Going Way Back With Marketing’s Top MindsThe Early Misadventures and Lessons Learned of Five of Today’s Leading Marketing Thought LeadersStarring Robert Rose, Viveka Von Rosen, Mark Schaefer, Ann Handley, and Jason Falls

ContentsForeword“Four Steps to Finding the Artistry in Marketing” by Robert Rose“Coincidentally Coinciding: How Not to Take the Straight and Narrow Path” by Viveka Von Rosen“A Marketing Career Today Means Constant Reinvention” by Mark Schaefer“3 Things I’ve Learned Since I Was 20-something” by Ann Handley“The Time Lending to the Details Saved My @$$” by Jason FallsAbout the Authors

Marketing is a Learning ExperienceGreat marketing has always been about trial and error and knowing when things are working and when they’re not. This has never been truer than it is now.Now long ago, the most prominent voices in marketing were fresh out of school, just starting their careers, and making their own share of mistakes. Between then and now, what experiences turned them into the thought leaders they are today?We asked five of these thought leaders to share with us their most transformative job experiences and what they learned. We hope you enjoy what they shared with us.As always, fellow marketers, keep experimenting, keep learning, and keep improving!- Joe Staples, CMO, Workfront

Four Steps to Finding the Artistry in MarketingBy Robert Rose, Chief Strategy Advisor, Content Marketing Institute

It was 1993, and I had my first - and to this day the best - full time job I’ve ever had. I was a marketing coordinator for Showtime Networks here in Los Angeles. It was truly where I found my love for the practice and learned some of the the key lessons that would shape my career. I came to Los Angeles in 1987 to be a musician and a screenwriter, and after spending 6 years flailing around doing just that, I decided it might be best to find a career that actually paid money.

I would find it, ironically, in the business I loved - but not in the form I originally thought it would be. There were really four incredible lessons that I’ve learned, since starting out as a 27 year old at Showtime...

1. Storytelling Matters More Than Data. I learned early on—especially using data—you can have every single fact on your side, but if you can’t present it in a compelling, inspiring, entertaining way, you will lose to those who can. Every time.

2. All Great Content Sells - But Know What It Is Selling. When I was in the TV business, something I learned from the famous writer Mike Nichols was that there are only three types of scenes - a fight, a negotiation or a seduction. In each one - the audience aligns one way or the other with a point of view. This is something to take forward in creating marketing content. Every piece of content is selling something - to convince you of something.

3. Market Where You’re Going - Not Where You Are. This is one that’s important to the personal, and/or to the new or nascent brand. This is similar advice to dressing one level better than the people where you’re going. You want to present yourself as to where you want to be, rather than where you are.

In other words, if you have desires to be a CMO, present and describe yourself as a leader, a thoughtful, inspirational manager who thinks strategically - even if right now you do SEO or email campaigns as your job. And, finally, the most important major lesson I learned - which wouldn’t come for another 23 years, was…

4. Don't confuse the function and the form of the career I desired. What I wanted was to write, work with multimedia, perform, and tell stories as a career. It wouldn’t be until more than a decade later that I realized that I now do exactly what I dreamed of doing. It’s just the form of it is entirely different than I imagined.

Focus on the function of what you want to do - and be open to all the different forms that will ultimately present themselves to you as opportunities.

Coincidentally Coinciding: How Not to Take the Straight and Narrow Path… and Why It’s Ok”By Viveka Von RosenLinkedIn Expert, Author, & Speaker

Truth be told, I didn't actually start out to be a marketer. I thought I was going to be a professor…. until my PhD advisor told me that I would hate the life. After some deep introspection, (and a look at my other friends who were already miserable PhD's) I decided she was probably right.

So I decided to go off and fly hang gliders for a while. A lot of fun—but not the best path to income generation.

After living on the road and in a van for a few years began to get a little old, I launched into my life as a serial entrepreneur (Coincidentally coinciding with becoming a marketer).

The first business I co-owned (and my first true experience in business marketing) was a Tack Store—selling equine gear to local young riders. As a bootstrapping entrepreneur, I had a crash course in Marketing… and sales and networking and BI and lead gen and biz dev and all the acronyms.

Then I joined a local education company, Pathfinder, as their marketing director. After a few really great years, however, I found myself itching to leave Florida!

