(upbeat music) When you hear someone say that they're a marketing generalist what's your first impression? Is it a good thing? Is it bad? Do you assume they make more or less money than a specialist? Let me ask you another question. Which one sounds like it would give you more job stability?

I recently did a poll on LinkedIn. 45% of respondents said that being a marketing generalist is great for early career individuals. Now 30% said that it's better for late careers and the remaining 25% said that it's better to have broad skill sets than being a pure specialist. So which is it?

The truth is both a specialist and generalist can provide great stability and both have the potential to result in very positive personal economic gain. So let's break this down. What does it mean to be a marketing generalist? If you've allowed yourself to experience different job functions, being a generalist means you know just enough about all the various functions around you and you package that together and bring all that wisdom and influence into your work.

You're that proverbial jack of all trades that could be the fabric that holds everything together. At this stage of my career, I would describe myself as a marketing generalist with a specialty in web marketing. Being a generalist has allowed me to be proactive and productive in meetings and take on that connective tissue role where I understand enough of the context of the meeting just to ask the right questions at the right time and really be that translator between various specialists and sometimes even leading cross-functional tiger teams that have nothing to do with my direct line of work.

So today, we'll be joined by Ashley Foss. She's the head of Lifecycle Marketing Portfolio at Atlassian. Not only is she a hilarious and a passionate individual, but she shares some great examples about the power of being a marketing generalist. In this video, she'll cover topics such as how to be the bridge builder that aligns teams to a common outcome, how a generalist equips you with skills to propel your career, and tips on how to become an effective marketing generalist.

All right, let's get started. - Hey, everyone. Today, we're talking about the power of a general marketer and joining us is Ashley Foss. Ashley, how are you doing? - Hey, I'm good. I'm excited to talk about this. I'm real passionate about this topic. - And I can't wait to dive in with you.

Can you maybe just tell us a little bit about yourself before we get started? - Sure. So my name is Ashley and I am a marketer, writer, and speaker by day, and a singer, actor, and fitness fiend by night. - That is awesome. - We're gonna dive right into the whole generalist thing.

Go straight. - Yeah, I don't know. You know, what I hear is like well-rounded, balanced life, work, and after. So I love everything you just said. And I think that's actually quite often, quite frankly, the theme of today. You know, I think the idea of a general marketer, which we're gonna kind of ask you what your take on it is, but like given today's market, you know, it's a very unstable time, right?

And people are actually equipped with a lot of skills. And the question is how do you put all those skills to use? Or how do you find an entry point that allows you to branch off into many things? 'Cause I think listeners to this particular podcast are just dying to know, especially if they're at a point where they wanna pivot their careers, or maybe they're at the starting point and they just graduated.

It's like, where do I go from here? So kind of turn to Ashley, like to you, like what does a general marketer mean to you? - So I think of a generalist. There's a couple of different frameworks that I've used over the years to kind of frame up this thinking that are pretty popular in the market.

One is the concept of the T-shaped marketer. So it's basically looking at some of the adjacent disciplines and skills and crafts within marketing and being broad across the top, and then eventually going deep in one area. But looking at that, again, from an adjacent crafts perspective, not just a single area.

So that's one that I like. The other one that I've heard that I think is interesting, it talks about the I-shaped marketer. So it's similar to the T-shaped marketer, except that it has this bottom foundation of leadership skills or communication skills or team management skills or project management skills, like kind of basic things you need to do if you're gonna be a leader or you're gonna be a professional as that foundation, that no matter what craft you're in, there's some core skills that go across the bottom.

So those are two that I really like. I think the biggest thing for me is, I think there's value for specialists and for generalists. And I think that the market tends to swing. It's a pendulum. For a while, particularly when I first graduated, you know, years ago, we were in a very specialist market.

And it was like, we need you to have 15 years in email. And I'm like, that is a lot of years in just like a single channel. Like, you don't need me to be good at writing or good at like analytics or any of that. You just like only email.

And then it swung back. We saw this over the last couple of years, the meme that everybody wants to hire one person to do 10 jobs. And it's like, you have to be a marketer and a writer and a graphic artist and a web dev and in it, right?

This concept that it's like, don't realize these job descriptions are 10 job descriptions. These are 10 jobs, not one job. So I think the pendulum swings. I think there are plenty of times where everybody wants a generalist, then it swings back and everyone wants a specialist. So I think both are valid paths.

