Catching up with Sean Fields
The time we spend at our desks can take up a lot of our time. And while what we do to make a living is important to our lives, it isn’t the full picture of who we are.
So we've set out to discover how our team spends their time during the work day and once they clock out.
Sean Fields serves as Content Marketing Manager for TurnkeyZRG. In this role, Sean works alongside the CEO, Managing Directors and Director of Recruiting Operations to support and execute marketing and communications plans to further new business development, marketing, and PR goals. Sean also creates, produces, and edits content that supports TurnkeyZRG’s social media and marketing initiatives.
Read on to learn more about Sean.
I start my day by making a quick breakfast and maybe a quick workout. I don’t always workout in the morning but some days I will knock it out early. When I get to my desk, I’ll pull up LinkedIn and a couple other sites to get a feel for what’s going on.
I handle all of the public facing content that comes from TurnkeyZRG. I manage what goes up on the website and all social channels (LinkedIn, Twitter, Instagram) including graphics, team content, updates, etc. From a client facing perspective, I design and refine the template for the deck our team present to clients, and our monthly newsletter. I do a lot of video stuff, too. And because we're a mostly a remote company, a lot of our video stuff is done online. So, I have to do a lot of recording and editing just to put things together since we're never really in a room to record any videos.
Basically, anything that is on the internet from Turnkey, I have my hands on.
And then I'm also thinking of new ways to improve our marketing to create more awareness of Turnkey and let people know what we do and how we can help them.
A big thing for me is consistency.
I want people to know, if they ask me to do something, they're going to get it on time and they're going to get a consistent level of quality no matter what the work is.
A lot of times people ask me to do things, and I'll say yes, even if I don't really know how to do it. The reason why is I think I'm good enough at figuring things out that I can make sure all the work is consistently good.
Because the technology I use for my work is constantly changing, I always have an element of exploration in my day.
In my workday there is a balance between researching and creating in between the processes that repeat daily, weekly, and monthly.
I try to squeeze a lot of work into the morning because I know it takes some effort to get back in the flow of things after I eat. So, I usually grind through the repetitive work early and save the creative work for the afternoons. Once I'm locked in in the morning, it's hard to pull myself away.
To me, it's about effort.
Most of my growth and success has come from just trying to be good and putting in the work to learn, grow, and be better. Even when I couldn't control the outcome of a situation, the one thing I could control was my level of effort.
Whenever something comes up, I want people to say, “Ask Sean. He can probably do it.”
I like finding those answers for people and helping people think about things from an unfamiliar perspective than their jobs usually require.
Marketing is one of those things that people have a general understanding of but miss some of the details.
One thing that people get wrong about marketing is that they think they can hop on whatever the newest trends are or whatever you see other organizations doing and expect to have success right away or at all.
This is usually because they want to be where a large audience is. But that large audience isn’t always the right audience. The other thing is that most new apps aren’t set up for most businesses to succeed. Most apps start out as something fun for young people, and then companies find ways to fit in or the app changes to accommodate businesses. Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Snapchat, and even TikTok all started as entertainment.
You have to create content that is entertaining, useful, and specific to each platform. Not every format works for every business and the content won’t work if you don't have a strategy for each platform.
Part of having a strategy is being willing to change.
Of course, major changes in the landscape, like the emergence of social media, are obvious reasons to shift your approach. But I think smaller changes are where a lot of companies miss opportunities and where the biggest impact can be made. If you were putting out a lot of content on Facebook and your audience moved to Instagram or LinkedIn, you’d obviously want to go where they are. But this also gives you the chance to shift your content focus. Maybe Instagram allows you to be a little more relaxed and personal. Maybe LinkedIn allows you to connect to your audience by showing more behind the scenes of how you work.
I think the important thing is figuring out what your audience is looking for and the best place to share it.
The kind of work I do has a lot of balance mixed into it. Because I am constantly trying to improve what I do, I'm always looking at other people's content to see what I can pull from that. Sometimes I look at a specific tutorial, like on improving the SEO (Search Engine Optimization) of a website. Other times I’m just listening to an interview, and I passively notice which questions get the best responses or see how the background music adds to the energy of the conversation.
As for getting away from the screen, I take small breaks throughout the day. I try to walk around the neighborhood for 20 minutes or so right before lunch and throughout the day I’ll walk in the other room and talk to my wife to see what she's up to. I usually cook during lunchtime, so that takes me away from the computer for a bit.
When you enjoy the work that you do, it’s a little harder to have some balance because work doesn’t always feel like work.
Sometimes when I’m “off the clock”, I will see something that can be an idea for new content. I can't really turn that off, but I’ll make a note of it and then wait until the work day starts to put things in motion.
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ABOUT TURNKEYZRG
Founded in 1996, TurnkeyZRG is a highly specialized talent recruitment/executive search firm filling C-level, senior-level and mid-management level positions throughout sports, entertainment, music and media. Over the past 25 years, TurnkeyZRG has filled more than 1,400 positions throughout sports, entertainment and media. TurnkeyZRG helps teams, leagues, stadiums, arenas, theaters, college athletic departments, events, sponsors, agencies, media companies, private equity companies and other clients identify, recruit and hire the very best management talent. Turnkey now benefits from ZRG’s global footprint, full array of industry practice groups, data-driven, analytical search tools, and technology investment in changing the way executive search/talent recruiting is done. TurnkeyZRG becomes a tech-enabled disrupter of the prior executive search model.