the importance of owning your work

I’m Hiba and I’ve finally snuck my way into the Grow Op! 👋

tl;dr I learned a lesson the hard way. So, what better way to deal with the stress than talk to a bunch of strangers about it?

I’ll set the stage.

I’ve had a roller coaster of a career. Lots of highs creating content I was proud of while building a community I loved, and working alongside people I cared about.

But, I’ve also been through lots of lows where I questioned (many times) if I even wanted to be a marketer. In many cases, thinking that I should just open a coffee shop and leave the internet for good.

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As I journeyed through my career, I always leaned on showcasing specific projects across interviews, and now I use that same portfolio to land clients as a consultant.

I’d always thought… These websites will always exist. These companies will always exist. My content will live on forever. 🤩

I don’t need to save my work because it’ll always be there.

If my cringey Facebook wall posts from 2008 are still alive and well, then what’s to say my work won’t be too?

Well, the truth is—startups fail. Companies get acquired and dissolve. People get laid off. And as those companies become obsolete… so does your portfolio.

And that’s what happened this week. I lost the ability to reference links to a big chunk of my portfolio and needed to figure out how I could still showcase my work.

The lesson I learned this week was the importance of owning your work.

So what does that mean for you? Save the receipts.

These are the 3 things you and I must do moving forward:

1. Save all of your favorite content pieces, emails, ad copy, marketing campaigns… everything. You can use this nifty tool to make the process easier.

2. While you’re going down memory lane, go beyond just saving receipts. Save the stories too. What impact did you have? How did you achieve that impact?*

3. And finally, start being more proactive moving forward. Carve out an hour or two every month to document your journey. Your wins and your failures.

That way no matter what happens, because *waving hands in the air* something will, you’re not scrambling to save your portfolio like I’ve been this week.

And you can bet I’ll be saving this email too. 😉

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