For me personally, that ability to look across the different areas within marketing, the different channels, the different audience types, the different deliverables, that's what's fun for me, that ability to connect the dots. So that's what I need when I talk about being a journalist and why I get excited about it.

- Yeah, that's a really, really good point. Right now, and I personally experienced it as well, right? You have organizations that may be flattening the organization or whatnot. And naturally, as you point out, when headcount gets removed, for example, it's gotta get absorbed somewhere. And right now, given the economy, companies don't have necessarily the budget to replace headcount with headcount.

So it does get absorbed by the team, right? And you're right, one headcount does a job of two, three, or four these days. And it's very, very true. I want to kind of maybe touch back on something you introduced us with, which is just kind of like how your career got started, right?

'Cause you mentioned that whether it's a T or it's the I, what they share in common is this horizontal bar of just like a broad spectrum of experience. So can you take us through like your own experience and what that looks like? And I'm kind of curious to understand like, how did that start becoming maybe a launching point for exploration to different parts of marketing?

- So I graduated in 2008, which was one of the worst recessions we've had in a very long time. It was not a good time to be a marketer coming out of school. So that was one factor against me. The other factor against me is that I graduated and moved.

And so marketing, especially early in your career, because there's a lot of art and science to it, there's not an objective right answer in most cases, the way there is for some of the hard, you know, the STEM areas where there's, you know, can you do the math? Can you do the code?

So it's a lot harder in an early career to get in somewhere if people don't know you, and you don't really have a portfolio to speak to, to say, this is how I know that I've got this experience or this is how I can prove it, or I've worked with you.

So that was the second strike against me. And then the third strike against me is I moved from Texas to California. And at the time when everybody was co-located and everybody had to go into an office, most of the companies that could afford it would actually outsource, like basically put their sales and marketing in a cheaper state.

Like they basically only had developers in their California offices because it's so expensive here. Real estate is very expensive. And so I had like three strikes against me coming out of it. It was like, you're new, you move to a new place where nobody knows you, and you move to a place that's like kind of not a hub for marketing and sales and communications.

And at the time I had my marketing degree, but I didn't really know where I wanted to go in marketing. And so I basically just took the first job I could get. I was interviewing a ton. A lot of people said, oh, you seem very smart. You seem very eager.

You seem like a hard worker, but we need somebody with 10 years of experience. And again, similar to the market right now where there's this glut of talent, they could hire somebody more senior. They didn't have to kind of settle for this random Texas girl who barely has, you know, barely has a marketing degree.

It's like, you just got out of school. So I took a startup role and I was doing a variety of things. I was doing writing. I was doing sales enablement. I mean, it was a startup. We had like five people. I was doing some math things. I worked in solar.

And so it really just taught me, you know, I had these grand visions of being in this big company and I'm going to become the CMO of Coca-Cola. And I'm, you know, that is not at all what happened. So what I would say a common thread, I've worked in solar, I've worked in aviation, I've worked in presentation and design and training firm.

I worked in two security companies prior to Atlassian. And then I've been in several teams at Atlassian across different audiences and markets. And the common thread is that I can fall in love with the audience. I can fall in love with their problems. I am, the thing that I am passionate about is marketing.

And that translates to being passionate about the audience and their problems. So it's not about the specific industry or the specific tasks. It's really about how do I fall in love with and serve that audience? And then how does that connect back to the business to serve the business goals?

I'm acting as that bridge. And so I think that that overarching mindset is the thing that has allowed me to lean into different types of audiences, types of companies, types of channels, types of metrics. I'm not super precious about which marketing thing I do. I'm super precious about the audience.

- I love that. And as a matter of fact, I chuckle to myself to date myself as well, 'cause I graduated from undergrad in 2001, which was the great dot-com bubble burst, right? So like no one was hiring for marketing. And I think you caught out two things that are really, really important because someone might wonder, it's like, well, why should I consider a generalist role?

Like almost journalists almost seems like watered down, seems like a specialist, like are they smarter and more experienced? Like, no, like the reason why I believe a generalist is so important is for a few things you mentioned. If you have the curiosity to understand what engages an audience, and you have the innate curiosity to figure out like, what levers do I pull to get them to engage?

