Eric Siu went from a $32,000 entry-level job in 2008 to VP of Marketing by doing free work, delivering audits and proposals before interviews, and prioritizing learning over salary. In a downturn, he says, ambitious marketers can out-work and out-learn competitors to accelerate their careers.
All right. So today we're going to talk about how to build a marketing career during a downturn. Before we start, here's a real quick story. When I first started working, the downturn of 2008 had already begun and the best job that I was able to get was a job that was paying me $32,000 a year. I was fine with that, but at the same time I knew that I wasn't growing as fast as I could grow. I would come into work at 6:00 AM and I would leave at 2:00 PM because they would allow you, if you work 8 hours, you're good to go. So I would always try to come really early and just leave really early too. And I was like, man, this is the rest of my life. And I saw a guy that was maybe 10 years older than me. He graduated from Harvard. He was doing exactly the same work I was doing. That's when I knew I needed to make a change. Even though it was during a downturn period, I wasn't able to get the best job possible. I knew it was important for me to learn, learn as quickly as I could and look for things that would ultimately make sense. So thankfully my friend Christina, she told me to look into this thing called internet marketing. Looked into it, found this internship, and while I was doing my full-time job, I would work from 6:00 AM to 2:00 PM. I would go home at 3:00 PM. I would study till 12:00 AM. Wow. And then I would just rinse and repeat every day. I did this as quickly as I could and I was able to parlay my internship into a full-time job. I went from $32,000 to $44,000 a year. I know it's not that much money, but then I jumped to $50,000 a year. Uh, then I jumped to $75,000. By the way, this was all in one year. So I was able to do this in one year because I kept going at it. I kept learning, um, jumped to $75,000 and I was able to parlay that into a VP of marketing job. And I was able to eventually take over Single Grain, which is an ad agency. I was able to parlay that into other projects and I continued to grow from there. All right, so now let's officially jump into the content itself. Right now we're recording this and we are in the midst of going into— we're in the downturn already. I think it's going to get worse, knock on wood. But when you think about building a marketing career during a downturn, the problem is a lot of companies, what's the first thing they're going to cut during a downturn? They're looking to cut marketing budgets. So marketing budgets are going to decrease. Marketing teams are going to decrease as well. So the question is, how do you stand out? What I would say is when you reach out to people, I mean, when I first started interning for a company, I started interning for a company called, um, Human Healthy Vending. They're now known as Snack Nation. At the time they're doing $0 in revenue. Now they're doing over $25 million a year in revenue. Um, they recruited a cohort of 14 interns. I got to learn for free. I got to learn, um, and I did a lot of work for them too. So I got that work experience as well. And that took me to the next level. So I would recommend during a downturn, if you can't find a good job, offer to work for someone for free. Tell them the different ideas that you would have. Listen to podcasts like Leveling Up. You can listen to Marketing School. There's a lot of other great podcasts out there that you can listen to. That information is free. And then when you come in for an interview, go above and beyond. Say, hey, you know what? I looked at these things on your website. I'll be doing this, this, and this. Most people are not going to be doing that when they go into it. They're just gonna be, you know, kind of playing it by ear and then you're just gonna be applying for a lot of different things. Show that you're motivated, show that you're excited, and then you work for free. And then the idea is they see you as so indispensable that they can't help but to pay you. That's guaranteed you're going to get a job no matter what. If you're a more senior person and you know you get laid off, you might have to be humble enough to say, hey, I'm willing to take a step back to take a step forward because most people are not going to have the humility to step back. They're gonna say, oh, I was making this money, I was doing this, I was doing that. Look, you no longer have that anymore because we are now in a downturn and people can't afford to pay you the original salary that you were at. Um, and you have to, you're going to have to take a step back. Humility comes into it. Like the first thing I was telling you about working for free, Raghav that used to work for me, he wrote an 8,000-word blog post saying all the things he would do. That's what really made him stand out. And when he wrote that, I immediately could tell. I said, you know what, this guy, no matter what, he's going to be successful in life. I just know it. And you want to be at that level. Whenever someone's done that for me where they say, hey, I'm gonna do this audit for you. I'm gonna do this blog post for you. It's always worked out really well and they've always actually ended up doing something, you know, greater than, um, you know, much greater than they could have ever imagined. So I will look at it from that lens. It's like, hey, I'm here to learn. The money doesn't matter right now because I'm gonna get that money later no matter what. Don't think about the money. Think about the growth rate. Think about the learning. Think about the opportunity. And that's what we want to take shots at because when you go into this, Especially if you're going into a downturn, you want to think about chasing the opportunity, not chasing the money. You want to ultimately be getting better and better at each job because if you're making more money at each job, but you're actually, your rate of growth is decelerating, you're actually in trouble because other people are pushing past you, right? So downturn, it's not good for the job market, but it's a big opportunity for you because a lot of people, because of their ego, they're not going to be able to take a step back. It's your time to capitalize on that. All right. Okay everyone, before we go, We have a bag of special goodies for you. Go to singlegrain.com/super to check out our pro version of our podcast, which includes a free trial. It has all these goodies to help you grow faster. It's gonna help you. Check it out. See you inside. So let me know what you think in the comments. Let me know what you plan to do. And don't forget, if you're coming from YouTube, check out the next video over there. And we will see you tomorrow.
