A few months ago, I viewed a demonstration of a new ad agency “operating system” that showed how AI could take one piece of blog content and distort it endlessly into a nearly infinite number of variations to serve every platform and every language. It made me feel ill as the copy of a copy of a copy gradually lost any connection to its human origins.

An AWS study showed that already a shocking 57.1% of all the content on the web is an AI-garbled dumpster of poor quality re-purposed content. And as AI inexorably scans the web for more information to learn and grow, it’s now training on its own crappy content.

In one respect, this ocean of meh might seem intimidating. Wasn’t it hard enough to stand out in this world — and now we have bots flooding our niches with so much crap that we’ll never be found?

But this is also an opportunity because the real, the human, the content that is surprising and even a little crazy, will feel like an oasis. The content that approaches the level of human art will stand out. The marketing activations that bring people together in shared experiences will be remembered and even celebrated.

But we simply can’t keep doing what we’ve always been doing. Competent doesn’t cut it. Competence doesn’t create conversations. Competent is ignorable.

This new AI marketing reality demands human audacity. So let’s get to it.

The place for humans in a pandemic of dull

Last week, I was given an incredible gift that I want to share with you.

Douglas Burdett, the legendary host of The Marketing Book podcast, came out of retirement to interview me about these topics — the core of my new book Audacious: How Humans Win in an AI Marketing World. The interview was part of a global livestream (you can see it here).

This discussion was so wonderful that I turned the recording into a special podcast episode for you. We cover:

• What are the strategies for human-based marketing in an AI-dominant world?
• How do humans unleash the revolutionary power of “everyday awe” in our businesses?
• Why AI creates a “pandemic of dull” that can only be overcome by human ingenuity.

… and much more.

It’s an incredibly fascinating show, and I hope you’ll join in by clicking here:

Click here to enjoy Marketing Companion Episode 309

Please support our sponsor, who brings you this fantastic episode.

Bravo for Brevo!

This episode is brought to you by Brevo (formerly Sendinblue). Brevo gives you the tools to attract, engage, and nurture customer relationships.

Now, any business can build automated customer experiences, email marketing workflows, and landing pages that guide your customer to your main message. We are here to support businesses successfully navigating their digital presence to strengthen their customer relationships.

Go to https://www.brevo.com/marketingcompanion to sign up for Brevo for free and use the code COMPANION to save 50% on your first three months of Brevo’s Starter & Business plan!

Illustration courtesy MidJourney

The post How AI is creating a pandemic of dull (and what to do about it!) appeared first on Schaefer Marketing Solutions: We Help Businesses {grow}.

I am writing this post BEFORE the 2024 U.S. election results. So I don’t know at this moment who won or lost or what chaos might ensue. But in any event, I wanted to share a hopeful thought about my country.

Both sides treated this election as a potential apocalypse. Everything is on the line. The nation will collapse if the wrong party wins. I was astonished by a video where a woman was asked what she would do if her candidate were not elected, and she said, “I would kill myself.” Let’s hope this was an exaggeration. But no matter how the election turned out, half the country is depressed right now and probably believes America is in irreparable decline.

This post is for you.

America is still becoming

I read a historical novel and was reminded of the state of America in the 1920s — just 100 years ago:

• Crime gangs ruled America’s largest cities.
• Life expectancy in the U.S. was 54 years compared to about 78 today.
• Black Americans couldn’t shop, dine, or live in the same places as other Americans. Terror and lynchings against people of color were common in some places.
• Most of our urban rivers and streams were open sewers.
• By the end of the decade, the Great Depression had started, and 25% of the country was unemployed.

In other words, America was a shit show.

Arguably, the history of the country has been a continuum of shit shows. Roughly 2% of the population lost their lives in the Civil War. We made it through two world wars, the assassination of presidents, the trauma of Vietnam, Covid, and Sept. 11, 2001.

We stood tall, the country moved forward.

The U.S. boasts an innovative and resilient economy that is the world’s envy. We live longer and better than our grandparents did, and our air and water are much cleaner. Our universities and companies are magnets for global talent. We lead the world in space exploration, technological research, and medical breakthroughs. The cultural impact of our media, music, and sports flows through the world. It would take more than a presidential candidate to screw all this up.

