The funniest thing about careers is how much we ignore the job we actually have. Everyone’s so busy chasing the next title, the next promotion, the next shiny LinkedIn update that they forget—this job right here? It’s where all the magic happens.
I didn’t get that for a long time either. Like most people, I was always thinking ahead. What’s next? How do I get there? It was like playing Monopoly, just trying to collect pieces without ever noticing the spaces I was landing on. Until one day, I realized something.
The next step wasn’t out there. It was right in front of me.
Take this one random sales engineer role I fell into. It wasn’t glamorous. It wasn’t something anyone aspired to. But I looked at it and thought, What can I learn from this? What can I make of it? That one decision—to see opportunity in something everyone else was overlooking—ended up launching the rest of my career.
It wasn’t about the title. Honestly, I didn’t even care about the title. I wasn’t chasing “Sales Engineer Extraordinaire” or whatever. I just wanted to get my hands dirty, figure out the customers, and see what I could do. And somewhere in the middle of all that? Everything changed.
Here’s what nobody tells you: the fastest way to get ahead isn’t to obsess over climbing the ladder. It’s to own the rung you’re standing on.
The funniest part? Most people don’t do it. They’re too busy grumbling about how their job doesn’t match their ambitions. Meanwhile, the people who lean in, who treat the work in front of them like it’s the most important thing they’ll ever do, are the ones quietly getting noticed.
I mean, look at my demo videos. Making those wasn’t part of my job description. But I noticed a gap—sales were getting stuck on the basics, the same repeated conversations—and I thought, What if I just recorded this?
It wasn’t rocket science. It wasn’t groundbreaking. But it worked. And that’s the thing: nobody’s asking you to reinvent the wheel. They just want you to make it roll better.
The same thing happened with this ridiculous little animated video I made. It wasn’t polished. It wasn’t even professional. I made it mostly because I wanted to play around with animation, but it ended up being the thing that connected everyone—customers, developers, even my boss—to what we were actually doing. That one scrappy experiment led to an entirely new role. Me! In marketing! The guy who knew nothing about marketing suddenly leading the charge.
You’d think this would’ve been some grand plan, but it wasn’t. I didn’t go into these jobs thinking, This is my big break. I just thought, What can I do here that matters?
And it wasn’t about perfection, either. Most of what I did was messy, unpolished, a little rough around the edges. But it added value. That’s what matters.
You know what’s funny? Titles mean nothing to me now. I think they’re kind of silly. Like, does anyone really care if you’re the Vice President of Things That Don’t Matter? Probably not. But they do care if you’re the person who gets stuff done. If you’re the one who’s always adding value, solving problems, seeing opportunities where others see grunt work.
I know this all sounds simple. Maybe too simple. But it’s the kind of thing that people overlook because they’re so focused on what’s next. It’s like standing in front of a treasure chest but refusing to open it because you’re too busy drawing a map to find another one.
So, here’s my advice: stop skipping steps. Stop chasing the next thing so hard that you forget the thing you’re standing on. The job you have right now isn’t just a stepping stone—it’s the foundation for everything that comes after. Treat it like it matters, and I promise, it will.
If you’re curious about how this philosophy shaped my career, there’s a video where I go deeper into the stories and lessons.
Leave a Reply