In September 2003, I took the plunge. I left the security of my job at a large corporation and jumped ship, moved city, and took up a new job and challenge with less pay working for a start-up business – it was to be the best decision I have made in my nine years within digital marketing. I wanted to share with you some of the key skills I learnt that have set me up in business and hope it provides some inspiration that working for a start up is sound career advice.
So back to 2003 – I was leaving behind the safety and security of a relatively well paid job for a 23-year-old fresh out of university. I loved my job and was climbing the corporate ladder but it was not giving me that extra challenge I was looking for – I was keen to understand how a business operates, without the luxury of big marketing budgets and staff. It was time for a change and I applied for a online marketing job for a start-up, got an interview, accepted and duly handed my notice in. It was then a case of saying goodbye to friends and workmates and embarking on this new challenge.
Day one at the new job and reality hit – after moving into my new flatshare, it was then off to the office – my new office was to be no office, I was assigned a desk in the warehouse using boxes of trainers as props to rest the laptop. Refreshingly, there was no hierarchy, everyone was treated the same and everyone mucked in day to day. Also gone was the corporate suit too 🙂 – For me, I found it a great adventure, a challenge and also the chance to learn, understand and pick up the everyday valuable skills I had not been exposed to in my previous job
With it, came more responsibility too – It was me who the MD turned to when it came to the daily sales, before I was the last to hear of company performance, now, I was mixing it with other directors. It was up to me to forge good working relationships with the other personnel of the company e.g. head of sales, buyers, call centre team and warehouse guys and it was up to me to get out there and begin to forge good working relations with our suppliers, competitors and most importantly potential business partners.
My background was in marketing and this new challenge was to going to test me in the new world of digital marketing. It was very much a generalist role where you could create your own map – I’m sure many of you reading this who work/have worked for start-ups, online marketing could mean a million and one things. I was just keen to learn digital marketing and I really went for it – the list of skills I quickly acquired was endless but as a flavour they included:
- How to deal with digital agencies – building good relationships
- Email – how to set-up, manage and report on running an email software program
- Affiliate programs – setting up a program and managing it (we didn’t have the luxury of the affiliate network managing our account) continuing to recruit new affiliates, de-dupe sales, agree commissions, creating promotions, campaigns
- Business development – setting up partnership programs and driving incremental revenue streams through micro sites
- Setting up a T-Shirt business – sourcing, printing and creating designs working with the rest of the team to drive additional revenue through to the business
- PPC – running cost effective campaigns displaying healthy ROI
- Analytics – measuring campaigns, optimising website promotions, analysing affiliate program long tail affiliates
The company also launched an annual catalogue -but in order to pay for printing and distribution costs, you had to think with your initiative and it was expected you get on the phone and hustle to sell advertising space in the catalogue so to subsidise the running costs. Christmas was always a key sales period and so to ensure all orders were out of the warehouse door for delivery – you were mucking in with the warehouse staff to bag up the orders and get them out, we were all in it together…
Strangely, SEO was a digital marketing tactic I never had the opportunity to get involved in at the time, but within my current role, it has provided me with the opportunity to learn this skill. SEO is still very much in its infancy as a marketing tactic and it has many similar parallels in the skills needed when working for a start-up I’ve put together a few “Learn to” actions I think you need in SEO, similar to what I needed and acquired when working in the world of start-ups. And more importantly, these are the type of skills you can acquire if you decide to work for a start-up:
- Learn to think creatively – Working in a start-up really tests you – there is no large marketing budget to fall back on, there is no marketing agency at your beckoning call and usually there are a number of larger competitors operating in your sector – you have to out-perform your competitors, to outsmart them, you have to think laterally and creatively – you have to to create a USP? What can you offer that your competitors can’t offer? How can you build that loyalty with your customer?
- Learn to fail – You can’t stand still in a start-up, you have to keep on pushing yourself and the company in not being afraid to try something different, putting something out there in the market that maybe, this time, it’s going to connect. If you fail you fail, dust yourself off and get back on it again – but it didn’t stop me from dusting myself off and trying again, not giving up.
- Learn to hustle – Whether it was getting on the phone, travelling to meet suppliers to negotiate on stock, meeting up with your partner sites or affiliates, negotiating over-ride fees with affiliate programs, learning to always get a deal on commission rates – just so you can say to yourself that you’ve gone that extra mile for your business to drive a better margin.
- Learn to adapt your skillset – Start-ups really do provide you with a platform to engage in many digital marketing skills – you need to dive straight in and acquire as much knowledge as you can, similar to that of an SEO – whether you’re learning to code, understanding how to create an effective link building strategy or measuring performance of keywords – it’s necessary not to be afraid of learning new skills and refining your digital craft.
- Learn to teach – In a start-up it was common that the business may not have the time (or budget) for you to take a week off on a distance learning digital marketing course, you had to teach yourself on the job, read industry blogs and forum and apply your knowledge. At the same time, it is important you give the time to train up staff in the company.
- Learn to ship – A term perhaps overused, but most important skill I learnt – learning to ship not being afraid to push the button on your new affiliate promotion, website deal, email campaign etc etc – Whatever it is, making sure you are continuing to deliver and to continue to raise the bar.
I would definitely recommend working for a start-up, at least at some point in your career – the wealth of experience you can learn is unlimited and provides you with those life skills no MBA is ever going to teach you – I’m pretty certain the six learn to skills listed, you’re not going to learn on an MBA course or lecture hall – Getting yourself involved in a real business where you need to make real decisions that constantly puts you in a challenging environment is second to none.
Keen to hear your thoughts….
Simon
