It's OK to Follow Your Heart AND Your Wallet

After I graduated from college, I enrolled in the Columbia Publishing Course, a 6-week boot camp for 100 candidates interested in a possible career in book and magazine publishing. Though brief, the course was intense, and besides the launch of my career, it also provided me with an amazing education and pre-built network of peers, not to mention some of my closest friends. It also taught me a funny thing about the book industry: 85% of books never earn out their advances. In my youthful naiveté I thought, “WOW, publishing is so altruistic, the vast majority of the books they produce never earn a profit for the publisher, but they remain committed to distributing these pieces of art and literature (amongst other categories) while staying in the black because of their bestselling, blockbuster books alone.”

After a couple years in the industry at the stifling low pay of an assistant, it seemed a bit less altruistic and a bit more like a foolish industry propped up by well-educated and previously trust-funded individuals who were able to work slavishly for little pay but still afford Upper West Side apartments. As unbelievable as it was for a lifelong reader and literature major to have already worked with half of the major publishers and met with their CEO’s before my late 20’s, I knew I needed to broaden my perspective.

I wanted to work somewhere a little less foolhardy, with higher profit margins and resources to keep employees engaged and happy, not an industry where it feels like a privilege to be underpaid. Unfortunately, that rules out a lot of the “fun” or “glamorous” industries like fashion, PR, media and entertainment, among others, but having spent so much time on small teams or at small agencies, I didn’t think that the big corporate world was right for me, either. Where does one find the balance of a small company where you can stand out and move up quickly, but generously provides for your needs, and does something profitable that doesn’t make you recoil in disgust?

The punchline to that question is consulting. I never intended to end up here, but with almost the first year of my MBA under my belt it’s hard to imagine many other industries where every day, though we are concerned about the bottom line, our job is to help companies and individuals work better, smarter, and build better relationships in the process. Consulting is all about the margins, which makes it seem callous, but we have no products to sell, no useless consumer goods that one could live without. We share knowledge, not ad slogans, and only sell our time, intelligence and services to make executives, their teams, and their whole workforce have richer personal and professional lives and to help drive the broader success of their organization.

I do still want to figure out a way to add more creativity to my career, and would love to take another shot at changing how media and entertainment work, but it’s so disheartening to see how many billions of dollars are wasted on frivolous movies that never needed to be made except for the small chance they will make studios and their investors millions. How many dozens of scripts, time and investment is wasted on the shows that don’t get picked up every pilot season? I’d like to think that data and analytics are moving us towards smarter business models even in these high risk industries, but the truth may be that media and entertainment are always going to gamble on big wins.

And sadly they aren’t alone. Every year companies invest billions in products that will never see the light of day. They spend millions on advertising and can still be met with disappointing sales. The never ending pursuit of “blockbuster” success in all industries trickles down to the startups who hope to be the next big thing. What is so bad about perhaps slow, but consistent growth and healthy margins? Economic inequality is built on the back of this idea of big wins and our inability to embrace a higher standard of living for all employees in the name of hierarchy and divine right. Dan Price of Gravity Payments, is just one CEO of many that believes in fair wages for his people and recently announced a significant pay cut for himself.

I’d like to see how businesses can change to grow in a more relational way, and less transactional. It’s great to have social impact and corporate responsibility, but that begins with your own folks and your business model, not just what you’re able to give away, but how you’re able to do good while earning money, improving the lives of your employees as well as your customers. Maybe it’s an ideal, but then again that’s what I thought about publishing and I haven’t given up on it, yet, either.

Originally published on Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/its-ok-follow-your-heart-wallet-blair-bryant-nichols/