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So the career you built doesn't exist anymore... · Content, Briefly

• 0:00
  [gentle music] Today's episode is brought to you by our friends at Venngage. You spent three weeks on that report. Be honest about how many people actually read past the intro.
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• 1:08
  That's SUPERPATH30 at venngage.com. Hope you enjoy the episode. Hey, team. Alex here. Today, Chloe and I talk to Shannon Diep and Kevin Lee, co-founders of Bonfire.
• 1:20
  After climbing the ladder of in-house marketing teams, Kevin and Shannon spent the last three years building their company that's an amalgamation of their various interests.
• 1:27
  They mainly do brand marketing, but they've also built a community of not just marketers, but mainly marketers, who are at the crossroads of their career. They offer workshops and retreats in the French countryside.
• 1:37
  We cover a lot of ground in this episode.
• 1:39
  We talk about the unique struggles content marketers are facing right now, if upskilling is worth it, the trade-offs of in-house versus freelance work, and why making time to think about the role work plays in your life is so important.
• 1:50
  I hope you enjoy the conversation as much as I did. Okay, onto the episode. Shannon and Kevin, welcome back to Content Briefly. Awesome to have you here. Thank you, Alex. Thanks, Alex.
• 2:00
  We also have, uh, Chloe here with us today. I'm really excited for this episode. I wanna hear a little bit about the retreats you've been doing and kind of these conversations you've been having with a lot of marketers.
• 2:12
  I think it's really relevant at the moment. We have a lot of folks in content marketing that are thinking about what's next, wondering if this space is still right for them.
• 2:22
  And maybe we just kick it off with a, a question of if you were talking to a content marketer right now, they're maybe questioning in this world of AI, um, do they still wanna be here, what would you say to them?
• 2:32
  What would be your advice? Yeah. We were just talking to someone today about that, weren't we? Yeah, actually. [laughs] Like, I mean, the question comes up so often.
• 2:40
  One of the things that we do with our retreats is we try to allow for people to have space to think about what matters to them and what, what they value in life and in a career.
• 2:51
  Where you find yourself in this current content marketing moment, like, navigating that could lead you so many different ways depending on what you value and what you want for yourself.
• 3:00
  I'm just thinking of my journey with content marketing. I loved starting and writing as much as I could. To think that I was getting paid to write was just, like, a dream come true in those early, early days.
• 3:12
  The fact that I got to come up with the spelling and grammar rules for an entire company was just, like, such a delight to me.
• 3:18
  But that's, like, such a relic these days and, and I think that type of work has changed a lot.
• 3:23
  And so for me, like, if I was to reflect back on that version of myself, the things that I valued might have led me down paths where I'm seeking out more content creation type roles, different types of content, like maybe thought leadership content, maybe bigger brand projects rather than traditional B2B content marketing.
• 3:38
  Um, but then there's another part of me that, you know, later in my career I was chasing, uh, management and strategy and systems, and, like, that's act- another route you could go, depending on what's important to you.
• 3:47
  And so I think the question of values is something that we often end up coming back to whether we meant to or not. Like, what do you want, and then where can you find what you want?
• 3:55
  I guess I was gonna take, like, maybe one level higher of a abstraction from what Kevin said. What is it that you like about content marketing? Is it that you like to write?
• 4:08
  Is it that you like being a part of a collaborative and complex system? Is it that you like working with or managing other people?
• 4:17
  Do you actually only really like this because you're in one particular situation at, like, a really good company with a really good boss, and maybe what you really like is somebody who gives you a lot of autonomy and creative leeway, and you don't actually care if you're writing a blog or SEO or AEO or life cycle emails or, like, whatever it happens to be.
• 4:38
  It is about identifying what are those aspects of what you really enjoy doing that could be universal. Um, and then I think that will
• 4:49
  kind of, like, shake loose the sunk cost, preconceived notions of, like, what it is you actually can do and open up the field of new opportunities or new ways to look at other possibilities that, like, if you just think about, well, I'm a content marketer, so I need to look for the closest thing that resembles content marketing moving forward.
• 5:12
  Today's content marketing skill set is incredibly fungible for, like, a modern business context. So, like, yeah, widen the, the aperture, I guess, would be my advice. Yeah.