What you're naturally doing in that role is testing the audience, testing mediums, testing messages or vehicles or technology or whatever. And whether you're intentional about it or not, you're grabbing all of this experience that can in itself put you into a channel, whether it's email marketing or whatever it is, right?

But you walk away so well-rounded that typically like as a hiring manager, we're trying to hire someone from these days, like a lot of it goes into the mindset, like what drives you? And if you came across my way and you say, hey, look, I care about the customer, I care about learning, and I just wanna figure out how to get them to engage, that mindset can propel you to a point where you're driving a leadership role eventually.

'Cause again, it's the mindset and having that round baseline allows you to work with a lot of cross-functional teams as opposed to just going narrow really quickly. And now, again, there's nothing wrong with being a subject matter expert, that's actually fantastic as well. But the well-roundedness of a generalist allows you to use a launching point to do just a lot of really cool things.

- I think it also helps you become a translator among those specialists. So I get brought in a lot where I've got a bunch of specialists in a meeting and then they throw me in to be like, how does all of this connect? Like we each know our thing and there are a number of my colleagues who can do it better, faster, and cheaper than me in one specific area.

But if you want somebody who can connect all the dots, I'm a great person to add to your meeting. I had the experience, this was years ago at this point, but we're all sitting around a room and they're trying to solve this problem. And I don't know if you've seen the meme that's basically how to draw an owl.

And it's like step one, draw two circles. Step two, draw the rest of the owl. And it's like the most lifelike detailed, it looks like a photograph. And you're like, there are a lot of steps between draw two circles and an owl that looks like this. So I'm sitting in this room and I'm listening to all of these people who know how to draw their specific bird.

Like they can go from the two circles of an owl to a realistic owl. They can go from two circles and it becomes an eagle or two circles and it becomes a hawk. The problem was they didn't realize that they were all drawing different birds. And so they were kind of arguing and it was like, well, no, it's this and no, it's that.

And I'm sitting there listening and I'm like, I think that they don't understand that they're actually drawing different birds because they all kind of recognize that they're talking about birds, but they're so knowledgeable about their specific species of bird that they don't realize that they're talking about different birds, right?

I am not an expert in drawing owls or eagles or hawks, but I am an expert in recognizing what these will become and helping them kind of translate and saying, listen, you're over here trying to draw this curved beak, right? And this person is over here drawing a flat bill because it's actually a duck.

Let me explain to you about the differences. And so that was the value that I could add was actually helping them to translate that they're drawing different birds, here's the differences, here's why it matters that we draw this bird or that bird, right? That was the big value add.

But it was just a fascinating moment to sit there and be like, sorry, why am I here? You have a lot of expertise in this room. And then as I listened, I was like, oh, this is why I'm here. - Yeah, you know, I wish I got that kind of insight or feedback early on in my career.

You know, 'cause I don't know anyone who's listening to this can relate to this, but like when I graduated out of college, obviously there's no experience on my resume that I can speak of, right? And I know that like communication skills seems to be something I was strong in, but it comes really weird on a resume.

As a matter of fact, it doesn't even make it on as a bullet point. And you kind of feel like, what do I do with that, right? Like, is there any value in that? I think what you're articulating here is like, yes, like communication skill described in a different way as the ability to understand what multiple different functions or departments are trying to figure out and being the connective tissue that becomes a translator that enables them to move forward towards a common goal.

That's what generalists can do. And that's super powerful. I'm thinking even on my own personal experience, you know, many, many years later, you know, like you, starting off in a, I started off in the world of project management and project management is also a great way to go deep and wide.

And just like you kind of interacting with developers, designers, project managers, like peers or product, taking me to a point where, you know, like a few years ago, so my role at the time was like senior director of web and digital. And I was brought into a meeting to solve something that was not even within my purview, right?

There was a issue that in this case, I'm not gonna obviously, you're not gonna use the name of the company, but there was an opportunity to optimize the sales process. Something was happening with the leads. I am not an SFDC expert. I've never have been. I would never pay myself to do that.

But when you're sitting in a room saying, okay, I've talked to sales people before. I've talked to sales engineers before. Okay, I've talked to people in the technology stack. So now as they're trying to figure out like, what, where's the leaky bucket? And they're kind of speaking across each other 'cause some of these problems existed for many, many years.

