I’ve been working in marketing and branding since 1999 – but I didn’t realize it.

My goal was to be a writer, plain and simple. Give me 30k a year (in 1999 money), a cubicle, and a view of the tree outside so I can watch the squirrels (#Milton) and I will write like a mofo.

But what I discovered was that writing is the discipline of language, the base of all other creative skills.

Think about it. Every great marketing campaign, logo, website, video anything in the realm of “digital marketing” started with a written outline, however crude. And trust me, I know crude.

So how did I realize this? I entered a writing contest held by local-Omaha entertainment rag, The Reader.

I was in my junior year of college at UNO studying Business Administration – something I thought was completely unrelated to creativity at the time. But “eye” would realize in the ensuing years that it was absolutely necessary to build a sustainable career as a writer.

I had no formal training as a writer. And still don’t lol. But I have 20+ years of experience being successful at it. The parameters of the contest were to write and submit three original pieces of content, of at least 500 words.

A friend told me about the contest on a Friday night, and the submissions were due by Monday at 9 AM – in physical form.

Remember kids, this was 1999. The internet was in its infancy. Email existed but had yet to dominate communication.

I didn’t know what was more daunting – the actual writing of the articles/ pieces, or figuring out how I was going to print it lol. #DotMatrix.

Printers sucked back then too and if you had one, you were probably a doctor or lawyer (BTW what do you call 500 million lawyers at the bottom of the ocean? A good start.). Or, you were going to a print shop and paying 25 cents per page. What a racket.

Regardless (or ‘irregardless’ as some dumbasses say which I was informed of by an astute copy editor at The Reader when I tried to use that word in an interview piece with the Wu-Tang Clan before being appropriately word shamed), I went home and sat by myself.

Akin to a mini-Burning Man, I spent the next 48 hours writing. And I came up with three absolute GEMS:

• Whatever Happened to MTV?
• 40 Ounces to Freedom – Which 40 is Right For You?
• Something else that I can’t remember rn

I won the contest and became an Entertainment and Music writer for the next two years.

And I quickly realized, content creation, specifically writing, has the least amount of monetary value associated with it. I.E. cash. Clams. Dinero. Bones. Duckets.

So to make a living writing, I was going to have to:

• Write until my fingers bled
• Figure out additional related skills
• “Werk” with Harvey Weinstein aka Weinstein’s Wiggle Stick

I did A for a while, but then social media came to be a thing. And I employed B as a freelance social media expert for the next several years. Which is why social media management is not one of the services “eye” offer lol. But, we have partnerships with great people who have that shit mastered. I learned that social media was dependent on great writing, just in a different form. 

I was still writing as a freelancer. But I had shifted my focus to Men’s Lifestyle and sports. I LOVE sports. So much so that I started my own sports blog and created a moderately successful YouTube channel, both full of first-person content at the biggest events, with the biggest athletes, in the world. 

This was back when you had to send PHYSICAL query letters to outlets you wanted to write for. It was time-consuming and wrought with failure. 

But now that email was a thing, it was better than the early 2000s when you had to send PHYSICAL query letters – you damn meddling kids don’t know nothing about that!

At this time, the internet had become THE thing. Everything was shifting to the online world, more so than physical. 

This was when I built my first website and began developing and building websites. My first website was a portfolio site of prior published articles and interviews that I could send to prospective employers. That first site was built on Yahoo Sitebuilder(!!). SO archaic. 

I eventually migrated that content (manually, ugh) to WordPress – this new fandangled content management system (CMS) that took the mystery away from website building. No one had to hard-code anything anymore. 

Remember: A website is just a collection of individual files grouped into folders. But back then you had to manually build every aspect of a website via coding knowledge. Until WordPress. WordPress changed the game. 

After sending about 10 million query letters and query emails, I finally had success. I was hired by Sports Illustrated and AskMen to create content. 

And I did that for the next several years – all while I was working a day job in the corporate world (which ultimately taught me about contract law, proposal writing, and negotiating). And being a single-parent to the best daughter on earth. 

I built a very friendly relationship with the then-greatest wide receiver in the history of the New Orleans Saints, Joe Horn. I had interviewed him several times and written several pieces about him, all of which he apparently enjoyed lol. 

One thing NFL Hall of Fame coach Joe Gibbs told me to my face on multiple occasions applies here: “The quality of your relationships determines the quality of your life.”