• 5:22
  You mentioned sunk cost too, and I think I was thinking of sunk cost and, like, should-ing yourself. Like, 10 years into a career- Yeah... well, I should go find higher paying content marketing job.
• 5:32
  I should be going through my career step-by-step, climbing the ladder. New title. I should not- New- New title. Yeah. Mm-hmm.
• 5:38
  I should not waste the last 10 years of experience and skills and relationships that I've built, and that is... That can be a very big weight when it comes to that decision too.
• 5:47
  I think that's really interesting because we know, right, for the most part, that marketing teams are not necessarily, like, doubling in size anymore, right?
• 5:58
  Like, the, the hierarchy is getting a lot flatter rather than having... Like, when I think of my own career trajectory, like, I've had the opportunity to lead a team of four people plus contractors, et cetera, et cetera.
• 6:12
  I question whether I'll be able to have that type of experience again, or if it's like, okay, they say that now CMOs need to learn how to manage agents instead of people, and that is obviously a brand new skill set, and quite frankly, one that like
• 6:27
  I don't know if I'm interested in that. So I think it's interesting to see the path between
• 6:33
  having to go down the people management route versus looking at how you grow as a specialized skilled individual contributor and trying to understand
• 6:46
  which path you want to go down and then which path you also can go down given the changing gestures wildly, everything. Yeah. That's a, that's a good point.
• 6:56
  In the same way that the, the content marketing job template has been turned on its head, also the career journey has been turned on its head from like, hey, I'm gonna start as a, you know, content specialist, and then maybe I get to be a manager, and I'm starting to manage somebody, and like maybe I work my way up and I become CMO over time.
• 7:14
  It is kind of unknown like what all of this is gonna look-- Like what will teams look like five years from now? That's, that's unclear too. And, um, will we all just be specialists? And what does that mean?
• 7:24
  Yeah, I think the other, the other side of that is if we're not all specialists, do we all have to end up being generalists?
• 7:30
  And like some of the path that we've watched people go through from the content marketing space is, oh, to be safe, I need to move from content marketing into product marketing- Mm. Mm...
• 7:41
  for instance, or to be safe, I need to move from- So yeah... content marketing into- Yeah...
• 7:45
  demand gen or into growth, and they kind of end up doing it all just so that, you know, depending on where the, the magnifying glass is focused on the budget that month, like you're, you're covered.
• 7:55
  And so I, I know some people are excited about that shift, and like there's lots of cool different directions to go there, again, if you're interested in that work. But, um,
• 8:04
  then there's like the hyper-specialization route where like I'm the only one who knows these one and two skills, and those skills are valuable. And then there's the
• 8:11
  save yourself generalist route where it's like I can do all these different things, whatever matters most to the company at this point in time.
• 8:17
  And yeah, both of those are very different than what a traditional content marketing role was five, 10 years ago.
• 8:24
  I think like the, the danger in that, and this is something we see 'cause we do some coaching of like mid-career, uh, marketers of, of all ilks, not just content marketing, but like the danger is being entirely reactive to what's happening rather than self-directed and like- Mm-hmm...
• 8:43
  looking inward even though it can be a scary place to look inward.
• 8:47
  Same thing I think with like the AI bubble where it's like everybody has to be reactive to the AI bubble or else it's kind of this sort of, you know, swim or perish sort of moment.
• 9:01
  But like if it truly is like taking a cheese grater to your soul to like have to interact with these technologies, is the return on investment really gonna be there in the long run if like you don't actually like what you're doing anymore but you've invested in a skill that someone will pay for?
• 9:21
  And I feel like you just like spoke to my heart right there. [laughs] 'Cause I, I do use AI, and I actually work for like an AI-centric company, right?
• 9:31
  In, um, the workforce intelligence and analytics space, and I see hugely the value of AI, but I also see how certain applications and moments are just soul, soul-sucking and take out what I love about my job.
• 9:49
  I don't want to outsource the things that I love about my job. I think every marketer and every content marketer for sure is having like this existential crisis moment where
• 10:01
  are we even allowed to fall in love with what we do because it's changing so rapidly amongst us?