All the evidence you need of the hope of America is gathering at the southern border. Suffering people from everywhere risk everything to get here—to work, to raise their children, to make a future. Neither Russia nor China have this problem.

I once hosted a friend from Africa and asked him what the biggest surprise was for him in America. He said, “You shower your lawns with clean drinking water.” That puts things in perspective.

If your candidate lost and the country looks like a shit show, you might be feeling hopeless. I hope you can take some small comfort by zooming out to see the wider view of American history. America is a story that is still unfolding. America is still becoming. We have weathered every crisis and can still be the country of hope and dreams.

Need a keynote speaker? Mark Schaefer is the most trusted voice in marketing. Your conference guests will buzz about his insights long after your event! Mark is the author of some of the world’s bestselling marketing books, a college educator, and an advisor to many of the world’s largest brands. Contact Mark to have him bring a fun, meaningful, and memorable presentation to your company event or conference.

Follow Mark on Twitter, LinkedIn, YouTube, and Instagram

Illustration courtesy MidJourney

The post America is still becoming appeared first on Schaefer Marketing Solutions: We Help Businesses {grow}.

Harbour Space University describes itself as “The State of the Art University for Technology, Entrepreneurship, and Design.” But over two years, when I taught online classes for them, I also learned that it is home to some of the hungriest, most ambitious, and brightest students anywhere.

I was delighted and honored to be invited to provide a short commencement speech for the students at their Bangkok campus. It’s the first time I’ve ever done a commencement speech, and I provided some advice I’ve never mentioned before. It is certainly advice that’s especially relevant today …

Hello to my friends at Harbor Space, and congratulations on this special day.

I get to know quite a few university students around the world. My books are used as textbooks at more than 70 universities, and I am often invited to give guest lectures or Zoom in for Q&A sessions. But any time I start talking about students around the world, I always say that the students at Harbour Space are my favorite.

But the reason for that characterization might be something that is unexpected. Sure, you’re smart. You’re ambitious. Many of you are even a lot of fun. But look, there are smart, ambitious, and fun students everywhere.

The thing that distinguishes you is enthusiasm. I saw it in your work in class and the questions that you asked. I saw it in the interactions you have with each other, and how you worked together on projects.

And today, I’d like to tell you a personal story about how I learned that this is such an essential quality in the workplace.

A cold, lonely job!

When I graduated from college, my first job was in the marketing department of a big Fortune 100 company. But I had the worst job in the department! My job was to get to the office before 7 a.m. each day and go through business publications, looking for news about our customers and our competitors and summarize these findings in a document for our executives before they arrived at work.

That might not sound too bad, except when you realize this was before the internet. This was before Google. I was literally looking through paper publications.

But it gets worse. I was a young guy who didn’t have any money. So I couldn’t afford to park in the city. I had to park outside the city and walk about 20 minutes to work each morning in the freezing cold and dark. I had to walk alone across a very long bridge and the wind would just cut right through me! I would get to work so early that I’d be the first one in the building. I’d be all alone in the dark with the only office lit up in the office tower and I’d plow through these journals to create my summary.

In my first performance review, my boss said, “Mark, everyone knows you have the worst job in the whole department. But you’re doing great because you’re always enthusiastic. When you’re enthusiastic, you make the people around you better — they’re enthused about your enthusiasm. It spreads. it’s contagious. You make people better colleagues, better team members, even better leaders.”

He said. “This quality that you have, this enthusiasm, will serve you well throughout your life. It makes you special. It makes you different. It helps you stand out.”

Learned enthusiasm

And here’s one of the things I learned through the experience. Sometimes, even when you do jobs that you don’t like, even when you have the worst job in the department, you can kind of trick yourself into having a positive energy and pretend to be enthusiastic. And if you pretend long enough, the energy kicks in, and you start to believe it because you see the positive effect on others.

Gratitude triggers enthusiasm. I would remember that cold and lonely trudge across the bridge was not a forever thing. I was lucky to have an opportunity to prove myself. I was making new friends and business contacts. My work was appreciated. And even though the job meant early mornings, I was learning a lot about our company and its competitors that would help me be a better marketer in the future.

