Chief Change Officer
#182 Erika Ayers Badan: Why “No One Cares About Your Career” Might Be the Best Advice Yet – Part One
Sun, 16 Feb 2025
If Erika Ayers Badan’s book title, No One Cares About Your Career, made you do a double take—same here. CEO of Food52 and former Barstool Sports exec, Erika has built an impressive career, but she’s not here to talk about her LinkedIn page. In Part One, we dig into her book, the lessons behind it, and five game-changing tips for workplace success. Then in Part Two, we step behind the curtain to explore leadership, workplace culture, and what career wisdom she’s passing on to the next generation. Key Highlights of Our Interview: Revisiting the Roots: A Walk Down Memory Lane to Discover the Past’s Impact on the Present The Brutal Truth Behind ‘No One Cares About Your Career’—How Did Erika Land on That Mic-Drop of a Title? "Nobody's coming to help you. It's up to you to save yourself, grow yourself, push yourself, teach yourself." What Sparked the Inspiration Behind Writing the Book? What Makes This Book a Game Changer in a Sea of Career Guides? Who Is This Book Really For? Unpacking the Audience Behind the Pages "Just because you went to Princeton doesn't mean you have to go work in finance. A lot of times people get caught up in what everyone else thinks they should do. That's the lore. What everyone else thinks they should be and the reality is that nobody's really thinking about you that much. You should do what makes you happy and tell everyone else to jump off a cliff." 30 Years, 5 Simple Lessons: How to Succeed at Work Without the Overwhelm Connect with us: Host: Vince Chan | Guest: Erika Ayers Badan ______________________ --Chief Change Officer-- Change Ambitiously. Outgrow Yourself. Open a World of Deep Human Intelligence for Growth Progressives, Visionary Underdogs, Transformation Gurus & Bold Hearts. 6 Million+ All-Time Downloads. Reaching 80+ Countries Daily. Global Top 3% Podcast. Top 10 US Business. Top 1 US Careers. >>>100,000+ subscribers are outgrowing. Act Today.<<< --Chief Change Officer--Change Ambitiously. Outgrow Yourself.Open a World of Expansive Human Intelligencefor Transformation Gurus, Black Sheep,Unsung Visionaries & Bold Hearts.12 Million+ All-Time Downloads.Reaching 80+ Countries Daily.Global Top 3% Podcast.Top 10 US Business.Top 1 US Careers.>>>140,000+ are outgrowing. Act Today.<<<
Chapter 1: Who is Erika Ayers Badan and what is her career history?
Hi, everyone. Welcome to our show, Chief Change Officer. I'm Vince Chen, your ambitious human host. Our show is a modernist humility for change progressives in organizational and human transformation from around the world. Today's episode is a special one for me. I'm joined by none other than Erica Ayers-Bodden, the current CEO of Food52, a leading innovator in the food, cooking, and home space.
Before her time at Food52, Erica was the first-ever CEO of Barstool Sports, and her career spans across media, marketing, and tech, with roles at companies like Fidelity Investments, Microsoft, AOL, and Yahoo. But let me be clear, this isn't about interviewing someone with big titles. On my show, I bring on guests who are willing to share real life stories. And Erica has no shortage of those.
In fact, she's gathered so many lessons along the way that she decided to write her first book titled, No One Cares About Your Career. When I saw that title, I knew I had to develop a two-part series featuring Erica. Why does this title hit so hard? Because it's the truth. I've learned it the hard way myself, through the twists and turns of my own career.
I'm excited that Erica has captured this reality so perfectly, and I'm grateful she is saying it out loud, helping others who feel stuck in their careers confront the truth and break free from the baggage holding them back. In this episode, we'll dive into the book why she wrote it, why now, and why this title.
Plus, we'll unpack some key nuggets of wisdom, including five simple things anyone can do to succeed at work. In the next episode, Erica will open up about her life and career experiences, her upbringing, her parents, her leadership approach, and even her thoughts on toxic work cultures. And here's something you won't hear in other interviews.
What career advice would Erica give her own two middle school children, given we are in such a rapidly changing workplace? That's our in-depth look at Erika Ayers Baden. Let's dive right in. Welcome, Erika. Thanks for being here. Thank you, Vince. I'm excited to be here. Erika, let's start with a bit of your career history.
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Chapter 2: Why did Erika write 'No One Cares About Your Career'?
Okay, great, Vince. So I'm Erica. I live right around New York City. I work in New York City. I worked in New York City for, I don't know, 15 years, almost 20 years. I grew up in a really small town in New England. I was born in Colorado, and I'm best known for my last job, which I spent a decade building a company called Barstool Sports, which in the American market is one of, if not the most
wild, fast-growing, creative, dynamic, disruptive companies in sports and media and entertainment in the past two to three decades. So I'm most known for my time at Barstool Sports. Prior to that, I worked at a lot of really big companies like Microsoft and Yahoo and AOL. I worked at a bunch of startups in the fashion space, in the music space.
In the entertainment space, I started my career thinking I wanted to be a lawyer, and I didn't. I had been laid off. I was a receptionist. I had a bunch of career changes. I had a very meandering career path. I worked at a bunch of ad agencies. I've worked all over the world. So I've had, I would say, a really unique career in that I've really tried a lot of different things.
I've worked at a lot of different places. I've learned from a lot of different types of people, all in pursuit of really becoming a better person and a better leader and a better executive and a more interested whole being. And I don't know if that works, Vince, but that's how I would describe it.
So initially, you planned to go to law school, or perhaps it was more of an expectation from your parents. But in the end, you chose a different path. What led you to that decision?
