Lead with Confidence: Be Hungry

People take all different types of career paths; how did you get to where you are today? 

My first role was as an SDR (sales development rep). I quickly realized that my favorite part of the job was writing our email templates and creating message cadences. I took an opportunity at that company to switch departments and work as the marketing coordinator.  

Then when I was at a small startup running customer success operations, I got to use HubSpot for the first time. I was fascinated with it and applied for an inbound specialist job at a HubSpot agency. That’s when my whole world changed.  

I felt lit up inside, and that’s when I knew I wanted to move into marketing operations. I took a specialist role and never looked back.  

What excites you most about your role today?  

We have a brand new HubSpot instance. It’s shiny and new, so I want to make sure that all of the consolidated data we brought over is clean, and all the integrations are set up properly.  

I love that you’re never building the same solution twice. It’s the same concepts and philosophies, but each circumstance is slightly different.  

And that’s where all the fun happens.  

How do you move from being an individual contributor to a leadership path?  

You have to start by advocating for yourself. Tell your manager that this is a path you want to get on.  

The rest of it is hunger. I took every spare ounce of time and energy and put it towards my goal.  

I taught myself Salesforce on the evenings and weekends because it was something I needed to advance in my career. I did freelance work and side projects to get my hands on as many different tools as possible so that I knew how to work with basically anything.  

Many marketing teams have been impacted by budget cuts recently. What are some things you’re doing now to keep your team motivated when you have to do more with less?  

It’s time to be resourceful. I would love a multi-touch attribution model tool. But for now, I can work with a data team to build it myself.  

Marketing operations professionals have very creative minds and lots of technical skills. We can build whatever we need to see us through this period.  

At the same time, I want my team to know that I have their back and to tell me when they feel overwhelmed. If they don’t have the bandwidth for that project, then I can take over. I would step up to the plate for my team any day of the week.  

The other piece right now is being firm on priorities. Projects with the lowest lift often have low impact. We need to stay focused on the projects with the highest impact first and set expectations for when we can deliver results.   

It’s the year 2023, if you’re looking back at your 23-year-old self, what advice would you give? 

You’re going to figure it out. Just be patient and then go after it. Because it’s going to be even better than you ever thought.  

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