05 Marketing Career
What is it Like Being a Successful Marketer
On this episode of the Unboxing Careers Podcast, we unbox the career of a successful marketer.
Guest: Paige Arnof-Fenn is the founder & CEO of global marketing and branding firm Mavens & Moguls. Her clients include Microsoft, Virgin, The New York Times Company, Colgate, venture-backed startups, and non profit organizations. She graduated from Stanford University and Harvard Business School. Paige serves on several Boards, is a popular speaker and columnist who has written for Entrepreneur and Forbes.
More about Mavens & Moguls
Find Paige on Linkedin
Listen: Spotify | Apple Podcasts | Amazon Music
What We Discuss:
Choosing a Career Path: Corporate vs Startup
Following Your Passion in Marketing
Advice for Young Professionals Entering the Marketing Field
Pivotal Moments and Career Transitions
Choosing a Career Path: Gut Feelings and Intuition
Staying Relevant in the Marketing Field
Showcasing Your Personality
Following Your Passion
Key Marketing Career Takeaways:
Marketing can take on many different forms and disciplines, and it's important to find a career path that aligns with your passions and skills.
Working at established companies like Procter & Gamble and Coca-Cola can provide a strong foundation and training in marketing.
Transitioning to the startup world offers the opportunity to be more creative and have a direct impact on the success of a new business.
There is no right or wrong path when it comes to starting a career in marketing. It's important to trust your intuition and choose a path that excites you.
Learning by doing is a valuable approach to gaining experience and discovering what you enjoy and excel at in your career. Stay relevant in the world by being informed about trends and pop culture.
Learn from successful marketers through blogs, books, podcasts, and internships.
Gain practical experience through clubs, campus jobs, and internships.
Showcase your personality and interests on your resume.
Be a team player and have a good sense of humor in the marketing field.
Follow your own passions and intuition when choosing a career path.
Full Interview:
Greg
Welcome everyone to the Unboxing Careers Podcast where we shed light on what different careers are really like so you can choose a career you'll really love. Today we are unboxing a career of a successful marketer and what it takes to be a good one.
But before we do, let’s talk briefly about unboxing thoughtful gifts. At ThoughtfulCollection.com you can shop from a wide selection of curated products you can feel good about, helping you express friendship, gratitude, and love.
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All right, I'd like to welcome the show, Paige Arnof-Fenn, founder and CEO of Mavens & Moguls Marketing Firm. Paige, welcome to the Unboxing Careers Podcast. Thank you for being
Paige Arnof-Fenn
Thanks for having me, Greg. I'm excited to chat today.
Greg
I’m excited to have you chat as well and we talk as little as possible so this should be fun. Let's do a little of a setting so let's start with this marketing we are talking offline before it takes on many different forms and looks and visions here so we'll have guests on the show to tackle different parts of that but we want to talk about how to be successful across all disciplines today and what some of those skills might be so that if you're getting into it you've got a foundational
I mentioned you're a CEO of a marketing firm. Can you give the audience a little bit of a sense of some of the marketing roles you've had before you started your own business?
Paige Arnof-Fenn
So I started in marketing in 1990 as a brand assistant at Procter & Gamble in Cincinnati. P &G is probably the most famous consumer products marketing company in the world. They compete in a lot of different categories.
and every category they compete in, their products are like number one, and sometimes number one and number two. So I learned marketing. It was like a marketing bootcamp. It's the Mecca of marketing. They invented the concept of brand management, which is treating each brand like a business. And so I really had all the greatest foundation.
kind of drilled into me at the Mecca of marketing. And after brand assistant, you become an assistant brand manager. So they created the concept of brand management as a career path. And I started in the paper division. They have Charmin toilet tissue, bounty paper towels, Pampers, diapers. Like I said, all of their brands
global, you know, dynamos. Then I got promoted to their cosmetics and fragrance division. At the time they owned the cosmetic brand CoverGirl Makeup and I worked on that for about three years. But, you know, the basics of marketing, you just learn all the different facets.
really well. You learn about the pricing, the promotion, the packaging, the media, all the different elements. It's all part of your training and development as you're going up the ladder at Procter & Gamble. When I left P&G, I kind of took a detour and then went back to kind of corporate marketing when I started at Coca-Cola, which again is probably the most recognized brand in the world. is sold in about 200 countries around the world. And I went in there as the assistant chief marketing officer. kind of working for the top guy in marketing globally at Coke. Coke and P &G are big budget brands. These are brands that are advertised and promoted 365 days a year around the world. They have sponsorships for things like sporting events, sporting teams, the Olympics, the Super Bowl, huge budgets, multi -million dollar budgets and multi -million dollar brands. These are huge businesses. But when the internet started taking off in the kind of mid to late
I left the corporate chapter of my career and headed up marketing at an internet company and did three of those stints back to back. And all three, they were technology businesses and all of them had positive exits. all either went public, got bought or both. The internet startups were tiny businesses when I started with each of them.
