The following is a conversation I had with Abby Wolfe from The Muse about my transition from working in a call center to serving as a content marketer.
If you’d told Jesse Wisnewski—Senior Content Marketer at Tithe.ly and founder of Stillhouse Marketing—10 years ago that he’d have a content-focused career one day, he wouldn’t have believed you.
“I always struggled tremendously with reading, grammar, and writing,” Wisnewski shares. “I just didn’t apply myself. I actually did so poorly in high school English that I had to take a remedial course when I started college.”
After graduating college, he spent a brief time training to sell insurance before deciding he wanted to be a pastor. He resigned from the insurance industry, relocated to take an unpaid internship with a church, and then he started grad school for religious studies.
It was during his masters program that he really developed a passion for writing. But even this didn’t make him consider a career in content. Instead, while still going to school part-time, he took a call center position for a communications company until something he was more interested in came along. He ended up being there for nearly three years. It was a tough time for him emotionally, as he was tired of spending time at a job he didn’t love. But with a wife and four kids at the time, he couldn’t leave—he had to help pay the bills.
In an effort to help, a friend told him about a job opening at a church that seemed right up Wisnewski’s alley. But when he looked at the job description, it didn’t really interest him.
“Another opening did catch my eye, though,” he shares, “A staff writing position. I realized this was exactly the type of work I wanted to do.” Going with his gut, he applied. And since he’d been writing on the side, he got the job.
Since then, Wisnewski has held a few different content jobs, such as marketing manager and account manager at a few different publishing companies. In early 2018, he launched his own content marketing agency, and, most recently, he landed his current gig at Tithe.ly, an online and mobile-giving company for churches and ministries.
“When I saw this opportunity—the chance to pursue the type of work I love at a company whose mission aligns with my values—I knew it was a match made in heaven,” he shares.
To hear more about my journey into content marketing, click here to keep reading.