Lessons learned:Sometimes turning your hobby or passion into a business kills your enjoyment of the hobby.Being able to combine business passions in your work can result in explosive personal and business growth.Research your business partners ahead of time!Never be afraid to jump into the unknown. You can learn skills at any time, but unique learning experiences are worth their weight in gold!

From buggy Florida I moved to beautiful Colorado. However, the marketing position I thought I was getting—fell through. And I ended up selling cars. For a long time.

I was soon headhunted by a medical device company, but the co-owners of the business had a falling out—and I was caught in the middle. Lessons learned: If you are going to move across the country for a job, make sure you have it first.If you’re going to work for a family-run business, make sure the family actually likes each other.

Fortunately, I quickly landed a new job as the co-owner and general manager of a virtual officing company. Once again, I got to explore the entrepreneurial and marketing side of things.

Also, I sucked at managing.

Lessons learned:Know what you are good at. Trying to force yourself into a skill set that you suck at doesn't help anyone. Including yourself.Some people just aren’t meant to work for other people.

Around this time, I discovered LinkedIn. It was the early days and I saw an opportunity. With a leap of faith (and a certain amount of luck) I was able to quit my day job and embark upon the career I have now. That was 10 years ago. Since then I have learned an enormous amount about marketing and business! I've learned how to run a business. I've learned all about social media marketing and social selling. I've learned how to create and build a speaking career. And I've learned how to manage clients.

My path to my marketing career was not a straight one. Nonetheless, I have been granted an enormously rich education through real life experience—and I think I have come out the other end better for it.

A Marketing Career Today Means Constant ReinventionBy Mark SchaeferConsultant, Educator, and Author of The Content Code

As a young man, I couldn't have known what was ahead of me but there has certainly been a pattern to my career. Here’s a little story to illustrate it...

In the mid-1990s, companies were finally starting to learn that there was a business role for the Internet. I was a young marketer and I knew I needed to be part of this next wave. So I asked my boss if I could get an AOL dial-up account for our marketing department and put it on my expense account. He agreed, and I became the first person in my company on the Internet!

At each stage of my career I had a sense of where the world was going and where I needed to be. And I acted on it. As it turned out, about every five years I reinvented myself. I started in PR and moved to developmental sales, then enterprise sales, and eventually global marketing, eCommerce, and digital marketing.

I didn't start my latest career as a teacher, consultant, speaker, and author until I was almost 50! Why am I always on the move? Because I know life is chasing me. If I didn't re-invent myself periodically, I would lose out to people who did.

I once met an elderly man who had been in the insurance business in Florida. A lot of the regulations had changed and, to keep his license, he would have had to submit to a battery of state tests. He decided that he could no longer keep up, and he did not take the tests. Now he was miserable and lost because he was disconnected from the career he loved. I won’t let that happen to me.

The scary thing is, it’s time to reinvent myself again. I’m getting the five-year itch, and that is a good thing.

Look around you. Where do you see marketing going? Where do you need to be? Big Data.Virtual reality.Analytics.3D printing.Drone deliveries.Driverless cars.Mobile.Enterprise work management.Marketing automation. All of these will have a profound impact on your marketing job, and your work life.

As a young man I had a SENSE that I needed to change, and now I KNOW I do. You do, too. Get ahead of the curve. Be ready when your company needs to you adapt to the latest trend.

Ready to get started on your reinvention?

3 Things I’ve Learned Since I Was 20-SomethingBy Ann HandleyAuthor and Chief Content OfficerMarketingProfs

1. Paths aren’t linear. When I was a child, I didn’t lie in my twin-sized bed and wish, “Someday, I’m going to be the world’s first Chief Content Officer!”

I got here through a series of left, rights, roundabouts, barrel rolls, and triple toe axels. Some of those felt like the wrong turn or an awkward move at the time. But none ultimately were – even the ones that were missteps – because even a wrong move teaches you something. Or maybe, especially a wrong move.

I quit jobs with steady paychecks to freelance full-time.

I took gigs I wasn’t really into just for the money. I’ve worked for free because I felt in my gut that it would ultimately pay off.

Are you thinking, “Oh sure – I was an intern, too”? I wasn’t an intern. I was a grown-up who’d already built and sold a company a few years prior. It was MarketingProfs I worked for, for free. And it did pay off. (And still is.)

