Sometimes, the job you envisioned working when you start at the bottom is far less glamorous or engaging than you need for your interests. It isn’t that it’s a bad internship because the company is undervaluing you or you are entitled to more interesting work as a new person, but maybe it isn’t fitting into what you find passion in. That in itself, can be the entire lesson.

The year was 2010, I was 19 just finishing my first year at Emory and looking to pad a summer internship to my application for Goizueta (the undergrad business school).

This internship was about as typical as one you can expect for someone living in Toledo, Ohio. I was working at a small local credit union, which was technically finance-y I thought, but the job was literally scanning paper for 8 hours a day which was less than ideal for someone as intellectually stimulated as myself.

I decided that it was a good time to maximize my monotonous routine by checking out some business podcasts on iTunes. I figured at the least, I have an environment where I can try to absorb something to write down when I talk about this internship in my applications.

After a few minutes of scrolling, I stumbled upon the Smart Passive Income Podcast by Pat Flynn, which seemed to be about the idea of setting up streams of monthly cash for yourself by doing hard work now and then nothing later. This was very appealing to someone like me who had at least 3 more years of free rent before graduation and uncertainty about what I wanted to do as a full-time career.

At first it was just affiliate marketing, building websites, and some basic info, but as the Podcast turned its focus to SEO, I was fascinated with every word. Keeping a small notebook I still have to this day next to the massive scanner on my desk, I furiously wrote as fast as I could in between scans (which ran about 1-2 min) and quickly became obsessed with the idea of search algorithms.

I ended up building almost 20 niche websites in the course of that summer doing web dev, social, content, SEO, Adsense, and affiliate marketing networks. However, I soon realized that my passion was for SEO, not passive income, which meant I needed to rebrand myself as an organic search expert using the success I had seen
with my own websites.

This turned into work consulting for a growing real estate firm in Atlanta, building a digital presence for a fitness startup, and finally led me to the west coast agency world. Despite it being 13 years later this summer, that passion for SEO has never waned, and I am constantly striving to learn more about this ever-changing industry.