So there's politics at play as well. Like there's finger pointing. It allows a generalist like me in that position to be like, hey, pull back for a second. Are we talking about this? Like, am I categorizing the problem statement? Yes. Okay, well, are we in agreement that like, this is the problem we're trying to solve?

And if it's yes, then it seems like these other things you guys are talking about are a little bit less than party. Is that true? Yes. Oh, cool. Okay, well, let's shift the conversation here then. Again, I'm not saying anything intelligent. I'm just being like a translator, right? And then it ends up revealing, oh, it seems like it's a technical issue.

Great, then what do we need to do that? Again, to your point, I'm not bringing anything to the table. As a matter of fact, none of these solutions have anything to do with that I'm responsible for. But at the end, I'm in a position where I'm driving the tiger team.

And I think to your point, that's the essential generalist right there, right? And just having the spectrum to kind of pull people together. - Yeah, I think it's interesting too. I think a lot of people, especially whenever they're trying to think about putting this on a resume, they'll write excellent verbal and written communication skills.

Everybody is gonna say that. - Yes. - The connective tissue, the translator, the bridge builder, ability to get executive buy-in, ability to speak to different audiences. Those are the interesting things. And especially if you have proof points of that, where you say, ran the tiger team consisting of these three other crafts to solve this problem.

You don't have to say experienced communicator with 15 years of verbal and written experience, right? Nobody cares about that. They care about the outcome you were able to achieve. And I think that was something, especially for me being able to tell those stories of the different types of people I've managed.

I've had a bunch of different specialists who've reported into me. And when you look at the types of teams I've managed, that starts to speak to my expertise and ability to connect and ability to communicate versus me saying, ability to manage different crafts. It's like, okay, so you have expertise in that?

You do that? Like, what do you do versus saying, these are the types of deliverables, the types of teams, the types of talent that I've helped lead and develop. That's the thing that signals it to you. So I would say too, it's interesting when you think about translating it beyond just excellent written and verbal skills, like you see in the job description.

How do you translate that into outcomes and actions that you take when you're in a role? - Yeah, I totally agree. As a matter of fact, even projecting on myself, I go into interviews very differently now. And as a matter of fact, I wish I can rewind 20 years and see if it still worked.

Back then it probably would, because to your point, I don't go into any interviews anymore where like, here's your job description. Here are my job accomplishments. Let me show you how they align to each other. It's like, no, like no one cares about that, right? It's like, here's the outcome that I drove.

And more interestingly enough, let me tell you how I got there. 'Cause like understanding how my brain works, that's what a hiring manager is more interested in. The outcome they can control by the context and environment, by team. How you solve the problem is really, really interesting. I think that's where, if you allowed yourself the opportunity to become a generalist and get that broad spectrum of experience, how you pull people together or how you align people or how you drove efficiency, 'cause maybe you observed an extra step in the process and you cut it out.

Now like, all of a sudden you're like, your product life cycle process and launch just got 20% faster 'cause you cut unnecessary stuff. Like those are really, really valuable. So Ashley, I'm curious, 'cause you mentioned like in the beginning of your career, obviously you kind of dabbled into a lot of things.

You mentioned being passionate about the audience and how that then kind of spurred in different avenues. Can you actually help us understand even more in depth, like which areas really called out to you that started becoming the foundation of maybe discovering what you're passionate about and allowing yourself to kind of experience that breadth?

- I think one of the biggest things is that early in my career, I didn't have the choice of where I worked and who I worked with. And so because of that, if I wanted to enjoy going to work every day, if I wanted to enjoy the tasks I was doing, if I wanted to feel like I was accomplishing something, I needed to go beyond just, I personally use this product or see value from this technology.

So we didn't have solar panels. Like I wasn't installing solar panels. I don't know anything about solar, right? Until I got in and I started realizing that the value of renewable energy and there's some nerdy pricing models with California energy that like make this particularly interesting here, right? And so that was something where I was like, okay, what is the unique thing here that I can kind of grab onto?

I remember when I was in aviation, I was in marketing. I was the only marketing person. I actually worked for the parent company, which was only like three people. But so all of the child companies were bigger and I was the only marketing person for all of them. And so it was this very weird thing where it was like, I'm kind of part of the culture.

