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Career Advice with Erika Ayers Badan
Career advice with WWSG exclusive speaker, Erika Ayers Badan.
Career Advice Q&A: Erika Ayers Badan
Most known for her seven-year tenure as the first CEO of Barstool Sports, Erika Ayers Badan knows how to run a hyper-relevant and cultural media site. Now, eight months after founder Dave Portnoy bought back the company in August for just $1, Ayers Badan is onto the next step of her career as CEO of digital food publication Food52. I sat down with her to discuss what the transition has been like, getting over yourself and the release of her new book, Nobody Cares About Your Career, out June 11. Our conversation has been edited for length and clarity.
Talk to me a bit about the inspiration for your book. Where did it come from?
I’ve spent most of my career in media, content and advertising on the internet. I’ve worked at a lot of big places, but I’ve worked at a bunch of startups. I’ve made like every mistake there is to make in the book. And about two years ago, as I was thinking about my career and I was thinking about how I spend my time at work and what I love about work and what I don’t love about work, and also what I love about myself and what I hate about myself, I just started to take notes on my phone on the train. And I decided that I would try to make that into a book.
I don’t read a whole lot of business books, but in 2024, I couldn’t find any business books that weren’t all yelling at me with arrows and graphs. Either someone was perfect and they were a genius and they all figured it out, and it was so unattainable, or it was screaming at me about like 10 things I needed to do and an equation I was supposed to follow. And I really wanted to write a book that was just more like me talking the way I talk to people I work with.
So it’s really about what I see happening in a modern workplace. And how people can crush their careers and more importantly crush their life by feeling better and being better at work.
Agreed on the business books! They can be so intimidating at times. What has the transition from Barstool Sports to Food52 been like? They’re such different brand names.
Definitely couldn’t be more different! I’ve always said, I’ll never love a place like I loved Barstool Sports. And the reason for that really is we just had an extraordinary run and, the cultural force that company and brand became was really staggering.
But I wanted to work with a different audience. I wanted to work with women. I wanted to do something that I didn’t know entirely how to do. I have a very good handle on building brands, but thinking about a business that is really centered on commerce was very interesting to me. And really thinking about, bringing products to life, telling stories around products, making a very smart, modern businesses in a category that needs, I think, energy and excitement and kind of that boutique enthusiasm.
The transition has been a little bit jarring where I’m like, wow, I wear clogs now! But otherwise it’s been good.
Walk me through the moment you knew it was time to transition.
So it’s funny, the other thing that is really different about this book is I’m writing the last chapters of the book, which are called “Do I Stay or Do I Go,” and I’m trying to figure out if I stay or if I go.
Talk about being meta!
So going through a career transition just as I’m about to have a book about career and career transitions is like, a lot of times I had to like, follow my own advice, and I was like, ‘oh, that’s annoying!’
Is there anything you wish someone would’ve told you in that moment that would’ve made your decision clearer earlier on?
I got a lot of advice. I asked for a lot of advice. How to handle transition is a really sensitive thing, so I wish I had followed some of the advice I got. It took me a long time to transition. I was very sad about it. I was very emotional about it, and I needed to decouple how I felt about it versus what I needed to do during it.
What’s the best piece of advice you’ve gotten?
The best piece of advice I got was, you know, really you have to follow your heart, which sounds so cliché, but I do really believe that. I think you have to follow your gut. The second thing is to be swift. Like, just be like, get over it! Do it. Get over it. Get over the change. Get over your head. Get over yourself.
Obviously this was a huge change in your career, but can you tell me about another time you had, or were forced into another career change? I think a lot of folks going through layoffs would like to hear they’re not alone.
Oh, great. So I was laid off from my job at Fidelity Investments in the late ‘90s, early 2000s. It was devastating. I was just devastated, I felt like it was a reflection of me personally. I couldn’t believe I was laid off. I was so upset, and I was so panicked that I scrambled so quickly to find the next job. Part of it is like, I needed the money, I needed to work. But I wished at that moment that I had not panicked. That I had been like, ‘it’s going to be okay, don’t react, get your head together, get yourself on a severe budget. And then go find the next job.’
What brought you comfort afterwards?
Oh. I did like the stupidest thing ever! The day I got laid off I agreed to be somebody’s nanny [laughs]. I just needed a job! The next day I had a nannying job and it was terrible. I was not a good nanny. I was not meant to be a nanny. I hated being a nanny! So mine is more the opposite of like, I created more of a headache for myself than actually doing something.
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