The Creative and the “Contained Chaos”
Hi, I’m Keegan Downs!
I’ve worked numerous jobs, from heavy physical labor to pencil pushing – you name it and I’ve probably done it. One of these jobs was here in Ottawa at Colour By Design as a junior graphic designer/printing assistant. This, unbeknownst to me at the time, would be the most pivotal job in my life.
With it being such a small business, I got to learn a lot of new skills – specifically about business management and real estate, which was our main source of clients. Real estate at the time was something I thought so little about, and now I couldn’t avoid it. Like with everything I do, I had to learn all there is to know about it. As you can imagine, this is like sticking your head in a puddle and finding an ocean.
My time there unfortunately ended due to COVID and I learned another hard lesson about small business, but my education wasn’t done as I still had so much more to know. From there I worked at RE/MAX as a Marketing and Admin person, and when that contract finished, used my “unique blend” of skills and knowledge to work at a Real Estate Media company based out of Toronto. Within a year I had moved from “Quality Control” to “Regional Manager”, leading teams of 20+ contractors in over 8 provinces.
All these lessons I learned in the past have led me to where I am today. I own a successful media company that puts out content I can be proud of, and employs an ever growing number of Canadian creatives, and I continue my Real Estate education journey with a team of people I genuinely respect and admire.
How I Support the Team
My role on the team is a supporting marketing role where I handle our social media, but also one of action and education. If you need something done, I will get it done. My flexibility allows me to fulfill any and all tasks thrown at me, and that leads me to learning a lot more than sitting idly by.
My Approach
I always and will always classify myself as a Jack of All Trades. I am obsessed with learning, and hate not knowing. As written above, I have worked many different jobs and I take pieces with me every time I move on to something else that interests me. To me, flexibility is king.
Knowledge of several different topics makes me versatile, and leads me to exploring new things where I jump into action and break things just to learn how to fix them for next time. I have adapted to the approach of “Contained Chaos”. I love to take all that ails you, and make it a me problem rather than a you problem. Problem-solving, especially if it’s for someone else, brings me a lot of joy.
The Man Behind the Laptop
On the rare occasion that I fall into that increasingly elusive zone of “outside of work” I am similar to who I am at work. I have a large breadth of hobbies that help me relate to a wide-range of people. From heavily nerdy things such as Dungeons and Dragons and video games, to the more traditional such as working on cars, playing sports, camping, or hitting the gym. The more things I can do to connect with more people the better, and if I ever need to recharge my social battery, I can always lean on my wonderful partner Tori. When I am overwhelmed, stressed, or feel lost, she always feels like the most rational and grounded person I can rely on to make me feel sane again, and I don’t think I could have asked for a better teammate.
Both of my parents were in logistics roles my whole life, so I also was privy to many dinner-time conversations of how something went wrong in the chain, and the fixes thereafter. I know several people reading this can relate to the family dinner served correlating exactly to the severity of work-related headache. For me it was the infamous Salisbury Steak Hungry-Man that meant something had gone seriously wrong during the workday. My career goal regardless of where I end up, is to never stop learning, and to prevent those types of dinners.
Want to connect with Keegan Downs? Find me on LinkedIn.
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