It's been a hundred million years.

At the time of sending this, I will have hit my two year anniversary at Email on Acid/Mailgun/Mailjet/Sinch Email/whatever we call ourselves now (it’s Sinch Email, though I often just say Email on Acid in most situations).

I feel like I’ve had more growth in my career in terms of maturity and industry in the last 24 months than I have in the last 13 years. Thought I’d share some things I’ve learned across the way if that’s okay?

Let’s do this.

1) Find your community.

Finding the emailgeeks community completely transformed my career. It allowed me to rapidly learn about email marketing/design/development in a way that I never would have on my own. I fully believe that I got to the next step of my career because of this place. Much love to the admins, y’all are the best.

Like all communities, you get what you give, so find your people, contribute, become friends with folks, and that will lead to opportunities. This is not an automatic/overnight ticket to an amazing job. You can’t be in it for yourself, but for others, too.

Be nice, build friendships, the rest will come.

2) Do it scared

Big job opportunity is presented to you and you know you can probably do the job but you’re scared? That’s the time to leap. I’ve always been skeptical about this piece of advice since it’s very typical, but it’s true. See point 1? This is where your community comes in. Talk to the few trusted people you’ve built up rapport with and ask their opinions. I can guarantee they’ll give it to you straight, and they’re more likely to tell you that you’re ready than not.

My interviewing process at EoA was wild (different story for a different time), and I would have probably lost my mind if it wasn’t for my friends Carin and Catherine, who both told me to keep going when what I really wanted to do was remove myself from the running. I’m so glad I listened to them, we are our own worst critic.

3) High performing teams are the key to putting out amazing work

Words like “high performing” and “innovative” used to scare me. I’m a simple person with a weird brain and these words felt too big for me to ever live up to. I always strived to be “the best”, but always felt like I’d fall a little short, and I could never figure out what was missing.

What I’ve learned is that innovation can’t happen in a bubble, and for most people, can’t happen on your own. Throughout my career I was an only. The only graphic designer. The only email marketer. There was no one else to bounce a lot of ideas off of or to help with execution.

Now I work with an incredible team that includes an amazing email marketing manager, graphic designers, multimedia specialist, and other content folks who help with brainstorming ideas and how to best execute.

It helps when we’re all having fun, too. Shout out to the core group I work with day in and day out — Julia (email ride or die!), Thomas, Kasey, Kim, and Francois.

(This is where I brag, sorrynotsorry)

Without the team surrounding me, we would have never put out an award-winning email campaign, a legendary April Fool’s email, or create an entire show dedicated to email development.

I know the job market is bad and scary right now in tech, and I hope this is helpful. If you have any questions, you can always reply and ask. I can’t promise to have all the answers, but I can try.

See you next time?
- Meg

P.S. if you’ve been on the list for a while, sorry it’s been two months since my last send. Things have been busy and honestly I’m really tired and trying to hold it together. Vacation is soon!