Pivot Quickly When You Make a Mistake

A short lesson in TAM, SAM, SOM, and other fun stuff.

A bright-eyed, clueless, culinary wannabe

I'll start at the beginning of my marketing career. I had several years of professional experience and no marketing degree. I worked in tech journalism for a couple years and decided to pivot into food writing.

I did what any rational person would do: I enrolled part-time at culinary school and resolved to quit my job within about a year and get a food writing job.

Without doing any research into this new industry I wanted to get into.

Every week day was this: 9am-5pm, I’d work from home in my journalism job. 5pm on the dot, I’d put on my culinary uniform, kravat, clogs and all, and head over to school. 6pm-11pm I’d be in in-class lecture, practicing knife cuts, preparing & cooking composed dishes, and washing dishes or mopping floors. Home by 11:30pm, shower, sleep, then do it all over again.

I was working so hard. Surely this was going to result in Serious Eats or America’s Test Kitchen hiring me immediately. I just had to trust the process, right?

Wrong.

I was working hard, but not smart. I ended up graduating at the top of my class and securing an internship at the Los Angeles Times. I worked in the newspaper’s test kitchen and picked up some writing work when I could.

But the food writing job? Nope. Turns out, there are like, 10 of these jobs ever, and they’re all taken by very talented people who aren’t retiring anytime soon.

I would have known this had I taken my head out of my own butt and actually did a little bit of research. So I changed plans. Quickly. I was somehow able to live on my meager $1,000 monthly budget, but money was running out. I needed to get a real job.

I started with freelance work. Back then, social media wasn’t as sophisticated as it is now, and most people were just posting some standalone content and dropping links to their blogs. I ran a few restaurants’ and startups’ social accounts. I also did some copywriting and email writing.

Then I used my journalism chops to find viable food startups. Working at a traditional media company was pretty much out of the question. (Yup, we’ve been saying “traditional media is dead” for over 10 years now.) I made a spreadsheet of all the funded food startups, then cold emailed all of them.

All of them.

And I followed up.

One of them eventually got back to me. The NatureBox CEO liked my attitude and asked to stay in touch. I ended up getting hired as their Content Marketing Manager almost four months later.

Lessons learned?

Know a market before you go after it. It’s not that I wouldn’t have tried a career pivot had I had the full knowledge. But I would’ve been a lot more calculated. I should’ve done some basic intel earlier on, like getting a sense of the overall market opportunity for my desired job relative to my skill set. I now know this is basic business school stuff. TAM, SAM, SOM: Know the total addressable market (TAM), the portion that I could reasonably pitch to (serviceable addressable market or SAM), and then the portion that I can realistically capture (serviceable obtainable market or SOM).

(Much to my parents’ dismay, I don’t have a business degree either.)

Once you realize you’re wrong, pivot quickly to Plan B. We all mistakes. It’s ok. Own them and move on. In my case, Plan B was content marketing at a food company. It ended up making a ton of sense because of the inflection points of SEO/content. This was when search algorithms became a lot more sophisticated and started rewarding higher-quality content. The most successful content marketers became the ones who were producing original, well-written, well-researched content — not the spammy link builders. Enter: me with my journalism skills.

When you’re young, create space for yourself to fail. The best things in life worth pursuing have some degree of risk. But that doesn’t mean you should quit your job without a safety net. What I’m saying is that you need to create your safety net. For me, that meant saving up about 8 months of living expenses, not shopping for leisure for over a year, and vowing to live on a $1,000 monthly budget. I ate a lot of kale chickpea quinoa salad — dirt cheap, filling and healthy. My Plan C, as the money ran out, would have been taking whatever job that might have me. I was single, child-free and 26 years old. I felt this was the only time I could take this sort of risk.

I know that ultimately, I’m lucky. But I did work my tail off for a couple years to make the change. I say this because when people ask me how to make a career transition, a lot of my advice starts with the fact that you just have to put in hours.

🤓 Newsletter to Check Out: Growth Memo

I don’t write case studies about other companies, so you won’t find those here. But if you are looking for these deep dives into organic growth, check out my friend Kevin Indig’s newsletter, Growth Memo. An awesome weekly read for marketers in SEO, CRO, email and product marketing.

🧁 Petits Fours

Four ideas or resources that I think are worth your time.

1:

First, a shot: Men are lost. Here’s a map out of the wilderness [WaPo gift link, courtesy Rand Fishkin]: It’s a long read, but worth it if you’re thinking about the masculinity crisis.

Then, a chaser: Sex differences in work preferences, life values, and personal views among gifted men and women: Fascinating chart. Men value being able to take risks at work, value having a merit-based pay system, and believe that society should invest in their ideas because they are more important than those of other people... yet when asked if they "take charge" who actually raises their hands? Women.

I’ve been following the masculinity crisis for a little while now, and there’s a lot to unpack here. I understand the need to help men. I’m not against it. I just can’t help but wonder, why is it that we call it a “crisis”… but when maternal mortality is on the rise and reproductive care is restricted in half our states, it’s just yet another thing that women have to deal with?

2:

Asian-Americans’ views of their homelands and other places in Asia: All kinds of interesting nuggets here. It appears that China isn’t that well-liked by other Asian-Americans. But the Philippines, Vietnam and India aren’t exactly beloved either. Indian-Americans seem to have the most favorable opinion of the US of all Asian-American groups. And only Filipino-Americans like the Philippines. LOL. (I’m allowed to laugh at that because I’m Filipino-American.)

3:

These real estate/finance influencers totally self-owned themselves: Listen. I don’t like people getting embarrassed on the internet. But when you claim to have certain expertise, build a brand around it, sell courses on it — and you prove to be shady, you… have it coming. Here, Ali and Josh Lupo a.k.a. “the FI couple” (FI = financially independent) bragged about their growing total rental income of $11,500 per month… only to later admit they net under $2,600 per month. That’s (at most) $31,200 per year. Split between two people. Or $7.50 per hour per person. Being that over-leveraged and taking on that amount of risk and responsibility for that amount of money is far from “financial independence.”

Here’s a crazy idea: How about for $30k a year, you just try a little harder at your day job?

4:

Lots of people are writing about Threads, talking about Threads, and threading about Threads. But… now what? Are marketers creating strategies for it? Are our target audiences there? Do we even have bandwidth to leverage Threads in our existing marketing strategies? At SparkToro, we ran an informal survey and 315 of you responded. I took a closer look at Threads and what marketers think about Meta’s new app.

Check out what folks had to say, and stay for my guidance which offers lots of questions for all of us to consider.

Also, follow me @amandanat on Threads!

🥗 Prepare Better Salads at Home

Here’s what makes a good, hearty salad:

It’s satiating: it has protein, fiber and fat. The fiber is obvious because you’re eating a bowl of vegetables. But you also need a protein, like animal protein, tofu, seeds, eggs, chickpeas… or some combination of several. Cheese, olive oil and/or dressing for fat.

Fat is balanced with acidity: Maybe your extra fat is cheese. Balance that out with a nice vinaigrette. Or maybe you’ll nix the cheese and add extra creamy dressing.

Textures are balanced: Leafy and crunchy. Juicy and dry. Meaty and cheesy. Whatever you add, make sure you’re thinking about the contrast of textures.

It’s seasoned: This one’s a restaurant tip. Season your salad with salt and pepper before you toss in that dressing. I promise it’ll taste better.