Transcript
Introduction and Amanda Behre’s New Business
(Stu, Host) Welcome to the Flow State Podcast. Welcome back if you’ve listened before; welcome for the first time if it’s your first time. Today, doing something a little bit different, I’m speaking to Amanda Behre and we’re diving into your career as a marketer: what the hell do you do when you’re in that squeezed middle period? Amanda has just launched a business which is very focused on that area. We’ve both been through it, we talk about our experiences, and we’re diving into all aspects of what’s happening in marketing this year and beyond. Welcome to the show, Amanda, thanks very much for coming on. Before we begin and dive into what we’re going to talk about today, which I’m loosely theming “escape from marketing” (which is not strictly true because I know you are still doing marketing, just in a different way), would you like to give a quick intro to yourself and what you’re currently up to, and then we can dive into your current project?
(Amanda Behre) Absolutely, well thanks for having me, Stu. It’s a pleasure to be here and also share my story as well. I have—I guess I finished my last CMO role (Chief Marketing Officer role) and I have launched a business, and it’s a place. It’s very exciting. Essentially, it’s a marketplace connecting mid-career professionals through to coaches and advisory support. I’ve got quite a few advisors on the platform already, everything from professional coaches (specializing in working parents, neurodiversity, career counseling, etc.) through to subject matter experts on the other side (whether that’s technology, strategy, operations, marketing, building your personal brand, etc.).
(Stu, Host) Love it. Now that sounds super exciting, Amanda. What I like about what you’re doing… is like you’re living the dream that I think a lot of marketers secretly inside at work wish that they were doing themselves, which is going off, starting your own business, being able to work on your own brand and push your own agenda and do things for yourself. What was it that first made you think “now is the time I’ve got to make the leap and go and do something for myself”?
(Amanda Behre) I love that you premised that by living the dream, because it’s certainly not—and as you know, possible mischaracterization at the start—it’s certainly not for the faint-hearted. Particularly if you are a working professional that’s come from big business executive career, it’s pretty tough. Your question around why now?
Amanda’s Career Journey and the “Why Now”
(Amanda Behre) I’ve been in marketing for a number of years. I actually started off funnily enough in human resources because I was really curious about human behavior and what makes people tick. I ended up getting sponsored working for a travel company in the States, spending about a decade in the US. I worked various sales and marketing and partnership roles and worked my way up there in a travel company, Quonus Vacations. The work I did in partnerships helped me land a job at What If, which was then acquired by Expédia. I went from a local operator who had made a huge impact on the Australian market to being acquired by a big global organization. Going through an acquisition process is really interesting.
After that role, I worked at Gumtree. I was on the other end where we acquired a motors business, Cars Guide and Auto Trader. I was doing the due diligence, working on the internal communications plans, etc.. Through Gumtree, I went through Covid and saw “every trend under the sun”. Moving from the travel category to working in large databases, a marketplace business, and changing categories in the motor space really meant that you had to be adaptable and had to try to figure things out.
After Gumtree, I worked at a disability tech company. The themes I saw throughout were the challenges that marketers and teams are facing. I had always enjoyed mentorship and coaching, and building high functioning teams; it was always the favourite part of my job.
After I left my last business, I thought, “two paths: I could go and pick my next CMO job, or have I actually got it in me to start my own business”? I guess you have that aha moment at some stage, and for me it was: if I don’t do this now, it’s never going to happen. I did a survey late last year and found a need in market. I ended up doing all the market research to figure out the product market fit, started doing a build in February of this year, and launched a soft launch three or four months later.
(Amanda Behre) I think it’s a cumulative impact. One area is probably coming out of Covid, where you’re seeing such change in marketing teams. You had businesses that had to accelerate their digital transformation. You’ve got the raft of technology options out there, which is “bloody confusing,” and then obviously AI, etc., and now you’ve got your cost of living pressures.
Statistics on Workplace Stress and Disengagement:
(Amanda Behre) Some of the statistics I looked at while doing my research for starting the business:
- The Gallup Workplace Report says 77% of people (Aussie workers) are now disengaged, both passively and actively.
- The stat was also that 48% are experiencing quite extreme stress in the workplace.
- The latest ABS mobility report is saying something like 8% of people are staying in their jobs compared to pre-pandemic levels than ever before, whereas more people are being retrenched.
(Amanda Behre) If you’re in an organization and starting out, your first one to five years is pretty well mapped out; you’ve got your networks and training. At the other end, C-suite executives tend to have leadership training and access to coaching. It’s probably in that mid-career section (Head of Marketing/Product/Technology, Senior Manager) where you’ve got the dual challenge of executional pressure driving short-term growth and translating business strategy. They are less well networked. A lot of companies I’ve been interviewing have been saying this is the cohort experiencing a lot of pressure, but “we can’t often afford to focus on this area; it’s the two, just leave them to it”.
