Perspectives: Embarking on a new adventure
Personal brand, moving across the globe, and rediscovering inertia.
This issue of Perspectives is an interview with Christine Gritmon (she/her), a strategic consultant and personal branding coach. I met Christine at a conference a few years ago and we've been "internet friends" ever since. Christine's personal brand is SO memorable with her bright red clothing and accessories! I found myself always noticing her whenever she was in the room. You can check out her website: gritmon.com.
Last year, Christine moved her family from New York in the U.S. to St. Albans in the U.K. I wanted to chat with Christine about what that move was like and the impact on her career and life.
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
Anna Burgess Yang: Tell me about this huge move. What was it like and what prompted it?
Christine Gritmon: When I was in my early 20s, I was thinking that I should go have an adventure. My mother's from Ireland, which made me eligible for Irish citizenship. I decided I was going to move to Ireland for a year. I got my Irish passport all set up and everything.
And then two things happened. One, I just didn't pull all of my stuff together, because there's a lot of stuff involved when you're moving across an ocean. And two, I fell in love (not with my current husband!). So I was like, ok, not going to move. But I always knew that interest might rise again.
ABY: Give me a brief rundown of your career and how you got to where you are now.
CG: I started in the corporate beauty industry, back in the early 2000s, mostly in marketing-related functions. It really played into the sort of "brand geekery" that I've always had. I'm fascinated by cool brands and I was working with cool brands like Estee Lauder and Avon and Shiseido. I was working with creative people and helping manage creative projects. And I was like, "What am I doing? I am a creative person. I don't want to just be helping creative people make things happen. I want to be a creative person."
So I became a creative freelancer. I studied graphic design at Parsons and I put myself out there as a freelance graphic designer and writer. Even though I had always written, I never considered myself a writer. I discovered quickly that writing was a skill. I cold-pitched some publications, and someone finally said, "Sure, we'll toss you an assignment and see how you do." That part wound up really blowing up, which led to the next career change. I went in-house at the publication. I learned so much, not only about journalism, but about communication in general and effective communication.
While I was there, it was a very fortuitous time, because the newsroom was just starting to make use of digital tools. Social media had been around for several years, but companies were still figuring out how to use it as a business tool. This was in about 2015, so it wasn't super early, but it was a time when if you were willing to hop in and try things out, you could do it. So I quickly made a name for myself in the newsroom as someone who "got" social media and was interested in seeing what it could do.
ABY: How did you end up moving into personal branding?
CG: I wound up getting promoted to engagement editor for events and branding. Basically my whole job was increasing the two-way communication and connecting with our community on a bigger level. After a while, people and business groups started asking me to give talks about social media. And my first thought was, "I don't know anything about social media." And then I realized, "Oh. They know even less." If you're good at something, you tend to assume that it's easy. Eventually, I wound up leaving that job to start Christine Gritmon Inc. in 2016.
I started by focusing on social media for small local businesses, and specifically restaurants, because I had great context in the local restaurant industry. That kind of reached an apex in 2020, because it was really sink or swim with digital in 2020. Either you got online to float your business through while it was closed, or you didn't and you resolved yourself to not having a business at the end of the pandemic.
So 2020 was amazing for my business. 2021 was horrifyingly terrible for my business, because the opposite happened. Businesses started to open back up, and they were terrified about how they were spending their money. And if it was a choice between a marketing strategy or plexiglass shields, they're going to spend it on plexiglass shields.
Somewhere in there, I realized that I did my best among an audience of my peers. And I realized that I'd always gotten compliments on my personal branding. So I said, "That's what I'm going to do." They say you should be known for something, that you should be niche. So I decided to make a name for myself and personal branding, specifically. I did a new show called Let's Talk about Brand and a Twitter chat, and just went for it.
ABY: When did you start thinking about moving to the U.K. with your family?
CG: In the midst of all this, the background of the "real world," there were changes taking place in the United States. Things were happening that my family was uncomfortable with. My husband brought up that I'd mentioned moving abroad and we started looking into that. And it wasn't just politics: it was also an incredible opportunity to see the world. My kids are 12 and almost 10 years old.
Then in 2022, I actually took a full-time position. I had an amazing job with a fully global, fully remote company. And I really got to use my skills. I was the head content editor for a community of social media professionals. So I got to leverage my incredible network, and I also got to maintain my own brand stuff. I didn't have to focus on Christine Gritmon Inc. making money in 2022, but I was still moving my brand forward. And in 2023, I entered the year strong. I was excited about new stuff with my full-time job, and I was also ready to hit the ground running and move to the U.K. that summer.
And then I got laid off at the end of January 2023. We decided not to change our plans about moving, but it did complicate things. We were applying for visas for my husband and children, and as the sponsor of the visa, I was required to have a certain level of income. And in addition to that, we had our house in New York. We ended up selling it, because moving across an ocean is expensive.
I started suffering from depression. I didn't realize it until I took a break from all of this to attend a conference in the U.K., where I have a lot of friends. They asked how things were going, and I answered very honestly. As I heard myself answering, I was like, "Oh, honey. You're not ok."
