The Career RelaunchPodcast

Episode Interview Transcript

Teaser (first ~15s): What held me back for so long was fear of this huge change. It feels like such a leap going from a job you hate to work your love, but there are a million tiny, baby steps that you can take along the way that will get you closer.

Joseph: Hello, Adrian. Welcome to Career Relaunch.

Adrian: Thank you. Thanks so much for having me today.

Joseph: You have written a lot of really useful career articles with some solid career advice. I’m definitely hoping to touch on some of those topics during our chat, but we are here to talk about change. I know that you’ve had a few changes recently in both your life and you career. Could you kick us off by giving us a glimpse into how things have evolved for you over the past couple of months?

Adrian: I have been at The Muse for about five and a half years. I joined the company as the very first employee. I have seen it grown from literally 0 to about 150 employees through all kinds of stages of growth. I was hired to run the editorial team. I served as Managing Editor and then Editor in Chief. I’ve recently transitioned into a new role there, which is a part-time Editor-at-Large role. What that means is I’m going to be spending time on creative projects and strategy, translating our content into all kinds of new vehicles and some press like this wonderful podcast. I’m really excited to be making this change and to be talking about change because it’s what I am going through currently.

Joseph: You are the very first editor that I’ve had on Career Relaunch, Adrian. For those out there who are interested in understanding the world of journalism a little bit, can you explain exactly what an editor in chief does?

Adrian: It looked a little bit different during my time at The Muse, but basically, it entailed overseeing all of the content, production, and marketing at Muse. We published about 50 articles a week, and the Editor in Chief is the one who makes sure all of that content is assigned, all of that content is in production, and then all of that content is produced in the best way possible so that when readers see it on the site, it is the best possible writing, it’s the best possible story, the best possible advice, and then the best possible title and photo and SEO optimization and lots of little things that readers don’t typically think about but that make a big difference when it comes to getting it out there into the world.

Joseph: I know you haven’t always been at The Muse, Adrian. I was wondering if you could take us back in time to your life in Washington DC, when you were at the George Washington University. Maybe you could tell us briefly about what you’re up to there, and then I definitely want to come back to some of the work that you’re doing here at The Muse at the very end and then also talk about some of your own projects.

Adrian: Previously, I was in a very, very different role. I was at the George Washington University in Washington DC, and I was running online communications for their health center. GW for me was actually a bridge job, and it helped me change careers. Prior to GW, I had been in marketing roles, and I realized that marketing was really not what I wanted to do. I didn’t really know how to get out of marketing and into a more editorial role, so I ended up taking a job at GW. I was hired as a marketing manager, but I used that experience and that time there to sort of transition and pivot my career into editorial.

The department that I worked for also put out the medical center’s publications, so in addition to my work as a marketing manager, I would go over to the publications team and say, ‘Hey, you guys seem really busy. Is there anything that I could help you with? Could I maybe write an article for the newsletter, maybe write an article for the magazine?’ Ultimately, that turned into me doing a lot of that work, a lot of writing and editing work. Ultimately, I pivoted into being the editor of the magazine, and then ultimately, that led to my final role there, which was running the online communications, overseeing websites and the content on those websites.

Joseph: When I hear that, it sounds like quite a seamless transition, but I’d imagine that it’s not the easiest thing to make a pivot within an organization from the function you’ve been hired into a new function that aligns with your interest. How did you go about uncovering this new opportunity while also keeping your day job going?

Adrian: I felt very lucky to have an organization that that was supportive of me taking on other projects. I know it’s not always so easy in every organization, and a lot of people don’t want to give up their work or let somebody else take something else on. In my case, everyone was very, very supportive and under-resourced and strapped, and so people were happy to have the help. It’s a big time suck and energy suck to do work on top of the job that you were hired for, and it took work outside of work hours and really putting a lot of time and energy into this. It’s not something that you can just do from 9:00 to 5:00 or 9:00 to 6:00.

Also during this time, I was freelance writing for other sites, which is what ultimately led me to my job at The Muse. That too, there were a lot of nights and weekends that I wasn’t relaxing, I wasn’t hanging out with my friends. I was doing this extra work, in some cases not being paid for it, but that was necessary to translate what I was doing then into what I ultimately wanted to be doing.

Joseph: How did you know that you wanted to get into journalism?

Adrian: It was one of those things that I sort of always knew. I just tried not to pay attention to it because I didn’t know any other writers, I didn’t know any editors, and I didn’t know anyone who had made a successful career in this field. I just had this idea in my head that I think a lot of people do, that, ‘Oh, well. Writers can’t make any money. I can’t find a writing job with good benefits.’ That’s not true at all.

