In Over Your Head at Work? Practical Tips, Insights and Strategies to Get Over The Hump

00:00:00.000 | (upbeat music)

00:00:02.580 | - You're listening to Let's Talk Jobs,

00:00:09.440 | where we give you practical insights into jobs and careers.

00:00:13.080 | Today, we're talking about the feeling you get

00:00:16.400 | when you're in over your head.

00:00:18.600 | And I'm curious, you guys,

00:00:21.120 | have you ever taken on like a new responsibility,

00:00:23.740 | a new team, or maybe someone left

00:00:26.240 | and you absorbed their role

00:00:28.120 | and you just felt immediately like a fish out of water?

00:00:30.920 | Like what happened to you?

00:00:32.640 | How did you deal with it?

00:00:33.920 | And then what did you learn from your experience?

00:00:36.360 | - You wanna go first, Troy?

00:00:39.280 | - No, I think you should start this one off.

00:00:42.360 | - Okay, I'm happy to.

00:00:44.580 | I've definitely been in experiences

00:00:50.320 | where I've moved up a level

00:00:54.440 | or my scope has changed

00:00:56.280 | and expectations have changed.

00:00:58.640 | I think though the experience that most reflected

00:01:03.640 | a sense of being really in over my head

00:01:07.400 | was when I started my own agency.

00:01:10.280 | And I started it with a couple of colleagues

00:01:12.720 | and there was a litany of things

00:01:16.440 | that I had never done before.

00:01:19.260 | I had been a copywriter and a freelancer at times

00:01:23.720 | for at that point, almost more than 20 years.

00:01:28.160 | And so I'd worked at agencies.

00:01:31.000 | I worked in-house at large enterprises.

00:01:34.880 | I'd been an individual contributor.

00:01:36.520 | I'd been a manager.

00:01:38.240 | I'd been a director and a manager of managers.

00:01:41.000 | I'd been in part of the hiring and firing processes.

00:01:46.000 | But when you start your own business,

00:01:50.960 | and even though I had been a freelancer,

00:01:52.760 | I was more of like an individual contributor freelancer.

00:01:57.760 | And when I engaged with businesses,

00:02:00.400 | it was on a, I gave them my social security number,

00:02:05.400 | not my employer identification number,

00:02:08.640 | which is different, your EID.

00:02:10.720 | So when I started an agency,

00:02:13.200 | number one, I had to set up an LLC,

00:02:15.360 | which was completely new for me.

00:02:16.960 | And my mom, who's an accountant,

00:02:20.840 | actually helped me out with that.

00:02:22.380 | And she knew the ins and outs.

00:02:23.600 | She's like, well, you just contact this company

00:02:25.480 | and they're in, I'm in California.

00:02:27.160 | They're in Sacramento, which is the capital.

00:02:29.120 | And this is where you give them the information.

00:02:31.480 | They submit it, they walk the form over.

00:02:33.040 | So, but that was a bit of a hurdle,

00:02:34.640 | just understanding, not just getting the LLC information

00:02:39.640 | because I needed to then give it back to my first client.

00:02:44.160 | And I would say, that's where I really felt

00:02:47.280 | like I was over my head,

00:02:48.200 | where I had gotten engagement at Uber

00:02:52.540 | that was working for one of their sort of sub businesses

00:02:55.300 | called Uber for Business.

00:02:56.940 | And I got an opportunity to start an agency

00:02:58.580 | because of a unique project that came about.

00:03:00.780 | But I had to negotiate a rate.

00:03:04.220 | So the scope of the project was fairly large.

00:03:07.140 | It was refreshing their website.

00:03:10.060 | They were pivoting from a freemium to a premium model.

00:03:13.540 | They wanted a new website.

00:03:14.900 | They wanted new branding, a new sort of brand narrative.

00:03:19.240 | They wanted to do focus groups on the work.

00:03:22.920 | So that by the time it went to market,

00:03:24.520 | it had been somewhat tested.

00:03:25.920 | They wanted a lot of stuff that I had been part of teams

00:03:30.960 | that had led projects of this type

00:03:33.680 | and they had been successful.

