Every first day of work is different.

Some companies hold your hand, some throw you in to see if you’ll sink or swim, and 9 Clouds gives you introductions and then lets you loose to set up all of the passwords for all of the accounts you’ll use as a creative content strategist. 

And that makes a lot of sense in a place that specializes in digital inbound marketing.

I brought a notebook with me on my first day, and so far I’ve needed it only to write down passwords.

Day One: Lunch and Logins

Like I said, most of my first day was spent on different work platforms (Slack and Basecamp being primary, of course), getting introduced to workflows, and having a team lunch.

We had barbecue, and it was so good.

Nelson brought his daughter in for lunch (she had a snow day), we sat in the conference room, everyone found out that Pat has a “fish guy,” and I remember thinking, “Wow, these people are cool. That’s going to make work a lot more fun.”

Day Two: Plugging Away

On my second day, I sat in on my first creative team meeting here and immediately noticed that this crew is very vocal (in all the best ways)!

Everyone had helpful comments and ideas, which makes me really excited for when I have some work to contribute to the meeting.

The project management (PM) team also let me in the know about two of my three current clients on day two.

I immediately had a million questions, and Catherine ended up fielding most of them. Our conversation ended like this:

Also during this day, a new Slack channel was created to celebrate the general office love of puppies without making the whole office stop to stare at one person’s phone for minutes on end.

I’m proud to say I was one of the first to post a pic of my pup on there. (His name is Louie, by the way, and he’s crazy and awesome both at the same time).

Day Three: Writing and Coffee

I’m fresh off a freelancing-and-barista-ing way of working, and so I love the fact that this place trusts me to be responsible enough to get my work done, even if that doesn’t happen in the office.

And on day three, which happened to be a Thursday, I got to do some “actual” work!

I hopped onto Slack and shared that I was relocating to The Source to get a practice blog done. I wasn’t the only one who was commenting with a WFH (“Working from Home”) or WFC (“Working from Coffee Shop”) icon on Slack.

The 9 Clouds team is pretty mobile (we’re a pretty millennial-heavy workplace). After watching people come and go for a few days, any fear I had about being chained to a desk were completely erased. Which felt awesome.

Day Four: Group Work is the Best Work

Day four, a Friday, started at Queen City Bakery, with a table in the corner where we worked and joked and drank coffee (and I said hi to the Fernson guys, who were meeting just a few tables away). Then it was time to edit some of the things I’d been able to write over the past few days.

I kept passing my laptop back and forth as the questions kept flowing — and so did the extremely helpful responses from Jenny, Rachel, Betsy, and Pat.

At one point, I apologized to Jenny about all of the “duh” questions I had. She laughed and said something along the lines of “There are no ‘duh’ questions!”

Notice a theme here?

Coming up Next: Up, Up, and Away

Looking ahead, I’m excited to learn more from these folks around me. They’re experts on this whole digital inbound marketing thing — and they’re pretty cool people, too.

Catch you next time!