Yes, I had gotten an internship. I went to a liberal arts college in Maine in the U.S. and I had gotten an internship in Boston. And most of my family are teachers and my parents were teachers and educators. My dad was my principal when I was in middle school, which is probably a story for later. And I felt my parents really sacrificed so that my brother and I could go to very good schools.
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Chapter 3: How did Erika choose the title 'No One Cares About Your Career'?
And I felt a very significant sense of obligation to do something with that. I feel that my parents had sacrificed everything. themselves to give us opportunity, and I felt a very big debt of gratitude on that. And when I had gotten this internship, it was at Fidelity Investments. It was in Boston, Massachusetts, and I loved it. And I got this bug to work in a corporate environment.
No one else in my extended family works in a corporate environment, but I got the bug. And it made me think, oh, I want to go to law school and I'd like to get a business degree. I never ended up doing either of those things. But what I did do is set out to be very successful in the corporate world and to do it the best way I could, which was really learning on the job and as an apprenticeship.
Now it's time to dive into your book. I have to confess to the audience. When Erica and her team reached out to me about doing this interview, I immediately said yes, like no hesitation at all. Why? What drew me in so quickly was the title of the book, which is No One Cares About Your Career. This is punchy title.
and given Erica's expertise in marketing, I'm not surprised she came up with something so catchy. But it's not just about the phrase. It's about those five words. They resonate with me 100%. Seriously, I learned this truth a hard way in my own journey. is one of life's realities. And once I understood it, I accepted it, and even embraced it.
Erica, if you and I were in a studio together right now, I would give you a hug or at least a solid high five for speaking my mind so perfectly. Take a hug, Vince. Thank you. Thank you. One day when I come to the States and interview you in person, let's do that. Anyway, back to the book title. I'm curious, how did you come up with No One Cares About Your Career as the title?
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Chapter 4: What inspired Erika to write her book during the pandemic?
Was it something you had in mind from the start of your writing process? Or did it come up later, maybe as a result of collaboration with your publisher or editor?
So Nobody Cares About Your Career is something someone told me once, Vince, probably 15 years ago, and it always stuck in my head. And when I was writing the book, it was the title of one of the chapters. And to be honest with you, I never thought about it as the title for the book. But I did feel very strongly about it as the core of the book, which is that Nobody's coming to help you.
You need to get over your insecurity and your ego and put yourself into what you're doing every day. And that work is tuition that you get paid for. And it's up to you to save yourself, grow yourself, push yourself, teach yourself. And so it becoming the title of the book really happened towards the end. I was honestly quite stuck about what the title should be.
I thought about the title of get comfortable being uncomfortable, or you can be yourself and be successful. And there was a really interesting woman at the publisher who said we're on a conference call trying to figure out the title of the book and
she said why don't you just go look at your chapters like maybe the book has a lot of punchy chapter titles i think and she was like why don't you go look in the chapter list and see if there's a title and i looked to the chapter list and it was obvious that was going to be the title yeah i read this chapter specifically we'll come back to this in a minute the book what inspired you to write it in the very first place
Oh, a lot. One is I've always been that person at work that just feel too much about work. I actually hate this about myself, but I'm deeply emotional about work. I think about work all the time. I think about how things could be better or different or what I could change or what I could do differently or better. And
I remember working at AOL a long time ago, probably 15 years ago at this point, and a coworker saying to me, I used to send these really long emails. And then my coworker was like, why do you do that? What a stupid waste of your time. Everybody's out partying after a workday and you're on your phone writing emails about what we did the day before. And so I've always really felt
the need to share how i feel emotionally about work it's very motivating to me to lay it out and hopefully it's motivating or interesting or compelling to others and i was at a point i had been at barstool sports for about eight years almost nine years and we had sold the company to a new company that was much bigger than ours, that was publicly traded, that was heavily regulated.
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Chapter 5: How did a podcast help Erika engage her team during the pandemic?
And I felt my creativity at work, Vince, just totally get zapped. I had been running this wild, creative business amorphous, freewheeling, fast growth company. And all of a sudden the brakes got pumped and I was trying to do daily financial reporting and daily forecasting and re-forecasting. And I was feeling my creativity just go to the wayside.
And so I started to write the book on my commute because I felt like it brought me back to the things that I had loved about Barstool Sports that were so creative. And then the second piece is over the pandemic, I had created a podcast when I was the CEO of Barstool Sports because at Barstool, we had never worked remote. We didn't have a remote working culture before the pandemic.
Everyone was in the office every day, all the time. We didn't have any need for technology because everybody worked together in person. When the pandemic hit, it was very alienating for me and it was very alienating for our company. And so I started emailing everyone in the company every week. And there were 250 people in the company at the time and I was sending 250 emails.
I would go through the A's and then the B's and then the C's. And what I realized was that was impossible because I was just getting flooded with email and I was flooding email right back and it seems silly. So I started a pod, a daily 10 minute podcast where I talked about what we were doing at Barstool Sports and I used it as a way to connect with people who I worked with.
And then it became interesting to people who worked outside of, or what were well beyond Barstool Sports. And so. What I gravitated towards was I was getting all sorts of Q&A questions from people about their careers. And it built over time where I get probably 200 questions a week at this point. So I'm getting a massive amount of work questions and
In the same way I felt making a podcast was a better way to talk to a 250-people employee base, I felt that writing a book was perhaps a more thoughtful, complete way to respond to people's work questions.
With the pandemic, everyone was stuck at home and you used a podcast to keep your team engaged instead of just sending long emails. It helped keep everyone active and connected Soon, more people outside your firm started paying attention, sending in career-related questions, which you began answering. Eventually, it led you to think, why not put all of this into a book?
A way to reach a wider audience and share your experiences and thoughts more broadly. Does that sound like a fair summary of your journey?
A far more succinct way to do it, Vince, for sure.
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