Enthusiastic leaders dispense hope. Even when you’re in the middle of a terrible job, even if you’re at a time that might seem bleak. Leaders dispense hope. And that is especially important in the world today.

Congratulations to all of you. Go forward with enthusiasm and best wishes on your career journey.

Mark Schaefer is the executive director of Schaefer Marketing Solutions. He is the author of some of the world’s bestselling marketing books and is an acclaimed keynote speaker, college educator, and business consultant. The Marketing Companion podcast is among the top business podcasts in the world. Contact Mark to have him speak at your company event or conference soon.

Follow Mark on Twitter, LinkedIn, YouTube, and Instagram.

Original illustration courtesy Unsplash.com

The post My commencement address: Enthusiasm as competitive advantage appeared first on Schaefer Marketing Solutions: We Help Businesses {grow}.

by Sonia Hunt, {grow} community member

It took me almost dying for a fourth time to get serious about my health and well-being.

At age three, I was diagnosed with severe food allergies, asthma, and environmental allergies – the trifecta nobody wants.

I managed my diagnosis the best I could while hiding it from the workplace for decades because it did not offer me the psychologically safe environment that I required.

Over the years, I rose up the ranks to Chief Marketing Officer, still keeping my personal and professional lives separate. This brought a double whammy of stress, anxiety, and unhealthy behaviors from both sides, which I somehow survived through.

In 2008, I found myself on the emergency room table for a fourth time in anaphylaxis and almost dead. The diagnosis was that it was a severe food allergy reaction, and it left me with hives all over my body for the next year of my life.

There was no way I could hide this from my CEO or my team anymore.

This incident forced me to be real about my health situation, become empowered to live in my truth, and get serious about improving my health and well-being in a way that could finally see me thriving across work-health-life.

I wanted to stop “surviving.” I wanted to see myself thriving.

And so, I began what became a new journey to optimal health and well-being, breaking down personal and professional compartments, advocating for myself and my needs, getting help when I needed it, and leading my teams by example by taking care of myself first and foremost and promoting they do the same.

As I look at the world today, I’m guessing this is a very good time to write about marketing career burnout and YOUR HEALTH.

Marketing career burnout and you 

Ten years ago, there was no talk of workplace well-being. Many of us grappling with health challenges endured a silent struggle behind closed doors, striving to maintain well-being while the corporate world demanded the separation of our personal and professional lives.

That thinking was shattered with the pandemic.

Today, there’s no more compartmentalization, and Gen Z rocked that torch in this fight against employers.

Marketers, in particular, have been through too much pain in too short of a time. We’ve been trying to manage everything as best we can — pandemic catastrophes, new rules of marketing, remote work, layoffs, crazy customer behavior, and this little thing called AI. I am exhausted. And you probably are, too.

“The work cannot suffer,” said my former CEO … but here’s what he really meant: The people could suffer.

I’ll venture to say the Marketing Leader has the worst job today.

Others haven’t agreed with me, but they aren’t marketers! There is no career on earth that has changed so quickly.

And it’s not just the hard skills. You’re required to evolve in new ways – with strong inner/core skills, including resilience and adaptability – and almost immediately required to be the expert in them.

Marketing career burnout is real, my friends. The data shows it, and I know it from personal experience.

Today, as the lines between personal and professional are blurred, the holistic well-being of Marketing Leaders becomes paramount.

Why? I believe the skills and mindset cultivated in the field of marketing align well with the principles of Healthy Leadership, making Marketing Leaders natural candidates to champion a culture of well-being, collaboration, and adaptability within their organizations.

But to champion this within your organization, you must first be healthy yourself.

Marketing leader, healthy leader

Healthy Leadership is about a simple formula:

• For your customers to thrive, the business must thrive.
• For the business to thrive, your people need to thrive.
• For your people to thrive, their leader must thrive.
• For you to thrive, you must prioritize your health and well-being first.

Yes, it’s that simple. Because, if you don’t, how can you:

• Be your best?
• Enjoy your work?
• Make conscious decisions?
• Drive the change you need?
• Lead healthily and by example?
• Be resilient to changing dynamics?
• Build long-term, valuable relationships?
• Adapt to the intricacies of business today?

