GradSimple Industry Insider: John Livengood

Disclaimer: The views expressed by our interviewees are their own and do not necessarily reflect the views of GradSimple. We only edit these responses for clarity. All opinions remain those of the interviewee.

• Role: Senior Director of Global Brand Marketing, Avalara

Tell us about what you went to school for initially. What did you study, and where did you go to school?

I went to Whitman College in Walla Walla, Washington. I eventually became a studio art major, but I thought I would be an economics major at first. That was my intention. But I took some classes, and frankly, I had a little trouble staying awake. I was probably one of those undiagnosed ADHD kids, but it wasn’t really a thing back when I was that age. Studying in the library at night was just something I couldn’t really do.

Then I took an art class, and I really enjoyed it. I could work at night. I would often work through the night. I could see myself getting out of college with this. At that point, the goal was really just to get through school, because if I had done a lot of other things, I don’t know that I would have finished.

I remember calling my dad when I declared my major. I told him I was going to be a studio art major, a painter. There was a long pause, and he basically said, “What are you going to do with a studio art major?” I was living with my brother at the time, and I handed him the phone. He told our dad, “This is a liberal arts education. You’re learning all kinds of things. Yes, you’re majoring in one thing, but you’re taking history classes, math classes, English classes.”

And I did end up doing a lot of writing because I wasn’t a very good test taker. But I could write, and that was always my secret weapon. In any class, if it was essay-based, even if I hadn’t done a ton of studying, I could write something that would get me a pretty good grade.

After you graduated, did you have a better understanding of what you might want to explore? What was your mindset then?

It was a process of elimination. If you’re an art major, a painter, you don’t have a ton of choices. You could be a teacher. You could be an artist, a fine artist. At the time, especially coming from a fine arts major, the idea of going into graphic arts or graphic design was looked down on, which is crazy.

But I knew I had talent from a visual perspective, and I also knew I could write. So I started to think I should look at advertising. I don’t think that I realized, even when I was graduating, that advertising was the path for me. I wasn’t mature enough to know what I wanted to do.

I’m still a pretty big believer in liberal arts because it allows you to learn a lot of things. You learn how to learn. My friends are a good example of that. History majors that ended up in technology. Political science or sociology majors ended up in business. For advertising, where I spent most of my career, psychology is hugely important. You’re trying to figure out how to convince people to do something. It’s the art of persuasion. Understanding the way people think is hugely valuable, but it’s not an obvious career path.

Can you talk to me about your most recent role, and what you did there?

I spent the bulk of my career working in advertising agencies as a creative director. I left my job at a large advertising firm in 2010, took some time off, and then got an opportunity to join a small tech company that was opening an office in the city where we lived. To be honest, it was a step down. But I could be close to home, our kids were still in elementary school, and I didn’t have to commute to downtown Seattle. I worked out a deal where I worked four days a week because it was a step down in pay and everything else.

I wasn’t convinced it was going to last very long, whether the company would succeed or whether I would like it. I almost did it as a contractor, but I decided to go on staff, and I ended up being there 15 years. When I joined, the company had maybe 100 employees around the world. We had an office in India, an office on the East Coast, a very small office in California, and the office in Washington. At its peak, it had about 6,000 employees and went public in 2018.

I went from director of advertising to senior director of global brand marketing. Essentially, we built an in-house agency. We had copywriters, designers, video people, corporate events people, and other teams. It was really interesting to see a company grow from a startup with really no money to a big global company with a lot of resources. It was fun.

How important are internships, or GPA, from your perspective?

I never asked anybody what their GPA was. Maybe I’m unique in that, but I don’t think so. I owned an agency with a partner, and we used to joke that advertising is a great industry for C students.

You want people who are out living their lives, understanding culture, and understanding what’s happening in the world, because you’re trying to reflect that world back on behalf of your clients and get people to take some action. If you’re book smart but not engaged in the world, you’re probably not very good. That’s not to say you can’t be an A student and do that too, but C students often lead pretty interesting lives. They’re doing a lot of things.

