I almost didn't write this recap. Year two of independent consulting during year two of a global pandemic didn't feel worth publicizing. (Are there not far more impressive and devastating things that demand our attention?) But as I noted in my consulting manifesto and continue to remind myself, small is beautiful again, and so here we are again, another year to archive under blistering suns and soft moons.

Intros first, for those who are new here: I'm Vicky, an editor, writer, and designer who thinks strategically and systematically. Applied to current market context, I'm a brand and content strategist. And in today's wild world, I'm an independent agent via Studio QQ, who found herself ambushed by the vagaries of indefinite contract work during a global medical-economic-ecologic-socio-cultural crisis.

Working by short term contracts is like seeing capitalism in its underpants. Once intimidating, the structure—in pandemic duress—reveals its vulnerabilities, whispering yes, market value is arbitrary, yes we expect you to keep wrangling the algorithms and human desire at the expense of mental health, sorry not sorry, but still count yourself lucky?

In any case, whether you're a fellow flex worker, considering the jump from a traditional full-time job, or just curious about the independent work lifestyle—I hope this reflection sheds illuminating light on otherwise opaque industry underbellies. I hope this paves the way for the fearless ones to come. For those who come not armed with corporate networks or generational wealth or racial privilege, but compassion, grit, and of course, general badassery.

[FYI this is longish, as I wanted to be detailed and transparent. Read it when you have the time, and share share share with anyone who could benefit.]

Table of Contents

  1. What I do
  2. Work highlights
  3. Process highlights
  4. Writing progress
  5. Tough times
  6. Plot twist!
  7. How to support my independent work

It took me two years to transition from my last role in:

marketing for millennial-oriented consumer products—think daily digital campaign management, tight-paced creative production, influencer and brand partnerships, the stuff you see on subway and Instagram ads—

towards brand and content strategy for software and service-based companies—think pulling complex, messy topics and themes, synthesizing and writing insights, editing down to the core concepts and stories, and structuring a plan for ambitious yet realistic execution.

The lesson? Functional and industry pivots are hard. I'd say two years is on the quicker end of the timeline, accelerated by a hot labor market for digital skillsets and loads of extra work I spent building my media collective Currant (doubling as a portfolio piece, which came up in pretty much every conversation I had). Decisions to pass or take on projects were made with much more deliberation than in my first year. As a whole, my project range reflected more generalist than specialist scopes, as I wanted each engagement to be a slow turn towards new directions.

Some things I'm proud of:

  • Honing communication practices across time zones and cultures with my first international client, for a project bringing an Asian product to the global market through an education-driven marketing strategy.
  • Formulating brand strategy and positioning for a sexy Fortune 500 retail company for a 2022 product line release. That's it, that's the tweet. [Example of strategy framing below.]
  • Solidifying my conviction into applied expertise in the social impact space, through developing brand, content, and social strategy for GOOD WORX, a social impact and DEI consultancy. (And, referring someone for the next stage of execution! Feels good to entrust stewardship.) [Brainstorming and auditing exercise below.]
  • Experimenting with organizational design for Currant. Dreaming and scheming with our four-person distributed team. Meeting lovely people from across the world in our Discord. Talking partnerships. Hosting our first in-person brainstorming offsite. Documenting company culture and working processes. I'd like to make our internal Notion an open source resource when it's ready—as a primer, here's a mini handbook for working with me. [Below: a taste of Currant at work.]

Process! Oft hidden yet deeply fulfilling. Things I enjoyed:

  • Developing relationships with studios I admire and respect: data viz studio Polygraph, brand creative team Another, design studio XXIX, culture change agency Invisible Hand. (Always grateful for the one who got me started: Elizabeth Tilton and the Oyster Sunday team.)
  • Scoped out my first FAANG (er, MAANG?) projects, around supporting ad marketing and creator initiatives. Good data points to note on the subworlds of subcontracting—and where I found my past marketing experience came into helpful play.
  • Wrote my working manifesto and realized my ~proprietary edge~ that I bring: I infuse art back into technology. Sure, I can whip up performance reports and SEO and social copy, but since I'm a literary nerd, I do it with style and flow. (Brainstorming on an essay on the creativity of business writing.)
  • Refined my workflow with Figma and Figjam, which I use for brainstorming, research, auditing, and drafting. This has been gold, as I'm equal parts verbal and visual thinker. Clients also enjoy working with it and getting to participate in my process, whether they're new to or familiar with the platform. [Quick research example below.]
  • Translating work between industries. I largely worked across the hospitality, media, and social impact sectors, so writing startup-oriented content strategy tips for Julia Lipton's Awesome People newsletter (thanks B!) pushed me to think and scope with another type of audience: early stage founders and VCs.
  • Cultivating my creative community. As someone with few real life friends who overlap with my professional disciplines, I spend lots of time on Discord and virtual coffees, and a bit on social media and Slack. Each conversation an infusion of energy. [Below: my profile for Tiny Factories, a tribe of creators supporting each other.]