For personal and career longevity, it’s no longer a nice-have to be healthy and well; it’s a must-have.

Being a Healthy Leader significantly expands your capacity to navigate dynamic landscapes, engage stakeholders, manage changing narratives, and cope with a need to be constantly “on” in a new remote-first work environment.

Beating marketing career burnout isn’t just a great personal decision. It’s a necessary business decision.

In my own journey as a Chief Marketing Officer who managed in a high-stress environment, I discovered an approach that seemed to be right under my nose. I could apply my best marketing skills to improve my personal health and well-being!

You’re the product

Your success as a marketer depends on vision, strategy, and execution that grows customers and your business.

Those same skills can be used to grow and improve your personal health and well-being using a simple formula: “Define + Implement + Analyze.”

With my engineering background, I’m all about systems that help us get to an optimal state – whether that be for the business or myself.

I realized the systems I used in marketing could easily be applied to my personal health with one slight twist: Think of yourself as a ‘Product.’

When you’re marketing a product (or service), there’s a systematic way to go about taking that product to a high growth stage.

In that process, you’re defining vision, current state, challenges, optimal state, and a set of strategies or tactics to achieve optimal state.

Then, you implement those strategies and collect data that will then be analyzed to see how far you are from the optimal state, tweaking the strategies in a cyclical process until you achieve the optimal state.

This works in marketing, and it can work for your health as well.

Applying marketing principles to health

Let’s look at three familiar marketing steps and apply them to your health.

1) DEFINE
Like defining a vision for your marketing, this step is about defining the vision you see for your health by identifying three things:

1. Key Challenges: what health challenges are you currently facing?
2. Optimal State: what does the optimal outcome look like for each challenge?
3. Tactics: what strategies will you put into place to improve each challenge?

2) IMPLEMENT
Define a set of strategies or tactics you can put into action to improve your health.

3) ANALYZE
Just as you would analyze marketing data, this step involves tracking the effectiveness of implemented health strategies, tweaking them as needed, and working toward desired outcomes

Let’s look at an example of one of the things I often hear from my executive coaching clients: “I feel stressed daily, but don’t know how to reduce it.”

Applying marketing principles to stress

1) DEFINE

• Key Challenges:
  • “I feel stress daily, but don’t know how to reduce it.”
• Optimal State:
  • Awareness: I know when I feel stress.
  • Management: I know the steps to reduce stress
• Strategies/Tactics: can be determined with help of a health coach or healthcare professional.
  • Physical health: Nutrition
  • Mental health: Mental Health fitness
  • Emotional health: Meditation
  • Spiritual health: Self-care activities

2) IMPLEMENT: the actions in this example are scientifically known to reduce stress.

• Nutrition — Primarily eat plant-based foods during weekdays
• Mental health — Therapy 2x/month
• Emotional health — 10 minutes daily meditation morning and night
• Spiritual health/Self-care — Walk for 10 minutes after every meal.

3) ANALYZE

• Track actions: keep track of what’s working, what’s not, how you’re feeling in a spreadsheet or app.
• Adjust what is needed to get to the desired outcome of reducing stress.

Then, repeat this system for every health challenge that you want to improve.

Over time, you’ll begin to determine what’s working for you and what’s not. Do more of what works and less of what doesn’t. In harmony, the strategies and tactics that are working will begin to, in this case, reduce stress because you’re eating nutritiously, exercising, more self-aware, meditating, etc.

This 3-step system guides you through defining awareness, management steps, and specific strategies such as nutrition, mental health fitness, meditation, and self-care activities for reducing stress.

This systematic approach aligns seamlessly with the visionary, strategic, and tactical facets of successful marketing work. Run this system through anything in your life, and you’ll realize that you can use your day skills to improve your health and well-being.

A thriving marketer leader

Marketing is a journey of perpetual adaptation, resilience, and, most importantly, self-care.

The truth becomes evident: when you, the marketing leader are healthy, your team thrives, and the business attains unprecedented heights of success.

