In my junior year at university, I really shifted focus toward finding a job. I knew it wasn’t going to be something that my school program took care of for me; it all fell on my shoulders. Along the way, I developed some plays that made a lot of impact for me. I wanted to share three:

2012: I signed as a freelance writer with Techvibes. What I lacked in writing skill, I made up for with enthusiasm and technological literacy. I came across a play, which was to offer conferences and business leaders coverage in a national publication in exchange for access. I must’ve attended $10,000+ worth of conferences in that summer. I also got 1-1 time with business leaders, often asking them for career advice that I would publish to readers. This advice was very useful. Looking back, this was a modification of a play I’d seen my cousin do many years earlier, when computer hardware companies sent samples to him in exchange for him to write a review at his website. My goal for attending college in the first place was to graduate and get a “real” job, which the articles at Techvibes, as well as the relationships I nurtured, helped me earn.

2013: I wrote my first articles at Medium, which was in beta. At the time, if several of your friends liked your work, Medium would show it to a lot more people. That was the play: I would ask my friends to, if they liked the work, please like it. Most of my friends obliged, some were excited to be a part of the process, and I’m sure a few were annoyed (I made an effort to not ask them). As a result, almost every week, thousands of people read my work. There was a second part to this: offer popular Medium articles to publications for republishing. These articles helped me build relationships with editors at The Next Web, The Huffington Post, and The New York Observer. I used both of these plays to help my first employer set up their publication. I started working with clients as a marketer (like Tiny Hearts), and helped them drive a lot of awareness for their businesses as well. This play would be useful for many years, to declining returns. Still, I have continued writing at Medium since, to varying degrees of effort.

2014: My friends and I released the first episode of our video series, Prologue. The play was this: get in touch with artists who were doing shows near Toronto, where I lived, and ask if we could record an interview after their show. Eventually, I also leveraged the credibility of the publications I found through Medium, like The Huffington Post, to make the offer more compelling. Here’s the first one I ran in HuffPost, with Casey Veggies. I learned, with time, that busy people occasionally would open up their schedules to promote a product they were launching, and that was when they would be available for interviews.

I hope some of these plays are useful for you. There are some timeless elements to these plays, and I tried highlighting them: looking for ways to offer value to people instead of asking for help, learning more about platforms and social media that more senior people didn’t keep up with, and focusing on your strengths (in my case, writing). 

Looking back, I was also practicing my work in a very exploratory way. That was useful early in my career, when I wanted to do all sorts of work—entrepreneurship! Technology! Writing and art!—and wasn’t sure which path to commit to yet.