When I finally started thinking about what I am going to do for the rest of my career that’s not marketing, this idea of writing just kept coming up. What I ended up doing and what was really helpful was I took a few classes and took online classes through Mediabistro. I don’t know if they have them anymore, but it’s an approach I recommend to everyone for a couple of reasons. I think, first, you interact in that world, so all of a sudden, I was talking to and working with people who were writers or editors or trying to be writers or editors and understood more about what that career path might look like. I also understood more about what type of writing and editing I like to do.

I took a personal essay writing class, I took a beauty writing class, I took an ad copywriting class, and I was sort of doing the assignments and the homework, I understood more about what I liked and what I didn’t like. I kept doing more of what I liked, and that was really helpful in figuring out what this career path could look like.

Joseph: That’s interesting. I know one of the articles you wrote, which I thought was really good, was about ‘How to Get Experience in a New Field without Starting at the Bottom’ I think was the title. You mentioned doing things like getting a side gig or doing some exploration on the side. It sounds like that was really fruitful for you to dip your toe in the water with some of these different classes. It seems so effective to do that, and yet I know that some people don’t seem to make the time or don’t seem to go down that road. What do you think stops people from taking that step?

Adrian: I think the time and energy factor is a big one. You come home from work at the end of the day, and you’re exhausted, and you still need to go to the gym and go to the grocery store and see your family or call your mom. There’s a very real time hurdle there.

I think one of the biggest things that holds people back and definitely was true for me was this fear of getting started, this fear of putting yourself out there, this fear of doing something different, this fear of, ‘What if I do this different thing, this thing that I’ve said for a long time I’ve wanted to do and I don’t like that or I’m not good at it or I fail at it?’ It’s easier to sit in your job and say, ‘I’m not happy. I really want to be a writer, and maybe someday that’ll happen.’ That’s pretty easy. Actually making stuff to do that, to put yourself out there to become a writer is really hard, and that held me back for a really long time.

Joseph: During your role there as the Managing Editor at George Washington University, what happened next for you?

Adrian: I started freelance writing for other sites on the side, and it was actually through that experience that I met Kathryn and Alex, the founders of The Muse. They had a site previous to The Muse, and a friend of a friend introduced us, and I started doing some work for them. Ultimately, they closed down that site, and they started The Muse and sent me an email one day and said, ‘We’re starting this thing. We need a full-time Managing Editor. Do you want to do it?’ The opportunity really did fall in my lap at a point that I maybe was not yet ready to make a big move, but it was an opportunity I knew I could pass up.

Joseph: It sounds like this was one of those things that came up not through some sort of job posting or anything but just through, I guess, networking.

Adrian: Exactly. I did not apply for this job. I don’t think Kathryn and Alex had ever seen my résumé. At the time, I was living in San Francisco. They were living in New York. We had worked together and emailed and Skyped and worked together, but it was purely online. I hadn’t met them in person, but it absolutely was the networking that got me to meet them in the first place.

I tell this story a lot because I think people tend to think, ‘I have to meet the people who are doing exactly what I want to be doing,’ and only consider a certain subset of people and their network. The woman who introduced me to Kathryn and Alex was a friend of my husband from law school. She has nothing to do with what I do. She has nothing to do with Kathryn and Alex do. She purely just knew someone who she thought I should meet, and it just goes to show that your network and the people who can help you reach your goals or get you to where you want to be could be anyone. They could be friends. They could be your parents’ friends. They could be your hairstylist’s sister. It could be anyone, and the more people you talk to about your goals and what you’re trying to achieve, the bigger your network becomes.

Joseph: I couldn’t help but read one of your articles where you called yourself a card-carrying introvert. I myself am an introvert, and I’ll tell you, Adrian, I wouldn’t say that networking necessarily comes naturally to me. Do you have any advice for introverts out there who maybe understand the importance of networking but just can’t quite bring themselves to do it? Is there anything that worked well for you?

Adrian: Networking does not come naturally to me, and the idea of walking into a networking event and introducing myself to strangers makes me break out in a sweat. I hate it. I’m more comfortable with it now than I was five years ago, but it will never be my preferred state of being. I hate it. That, however, is not the only version of networking. What I tell people like me is to find the version of networking that works for you.

