tl;dr the work is hard, the pay is marginal, but the experience is invaluable.

In December 2013, I reached out to a Reddit job post for a writing position at a startup in Vancouver. The job post was unique, they didn’t have any experience requirements. They were looking for people who could tell a story and would help take some of the responsibility in building a company. They decided to take that chance on me.

I was in school at the time. I had very little that I could bring to most companies. I was stuck in retail hell while I struggled to find an internship anywhere. I felt like I wasn’t making any progress. And I was quickly running out of vitality when I needed it most. I saw this as an opportunity to get my feet wet and start building some kind of experience.

I sucked.

I often felt that when I was hired, they made a mistake hiring me. I had no experience and I had no applicable knowledge to power up their marketing department. I struggled everyday trying to find a way I could bring value to the marketing department and the company. But the founders and the team wanted to take a chance on me, and I wanted to say thank you for giving me that chance. And part of saying thanks is this— I want to share my learnings with other people who might be or are in a similar situation as to where I was.

Don’t give up. It does get better. I’m an impatient person, and perhaps that’s a common trait for us millennials. I wanted to see change over night. Yet it took me almost two years to find something I’m passionate about. In fact I’d go a step further and say that finding your calling is a big numbers game. Sometimes people know exactly what they want to do and they pursue that vigorously. I had no idea what I wanted to do or what I wanted to focus on. I felt like the landing a career game was stacked against me — and it probably was. But you have to keep trying at different things till you get lucky and find something that clicks.

This is why I find working in a startup invaluable. It’s your opportunity to find yourself and grow. Startups are defined by a culture of rapid growth, learning, and transparency. I started as a blogger. Then we needed someone to build digital ads — so I decided to start doing that as well. But the ads needed to go somewhere, and I learned how to build landing pages and test them. As an individual you can only grow as quickly as you want, but working in a startup environment means your pace will generally match the pace of the company.

However startups aren’t entirely fun and positive experiences. The pay is lackluster because the company is struggling to stay afloat. Often times there’s no one that can train or mentor you. You have to spend more time learning and finding your own resources, and in the end there’s a strong chance that the startup won’t take off.

Furthermore as an individual, you have to wear a lot of hats and do a lot of different things. This can often feel like you’re making small progress in a bunch of different things rather than large gains in one thing. It’s easy to feel unaccomplished and lose motivation when you can’t even explain your role to someone.

On the flip-side, I’ve seen a company go through two funding rounds. I’ve seen what it takes to build a startup and the things that need to be done. I have knowledge that I never thought I’d gain.

So what do I do now? I work on marketing automation & operations. I moved into marketing database management. It may sound boring, but I found my passion working in and building out automation frameworks. The automation framework was all about data and information. Essentially creating the nervous system to connect all our other touch-points. I’m not going to spend too much time explaining what I do now — but I will say that I found it fun and I was good at it. Yet to even get to this point I struggled for years.

But if I graduated school and committed to my fall-back plan of teaching overseas or finding a corporate internship, I would have missed this opportunity entirely. Sure I would have the opportunity to learn what I do now at a corporate organization, but it would have taken years to get this point.

I have a lot of ambition these days. Learning and growing, finding something that adds value to other people’s work and lives — this gives me vitality.

I realize now that I had safe plans for my future, when really I should have focused on taking more risks. This is the essence of why I think you should work in a startup. You’re empowered to create and learn, but you’re also empowered to destroy. Mistakes are welcomed, but you also understand that some mistakes may be the end of a startup. Don’t be afraid because of that.

Go make mistakes. Start small and add to yourself. One day, years from now, you WILL look back, and realize how much you’ve grown and what you can now do. But the only way to get there is to stick with it. For me — working in a startup gave me that opportunity to grow.