“When in doubt…Solve a problem.”​

“When in doubt….Solve a problem” is a tidbit of wisdom I picked up somewhere. It was probably something I read during my 8 months of job (and soul) searching in 2016, prior to starting my company FansRaise.

A large part of my life was dedicated to becoming a performing musician and educator. I applied to exactly ONE college, because that was the place to go if you wanted to become a high school band director. I’d like to say that I grew up with a dying passion to become a band director, but I didn’t exactly have that. Going to college to study music seemed like the natural thing to do, as band and the performing arts was simply my persona, and to do anything else seemed unnatural.

After teaching in the public school classroom/bandroom for parts of 7 years (not counting the years of private lesson and marching band instruction/design) I set forth into the more commercial/corporate job market place. I probably transitioned better than most teachers do that are exiting the teaching field, mostly due to some awesome part/full time gigs I had in sales. These experiences were more than just paying the bills — they were setting me up for what came next.

In my journey in the B2B corporate sales world, I found quickly that sometimes the only way to move up the ladder is to move out onto a different ladder. I found that “job-hopping” as our Talent Acquisition colleagues termed it ACTUALLY helped me much more than it hurt. I’m sure there were positions that I was disqualified from because some recruiter was working under the mandate of “NO JOB HOPPERS”, but I’ve come to learn that those types of organizations are trying to thrive on the premise of bringing in new employees that are less likely to quit. “Rather than try to strive for a better workplace culture or deeper support of employee development, let’s focus on finding candidates that will put up with a lot of stuff without leaving…”

I found my fit (and what I had hoped might be my professional “ForeverHome”) with a HR and Recruitment software provider. I had a great boss, my employer was interested in my own development, my sales team was full of great people, and we were disrupting the HR Tech space and generally just FREAKING OUT our competitors. What ended up happening is that our primary competitor bought us (“merged” was the official…