Some of you might be familiar with my journey to entrepreneurship. How I was fired from a creative content director job in May of 2024, then spent 14+ hours a day applying for jobs, competing with AI, feeling defeat and rejection every day.
I applied for nearly 3,000 jobs. I got one interview. And get this, the one interview wasn’t even for a job I traditionally applied for – it was just through my own network of folks I had been connected with on LinkedIn.
I have not applied for a single job since December 30, 2024. I was too exhausted to even keep trying. Mind you, I definitely did use AI in “my favor” as much as possible. But what really sucked was how the jobs I have always held were creative in nature, meaning my own brain was the source of what would come to fruition (mostly in advertising and marketing). And now, the roles for which I applied were using AI to qualify my own creative talent? Makes no sense. But still, I paid for a resume scanner service, which was a grueling and time consuming effort, just to make sure my resume would appear in the top 20% of applicants.
From 2009 to 2021, I owned my own creative agency, but reviving that agency was not showing much potential for success. Especially if the big dogs can’t even get or keep clients due to in-house employees simply utilizing AI for marketing initiatives.
Sigh.
I’m scared of how AI is going to impact humanity. Selfishly, I worried about my own future. But when I took that one week completely off (from 12/30/24 to 1/5/25), it gave my mind the space to create this AI-effery-free journey of Bula Bag Co. Because original art will always be in style, and bags will always be a trend, and dogs will always need rescuing.
