A Growing Me

For all the working adults, we have jobs for different reasons, combined:

• to make money for a living
• to pursue some passion or fulfil some dreams
• to make friends
• to learn some interesting skills or fight against boredom

Why did I work in Adtech?

When I switched industry from Pharmaceutical to AdTech, I was very curious and enthusiastic to learn more about the technology industry and how things work, all looked new and exciting. I met the most friendly and caring colleagues I could imagined, and I was very happy. However I always felt something was missing and I didn’t know why.

Until one day my kid asked me: “Mom, what is your job?” I told him I worked in an advertising technology company. He had a disgusting look and asked, “Mom, why advertisements?? why don’t you work in a company that design a space rocket instead?”

I realized, compared to Pharma where I clearly knew what I was doing was to save people’s lives, in my new job soon after the excitement was gone, I was not too sure why I worked in the advertising and marketing space?!

This made me struggle.

And these struggles made me lost, I hardly understood why something became the company priority, and why we did this or that, I was not sure what direction I could tell my team members as a manager.

But thanks to these struggles, I paid a lot more attention to our industry, and how it’s impacting people’s daily life. I had these two observations:

1. Personally I love to write, however it’s not a life skill that allows me to make a living yet. If displaying some friendly advertisements at the side could get me some revenue and not harming readers’ experience, I might have a totally new life possibility to focus on creating impactful contents. Look at the little ads at the top right of a news website, it generated money to pay for journalists and editors whose passion was to bring the latest news to the world.

2. Another day I was browsing my FB and saw this video ads below, I was immediately attracted by this and bought a set for my kids. I loved this ads so much and wondered, if not because of this ads, is there any other way I would get to know these great products and have another interesting life experience? I can’t think of any. And thinking further down the road, one day when I become an entrepreneur that invented great products, I want my products to be well known to as many relevant customers as possible!

My purpose for the industry immediately started to forge.

• Because of great advertising, content creators could now generate profit to continue support them generating great contents.
• Because of great advertising, great products could be spread world wide and get to the most relevant people.
• Because of great advertising, users could have a chance to get to know the great products, try something new, and improve their life experience.

Why is it important to deep dive and find your purpose?

When you know what connects to you most, you start to care more. You become a thought leader and truly know what matters to people. You will unconsciously start to work on the areas that could lead to changes, and you don’t get easily stopped by obstacles because you have a vision and dream to achieve!

So when I formed my purpose for the Adtech industry. I started to align my work, projects all related to the goals above. This changed my work attitude. And I identified these areas that I truly believe in its value and love to work on:

1. Revenue for media owners: provide a platform for great publishers to be rewarded for great contents. And through supply path optimization to reduce middle layers, to make content creators get the most from advertiser spend.
2. Smart targeting for advertisers: make sure that the right user gets the right ads, non-intrusive and potentially interesting ads.
3. User Experience: fight against invalid and bad quality ads. Remove bad ads and focus on the media owners that truly create great contents.
4. Education: make users become aware of the positive impact of a great and healthy ad environment to users, content creators and product designers/owners.

I realized I clearly knew what was important in my job, in my role, and I could influence others a lot more easily and structure my team to focus on the areas that matter too. My mind had never been so clear before!

On top of an industry purpose, I talked to my manager about my other personal interest and passion, to help people grow and be impactful. The other story is here. He fully supported me, and I started to take care of talents development in the team, and created peer learning groups together, for a space to learn and grow together. All came in naturally and smoothly, and I truly credited all these to a clear sense of purpose (and of course a caring boss!).

How to find your own purpose for a job?

Sometimes we got so busy that we forgot why we worked for a company. Here’re some of the things you can do to find your own purpose:

1. Take a pause from work, and spend an afternoon to think about these very thoroughly:

• Why did you work for this company?
• What is your life purpose?
• What would you like to achieve in this company?
• What bothers you in this industry / this company that makes you wanting to change?

2. On a daily basis, observe how your industry is really impacting everybody’s daily life.

3. Talk to peers / leaders in the industry and find out why they work here. Your purpose might not be the same as them, but it is exciting to partner with those who share a similar purpose with you and work on projects together.

4. Once you’re clear about what you want, take some time to think about where you’re now, and what changes you can make. Write them down, talk to your manager or directly start taking actions! You’ll open up a lot more possibilities!

5. And if after all the research, you’re clear that what you want in life is totally not aligned with what you can achieve within the job, it’s probably a time for you to start with planning for something new!

If you’d like to have a guided conversation to discover yourself and find out your job purposes, send me an email at renee@agrowingme.com or leave me a reply under this post.

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