Prioritizing your well-being creates a narrative that extends far beyond the metrics and strategies of the corporate world. You become a beacon of inspiration internally and externally. Your decisions, fueled by clarity and mindfulness, set the precedent for a work environment and culture of prosperity.

As the complexities of the marketing landscape continue to accelerate, the simple truth remains – personal health is the cornerstone of effective leadership.

It’s a journey of acknowledging the challenges, implementing proactive strategies, and recognizing that a healthy leader isn’t just an individual accomplishment; it’s a strategic imperative for the flourishing of teams and the endurance of businesses.

As you struggle with marketing career burnout, let one truth guide your way – thriving through health is not just a choice: it’s the essence of marketing leadership today. 

Sonia Hunt is a Fractional Chief Marketing Officer, Executive and Health Coach, Best-Selling Author, and TEDx Speaker in Health and Wellness. Her mission is to create a world in which everyone can thrive by building a foundation of personal health and well-being. For business inquiries, email sonia@soniahunt.com or visit soniahunt.com

Illustration courtesy Unsplash.com

The post Experiencing marketing career burnout? Read this. appeared first on Schaefer Marketing Solutions: We Help Businesses {grow}.

In 2019, I published my most popular book, Marketing Rebellion: The Most Human Company Wins. Chapter 8 included a Manifesto for Human Marketing that became a guidepost for a generation of marketers who aspired to do something greater than trick people into clicking links. The Manifesto was a blueprint for human marketing at scale, and it became a sensation.

Almost every marketing conversation these days is about AI. Five years after I wrote the Manifesto, I thought it would be interesting to test the theory. How do these ideas hold up in a world swerving toward non-human marketing priorities?

On the new episode of The Marketing Companion, Dennis Yu and I dissect the 10 points of the Manifesto and debate the relevance of human marketing at scale.

This is an entertaining and thought-provoking debate that puts human marketing to the test.

By the way, you can download a colorful, hand-drawn edition of the 10-point Manifesto HERE.

Click here to listen to Marketing Companion Episode 272

Please support our sponsors who bring you this amazing episode!

Bravo for Brevo!

This episode is brought to you by Brevo (formerly Sendinblue). Brevo gives you the tools to attract, engage, and nurture customer relationships.

Now any business can build automated customer experiences, email marketing workflows, and landing pages that guide your customer to your main message. We are here to support businesses successfully navigating their digital presence in order to strengthen their customer relationships.

Go to https://www.brevo.com/marketingcompanion to sign up for Brevo for free and use the code COMPANION to save 50% on your first three months of Brevo’s Starter & Business plan!

Build Your Brand with the Architects

Introducing a research-first podcast that builds revenue, not condos — The Marketing Architects!  Keep up with the biggest marketing trends and news through discussions based in marketing, psychology, and economics research. Along the way, learn about marketing accountability, category leadership, brand-building, and much more. Featuring a team of experienced marketers whose blueprints for success are marketing strategies that have actually been proven to work.

The post Is it possible to achieve human marketing at scale? appeared first on Schaefer Marketing Solutions: We Help Businesses {grow}.

I recently engaged in an energized LinkedIn discussion with Frank Prendergast and Jason Ranalli. We were trying to discern the “Milli Vanilli Line” when it comes to personal disclosure and AI. Never heard of it? It’s probably going to impact you soon, so let’s dive into it …

How much authenticity can we lose?

The debate began with Frank’s comment on my recent blog post (Where humans thrive in the hierarchy of AI content):

“If I read a blog post from someone on the assumption it’s written by them, and I find out it was actually AI, I’ll feel cheated,” Frank said, “like I’ve been a victim of the old bait-and-switch.

“But where’s my line? Is 20% AI OK? 40%? 60? I have no idea. And how would it even be measured?

“Will that question be a thing of the past when AI is ubiquitous?”

How much authenticity are we willing to lose?

ChatGPT makes everyone a competent writer, just like the calculator made everyone competent at math in the 1980s. We don’t feel compelled to declare to the world that we use a calculator to do our taxes or run a business. When does AI simply become … life?

The Milli Vanilli Line

Now let’s get to the Milli Vanilli part.

