Take the Risk to Make a Change
A year ago today, I reached out via email to a former colleague to request that he introduce me to a fellow executive at his small, but growing company. When I made that request, I didn't realize how this seemingly small effort would set into motion events that would lead me to join his company, Aaptiv, several months later.
I had seen that he had been hiring a few people I knew and liked to help build the tech and product side of the business. I admit that it wasn't a company I was terribly familiar with or an industry that I had been eyeing. But I did recognize that the people who had come aboard with him were high-quality individuals, and I embraced the chance to work with them all again. At the very least, it was worth exploring, I thought. So I asked him to connect me with the head of the marketing department, and, if she would indulge, I looked to chat with her about the possibility of creating a position for me somewhere down the line.
I never expected that by the end of our one-hour sit-down I'd be tasked with writing up a job description for myself, outlining how I could help grow the company that season. I thought within our conversation that we were projecting six to nine months out, when the time was right and they were ready to create and advertise a new role. However, I was pleasantly surprised to discover that sometimes when the right candidate for a possible role is sitting right there in front of you, you want to accelerate the process and get started right away. That was a new lesson for me in my career and one that delighted me and continues to motivate me many months on.
Many people never get the opportunity to entertain writing a job description for themselves, to pitch and position themselves for a potential role within an existing organization. It's a challenging prospect and one I took seriously. I treated it like it was my opus. It's not as simple as filling a page with what you can do and can provide at the current time; you must project what success looks like in the short-term and also how you can increase your impact in the long-term as the company grows and expectations and responsibilities mount. Figure out what problems the executives must be looking to solve. This was a rewarding challenge for me to demonstrate vision for what a company would look like a year out with my assistance in key areas.
So here I stand a year later, reflecting on this simple act, and reviewing what I put together last summer as a plan. In some ways, I'm impressed with how much I got right, as I envisioned what would be happening that fall and winter -- new year's resolutions season at a fitness tech company is a whirlwind, let me tell you. In other ways, I never could have imagined the intense personnel growth and massive amount our team would be able to accomplish together in such a short period of time.
Surrounded by others who take the bull by the horns, I'm inspired to write (even if only for myself) a similar document with predictions of where my work -- and our team's collective work -- will reside in the second half of this year and into next year. It's clear we're only still getting started with what we can offer to our members. We grow stronger every day.