2. Your rich thing is everything. When I was 8, I wrote in my diary, “I want to be a writter.” (Even then, I knew I’d always need a copyeditor to help with the spelling.) Writing is my thing. But my bigger, richer thing is clear, compelling communication, period. Clear communication. Simple but not simplistic. Respect for the recipient. Regarding an audience as a privilege.

All that is the through-line throughout my entire career as a journalist, editor, marketer, author, and speaker. I could argue that in high school it also helped me become the assistant shift manager when I worked the window at Jack in the Box. My “Drive up, please!” was hella direct, crisp, and clear. (Kidding.) (Kind of.)

Commit to your rich thing, whatever that might be. Lean into it. Learn it. Rub it all over your body and wallow in it, neck deep. Get obsessed with it. Go all in or no in. But realize…

3. You’re never 100% competent. The more you master, the more you realize you don’t know. That sounds a little depressing, doesn’t it?

As in: What’s the point of all that neck-deep wallowing when there’s so many more pools in the world in which you have yet to wallow?

Maybe. Or consider the fun of discovering all those pools in need of your wallowing body. Consider the challenge of giving it your all.

The truth is this: To stand still is to fall behind. --Mark Twain Disheartening? Or motivating? I’d say the latter.

The Time Tending to the Details Saved My @$$By Jason FallsKeynote Speaker, Consultant & AuthorSocial Marketing & Intelligence

Having grown up in the marketing world as a public relations guy in a niche industry (college athletics), I didn't gain exposure to the mainstream marketing and advertising world until my mid-30s. But being smart enough to know what I didn't know, I wrote everything down, made sure I had paperwork on everything, client's signatures and such. On the first true advertising account I handled, this turned out to be an example of being wise beyond my years.

The client was a company with an industrial product who hired my agency to help differentiate its message from the stale, predictable, boring standards in their industry. We went through 2-3 rounds of creative to come up with a campaign that really stood out and executed the first few advertisements in a couple of trade publications.

The day after the trade pubs came out, the "chief of staff" to the CEO (which should have been a warning sign of unnecessary pretentiousness) called and fired us.

Upon inquiring about the reasons, I was told that the ad campaign as an embarrassment, brought unnecessary negative attention to the company and that we were not given authorization to execute the campaign. The client was refusing to pay for about $50,000 in work.

But I forwarded the signed run flights to the client, showing them where the CEO himself had approved the creative and the ad buys and we were protected. Ironically, I don't consider myself to be a detail guy. But tending to them in that instance saved the agency and my ass.

Where will your marketing career take you?The path to marketing success is often dotted with tangents, misfires, and failures. But that path always comes back to tenacity, an ability to learn and adapt, and a healthy sense of humor. It always comes back to discovering those timeless principles getting rid of the things that hold you back, building relationships with the people you work with, and seeing where you need to be next.

About the AuthorsAnn HandleyAnn is a Wall Street Journal best-selling author, keynote speaker, and the world’s first Chief Content Officer. She has been cited in Forbes as the most influential woman in Social Media and recognized by ForbesWoman as one of the top 20 women bloggers.

Jason FallsJason is a digital strategist whose work has touched a number of large brands, including Maker’s Mark, AT&T, Cafepress and Humana, to name a few. He has co-authored two books and is a professional public speaker. Jason focuses on digital marketing with a specific niche expertise around social media and content marketing.Mark SchaeferMark is a globally-recognized blogger, speaker, educator, business consultant, and author who grows blogs at {grow}—one of the top marketing blogs in the world. He specializes in social media training and clients include both startups and global brands such as IBM, AT&T, Johnson & Johnson, Adidas, and the UK government.

Robert RoseRobert is an author, a speaker, a consultant, and the Chief Strategy Advisor for the Content Marketing Institute and a senior contributing consultant for Digital Clarity Group. He innovates creative and technical strategies for a wide variety of clientele, such as AT&T, The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, Petco, Caterpillar, ADP, Fairchild Semiconductor, and KPMG.Viveka Von Rosen Viveka is known internationally as the “LinkedIn Expert” and speaks to businesspeople on the benefits of marketing with social media. The author of LinkedIn Marketing: An Hour a Day, she is also the host of the biggest LinkedIn chat on Twitter, with over 32,000 followers and a network of over 42 million people on LinkedIn, and 82,000+ followers on Twitter.

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