In 1989, Milli Vanilli rose from obscurity to superstardom almost overnight. Their debut album sold over 8 million copies and spawned three Number One singles. All of that was swept into the dustbin of pop history by disgrace.

By the time Milli Vanilli accepted their Grammy award for Best New Artist in 1990, many in the music business had suspected something was wrong with this duo. It was soon revealed the two singers — Rob Pilatus and Fabrice Morvan — never sang on any of their recordings and lip-synced live performances. The ruse torpedoed the act – radio stations stopped playing their songs, fans destroyed their records, and the Grammys rescinded their award for the only time in history.

Milli Vanilli became cultural shorthand for hubris and deceit.

Jason Ranalli provided his observation:

“Anyone remember Milli Vanilli back in the 80s? BIG scandal because we all felt cheated that they didn’t actually sing the songs themselves — they had zero part in the production other than lip-syncing and dancing.

“How did the world react? We rejected them entirely and stripped them of their Grammy.

“What are we doing now with AI content? Well, the line is somewhere between singing yourself and a TON of auto-tune/effects.

“Perhaps AI ends up drawing the same muddy lines of authenticity.”

The fellas in Milli Vanilli were clear-cut cheats. An absolute. But how do we interpret “cheating” in a world where everyone can get an AI-assist on their writing, their voice, their music, and even a LinkedIn headshot? Let’s look at a couple of scenarios.

Crossing the Milli Vanilli Line

Weeks after ChatGPT entered the scene, a friend asked me to help promote his new book, which I discovered was entirely written by ChatGPT. Literally, he had just cut and pasted responses to prompts into a manuscript. There was no human commentary, editing, or insight whatsoever.

Although he was transparent about the AI assist, he put his name on the book as the author.

I told him I would not promote the book and observed that this was the very worst use of ChatGPT imaginable. In essence, he was lip-synching his book. He crossed the Milli Vanilli Line.

Example two: I have a friend who, by her own admission, is a terrible writer. Once she discovered ChatGPT, she told me that she could put her ideas into this machine and create serviceable content for the first time in her life.

“I can blog every day,” she exclaimed, “I could even write a book!”

This is the beauty of AI — unleashing a new creative power in a person with a creative deficit. She’s not lip-synching. She’s the author of her work with a little auto-tune to keep her on key!

In between these two extremes, we face nuanced ethical decisions about ownership, authorship, and authenticity.

We face these decisions now

Today, or in the near future, every one of us will have an opportunity to cross the Milli Vanilli Line.

What percent of AI work can we still claim as ours, as “authentic?”

I haven’t used AI in any of my writing. My blog posts are my stories and observations and insights about our marketing world. It’s faster and easier just to be “me” than try to prompt a bot into it! Could AI have written this post? No, at least not as effortlessly as me pecking on a keyboard for an hour. I am uniquely connecting dots, creating something unique, insightful, and connected to my own life experience.

But what about my next book? Could I edge towards the Milli Vanilli Line?

My last book, Belonging to the Brand was finished about a month before ChatGPT was unleashed. One of my first AI experiments was to ask ChatGPT to write an essay based on an idea from the book, in the voice of Mark Schaefer, with academic references. It did it. It did it well … and in five seconds.

It would have taken me a day to write that essay. So in the future, I’d feel stupid not to use AI to some degree and save days, or even weeks, of my life!

But another choice might be … to be stupid and keep doing it the hard way. Or, maybe it’s the right way — to just always be me. Perhaps my reward is in the toil that comes with authenticity.

I never want to explain to somebody how close I am to the Milli Vanilli Line.

Mark Schaefer is the executive director of Schaefer Marketing Solutions. He is the author of some of the world’s bestselling marketing books and is an acclaimed keynote speaker, college educator, and business consultant. The Marketing Companion podcast is among the top business podcasts in the world. Contact Mark to have him speak at your company event or conference soon.

Follow Mark on Twitter, LinkedIn, YouTube, and Instagram.

The post When do you and ChatGPT cross the Milli Vanilli Line? appeared first on Schaefer Marketing Solutions: We Help Businesses {grow}.

