My Only Marketing Career Plan

Looking for the one killer hack to a successful career?

I’ll share mine with you. It can be summed up in three words:

Continual focused learning.

As I’ve moved along my career path, this has been the one common thread that has remained consistent. Even when I’ve had jobs I didn’t enjoy, I did everything in my power to mine them for learnings.

I’ve learned that the best way to approach your career is to ensure that wherever you are, and however long you’re there, that you’re continuing to educate yourself.

The moment you stop learning is the moment you will become stagnant. As Robert Frost said:

“Education is the ability to listen to almost anything without losing your temper or self-confidence.” ― Robert Frost

Where do you start with continual focused learning?

For me, it took a bit of time, which is partly why I’m sharing it here. If there is any way I can provide someone else the opportunity to learn quickly where I have learned slowly, I’m more than happy to share my insights.

Here is what I would tell myself if I had to start all over again:

1. Narrow your interests from many down to around four areas by speaking with experienced and practicing professionals in your areas of interest. (You don’t want to spend years educating yourself in an area that you later realize is a bummer job.) These folks can tell you what you need to read, what experience you need to gain, what other people you need to meet and learn from.
2. Take the remaining four areas of interest and try to absorb as much as possible in each of the areas. I’m talking about listening to podcasts, reading focused industry articles (using great tools like Zest!), buying coffee and lunch for experienced pros to learn from them, and reading (or listening) to as many books on the topics as possible. Look for resources that are highly recommended by trusted voices in your industry.
3. Start thinking of your areas of interest as a Venn diagram and look for the overlap. I recommend thinking of your remaining areas of interest as 3 – 4 circles that you’re trying to learn more and more about. As time passes and you are learning more in each area, start to look for the core area of overlap.

4. When you identify where those areas overlap, start a blog. Don’t worry about promoting it. Just use it to hone your skills of writing and thinking clearly around your area of overlap. The focus during this step is to work on taking the abstract and complex and making it concrete and simple.

“If you can’t explain it to a six-year-old, you don’t understand it yourself.”
— Albert Einstein.

5. Now work on learning soft skills. This means learning things like how to be a manager that others will want to follow. Learn things like public speaking, how to run an effective meeting, how to help a group reach consensus and more.

6. Make professional friends. Suspiciously absent from this is formal networking. I would actually recommend against what most people consider “networking”. Namely, that popular practice where you try to meet a bunch of strangers and swap business cards awkwardly at a group gathering. Instead, focus on the relevant small gatherings. Invite no more than you could fit around your table at Thanksgiving.

More Signal, Less Noise Learning

I’m sharing my perspective as a part of the Zest Enlight beta because I’m a big believer in what they’re doing. They’re making it much easier to find curated, high-quality content to help you level up your career at a faster pace.

If you’re looking to level up your career, Zest Enlight Beta is a great shortcut.