Erin McGoff was in the midst of getting her degree to American University when she started realizing her talent in professional advising. People seemed drawn to her for help with applying to jobs through resumes, interviews, and beyond, and McGoff enjoyed every minute of it.
However, this prospect was left unexamined as she graduated and became an editor and director of films, including award-winning Amazon film “This Little Land of Mines.” McGoff was supported through winning various awards, including AU SoC Woman of the Year Award and the International Reporting Fellowship award from the Pulitzer Center, and has worked with many mainstream companies, including National Geographic and Google.
However, McGoff saw an opportunity in the surge of popularity with TikTok during the pandemic to fill the gap in a lack of career advice being readily available to those who needed it. She started posting tips on navigating the professional world, including a humorous element to appeal to a young target audience she thought might benefit from such advice as her friends did and which she delighted in as a young adult. Her main channel is deemed AdviceWithErin and exists over several channels, boasting 845,000 followers YouTube and 2 million on Instagram.
Scrolling through McGoff’s YouTube account, users are met with videos detailing anything from “How To: Negotiate Your Salary in a Job Offer” to “How to Deal with a Rude Person (in work and life)” to “Cabin Tour: building a TINY HOUSE (325 sqft) | Update #3,” showing a diverse pool of content that appeals to many different demographics within her target audience of those seeking advice in entering the professional world and those just generally interested in her channel. McGoff is an exemplary example of someone who kept a skillset in her back pocket and acted on it from a mindset of openness and passion whenever she saw an opportunity to do so.
David Portnoy is an internet and sports sensation. He grew up in Massachusetts and attended the University of Michigan. He had a minor job directly out of college at a small marketing firm in Boston but eventually left his job to start Barstool Sports in 2003. Barstool Sports started off as a sports newspaper that Portnoy himself would hand out in downtown Boston and in subway stations to people passing by. The newspaper had some trouble taking off at the beginning and the only sponsorships they had were with some small sports betting sites which were illegal in America. Believe it or not but Barstool Sports started to gain some traction in and around Boston once Portnoy started adding different things that would appeal to men on the covers of his newspapers. Portnoy eventually graduated from the newspaper and opened up his blog in 2007. Portnoy himself comes off as a ruthless type of person in his blogs and on the internet for his political incorrectness and has gained the name El Presidente amongst the fans of Barstool Sports. As of 2022, Portnoy still owns Barstool Sports and is in charge of the creative thought process for the blogs. In 2020, Penn National Gaming bought a 36% stake in Barstool which gave Portnoy $135 million in cash. Portnoy has retired his persona of the big ruthless “bro” as some would say and now has a series of going around the country reviewing pizza shops trying to find the perfect slice. When it comes to Dave Portnoy himself, he may not be the best person and there are many negative things that surround him, but all entrepreneurs should take his gritty push to become rich and famous and implement that into their work ethic. Not many people would go out and stand on subway stations for hours in consecutive days to try and make a name for themselves and their product.