End of 2022. After 11 years of a typical employee, I made the jump to create my own consultancy firm and work for myself as a Growth Marketing consultant. Or a Performance Marketing consultant. Or a Digital Analyst consultant?
Whatever… Basically anything to do with marketing and data.
To be honest, it has never been my dream. I’ve been quite lucky in my different past companies with lots of responsibility, where I learned a lot.
Nonetheless, there is always a point at which the learning curve stops growing. And that is probably the main reason why I decided to jump.
I don’t exclude returning to work for a company. Obviously it has to tick many boxes (interesting project with potential, members I connect with, an adequate wage, etc) but all doors are open if the right opportunity comes up.
When I started in January, I gave myself 12 months to try it out.
And I’m not going to surprise you by telling you that these past 12 months have been a rollercoaster.
Keep reading if you want to know about the accomplishments I’m proud of but also the struggles I’ve had.
Learning. But x10.
One of the main reasons I started my own consultancy was to expand my knowledge. For almost every job, I left because I felt that there was no more space for developing myself and learning.
And when I look back, I’ve probably learned 10x more than in any year as an employee. And I have some experience in the game. ^^
I had the chance to tackled new projects such as:
- BigQuery data warehouse
- Data pipelines with Fivetran
- Looker Studio dashboards
- Server-side tracking for Shopify
The other thing I have done is participate in, attend, or enroll in many communities, conferences, and online courses. It is great to be able and have the time to do this.
Diversity of tasks
Of course the job is not all about learning. Sometimes clients actually need you for your experience in something you’ve done 🙂
Monotonous it isn’t.
I’ve had the chance to work for companies with different target groups. And therefore different performance marketing channels:
- Meta Ads
- TikTok Ads
- Pinterest Ads
- Google Ads - Search, Display & Shopping
- App campaigns - UAC & Apple
I also had the chance to train and mentor teams:
- I trained the founders of STUR how to use Google Analytics 4 (GA4)
- I trained the performance marketing of EIGENSONNE how to use it GA4 and Google Tag Manager (GTM)
- I trained the marketing team of Tinystories to create campaigns and analyse their performance in Meta Ads and GA4.
I loved it.
Each company has its own set of issues, questions, and improvements. It is intellectually very stimulating.
And now come the struggles.
Loneliness
I’ve read about it. And I can confirm: it is a thing. But sneaky and shifty.
Going from a tetris-like Google calendar to an almost-zero-meeting calendar is so liberating. What a huge bubble of fresh air I got when I started as I really felt asphyxiated by all the meetings.
After 3-4 months, I wasn’t missing those meetings but I felt somehow alone. No meetings also mean you no longer belong to teams. And that can be tricky psychologically as you miss social interactions and a sense of belonging to something significant.
That’s why coworking spaces and their networks are important. As well as activities outside work.
For me, since this summer, it is therefore #moveyourass.
LinkedIn and visibility pressure
In the realm of consultancy, maintaining visibility on LinkedIn is crucial, even when your schedule is already brimming with client commitments. Paradox.
This additional responsibility adds stress, as you strive to strike a balance between serving existing clients and laying the groundwork for future opportunities.
I have yet to master this delicate dance.
As a conclusion, I don’t regret my choice and plan to continue next year.
I have stepped out of my comfort zone so many times and learned a lot.
To be fair, it was actually much better than I initially thought and stressed about before starting.
So try it out. It might not be as bad as you think.