00:03:35.040 | So I felt like, well, I knew enough

00:03:37.400 | that I could feel confident

00:03:39.400 | about moving forward in that direction,

00:03:40.880 | but negotiating a rate and it was a blended rate, right?

00:03:44.320 | So a rate for copywriting, for design, for production,

00:03:48.320 | for development, for focus group moderation, for analysis,

00:03:53.320 | for at some point along the line,

00:03:59.680 | once we had been hired for media planning.

00:04:03.280 | We also did brand strategy and brand narrative.

00:04:08.280 | All of this stuff, which I had kind of sort of done

00:04:11.940 | some part of over the course of my 20-year career,

00:04:16.620 | but I never led.

00:04:18.140 | And when you're, you know,

00:04:19.960 | I finally was able to recruit a couple of colleagues,

00:04:21.700 | really talented people on the design side

00:04:23.980 | that I worked with as partners,

00:04:26.300 | but I was there negotiating the rate

00:04:27.740 | to get them in the door.

00:04:28.620 | Meaning, what was the blended rate gonna be?

00:04:31.020 | Was it $400 an hour?

00:04:32.260 | Was it $200 an hour?

00:04:33.460 | Now, mind you, I'd never hired myself out as a freelancer

00:04:36.340 | for more than 80 or $90 an hour at the time.

00:04:40.020 | So it was a huge jump.

00:04:41.140 | And sort of just the process

00:04:44.420 | of figuring out how to do that required a lot of,

00:04:48.880 | I did a lot of research, frankly.

00:04:50.540 | I talked to people.

00:04:51.780 | I read articles and books about what to do

00:04:55.060 | when you're running a digital marketing agency.

00:04:57.580 | And so I ended up negotiating this blended rate.

00:04:59.700 | And then I had to come up with a,

00:05:01.780 | I had to sign an MSA, a master services agreement,

00:05:04.660 | master service agreement with Uber.

00:05:09.220 | And so that involved having the LLC and having insurance,

00:05:13.540 | which I had to get, business insurance.

00:05:15.540 | It was just a lot of things that I had never done before.

00:05:17.660 | And I felt like, and I was really stressed out about it,

00:05:21.060 | but it was always, it was such an exciting moment,

00:05:24.980 | I think, at the beginning for me,

00:05:26.300 | because it was all potential.

00:05:28.140 | Like, I just said yes to everything and I dove into it.

00:05:32.100 | But if I sit back and think about it,

00:05:33.820 | I was way over my head.

00:05:35.300 | I had no idea what I, well, I had never done it before.

00:05:37.820 | And it's not that I had no idea what to do,

00:05:40.900 | but I think when you're in that position

00:05:43.260 | where you have an opportunity like that,

00:05:45.840 | and you're going for it, you need to be flexible.

00:05:48.460 | In order to land on a rate that Uber could agree with,

00:05:51.980 | I had to do a lot of negotiations.

00:05:53.460 | There were weeks of negotiating back and forth

00:05:55.340 | with the primary stakeholder on the Uber side.

00:05:58.500 | And you have to be adaptable

00:06:00.440 | 'cause you're working with different people.

00:06:01.820 | There's different, there's like,

00:06:03.420 | stakeholders that have input, but not the decision.

00:06:07.740 | And it's just a lot of that being flexible

00:06:12.300 | in the moment to the conditions that you're presented with

00:06:14.380 | and having to then adapt.

00:06:16.300 | And I think, you know, as a creative, I'd never really,

00:06:19.620 | even though I'd manage people,

00:06:21.340 | managing people and running a business is totally different.

00:06:23.740 | So I'm just describing like some of the things,

00:06:25.660 | but then there's the business planning,

00:06:28.260 | there's the hiring and firing,

00:06:29.540 | there's the accounting side of it.

00:06:32.180 | There's eventually, we got a fourth partner

00:06:33.980 | who did all the financial planning

00:06:36.580 | and it's like the line item, cash flow, all that stuff.

00:06:40.020 | And yeah, if I sat back at any one point

00:06:44.860 | to think about all the things that I had to accomplish

00:06:48.060 | to get that business afloat and then keep it going,

00:06:50.660 | I was way over my head.

00:06:52.940 | Like I had no experience doing that stuff,

00:06:55.540 | but I learned by doing and I learned a lot.

