Optionality: The Core Value that Changed my Career

In 2018, I was an absolute nobody in the marketing world.

But, I wanted to be known for SEO.

I wanted the industry to know who I was.

So I committed to a 100-day project.

For 20 weeks, I created a blog post, a YouTube video AND a podcast episode every weekday.

5+ months later?

A lot of people knew who I was.

It was a volume of work that was hard to ignore.

I was getting unsolicited interview requests at new companies.

I got a promotion at work.

I had sponsors.

I sold courses.

I had the start of an email list.

I also had friends and colleagues that I never expected.

For the first time in my life I had… options.

A few weeks ago, I wrote about the second core pillar of ALL IN:

Deep generalism.

100k+ people read about it.

I got emails back like:

“This resonates so much with me. Thank you, Brendan.”

“I friggin love this issue.”

“Can I make this my LinkedIn headline?”

So I knew it was time to talk about our first core value:

OPTIONALITY.

What is optionality in your career?

For me, it’s been the the ability to:

• Get interview requests (even when I’m not looking)
• Be a successful individual contributor
• Get promoted within a company
• Create digital products
• Freelance
• Consult

It’s building the career mix that’s right for ME.

And the true “optionality” part?

I can do any one of those things any time I want.

That’s what I see as the modern marketing career.

Traditional marketing careers are often about climbing the ladder to CMO at all costs.

In past generations, you would:

• Get an MBA (20s)
• Become highly specialized
• Get a job at a startup
• Work 50-60 hours a week (30s)
• Get new jobs every few years (40s)
• Try to stay at one long enough to retire (50s-60s)

Or worse yet, get a job in your 20s and pray to stay there for 40 years (0% chance of happening).

Modern marketing careers are about building a career you are proud of by becoming a person you are proud of and having the options to do what you want, when you want.

One caveat: this isn’t for everybody.

I hate the hustlebros as much as you do.

I just reached a point in my career that I was so fucking sad and so so fucking tired and had had enough of other people controlling my life (and the life of my family).

This isn’t just about having a backup plan.

It’s about letting yourself make bigger bets (and take bigger swings) in your career.

That’s what makes this different from personal branding and why I’m not talking about how to get famous on LinkedIn or starting a podcast (or whatever).

How to build optionality in your career

Most people couch what I’m about to tell you under “build a personal brand.”

Or “build an audience.”

That’s not wrong, but it’s also not right.

With optionality, we don’t just want a single outcome.

We want the ability to choose option A, B, C, or X, Y or Z at any given time.

Optionality is not your LinkedIn followers.

It is not your newsletter subscribers.

It’s not being a “creator.”

Sure, if you build a big audience you may feel like you have more options, but that’s rarely true.

Because most people get stuck there.

They get a lot of LinkedIn followers talking about pay gaps, hiring, and remote work.

Now they’re stuck.

Why?

First, they forgot to ask themselves two key questions:

1. What do you want to be known for?
2. Who do you want to know you for that?

This was the key to my 100 Days of SEO project.

That project also helped me develop a sense of deep generalism to execute on all of those channels at once.

Second, it’s also helpful here to write out your career goals.

They can be anything YOU want them to be.

• Stay at a company I love for 30 years
• Never job hunt ever again
• Have multiple income streams
• Sign a book deal
• Speak at conferences
• Make friends who people whose ideas I love
• Hire A-players (and have them knocking down my door to work for me)
• Raise money easily for your next company

Or if you’re like me (and Amy Peohler), it’s “make cool shit you’re proud of with your friends.”

Honestly, it could be anything.

It can also change.

Oh for the love of god please let it change as you change. ❤️

Third, write out blockers to those goals.

For a long time, my goal was just to quit my teaching job.

Identifying my blockers for that was easy:

• Nobody knew who I was
• Shallow experience in a lot of areas
• No education background in marketing
• Zero experience working as a professional marketer
• Zero track record or tangible experiences other than my own

It was… a (very) long list.

Much longer than what I’ve written here.

But an important one.

Because now I knew how high the mountain was to climb.

No idea how to get there.

And no guide to help me (yet).

But I knew directionally where to start moving.

And I believed that if I just kept trying to check off one thing from my blocker list, it would get me closer to where I wanted to go (and new options would appear along the way).

Which is exactly what happens

Put it all together:

1. Ask yourself what you want to be known for and by whom
2. Write out your career goals
3. Write out blockers to those goals

Then, and I sincerely mean this:

If you’re an in house SaaS marketer, join ALL IN, where we invest in our career by investing in ourselves.

It’s free and literally exists to help you do those 3 things above.

If you’re ready to have more options tomorrow than you did yesterday, I’ll see you there.