A look back on Year One of ibiliti

Years ago, well before I had a proper understanding of what the number meant, I picked 40 as the age by which I would start my own business.
And this year, I did it. I filed ibiliti, LLC in February, and my first batch of branded business cards arrived just in time for my 39th birthday.

What followed was a months-long charm offensive where I reconnected with people I’d worked with and people I wanted to work with. Not just to look for jobs, but to learn from them. It was surprising, after 15 years of keeping my head down, to look up and realize that all that time I thought I was just doing my job, I was also making connections with people I admire so, so much. And now I had the time to hang out with ALL OF THEM.

And you know what? Talking to them led to some great opportunities. I did some totally new things. From shepherding a national brand campaign for a nut milk company all by my lonesome to taking and giving a crash course in SquareSpace for a local theatre company.

I also did some not-so-new things. I did a lot of writing about groceries & recipes, and I did A LOT of thinking about Target, just like every single other year of my career.

But that’s okay. Because now I’m doing it on purpose, and now I’m doing it for myself.

So here’s what happened, and here’s what I learned. 

The first quarter of the year, I felt like a river emptying into the sea. I’d been on such a path for so much of my career that to find myself on my own meant being surrounded by options and paralyzed by the range of choices. So I just set out to find out as much as I could from as many people as I could. One of the first things I learned was that if there’s someone you want to talk to, just ask them. Nearly everyone I reached out to was as excited as I was to have the opportunity to just talk about stuff.

I’m someone who gets anxious asking anybody for anything. But my circumstances gave me the introduction to every invitation on a silver platter. Having this perfect excuse to ask my former colleagues to hang out with me felt like enough of an opening line to push through that. And it was great that so many times in a row, the answer was ‘yes.’ 

From there, work did start to come in. Look: I’ve only ever gotten job opportunities one way: Through friends and colleagues. I’ve applied online and sent in resumes and even gotten interviews, but in my experience, it truly is who you know. Especially in a skill like writing—which as I like to say is something everyone can do, but not everyone can do—it helps a lot to have somebody who has seen you do it to speak up for you.

As I started to go outside my immediate circle of contacts, I found out something surprising: having a broad range of experience is both a blessing and a curse. If I’d been specialized, I’d have an easy answer for, “So what kind of projects have you worked on?” But the fact is, I’ve worked on … everything. I’ve done grocery, I’ve done events, I’ve done finance, I’ve done liquor, I’ve done national brand campaigns for medical device companies and I’ve done annualized retail campaigns for CPG brands. I’ve done long-form, I’ve done video, I’ve done social, I’ve done TV, radio, Spotify, YouTube preroll… If you can make money writing it in the marketing space, I’ve done it.

Which—it turns out—doesn’t make for a very useful conversation. Because you know what that answer sounds like to potential clients? A lie!

So what I focused on instead was the skill that all that experience actually gave me: The ability to approach a range of situations, including the most important one, the one right in front of you. If it’s not useful to talk about my experience, then I will talk about your business. And when people saw how quickly I could understand what they were dealing with and what they might need, suddenly I got added to a list in their brains of the kind of person they could see themselves working with. The kind of person they could give a project to, and he’d be able to handle it.

Which is maybe the most important thing I’ve learned this year. That I can handle it. In the last few years of isolation, back when I was working at agencies, whenever I would hit a wall on a project, I had a bit that I would do to get me past it. As a little joke, I would ask myself, “What if it was me doing this?” See, the gag is that it obviously WAS me. But my years in agency life had me falling into the trap of trying to do somebody else’s best. I had to learn to approach things in my own way. And over the course of over 15 years in the business, I had developed my own way, and I never even noticed.

So that’s what happened. And that’s what I learned.

Rely on your friends. Minneapolis is a big market, but it’s a small town. Think about the high points—and even the low points—in your career. Think about the people who were there alongside you. They know what you know, and they know what you can do. Stay connected, and look out for each other.

Rely on your experience. The work you do becomes the lessons you learn. Everything that worked—and everything that didn’t—can give you an informed perspective on what you and your clients should do next.

Rely on yourself. When you’ve been at this as long as I have, you’ve seen a lot of different ways to do the job. There are as many different approaches to marketing as there are marketing agencies. But the best approach is the one you can proudly stand behind. Sometimes, the most important question is not “how do you do this?” it’s “How do I believe this should be done?”

I’m still finding the answer for myself, but for right now, it’s the most exciting question in the world.