00:06:59.580 | - Were you ever afraid, Jesse,

00:07:02.620 | that you would be exposed, you know,

00:07:05.100 | for not being the expert

00:07:08.340 | that your rate supposed to justify, right?

00:07:11.180 | So you negotiated blended rate.

00:07:13.140 | It assumes you have expertise,

00:07:15.340 | but obviously you know that you're in a degree

00:07:18.540 | kind of putting yourself out there,

00:07:19.740 | maybe overselling and kind of growing in a process.

00:07:22.180 | Like, was there ever like a fear

00:07:24.100 | that you wouldn't be able to meet the expectation

00:07:26.900 | or was that pressure added to yourself?

00:07:28.860 | - Of course, yeah.

00:07:31.740 | I think if I said I wasn't afraid,

00:07:35.100 | if anyone said, you know, no, I had no fear

00:07:37.900 | when presented with an opportunity

00:07:39.380 | that I didn't really have experience with

00:07:41.940 | and therefore didn't have maybe the confidence

00:07:44.740 | or the experience of going through something successfully

00:07:47.780 | or even unsuccessfully.

00:07:48.900 | So yeah, there was a lot of fear, but you know what?

00:07:51.340 | I learned to rely on other people.

00:07:52.940 | When they asked me for a media plan,

00:07:55.780 | I went out and got a media planner.

00:07:57.060 | When they asked me for,

00:07:58.500 | I think video production at one time,

00:08:01.620 | we went out and got a video production person.

00:08:04.620 | When they asked for brand strategy,

00:08:06.180 | I did as much as I could,

00:08:07.260 | but I brought in an expert to look at my work.

00:08:09.580 | You know, I produced a brand narrative

00:08:11.740 | before I presented to the client.

00:08:13.380 | On the side, I sent it out to someone I knew

00:08:15.500 | in the brand strategy world who could help me refine it.

00:08:18.620 | Then once I had that first client

00:08:20.300 | and then we were operating as business,

00:08:21.900 | there was three of us,

00:08:23.860 | in order to get more business,

00:08:25.140 | I worked through my network.

00:08:26.460 | So everyone that I worked with initially knew me.

00:08:29.660 | I wasn't over-promising.

00:08:31.340 | They knew my history.

00:08:32.980 | It wasn't until a few months had gone by

00:08:35.060 | that we started bringing in clients

00:08:36.940 | that didn't know us at all.

00:08:39.220 | And they were often startups

00:08:40.380 | who looked to our experience with,

00:08:42.700 | you know, as contributors or managers

00:08:44.540 | at larger corporations like Google and other places.

00:08:47.140 | And so that gave us credibility,

00:08:48.660 | gave me credibility, I think.

00:08:50.740 | You know, often I was the one

00:08:51.700 | doing the business development,

00:08:53.140 | meaning getting those new clients,

00:08:54.540 | like talking to them up,

00:08:55.620 | talking them up about our offer and our promise

00:08:58.340 | and what we could do.

00:09:00.340 | So certainly the fear motivated me

00:09:03.260 | to search for answers, you know,

00:09:07.140 | and be flexible and in a way that was accelerated.

00:09:11.420 | Like I wasn't waiting around to make a decision.

00:09:13.860 | You know, if a client called me up

00:09:16.220 | and we had been engaged for a little while

00:09:17.580 | and they said, there was one client

00:09:20.020 | that they engaged with us

00:09:21.020 | to do a full-scale content marketing operation.

00:09:25.620 | So it meant they were launching this business,

00:09:27.900 | they wanted to produce all this content

00:09:30.500 | to get credibility, but they had no positioning.

00:09:33.820 | So all of a sudden they wanted

00:09:34.660 | a brand positioning playbook.

00:09:36.380 | And I reached out to another colleague

00:09:39.100 | who ran specifically a brand branding agency

00:09:43.220 | and I got a playbook,

00:09:44.780 | like a template that I could use

00:09:46.940 | to then go into a workshop

00:09:48.140 | to get my new client to a place

00:09:50.500 | where they had a starting point in terms of positioning.

00:09:53.700 | And I had enough information

00:09:54.980 | and I had enough information

00:09:55.820 | and I brought in one of the people

00:09:58.380 | at this other agency

00:09:59.220 | to help guide us through that process.