We recently had a lively discussion in the RISE community about the advantage of spending time in the corporate world before taking an entrepreneurial leap. Several people in my community have experience with large companies, and we all had the same conclusion: the advantage of having a job before doing your own thing can be life-changing.

Since I have this conversation with a lot of young people who dream of starting a business, I thought I would put these ideas down in a blog post that I can use as a teaching tool in the future!

The advantage of having a job

Almost without exception, I recommend working in a company environment for at least five years before starting your own thing.

Some of the themes that came out of our community discussion:

Financial buffer

Having a steady job allows you to build a financial safety net so you can pursue your dream in a steady and patient manner.

For example, one person I know saved up $20,000 in a job at a university before starting her own business. At the university, she was learning relevant skills on-the-job, and, as an employee, was eligible for free classes in entrepreneurial business.

Shortly after she made the leap to start her own business, the pandemic hit. That financial buffer helped her get through the hard times, and her business has been a great success in spite of the crisis.

Education

Most companies offer allowances for professional development. These courses and conferences can be even more important than a college education because they can provide specific skills and professional contacts that can lead to success later.

I was in the corporate world for more than two decades and received company-sponsored education in marketing, organizational development, business strategy, supply chain management, statistics, law, and HR which helped me become a well-rounded and prepared entrepreneur.

Confidence

I recently had lunch with a person who worked with me in the corporate world. We had great careers in the corporate world and had made our own paths in the world. But both of us remarked that the challenges we faced in a corporate setting helped us become more confident out on our own.

“I didn’t realize it until I left the company,” she said. “But working on big projects and big problems with a team gave me confidence when I was out on my own.”

If you start a company without working in a job first, you might “think” you can do it, but having some business experience under your belt will help you KNOW you can do it!

Exposure to professional experiences

When I worked for a big company, I visited diverse customer locations, had a chance to visit foreign countries, and work alongside smart people in finance, transportation, and business development. I had great bosses and mentors who helped me grow and mature as a business professional.

All of these experiences provided insights into how all these functions and systems worked together to create value for a customer.

Network of relevant friends

When I left the corporate world, three of my first customers were friends I had met through my company job. Having a job lets you plant the seeds for a new customer network, financial base, and advisory network that can help support your new venture.

On one massive customer project for my new business, I actually hired colleagues from my ex-company as partners on the assignment. They were subject matter experts, and we already had a good work history together.

Emotional intelligence

Leading a business is more than learning about systems and processes. It’s also about learning to handle conflict, negotiate a contract, and respond to employee issues. In the end, these “soft skills” might make or break your company more than the success or failure of your business idea!

Last thoughts

Working for a company might seem old-fashioned and maybe even unpopular with most young people. I know there is a lot of status attached to the gig economy and the hustle culture.

The advantage of having a job for a few years is that you will be MUCH more prepared to start your own business compared to any experience you would have at college or courses you could pick up on the internet.

Going to college will give you the skills to start a career. But working in a corporate environment can provide the experience, connections, and resources to start a business.

Mark Schaefer is the executive director of Schaefer Marketing Solutions. He is the author of some of the world’s bestselling marketing books and is an acclaimed keynote speaker, college educator, and business consultant. The Marketing Companion podcast is among the top business podcasts in the world. Contact Mark to have him speak at your company event or conference soon.

Follow Mark on Twitter, LinkedIn, YouTube, and Instagram.

Thanks to Drew from Toothpaste for Dinner for the cartoons!

The post The advantage of having a job before starting your own business appeared first on Schaefer Marketing Solutions: We Help Businesses {grow}.

I’ve had the most amazing career. For example, I’ve …

• Published ten books that people love.
• Graduated with two master’s degrees
• Earned seven patents
• Worked with amazing companies like Dell, Johnson & Johnson, and Adidas.
• Been a speaker on some of the world’s biggest stages.

But the very best achievement I’m most proud of is how I brought 30 people together for an entirely new way to talk about marketing. A meeting that created a bond.

Does that seem weird? Well, it’s a pretty great story that had its origins in 2010 and is still going strong today.