(Stu, Host) That’s really interesting actually because I think… it’s like the classic example of like the squeeze middle right? You get the worst of both worlds often, and you get very little support. For me, from my own experience doing it in agencies, I was going typically from a specialized role up to like managing people, sometimes with very little formal training. The career trajectory usually is like do something for a bit, become a manager, and then do something else after that.
Challenges Facing Mid-Career Professionals: Management and Specialism
(Amanda Behre) I think companies are expecting a lot from employees these days. You’ve got to drive that growth, figure out your capability gaps, build teams, etc., build the culture within an organization. If you’re an individual contributor going to be a people manager, I’ve found that there’s a lot of companies not doing the training well enough to work through that transition. It’s particularly rife with the agencies I’ve spoken to versus your corporate organizations. When you’re in that early first 1-3 years, you need to lean on internal mentors, external guidance, or that training.
One of the biggest challenges now is that if you choose to be a specialist, things are moving so fast. Whether it’s in digital marketing, thinking about AI efficiencies, productivity tools, whatever that looks like, it’s hard to figure out what to specialize in, and if you do, is it going to change in another two years? You just have to make sure you’re peeking above, learning and growing, and getting out of your day-to-day execution and outside of your organization to keep learning, otherwise you are going to be left behind.
(Stu, Host) I was at an RMA meetup in Sydney… they were talking about skill gaps. One that surprised me was that apparently there’s just quite a skills gap in general communications, like people just being able to generally talk to one another clearly. They were also saying that the perceived gaps were around some of those specialist areas, so like social media was one, and I think one of the others was something around something a bit more established like it was either search or content strategy.
(Amanda Behre) It’s all of the above. A few of the comments I’m getting from organizations and employees:
- Soft skills are common themes, such as giving feedback, storytelling and executive presence, and working with C-suite.
- In agency world in particular, where they hire junior people quite early, there’s quite a disconnect between expectations, work ethic (live to work versus work to live scenario) at that junior stage versus senior managers. I’m going to start to pull together content on how to understand the language they’re getting the most in terms of productivity out of these almost multigenerational teams.
- Capability gap around AI. You’ve got quite a divide. Some marketers have already started good adoption beyond ChatGPT. Others are still going, “I don’t know where to start,” because it’s too overwhelming. I have a couple of coaches who focus on innovation, AI, and productivity tools.
- There is so much rapidity in terms of movement in social media, digital marketing, and the amount of technology tools is just so voracious. It’s really difficult: “What do I pick, what actually matches into my current tech stack, and how do I understand the pitfalls and opportunities”?
(Stu, Host) I never really know whether I’d like to describe myself as a generalist or a specialist now. I think it’s hard to imagine coming into it fresh today. You kind of forget that you and I probably have a very good sense of what’s just probably a tactical, “it’ll be here for a year and then gone,” versus a more long range, “something feels like it’s going to be embedded into your life” idea.
(Amanda Behre) If you’re a newbie starting out—and this is exactly why I’ve also formed my platform—you need to be talking to a couple of key people. Talk to people that are probably a couple of years ahead of you. You might want to talk to a handful of different specialists, whether that is in social media or SEO, because they’re going to tell you completely different things. Learning through YouTube or LinkedIn learning is a starting point, but it doesn’t often answer the questions about your personal journey.
The role of the CMO has shifted considerably. If you’re now leading a marketing function, you’ve got to understand the data analytics, business strategy, basics of tech, product marketing, and CX strategy. You’ve also got to be able to understand how to lead multi-disciplinary teams.
The Importance of Soft Skills, Networking, and Visibility
(Stu, Host) I almost feel like the pendulum swung too far the other way now, where everyone just starts with all the technical stuff and they’ve kind of forgotten that marketing essentially is ultimately a job of telling each other stories and communicating.
(Amanda Behre) The opportunities for people coming up now is massive. I have someone who is relatively young on the Dear Thrive platform who has a following on LinkedIn of 56,000 people. She helps people with their personal branding.
I coach quite a few people. The piece of advice here is how do you get yourself noticed or visible in an organization when you aren’t in the room? I always tell them: what reputation do you want to build for yourself? In startup land, they call it your “unfair advantage”; I call it your “unique advantage”. Do a bit of homework on yourself so you can actually present a really succinct story about what you’re passionate about.
You probably would have heard the saying around: you network when you don’t need to network. When you’re gainfully employed, that is when you need to be going out and reaching out to as many people with purposeful conversations as you can. I always have a theme around kindness and courtesy. If you treat people with respect, kindness, and courtesy, not be a taker, it comes around.
You want to network properly: be a little bit prepared, ask curious questions, go in there, and remember a few things the person has said. Get their details, follow up within 24–48 hours. Simple things like if a leader has made a presentation at an all-hands meeting, go up to that leader afterwards and say, “I loved what you said there, this is what I’m taking away”. You will become memorable.
(Stu, Host) I think the fact that you were like, “okay, maybe you were more happy in the office and then suddenly you were just like shoved into your own house” is jarring. The best way to combat that [stress and instability] is just to remember that everybody probably is a bit stressed out, and if we’re just all nice to each other, things will be a lot easier.