• 10:07
  To your point, that is how I try to ground myself are what are the things that I like doing that I feel that I'm good at, and that most importantly for my job welfare and the continuity of like a paycheck, what will bring a business money?
• 10:23
  Trying to find your passions and really trying to like be true to that while also having a curiosity.
• 10:31
  It is that balancing act to not be so resistant to like what could happen in the future, but really landing like what your strengths are and, and what your, what your core is. I think like you totally nailed it there.
• 10:43
  So Kevin and Shannon, you're having lots of conversations with marketers right now. What are some of the, the things that you're hearing from them?
• 10:52
  Any patterns that you're picking up on of like the things that people are processing as they think about what is next for them, what, what they actually want out of their careers? What are the options?
• 11:02
  I've been reading some of your newsletters.
• 11:04
  You've got some great frameworks for this, but walk me through like, one, what you're hearing from folks, and then two, kind of what some of your recommendations are to them and, and kind of like what some of the outcomes that you're seeing are for folks that are going through this big decision right now.
• 11:17
  Are you mainly working with like in-house folks?
• 11:20
  We interface a lot with like peers who are other either freelancers or entrepreneurs and, and people who like kind of have their own small boutique shops, but primarily like our clients and the folks that we're advising are, are all in-house.
• 11:35
  Yeah. Our network was really in-house also when we started. Yeah. Um, and I'd say that we've moved with the network to be like a lot of us are finding different ways of working besides just the traditional in-house work.
• 11:47
  Um, so job market's hard is one.
• 11:49
  ROI I guess would be another one that we hear a lot, like how do you prove the worth of content or brand or some of this work that folks want to be doing but either no one's hiring for it or it's getting no budget when they're in-house, so they're thinking of, "Can I find this-- Can I find someone elsewhere who cares about this stuff?"
• 12:07
  So hard, hard conversations, hard questions.
• 12:09
  A lot of people use the word paralysis In terms of their larger career and what they should be doing, but also from like just to like what is my next strategy going to look like? What do I do now [laughs]
• 12:26
  in the next quarter that is like going to make a difference, move the needle, feel effective, feel like I'm not just falling further and further behind the trends?
• 12:38
  Um, because ev- like Kevin was saying, everything is changing so fast. There are no proven playbooks anymore, and there's tons of pressure to prove value. Yeah. Oh my gosh, that, that brings back...
• 12:52
  So I mean, I sat in an in-house role as recently as just over a year ago, and one of my things as I was thinking about my own career was like I don't have any experimentation time because like I'm holding down way too many different things.
• 13:05
  If I sit here in a role like this for the next two years, my skill set's gonna fall behind. I was thinking that exact same thing. And it, it's interesting 'cause I think we see that in Superpath as well.
• 13:14
  A lot of our in-house folk, the value they get out of Superpath is like the quick doses of like can you just sort through all this noise that I'm hearing to what's most relevant for me right now?
• 13:22
  'Cause I have so little time to, uh, adapt to what's going on.
• 13:25
  It's a super tricky place to be because like Shannon mentioned, it's paralysis and it's stuck, and you just like life ends up passing you by, and you blink, and you've been in the same job for two years and didn't ever get a chance to go and see what else was out there too.
• 13:39
  And so when we hear people at a crossroads, sometimes it's almost like they're at the stage of burnout because they've been at the crossroads for so long and haven't been able to do anything about it.
• 13:49
  Or they've wanted to do something about it, but can't get an interview somewhere or can't make a connection or whatever the case may be.
• 13:56
  I think that there's another slice of ROI that I'm curious about your thoughts on because I also think of ROI in terms of the time you spend upskilling and how that is gonna benefit you in the short term and the long term.
• 14:10
  There, there isn't really like a must-have skill set list in terms of these are the things you need to be seen as more marketable. How would you parse through that thinking in terms of do I go back to school?
• 14:26
  Do I take a certification? Do I just listen to a lot of podcasts and webinars and then somehow weave that into my interviews because that's not a line item on a resume, right?
• 14:37
  What exactly should people be doing to make themselves more marketable knowing that job searching and figuring out what you wanna do takes a lot of time and bandwidth as well? Two thoughts on it.