Nobody had heard of them. Some of them didn't even have a logo or a tagline. So having worked for companies with brands that were decades, if not centuries old, and then going to literally brand new businesses, small budgets. We were not doing Super Bowl Olympics advertising. Everything was very scrappy online, being very resourceful. They refer to that as guerrilla marketing. It's, you know, kind of down and dirty. And then about 22 years ago, I hung out a shingle and started my own marketing business. So I look at my career in kind of three chapters, corporate marketing, startup marketing, and then being an entrepreneur in marketing.
Greg
I'm curious why you went from big brands down to the small startup. Did they come and approach you? Was it just something you looked at the technology like, know, I want to do that. That looks cool. Can you give a little background about why you went from Pinnacle to kind of Floor?
Paige Arnof-Fenn
So, you know, I actually before I got into marketing, I did finance for two years. And if you had seen my resume coming out of college or business school, everything was like a blue chip brand. I guess in my experience, I was more risk averse at that point in my life. And I felt like I needed the best schools and the best company names on my resume so that I learned from the very, very best. So I was very attracted to a more traditional path with those big corporate brands. And both P &G and Coca -Cola are known for training and developing their people very well. They put together, you know, six month and 12 month plans for your professional development.
You take classes, you go to conferences. So they are very supportive and encouraging of learning and training and development. So I really, it's funny, you know, I did get an MBA, but I feel like my time I was at P &G for about three and a half years. And I joke that was like my PhD in marketing because I learned so much about marketing.
I had never taken a marketing class before my first year in business school. So I was really learning from the ground floor. And I look at my time at Coca -Cola working as the assistant chief marketing officer for the guy who was in charge of all of Coke globally. I say that was my post -doctorate because he was really a genius. He was the guy that did both new Coke and Diet Coke.
New Coke was the biggest flop and Diet Coke was the biggest success ever in marketing. And I was really learning from the best. mean, here's a guy who had seen it from every angle and, you know, having a front row seat, it really was just continuing my training and learning. I think what I found kind of magnetic about the internet, things were just, you know, this is in the very early days, like I said, mid to late 90s, when the internet started taking off and these small companies were raising, I don't know, I think the first company I worked for raised about $40 million, which I know sounds like a lot of money, but when you've worked for, you know, much bigger brands, that actually is not as big of a budget as you can imagine.
I was very excited about taking something that nobody had ever heard of. Nobody knew, had no relationship with that brand and trying to turn it into kind of something that the audience connected with. I wanted to test my metal. I wanted to see if I had learned anything working for these big businesses. Could I do this? Could I, you know, when you look at brands like Starbucks that started out, you know, very small and became very successful global brands, I wanted to be responsible for that. I felt like when you work for a business that's either decades or centuries old, you don't, it's hard to know your contribution to that business. You don't know if that ball would have been rolling downhill with or without you.
I wanted to know that I had something in my DNA that could launch a new business, create a new brand that emotionally connected with the audience and that my DNA would be in that business forever. That I would know that, you know, it wouldn't have, it wouldn't have turned out the way it did without me. And I got to do that three times, was really a joy and it was a great learning experience. And all three of the brands survived. They all had good exits. A lot of people made money and I was really proud to be part of it. And then when that chapter was ending, I thought, you know, I've done it for other people's brands. Maybe I can do it for my brand. And so for me, the company that I created,
It's a platform to do things that I want to be associated with and the businesses that I want to help grow. So I think it was me that changed. think my definition of success changed. I think if you had met me when I was a student, my definition of success was to be like a fortune 500 CEO. My dad and both my grandfathers ran successful businesses.
And I always wanted to go into business, but I thought I wanted to run a really big global business. That to me was, you know, the path I wanted to be on. And that definition changed. I mean, there's a lot of great things about working in big companies, but the hierarchy and, you know, you have to do it their way. These companies are very successful, and they know what they want to do. And I was trying, I feel like I was always trying to bend, or change the rules. If you had met any of my bosses at P&G when I was first, you know, out of school, they'd probably shake their head. You said, you know, what, what kind of a team member was Paige? They'd say, well, she works really hard. great attitude, but boy was she a pain in the butt. Because she was, I would give her an assignment and she'd come back and say, what about this? Have you thought about that? Maybe we could try this.
