Tell Us Who You Are! 

Hi 👋🏻! I’m Erika Ayers-Baden, the CEO of Food52. I’m also the author of Nobody Cares About Your Career: Why Failure is Good, The Great Ones Play Hurt and Other Hard Truths, which braids anecdotes from my (long!) career with insights into how work-life really functions. (And how you can get your job to work for you!) 

In another life, I was the first-ever CEO of media magnate Barstool Sports where I led explosive growth, expanding the company from a regional blog to a national powerhouse brand. (Yep, I helped launch Call Her Daddy!) 

Nowadays, I’m in the business of helping others. I started the Slack community Work Like A Girl, a hive where 600+ women (and growing!) in business are helping, hearing, and championing one another in real time. I also host the Work Life podcast, where I candidly navigate the modern corporate landscape and help people become their best selves in their careers (and beyond!). 

Follow along on my journey toward building more women-centered work communities on Instagram! 

6:30 AM - 7:30 AM  → Rise & Shine! ☀️

Every morning I wake up and I’m like: I should work out! But I never do, TBH.

Mainly, my mornings are about waking everyone in my family up, getting them fed, having a cup of coffee, making lunches, and then getting out the door. I leave for the train at exactly 7:24 AM every day, and I commute into the city from Connecticut! 

7:30 AM - 9:30 AM → Commute & Creativity 🚆

When I finally get on the train to work, I always listen to Spotify and do The New York Times Mini Crossword. (I’m in a cutthroat competition with my mother!) Then, I get right into work. With my phone in hand, I can be very productive on the train! 

I have a rule that the first three emails I send each day are for helping somebody else. It could be a favor for a friend, writing an introduction, you name it. It’s whatever I want to do for another person. Oddly enough, it’s relaxing to me. 

Once my train arrives at Grand Central Station, I ride the ferry. Then, I’m finally at Food52’s Brooklyn Navy Yard offices! 

9:45 AM - 5:00 PM → Meetings, Meetings, Meetings! 👥 

I have to get most of my creating and working tasks done on the train, because when I’m actually at the office, I’m in constant meetings. All. Day. Long. 

Depending on if the NYC ferry system is cooperating with me that day (LOL), I’ll leave the office between 4:30 PM and 6:30 PM to head home. 

5:00 PM - 7:00 PM → Wrap Up & Wind Down… 💆🏼

On my commute, I keep working until I’m officially home! I always take the final half hour of my work schedule to wrap everything up. (But admittedly, there are still days I need an extra half hour to shut things down when I get home!) That said, I tend to check my texts or Slack one more time before I go to bed. 

When I was younger, I had no boundaries between my work day and when I got home. I would work until I went to sleep. But that wasn’t healthy. Now, I’m better at balancing it all. 

What’s the most important thing to do if you want to grow in your profession?

Forcing yourself to be in discomfort and the unknown. When I look back on my career, that’s what I was able to do well. I was relentless over a long period of time about trying new things. I remember talking to Barbara Corcoran when I was at Barstool, and she was like, “I’m successfully insecure.” Her philosophy is that the most successful people are insecure, because they’re always afraid they’re gonna miss out on the next big thing. In the early part of my career, I always wanted to earn more money. I wanted to have more options. I wanted to work with more people. I wanted to have more skills. If you can just do something akin to that, you’ll end up someplace great. 

When it came to your early roles, what do you think helped move the needle toward earning leadership positions?

I was not picky, and I always took a discount salary when being hired for the job, since it was a way for me to get my foot in the door. I knew that I would outperform once I was actually there, and then I could negotiate from a place of strength. Some people best negotiate their salary while going in. I was never good at that, but I knew I could outwork anybody. I’m relentless and I have a lot of energy and grit. I would then use that as the opportunity to communicate that I wanted more opportunity and more responsibility, and that I needed to have a commensurate comp package. 

How do you mentally get yourself to move forward from failures at work? 

My whole book is about embracing failure. What’s hard about failure is how it feels. It’s easier to clean up a problem than it is to reconcile the feelings that it dredges up in you. So when I have a problem, the first thing I need to do is sleep it off. In my sleep, I process what I could have done differently. I sulk for 48 hours. Give yourself two days to have a pity party. Be bummed, watch rom-coms, eat pizza, and sleep. But after 48 hours, it’s time to think about how to move forward. 

My go-to advice is…

Don’t be afraid to fail. I fail all the time, and I’m not afraid to say it! It’s a part of learning and life.