• 14:47
  I don't think either of them are great answers, but like the first one is don't, don't go back to school and don't take certifications 'cause all that, that your hiring manager is gonna care about is like experience and have you done this before, and can you speak the language on the call?
• 15:00
  I think you're right on that. Yeah. I, I, I am tempted to go back to school all the time to learn stuff 'cause it sounds fun and, and enjoyable, and things.
• 15:07
  And then I'm like, oh no, I don't know that anyone's gonna care [laughs] when it comes to like- And also wouldn't you worry-... the hiring conversation... that it would be outdated? Like I have- And outdated. Yeah...
• 15:14
  I have marketing, you know, recent graduates that are coming to me, and they're like, "The job market's really hard. Should I go back? Should I get my master's?"
• 15:21
  And I'm like, I don't know if honestly a university is where I would go to learn things right now. Like- No. Right? No. [laughs] No. Yeah. Like what do they know- Yeah...
• 15:32
  that you don't know from being in the field right now? And I mean, I didn't go to school for marketing. Did anybody on this call go to school for marketing? Journalism- Nope... and women's studies. [laughs] Yeah.
• 15:40
  [laughs] Th- theater and creative writing, yeah. Yeah, journalism, so. Economics and government. Yeah. [laughs] Oh. Marketing adjacent maybe.
• 15:51
  I think there's also the issue with the current job market of like just how tight the filters are and how few folks are actually like getting through to another human being that's looking at their resume.
• 16:05
  Chucking a bunch of new skills onto a resume or into a cover letter in the hopes that you will get past the th- 1,000 hurdles for someone to even evaluate you, there's something like really fundamentally broken at the beginning gates of evaluating candidates right now.
• 16:24
  Actually trying to become a better candidate, like not a good use of your time because it's this kind of horrible random number game.
• 16:34
  I think it's about like what can you prove that you can do, and then are there public ways to show off what you can do?
• 16:43
  I think this speaks to like another horrible trend, which is everybody has to become their own personal brand and has to like have this LinkedIn persona where you have developed your own proprietary frameworks and downloadable things, comment PDF, and like your favorite emoji below, and I'll send you my whatever.
• 17:04
  Like, but that's what this is all-- that's what all these pressures are like pushing us towards because
• 17:10
  you have to count on somebody roving past your LinkedIn profile and seeing something that they think that their company needs, and that's just like a whole other paradigm of how people get hired.
• 17:24
  I actually got my current job through a cold application. I knew no one there. Wow.
• 17:30
  I applied on LinkedIn, but I had spent the last few months really honing in on, I wouldn't say my personal brand, but like what was my story? What were my non-negotiables?
• 17:42
  What were the things that I was really passionate about? And what were the things that I had stories and proof points attached to? I think that showed up through, you know, my cover letter and my resume.
• 17:51
  I think we all need to realize that you're not gonna love every second of your job. If you do, kudos.
• 17:57
  [laughs] Um, but like, but I do believe you spend a lot of your life working, and you should feel some kinda way about it. You should really like what you do.
• 18:07
  There's a, a saying that Shannon puts in a lot of newsletters, and it's de-center work, and I think that's like relevant in the job search, in the conversation of like how do you upskill yourself because like- Pick any, any dozen of things that different companies are gonna want at different times.
• 18:22
  Is it your duty to go and learn those things so that you stand out as an applicant? Or do you
• 18:28
  kinda make work not be what you learn about, what you care about, how you spend your time, and you just go and do the stuff that you wanna do?
• 18:35
  That's, like, a very tricky place to be when you're desperate to find work or you're desperate to get out of a situation. It's very, very tempting to go and become the person that you see in the job description.
• 18:45
  But I think given, like what Shannon mentioned also, about how hard it is to get in front of employers and hirers, like, that is just gonna be a fool's errand to go and be a chameleon for every single thing that's out there.
• 18:55
  So I, I guess what you're saying is just when you're thinking about upskilling, make sure it's something that you actually want to be upskilled in- [laughs] Yes...
• 19:03
  and that you actually care about, rather than just making it, like, a tick box exercise. Go find something else that kinda lights you up. That's kinda what I'm hearing from you. Yeah.