Brands like, know, businesses like that are not necessarily looking for people to upset the apple cart. Like they have a system that works. They know what works. They know how to grow businesses. Like I said, you don't get to, you launch businesses like Tide and Oil of Olay. Like when you think of all the businesses under the Procter and Gamble umbrella, these are billion dollar companies. They know what they're doing. And I think even though I didn't think of myself this way as a student, I was very entrepreneurial in a corporate environment. And now looking back at my early career,
I'm actually amazed I was as successful as I was, because now I think, my God, like I felt so constrained. But I really was learning a ton. But once I kind of moved to the startup world, you know, there was no hierarchy, there were no rules, there was no process to do anything, and my team was looking at me like, okay, where do we start? What do we do? How do we do this? And I didn't actually even realize how much I learned and how much I internalized in a corporate environment that
I could then create parameters and a process in a kind of wild west environment with the internet 1 .0. And it's funny because I was the least corporate person in my corporate life. And I was the most corporate person in the startup world. Everyone on my team was like, wow, how did you know how to do this? Where did you come up with this? And I'm thinking, I mean, I just lived through three and a half years of bootcamp and like that's, you know, because they drill it into
Greg
So I wanted to say this for later, but we're on the conversation, so I'm gonna jump in. I really love the background, by the way, so thank you for that. So later we're gonna talk about people coming out of college, brand new in the workforce, and tips. had, I mean, you look now, there's a startup in every corner, right? So if you wanna join a startup, you can kinda join a startup if you want to. There's also corporations that you can go to work for. If you're a brand new person coming into the workforce,
And I agree with you with the marketing, right? You take marketing classes in college, but you're going to, I think most jobs are like this. You're going to learn the majority of your work, actually doing the work and figuring out the nuances of it. And that's the fun part of it.
If you're coming out of the workforce, would you recommend someone try to get into a more structured corporate job to kind of learn some of those ropes before they go into the, I say Wild West, but like it's controlled chaos in the startups, in a lot of startup world, right? It's kind of what it is. Is there, in your opinion, a better way to go, learn it in the structured environment and stabilized or kind of go into the, let's talk in the pool.
Paige Arnof-Fenn
So I don't think there's a correct answer to that question. I just think it's a different path. All I know is what I did. I started with the bigger names on my resume and kind of traded down the food chain. But you can absolutely start with these scrappy companies. The difference is when you start at a place like Procter & Gamble, you're given a very discreet job.
and you are learning each one of those building blocks until you go to the next level and then you've got new building blocks and you're learning kind of each line item on the budget like, now you're learning about advertising, now you're learning about pricing, now you're learning about promotion, now you're learning about media. When you work for a startup, your job
is not like clearly laid out. When you walk in in the morning, there are maybe 15 different hats on the shelf. And every day you may be wearing a different hat. Like you're not, you're gonna go much wider, but not as deep. know, at P &G you're going very deep and then you go to the next one and you go deep in that area.
So it's really a question of preferences and where you get your energy from, what you're excited about, what's gonna have you jump out of bed and really be psyched to go to work every day. I mean, the truth is, and I've been a mentor to people at business school who were graduating trying to figure out their first job out of graduate school.
I remember one woman in particular, she was really torn between working for a very established business in the cosmetics area or a brand new food business. And she just didn't know what to do. And like me, she had a very traditional resume before business school, worked for very big companies, but she was so excited by this food business. She loved it. She loved the founder. She loved their values, their philosophy. And she was worried like, but what if it's not successful? You know, and I said to her, I mean, you've been so risk averse on your resume. If you have one job that doesn't end up being like a huge hit and you want to go back and work in a more stable environment.
You have a story that you can show what you learned and why you want to go back on a more traditional path. But if it's successful, it's going to be a completely different trajectory. Well, the food business was Chobani yogurt, which has been phenomenally successful. And she had a very interesting job on the ground floor from literally the very beginning and what an amazing ride and how interesting that career path is. And now it's a probably billion dollar business and she was there and was able to see it from the front row. But she just trusted her intuition and her gut. And I think after she realized the, you know, what's the worst that could happen, the company goes belly up and then
She's like, could I go back and get a corporate job? Sure. I mean, again, it's the narrative and how you process what you learn and the story you tell to the recruiter or the hiring manager about why you wanna do the next chapter the way you do. And I just don't believe, especially when you're so young and you're 20s, people don't expect you to have all the answers or to know everything. And all of these, you can learn so much from all these experiences. They're all interesting, but in different ways. And I just don't think you can go wrong, but I think the risk profile and the kind of gut intuition is gonna be different for everybody. And if you get really excited to jump out of bed,
And you have so many ideas. She just loved the product. She loved everything about the business, how it was more mission driven, their hiring practices. It just spoke to her. And she felt like she would really regret it if she took the corporate job. And she would regret that she didn't try something that was so exciting. And she's never looked back.