ABY: I was listening to a podcast on NPR and it cited a stat that 40% of Americans have been laid off at some point in their careers, and that it's really jarring for most people. Can you talk about that experience?
CG: I try extra hard to make the best of things. And I did have some warning, so it wasn't completely out of nowhere. I was hired for a specific project that wasn't tied to the company's revenue. Which means, essentially, that it was a cost center, rather than a profit center, for this company. It was a project that the CEO believed in and was committed to, and I got to be part of the launch team for the project, and it was really great.
At the end of 2022, we were hit with a kind of one-two punch. One was that the CEO told the whole company that the numbers weren't great. The second blow was that my boss got a life-changing dream job offer and left. So we were immediately faced with, "Do we replace him? Or do we pull the plug?"
It's good that I stayed on good terms with the people. I didn't burn bridges, and I wasn't a jerk about it. But at the same time, I feel like it's one thing to be that way on the surface. I could have been a little angry. I could have allowed myself to be a little more upset and hurt and shocked. But I was really trying too hard to be okay with it.
ABY: So you're in the middle of all of this, and you moved?
CG: We moved, later than we had hoped to. We had hoped to move mid-summer. What wound up happening was that I moved at the beginning of September. We thought we could rent a place from afar via virtual tours or find a realtor who could help us out. But everyone was incredibly unhelpful until I was physically there, in person. So I came out in September and spent the month going from guest room to guest room at friends' houses. I was really adamant that I not spend more than a few days in any once place. I said I'd rather impose on a greater number of people for shorter amounts of time.
And I kept going to events. There were conferences in the U.K. that I was attending. It was just exhausting, and I was away from my family for longer than I'd ever been. But at the end of September, literally while I was at a marketing meetup, I got approved for a rental that I'd been interested in. At the time, we were in contract to sell our house, but hadn't closed yet, which meant we didn't have any money and were still paying our mortgage. So I moved into this house. I got a mattress delivered and I bought an IKEA couch. That was all I could do.
My family came from New York and joined me here. We bought a few more IKEA beds. But we were living very bare bones because our house hadn't closed yet and all of our stuff was still in a shipping container on the Atlantic Ocean. It was really hard, plus the kids weren't in school for a few weeks. We were just sitting around in this empty house, kind of shell-shocked.
In mid-November, the final pieces started falling into place. While I was speaking at an event, our shipping container of stuff arrived. My husband texted me during the day, showing me all the boxes and how full this empty house had become. The next day, our house sale closed.
ABY: And meanwhile, you've been applying for jobs?
CG: I had all my bold plans for my own business at the start of 2023, but getting laid off kind of throws you for a loop, in ways that aren't always immediately evident. I was thinking, "Everything was working, and everything was falling into place. Now, all of a sudden, nothing is falling into place, and nothing is working." It was a combination of my head not being in the right place and a symptom of larger economic issues that led to me getting laid off in the first place. Because now I've been in the job market for a year and a half, and it is so tough out there.
I've always had extremely good luck and have gotten the majority of the jobs that I've applied for in the past. I used to be very meticulous about the right job and try extra hard on the application and cover letter, and it paid off. But now, for example, one job had such a huge glut of applicants that the hiring manager literally wrote a blog post about it. It's hard. It sucks. And especially now. I feel like we turned our family's lives around and did all of this, and now, because of me, we can't do things like hop off to Portugal for the weekend for giggles.
ABY: I interview a lot of people who have gone through change. What has the identity flux been like, for you?
CG: I thought that once I got here, I'd bounce back. Especially since I had such a great, supportive network that was eager to help me. I could get my business going in the U.K. and adjust to a new market.
But that's not really what it is. I hadn't realized how exhausted I was. So I didn't hit the ground running. I kind of flailed a bit, and now I'm realizing it's because I needed a break. My life had been on hold for a year dealing with all of this.
Now, my priorities are shifting, and I need to figure out what that means for what I'm doing professionally. Here's what I mean by that: for the past decade, I've been increasingly front-and-center in my business. I'm the brand, and my brand is out there with the red. It's been genuine and legitimate, but it takes a lot of energy, and I'm empty.
I'm entering a new chapter in my life now, partially just because of time and the ages of my children, partially because of the move, partially because of all sorts of things. I think I'd rather just do the work, where I can show up and be smart, tell people what to do, and leave. I don't want to be the execution person anymore. And it's not that I don't want to be a personal brand — it's just that I need to pull back a little.
It's time to stop that break now, because the reason I turned my life around was so that I could have these adventures. I need to no longer be a body at rest, continuing to be at rest. It's time to get the inertia going in the other direction, to get some momentum going as I move forward into this chapter of my life and decide what it looks like.
What to read next:
If you love this newsletter and look forward to reading it every week, please consider forwarding it to a friend or becoming a subscriber. Subscribers get access to additional stories I publish.
Have a work story you’d like to share? Please reach out using this form. I can retell your story while protecting your identity, share a guest post, or conduct an interview.