• 19:12
  Like, know what's important to you so that when you're upskilling, you're upskilling in that direction instead of being reactive.
• 19:18
  If you're open to it, I'd love to hear a little bit more about both of your stories and journeys of deciding to leave being in-house marketers to your agency and then your community work and, and kind of like how you're thinking about that for yourselves.
• 19:31
  Yeah, happy to. We had just come out of working together at Oyster, which is in the HR space, and that was a great experience until it stopped being a great experience.
• 19:41
  That was kind of the way that it had gone at a lot of marketing jobs for me. It was great at times, great for a while, and then it stopped being great.
• 19:50
  And I started to recognize that pattern, and was like, "Oh, I don't have much control over when it stops being great, and I don't have much control over what people value within these companies.
• 20:01
  No matter how much I advocate for, no matter how much I show up, no matter what numbers I bring, no matter how hard we work and how great we perform, like, at the end of the day, the stuff I care about historically has not been the stuff that everyone else cares about at work."
• 20:13
  And that was not a great realization. Part of my, like, career journey has been like, "Oh, maybe the next place will care about this thing that I care about." And, and lo and behold, no, that doesn't seem to be the case.
• 20:22
  I think it became more and more exciting to me to make my own perfect place and to set the rules and the strategies and, and to, to have that autonomy and that control was really exciting to me.
• 20:34
  Um, but it was, for me, the, the shift from in-house work to doing my own thing, our own thing, was largely driven from getting so worn down by all the, like, bad experiences I ended up having in-house. Yeah.
• 20:48
  I feel fairly, like, similar. I was a freelance writer. I was working in theater. I was a, a script consultant and dramaturg for new play development in New York.
• 20:59
  And so branding, marketing, copywriting, all of that was, just because of my background, it was only ever, like, a convenient parking lot for the s- the skills that I had.
• 21:11
  There was always this sort of like, "Oh, what a lark [laughs] this job is." [laughs] Because, you know, it's not really that serious. But I was still
• 21:24
  subject to and felt myself getting, like, really caught up in the mindset that especially tech companies, VC-funded hyper-growth, like, they get into this mindset of, "This is really important, and, like, everybody, like, needs to be on board with how important our work is."
• 21:43
  And it's like I'm pretty sure all we're doing is, like, compressing documents and charging people $9 a month for it. It- g- it, like, infects you, and, like, you get caught up in that world.
• 21:56
  And so I also went through, like, cycles of, like, getting overly invested, getting burnt out, and then losing sight of, like, is any of this fun, rewarding?
• 22:09
  For me, it was always the relationships and the people, and I kind of, like, found my mission then.
• 22:15
  I care about these people, and I care about their lives being better and, like, making this job as exciting and rewarding for them as it possibly can be. Kevin was my manager at Oyster.
• 22:27
  He hired me there, and [laughs] I ended up leading, like, a team of, like, 10 people.
• 22:31
  And we went through the same kind of, like, cycle of everybody feeling really good, feeling very motivated, and then the business reality sort of crashing in. I, I was just kind of like there has to be a better way.
• 22:43
  So when, when Kevin and I began discussing, like, well, what could we do on our own? We knew that we worked really well together.
• 22:50
  We knew that we cared about the same things, both values-wise, but also, like, the type of work that we thought was interesting and that we believed that companies should be investing in.
• 23:00
  And we decided, well, what if we just offer that and see if anybody wants it? And turns out some people have wanted it for the last three years.
• 23:09
  And I think the people stuff is, is where a lot of our passion for retreats comes in, too. Like, we get- Yeah... a week i- in person talking about really big topics.
• 23:20
  We don't manage people in the way that we did when we were in-house, but we have so many other relationships like that, uh, either existing relationships from people that we used to work with that we still stay in touch with, coaching relationships through the business, or the in-person stuff that we do with the retreats.
• 23:33
  We still get to stretch those muscles, um, but on our own terms, which feels great. My own story has so many threads that are similar to what you both said that I'm not gonna repeat that.
• 23:43
  But I will ask the elephant in the room question here, which is, like, to do this on your own terms, do you have to start your own thing? And are there, like, enough opportunities out there?