00:10:00.980 | So, you know, there's always a sense

00:10:03.500 | that I could go and find somebody

00:10:05.180 | that had more expertise than I had.

00:10:06.980 | And I think that was really critical

00:10:08.220 | to know sort of how much I knew

00:10:10.220 | where the limits of my knowledge was

00:10:12.140 | and what I needed to ask, you know, for support.

00:10:14.860 | And there's a lot of people

00:10:16.500 | in the marketing community

00:10:17.340 | that are willing to help,

00:10:18.180 | especially if you're willing to pay them

00:10:19.500 | some amount of money.

00:10:20.340 | So, or, you know, even if you just need an ear,

00:10:23.260 | I think our business is very competitive

00:10:27.140 | and certainly the agency business

00:10:28.300 | is exceptionally competitive

00:10:29.420 | and you have a lot of talented creatives

00:10:32.220 | and strategists and planners

00:10:33.580 | that can really help businesses

00:10:36.900 | that often in Silicon Valley anyway,

00:10:39.020 | you see lots of startups with engineering

00:10:41.060 | or some kind of technical expertise

00:10:43.500 | that their founders bring to the table,

00:10:47.500 | but very little marketing expertise.

00:10:49.060 | And so they're really, really desperate

00:10:51.020 | for someone to understand how to tell their story

00:10:54.580 | and bring it to market

00:10:55.420 | in a cohesive, consistent way.

00:10:57.340 | So it's amazing, I think,

00:11:00.420 | how after a few years as a marketer,

00:11:02.100 | how much expertise and experience you have

00:11:04.140 | compared to the rest of the world,

00:11:05.780 | the business world.

00:11:06.620 | And I think what I would say

00:11:09.860 | to people that are starting out

00:11:10.940 | that maybe haven't done anything on their own,

00:11:13.220 | whether it's a freelance thing

00:11:14.420 | or more of a collective effort,

00:11:17.180 | like a small agency is you have experience,

00:11:21.380 | some years of experience,

00:11:22.900 | and it's given you some level of expertise.

00:11:25.060 | That's your shingle, right?

00:11:27.740 | That's the thing you put out on the door.

00:11:29.500 | And should you talk to anyone

00:11:31.980 | and let them know they might be interested,

00:11:34.420 | they spread the word,

00:11:35.660 | like these things just kind of get momentum

00:11:37.700 | on their own, I think.

00:11:38.700 | And the other thing I would say

00:11:40.980 | is as you're learning to deal with things

00:11:43.980 | that are way over your head

00:11:44.940 | that maybe you've never done before,

00:11:47.140 | and you're scared,

00:11:47.980 | you develop a narrative.

00:11:49.860 | Like the way I'm being able to talk about this process,

00:11:52.220 | I think is invaluable

00:11:53.860 | when you're going out to pitch for new business,

00:11:56.740 | or you just, like I'm doing now,

00:11:58.220 | being a consultant,

00:11:59.260 | and I wanna talk to not just potential clients,

00:12:01.980 | but current clients

00:12:03.700 | that wanna understand how to solve problems.

00:12:05.460 | Like I can bring that confidence

00:12:07.460 | and that the experience I have

00:12:10.340 | is forms a narrative that,

00:12:13.100 | you know, isn't just a straight line.

00:12:14.260 | It's yeah, there's challenges,

00:12:15.340 | there's peaks and valleys,

00:12:16.180 | but you get,

00:12:17.380 | this is how you get through that.

00:12:19.060 | It's been invaluable.

00:12:21.540 | I think to be over my head

00:12:23.020 | and to be challenged

00:12:23.940 | has been an invaluable experience.

00:12:26.580 | - There's an element of Jesse,

00:12:33.300 | what Jesse was saying there

00:12:34.300 | that brought to mind

00:12:36.780 | a couple of my favorite

00:12:40.220 | or least favorite expressions

00:12:41.700 | that you hear often around the workplace,

00:12:44.500 | especially in sort of small business,

00:12:45.980 | startup land.

00:12:47.500 | One is fake it until you make it.

00:12:49.580 | And the other is act like you've been there before.