This isn't directly tied to my independent consulting work, but it fuels it. (We could call this the meta-work?) I can't help but write, all the time. My reminders app holds an embarrassing backlog of half-baked thoughts before transferring them to my perfectly chaotic Obsidian. I love squeezing into the gritty, squishy corners of culture, pushing and pulling our biases, thinking critically and compassionately about why we work. Some things I published:

  • Self-published a culture crit piece on hautecore on my blog, which got me in touch with the Real Life Mag team (thanks K!). Noodling on a pitch around the history of community design for them, after a good convo with a friend around web3 ethics (thanks C!).
  • Photographed Seattle-based jam-producer Ayako & Family, for Currant's upcoming feature series around climate change through the lens of jam. [Sneak peek below.]
  • Gained personal press hits: the kind Daisy Zeijlon interviewed me in a roundup of food media innovators for Lunch Rush. The lovely Kristen Siharath from Mailchimp interviewed me about demand generation, then the team transitioned, then they got acquired and things got nuttier, so TBD on pub date.
  • Rest of World Editor Louise Matsakis retweeted my thread about Meaghan Tobin's article "Why China’s crypto cowboys are fleeing to Texas."
  • Planning a fun (!) editorial series for my newsletter and website, featuring smart, so smart friends with collectively eclectic areas of domain expertise. [Noodling in process below.]

It ain't always sunny times…

  • It's still COVID. Caring for self and loved ones demands lots of physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual labor. Relearning all the time that it's okay to stay still when I don't have the margins for much else.
  • Staying focused on the long goal through the slogs, which meant declining work to make way for the work I wanted to grow in. The summer months were a relentless cycle of personal biz dev: exploratory calls, scoping out new projects, building my portfolio, developing my methodology and positioning, and applying to jobs. At the peak, I engaged around 20-30 people and companies per month.
  • This is another convo, but healthcare. Switching from Oscar to the public health marketplace was one of the best decisions I made. Of course the digital and physical UX suck, but in return, I gained better coverage and a deeper understanding of how public welfare actually works. No empathy like lived experience.
  • Realizing the limitations of going it solo, vis-à-vis growth potential when embedded in a long term team, where I'd have steady mentorship and functional support, fuller enablement to scale and specialize.

Which brings me to an unexpected curve in the path: I'm sunsetting Studio QQ to join NewtonX, the world's leading B2B market research company, as our Content Strategist.

I'm excited, especially because this decision didn't come easily. Took a bit of time for my head to catch up to my gut and articulate the driving reason for the change: I'm not just here to build content strategy; we're here to build an organization. We're redefining scale and doing it methodically. With lots of growth on the horizon, joining now means making impact on the foundational level—empowering the people around me—while having the resources to dream on higher levels. (Also, we're hiring! Across marketing, product, people, sales, and engineering.)

After these two years, it's hard for me to get excited about the current dialogue around the creator economy. I'm not a full-time creator, but there are parallels to me accidentally going indie while early career, without corporate networks of scale. Still, I'm grateful for the anchor in working with businesses rather than relying on the end consumer. I suppose that's why we need people with careful, deliberate optimism to work on this, from the unions to the community organizers to the venture capitalists. Because they see a future I'm too tired to envision.

But alas! So many! Things! To make! If you want to join me on the fun and unpredictable journey, consider supporting me at $5/mon or $50/yr. (You can also sign up for free! Makes my day either way.) The main perk: you'll enable me to keep creating things that touch others, in small and big ways. The tangible perks: you'll receive intimate musings on work and life and peeks at creative projects in the works, with original photo, design, and illustration woven through. In a nutshell: expect a party in your inbox, a couple times a month. It feels ironic to ask for your support given what I just talked about, but maybe this is me believing in the future I can't see.

Support me

Thanks to my family, for everything. A special thanks to my coach Julia Regan—for listening, calling me out, and nudging me on.

Indulge me for my redundancy, but there are truly too many people to thank. You know who you are. Much love to my existing subscribers. I suppose that's the theme of these everlasting and neverending years. Gratitude.

If you're curious, my year one recap of independent consulting here: Field Notes: 2020.

Tags: consulting, field notes