“In your career, the most valuable currency is not how much you know. It’s how well you learn. In a stable world success depended on building expertise. In a changing world, it hinges on evolving expertise.”–Adam Grant
Two years ago, I left a rewarding job at Amazon Prime Video because it felt like the right time to take on a new challenge. I was enjoying success launching films and tv shows with Amazon’s war chest of money, resources, and billions of eyeballs, but it started to feel too comfortable. Real growth comes when we get out of our comfort zones, and I view my career as a journey to learn as much as possible from great people along the way.
That brought me to Rooster Teeth, a company with a huge reputation because of the impact it made in digital media since 2003. Rooster Teeth is truly unique because of the passion that it generates. That passion is a bonding agent between the employees, the content it inspires, and the community that it galvanizes. Pursuing interests fostered boundless innovation in the Web 2.0 era. Messing around and seeing what happened launched a direct-to-consumer business responsible for gamechangers in the media landscape like Red vs Blue, Achievement Hunter, which jumpstarted gaming content, and the emergence of video podcasts. Writing that seems farcical, but it’s incredible what passion and curiosity can manifest.
It's bittersweet to acknowledge the end of the Rooster Teeth era after 21 odds-defying years. I was brought to the company to help re-center a brand that was struggling with its identity because we grew in so many directions by chasing our interests. A company that thrived with innovation struggled with reinvention because economic hardships created hiring freezes and budget cuts, forcing us to do more with less. I’m incredibly proud of the work we’ve done to reshape the business, but the goal for profitability turned into a fight for survival. Sadly, we can’t keep fighting for tomorrow, but the passion and the pride in the Rooster Teeth building will be something that I carry forward and my talented colleagues created an infectious energy that brands can rarely develop. It didn’t go quite as planned, but as Adam Grant so eloquently notes above, I gained so much value in learning new lessons from incredible colleagues that have become friends.
The outpouring of support I have received from the RT news is testimony of all the great relationships that I’ve built along the way and having that network will make the unenviable task of looking for the next opportunity hopefully feel that much easier. I call upon this network to please reach out if you have a beat on any job openings not just for myself, but for the incredible creative minds, strategists, project managers, producers, media planners, and designers with whom I was privileged to call upon. Rooster Teeth is full of talented people that are hungry to succeed, and they will certainly take that passion into the next chapter of their careers.