Clarissa Campitelli is the founder of C. Digital Marketing Agency, a full service agency providing everything from marketing strategy, social media, branding, and more.
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1) To kick things off, could you tell us a little about your career background and current role?
Yes of course. I’ve been working in marketing and communications related positions for about 10 years in a variety of industries.
I’ve worked both in house and in agencies, for industries such as healthcare, telecommunications, mining, building supplies, travel, education, real estate, business and professional services, charities, and more.
I also have my Masters in Marketing, which I completed part-time over 4 years while working full-time, so life was very busy for a while there and is getting that way again!
I actually currently have two roles. A few months after COVID-19 hit, my full-time position was made redundant. While applying for new full-time roles, I also decided to start my own marketing agency, C. Digital Marketing, which is something that I always dreamed about doing.
I thought, being made redundant was the biggest push I was ever going to get to try and go out on my own, so why not! It’s been so much fun starting my own marketing business and I am proud to say that in only 4 months of operation, I have 3 clients, which is an absolute dream!
I am currently completing everything myself, however I do have graphic designers and other colleagues that I can call on if I need the assistance.
I also recently landed a new full-time role as the PR & Marketing Manager for Castran Gilbert, a project marketing and real estate firm. Another very busy role, which I’m loving.
On top of these, I actually started my own jewellery business, Honeymoon Collective, selling handmade jewellery through Etsy about a year ago! I source the materials, design and create the pieces, list, package and ship them all myself!
As you can see, I like having things on the go but with so many different priorities, time management is definitely key.
2) What does a day in the life look like for you? Can you take us through a recent workday?
Every day is different and things are a little chaotic at the moment as we’re currently waiting to move into our house, but I can give you a standard outline of a work day.
Each day involves working on C. Digital Marketing as well as my full-time role with Castran Gilbert, so I need to plan my time carefully in order to get everything done.
I’ve actually been working really long hours the past few weeks, which I’m hoping will ease up as things start to settle down with work. With Melbourne easing the COVID-19 restrictions, work has been go go go.
Each day starts the same, waking up about 6.30/7am, quickly getting dressed and getting the puppy ready for a walk. Then my husband and I walk to the local coffee shop with our 3.5 month old toy cavoodle, Luna, and buy our much needed morning take away coffees!
Once we walk home again, we have a quick play outside with Luna before settling in to work by around 7.45am. By this point, Luna is ready for a nap so I can actually get some work done! I squeeze in about an hour of work for C. Digital Marketing (depending on priorities and any urgent client business), eat breakfast at my desk and then get ready for my full-time role.
After about 2 hours, Luna wakes up and is ready to play, so I take a quick 15 minute break to play with her and usually squeeze in some client Instagram monitoring at the same time, then it’s back to the desk and back to work.
Lunch is usually quite quick and often at my desk, just depending on any urgent priorities. If it’s a nice day and it’s not too hectic with work, I’ll eat outside with the puppy. The afternoon is pretty much the same – work, play with Luna, work.
After I’ve finished my full-time role (which doesn’t really have a set finish time at the moment as it’s been so busy!) I’ll spend another hour or so on C. Digital Marketing, eat dinner and do a pilates or yoga session.
In a pre-COVID world, I would go to the gym on the way home from work and do a reformer pilates class, however with COVID, we have all needed to adapt. After dinner, I’ll switch off and spend some time with my husband and puppy before getting ready for bed.
3) Does your current role allow for flexible or remote working? If so, how does that fit into your life and routine?
With COVID-19, businesses have obviously needed to adapt. With C. Digital Marketing, we’re completely remote and flexible around my full-time role, so I often work weekends on C.
With my full-time role, I’m currently working remotely and have been since I started about a month ago as Melbourne’s current restrictions don’t allow for businesses to go back to the office yet.
Starting a new job remotely has been a very strange experience, and one that I’m sure lots of people have been experiencing! Moving forward, my full-time role will be flexible and allow for some remote work as needed, but ideally it will be back in the office.
As much as I love working from home, physically going into an office will definitely help with having a set finish time from work and I can “leave” work at the office and not take it home with me.
4) What does work-life balance mean to you and how do you work to achieve that goal?
To me, work-life balance means having time to spend with my family, friends and puppy, exercise, eat well and do any hobbies or side projects, like Honeymoon Collective. How I want to achieve it is definitely by having a more “strict” routine.
We recently relocated from Sydney to Melbourne and, like I mentioned before, we’re not in our house yet, so our routine isn’t set. When we were in Sydney, we would go for our morning coffee walk, work, then go for a walk to the beach after work.
I absolutely loved this routine and it definitely helped me feel like I had achieved work-life balance. I’m looking forward to getting back into this stricter routine, possibly even setting myself a daily timetable, which I think will really help make sure I can achieve that balance.
5) In the past 12 months, have you started or stopped any routines or habits to change your life?
Yes, definitely. While we were still in Sydney, we lived 1.8km from Clovelly Beach. During COVID lock-down, we were both working from home and, at the start, noticed that we were working really long hours and barely getting outside.
Some days, we didn’t leave our apartment. So, we decided to start going for a walk in the morning to one of the local cafes to get our coffee, which acted like our “commute” to work, and after work we would go for at least an hour long walk down to Clovelly Beach and up the Coastal Walk to Waverley Cemetery and Bronte.
Although we were restricted with where we were allowed to go and what we were allowed to do because of COVID, we had the opportunity to really explore our local area.
Something else that I started doing was exercising at home! I’ve always been shocking at working out at home, away from the gym or studio, but once again, COVID changed things. It’s been really nice being able to exercise in my own time whenever suits me, without needing to worry about booking in a class. Having said that, I am dying to get back to reformer pilates!
The last routine that I started was having a shower at about 3pm in the afternoon! What I found was that I was getting a lot of anxiety when we first started working from home and my previous job was also crazy busy. Taking 10 minutes for myself to have a shower and unwind in the afternoon was exactly what I needed to help with my anxiety and focus on the rest of the day.
6) Are there any products, gadgets or apps that you can’t live without?
My iPhone and my Macbook Air! Running my own business and working from home, I can’t live without my tech. My Google Calendar gets a workout and unless a task is in my calendar, chances are I’ll forget it.
I love To Do lists and popping everything in my calendar has really helped to take it to the next level. I’ve also had the chance to use a range of social media scheduling tools, such as AgoraPulse and Buffer, and work planners, such as Trello, thanks to my clients.
Microsoft Teams is also fantastic for collaborating with a team and sending a message to reach someone about a quick query.
I also love my FitBit app to see how many steps I’ve done during the day. It also buzzes 10 minutes before the hour if I haven’t achieved 250 steps that hour.
This helps to make sure that I stay somewhat active while working, even if achieving 250 steps every hour isn’t always possible. Especially working from home where the walk to the coffee machine and bathroom is much shorter than it is in the office.
7) If you could read an interview about work-life balance by anyone, who would that be?
Someone really successful and driven like Michelle and Barack Obama. It would be so interesting to see how Barack successfully ran a country while also maintaining a personal life.
8) Do you have any last thoughts on work, life or balance that you’d like to share with our readers?
It is so important to be able to strike a balance between your career and your out-of-work life. Having hobbies, spending time with friends and family, exercising and doing whatever it is that you like to do helps to enrich our lives and in turn, will actually make you better at your job.
If you’re struggling to find that balance because you have a really demanding job or because you work from home and struggle to switch off, try having a routine like getting out for your “commute” to and from work (like my walk in the morning and night), or try working in a separate part of your house/apartment, so you can physically leave it at the end of the day.
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