I'm kind of part of the business, but I'm not fully immersed and I'm kind of an odd ball. And so I got tasked with helping to decorate the office because we were in this space. And it turns out that part of the reason we needed to decorate the space is that when clients would come, they felt like we were kind of a fly-by-night shop because it didn't look like we were settled into the office.

It looked like we had just moved in and that didn't sell well. And so there was an element of it where on the surface, it would look like, I don't know, get the marketing girl to do it, right? She's young, make her buy some pictures, right? But when you dig in and you find out that actually this is impacting our ability to close deals because we can't really invite people to our office.

They don't feel comfortable. And it's kind of just, it just doesn't look nice. And so they don't feel comfortable. And again, this was 15 years ago and aviation is old school. Man, like they're still wearing their suits and their polo shirts and like doing business in person. If you can't invite your customers to your office, that's a problem.

And so I started pulling things together and it ended up being kind of this culture thing where people would ask like, Ashley, hi, yeah, I noticed you were putting up some pictures in this space. Like, are there gonna be any in my hallway? And so it started to really bring people together.

And that's how I started to develop the relationships with the sales reps and with our manufacturing lead and with our shop floor lead. And that way, when I then came around and said, hey guys, there's this new thing called LinkedIn. This is how we start to build relationships to go for bigger deals.

I had built that credibility that they were like, all right, you can take our headshots. You can put us on LinkedIn, right? You can help us with LinkedIn. So I think that's the big thing for me is that willingness to do some of the work early on that on the surface looked boring or looked like busy work, but actually finding out that that's a way to build relationships with people.

And so that's something that's been positive throughout my career of being willing to find the interesting stories. Like, I wanna do interesting work for myself. That probably means that whoever is consuming this work also wants to feel interested in it, right? You know? - Yeah. - And I hear this a lot from people of like, oh, that audience is boring.

Or like, oh, that product is boring. And I'm like, it's not boring to somebody. Somebody thinks this is interesting. Somebody is thrilled that this problem got solved. Plenty of people think what I do is boring. So if we flip that around, right, there's something interesting. There's a human behind the screen.

Somebody thinks this is interesting. Why are they so excited about it? And can I draft off of some of that excitement? - Yeah, that is so cool. And I even think of the world of like Marvel with parallel universes, right? Like one single decision can branch off on so many things.

'Cause as you're talking through that, it made me think. So like, taking the opportunity to notice, hey, our office space needs to feel more welcoming, right? And you kind of do all things. That in itself as a generalist activity could have branched you into different universes. You could have spun that as, hey, you know what?

This is actually about brand building. So maybe brand and comms becomes a passion area you kind of branch off into. If it's around attracting customers, maybe that becomes event planning, or campaigns, or demand gen, or maybe regional sales. There's another branch for you, right? Maybe it's around, because you're talking about bringing people to the office, that could become an HR function, right?

And so like everything that you do, like I think that universe, the underlying theme you mentioned is like a hunger or desire to kind of learn and extract the most you can out of any situation with intent. And then you can go kind of figure some stuff out. 'Cause I think early in my career, that's probably the one thing that did right amongst all of the things I did wrong.

'Cause like I graduated during recession and like nothing was happening. So I took all these really random oddball jobs, which on the surface was the least glamorous thing, right? Like it ranged from like call center to whatever. But I challenged myself with every single role that I took to at least get one major learning out of it.

So for call center, I overcame the fear of cold calling and rejection, right? I had a content entry job. My words per minute typing went up, you know? So like, but all these things then cascade and build up into who I am today. And I'm glad that I took a chance to go broad, to experience all these things.

And quite frankly, sometimes you rule stuff out as well. It's like, oh, that's totally not for me, you know? School ruled out medicine for me, you know? Because I just couldn't do it. I wouldn't have known if I didn't try. But yeah, I think what I'm hearing from you is kind of similar to me.

These things start building up for relationships. For you, you kind of discover a platform like LinkedIn. You build a brand for yourself now. You have credibility. And that overall experience allows you, it propels you to do a lot of things. So where did you go from there then, Ashley?

So now like you just discovered one channel or one avenue you're interested in. Is that where you double down on or where else did you go? - I mean, I kept, I was in smaller companies and startups. So I continued down that path. I would say, I think I kind of like found my people when I was working at Duarte.

