As of last week, I officially left my job as CMO at a large personal injury law firm. The obvious question I get from the friends and family when I tell them this is: “What’s next”…

And truthfully, I don’t know.

For people that know me, they probably won’t be surprised to hear that I have dozens of ideas floating around my head… and for once, I want to take a break, and let the ideas simmer a bit before I make any decisions.

I’ve had two conversations recently that remind me of two criteria I want to hold as I look for my next opportunity:

1. No Resume. When I told a friend that I was leaving this company, his reaction was “are you finally going to create a resume?” … and I said “nope.” I’m yet to ever go hunting for a job and I think things are better that way. But that also means that I need to find my voice again if I ‘m going to uncover the really interesting opportunities.
2. Meaningfulness. In exploring opportunities with another friend who sold off his marketing agency a while back and was finally taking his exit, I mentioned a few ideas when he said something that really stuck with me. He said something like: I’m not in a spot where I *need* to create another company. I’m only going to get involved in meaningful projects going forward. In hearing him, there was a certain, “ah ha” moment in my head that said whatever I do next better be meaningful… It seems obvious in retrospect, but sometimes the obvious needs to be stated to be realized.

The three most obvious ideas based on my recent experience (in the ridiculously inefficient world of marketing for personal injury law, where there is plenty of money to be made) include:

• Create an agency (Sales? Marketing? Conversions?) that consults with either law firms to better drive leads. Could be through optimizing digital ad campaigns, optimizing intake processes or through building our a CRM.
• Create a lead gen company that drives leads and sells them to personal injury law firms (I have some good insight around leveraging mobile search and tracking to drive value through, among other things, optimizing conversions through google ads.
• Create a start up based on a lead value idea that’s was tossing around my head while running marketing at my last company. I’m positive the idea would be valuable, but not positive on how I’d get adoption.

And while all three of these potential companies would meet the first criteria of not requiring a (traditional) resume, I’m not sure they meet my criteria of doing something meaningful. I think I’m a good enough marketer that I think I could spin things so that the companies have a “meaningful” impact, but not quite sure I want to go that route.

Which has led me to think about the most common conversations that get me amped up lately… and that’s around our fuel cell Mirai and the potential to for hydrogen power to substantially support a more environmentally friendly future.

At least for the next little bit, I want to do some research in the space and see where the conversations take me.

By the way, if you’re curious to learn more about the Mirai, Doug DeMuro has a nice overview that describes a lot of what makes a fuel cell car unique.