• 23:52
  And, like, there, there's trade-offs with that too. Not everybody wants to actually run a whole business on their own.
• 23:58
  Like, sometimes you're just like, "I wanna do the work, but [laughs] I don't wanna run the business that allows me to do the work I wanna do," right? Uh, Kevin and I talk about this all the time too.
• 24:06
  You have to kind of be a generalist on a certain level to run your own business, and you have to stretch and learn in a bunch of ways and that... I, I don't know. I, I can...
• 24:16
  Sorry if you can hear my cat in the background. Honestly, I thought that was a child. I'm not- Yeah. No, it's- [laughs] It's my- It's my very elderly cat who [laughs] has decided that it's the witching hour.
• 24:28
  But yeah, like, the, I've had to learn a bunch of stuff that I don't really wanna learn, like- Yeah... to, to be honest.
• 24:35
  Like, I'm, I'm, despite what I, like, said earlier, uh- I was about to say- About like- Let's like- Yeah, yeah, yeah... wait a second. But I think, I think the, I think the difference is that, like,
• 24:45
  I am investing in myself and something that I co-own with Kevin. Because my goal is have a business that sustainably supports my family and Kevin's family,
• 25:02
  I can learn and stretch and figure out the things I need to do to make that true, and that becomes something that doesn't get pulled out from under me. It is not easy.
• 25:15
  You, you have to have, like, a really particular niche that you're able to, like, plug into, or you do have to have the appetite to, like, sort of spin a bunch of plates, but at least you're spinning plates for yourself is kind of- I think that's a really good point.
• 25:29
  Um, I was at one of my previous jobs for seven and a half years, which, like, millennial tenure, that's wild. That's like- Yeah... three times the, the average tenure.
• 25:40
  And I really, really, really loved my job for six and a half years. But the last year completely just broke me, and I was like, "This is not the job I started. This is not where I want to be.
• 25:54
  This is not who I want to be." And so I left voluntarily, which was, like, unheard of at that point. And I had so many people that assumed that I was going out on my own, and I was like, "I'm not ready for it."
• 26:11
  I'm terrified of, you know, like, the actual running the business. Also, taking a step back and thinking about, like, what is the one thing you offer that no one else does?
• 26:18
  Because in this really crappy job market, the freelance business and the consultative business has also gotten so much more competitive.
• 26:28
  So I think trying to understand, like, when you're ready to make that leap is really important. Yes. And maybe that's why someone should go to one of your retreats.
• 26:36
  Like, it, you know, it does take that, that soul-searching in terms of being okay with the instability and the unknown, um, which is something that I'm not great at [laughs] personally. Yeah. No, t- totally.
• 26:49
  Uh, like, having a partner was, like, a huge part of it for me, too. Um, I think we balance each other really well on the skills that we brought in.
• 26:59
  Uh, Kevin has a lot more, like, leadership experience in marketing teams. I worked at an agency, so, like, I can kind of bring those norms in.
• 27:08
  But Kevin is very attractive to clients who want, like, a fractional marketing leader, and so we have that, but we also have, like, agency mindset. We cover a bit of a range of things.
• 27:18
  Um, Kevin was an accounting major for, like, one year, I think, right? [laughs] Uh, in college. And so he can, [laughs] he knows how to put a spreadsheet together. You don't, you don't do all the things you hate.
• 27:29
  Sometimes I do the things you hate, and you do the things I hate. Yes, exactly. [laughs] So that, that's nice. [laughs] Yeah. Yeah.
• 27:35
  G- I, so I think, like, partnership or, like, Kevin and I have also discussed, like, the full name of our company is Bonfire Collective because we have sort of, like, a stable of, like, other independent operators that we'll bring in to projects as we need them.
• 27:48
  But we were like, do we specifically design this as a collective where it's not just me and Kevin and then some freelancers, but it's, like, other people who don't wanna do it alone, but whose skills complement ours?
• 28:01
  And do we try to find them and bring them into the fold? So we've talked about things like that, too. I was gonna ask, how do you find them?
• 28:08
  Is it because they're showing up on LinkedIn, like we talked about, with their personal brand, with their stories? Is it looking at brands and then seeing who's behind them?