00:12:53.780 | And I think Jesse's sort of concluding points are,

00:12:58.460 | you know, you don't need to fake who you are as a whole.

00:13:02.180 | You need to focus in on what your strengths are

00:13:05.020 | and get help around the periphery, right?

00:13:06.780 | 'Cause you're,

00:13:07.620 | even if you're feeling like you're in over your head,

00:13:13.420 | you're there for a reason

00:13:15.140 | and you need to remember what those reasons are.

00:13:17.420 | That doesn't mean you know everything about everything

00:13:20.460 | and you never will,

00:13:21.820 | but you can,

00:13:23.820 | there's resources to sort of fill in the blanks

00:13:26.420 | and nobody would expect you,

00:13:28.860 | or Jesse in this case,

00:13:30.180 | to know everything about running an agency

00:13:32.540 | right at the start, right?

00:13:33.540 | But they hired him for his experiences

00:13:37.020 | and his, you know,

00:13:38.140 | the sort of the core,

00:13:40.180 | you know, experience and talents that he had.

00:13:42.540 | So my story is a little bit different.

00:13:47.220 | I was at Logitech and you guys both knew me,

00:13:51.860 | I think in the gaming role.

00:13:54.340 | And that was, I didn't start in gaming.

00:13:56.940 | I started in the corporate marketing

00:13:59.220 | and the public relations team.

00:14:00.660 | I was a communications guy by background

00:14:03.420 | and had a desire at a certain point

00:14:06.540 | to get closer to the product

00:14:08.340 | because product marketing always fascinated me.

00:14:10.540 | So I was talking with the gaming guys,

00:14:13.340 | a lot of them were my friends

00:14:14.420 | and they had a,

00:14:17.420 | they were looking for a game developer relations manager

00:14:20.780 | to start.

00:14:21.620 | And what they liked in me

00:14:24.300 | was that I had experience with relationships

00:14:26.900 | and in doing public relations and media relations

00:14:30.020 | and specifically.

00:14:31.060 | And so partner, you know,

00:14:33.100 | partner marketing was,

00:14:34.300 | they were looking for with, you know,

00:14:35.740 | some of the big game publishers

00:14:37.340 | and game developers was not too far removed

00:14:40.860 | from the kind of work I'd done with,

00:14:42.700 | you know, public relations in the past.

00:14:44.220 | And they liked my writing ability

00:14:45.500 | because they wanted to do,

00:14:46.860 | you know, targeted newsletters

00:14:49.100 | to keep developers up to date on,

00:14:54.100 | you know, what was happening in that realm.

00:14:56.820 | But I felt completely off my skis

00:15:01.820 | when it came to gaming.

00:15:04.340 | I was not a gamer.

00:15:05.740 | Yeah, I'm a very casual gamer,

00:15:08.340 | you might say,

00:15:09.180 | but I knew nothing about the world of,

00:15:12.300 | you know, MMOs and World of Warcraft

00:15:14.340 | and first person shooters.

00:15:15.540 | And that was not my forte.

00:15:17.820 | And it was,

00:15:19.340 | I often felt like I was in over my head,

00:15:22.700 | but every time I did,

00:15:23.540 | I would try to bring myself back to like,

00:15:25.540 | you know, I'm offering something

00:15:27.180 | that's a little bit different

00:15:28.580 | as a complimentary piece to this group.

00:15:32.140 | And these guys that I work with

00:15:34.300 | are classic hardcore gamers, right?

00:15:36.540 | So they've got that piece taken care of.

00:15:38.300 | I just need to focus on what I do well

00:15:40.300 | and add that layer to what they're doing.

00:15:45.300 | But I would urge everybody if they,

00:15:48.460 | to cringe a little bit,

00:15:49.540 | if they ever hear "fake it till you make it."

00:15:51.780 | It's good to have confidence.

00:15:53.460 | It's good to believe that you can problem solve

00:15:56.540 | and fix things maybe that you haven't seen before.

00:15:59.220 | But never, I would say,

00:16:00.660 | never misrepresent who you are

00:16:02.780 | and what your experiences are.

00:16:04.620 | Trying to jump in and do it yourself

00:16:08.140 | and maybe make a mess of things.

