🔥 Built Around: In Community #142

Your weekly spark at the intersection of community, culture, and commerce

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💥 Today’s Highlights

  • Last call: Attend The Mixdown

  • Your weekly spark

  • Mark Edmonson’s Money Moves

  • Roundup of open jobs across the community

🗓️ Last Call: Attend The Mixdown

We're gathering brand marketing and media leaders for a curated conversation and real connection. PLUS: I'll be moderating a panel you don't want to miss.

What I Won't Let AI Decide For Me: A candid conversation about the judgment calls marketers refuse to hand over, and what that says about the trust and data behind them.

Featuring:
Amanda Forrester, SVP Marketing & Comms at OpenX
Vicky Sarmiento, Director, Marketing & AI Innovation at FeedMob
Rekha Yadav, SVP, Director Brand Marketing at First Citizens Bank

Join us at The Mixdown, in partnership with OpenX.

Make sure to save your spot.

🔥 And now, for your weekly spark.

Built Around.

When I think about the work I’ve done, the question hasn’t always been What do I want to do next? Sometimes it’s been: What do I want to build my time around?

When I started Hue, I knew I wanted to ease the path to opportunity for those of us who weren’t always connected to the rooms where opportunity moved. That wasn’t just some line I wanted to put on a website. It had to shape everything: who we brought together, what we built, the conversations we made room for, and ultimately how we measured whether we were doing what we said we’d do.

It’s easy to make purpose sound like a layer you add after the real work is done. But what if the purpose is part of the architecture? What if it’s part of the plan in the first place?

A lot of how we talk about careers is still organized around momentum: the next title, bigger company, broader scope, higher salary, or more responsibility.

Those things matter. I’ve chased them too. But there’s another question I’ve become much more interested in recently:

What is the work built around?

That question can change how you think about a career, a company, or even a business model.

Mark Anthony Edmonson, Chief Marketing Officer of Newman’s Own, is an example in practice in the latest Money Moves. His career has moved through P&G, Campbell’s, Henkel, Materne and now Newman’s Own, across marketing, innovation, R&D, and leadership.

The throughline isn’t just momentum or progression. It’s meaning.

At Newman’s Own, purpose isn’t something Mark has to manufacture in the marketing. The company’s business model already carries it: 100% of product profits go toward helping children facing adversity.

That makes the purpose harder to separate from the work.

Mark asks himself whether a move gets the company closer to who it says it is. I like that because it’s something simple that all of us can understand, and it also turns purpose from a statement into a decision-making tool.

The strongest work isn’t always the work that takes you somewhere faster. Sometimes it’s the work that makes where you’re going mean something.

📌 Build Around What Matters

Before you take the next opportunity or make the next big decision, ask:

👉🏽 What do I want this work to make possible, beyond the immediate result?

👉🏽 Is what I say I value actually shaping how I spend my time, make decisions, and build?

👉🏽 What would change if the purpose weren’t a message around the work, but part of how the work was designed?

👉🏽 Am I building toward something I actually want to be responsible for?

A career doesn’t have to be perfectly linear to be meaningful. A business doesn’t have to be perfect to have a point.

🔥 If you’re going to build something, don’t just ask what’s next. Ask what you want the next thing to be built around.

✅ Now Hiring

Is someone you know considering what’s next for them? Here are a few roles with people hiring across the network. I list roles here every week, so stay tuned and make sure to spread the word.

ICYMI: The Last Jobs Roundup

💥 VP, Marketing — BET

💥 Sr Director, Media — Walgreens (multiple other roles)

And before you go, consider who else might value this newsletter and what’s coming up on YouTube. Make sure to fwd this newsletter onward to them too. They can subscribe here for more directly in their inbox.. 🔁 

In community,

Fahad