when are you going to stop falling for the same flashy corporate packaging?
you silly rabbit, trix are for kids.
i grew up 3 older brothers in the Midwest. as kids we never really got to have fancy, bright boxed sugary cereals. when we would go to the grocery store with our parents we would beg them for the latest we had seen in the fun commercials in our favorite cartoons. froot loops. lucky charms. cinnamon toast crunch. cocoa puffs. it was almost always no. our parents would say that sugary stuff wasn’t good for us. it’s like crack for kids. instead we stocked cereals like frosted mini wheats, raisin bran, corn flakes and things of the like. they were solid cereals with no flash, relatively good for us and pretty simple. we never craved them or got a rush from eating them. when you finished a bowl, you were done and moved on with your day.
but when we would go to our anything-goes-kind-of-friends houses, they would have a pantry full of contraband. their parents would joyfully ask, are you hungry? go grab a snack! have whatever you want! make yourself at home. opening up their cupboards was like finding a chest of forbidden riches. double stuffed oreos. little debbie zebra cakes. and all the cereals we couldn’t have.
without any hesitation, we would devour 3 bowls in a sitting. eating as fast we could, slurping the sugary infested milk in paranoia to erase any evidence. always to our surprise, the sugary puffs and bold artificial flavoring never satisfied us. no matter how much we ate, it never left us feeling full. ever. but it always, always made us feel worse. and of course when we got back home, we would have crippling stomach aches that gave it away. what did y’all eat over there? in the midst of our sugary crack crash, somebody (aj) would always cave and confess, we had some of their cereal. my mom would dig deeper asking, what kind? and in unison we’d say, they had Trix.
this maladaptive compulsion would repeat over and over again.
do you love sleep?
in October 2020, i had made the painful decision to let Netflix go. i loved it there. and was proud of the work we had done. but i couldn’t keep eating off the empty promises. the resentment and frustration i harbored was becoming louder than my desire to want to do great work there. i knew it was time to move on. i believe you leave a job three times. first spiritually when your soul realizes it can’t fully express there, then emotionally when you stop caring about it all, and then eventually you leave physically. i had left emotionally.
weeks after letting go, i received a call from the head of HR at Calm, the leading app for sleep and meditation. we knew each other from Netflix and he said they were looking for someone to come in and lead marketing globally. they were experiencing exponential growth as a result of the pandemic. with unprecedented levels of anxiety, insomnia was on the rise and people were turning to Calm for relief. he talked about the founders and how they weren’t perfect, but genuinely good people and they were assembling a solid team. they needed to take the brand and the company to the next level. they needed it to break through culture. and he thought of me.
where are you right now, he asked. are you ready to leave to Netflix?
i am, actually, i responded. but i don’t use Calm. and you know i only consider places where i genuinely feel connected and passionate about the product. i can’t build a brand around something i don’t use or care about.
he said, do you love sleep?
i chuckled, i LOVE sleep. i LIVE to sleep.
he played his hand, then you already love Calm. at least do an intro call with their chief strategy officer to get a feel. if you’re down, i’ll email intro you.
i trusted him. and his approach delighted me. i agreed to an intro.
take a deep breath.
over the next month, we started our top secret work affair. i was taking calls after Netflix hours to get to know the team. i began studying everything about them in between meetings and when i was bored on Zooms. i was observing their consumer touch points, taking stock and trying to understand what was there. i continued reading up on all the news of the company, reviews in the app store and the origin story of the founders. more and more, i was imagining myself in the role. which is usually a sign that i being called toward something. i started thinking about the kinds of people we would need to hire, the first moves we would need to make and the kind of culture we would need to create to take the company to the next level.
on election night in November 2020, i remember siting on my couch in Sherman Oaks, with tequila on the rocks, watching CNN. John King and his interactive map was detailing the digital battleground between Joe Biden and Donald Trump. the race was too close. every update from the anchors felt like a sudden drop on a roller coaster. you could feel the thick cloud of anxiety hovering over the country and the pit in everyone’s stomach.
in the midst of the chaos, a :30 ad from Calm appeared that instructed us to take a deep breath with gentle, soft rain falling on green leaves. no words. no voice over. just an invitation to breathe. i thought it was absolutely genius. i could viscerally feel the positive impact of the brand. we needed more of this right now.
i emailed my contact there and said, i’m no longer just curious. i want the job. let’s take things to the next level.