00:16:10.180 | - I would just add,

00:16:15.020 | you know, there's something you said at the end there,

00:16:17.740 | Troy, about confidence and belief.

00:16:20.740 | And there's a difference between believing and doing.

00:16:25.420 | You know, I can believe I'm an incredible chef,

00:16:29.100 | but ask me how to make a incredible meal.

00:16:33.940 | And I can't break down the steps

00:16:35.660 | 'cause I actually don't know how to do it.

00:16:37.780 | I'm not a very good cook.

00:16:39.700 | I wouldn't know how to tell you to,

00:16:41.540 | I can boil water and things like that.

00:16:45.380 | And I think that the trick is,

00:16:48.900 | especially, and I think in our culture

00:16:50.660 | and maybe in the business culture at large,

00:16:52.900 | there's a real emphasis on confidence and belief.

00:16:56.980 | Believe in yourself, things will come true.

00:16:58.740 | Believe in the three steps to success, they'll come true.

00:17:02.700 | But there's a different type of knowledge

00:17:04.420 | and that's the knowledge of the process

00:17:06.220 | to get to those things.

00:17:07.940 | And so if you ask me, how do I,

00:17:09.900 | Jesse, how do you build a content marketing program

00:17:13.220 | that is effective over a 12-month period?

00:17:15.740 | I can break it down into the steps.

00:17:17.380 | Well, first you wanna take a look at how you're doing now

00:17:20.060 | and audit your current library and its performance.

00:17:24.420 | And you wanna look at the market and the competition

00:17:26.820 | to see what the topics are, the trends in the market

00:17:30.420 | and look at your product roadmap.

00:17:32.860 | And there's all these steps to developing a plan

00:17:36.220 | that is very different from the belief

00:17:38.460 | that I can develop a plan.

00:17:40.460 | And I think often, especially on social media sites

00:17:46.580 | like LinkedIn, there's an overemphasis in belief

00:17:50.500 | over the knowledge of actually how the process

00:17:53.780 | of something works.

00:17:54.620 | And that second type of knowledge

00:17:58.340 | is often much more important than the first one.

00:18:01.500 | Although I think, yeah, fake it till you make it.

00:18:04.060 | I don't love that.

00:18:05.620 | I think I'd like to say, know your limits.

00:18:08.380 | Know your limits and know when you need help.

00:18:12.020 | You know, and I think that's maybe a more realistic way

00:18:15.340 | to approach things.

00:18:16.660 | I think if you take on something

00:18:19.260 | and you promise to do something you can't do,

00:18:21.420 | you're likely to be frustrated

00:18:23.900 | and frustrate other people as well.

00:18:26.060 | - Yeah, I really agree.

00:18:27.300 | As a matter of fact, my example is almost the opposite

00:18:31.300 | of you guys where I knew my limits

00:18:33.820 | and I had to intentionally retract.

00:18:35.700 | So like you guys, most of my times were the fake it

00:18:42.180 | to make it or feeling in over your head.

00:18:44.420 | Usually happens for me like when I get promoted a level,

00:18:47.100 | right, my responsibilities increase or whatnot.

00:18:50.260 | And for the most part, because, you know,

00:18:53.300 | our skillsets as we get older,

00:18:54.940 | they become more broad and deep

00:18:56.900 | just 'cause you're able to expose more stuff.

00:18:59.420 | I'm usually able to mask my deficiencies

00:19:02.820 | and quickly and read up and get smart about it.

00:19:05.580 | My last role at A10 Networks didn't pan out the same way

00:19:11.780 | because, you know, for me, I'm a web marketer.

00:19:15.620 | Digital marketing is a different skillset.

00:19:18.220 | Now, web marketing is about, you know,

00:19:19.820 | pushing out content to prospect customers

00:19:23.220 | and trying to build the best experience

00:19:24.380 | to get them to engage, right?

00:19:25.420 | Now, digital marketing with paid is different.

00:19:29.660 | It's typically a demand general, right?

00:19:31.860 | And so I've been involved with search engine marketing

00:19:36.700 | and I've owned that as a discipline or whatnot,

00:19:39.020 | but the broader field of demand generation, I've never run.

