Originally published on GoDaddy Life
Listen to the Podcast, here! Transcription provided, below.
Janelle (Host): Hello, and welcome to the Own Your career podcast. My name is Janelle Jordan and I’m a Program Manager on our Talent, Performance and Engagement team. I’m so excited to be here with you. Throughout this series, you’ll hear inspiring interviews with employees who have achieved career growth at GoDaddy through internal promotions and movements. In addition, you’ll hear tips, best practices, and advice to support your career journey. Career management is necessary for successful journey, and we hope that you’ll walk away ready to own your career. Thanks for spending time with us today. Now let’s jump into our career spotlight. I’m here today with Raisa, who is an Instructional Designer on the customer education team at GoDaddy. Hi, Raisa. Welcome to podcast.
Raisa (Guest): Hi, thanks for having me.
Janelle: All right, let’s get to know you quickly. Can you share with us a little bit about who you are and what brings you joy outside the office?
Raisa: Sure. I was actually born and raised in Phoenix, but I live in Washington now. I have a five year old foster fail dog named Benji and a loving partner of four years. I am an enjoyer of Internet culture and I have been making YouTube videos for about ten years now.
Janelle: Ten years is a really long time. Can you share a little bit more about Internet culture? I think that’s a term that’s new to me.
Raisa: So, my degree is actually digital culture. I am chronically online. It’s just something I’ve always enjoyed. I think I picked it up from my dad. He was also very into computers and cameras, and I think every moment of my existence is recorded somewhere in a hard drive in his house. And then when I started working at Disneyland, I filmed every moment of that. So that was what started my YouTube career, was working at Disney.
Janelle: Amazing. I can’t wait to hear a little bit more about this. Can you give our listeners a quick overview of your career journey and any of your movement here at GoDaddy?
Raisa: Absolutely. So I started in the Outbound Call Center in Gilbert in 2018 and I was absolutely terrible at it. I couldn’t sell ice to a polar bear, and the only time I would ever have met my sales goal, a customer ended up returning the PWS that I sold her in the first place. Thankfully, there was an opening for a Video Copywriter on the Content Marketing team at the time. I absolutely jumped at the chance to apply. I got the job and immediately moved to Seattle to start making YouTube videos for the GoDaddy YouTube channel. Then about a year later, I was reorganized into the Customer Education team and promoted to become the Instructional Designer that I am today.
Janelle: Awesome. That was quick. Let’s rewind. You started in Outbound in Gilbert and you were terrible at it. Okay. What brought you to GoDaddy? Why did you say yes to the job?
Raisa: I was actually working on a cruise ship, of all things. And when I came home and finished my contract, I didn’t want to do another one. I came back to Phoenix, and I was just looking for work, and my mom’s like, “hey, you know, GoDaddy is here in the Valley. Why don’t you apply?” It was just supposed to be not necessarily a temporary thing, but just like, I need a job. So I came, I interviewed and my interviewer actually was talking to me about my YouTube channel. He’s like, “if this doesn’t work out, we could totally find you a position working maybe on the YouTube channel. Who knows?” I’m like, “wow, that’d be so cool.” Fast forward maybe four months, and I was doing exactly that.
Janelle: I love that. That’s great. All right, can you share with us who or what has been most impactful to your career growth at GoDaddy and why?
Raisa: I think the most impactful thing was probably the Education Reimbursement Program. Not to say I didn’t have any supportive managers and coworkers, because I absolutely do. I love my team. Everyone’s very passionate about what they do, and I’m very thankful that they looked past my education and focused more on my relevant work experience when hiring me as an Instructional Designer, because I didn’t actually have my degree at the time. I had wanted to go back and finish it, but I was pushing off for one reason or another. Right about the time I went to Seattle, my student loans became due, and I was like, “oh, hey, maybe I should refinance those.” I had four different ones, all different rates, and it was just a nightmare. But you can’t do that unless you have a degree. So, I was talking about it with a coworker, and she told me about the GoDaddy Reimbursement Fund. If you pass your class with a B or better, it’s reimbursed. Obviously there are a lot more rules and conditions, so go read up on those if you’re interested! But GoDaddy covers your tuition costs, so it was definitely an added incentive to go back. And I ended up earning A’s in both of the classes that I needed, which was shocking because I am riddled with ADHD. But thanks to the program, I was able to get a tutor, which was helpful. I now officially have my bachelor’s degree in digital culture, like I mentioned, with a focus in design. I highly recommend this to anyone who’s going back to school to look into the program. Why not? As long as you’re passing your classes, why not get that money back?
Janelle: I just learned so much, and I imagine so did all of our listeners, because I was today years old when I realized that, one, you have to have a degree to do the refinancing and the consolidating, because you’re right, that’s a brilliant move. Anyone listening? Consolidate your student loans. I did that as well, but I didn’t realize you had to have a degree, which is really cool. And then also the reimbursement with getting B’s and getting your tuition costs. Like, wow, how powerful is that? And what a great tool and benefit as a GoDaddy employee to take advantage of. Especially because, like you said, maybe you start going to school and you’re tracked on like, I’m going to do journalism and I’m going to do finance. There’s these really awesome programs out there that are more catered, for what you are truly passionate about, like digital culture with a focus and design, you know what I mean? Like sustainability, which I swear that was not a major when I was in college. So great. And then here you are working with a company that allows you the flexibility, one, to be a student and then supports you financially.