So it was a presentation design and training firm. I had a graphic designer, project manager, and a writer on my team and a videographer. So again, like this very interesting mix of skills that were not core marketers. I was kind of the only marketer. My boss was a marketer, but she was off trying to build another part of the business.

And she was like, listen, I just need somebody who can get in here and do this. So I did email. I did social media. I did PR. I was doing branding stuff. We were doing a mix of like high touch kind of sales stuff. So like I brought in Marketo when HubSpot into that organization at the time, I was helping to do events.

We did book marketing. So our CEO, Nancy Duarte had written several books. So I helped her launch those books. I hosted the events in the office, right? Like I got a chance to do everything. And I think that, you know, I had been doing a lot of that at the previous two companies where I was doing email and starting to bring people into social and that kind of thing.

And I think those staying in small companies. And then again, I was at two security startups. So like, I just didn't have the luxury of being like, I only want to do this one thing. I've, you know, started to specialize a little bit at Atlassian, but even still I've gotten the chance to do more of the product marketing.

My title is literally integrated. It's been integrated twice now. I was senior manager of integrated media. Then I like sort of specialized, whatever you want to call it in content strategy. And again, that does still include email, social media, presentations, you know, a variety of different content marketing types.

Now I'm back to like integrated product marketing. So I think that every time I start to get too specialized, I'm like, why is there only one audience? Why is there only one channel? Why is there only one deliverable? And I start to be like, all right guys, can't let my skills get dull in these other areas.

And I do think that I take a pretty broad approach, even in those cases of like, you know, looking at onboarding journeys or, you know, doing demos and tutorials that might not traditionally be considered. Content marketing is a weird space. I think it's like a catch-all term. I feel like that's almost a generalist space in itself, but I actually do have fairly deep expertise in social media.

And so the people who use social media as a distribution channel in their content strategy versus a separate channel, influencer marketing, community building, like basically treating it as its own strategy would probably look at the way I treat both of those and say, okay, those are actually quite separate and they are specialists.

The way I do them is more of a generalist, very connected, integrated way. So I think just that ability to stay generalist and to know what I want and being willing to stick my nose in other people's business, that's how I switched teams internally a couple of times at Atlassian because I've worked with a team and they're like, should you do this?

Like, do we need this all the time? Maybe let's bring that over or let's add this to your role or let's combine these two things so that it becomes a role for you or something like that to say, hey, we need this. We had somebody who's doing like three out of the five, you can do all five.

Like we're gonna restructure this a bit. So it's been an interesting journey, especially in a bigger company where I am surrounded by phenomenal specialists in a variety of different areas. And so that ability to keep connecting the dots, having a variety of different crafts and skills and expertise on my team and helping them grow.

And then being somebody, the other nice thing about it is that I can play as a team. That's one of our values really well because my goals are horizontal. And so if you have something that you can't really get done because it doesn't achieve your goals, it probably helps achieve my goals.

And so I can help you get stuff done across the organization because I'm not beholden to a single vertical goal. So it's actually a superpower to have a mix of generalists and specialists because the specialists are doing amazing work on this one goal. And the generalists are connecting across to do amazing work across all of these goals.

So it's actually a really nice pairing. Again, I'm not trying to hate on specialists. I'm trying to combat a little bit of that like, ah, specialists own the world. You can only succeed as a specialist. And I'm like, I don't know, I feel like you can succeed as a generalist.

And here's how they pair really well together. Where you are in terms of your career maturity, your company maturity, your team size, your goals. Yes, that's gonna depend on the mix that you need, but you gotta have some generalists in there. Like it's so helpful. - Is there a dark side to being a generalist?

And I'm gonna make up an example and maybe this is real. The fear of if I'm potentially spreading myself thin or reaching beyond where I have legitimate experience as I'm poking my nose into stuff, can it ever backfire? You know, it could be a lack of executional expertise. And so now I went far, but kind of backfired or maybe I went somewhere that I shouldn't have.

And now kind of, again, it's not going my way. Is there the downside to this? - 100% there's a downside to this. So if, I mean, LinkedIn is an excellent example, right? Numerous people have asked me why I don't niche down and has said, if you wanna keep growing, you've gotta niche down.

What do you do? What do you want? Who do you serve? And I'm like, well, I do all the things and I serve all the people and I want all the things. And they're like, okay, but at some point you have to pick, right? I would say that to your point about spreading yourself too thin, that is something that is a continued growth area for me in terms of prioritization, saying no.

