Last September I walked into the office on a Monday and at 9:00 I got called into a meeting I didn’t know about. This meeting consisted of my boss, other people in my department, the COO and his lackey, the CFO, and the owner of the company.
The owner informed us that I, and everyone else in my department, would now be reporting directly to the COO and his lackey. Directly after this meeting, I had a one-on-one meeting with Mr. lackey.
Before we go any further I should probably give some back story. This was my first job out of college, and my passion for this job was on par with Kanye’s humility. My job was to recruit truck drivers. I studied advertising in college, but despite good grades, an impressive portfolio, and strong recommendations from professors, this is what I ended up doing.
Back to the meeting.
During this one-on-one meeting, I explained that I didn’t really like being a recruiter and wanted to focus more on the marketing. My old boss knew this and was as supportive as she could be. The next day I got called into the COO’s office and he fired me.
He explains there will never be a true marketing job and they needed a pure recruiter. I wasn’t fired for not hitting my numbers, I wasn’t fired for having a poor work ethic or anything like that. I was just fired.
I had worked there for just shy of a year and a half. During my stint there, I spent a fair amount of time fantasizing about what it would be like to walk out of my office and never have to come back. This is not how I imagined it.
A week later I had a job offer. How that happened so quickly is another story for another time. For now, we’ll just credit it to the grace of God Almighty and well connected friends. The job offer was for an Online Marketing Specialist here at Create the Movement. It sounds cliche, but there are no words that adequately describe the euphoria I experienced when I opened the email with the job offer.
I opened that email a little over six months ago, and the euphoria hasn’t stopped. I get to work for a company I love, with people I love even more, doing work I’m passionate about. Like the title says, I took a pay-cut, but I couldn’t care less.
About three months into the job we started throwing around the idea of creating some core principles. The first one I added to the list was passion.
I’m only 24, but if there’s one thing I’ve learned working in the professional world it’s that passion absolutely matters.
Passion isn’t just something that’s nice to have or some idealist notion. It’s the wind in your sails, the blood in your veins, the air in your lungs, and every other overused metaphor that describes total necessity.
As much as I hate to admit it, I should write a thank you note to my old COO. Getting fired was the best career move I could have possibly made. There’s no way I would have ever truly excelled at my old job, because at the end of the day I didn’t care enough.
I used to pray for 5:00 to come faster, but now days fly by and I even text my boss with ideas on the weekend.
Without passion we’ll all be average at best, but when passion is driving you, when you love your job as much as Kanye loves Kanye, you can’t lose.
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“Far and away the best prize that life has to offer is the chance to work hard at work worth doing,” – Theodore Roosevelt