Greg
Has she given you free yogurt for life? You should get that if you haven't yet. Try to get that in rears. So Paige, you mentioned earlier, you always thought you wanted to be a CEO of a Fortune 500 company. You alluded to the fact that you went to school for finance and then switched. This is a common story offline today, I was talking to someone we were joking like no one works in marketing who went to school for marketing, right? It's always a different career Marketing was my fallback career, right? I was planning it but it was not my primary one So I'm curious about that that pivotal moment were like what made you decide when you're going to school and looking this gun I don't want to do this anymore. Right? Can you speak to that moment of clarity a little bit if you could?
Paige Arnof-Fenn
So I was always really good with numbers and my dad was an economics major in college. So I immediately declared econ as my major my freshman year and I kind of just did it and didn't even think twice about it. When I got into my Wall Street job right out of school, I was a financial analyst and I was good at it. I'm good with numbers, but I really didn't enjoy the work very much.
But I made a two year commitment to this bank that I would be there, but I really was not having the best experience because I just felt like it was only using one part of my brain and I wanted a more creative career path. I love the data and analytics, but I wanted to balance it with a more creative role as well. So I was looking for something that kind of used both my left brain and my right brain. At the end of the two -year commitment, a girlfriend who worked at the same bank, she and I traveled through Europe before we started business school. And while we were traveling, she said to me, are you going back to the bank after school?
And I said, not a chance. You couldn't pay me enough, no way, no how. And she says, my God, I loved it. I can't wait to go back. And they paid really, really well. She's like, well, what are you going to do? And I said, I don't know. My whole life, I thought I would be a banker because my dad, both my grandfathers, they all worked at commercial banks. And I thought I was doing something even cooler, working for an investment bank.
But there's no way. She said, there has to something about the job that you liked, because you were so good at it. And I said, I don't know. I mean, there were three things I really liked about my job. When you closed a deal, know, banks, investment banks help companies get bought, get sold, raise money. Anytime the transaction finished, you would have a closing dinner to celebrate the end of the deal, and because I was the junior person on the team, right out of college, it was my job to plan the dinner, order like toys to commemorate the deal closing. And then we would run these, they call them tombstone ads in the Wall Street Journal and the New York Times. They're very boring ads that say, this bank completed the transaction and raise this much money for a company going public or this bank helped sell this company to that company.
And I said to her, those were really the only three things I liked. I didn't like doing the deal, but once the deal was done, I always looked forward to all the things after. And she shook her head and she said, Paige, what is wrong with you? You are not a finance person.
You're a marketing person." said, what are you talking about? And she said, everything you like is marketing. It's advertising in the newspaper. It's planning events and it's promotions, buying toys to commemorate the deal. All of those are marketing things. They're not finance things. I said, I've never taken a marketing class. In college, there were no marketing classes. You know, I went to a liberal arts school.
I had no idea what, I didn't even know marketing, what it was. I'd never thought about it. She said, Paige, when you go to business school, you're gonna take marketing. I think you're gonna do really well. So she had planted that seed the summer between ending the job and going to school. Well, wouldn't you know it, in the first semester of the MBA program, I had a marketing class. And sure enough, I got the top grade in the class.
And then I got the job at Procter & Gamble to be a summer intern. And then when I came back in college, I was the president of the economics association. And then when I came back my second year in business school, I was the president of the marketing club. So I had completely used my MBA to rebrand myself from a finance person to a marketing person. And then I went back to Procter & Gamble.
So for me, the pivot, the aha moment, if you will, was when my girlfriend kind of enlightened me and made me realize that the things that I enjoyed that were more intuitive to me and that I really had a passion for, that I found fun and interesting and exciting, were more under the marketing umbrella. They weren't finance oriented.
And the best thing for Procter & Gamble, they're probably the most data -driven consumer products company in the world. So my analytical finance training was actually a real asset at P &G because they loved that I knew how to crunch numbers and that I could use data to support all my recommendations. So having that strong analytical training was a huge asset and benefit to me in my career there. So I don't know. mean, I don't know without her, I don't know that I would have figured it out on my own, but I think you have to really be in touch with what you enjoy, what you're good at, what's intuitive to you. And if you don't know, ask people around you, what do you think I'm good at? Where did you see me really shine and thrive?
And, you know, that's how you learn. You learn to do by doing. And sometimes you learn what you love and sometimes you learn what you don't want to do. And that's part of the experience.