I get excited about kind of the next new thing. And so I'm constantly like, what's going on over there? Could we somehow bring it in over here? And can I just like do that? And sometimes the answer is, yeah, sure. Low consequences, get it done, try it out. We'll see if it works.

Obviously there are other times where that might have high consequences. And if you are not cautious and saying, okay, let's look at this. Does this actually require a specialist? I think that can be hard. You can not go deep enough, not explore enough, potentially get yourself into hot water.

I have been very fortunate to have some excellent specialist partners that if I'm coming in and it's something that is a solved problem within another specialty, but is maybe new to the organization or it's a new use case, then I'm able to pair. If it's completely not new, that's a separate issue.

And I'm a great person to do that. 'Cause I'm like, can't mess it up that bad. Like probably gonna be okay, right? And then I think in terms of, particularly if you have a very specific niche skill set and you are very rare in how you provide that skill, yeah, you can make a lot of money if you can tell that story and you can say, hey, I'm like one of five people who can do this one thing.

You can make a boatload of money doing that. And it is a harder story to tell as a generalist, particularly if you're in your early or mid career. Think once you start getting into leadership levels, you've seen it all, you've managed different types of people, you've run into different types of problems, that's an easier story.

But for early to mid career folks, the general story is harder to tell. And so maximizing your compensation and your offering can be a lot more difficult than if you come in and you're like, I've literally seen every permutation of this specific problem versus saying, I can connect the dots, I can learn, I'm curious, I'm adaptable.

I've seen a bunch of different types of problems. Here's a bunch of different types of solutions. That can be a much harder story to tell. And so from a compensation and a career trajectory standpoint, you have to be strategic about how you're telling that story. You can't just flop around and be like, yeah, I can do any job.

That's not a generalist. That's a different, that's not a story that's gonna resonate. I don't know, any job will do, right? I'm gonna apply for a head of brand and a head of product marketing and a head of communications and a head of social media. And it's like, that is a lot of head ofs that you're just gonna apply for all the jobs here.

That is a much harder story to tell than either smaller companies, like a director of marketing or VP of marketing of a smaller company where they want that breadth of experience. - Yeah, I totally agree with all of that. And I think the trap I fell into early in my career in a mission to become a generalist, so the intent was good, I spread myself way too thin as well.

So I ran out of hours in the day and I started burning the midnight candle. And so it became a self-fulfilling prophecy where like the more success I gained, the more work I added, and then things start suffering 'cause then people are wondering, oh, Tim, are you supposed to be doing this?

Well, let me give you more of that then. And it's like, okay, well, that's taking me away from my core job now because to your point, there is a need. Someone needs that help and I'll take all the free need I can get, but it put me in conflict with my manager at the time.

They're like, why are you doing that? Like, I specifically told you to do this thing, now you're doing this. And so that looked poorly on me early on in my career. So I think you're right. I think having a really good point of view on what you're trying to do, so even though you're a generalist, there's still gotta be some kind of direction.

I think the storytelling piece of that, well, that comes with age as well. Like as we mature, we have more context, but I think, again, for those who are early in their careers hearing this, start thinking about that story and how you're crafting your journey 'cause people will be interested.

But again, how you're getting from A to B and the decisions you make become really, really important. So these are all kind of foundational pieces of that. - Yeah, I think the other thing that's funny, I have these conversations fairly frequently now where people are like, you've done all this different stuff and how did you decide and how did you do it?

Yeah, sure, I can look back and be like, oh, this was the common thread, right? I can look back and say, this is the common skill. This is the thing that made it happen. I didn't know that 10 years ago. I didn't know that 15 years ago. I'm looking back on that and drawing those threads and drawing those parallels.

And I think that especially for folks who are earlier in their career, it's gonna take you some time. And this was something I actually did an Ask Me Anything with some high school students at one point. And they asked me, they're like, how did you know that marketing was your life's purpose?

And I was like, whoa, I'm gonna stop you right there. Marketing is not my life's purpose. You're 17 years old. You can switch majors. You can pick a major and never work a day in your field. You can go and work in that field and actually decide that it turns out that the work is not interesting.

You can go back to school. You could become an entrepreneur. And they were just like, thank you, right? I was like, this idea that we go on this linear journey and we get good grades and we pick our major at 17 years old, 'cause you have to apply to college like the summer before or whatever, like summer after your junior year.

