Episode Summary
If you feel like you’ve outgrown your current marketing role and you know more than your boss, where should you turn? How do you take the next step along your career path?
One option is to discuss the possibility of taking on more challenging tasks or responsibilities within your current role. If that’s not possible, then you may want to connect with other leaders in your organization and figure out how to get experience in other areas of the business.
When it comes to career growth, your path doesn’t have to be linear.
In the first episode of The Anonymous Marketer, Nick Bennett welcomes Corrina Owens, the Senior ABM Manager at Gong. During the conversation, Nick and Corrina answer two big career growth-related questions sent in by our anonymous marketers.
- How can you find a mentor? Especially when you don’t live in a big city like San Francisco or New York. People are always stressing the importance of mentors but fall silent when I ask for working examples.
- It recently hit me that I don’t learn from my boss anymore. I actually know more than her. The marketing is very young in experience. But I am not. I can probably cruise here for a while, but what would you personally do if you were in my shoes?
For those interested in being part of our future episodes, visit motionagency.io/anonymous. We look forward to your questions.
Guest Profile
- Name: Corrina Owens
- What she does: Corrina is the Senior ABM Manager at Gong.
- Company: Gong
- Noteworthy: Corrina is a revenue marketer focused on developing and leading content generation across multiple media platforms.
Key Insights
- Seek mentorship but remain your most devoted cheerleader. There's nothing like a solid support system, whether private or professional. But when you're entering the job market, it is next to impossible to expect someone else to push you. Instead, you must make the first move. Remember, you are the initiator of change in your career. ''You cannot make any assumptions that anybody's looking out for you, ever. You have to look out for yourself and make that super intentional. [...] I am Corrina's advocate. And I'm grateful for people in the community who come to me when they would like to work with me. But for a long time, it is a grind of being your biggest fan and advocate. Believe it or not, that's what it takes to get you to where you want to be.''
- Don't be afraid to share your point of view. It will bring you closer to like-minded individuals, including mentors. It may seem scary to enter someone's office and say, "I would like to discuss my career plans with you," or do it on a platform like LinkedIn. But it may surprise you how open people are when you are willing to grow professionally. So, don't hesitate to ask questions, reach out to successful people from your field, and share your perspectives, especially on social media. ''Expose yourself to a lot of different things and take notes of what is resonating the most with you. And then, take five minutes to write down why it resonated with you and your unique viewpoint on why it resonated with you, and then start putting it out in person, on LinkedIn, in comments, and in threads in different communities and forums. You'll start to see the world around you. It'll start to attract you to like-minded individuals.''
- Your career path doesn't have to be linear. For instance, a marketer is expected to first be an individual contributor, followed by a director, a VP, and finally, a CMO. But what if someone wants a different path? ''I'm amazed by people that go out and write books or create LinkedIn courses. [...] There are many ways you can think about your job. [...] The more you explore and test and can hone in on like, 'Hey, this is what's resonating and what's working,' that's when you find the honey pot of, 'Okay, now I can lean into this area.' And you can choose to stick with an organization. You can choose to do it on your own. You can choose to do both at the same time. That's nobody's freaking business. So, I keep what is possible as limitless as I can in my mind, and when I do that, things start to come.''
Episode Highlights
The Concept of Mentorship Is Not Set in Stone. Instead, It Depends on Individual Aspirations
”I always tell people: be intentional and direct with yourself about what you are looking to get out of the mentorship, whether you’re the mentor or the mentee. And then, be intentional about who you’re seeking out for it.
Even though I was surrounded by a lot of people that looked like me growing up in my career, I related to none of them. They grew up in successful environments. They had a lot of family connections. They went to certain quality schools, and I wasn’t afforded that.
Their mentorship wasn’t going to be as impactful for me because the way we related to one another and the way we go about life is not the same.”
How Do You Find a Good Mentor
”There is no one medium or source that I solely get all my information from. I listen to a variety of podcasts, […] and that fills up my mind with a lot of creative viewpoints. And then, you can start to figure out — in different LinkedIn threads or communities — who else thinks similarly to you. And you can start to form that one-on-one relationship when you start talking about your unique point of view.”
What If You Outgrow Your Team and There’s No One You Can Learn From?
”If you are choosing to stay at this company — and I imagine most people are making this choice in this economy — I would advise you to talk to other departments within the company and see if there’s maybe some projects that you can insert yourself in. […]
[Also] when you’re finding that you’re stuck with your boss, you’re not getting motivated, you’re not feeling like you’re doing your best work, search in other departments and other leaders and see if you can make an impact.
As marketers, we are inherently creative. We are forced to be analytical, so we are suited to impact areas like product. Who knows the voice of the customer better than the marketer? So imagine the impact you could have on testing out a new experience with the product or offering a product enhancement, or how we can get more users to adopt a PLG-led motion, or how we can analyze how they use this new feature. It’s endless.”