Greg
That's a great story. I love the last piece of advice, by the way, because we were chatting offline, and I think it's tough that kids when they're 16, 17 years old kind of need to choose a direction for a career. I mean, you change so much. I mean, you change so much even after college, right, the first four five years, but it's a young age where you're still kind of figuring out who you are and what you like.
This one might be tough for you to answer because I'm going to ask you to remember something very specific when you were initially going to school for finance. So it's okay if you don't know. I'm just poking, pulling at straws here. Was there anything kind of in the back of your mind, your gut that you can remember when you were going to school, studying finance that if you're looking back at it, you go...
My gut was telling me this is not where my heart is. Was there anything you can think of that there was that or was it just, hey, I'm good with numbers, this is fun, we'll figure it out and then just later that moment came once you started doing it.
Paige Arnof-Fenn
Yeah, the in my gut feeling didn't happen till I got to Wall Street. And I knew within the first two weeks of the job, literally, I was like, God, I made a two year commitment. This is going to be hard. This is not. Yeah, this is not what I thought I signed up for. But as a kid and in college, I was on a mission like I really thought.
Greg
Hahaha. Only 102 weeks to go.
Paige Arnof-Fenn
I was gonna conquer the world in finance. My senior year in college, the first Wall Street movie came out with Michael Douglas and it won an Oscar. And I was so enamored with that movie. And I just thought, my God, that is gonna be my life. Crazy. I was hooked. I was absolutely hooked. And like I said, I had grown up in a family of commercial bankers, but I thought investment banking was like super exciting and even better, like more money, you know, I could make a ton of money. I could be super successful. I could travel for my job.
Like everything about it seemed over the top exciting. And I didn't have any reservations at all. And when I got offers from a lot of the investment banks and I was so excited to accept the offer for the one that I felt the most excited by. And it really wasn't until I got there where I thought, my goodness, like this, I looked at my boss and my boss's boss and my boss's boss's boss. And I realized I don't want any of their lives. I don't want any of their careers. Like that is not the path I wanna be on, but I had never met anybody that did marketing. I didn't even know that that was a thing.
My parents had friends who were doctors, lawyers, architects. I didn't know anybody in marketing. But then when I started at P &G and I looked at my boss, my boss's boss, my boss's boss's boss, and at Coke, I thought all of their jobs and careers were amazing.
Like to me, that just really resonated with me. Like what they did, you know, where they did it, how they did it, what they learned. I just thought it was all so cool, so interesting. And I could see how, I could just see how all of it was kind of coming together in a way that seemed like it would appeal to my strengths naturally.
So I don't know, it felt like the right
Greg
That's great. I think the advice there is listen to your gut, even after you've graduated college, right? And that's a lot of, for a lot of people, it's tough because you put all this time, money into getting something. And that should be the kind of the start of your professional career. It's hard to go back and go, you know what? I should probably go spend some more time, spend some more money, delay my career, you know? So I think it's good advice to listen to that because you're a lot more fulfilled. You're a lot more happy now than you would have been.
Paige Arnof-Fenn
Without a doubt.
Greg
Paige, I want to shift gears a little bit and speak directly to high school kids more now.
You said you do some mentoring in the college, the collegiate side. So if you're advising high school kids today and who are interested in either pursuing a business, marketing, right? Maybe they are interested in marketing. They don't know they want to do it full time. But the depth of toes of the water and start building those skills that they're going to take with them later. What advice might you offer them? And this could be in terms of here's a skill you need to learn or sharpen. It could be a specific class to take that might not be a business class, right? A of high schools don't offer those,
This thing really came back to be super helpful for me. Any piece of advice you can offer to someone who's in high school that may be flirting or knows they want to do marketing as a career?
Paige Arnof-Fenn
Yeah, I mean, I think there are a lot of things you can do in high school and college in terms of everything from, you know, marketing is about being relevant in the world. You've got to be somebody who's always got your antenna up. You see trends, you understand pop culture. So if you like marketing, or if you think you might, look at some of the great marketers who have blogs and websites and follow them. Just tag them and see what they're thinking about, what they're talking about. A lot of them have written books, they have podcasts, and so you can learn a lot just by kind of seeing what's out there.
You know, one question I used to always ask when I was interviewing people for internships or jobs early in their career is, do you know what the top box office movies are right now? Do you know the books that are the New York Times bestsellers? Do you know why a certain TV show, Abbott Elementary or The Bachelorette or, you know, any show that you like, why is it one of the top rated shows? Maybe it's a show you don't like, but it's a top rated show. Do you know what it is that they're hitting on that's resonating with the population? The thing is, you gotta walk the streets, gotta use your eyes, your ears, you gotta take it all in.
