❤️ Career advice for 2026

I'm currently sitting in Sightglass Coffee in San Francisco. One of my favorite coffee spots, but I do hate that they don't have wifi.

Anyways, being in San Francisco is very bittersweet for me.

I walked around the city last night and held back tears from thinking about my time here.

My real career started here, at the ripe age of 22.

Right before I moved here, I was going through an existential crisis about what my purpose was. I had just graduated college with a mechanical engineering degree, and I hated it.

All I knew was I liked creating content, I was fascinated by what makes people buy things, and I really liked graphic design and branding.

And a year before I graduated, I decided to start a tiny WordPress blog called marketermilk.com. I don’t know why I did it. But for some reason, since I was 11, I felt like I had to tell someone about the things I was learning.

On my blog, I would write about all the things I was tinkering with and learning on my own — running facebook ads, creating ecommerce stores, starting a blog, figuring out affiliate marketing.

I also decided to make some YouTube videos about it, and over a few months it grew.

But I still had no idea what I was doing.

And as I started to gain a little audience, I felt more confused than ever.

I didn't understand why, at the time, anyone would trust a 21 year old explaining marketing to them.

Regardless, I just created content as a distraction from how hard my last year of college was. I was so lost, and pressing record on a camera and reading comments from strangers became my escape.

It would get my mind off trying to understand how to solve equations that looked like hieroglyphics.

But then, time did its thing, and I graduated.

And I panicked.

What now? What am I supposed to do with my life? Would people even hire me even though I have no traditional marketing experience?

I went through 4 months of applying for jobs with no success. And the anxiety and stress grew even more.

“I shouldn’t have created content online and made a fool of myself. Now no one wants to hire me.” That’s what I actually thought.

Then, I saw that one of my favorite marketers, someone whose content I would read all the time, started an agency in Los Angeles. He was hiring.

I applied, and mentioned how many projects I had done in the past, and how I had this little blog and YouTube channel.

I submitted the application and forgot about it.

A few days later, I saw an interesting startup in NYC looking for a role. And I thought to myself, "lol imagine I go to NYC." And I applied as a joke.

A couple weeks passed by and I got an interview with both the agency in LA and the startup in NYC.

Both of them loved that I had created content online. Exactly the opposite of what I thought these companies thought.

And somehow, I got an offer from both companies.

$55K/year for the agency in LA.

$80K/year for the startup in NYC.

My first instinct was, $80K! But then, NYC? That's on the other side of the country…

So I asked a friend what to do.

And he gave me the best piece of career advice that I still take with me today.

"Go where you think the smart people are," he said.

The agency was less money, but the founder was someone I looked up to and would love to have learned from.

The startup in NYC was in, well, NYC. The best city in the world. And more money! But I didn't know anything about the founders.

I took the less pay at the agency.

And over a couple months, the founder of the agency became a mentor. And to this day, is a dear friend.

But funny enough, my job there was short-lived.

Some disagreements at the top caused the founding team to split. The one co-founder I joined the company for was leaving and he told me that I should try to find a new place to work at.

He told me that there’s a really cool startup in SF, and that I should reach out to one of their co-founders.

Through that warm introduction, I got in touch with the startup in SF. And a month later, I found myself packing all of my stuff in my little two door Scion tC and driving up to SF.

Not only did my salary nearly double, but I was working with some of the smartest people I had ever met. I felt like the dumbest person in the room all the time, and I questioned why they hired me on a daily basis.

But I tried to live up to the role. And I wanted to rise up with my peers. And over the next couple years that happened.

I started leading SEO initiatives at one of the most talked about startups in SF during that time. And it gave me the confidence to go out and build my own media company years later.

Moral of the story is that, the best career advice I ever received was to go work with smart people. The connections you make, the things you will learn, and the confidence you will gain (over time) is priceless.

And my own advice to you would be to document your work. The YouTube videos, the blog articles, the LinkedIn posts, they may not always get a lot of views. But they have lead to some of the biggest opportunities of my life.

You never know who’s watching.

And at the same time, remember that life is not linear.

I went to college for something I have never used to this day.

I joined an agency in LA thinking it was going to be the highlight of my career. But the failure of the agency led to something even greater in the end.

So as I sit in this coffee shop, I think back to all the years in my career. How I was so worried and confused about where my life was headed. But that so much of that worry was for nothing.

I still don’t know where it’s headed.

But I am certain that things will always work out for our greater good. We just have to believe it will.

So here's to whatever comes in 2026. Successes, failures, and everything in between. Open yourself to receive it all.

In the end, the stories we carry with us, and the people we meet along the way, are the only things that matters. So don't be afraid if some of the chapters get a little rocky. It all leads to a great book in the end.

With that, let's get into what we have in store this week (lots of good stuff):

• Marketing news from the past week

• A GTM sequencing playbook

• The only 3 email flows you need

• How to do keyword research for SEO/AEO

• How to create AI ads that convert

• Ad in the wild

• Website of the week

• Cool marketing jobs

• And much more

🗞 In the news

• Media agencies test AI planning agents, while edging toward buying tools

• Google's third core update of 2025 just dropped before Christmas

• Meta launches Reels algorithm controls to US users

• OpenAI says it’s turned off app suggestions that look like ads

🚀 All things growth & product

 🤖 AI, emails, & copywriting

✍️ SEO & content marketing

🤳 Social media, paid ads, & branding

🧠 Wild card

📣 Ad in the wild

💻 Website of the week

🏝 Cool marketing jobs

• Manager, SEO @ Figma

• Social Media Manager @ Ahrefs

• Product Marketing Manager, Developer Platform @ OpenAI

• Senior Growth Marketing Manager @ Fathom

• Marketing Strategy Lead @ Square

Okay, that's it for now 💚❤️. See you in the next edition!

“Question everything generally thought to be obvious.” — Dieter Rams

Riddle answer: Popcorn