We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Rusty Boyer a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.

Alright, Rusty thanks for taking the time to share your stories and insights with us today. We’d love to hear your thoughts about making remote work effective.

I’m a full-time remote worker — which is something I’d never imagined saying. Moreso, I never thought I’d be capable of working remotely full-time, or that I would actually enjoy it. I’m on a team with content strategists around the world and the post-pandemic remote work reality has made it possible for us to work more seamlessly than I feel we would have in an office environment. I do miss the personal interactions with my creative teammates, as those bullpen working sessions often lead to innovative ideas and inspirations that can be hard to pin down when you’re solo. But in the end, I feel I’m thriving as a remote worker who is also a spouse to a full-time remote employee and a parent. It’s a balance I never thought I’d be able to achieve; now I can’t imagine going back.

Rusty, before we move on to more of these sorts of questions, can you take some time to bring our readers up to speed on you and what you do?

I came into marketing in sort of a backwards way. I was a creative writer in school — poetry and prose. Most folks in my line of work come through communications or specific marketing training, whether that’s what they knew they wanted in school or it came about more naturally as they began their careers. I resisted — I started writing and editing piecemeal freelance advertising content and other random writing jobs as a way to earn money. I found that I could do it well enough to make a steady living and ended up doing tough, fast-turnaround, deadline-driven editing work at a global company. Excellent formative training in how real-world workplaces are, but definitely NOT the type of pressure or creative output that made me feel happy. After several years of fighting through it, I relocated and had to start over with freelance. I discovered that when I had some creative control over what was being written, instead of just editing existing material, I felt much more accomplished at the end of the project. The creative marketing bug had bitten me. I started a fresh career path in marketing and now enjoy a pretty steady balance between creative writing and strategic content creation. Now, almost 20 years in, I love finding ways to make my human-made copy perform in a digital world for clients who respect my work and my insights. Nothing, in my view, will replace the intuition and strength of writing created by flesh-and-blood people, even as we enter an era of new technologies we must embrace to help us get the results we (and our clients) expect. I’ll always crave a little poetry, though.

Have you ever had to pivot?

I very recently found myself in an unlucky position. My agency was cutting costs, which meant cutting jobs, and I was at the top of the scale for my team. Ironically, this meant that my position was the one on the chopping block. It’s a tough reality that businesses will look at their most qualified, experienced employees as potential cuts because we are also paid more than junior team members. So, those promotions and raises you work so hard for can put you in danger when it comes time to shrink costs. Long story short(ened) — I was able to pivot quickly to another team working for another client. With a bit of luck, good timing, and a lot of support from other folks in the company who saw my value, I was able to find a place to land, literally at the last minute. I’m still recovering from the emotional whiplash but am immensely grateful that I was able to overcome what can be a much more devastating, unexpected change for many.

What’s the most rewarding aspect of being a creative in your experience?

The most rewarding aspect of working in the creative-meets-strategy realm is striking that elusive balance between truly inspiring messaging — saying something fresh, well — and hitting the right notes when proving value to clients. When you create something you believe in AND it performs well — that’s when the job really sings.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://rustyboyerwriter.squarespace.com/
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/rustyboyer/

Image Credits

Jodi Boyer