Because marketing is about capitalizing on trends and being relevant to the audience that you're selling to, whether you're a product or service, you really have to understand what's in that person's head. So you can take psychology classes if they're offered, reading books, podcasts, webinars, and internships. The other thing is if you have clubs at your school or at your college. You know, a lot of them have a marketing committee or a promotions group. If you know, you're promoting an event on campus, putting up posters, doing some, you know, local advertising targeted to certain people. It could be related to a hobby or interest.
It doesn't have to like a big job. But I did that when I went back to business school. When I was in high school and college, I always wanted to be the treasurer or the finance person on a committee. In business school, I wanted to be on the marketing committee, publicity committee, because you can get a lot of good experience doing like campus jobs, jobs at school, where you're learning. And again, it doesn't have to be a formal education, but if you're making posters or selling tickets to an event or whatever, you test, learn, you do market research, you do different posters. You may have people sign up for stuff online and you can look at what the data says. What did you learn? I learned that this worked, this didn't. We tried this, it didn't work, we changed it, and then we got tons of people to sign up. That's marketing. And so it doesn't have to be, you know, and a lot of times internships don't pay very well, or they don't pay anything at all. If you can afford to go and just do it for the learning experience, that's great.
You could also ask professionals for an informational interview and just ask them about their careers. How did you get into it? Does your company have interns? My mom really wanted me to be a lawyer. I never wanted to be a lawyer, but my first job in high school that I got paid for was delivering mail at a law firm. And it gave me an opportunity to see a bunch of lawyers, talk to them.
And then I was sure, I said, Mom, I worked there. I don't want to be a lawyer. I want to be business person. But my mom thought I was so good at arguing, I would make an excellent attorney. But I don't know. mean, I just think, get your foot in the door and, you know, go have lunch or coffee with professionals that can tell you about their path, what they learned, and see what resonates if it's something that you feel like, you know, will educate you and give you a sense of, you know, experience. You never know where those opportunities will go.
Greg
Absolutely. I was going to say it and then you jumped in at the end, but I think it's a really important point. It's one that's been resonated through multiple of these interviews is when you start doing things, we talked about this earlier, sometimes you figure out what you don't like more than what you do like. And that's half the battle, right? It's half the battle.
Paige Arnof-Fenn
Which is so valuable. I think it's actually more valuable when things fail, when they don't work out and you take the time to like do the post-mortem, go back and realize what was it about that I didn't like? Why didn't that work? You know, I think that's as valuable, if not more valuable than finding things you love to do.
Greg
100%. So I know when I was asked about high school, a lot of times the high school college advice is the same. So look at classes, you mentioned clubs, high schools, some offer, some don't. Colleges, absolutely. There's usually a club for everything at most schools. If not, you could always start one, I guess. Anything specific to those college students that maybe you haven't touched on that would apply only to them and it wouldn't apply to say high schoolers that you haven't touched on yet.
Paige Arnof-Fenn
So for college, you've got to get some good internships. And the other thing is, you know, your professors in college, a lot of them do consulting on the side and use your professors as sounding boards because sometimes you're taking a marketing class, maybe your professor has a project where you could be an assistant or an intern or maybe he needs data.
You know, analyzed and someone to write up a report. So don't forget the professors and the alumni database at college is gold. You know, you can go in and search by region, by title. And at least my alma mater, they have something called the Alumni Mentoring Program, where alumni check the box and say,
They're happy to be contacted by students about careers stuff. So use your alumni database, use your professors, you know, use the clubs on campus, or like you said, start your own club. All of those are great opportunities. But in college, definitely, you know, summer internships are critical. And I would say I know it's fun to be a camp counselor and it's fun to go hiking through Europe or whatever, but try and at least get some good internships under your belt that are more career oriented, because it's such a great opportunity. And like when I was in grad school, they had something called field studies, where you basically do a consulting project for an alum for credit.
Instead of taking a class, you can do basically free consulting. You get class credit, they don't pay you. But it's like a job experience that an alumni gives you to learn about the field. So look into those too. Anything like that is great for the resume.
Greg
That's phenomenal advice. The internship one, finding them early and sometimes doing multiple of them seems to be a very common piece of advice as well. It's getting your foot in the door, which is tough nowadays. Which nice segue for me. I want to talk about those new in the workforce. So we've touched on it a little bit. Challenge for any person coming out of college is proving you can do the job with experience when you have no experience, right? Outside of those small things that we talked about here. So I'm put it this way. You have, and you've certainly done your fair share of hiring. So you're hiring a new graduate. You have 10 resumes in front of you to fill one job. What are you specifically looking for that would set those 10 candidates apart?