i’m going to do the best work of my life.
by Jan 2021, i had met with all the key players inside of Calm. the head of product. the head of content. the existing team and multiple calls with both founders. i had even done mock strategy sessions with the head of strategy. i was into Calm and they were into me. and i kept waiting for them to put a ring on it, but there was always one more thing.
the last and final request was for me to put together a presentation of a vision for the brand with some hypothetical ideas that gave them a sense of my thinking. i thought it was a bit much and that i should probably be paid for it, but if this was their process i wasn’t going to fight it. what i did know was i was going to put together something so spectacular, it would be undeniable. i had a week to pull it together.
i called up a friend who was a freelance creative director and briefed him and said that i wanted to build a custom animated deck, create a mock harry styles ad (they had just signed him to do a sleep story) and a few other creative beats. while they started on the creative, i started outlining the vision.. i explained how we needed to shift Calm into a lifestyle brand. live events, annual festivals, high fashion pajama collabs, more disruptive ads wherever there was chaos. a list of new voices, faces and partnerships that would help elevate us in culture. how we could reimagine the branding and become synonymous with the sound of a deep breath. we would eventize sleep and turn the sleep stories into netflix title level trailers and promotion.
as i worked on the presentation, i realized how connected i actually felt towards the mission. my background working in personal growth, SuperSoul at OWN, and working on the meditation business was flowing through seamlessly. my entertainment culture experience at Netflix helped me see the sleep stories as our content driver. and i generally had so much reverence for sleep my whole life. as a kid, i used to put myself to bed because i loved it so much. so the idea of helping the world stress less and sleep more felt like important work that i wanted to be a part of and that was good for society. and it was something that i needed to personally really embrace in the midst of the pandemic, after recently separating from my husband and decompressing from everything i experienced at the big red N.
unsurprisingly, i crushed the presentation. so much so, they applauded at the end. i knew i had the job. the next Monday i got an offer over email with everything we had discussed. i called founders and verbally committed to them. i’m going to do the best work of my life. i told them i needed a week to review the paperwork for myself and with my divorce attorneys to prepare for any implications it might have on our settlement.
i was grateful that i was finally getting everything i wanted–the opportunity to shape a global brand in the top marketing spot. real equity in the company. but most importantly, being surrounded by a great group of people to do work that mattered and helped people around the world. i had gotten to know them over the last five months and i felt the goodness and the calm in the air. i could finally exhale.
lust at first sight.
on Wednesday of that same week, the CEO and founder of Clubhouse slid into my Linkedin dms saying they were looking for a marketing, comms and content leader for the company. it was the same day Elon Musk had just agreed to hop on the app with Kanye West.
it felt surreal. Clubhouse was the hottest app in the world at the time. i had been invited to join the social audio experience six months prior and felt like i was part of this exclusive club that millions had been waiting months to join. it was what everyone was talking about. i had said to my team at Netflix that we needed to be a first mover and start figuring out our Clubhouse strategy. i had no idea i was even on their radar. i had no idea that i would even be considered for something like this.
we got on the phone immediately and talked for four hours. it was lust at first sight. the founder was this overly energetic, almost toxically optimistic guy. i had never heard or met anyone like him. he painted this picture of coming in as one of the early employees to build out the next great social platform in the world. they had just been valued at $1B and received hundreds of millions to keep growing. at the time, it was the fastest growing app in the history of tech both in user growth and valuation. he was selling me on the opportunity to be part of it’s rocketship trajectory, to shape the future, to make generational shifting money and to be a part of history.
i told him that i had just committed to Calm two days prior and needed to get back to them by Friday. he replied, then we better move fast.
over the next 24 hours, i cleared my Netflix calendar (i had not told them about Calm) and we organized 15+ hours of interviews and conversations. i wanted his references and he needed mine. we talked all day. and all night. throughout the discussions, i wasn’t even sure what i should be asking about. the job felt so big and ambiguous. i didn’t even know where to start. everything just felt like hype, energy and excitement. i can’t remember the details of any of it. it was just happening to me suddenly.
i knew one of Clubhouse’s leading investors, who told me on the phone, this is the fastest-growing company i’ve ever had in my portfolio. there will always be a Calm, but there may never be another Clubhouse. this is like Mark Zuckerberg calling you up in 2007. do you want to be employee number ten at Facebook? i wasn’t sure i did, but how do you say no?
am i about to be the Black Sheryl Sandberg?! i thought.
every mentor I talked to confirmed that this would set me on a trajectory for the rest of my life. one, i guess, i should want to be on.
during that sprint, i never really felt any depth of connection to the people i talked to or what the company was becoming. they didn’t really know what the company was becoming because everything was happening so fast. but they did know that every other tech giant – Facebook, Twitter and even LinkedIn had declared war on them to build similar technology. they needed to hire and build fast. and they needed an answer by Friday.
i had the worst stomach ache.
