A Day in the Life: Director

Start of Day

You wake up at 7 a.m. to the pitter patter of raindrops falling on the window.

It’s a rainy day in Vancouver today—something most people complain about, but you quite enjoy. It’s a nice change from the heat of Tulum, where you just spent the last 6 months working. You’ve lived in Vancouver for years with your partner and there’s nothing quite like an early morning walk with a crisp breeze and water droplets to get you refreshed and ready for the day. 

After walking Link, you debate going into the office but decide today would be best spent working from home. Although Flywheel is a remote-first company, we’re based in Vancouver with an office you can choose to work from whenever you want. About half of the team is based in Vancouver, while the rest are scattered across Canada, which means there’s no obligation to go into the office if you’re not feeling it. 

After a quick yoga sesh in your living room, you brew a cup of coffee and watch the rain fall as you munch on a piece of toast and listen to the news. This is usually how your mornings go and you like to stick to your daily routine. Flywheel’s best perk is flexible hours, which means the team can set their own work schedule. While many tend to work at night when they’re most productive or spread their hours out over half days and weekends, you like to work a regular 9-5, sometimes working longer days so you can work a 4-day week. It’s your job as a director to make sure your team can enjoy these freedoms while making sure clients are fully serviced and deadlines are always met.

It’s 8:30 a.m. now, so you get set up in your home office. Thanks to Flywheel’s quarterly bonus last month, you’ve upgraded it to include a second monitor, laptop stand, and external keyboard. Thanks, Flywheel! 

Next, you start building your priorities for the day, based on Slack messages and emails. This morning, you’ll have a one-on-one with a team member, review blog content and reports, and have a meeting with a larger client to review their monthly reporting, discuss current difficulties, and prioritize action items for the next month. 

Mid-morning

You finish up your meeting with a client, feeling energized. They’ve seen some great results over the past quarter and their traffic and revenue is growing, thanks to the combined efforts of Flywheel’s Content and Paid teams. You share these client updates and feedback with the team working on the account and confirm next steps. Not only do you love helping your own team reach success, but you love being a part of your clients’ successes too. It’s a fulfilling role, and one you don’t take for granted. 

Sometimes, client meetings don’t go so smoothly, though. In these cases, it’s up to you as the director to have excellent communication skills and business management know-how to speak the client’s language and make compelling arguments for Flywheel’s services, insights, and recommendations. And other times, you may get stumped with a client’s ask—and that’s okay. Someone in your role needs to be comfortable admitting what they don’t know and turning to their team for their specific expertise. 

On that note, it’s time for lunch! While today is a full day, it’s not as jam packed as others have been, so you take a full hour to sit on your patio and relax with the rainfall, rest your eyes, and chat on the phone with a family member in Australia. Flywheel’s emphasis on team happiness allows you to balance your personal and professional life in a way that aligns with your values. You have friends and family in the US, Canada, and Australia, and you hardly need to take vacation time to see them because Flywheel’s flexibility allows you to plan around these important things.

Afternoon

After lunch, you hop on a screening call with a job applicant. Flywheel is rapidly growing and always on the lookout for new talent in technical digital marketing. After the call, you muse at how far you’ve come, not only in your career but in your developed skillset as well. You’re a new manager, which can be scary at times. But Flywheel’s culture is one of learning by doing, maybe failing, and iterating until you get it right. Although high-quality work is expected, you’re not expected to be perfect right away. You’re trusted enough to figure things out as you go, whether it’s operations or management—and that sort of trust is hard to find in any job.

In only a year, you’ve gone from contracting for Flywheel, to taking on a full-time position as a lead, and then moving into working up to a director role. This is what attracted you so much to the company: the opportunity for growth and trust in leadership is unlike other agencies you’ve worked at before. Flywheel is a smaller, boutique agency. You previously worked at a larger, more established agency and soon realized your path to career growth would be limited and slow. You truly believe in what you’re helping to build at Flywheel. Getting to work with a team of technical marketing experts means you can continue to learn and sharpen your technical skills in a variety of marketing sectors. 

Late afternoon

You go through Slack messages and emails that have accumulated throughout the day. You also check Notion, Flywheel’s project management tool, to see if any clarifications are needed on ongoing projects and help remove sticking points. You poke around to make sure project deliverables are still on track, and follow up on any outstanding items, before launching into your final task of the day: completing and sending off a proposal for a current client. 

This wide breadth of tasks is typical  for you, and keeps you on your toes. Whether it’s impromptu Zoom calls to clarify a project with a team member, an online social with the team, or a virtual lunch date with a team member, Flywheel’s emphasis on people, growth, and happiness ensures that you enjoy your work day on top of enjoying the work that you do.

End of day

You log off at around 4 p.m. after a productive day. One of your favourite parts about working at Flywheel is that you don’t work overtime, and have learned to separate life and work. 

It’s no longer raining and your partner will be home soon…you think you’ll both go for a nice, long walk along the Seawall.

We’re always looking for talented Flywheelers to join our team! Check out our open positions and connect with us on social media to keep in touch.