Why Austin? It's Weird You Asked...

It’s a question I’ve been asked a lot over the past couple of months as I made the call to move to Austin. You see, they say everything is bigger here. Big sky, big land, big hats, big boots, big oil...and big data??

I guess the data was really the key to getting me to Austin after nine years in New Jersey, seven years in Hong Kong, seven years in Sydney, and 29 years in New Zealand.?

And while zeros and ones are less compelling than the sky, land, hats, and so on, it’s essential if you’re a technology marketer. Especially one who’s spent their career in mid-sized and large agencies then made the crazy decision to build a COVID business.?

But let’s not get ahead of ourselves. Rewind to November 2019. I found myself under-employed in New Jersey (sounds like a Neil Simon play). I was interviewing, but not really into it.

You know when you’re selling yourself in an interview and can hear yourself saying the words but not believing them? I was that guy.

And then Tom Hanks got COVID, and the world turned upside-down. I still remember doing my last (ever?) face-to-face interview and joking about foot ‘handshakes’. Those were crazy, carefree days. You could walk maskless in the streets of New York. Get a drink without showing a vaccination card. And travel to New Zealand without putting down $2,200 to spend two weeks in a random hotel.?

And having been through several significant global crises in my working life (Black Wednesday, the dot-com bubble, the Great Recession…), I had a sense of what was coming. The marketing and communications agencies I was interviewing with would stop all senior and junior hiring, ahead of inevitable client pull-back, attempt to stop layoffs, and generally push all work to the mid-tier folks.

And so there’s me. In a New Jersey winter. In my basement. With a mortgage. So after spending a professional lifetime working for other people, I decided to double-down on an idea from several years before. After my first period of under-employment, I set up the cleverly named Jeremy Woolf Consulting as a means of hedging my bets. I’d always had thoughts about building an agency, and at the time, I was playing consulting for myself against finding another gig.

The other gig (well, gigs, *sigh*) worked out really well. Until they didn’t.

So, back to my basement. I did what any good communications consultant would do and set about creating demand once I’d defined my audience and services. Posted my profile to various sites, and early on, had a nibble from AngelList. To be honest, I thought my nibbler (!) was trying to sell me something. But an inquiry from a boot-strapped BI company bipp in Texas about marketing support got us connected. And after a couple of due diligence calls, it was clear that while this company had a great product, it needed help with its voice and audience.?

After a mission, vision, values, and purpose workshop, we went onto product differentiation, buyer personas, and my little agency gathered steam. I ultimately became bipp’s fractional CMO and have supported them part-time through website creation, open beta launch, and now building an enterprise proposition. Most encouragingly, we’re getting more than 50 sign-ups each week.

I loved working directly with the founders. After years of aging disgracefully in agencies, I had become too expensive to consult and too far removed from the actual work. With my business, I was back in the trenches.

There’s nothing like the thrill of seeing new sign-ups, web traffic growing, and being part of something again.

I also joined a former colleague supporting a large IT services company’s evolution to digital transformation supplier of choice. And in my spare time, I was pitching business and picking up smaller projects.

And then it hit me. My little hedging exercise had become a consultancy. And I was happy. And the bank was delighted! As I gazed into my crystal ball, I saw something of a path forward. One that wasn’t dependent on my access to a Manhattan train line or Manhattan-based clients. I could work remotely on meaningful projects.?

So...why Austin? The relative success of my little COVID business started raising more questions. Why not live in a place where your hard-earned dollars go a little further? Why not enjoy great weather almost year-round? Why not be in a place where technology (especially big data) is a growing and dominant sector? The answer seemed to be Austin. And while I’ve loved my life in New Jersey, after a month in Texas, I couldn’t be happier.

There’s more to come as I embark on my Austin adventure. And, gentle readers, if you know anyone in Austin who’d like to meet up with a slightly used B2B brand strategist and content marketer for coffee or beers, please connect us...