(Amanda Behre) It makes it really hard to continue to make those connections, coupled with economic pressures, businesses struggling with growth, people being made redundant, the scenario around replacing people with AI. There are lots of things to feel nervous about. You don’t need permission to reach out. A lot of the times, it isn’t what people need (medical professional); it’s how do I deal with this current challenge that I’m facing? How do I practically get the right advice to get you through it?
The Hybrid Work Challenge and Culture Building
(Amanda Behre) The challenge now is perks like the ping pong table at work; it’s so 5-10 years ago. Nowadays, the purpose of coming into the office is around culture around a connected experience with your colleagues (water cooler moments). The office environment almost has to change a little bit; some companies are remodeling their offices to be much more conducive for that collaborative work. The problem of bringing people in five days a week isn’t solving the productivity challenge. Technology is still the enabler; it’s still human beings that dictate how we work. This is why things like the right to disconnect legislation happened.
(Amanda Behre) I think the challenge is that I heard a few stats around hybrid working being the hardest to build culture. If you’re remote, you do different rituals to keep team engagement happening. If teams come in at different times on different days, there’s rarely any set days. The expectation of coming to the office and coming together has just shifted. What is that new normal? We haven’t figured it out yet.
(Stu, Host) You’ve seen a lot of the mismatch where companies will do hybrid but they won’t specify when anyone comes in, which obviously means you just end up coming to the office and spend all your time on Zoom anyway because no one else is there.
(Amanda Behre) I can’t build culture once a month. The challenge is that it’s a once-off scenario. It’s not a daily momentum-building water cooler conversation scenario where you’re having those side conversations. That is just as valuable as—actually, probably more valuable sometimes—in your Zoom meeting because they’re impromptu. That’s the nuance that you quite often miss.
The APAC Marketing Ceiling and Category Shifts
(Stu, Host) My feeling about APAC specifically… is once you’ve risen to a certain level within the marketing world, it’s very hard to find a job that they really want to do. When people start to consider the move that you have made, it’s when they’re getting close to that where, putting it brutally, it’s either just like hang around and wait for retirement or long service leave, or do something dramatic and different. Do you agree with that characterization?
(Amanda Behre) I’m going to give you a cop answer: it depends.
If you think your career is linear… I agree that there is a ceiling in APAC in terms of team size, role and responsibility, and revenue responsibility, compared to the big globals headquartered in Europe or the US.
However, Australia is the home to a lot of pretty brilliant startups. If you think about climate tech, AI, SaaS solutions, there is a breadth of opportunity here, especially if you are a female leader who has ambitions to look at startup or scaleups. I do think that having international experience opens your eyes to different opportunities.
(Stu, Host) Is it easy enough to switch categories? My friends who are in senior marketing roles have struggled to make the change because they just hit up on a lot of the usual boring recruitment issues where they’re like, “Well, you don’t seem to have any experience in this category”.
(Amanda Behre) It’s such a hard one. If you’re coming up against a recruiter and you haven’t got the breadth of experience in a certain category… “computer says no”. This is where your networking becomes really important.
I was proof that you can actually switch. I bridged from travel (traditional) through to technology (What If/Expedia). The two hardest categories that I worked in were in motors (predominantly male) and then in disability. You have to demonstrate the fundamentals of marketing are still the same. You still need to understand your customer, your brand positioning, research, value proposition, acquisition or retention. You need to paint that story and give your examples that are really transferable, backed by data (S.O.A.R. stories).
Final Thoughts and Dear Thrive’s Future
(Amanda Behre) I reflect on some really practical challenges I had at both my last organizations, implementing new processes in new technology. I spent a lot of money. When I asked the tech companies for help maximizing the opportunity, they both said, “We can’t help you with that; you need to go and speak to another agency”. My biggest bugbear was, “I’ve spent a big load of money with you, and you’re asking me to spend another big load with an agency”. I realised I’d rather spend $5,000 or $10,000 just speaking to a couple of people first for a consultancy or advisory support, versus spending $150,000 first.
The opportunity with advisory supporters (coaching space and technical expertise space) is huge. It isn’t mentorship; it’s not asking for someone’s favour. You want fresh thinking, an impartial view, and confidential conversations.
- Next Steps: dearth.com is our website, or look at our activity on LinkedIn.
- The idea is it’s individualized support. I’m having conversations with P&C leaders and learning development people, saying, “I understand it’s almost like a choose your own adventure scenario“. Each individual employee can choose personalized support for problems like resilience, confidence, executive presence, prioritization, or driving short-term growth.
(Stu, Host) I love that. We’ll obviously include all the links to all of that with the episode. I appreciate you coming on. That was really interesting.
(Amanda Behre) Awesome, thank you, Stu.
(Stu, Host) My pleasure, thanks for coming on, Amanda. We are back in a couple of weeks with another in-depth discussion, this time diving into the shady murky but still very useful world of LinkedIn with Alex Boyd.