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Success means different things to different people. As children we're continually asked 'what do you want to be when you grow up?'. Ten-year-old me would have answered 'a paediatrician', at fifteen it had drastically changed to 'editor of Vogue', but, fast forward ten more years and my answer is 'to be happy'. The impact of COVID-19, subsequent lockdowns, working from home and more, has made many people reassess their priorities. People close to me have made the brave jump and chosen a completely different career path based on their passions and eventually it made me reconsider what I wanted and why.
I realised the main things that were important to me when it came to my career: to be mentally challenged, to have variety in my day-to-day work, to be able to take ownership of my ideas, and most importantly connection and interaction with other people. I realise that these may not be essential to everyone as we all work in very different ways, but the value and support that comes with these things is something I want to share with others in my role at Passionfruit.
At Passionfruit we're making work, work for everyone by helping you claim ownership of your career and feel empowered to do what's important to you, all the while being supported as part of our wider freelance community. Very often our work doesn't work for us, but we continue with our lives, not recognising or realising that another way of working is possible. Now Passionfruit have given me the opportunity to help them by rethinking and fixing the way we work and live.
Why Passionfruit?
I don't have experience of working at a start-up, and marketing is a relatively new industry to me, but that didn't make me shy away from this opportunity. It's going to require an initial period of dedication to learning, but I'm definitely up for the challenge! Start-ups are places where ideas come to life quickly. Even within my first week at Passionfruit my suggestions were taken seriously and quickly acted upon, showing that here everyone's voice is heard, experiments are encouraged, and you're working together to challenge the status quo.
Another reason I jumped at this opportunity was because I knew each day I would be interacting with and learning from extremely talented and top-tier specialists, as well as businesses at the forefront of their industries. Both are also challenging the status quo in many ways - freelancers by taking charge of their own work and rejecting the tradition of agencies or in-house marketing teams, and innovating companies who are working to challenge, improve, and upgrade many areas of our lives.
I had been looking for a role that not only challenged me but was also meaningful work. I think customer success is such a crucial part of any company, but unfortunately it is often overlooked. As employee #1 in a Customer Success role, it's obvious that this is at the core of Passionfruit's ethos. Everything revolves around people - the internal Passionfruit team, current users, current specialists and everyone we'll connect with in the future.
In my previous job I was dealing with the day-to-day problems of customers for an international company, but it was often fleeting encounters, trying to fix problems that had already occurred. I began to desire a role that would allow me to have a real impact on the people I was dealing with - I wanted to be a more integral part of customers' days. The Customer Success role for Passionfruit is just that; I am going to be the go-to contact for specialists. I want to create an environment that encourages support and growth and I want to build a community where freelancers feel empowered, where encounters are not fleeting moments, but long-lasting meaningful relationships between specialists and Passionfruit.
It was daunting leaving a large company to join a start-up, and in the time running up to my first day I often had that butterfly-feeling of nerves, excitement, and potential all mixed into one. However, now I am in an evolving workspace, I hope my ten and fifteen year old self would be happy and excited about how we define success here at Passionfruit.
