A beloved French boss, Bernard Miquel, gave me the best piece of business advice I have ever received: “If you can’t be yourself at work, change jobs.”
When he shared this tidbit of wisdom, I was a twenty-something American in Paris, aspiring (pushing! shoving!) to move from customer service to sales in the shipping container leasing industry. YES. (And now you know why, after five years of peddling 20- and 40-foot steel boxes—the same as our competitors’ boxes, mind you—it is my great joy in life to sell the Content Bureau’s truly unique and outstanding marketing copywriting services).
I was in the wrong job. And now I’m in the right one. Which brings me, naturellement, to Marissa Mayer (dear God, you knew I wasn’t going to be able to leave this issue alone!) and the point of this blog post: Earning money, while doing what you love when you love doing it where you love doing it, is not called “work.” It’s called “getting paid to do what you love, when you love doing it, where you love doing it.”
And I firmly believe that the Content Bureau is the very best copywriting agency you will find anywhere in the world, because …
- We hire the very best writers, editors, and graphic designers …
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Who are emotionally intelligent and experienced enough to recognize what they love doing, when and where they love doing it …
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And communicative enough to share this info with us …
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So we can offer them the kind of work they love doing, and that fits into the rest of their lives …
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And then these incredibly talented individuals work together to totally rock their projects …
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And our clients receive that work, and rave!!!!!, and call us again because they are happy with our work …
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Which we offer to the very best writers, editors, and graphic designers, who are thrilled with the raves and proud of their successful (virtual) collaboration …
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And this happens a gazillion times every year (actually, we had 518 unique “projects” in 2012—nearly triple our 2009 volume) …
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So we get smarter, and we know our clients better, and our work and service improve …
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And people—team, clients, me—are happy.
Flexibility leads to happiness. Happiness leads to quality. Quality leads to happiness. Happiness all around? It’s achievable. And now, Marissa Mayer, while we sit here in a big fat Content Bureau group hug, we invite you to go off and fight with your workforce and see how that goes for you (and Yahoo!’s clients).
Stacy, and support staff, being themselves at work (and loving it) at the Content Bureau.
Stacy Crinks runs the Content Bureau, @contentbureau.
