I didnât take any âtime offâ between my last day in corporate life and my first day in startup media life. I had been working 5 jobs all at once. So after I quit 84.51, a huge weight was lifted. The morning after my last day, I woke up at 6am like normal even though it was Saturday. But instead of sitting in traffic for an hour on the bus ride downtown, I walked downstairs and opened my computer. It wasnât âtime offâ but it felt like freedom.
My first day on The Dad was 10/1/2017. The Dad officially launched on 11/1/2017.
We had one month to define an editorial workflow. One month to get thedad.com up and running. One month to get the team in place.
***** LOST FLASH FORWARD WOOSH SOUND *****
After we were acquired by Bustle Digital Group summer of 2021 we had some type of Zoom teambuilding session. Our icebreaker intro was to describe our job in 10 words or less.
Mine: âEmpower talented creatives, then get out of their wayâ
When we were starting The Dad, our parent (no pun intended I swear) company owned and operated two other brands: Scary Mommy of course and a brand called Cafe. Iâd describe it at the time as a digital/social media Daily Show.
Since I was new to this entire professional media universe, I set up 1x1 meetings with everyone. I was taking in so much info, in a futile attempt to learn what the hell I was doing.
I met with the Cafe Editor-in-Chief Blake Zeff. Really good dude. I remember telling him that I thought leadership was surprised by how serious I was all the time. And that they may expect me to be more comedic, like I am on the internet. He said, âItâs not like you should be cracking Knock Knock jokes in budget reviews.â Haha, I still think about that.
I asked Blake what he wish someone told him when he started running Cafe. What he said stuck with me. I tell people this all the time.
âThink about the brand you want to build and what it could be years from now. Design your team around that. Donât fall into an accidental org structure.â
If youâre a leader of any type, this advice is for you too.
Dream big. Right now you may have a scrappy team of a couple people, or even just you. But think about what youâd like your team to look like as a large scale production with all the money in the world. Literally design that. What are the departments? What are the department leads?
Blake was saying: Design for massive success. Donât just let your organization structure be dictated by who comes your way or worse yet by what other internal teams want you to be.
To show you I take this seriously, hereâs a version of this exercise I just did for Channel 3:
Literally nobody is getting paid on Channel 3, including me. But Iâm already designing for what the org chart will look like with 5, 10, 100, 200 employees.
Not because Iâm desperate for people or really love managing large teams (not my favorite, to be honest), but because designing for the ideal org helps structure the work, KPIs, plans, all of it.
Also, maybe it becomes a self fulfilling prophecy like a mantra. If that Channel 3 org chart comes true, I will be ECSTATIC.
I looove org charts.
May seem weird because Iâm so not a militaristic chain of command kind of person. Itâs not about that. Itâs not about power or authority. Itâs about making it clear who owns what. Then they know what theyâre responsible for. Thereâs comfort and power and even freedom in knowing what you have to do and what you donât do, and who to go for when you need help in other areas.
Org charts and clearly delineated areas of responsibility make accountability for KPIs and objectives clear. But most importantly, allow teams to celebrate their own successes and OWN IT. Pointing to an accomplishment and saying âWe did that.â
Here is the org design I did before The Dad was started.
See that âExecutive Editorâ? That was me!
You may be asking, âBut arenât the heads of editorial called Editor in Chief?â
Wow, very astute. True. And my initial job offer said Editor in Chief in the title spot. 2 hours later, I was sent a new offer with the title removed.
âWe're still trying to figure out your exact title so will leave it out for the time being, if you don't mind.â
I shrugged. I was getting my dream job. Title was not important to me. We worked together and changed the title to Executive Editor. I didnât think it was a big deal.
Ya see, I was the head of The Dad, but for everything except original long-form studio video. That was led by Nick Fabiano and Ben Stumpf.
Related to the topic of org charts and org design, The Dad team was essentially co-led and separated by content type (video, and ânon-videoâ). With separate âteams.â
âEmpower talented creatives, then get out of their wayâ
I get too much credit for The Dad. Even me writing this story feels phony and makes me cringe.
The Dad was not ME sitting alone cranking out content. The Dad was (and is) a team of talented creatives. I just tried to find the best people, get em in a good spot, empower them, and get out of their way.
I HAD to start Part 2 of The Dad Story by discussing org and team. Because from here on out, itâs ALLLLLLLL about the team and their accomplishments.
Weâre in October 2017 at this point. Weâre weeks from The Dad launching. Itâs easy to take the success for granted in hindsight. But back then, we were nervous and not sure if it would work or not. There were so many unknowns. Itâs easy to look at someone elseâs work and critique, itâs much harder to build something from a blank sheet of paper.
Now we know, The Dad was about to BLOW UP and exceed our wildest expectations. That was all thanks to the TEAM. So weâll be discussing them a lot. The team deserves the credit.
Part 1 of The Dad Story was about escaping corporate life and pursuing your dreams. This is the first post in Part 2. Weâre now talking about brand building. From here on out Iâll be telling war stories from the trenches of the media industry, discussing what itâs like to spend ALL of your waking hours on social media (itâs not great), and sharing tips about social media marketing and business.
Email me any questions or topics youâd like to see covered. I already have a few Iâll get to soon.
Weâll do some behind the scenes kind of stuff, but can also cover very practical topics.
Donât forget, we all know how this story ends. Spoiler alert. I quit. Why?