Clubhouse made me offer that was almost identical Calm, except the potential financial upside was insane and the status and level of visibility i would get could change my life forever. on our final call Thursday late night before i had to make a decision, the Clubhouse founder said, listen, i’ll be in Santa Monica on Friday afternoon with my family. if you say yes, we can meet in-person on the strand and celebrate.
i remember laying on the couch curled up in a ball with crippling anxiety. i had the worst stomach ache of my life. i was completely and utterly overwhelmed. i think i may have even had a mild panic attack. i couldn’t distinguish if the angst and crushing weight i was feeling was the fear of stepping into the unknown or if it was my body trying to tell me this wasn’t right and i should run. i was tossing and turned all night. to soothe me, i flipped on Idris Elba’s sleep story on Calm to help me relax.
on Friday morning, February 12, 2021, i woke up way before the sun. i quietly went downstairs and made a perfect cup of coffee. i sipped it slowly. i prayed that i had made the right decision. in the light of the dawn, i looked at the clock and it wasn’t even 7a yet. but i wanted to get it over with. i grabbed my phone to make the call. on the first ring he picked up.
what time should i meet you in Santa Monica to celebrate, i said.
what i didn’t know then but i know now is that my body was so burned out and depleted from battling for my worth at Netflix, numbing myself from the pain of being abandoned in divorce, working and mothering through the pandemic, plus the years of exhaustion of just existing as a Black woman that i had conditioned my body to ignore red flags. in my state of depleted willpower, i mistaken chaotic environments for familiar comfort and lost the ability to distinguish real, intuitive danger from chronic anxiety. my nervous system steered me back into a toxic situation because it had become addicted to adrenaline, cortisol and chaos. when your house alarm has been ringing for months, you get used to the noise. a healthier, calm environment actually felt boring, unfamiliar and unsafe to me.
when i walked with the founder on the strand in Santa Monica that day, i knew somewhere deep down it was the wrong decision. but i was locked in. i had signed the paperwork. and i had to force myself to believe it was the right call. the people at Clubhouse were good people. they just weren’t my people. and after less than two years there, the stress and anxiety from that job nearly destroyed me.
i had to first forgive myself for moving too quickly. i let the pace and haste of the situation deterimine my decision making timeline instead of asking for more time to process. i had to apologize to my body for betraying her. for not honoring the truth of what she needed at the time. and putting her through so much stress because of my trauma and people pleasing nature to be seen, validated and chosen. in the thick of it, i had to reframe why i was there. i can still learn a lot. i can still contribute to the best of my ability. i can still take care of the people on my team. but i have to protect myself. but i also had to understand that my best work wasn’t going to happen there. and that was ok.
over time, i’ve had to recondition myself about the truth of who i am. and what my real work really is. i’m not the type to chase money. i sign up for missions. and choosing Clubhouse was the first time i chose a role because of the opportunity to make money. and i can promise you if it worked out i’d be on a yacht somewhere next to Emma Grede in the South of France, not writing the truth of my story to you all.
we didn’t have a common goal. we had a common enemy. and in my experience it’s always better to be for something than against something. and the connection i feel with people in the work really matters because that is core experience. that is the real work. i cannot compromise on that.
even years later, when i think about the decision, i still sometimes beat myself up and wonder what could have happened if i would have chosen Calm. but i’m learning to give myself grace, stress less and to sleep more and to stop chasing the sugary, bright boxed packaged cereal that’s no good for me.
sending u so much love,
m
p.s. talk to us in the comments. how does your body communicate with you in the middle of a tough decision?
if you enjoyed this, more work essays from Follow the Leader…
Maya! This was a masterclass in giving yourself grace reflecting back on career decisions. “Lust at first sight” is such a powerful way to describe how the sexy career opportunities we’re all taught to chase is fleeting and never quite fulfills us meaningfully. Thanks for being vulnerable and sharing this.