You don't freaking know anything. I started college as a musical theater major, right? Like you don't know things at 17, right? I'm an oddball because I actually got an undergraduate marketing degree and I've worked my whole career in marketing. People are like, what? You did the thing with your degree?

This is fascinating. So I think that's the other thing I would say is that looking at a journey like mine, and I'm sure it sounds like you've got the same thing where you're like, oh, I can look back and here's all the lessons that I learned. And it's like, wow, that Tim guy, he really crafted a great career.

And you're like, I mean, I tried to make smart moves, but it was in a recession and I took the job I could take and I made money and I tried to make the best of it. And there's not a perfect path. And as much as, I mean, I still deal with this.

I look at people who are further along than me and I'm like, man, they've got it figured out. If I could just do what they did, but I can't because that's not my journey. My journey is my journey. And looking back on it, I can draw the threads, but I don't know.

I think every so often, I'm managing some early career folks now and I just wanna tell them like, it's gonna be okay. Like you're doing fine for yourself. I'm happy to help, I'm happy to answer, but get a long career and it's gonna be okay. - Yeah, that's so funny.

I love that 'cause you're totally right in terms of like that being my career story as well. 'Cause I wrote, it hasn't been released yet, at least at the time of this recording, but I recorded a podcast specifically on all around my failures of my career. 'Cause when I thought about it, I was like, man, it was a lot.

And ranging all the way back to like academic choices and it's all those small pivot points that you kind of figure out. It's like, okay, that didn't work. Maybe I need to swallow my pride a little bit. Let me try something else. And again, the accumulation of all those micro decisions, good and bad, all should hopefully lead to something positive.

And I think it's easy to focus on let's say failure because you tried all these things and they fail. It's like, oh man, the common thread you see so far is failure. It's like, well, actually like all of those have, like if you can figure out what the underlying problem is, maybe it's a person, maybe it's a point of view thing or your outlook or attitude or something like that, like that can be a micro turning point where it's just like, if you're 15 years later and you reflect back, it's like, oh man, that failure was the best thing that ever happened to me 'cause it forced me to swallow the pride and whatnot.

And I think you're right in today's age, like man, being a student right now with all the information available to them. And like, I got two kids, like eight and 10 and the academic expectations are so high. And like some of it for me is cultural as well, right?

So like being a journalist and in this case being Asian, that almost like, that doesn't sound like a doctor or whatever it is. - Right, it's not a doctor or a lawyer or an engineer. - Yeah, that's exactly it. I tried all three in college and I failed all three.

Marketing is the only thing that made my grade, like graduate, like I can graduate. Otherwise I would have flipped out of school. But yeah, it's the willingness to, again, maybe it's not the straight path. There are some careers you do, it's more linear. Like if you're gonna do like sciences or medicine, there is definitely an academic path.

That just didn't happen to be my path. My parents described me as street smart because I kept, my GPA looked like this. Whereas my brother, like he went the dental path and he's academically successful. But like we're both happy and we would both describe ourselves as accomplished. And that's not a financial conversation.

It's a career satisfaction statement, right? So yeah, I love that. So power of general marketing or even generalist, regardless of your field, doesn't even have to be marketing. It's the mindset of willing to try things and learn things and make something of it. I love, that's powerful. Well, Ashley, I just wanna thank you for this time.

I really had a lot of fun. And especially hearing about your career journey, it's always, I feel like we're in the same tribe. - I know, I know. Like I found my people, me and Tim, we're in the same boat. - Well, thank you so much. Is there anything for people to follow you on or are there any kind of, you mentioned like you have a, obviously a very spiritual life outside of work.

Is there anything that people can follow you on or discover about you? - Sure, so I would love to connect with folks on LinkedIn. I'm very active there. I post and comment and try to keep up with my DMs and all of that kind of stuff. So yeah, LinkedIn is a great place.

You can sort of catch me on Twitter, X, whatever we're calling it these days, but yeah, primarily LinkedIn. - I think you are doing a clinic on social selling, by the way. I love your posts on LinkedIn. - Oh, thank you, thank you. It's fun, it's fun. - Cool, well, thanks a lot, Ashley.

- Thanks, Tim. (upbeat music) you