Big conundrum. To take the job or not to take the job.

As I thought might happen, I got a job offer from the company I'd been interviewing with, but I'm very, very hesitant to take it. On one hand, it's a good offer, decent salary and seems like a great, smart group of people at a company in a growing industry segment. On the other hand, it's an individual contributor role (contrary to my last jobs) , there's no bonus plan (contrary to my last jobs), it's a longer commute and the salary is lower than before too.....so I'm not terribly keen. ...yet, of course financially it'd be nice to have a proper income again..and I could keep looking for another job while I start this one...but then, it's awfully hard to be looking properly for another job when you're starting a new one and need to put a lot of energy into the new role....you get my dilemma....

I'm leaning towards declining. I have several other leads that I'm working right now, which makes me positive that I will have other options, tough of course, that's not 100% guaranteed...still, I'm thinking it's too early to compromise, and based on discussions with several search agencies, they all seemed to think that with my background I should be able to get a really good position within the next 2 months time, and they know the job market better than I do...I just hope I'm not being too arrogant in thinking I can land something better in the short term...guess time will tell.

One of the upsides of my current situation is that I've been able to take the time to talk to a lot of people in depth, and it's actually yielded a pleasant side effect. Many of those folks aren't marketers. One is a keynote speaker who's written a book, another is an ideation consultant, another is a small business owner, etc.....one of the common threads is that they can all use marketing help. In talking to them, I was able to share some ideas of how they could cost-effectively improve their visibility to help grow their business. Nothing earth-shattering for people with marketing experience, but pretty novel for people who've never run such programs. And it felt really good to be able to help these friends....it makes me think that at some point in the future, I might want to explore that as a business: providing marketing support for small and medium-size business. I know I have the strategy skills, I'm experienced enoujgh with all the different elements in the marketing mix (marcom, PR, digital, product marketing, channel marketing, adertising, etc.) to offer comprehensive advise, I'd need to beef up on my design-skills to be able to do that myself (but I could always use design freelancers for that part of the projects)......and I'd give me the opportunity to set my own hours and potentially work from home, but still have the variety of working with lot's of different people and business... a very appealing idea for maybe 10 years down the line when I'm tired of the ratrace.....