• 28:18
  How do you kinda find the best of the best, I guess? [laughs] Yeah. I- Yeah. Come- It's- Come say hi to us online. Yeah. Yeah. For me, I think it's, like, really values driven.
• 28:26
  It's like, who do we like working with, and who do we work well with? And who works in a manner, runs their own business in a manner where we're like, "Yeah, this is, like, the kind of integrity that we wanna have"?
• 28:39
  But yeah, like, say, say hello to us. Our email inboxes is open. [laughs] Yeah. I think values is a big piece of it. And, and your question, like, the elephant question, Alex, about is there a way to- Yeah...
• 28:50
  to have it your way, um, no. You have to go out of the in-house role to have it your way.
• 28:57
  Um, but there is, if you stay in the in-house role, you do get to choose what your relationship to work is like, and so I think that's the trade-off.
• 29:03
  Totally fine to stay in in-house and keep that job and that security and all that stuff that you don't get when you leave and try to do it your own way.
• 29:11
  But if you're miserable, then it's up to you to take agency into how you approach your work and how you think about the role that work plays within your life.
• 29:19
  'Cause if it's not gonna be sustainable, then you're in a really tough spot. There's just so many things you can't control in an in-house role.
• 29:25
  So you just think about, like, who would've expected four years ago that, like, today everybody would just have AI thrown down from the top and have no say over it and no control over, like, the role it plays in their work.
• 29:37
  Yeah, you just don't have a lot of control there. Um, okay. We've bounced around it a lot. Tell us a little bit more about the retreats. Yeah. Of course. We would love to have anyone who's listening check us out online.
• 29:47
  Come say hi to us so we can tell you more in person, too, over Zoom. Uh, but the retreats, we have a group of three for 2027. They take place in the French countryside.
• 29:57
  Um, it's typically around a week long, and it's a lot of hanging out together, having conversations with one another. We cater it and bring in a chef, lots of wine, lots of cheese.
• 30:07
  For 2027 in particular, we are doing a return to a creative practice, and so, like, they're branded as creative retreats.
• 30:15
  One of the things that we've heard and experienced talking with in-house folks and being in-house folks also is it can be really hard to prioritize the creative projects that bring you to life.
• 30:23
  And so this is our way to create space for people to come and experience that in a little community of in-person folks. And so they're open to anyone worldwide.
• 30:33
  We've had folks from all sorts of different countries over the past couple years, and we'd love to have, have you there.
• 30:38
  The retreats that we did last year, what was so great was the diversity of folks that we had coming together all around this shared idea of, "I'm at a career crossroads and I don't know what I want next."
• 30:50
  To be able to, like, plan programming around that question, but then not have to plan it for a specific skill set that people were trying to develop.
• 30:59
  We had a lot of marketers, but it wasn't only marketers, and we had a lot of people who were mid-career, but it wasn't only people who were mid-career.
• 31:07
  But they're all asking the same question, and so that allows for everybody's really different backgrounds to, like, enter the room, and everybody kind of gets the richness of that.
• 31:20
  That's why we also, instead of having creative retreats where, you know, I'm a writer, Kevin's a writer, a, a lot of marketers are writers. We didn't make it a creative retreat for writers.
• 31:32
  We made it a creative retreat for anyone who wants to return to or develop a creative practice that they've been procrastinating on or ignoring. Because we believe the same thing.
• 31:43
  Whatever it is that you feel called to try or do, we will have activities organized around developing that creative practice, but aren't skill specific, so we get that same kind of diversity.
• 31:58
  Everyone is there for the same reason, but with different tools. And also, we didn't want anybody to feel like, "I'm not enough of a real writer to go on a writing retreat.
• 32:07
  I'm not enough of a real painter to go on a painting retreat." Um, we purposely designed the 2027 retreats to be more on the creative end of things for that reason. Yeah.
• 32:17
  They're called The Excuse, so it's an excuse to finally do the thing. [laughs] And so if anyone listening knows exactly what that means for you personally, we'd love to hear from you. Awesome.
• 32:26
  Well, Shannon and Kevin, thanks for joining us today. Thank you so much. Thanks. This was really interesting. Thanks so much. Yeah, this was fun. [outro music]