Only recently have I started sharing the story of my search engine ah-ha moment, and with the encouragement of a colleague at Spark, I have decided to pen it down for the world to see. It really wasn’t a big deal, but it certainly was a defining moment for me that set a chain of events into action and has gotten me to where I am today.
It started back when I was working as an executive recruiter. Yes, true story. This is a little known fact about me. Before I was working in SEO, I was working at a national recruiting firm. And guess what, I hated it! It wasn’t for me. I went to school for marketing. At the time, they only taught traditional marketing at my school, but I went into it anyway. I wasn’t too excited about it, because honestly, it seemed like something big was coming (facebook had just started like 3 years before that), but I didn’t know exactly what it was. Coming out of school, I felt a little lost and didn’t have a solid direction, and recruiting just made sense.
But I digress… Back to my ah-ha moment.
So I was working at this recruiting firm, and I wanted out. The economy had just tanked, there were no jobs, and I felt like I was getting cornered in a job I hated.
So I did what any normal person would do to get answers. I went to Google.
But here is the funny thing, I knew Google worked, but I didn’t know why or how. I didn’t know a stinkin thing about algorithms and to be honest, I didn’t really care. It was answering my questions and making my life easier, which is all that mattered.
I did know 2 things though: I knew I wanted to get into the advertising industry, and I knew I was moving with my wife to Chicago. Hoping to meet talented people in the industry, I went over to Google and typed something like “Marketing Blogger in Chicago” and Ian Sohn’s blog popped up in the top results (who later turned out to be a valuable resource and wealth of knowledge).
And here is the Ah-Ha moment!
I don’t remember the exact search, and with personalized search, it would be impossible to re-create, but I do remeber that I paused when that happened and had a moment of, “hmmm…. I wonder why his website showed up?”
At the time, I sort of brushed it off, but I attribute that moment and the people I met from that moment, to making my way into social media marketing at Zocalo, and then finally into search engine marketing at Resolution Media, and now to Spark where I am in charge of building out a practice.
And it all traces back to that one moment when I paused and wondered why.
I could go on about this and all the other connected dots that helped me shape my career, but that is for another time.
Do you have an ah-ha moment?