Paige Arnof-Fenn
So I'm a little odd, I think. I mean, you do want to see that they have experience that's relevant and that they have results. But for me, I almost look at the bottom of the resume at least as much as I do the top. So the interests, the hobbies, the things that they have, kind of random stuff at the
They're a jazz musician, fluent in five languages, have traveled to 30 countries, like random stuff that's like personal information. You know, they're a chef, like whatever human interest. Don't forget to put some personality on your resume. When I was hiring for my second startup, that I was head of marketing. There was a woman who had been a chef at top restaurants and she had studied in Italy in college. And I studied in Italy in college and she was interviewing for a customer service job. And she did have some relevant experience, but we had a lot of resumes with much more experience.
So I got like 300 resumes and my boss said, you can bring like, I don't know, seven, eight people in to give me the resumes you wanna bring in. So I handed him the resumes, including this woman. And so he looks through them and he said, all right, fine, but I gotta ask you, this one woman, she seems a little lighter on the experience than the others.
I said, yeah, I know, but she looks really cool. Anyone that's worked at a top restaurant as a chef knows a lot about customer service. you know, the restaurant business, service is so critical. And so my sense is that she's got like tangential experience that could be very relevant. And I just think I'm going to like her a lot. She seems like someone that would be very simpatico and she'd be a great fit like culturally with the group. So long story short, I bring in all the candidates and they're all qualified. But my gut was totally right. This woman was like someone that I would love to work with side by side. She knew a lot of, she had very good instincts on people and customer service.
Anyway, after I talked to her, said, I'll be right back. And I walked down to my boss's office and said, do you have a few minutes? I want you to interview this woman for the customer service job. And he said, great, which one? And I told him, shook his head. He said, all right, fine. I'll give her a few minutes. Well, sure enough, they had an amazing conversation. He said goodbye, walked her out and he came into my office and he said,
I don't get it. How did you know she's perfect for this job? Like on paper, I wouldn't have picked her. And I said, I don't know. I'm just looking. It's like a holistic approach. know, people that do stuff outside of work that they have passion, they have interests, they have hobbies. I like multi -dimensional people. I want people that like, you see all three dimensions.
If they work hard if they're just all work all the time. I mean, that's good in a way, but I don't think it makes for the best kind of package. You can be smart and fun. You can get the job done and be funny and be somebody in the trenches when you're working those late nights. And you go like, God, this you know, this is really kind of cool. We're learning together that, you know, people are laughing and having fun. They're not just like super intense all the time, 24 seven. So I guess I would tell people it's important to showcase the stuff you're very proud of professionally, but don't forget to be a total human being and talk about other things you do and your passion, hobbies or interests outside of work because I think sometimes that becomes what's different, special, unique about
Greg
Very good, I love the story and I would say if you've ever worked in a high -end restaurant, I have. If you, that chef is probably really good at multitasking and not always, but probably good at dealing with pressure too. Just my two cents.
Paige Arnof-Fenn
Absolutely, which is like killer in a startup.
Greg
100 % 100 % so Paige you've been really good with your time today just a couple questions and I'll let you kind of get on so I want to spend just second with personalities so with every walk of life you're gonna deal with with different people with different personalities is there a personality did you think someone who's going into the marketing world or traits of a personality should
possessed to really be successful or to be happy in the field because they're gonna deal with people that are short, abrasive, they're gonna deal with people who are funny and fun to be around, especially with the marketing world, you're gonna get some of that. It's a mixed bag, but are there certain traits that people have? like, know what, you might want to do some deeper soul search and to figure out this is for you.
Paige Arnof-Fenn
So I think a lot of people think everyone in marketing is extroverted and gregarious. I've worked at companies where people shake their heads because every time they walk through the marketing department, we're kind of laughing or we're talking loud, funny, they dress well, stylish. I think some of that is true, but I think... you know, there are a lot of roles that are marketing that are better for more pensive, introverted people as well. Like if you're somebody who likes to think and kind of maybe be more introverted and more thoughtful, you may want more of a market research job versus an advertising job.
Advertising, public relations, those are more out there, you know, having a big personality, being very extroverted and gregarious. Those personalities tend to gravitate to more advertising and PR. Market research, which is a really important role in marketing, is kind of the other extreme.
A lot of those people really are happy to be kind of in their office, plowing through research, crunching the numbers, doing the analysis, writing up reports, and they can be incredibly successful. So, you know, if you have the opportunity to shadow people or do a rotation program at a company where you get to see different sides of the business. There are so many things that can be done under the marketing umbrella. You know, you need pricing strategy, you need promotion, you need advertising, know, branding.
