My Work Week – Corporate, Freelance and Why I Don’t Say Balance

What do I do? Oh you know, work in recruitment and retention, skincare and the hospitality business with a side of blogger and consultant. That incredibly diverse, confusing statement is why today I’m breaking down what I work on in a week between my corporate role and my freelance.

Also, on another note, I introduced #WorkWearAF on Instagram this week where I’m uploading my work outfits on Sunday so you can hopefully get inspired to play around with your corporate/business professional attire. Please let me know if you like it!

I paused as I wrote this to ask if I was just glorifying being busy. I hate that in the 2010’s we were all about turning EVERYTHING into a “side hustle.” Nothing could just be something we enjoyed. We had to turn it into something that made us money or consumed us. I want to do my part in NOT glorifying being busy, despite having the personality that thinks you aren’t busy until you are at a legit mental breakdown state. I don’t need to be busy to prove my worth. In fact, my boss at ADT has us reading about doing less, obsessing more and what possibilities that opens us up to.

Every one of these areas fuels me in some way, which is why I won’t add a new one to my plate right now. All of them also push me in very different ways but manage to weave seamlessly into the other.

I’ve learned to say no, but I will be the first to say that this is not easy for me. I’m finally realizing that my plate is full and sometimes needs both hands to hold because there are a lot of commitments on it. So why are these the items that have remained with me even as I scale back and try to have a little bit more balance*? *see below about my thoughts on balance

ADT

ADT is my actual full-time role. I’m based out of the Wichita, Kansas office and am on the CX&O (Customer Experience and Operations) team. I’ve worked at ADT for four years and I’m genuinely very happy there. I started in Marketing as as Marketing Specialist and then was promoted to Senior Marketing Specialist then Manager, Content Development and now have the super vague title of “Manager, Culture Development and Communications.” (The transition to this role is part of this story.) I know that most people say they have great co-workers, but I think that I can say my co-workers are some of the best and most important people in my life. They have gotten me through a LOT!

My Role

ADT has contact centers across the country. I help support our recruitment efforts through marketing help, event planning, retention efforts and many other corporate buzzwords that would bore you. My role impacts the entire org as our people and staffing was our #1 priority in 2019. For 2020 it has remained our highest priority. I help our General Care teams as well as our Retention teams develop their staffing strategies and travel to centers to host recruiting events and develop connection among current employees.

I typically visit at least 2-3 centers a month in addition to being at the Wichita ADT contact center. This is why I’m always on a plane (120 flights in 2019). Due to the nature of hiring what typically happens is we monitor what our Talent Acquisition team is doing on certain class requirements and that determines where I go or a Director will ask me to host an event or leadership hiring event.

(I cannot say which center(s) are my favorite because the Directors will never let me hear the end of it as it’s often teased that they are Alissa’s favorite center when they are on calls.) Our contact centers I support are: Wichita, Irving, Knoxville, Jacksonville and Rochester.

Scope of Work

Since this is my actual full-time role I don’t want to disclose all of this, so please know that this is a very vague overview of what I am responsible for. I won’t bore you with details, but there are many, many sub-bullets to this and well, I also want to keep some other things private.

• Developing materials for Talent Acquisition, Directors and other key members to help enhance the ADT image in the community.
  • Example: Currently trying to launch a Contact Center Facebook page as connection tool as well as advertising for recruiting.
    • Something like this means planning out 3-4 weeks of branded content ahead of time, working with center contacts and making sure the brand voice is consistent as we focus on a different site every day.
• Recruitment event planning.
  • There are so many sub-bullets to this that it almost hurts but this is the best way to say that this is like predicting the weather and then trying to control the weather and then getting everyone to agree on the weather being nice.
• Increasing our internal promotions within ADT and hosting internal career progression events.
  • This has been a newer part of my role and I have loved it! We are focusing on our more advanced departments becoming internal-only opportunities to transfer in. We’ve started having great success with this!
• Misc opportunities: Workshops, connection events, filming, photography and whatever we need in that moment!
• One daily newsletter to the entire CX&O organization
• One Tuesday/Thursday newsletter to a CX&O sub-organization

Beauty Boost

Beauty Boost is what got me into skincare. I met Ashly when I needed to get my eyebrows done on my 25th birthday. What started as eyebrows has now gone to a full on partnership. And an amount of waxing/services every three weeks that most people would probably have to take ibuprofen for.

