Hi there 👋
For a minute, my love of roller coasters knew no bounds. I tried them all, fearlessly (or naively). Space Mountain at Disneyland was one of the most notorious, a twisting, turning, stomach-churning ride in the complete dark where all you could do was hang on for dear life because you never knew which direction you’d be going next. At the end of the ride, you’d look around at your friends, breathless and a little worse for wear, and somehow choose to do it all again.
This has been my experience as an in-house marketer at startups, too: breathless, bewildered, moving fast, wishing I could hold a steering wheel (and work the gas pedal – or brake!).
For 15 years (a long minute), I have been hustling my way through tech — at Vox, at Buffer, at Oyster, working with dozens of early-stage and growth-stage companies to build their brands and grow their revenue using my unique take on marketing.
It’s been a fun ride.
Space Mountain was a fun ride, too.
But now when I think about hopping on a roller coaster, I have other ideas of how I’d like to spend my time. The same is true for my work.
I’m ready for a new kind of ride.
I’ll tell you all the cool details in next week’s newsletter. (Cliffhanger … 🧗♀️)
Today, I can tell you that the new ride is going to be something very different for me; it’s going to be me making a new thing with people, topics, and impact that I adore. And the decision to do so, which I thought might be fraught with fear and trepidation, has been exceedingly easy and … right.
It’s time.
How do I know it’s time? How does anyone know it’s time? Well, ahead of next week’s newsletter where I promise I’ll give you all the details, I thought I’d share a few of the reflections that helped me make the decision to quit roller coasters and start something new.
Let me know which parts resonate with you and if you’re thinking about a change, too.
1 - It’s never too late to reinvent yourself
Part of my coping mechanism for maintaining a job in tech was convincing myself that if my impostor syndrome around my marketing expertise proved to be correct and – poof! – I could never be a marketer again, then I could just be something else. I mentally prepared a CV for being an engineer, an influencer, and a brain surgeon. How hard could it be!
There was another part of me, though, that believed the only thing I was good at was marketing, in-house, at early-stage tech companies. Or, that I had come so far on this career path that to abandon it for something else would be irresponsible.
Was the rest of my life going to be jumping from tech job to tech job? Was I Sisyphus in a corporate-branded Patagonia vest?
No. I am capable of turning my experience into value elsewhere. My experience is tangible to tech companies, sure, but it’s also the behaviors and attitudes I bring to my work, how I show up and get things done, which translate to so many other possible paths. Maybe even brain surgeon!
2 - Who’s actually in control?
One of the most difficult book-reading moments of my life was when I finished reading The Hard Thing About Hard Things, a memoir about building a tech company, and I instantly wanted to make all the decisions at the tech company where I worked.
But, and this will come as no surprise to you, I did not have the ability to make those decisions.
There’s a part of my personality that craves control, although I think that’s probably true for most people. (I am definitely the nicest controlling person you’ve ever met.) For me, control became more and more important the higher I rose in each company because I saw how critical the C-level decisions could be and how sometimes I wished we would decide differently. The only way for me to truly own more business-critical decisions was to, well, own my own business.
3 - Very few companies really get brand. (aka, stop firing all the brand people!)
Along my career journey, I came to learn what I was best at: helping companies grow through differentiated brand storytelling and Product-Led Growth. Ironically, these are two of the things that companies struggle most to understand. They at least somewhat get PLG, even if they confuse self-serve with true PLG religion. But very few of them get brand.
This became rather frustrating for me to keep educating people about brand, advocating for brand resources, defending my decisions about brand. It became incredibly hard to see my friends in brand roles, content roles, design and creative and even some product marketers and growth marketers, lose out on influence or recognition – or, in the past couple years, lose their jobs! – because the real impact of their work was missed by those in authority.
It’s enough to make you want to hop off the roller coaster and go make your own ride, right?
4 - Find your people
I like to think that I have a unique lens to the way that I show up at work, how I market, and how I lead. There was a time when I felt this lens cost me; I was less effective because I was different. But now, I firmly believe that this lens is the greatest gift I could have received for it has shown me who my people are, those who appreciate this lens or who share a similar lens and similar outlook on work, life, and impact.
(If you’re reading this newsletter, I consider you part of my people. Hi! And thank you!)
In order to embrace that it was time for a new thing, I needed support and encouragement from those around me. I needed to not be alone. In hindsight, I needed a few years to figure out exactly who I was and to be confident to show up in this way even if it wasn’t the normal default state of startups.
Finding the right people has made this next stage of the journey feel easy, inevitable. It has validated ideas, it has provided traction and audience, it has given me the most amazing people to hang out with and build with. And it has encouraged me to be more the person that I already am.
More to come next week … !
I’ll fill you in on all the details and specifics next week. But until then, do some of these reflections resonate with you? Where are you at in your career / life journey? Let me know by replying to this email. I’d love to hear from you.
Kevan
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Thank you for being part of this newsletter. Each week, I share playbooks, case studies, stories, and links from inside the startup marketing world and my time at Oyster, Buffer, and more.
Say hi anytime at hello@kevanlee.com. I’d love to hear from you.
About this newsletter …
Hi, I’m Kevan, a marketing exec based in Boise, Idaho, who specializes in startup marketing and brand-building. I previously built brands at Oyster, Buffer, and Vox. Each week, I share playbooks, case studies, stories, and links from inside the startup marketing world. Not yet subscribed? No worries. You can check out the archive, or sign up below:
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