Raisa: Absolutely. I mean, I was thankful that I only have the two classes left, but the reason I was putting off is because they were math. I’m not good at math at all and I would argue if I was able to finish the entire degree without the two math classes, did I really need them in the first place?
Janelle: Okay, thank you so much for sharing that. I love it. What advice do you have for someone who’s new to your industry?
Raisa: So I think a pretty shared experience among professional creative people is burnout. I know I’ve experienced it in major way. A big part of my job is to write scripts for YouTube videos and then I would then quote, unquote, log off from work, would try and write scripts on my own videos. And that just wasn’t working because obviously I need to kind of pay my bills. So, work has to come first and my creative outlet kind of has to be put off to the side for a bit just so that I can have the creative mindset to work on my work. But there are a few things I have done to kind of prevent my burnout. So one thing I am terrible at is making myself eternally available for work. And sometimes I’ll even work well into the night. I try and set rigid work hours. This time I am at my desk trying to be productive and at this time I am done. Put it all away, log off. Another thing I do is I follow the Pomodoro technique, which is where you do 25 minutes of work, you take a five minute break and after four rounds of that, you take a bit of a longer break. I try and do as much as I can. I also have an Apple Watch that reminds me when to stand or drink water again. Helps my brain too. I also have a completely unrelated creative outlet. I started embroidery as a way to continue to be creative. But again, I have ADHD, so these things might not work for the same for everybody, but I even have trouble sticking to some of the 100% of the time. The intention is there.
Janelle: The intention is there, and the intention is positive. And I love that you talk about the ADHD and how that impacts so much of your work and how you do your work and how you get your work done. And it’s just important for anyone that’s listening that can relate to it and the advice that you gave in setting rigid work hours. And the Pomodoro technique. Again, for anyone who’s listening, this might be new information or a new technique to try and then really understanding yourself. For some people, creativity, for example, is not an outlet. For me, it burns me out. It’s hard for me. I can do it. I would find that I’m talented at it, but it is exhausting for me. And so for somebody where they drive their passion and their energy from it right, so they refill their cup. If you’re doing that in work and in personal, for sure, that would be an a vicious cycle that doesn’t end. So just knowing when to give your brain a break.
Raisa: Yeah, exactly. I get hyper focused on a project and I will go for hours. I don’t eat, I don’t stop. It’s good having the little reminders to stand a drink water. Or to have a snack.
Janelle: Don’t you wish our dogs could talk? You mentioned earlier that you have a five year old dog named Benji. Don’t you wish that they could just like, “hey, you have not gotten up from your desk in 2 hours.”
Raisa: He definitely knows when it’s time to walk. He’ll come up and nudge me, which, thankfully, is a good physical indicator. Like, “hey, let’s go do something else right now.”
Janelle: Truly a man’s best friend. We don’t deserve them. Last question. What is a common myth about your job department or your field of expertise?
Raisa: When talking about Instructional Designers, specifically, I think one myth would be that you need to have a formal education to be able to become one. Obviously, I didn’t go to school for it, and actually nobody on my team did either. I don’t think anyone on my team has either A degree or B, a specific instructional design degree. It all comes from relative experience. Since I have a background in online video and I also used to teach lifeguarding, CPR, first aid, I was a great candidate for the job because I understood the individual aspects of the teaching and also the creation of the materials without even realizing it. I remember being in college and asking myself, is it the lifeguarding part that I like or is it the teaching? And I kind of had an existential moment like “oh, my gosh, am I doing the wrong degree?” So for me, it really just came down to my passion of wanting to help people, to teach them skills that they can then apply to whatever aspect of their life.
Janelle: It’s amazing, the reflection and the asking yourself the questions to get better, to better understand what is it that you like and love and don’t like and how you can use that to drive the work that you do every single day. And I think that’s the goal of everyone is we want to be doing work that we love because we know that makes it not feel like work. We know that makes the day go by faster. It’s the reason we want to wake up and we want to get excited to sit down at our laptop. And so we’re all looking and seeking to bring our values and what we’re passionate about closer to the work that we do. And you found that, and that’s fantastic. What an inspiration. I want to thank you so much, Raisa, for spending time with us today and sharing your personal and career journey with our GoDaddy listeners. Can you share with us the best way to reach you?
Raisa: You’re welcome to check out my YouTube channel and my Instagram. It’s “RaisaLynn”.
Janelle: You have given us all permission to find you on the Internet. Just beware! I can’t wait to check out your content. Thank you, everyone for listening to the Own Your Career podcast, aiming to inspire, motivate and empower our employees to meet and achieve their professional goals. If you’re interested in being a guest on a future podcast, visit the My Career Portal Career Spotlight page and complete the interest form. While you’re there, check out the many resources and articles available and reach out to us with feedback, questions and ideas. We would love to hear from you. Thank you, Raisa, for spending time with us today.
Raisa: Yeah, thanks so much for having me.
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