I do a lot of one-on-one coffee meetings or I do really small, intimate dinners. I’ve done this with a couple of groups of people there. I find a friend who has a similar goal or is in a similar world, and we both invite two or three other people, and then we have a really small, intimate dinner party. That is a great way to meet new people and have really deep, interesting conversations with people, which is absolutely a form of networking. It’s not the walking into a room and introducing myself to strangers. Actually, in some ways, it’s more effective.

Joseph: You decide that you’re going to shift over to The Muse. I know that that also involved a geographical change for you. What were some of the challenges, if any, that you faced when you were transitioning from one role in one sector to another role in a different type of company, a different type of organization, a different city, and a slightly different role?

Adrian: We were a completely remote company when we started. I was in San Francisco. The founders were in New York. They actually came to San Francisco for about a year when The Muse was going through Y Combinator. Then I moved to LA. The company moved to New York, and I sort of kicked and screamed for a couple of years before ultimately making the move to New York.

Joseph: What was your hesitation in doing that?

Adrian: I really love life in California: I love sunshine, I hate winter, I had a great community and group of friends there, my family is there, and I thought New York life would be hard. It is in certain ways, but I actually love it much more than I thought I would.

For me, it was really refreshing. I sort of felt like, for the first time, this is the environment that I belong in. This is the type of work environment I want. This is the type of work I want to do, the type of co-workers I want, the type of relationship with co-workers I want. I felt so, so happy.

Certainly, there were challenges for me. It was hard not having the resources that I was used to, not having an HR department or even health benefits at the beginning. I think it’s really important to do your research before you’re making the move so you’re not completely blindsided in this new environment, that you sort of have an understanding of what people like and don’t like about those environments, whether you will like or not like your new environment, what to expect, eliminate surprises before you get into that situation.

Joseph: Is there one particular tactic that you thought worked well for you to understand whether or not The Muse was going to be a good fit for you?

Adrian: I had a lot of conversations. I had a lot of conversations with Kathryn and Alex about their working style and their expectations, their goals for the company. I talked to people who had worked with them before. I basically did a lot of research to understand, ‘This is who I want to work with. This is who I want to build a company with for the next several years.’

I really just can’t stress the importance of that enough: you are interviewing a company as much as they are interviewing you, especially in a startup when you’re going to be working a lot, you’re going to be working on a small team, and you’re going to be working through some pretty stressful times. It’s really, really important to do that research.

Joseph: It’s interesting because you’ve got a really unique perspective, Adrian, because you worked for a large medical facility in Washington DC and focused on medical research, and now, you’re in much more of the startup world. Having been in both sides of the equation there, do you think that there are any sort of misconceptions or any sort of surprising things that you’ve found, now that you’ve spent some time in the startup world, having been in the non-startup world before?

Adrian: I think people think that working for a startup has a certain element of glamor or excitement. I would say excitement certainly. Glamor, not so much, especially at early-stage startups. It’s pretty hard. The hours are pretty crazy. There are things you have to deal with, like there’s 12 of us in this company, no one is the office manager or the IT guy, but the internet just went out. One of you 12 people needs to solve the internet problem, and a lot of just jumping in and doing things that you might not be great at or you might not be qualified for or you might really not want to do, like sit on the phone with Comcast for an hour. There’s a lot that is hard, and it’s not glamorous, especially in the early days.

Joseph: You were most recently in this role as Editor in Chief, but I know you made the decision to make a slight change in the nature of your role there. Now you’re doing the part-time Editor-at-Large role. Was there any particular trigger or impetus to you making that shift in your role?

Adrian: I had been thinking a lot about it last year for a couple of reasons. The company was growing really, really fast, which is amazing, but I sort of prefer the early days and sort of preferred some of the work that I was doing earlier on in the company. I wasn’t really quite sure what that meant or what I wanted to do with my role.

I actually spent the month of January in Southeast Asia. The Muse has a wonderful sabbatical policy, where after you’ve been there for five years, you can take a month off completely paid. I took advantage of that, traveled around for four weeks, but it was the first time in my life that I hadn’t worked at all while I was on vacation. That sort of had an interesting impact. I came back, and for a month, I had pushed everything off my plate. My team was completely doing everything that I normally did. It came back, and I had to think about, ‘What are the things that I want to add back on my plate and what are the things that should stay off my plate forever that someone else is actually better qualified for and enjoying more than I was?’

As I started thinking about that, I started designing this new role and then realized these are the things that I’m really excited about and passionate about and think that I can add value in, things like starting a new initiative or a new project, creative strategy with our growing, branded content team. I really crafted a role around those things, and it was amazing. It was amazing that the company was supportive of that, and I feel more energized than I have in a really long time.