I never looked at GPA. It wasn’t important. I looked at the portfolio, or if they had done anything before, what those previous jobs were. Internships are important, though I say that as someone who never really did one. They weren’t as much of a thing back then, or maybe I just like to think they weren’t. If you can get an internship at an agency or a corporation, you should. If you want to work in public relations and you intern in communications at a corporation, that can turn into a job. Even if you don’t go back there, it’s a huge feather in your cap.

It’s much harder to come out with nothing on your resume other than a summer job. But if you don’t have experience, make your own experience. If you want to work in advertising or video, take the time when you’re not working and make your own short film, your own campaign, your own project. That is your job: building things that show your capability so that when someone looks at you, they have something to look at.

How do you think AI is impacting your industry today?

AI is not going anywhere. If you’re young, learn it. Figure out how it can help you. It shouldn’t replace what you can bring to the work, but if you can use it to make yourself more effective and efficient, that’s great.

A lot of companies are still in the stage where CEOs and C-suites look at AI as something that will save them a ton of money because they’ll be able to automate everything. The technology is going to change massively over the next couple of years, even every six months. To the degree that you use it as a tool to augment what’s in your head and make you more efficient. But if you don’t have any idea what you want to create and you just prompt your way to it, I don’t think that works. You have to have perspective. You have to have a point of view.

You can ask it to help write an outline or generate 20 headlines for a banner campaign, but if you just copy and paste those, that’s not your thinking, and typically they’re not very good. They can be thought starters. You might see two ideas put together in a way you hadn’t considered, and then you can take that and make it better. If you’re just using AI as straight output, you’re not presenting any value. If you’re not presenting value to the company, the agency, or your clients, you’re not going to get paid for very long.

What do you say to young people who have strong feelings against AI?

There are good reasons not to like AI. There are environmental concerns: a ton of power, a ton of water. I don’t think we as a society know what to do about that yet. But we’re not going to put it back in the bottle, so we’re going to have to figure out the power grid, water usage, and where we put data centers.

The idea of being resistant to AI feels self-limiting. It replaces jobs, and there are moral reasons to feel resistant to it. But if you want to have a job in these corporate environments, you’re going to have to get comfortable with it or decide to do something else.

There are plenty of jobs where AI isn’t going to replace the work. If someone needs to draw blood, there’s not going to be an AI agent finding the vein in your arm. If you want to become a phlebotomist, great. But if you want to work in a corporate environment or in marketing, which is what I know, you’re going to have to be pretty comfortable with AI and figure out how it can make you more efficient and more creative.

If you can’t get there from a moral or values perspective, then maybe that’s not where you should be. At my previous company, we pushed very fast and very hard into AI, and we did lose people. Some people decided it wasn’t really for them.

Talk to me about prioritizing passion versus practicality in a career.

This may sound a little crass, but when I was a senior about to graduate, I remember thinking, I’m going to have a fine arts major with an emphasis in painting. What are my choices? I could be a fine artist, which is a long, tough world. I could become a teacher, which would probably require graduate school or working at a private school.

I looked at those opportunities and thought, I’m not going to make very much money. It’s going to be hand-to-mouth for a long time, maybe the rest of my life. And I didn’t want that. I wanted to make more money than that, quite honestly. I wanted the opportunity to do some of the things I enjoyed growing up.

So I knew it wasn’t going to be following those paths full-time. I continued to paint as a hobby. I’ve done things from a purely passionate perspective, not from a money perspective. But I also knew I had to get into a business where I would be rewarded for hard work and creative capabilities.

What piece of advice would you wish you had known earlier in your career?

I didn’t fully realize or appreciate how much hard work matters. Hustle is worth a lot, and so few people have hustle. So few people have the gumption to do what they need to do.

It requires a lot of dissatisfaction, frustration, repetitive effort, and rejection. I remember getting out of college and feeling a little bit on top of the world. The next year and a half were some of the lowest points of my life. You come out thinking you’ve got the world by the tail, and you don’t.

Some people come out and get jobs right away, and that’s fantastic. But for a lot of people, that doesn’t happen, and it’s depressing. You will get through it, but you’ll get through it faster the harder you work. I think we underappreciate hustle, follow-up, and getting the easy stuff right.