00:19:44.220 | Now, I've sat very closely to sales and demand gen

00:19:48.220 | and channel that made me believe

00:19:51.220 | that if I were to take on demand gen right away,

00:19:54.140 | I could do it successfully from the ground,

00:19:57.220 | hit the ground running.

00:19:58.060 | And so when I went to A10 Networks,

00:20:01.500 | I was hired to run both demand gen and web marketing.

00:20:06.500 | Where I started to feel pressure immediately was,

00:20:14.180 | and this is what I'm about to say

00:20:15.940 | is not necessarily just related to A10,

00:20:17.820 | but I think most companies can relate to this,

00:20:20.380 | which is a lot of times, like your ability to execute

00:20:24.540 | or make decisions is only as good

00:20:27.020 | as the data in front of you.

00:20:28.380 | If you have bad data hygiene,

00:20:29.820 | it's really hard to make well-informed decisions, right?

00:20:33.500 | And so in this world, it was both a data hygiene issue

00:20:38.500 | where if I'm trying to understand my segments

00:20:41.340 | and understand where the opportunities are

00:20:43.420 | or how to measure, the data wasn't clean.

00:20:45.580 | You pair that with cultural differences

00:20:49.180 | where demand gen, how it was maybe previously run

00:20:53.380 | or who was heavily influenced decisions,

00:20:56.460 | and that differs by organization.

00:20:58.540 | Sometimes the executive leadership has very high influence

00:21:01.940 | and they're in the weeds.

00:21:03.060 | Sometimes it's hands-off completely, right?

00:21:05.100 | And in this case, the reputation of demand gen

00:21:08.500 | and how it worked with product marketing,

00:21:10.740 | I would describe it as not the healthiest.

00:21:13.300 | And so the influence or expectations

00:21:16.220 | often were met with unrealistic expectations.

00:21:19.460 | And so I came into a situation where I had to run demand gen

00:21:24.460 | and a lot of the pipeline work

00:21:26.460 | and upstream workflows were not ideal.

00:21:31.020 | And I was not equipped to fix that.

00:21:34.540 | Now, I came in, I was able to identify some gaps,

00:21:38.340 | you know, like I'm looking at the funnel,

00:21:39.660 | I can tell where the leaky bucket was in the data

00:21:42.260 | and I absolutely fix some things,

00:21:45.180 | but there truly is a strategic element

00:21:48.140 | where you have to understand at a company initiative level

00:21:52.260 | what your CEO is going for.

00:21:54.260 | And you have to know the product well enough to discern

00:21:57.420 | if what the marketing leadership is pushing for

00:22:00.020 | is different, right?

00:22:01.540 | And then you need to break it down by the regents

00:22:03.380 | and NGOs and how are they all interpreting a mission.

00:22:06.140 | And all of this, if they're not aligned,

00:22:08.460 | it becomes really hard to execute tactically

00:22:10.740 | on things like campaign kits or whatnot.

00:22:12.820 | And so I had never been exposed to that up-level stream

00:22:17.260 | as it pertains to demand gen.

00:22:18.620 | I've only seen execution.

00:22:21.140 | And so I was very unequipped

00:22:24.140 | and the team was really, really lean,

00:22:26.140 | which means you're a player coach.

00:22:28.980 | And so I quickly immediately felt over my head

00:22:32.940 | 'cause I had never had execute either.

00:22:35.780 | And so the areas that I was focused on optimizing,

00:22:38.420 | like some of those campaigns turned really, really well,

00:22:41.180 | but solving for a campaign is different

00:22:44.100 | than solving for a broader company strategy.

00:22:46.460 | And I'll describe it as,

00:22:48.580 | I was focused on solving a $50,000 problem

00:22:51.660 | when I was ignoring the million, right?

00:22:54.740 | 'Cause I just didn't have the expertise.

00:22:56.020 | And so by focusing all of my attention on that,

00:23:00.620 | my other half of my responsibility,

00:23:02.420 | which is web marketing, was basically ignored, right?

00:23:06.100 | And there's a lot of things that that team need to do.

00:23:08.220 | And also it was a very lean team.

00:23:10.260 | They were awesome at what they did,

00:23:11.780 | but they still needed a leadership.

00:23:13.060 | That's what I was hired for.