Joseph: Was there anything that you did that you felt made those individuals in your company more receptive to the idea of you making a slight tweak?

Adrian: What I did was focus on not only what I liked doing but where I thought that I added the most value. For any boss to say yes to this sort of arrangement, it needs to be something that is equally as good for the company as it is for you or better for the company than it is for you but pitching it as a business case, not just, ‘This is what would make me happier. This is what I want to spend time on,’ but how I will be able to impact the business and the company in a bigger, better way. If you could do that, then there’s a much better chance of the powers to be going for it.

Joseph: For other people who are thinking about making a career change, do you have any advice that you would like to share with people who are maybe on the cusp of making that shift from doing work that they’re not super thrilled about to something that they can feel super passionate about?

Adrian: Just start taking one tiny, little, baby step. What held me back for so long was fear and fear of this huge, monumental change. It feels like such a leap going from a job you hate to work you love, but there are a million tiny, baby steps that you can take along the way that will get you closer. Figure out what those baby steps are, whether it is just sitting down for coffee with someone who has a job that you really admire or doing one, tiny volunteer project for an organization you admire where you can use your skills in a different way or reading a book. Whatever the smallest step that you could possibly take is, do that step. What I found is once you do that one step, it’ll make the next one a little easier and the next one a little easier, and you’ll find some momentum there. It’s that first step that’s the hardest.

Joseph: Do you have any tools or resources that you used to stay on track with your own career goals?

Adrian: One of the things that I am doing right now is working through a book called The Artist’s Way. It was really important to me to start writing more. It’s something that I love, I changed career paths to do more of, and then last year, I really wasn’t doing it at all. I wanted to get started again, but I just couldn’t figure out how to get started. This book is all about breaking through that fear, just getting back into the habits and the routines of a writer and not judging the work that you’re producing. That has been really helpful for me this year in making progress towards my new goals.

Joseph: Finally, before we talk about your current projects, having been through this career change, Adrian, what’s one thing that you’ve learned either about career change or even about yourself?

Adrian: The biggest thing I have learned is that careers are really long. I remember being 28 years old and feeling stuck and feeling like, ‘I guess this is just what I’m going to do for the rest of my career. I guess I’m just going to be a marketer.’ Looking back, that was so wrong. It was only a few years into my career, a career that’s going to be hopefully 30+ years long. It’s never too late to make a change. There’s a lot of roads in front of you, so it’s important not to feel stuck, to feel like there’s always something that you can do. It’s never too late to try something new. There’s a long road ahead.

Joseph: I want to wrap up, Adrian, with what you’re doing now, because I know you’ve got a few interesting things going on. I was wondering if we could start with The Muse first. Can you tell me a little bit more about what you’re focused on at The Muse? I know that specifically, you’re expanding your content into other formats, and I think you got a new book coming out.

Adrian: The two things that I’m really, really excited about right now at The Muse are translating our content into video, into online courses, into some other formats that we haven’t even dreamed up yet. We have a wealth of content that’s all written that you can find on TheMuse.com/advice. What is the next way? What do we turn that into next? I’m thinking a lot about that right now, and it’s really exciting.

Then The Muse Founders, Kathryn and Alex, just published a book called The New Rules of Work, and it basically is an A-to-Z guide to what we’ve been talking about today, which is finding work you love and then succeeding once you got there. Actually, it’s a great read if you’re feeling stuck. There’s all kinds of topics in there: résumés and cover letters and interviewing and pressing your boss, but my favorite part of it is the beginning, where you sort of walk through your personal career values and then use that information to weigh all of the different job possibilities in front of you. I think if I had had this when I was early in my career or making my career change, it would’ve been a lot easier.

Joseph: Aside from your work at The Muse, can you give us a quick snapshot of the freelance work you’re doing for early-stage companies, which I know is a new exciting initiative for you personally?

Adrian: As I mentioned, I really love the early days of startup life. One of the things that I’m really excited to work on outside of The Muse is helping other early stage companies figure out their content strategy and building editorial teams. I’m also saving some time for my own creative projects.

Joseph: Interesting. I’ll be looking forward to hearing how that goes for you. From your articles and our conversation today, I can definitely tell you I find your guidance very practical and grounded in reality. I’m sure people who work with you will gain a lot of value. I just wanted to thank you so much for telling us more about the life of an editor and some tips on networking in a way that works for you and also the importance of taking manageable steps towards your goals that aren’t too overwhelming. Best of luck with your new role at The Muse, Adrian, and your own freelance consulting work.

Adrian: Thank you so much.