In this week’s Marketing Companion episode, for the first time, I tell the inside story of The Uprising retreat. I’m peeling back the curtain of a fascinating part of my life that exposes

• The desperate step I took early in my career when nobody would hire me as a conference speaker.
• The reason I canceled a successful marketing event called Social Slam, even after it had grown to 700 attendees.
• How writing Marketing Rebellion changed the direction of my life.
• Why I rented an entire castle in Ireland this year.

I brought some friends along to help me tell this tale!

Chad Parizman was a digital marketing leader for HGTV and Pfizer who now creates and produces branded podcasts through his company Ader Communications.

Samantha Stone is the CEO and Founder of The Marketing Advisory Network. Samantha also launched a new course called Master the Art of Finding and Using Buyer Insights.

This is a fun, insightful, and unusual story, and I think you’ll love it! Ready? Here we go:

Click on this link to listen to hear Episode 265

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I don’t believe anyone can truly be an expert any more. Any hope of expertise has been overrun by the malignant complexity of our world.

There is no single human who understands the internet or the economy or teenagers. I recently read an article about a new scientific discipline devoted to understanding how Artificial Intelligence is making its decisions. Wait … didn’t we build the thing? We don’t even understand our own machines.

So there really are very few experts in the world. But you probably already know this.

The important question is, how can you remain an effective leader without being an expert? I will provide a suggested strategy today.

Because … I’m an expert! Just kidding.

An effective leader asks the right questions

When I was in graduate school, I had the honor of studying for three years under the legendary Peter Drucker. He used to tell us that an effective leader didn’t need to have all the right answers. They needed to have the right questions.

This is profound and true, especially today.

My friend Joe Waters passed this quote along: “That’s all any of us are: amateurs. We don’t live long enough to be anything else.” – Charlie Chaplin

So true.

The pace of change in the business world is breathtaking. It’s impossible to keep up, but it’s reasonable to have a goal of knowing enough to pose the right questions.

To ask the right questions and lead your business, you need enough familiarity with the changes in your industry to know:

• What is possible?
• What is probable about its future?
• How is it applicable to my business and industry?

And the only way to know these things is to dabble. With courage, you must become an intrepid explorer, immersing yourself in unfamiliar worlds to understand these questions. Part of my recent journey:

• I’m not an expert in NFTs, but I have a digital wallet, bought a few NFTs, and created one. I even tried to publish an NFT book, but the tech world isn’t there yet.
• I learned to create AI-generated images like the one used in this post and I’m experimenting a little each day with ChatGPT.
• I’m no metaverse expert, but I own a digital penthouse on Spatial and meet my friends there. We are learning what is possible to do in an immersive digital world.
• In the past 24 months, I launched a creator coin (and watched it crash), started a community on Discord, and went to a conference about the creator economy.

I’ll never be an expert in any of these things, but I know enough about them to talk to a customer, ask the right questions, and determine how these opportunities might fit (or not fit) in their marketing strategy. And then we can experiment.

What this means for you

I recently did a 1:1 coaching call with a person five years younger than me. She said, “I give up.” She was simply overwhelmed by the rate of change in the world. I understand. It IS overwhelming.

“Overwhelm” is not a function of age. Whether you’re 18 or 68, the world is changing at the same rate. This moment we are spending together right now is the moment of slowest technological change you will ever experience. The overwhelm problem speeds ahead — for everybody.

This means you and I need a new mindset to survive and thrive.

My hope is that you don’t give up. Keep dabbling. Keep trying new things, even if they seem unfamiliar and scary. Learn so we can unlearn.

I explained in my book Cumulative Advantage that every shift in the status quo represents opportunity. Understanding the shift — not necessarily mastering it — can lead to breakthrough innovations, new business models, and momentum for your business.

Forget about having all the answers. But, you can certainly have the right questions.

And that’s enough.

Mark Schaefer is the executive director of Schaefer Marketing Solutions. He is the author of some of the world’s bestselling digital marketing books and is an acclaimed keynote speaker, college educator, and business consultant.  The Marketing Companion podcast is among the top business podcasts in the world. Contact Mark to have him speak at your company event or conference soon.

Follow Mark on Twitter, LinkedIn, YouTube, and Instagram.

Illustration generated by MidJourney

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