00:23:15.500 | And so two months into my job,

00:23:17.980 | I would say my focus is like 90% on demand gen,

00:23:20.820 | of which I was probably only 50% efficient or effective

00:23:25.260 | and only 10% on web.

00:23:26.660 | And so none of the things under my purview

00:23:29.780 | were succeeding well.

00:23:31.540 | And my inability to understand demand gen

00:23:35.380 | was confusing the demand gen team.

00:23:37.580 | So I wasn't doing anyone a service.

00:23:39.780 | And so I ended up going to my VP

00:23:45.500 | and I said, "Look, man,

00:23:47.900 | I know you hired me to do these things

00:23:50.740 | and I'm working my damnedest to get it done.

00:23:53.780 | It's only been a one quarter engagement so far

00:23:56.540 | and I'm not doing well."

00:23:58.780 | And to your point earlier, you guys,

00:24:00.100 | about knowing your limits, I knew my limits.

00:24:03.580 | I had no way to bring in extra help.

00:24:05.900 | And the help that I had or that the resources,

00:24:09.860 | they didn't have enough experience

00:24:11.740 | to solve the strategic gaps I was missing.

00:24:13.620 | So there was no nothing, thumbs up from Zoom.

00:24:17.700 | There was nothing for me to pull from, right?

00:24:20.100 | And so that conversation was interesting.

00:24:22.700 | I was like, I was mentally ready to get let go.

00:24:26.620 | I was mentally ready to get demoted.

00:24:34.540 | And that's what I expected to happen.

00:24:37.820 | And so in the end, thankfully,

00:24:40.180 | I was not removed from my position,

00:24:42.220 | but I did get my role divided, right?

00:24:45.460 | And the learning point for that was

00:24:48.540 | how do you exit a role gracefully?

00:24:51.580 | So I took all my observations that were true

00:24:56.060 | and presented them to the VP to help them understand,

00:24:59.020 | "Hey, look, for anyone stepping into this job,

00:25:01.500 | here are the things that they need to be aware of

00:25:03.820 | that I wish I knew before I took this job,

00:25:06.380 | or otherwise I might not have taken it."

00:25:07.580 | And that helps set them up

00:25:09.860 | to identify the next replacement, right?

00:25:12.460 | So yeah, that was my experience being over my head.

00:25:16.700 | And I just wanna share that one 'cause like you guys,

00:25:19.060 | most of the other ones I was able to power through,

00:25:21.540 | but that's one where I had to wave the white flag

00:25:24.260 | and I had to figure out a way to do that.

00:25:26.700 | How you position yourself and provide a plan forward

00:25:31.780 | is a difference between,

00:25:33.420 | I guess, retracting and having a positive outcome

00:25:41.180 | rather than retracting and leaving it,

00:25:43.340 | like the control out of our hands, right?

00:25:44.780 | So I feel like I had a little more control

00:25:46.020 | over my destiny by handling it that way.

00:25:48.140 | So I've already kind of put a wrap

00:25:50.300 | on this particular conversation.

00:25:51.460 | I think we all agree.

00:25:52.300 | And like, first of all, acknowledge that in any situation,

00:25:56.300 | you bring value, you are hired to do that role

00:25:59.540 | 'cause you're experienced.

00:26:00.660 | And so lean into it.

00:26:03.820 | But as you're doing that and you're growing

00:26:06.100 | and growing is a natural part of our jobs,

00:26:08.580 | know your limits and pull in help when you need to, right?

00:26:11.980 | And whether that's through external help

00:26:15.100 | or maybe even setting your scope appropriately

00:26:17.860 | when you realize you're hitting something

00:26:19.780 | that's kind of come out of your purview.

00:26:21.740 | But know that there's so many resources out there for you

00:26:25.380 | and don't wait until you're drowning in a deep end

00:26:28.420 | before you decide to call for help.

00:26:30.700 | Hey guys, thanks again for watching and listening.

00:26:33.100 | Next week, we'll be talking about

00:26:34.300 | how to deal with imposter syndrome.

00:26:36.700 | So make sure you hit like, subscribe

00:26:38.900 | and the notification bell so you don't miss the episode.

00:26:41.700 | [BLANK_AUDIO]

In Over Your Head at Work? Practical Tips, Insights and Strategies to Get Over The Hump

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