There are lots and lots of tools in the marketing toolkit. Web design, graphic design, you know, search engine, all the online marketing, all the social media, all the social listening tools. So, you know, I think again, you kind of learn to do by doing and if you can find a way to get informational interviews, shadow people, watch them, talk to them, see where your gut tells you, these are my people. I could see myself in a meeting with them and this is the kind career path that looks really interesting to me. This is where I think I'm gonna be successful and where I'm gonna thrive. That's great. mean, you don't need everybody in the same boat. You need all the boats filled with really great talent pulling in the same direction. So there's no one right path.
There's no one way to be successful in marketing. Lots of different areas that need talented people. I guess the only common denominator I would say, be willing to roll up your sleeves and do your homework and just be kind of a fun person, a nice person to be around, having a good sense of humor and just being willing to jump in and raise your hand when they need help, be there. Come in early, stay late, set up yourself for success because then you build a great reputation and people remember you. Like when you're in the trenches and you say something funny and it keeps the mood light, you're not high maintenance, you're not a lot of drama, that goes a long way. And I just know in my career, you know, even for like interns and entry level positions,
When people leave to take other jobs, a lot of times they remember who the junior people were that were really good. They worked hard, they came in early, they stayed late. They were fun to work with, no attitude, no drama. And so they recruit them to come with them in the new job. So if you do that, your career will get made. mean, people will remember you. You'll build a great reputation and you'll be known as someone who's like, you know, a great, teammate.
Greg
Wonderful. So Paige, thank you so much. You've given tons of advice, useful advice at that, which is, I appreciate the openness. I appreciate the stories to go along with it, because I think it paints a really good picture. Last one for you here. I'm going to take you out of the marketing world. You're not coming back. You've got to choose a different career. What are you choosing and why?
Paige Arnof-Fenn
Well, it's funny. mean, I don't know. I think I could see going a couple of different directions. Well, now that all the healthcare and biotech is so amazing, it never dawned on me to study all of that, you know, in the eighties, but there would be a part of me if I were in college today, I probably take a lot more of the sciences if I had any talent in that area, just because I think it's fascinating what is possible now with technology and artificial intelligence, just all the possibilities of creating solutions to health problems and making humanity better whether it's poverty or illness or peace, you look at all the things that you could affect with a degree and something more along the science area. That would be tempting.
The other thing that I don't know if it would be crazy, but I could see trying to be like a comedy writer. I always kind of thought it would be kind of cool to write, I don't know, TV for TV or for movies or for comedians. think, you know, I love writing in the marketing. I do a lot of content marketing and I think I could probably repurpose that in related but different way. But, you know, so few people really succeed in those areas. It might be too frustrating. I don't know that I would be good enough, but it would be something fun to toy with.
Greg
So what's your sense of humor? Is it sarcastic? Is it dry and witty? Is it boisterous? What type of sitcom we write in here?
Paige Arnof-Fenn
I'm probably a comedy or a romantic comedy. I'm, I don't know, I think I do have a decent sense of humor, but I'm not, I mean, I'm pretty quick witted, but not dark or gloomy, know, not snarky or anything. I think I'm more just straight up, you know, kind of funny in a way like.
I don't know, Reese Witherspoon or Julia Louis -Dreyfus or, not as good as them, but, you know, kind of in a nice way.
Greg
Perfect. So, well, Paige, thank you so much for your time today. I appreciate you sharing everything. Any closing comments you want to leave the audience?
Paige Arnof-Fenn
Well, I just think you learn to do by doing, so go out there and do it and figure out what it is that makes you tick. And just be honest, it's your life, it's your career. Don't worry about what your mom or dad or any expectations that other people are putting on you. It's your life and you're the one that needs to jump out of bed every day, excited to kind of go conquer the world.
So figure out what it is that makes you tick and not something that is going to impress somebody at a cocktail party or make your mother happy. That's not, that's not the way to pick a career. And I think if you do that, you're honest with your kind of gut and intuition. think you're going to have an amazing career because there's so much stuff out there now that is so exciting and just keep learning every day, try and learn something new.
Greg
Well said. Paige Arnof-Fenn, everyone, marketer and founder and CEO of Mavens and Moguls. To find out more about Paige, everything she's up to, visit MavensandMoguls.com, which is also linked in the video description.
So I hope you enjoyed today's episode. If you'd to unbox your career with us, we'd love to have you. And until next time, be kind to one another.
(Interview transcription provided by Riverside.fm. May not be 100% accurate.)
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