Ashly and I always talked business and initially did a little bit of an exchange of services but then she went on her own. What was once maybe just an idea of what we could do for her was now a reality.

My Role

I’m responsible for our marketing, specifically social media, photography, planning spa specials, general business needs and anything else we need to do. One of the cooler things I get to be part of is picking out products. However, when it comes to investing someone else’s money in something I like, I am very cautious.

While Ashly is very focused on clean, organic and cruelty-free ingredients, I have the customer mindset as my focus. When we first brought on our biggest line we spent hours sniffing, rubbing, masking and scrubbing to decide what our product-offering was going to be. Don’t get me wrong, it was fun! However, I cannot stress enough how much every decision matters to a small business. Decisions like this are a ton of pressure as we try to guess what customers will want and try to grow the business.

Scope of Work

Here’s what a typical month for the spa is like:

• Monthly Social Media Shoot(s)
  • Every month is a new theme and features different products that tie into our specials our current trends.
• Social Media Planning
  • Using Later, plan out the entire month of Instagram posts (3-4 hours)
• Spa Special Planning
  • This can vary as we did an overall plan at the end of last year and I do monthly tweaks to descriptions, etc. 1-2 hours a month.
• Blog Post
  • I give Ashly a prompt and she writes it, I edit it and give feedback
• A Ton of Texts and Emails
  • What are sales this week? Who bought the last scrub? What is happening in our DMs? What was that password again? Look at how good my skin looks today! Honestly, Ashly and I are in constant communication, but it’s never just business, we are friends as well which makes it feel less like we’re making 10,000 decisions about the spa every week.

This is one of my favorite roles I have. Selfishly I love it because it means I “have” to get a facial every month for our marketing purposes as well as other things. I also love that I know we are building something really great. Again the facials are trying out new skincare trends IS pretty great. Ashly has really grown a LOT in the time I’ve known her and it’s been great to see where our strengths are together and how we can compliment each other with the goal of growing the spa together.

Homewood Suites at the Waterfront

Homewood came to me through a friend in 2019 and has been such an unexpected surprise! Right before our first meeting I had terrible impostor syndrome because I kept saying, “but you don’t know anything about hotels.” Thankfully I got over that very quickly when I learned that their goals are to raise awareness, have an active social media and general marketing.

My Role and Scope of Work

This one I’m combining as it tells the story better. I spend most of my freelance hours on Homewood due to guest questions on social media, operations or design needs or research on trends in the industry.

• Social Media
  • Monthly content calendar delivered, monthly photoshoots (larger ones during the spring/fall).
• Email Campaigns
  • Monthly newsletter
  • Special campaigns (weddings)
• Marketing Needs
  • This could be a menu created, pop-up banner or a rack card or something as simple as just some images done.
  • I also do a lot of “secret shopping” to try to make sure our experience is what we are advertising.
• Events
  • In the summer we host Yoga on the Lake events every month and they were a huge hit! I am really looking forward to bringing this back in 2020.

Our typical cadence is 1-2 in-person meetings and some digital reports on our social media. My favorite part of this role is that I often to get to be part of a surprise-and-delight process. I’ve worked hard to try to connect people’s digital experience with us match their in-person with a custom note or something that addresses an item they brought up on social. It’s a honor to get to work for a team that has won numerous awards for their hospitality and to get to tell that story!

I have another small role and misc consulting that I do, plus the blog that can take up to 5-10 hours a week. A typical blog post for me takes two hours to write from start to scheduling. For more detailed posts like these, it’s three hours of writing alone.

The greatest compliment I could ever receive is that I have a work ethic like my father. My parents have always modeled an excellence to me, but my father is one of the hardest workers I know, next to his dad who is 97 and still farming. It’s from him that I got the love to work and throw myself fully into everything I do.

So how do I *balance* it all? I don’t think that’s fair work to use because it implies it has to be balanced. My life is work-heavy and I am okay with that. It’s what I want and I have intentionally chose this path. However, I do know myself well enough to know that I need a mix of work, freelance and personal life. I don’t try to *balance* it anymore than I would normally try to just be as efficient as possible and smart about it. I prioritize what needs to be done, whether that’s work or spending time with someone. What your priorities are is what creates your *balance.*