Scaling Through Failure: Entrepreneurship, Creativity and Building a Personal Brand as an Aspiring CMO

James Dooley: The aspiring CMO today. I'm joined with Anna who's got an amazing podcast, so I want to jump straight in. Why did you call it the aspiring CMO?

Anna: The aspiring CMO is a journey. It tells a story from someone who is eager to learn in a creative field and still want to monetize it. So it comes from a place of I want to make money. But I want to make money in a fun way and at the time when I created the aspiring CMO I didn't think about entrepreneurship, although I was very impressed by entrepreneurs, but there was a different skill set that I was also very inspired by which is a creative directorness or creativity in general. So when I merged these two things in my head, entrepreneurship skills and creativity skills, I was like, oh, I think that's a chief marketing officer. Someone who herds this crowd, someone who recruits the right people doing the right thing and someone who deals with creative projects. Who else is there? And then you could argue it's a creative director. I think it's now that I'm maturing it sounds like that, but at the time I was more into, I guess, chief marketing officership. So why not?

James Dooley: The aspiring entrepreneur as opposed to the aspiring CMO?

Anna: Entrepreneurship, I think it's a little bit oversold. Anyone can be an entrepreneur. I can start selling plants and call myself an entrepreneur, but when it comes to, but in my head, I guess you would correct me if I'm wrong, with the chief marketing officer. Understand corporates, understand a bigger picture from day one or like from that job.

James Dooley: But you see what's interesting about that is I don't think you go and sell plants and make sure an entrepreneur. I think what starts to happen is if you set up a plant company and you were successful and then you went and set up another business and that was successful and you set up another business and that at that point we can make sure an entrepreneur. You're taking lots of risk just going doing a drop shipping e-commerce. No, you're just you're running a business. You're not an entrepreneur. You're a business owner. I think until you start taking the risk element and lots of risk element, does it then go down the branch of an entrepreneur? Everyone's got different kind of terms for what's what with regards to a CMO. I feel it's more of a job role. So yes, you are creative, but you are an employee within a business. So you've got the entrepreneur, the business owner, the founder that then creates like a CFO, a CMO, a CTO, a COO, and it's just one of the middle management roles. So when it was like aspiring to be a middle manager, which is kind of what I the way I would do it, with the way I would think of it, was why not aspiring to entrepreneurship. However, you wanted it in a way I never thought about it because it seems to be that you love the creativity side and at that point you could be an entrepreneur that hires lots of CMOs and still be an entrepreneur, but you're it seems to be you creativity part of the brain is what makes you tick and what what is fun for you? Is that correct?

Anna: I think so, yeah, and I also love how you explained entrepreneurship as a risk, like a constant risk taker. Because honestly, I thought like anyone really, anyone could be an entrepreneur, like any street seller on the street, like if you just open a stall, like you are selling something and you are an entrepreneur. I think also that's also a risk, but I never thought of it this way. So thank you.

James Dooley: Yeah, well to be honest this is just my own way of, like I wouldn't I wouldn't personally call someone entrepreneur if they just set up a business. I'd only call them really an entrepreneur if they take lots of risk and they're setting up multiple businesses. Now my terminology of it is very different to the way you go and search it on Wikipedia. Yeah, they could say you could basically turn around and go in I'm a managing director. But actually you might just be there's only you working inside of a business that you set up a little business. I know you're the managing director of that business.

Anna: Yes, technically you are, but you're not really a managing director. You're just an employee within your own business that's trying to make ends meet.

James Dooley: So it's like, it's what people kind of look to do. Why on the aspiring CMO you've got the podcast. What's the end goal with it? Why did you create the podcast?

Anna: The podcast at the time I created was for me to learn from people I admire or I think I can learn from and the fastest way, and to this day I stand by this, the fastest way to get someone to talk to you on a professional level without any attachment, it's a podcast. I'm just gonna be like, hey James, I have a podcast. You're really cool. Can you talk to me for 40 minutes? And you'll be like, yeah. But if I just come to you while you're having coffee, like hey, you want to talk to me for 40 minutes? You'd be like piss off. I have so much.

James Dooley: That's so true. I'm not. That is that. If someone reaches out to me, I don't I don't want people to reach out to me. I'm busy. But if someone does reach out to me and says do you want to jump on my podcast? And I've got a 30-minute podcast. A lot of time I used to say I rarely know but I used to say yeah. Well if someone basically came to me and says can I do a consult call and my hourly rate within like audio is like $2,000 for 30 minutes? I know it's declining at the $2,000 for 30 minutes. Yeah, I jump on a podcast for someone for free. And they were asking me the questions that sometimes is the questions that was being asked in an old eyes mentorship call. I was declining it for $2,000 for the 30 minutes. So he's like you're right. Sometimes you can get yourself in a position with people that might not have the time to speak to you apart from the minute you mentioned podcast. And it's gonna get syndicated out and you can deliver your message. You can ask the person the questions that you wanted to ask yeah and get that time. So that's that's a great part of the really thought of it that way.

Anna: It was really great for me to get hold of a lot of people who otherwise would be living in a different country, different time zone, et cetera. And at the time I didn't have a career running for myself. I wanted to start something and I think the podcasting helped me to learn the ins and outs of content creation, how to get a footage, how to edit a footage, how to, you know, all the things we just talked about in different episodes. You should check out in the link below. And it also showed me that I can do it, but it's also showed the future employers fans that I can do it. So this skill set also helped me to get very good job opportunities in the future. It helped me to build a reputation of like yeah, and he does this in her free time. How cool is that?

James Dooley: Yeah, she's building up your own personal brand as well as something else. I absolutely love this. It's just personal brand. Yeah, it's a flashy stuff but for a personal growth perspective I could do this alone and later on I could hire people and intern people and mentor people to do the same.

Anna: From this aspiring CMO project alone in the past two three years, I was giving opportunities to people I never thought that would change their lives.

James Dooley: Yeah, and it sounds cliche but like one of our interns in the ACMO project, she got herself such a good salary and now she is no longer, you know making a very bare minimum wage in a restaurant. She can now enjoy her hobbies, walk her dog and and just like give it, live a comfortable young adult life, you know me? Yeah, and just because I've set up this system of like and he goes an interview and he has a video and he does a description.

Anna: Yeah, I love the idea of off-air when we was talking on the way in about the community that you're creating and the amount of people that are maybe in-house employees that feel they're stuck and you're there presenting what can't be and what you can be doing and this is how what you can aspire to. I love that element. I love the element of these people in third world countries that might be watching that could be like whoa, wait a minute. I can dream bigger because the amount of people that kind of seem to be holding themselves back into being I'm in a role and that's it. I want my security. Where you're kind of going no, you can take yourself to this next level and you're creating this community and buzz around it. I thought that was heartwarming of the being on this with you. I thought that was a great part to it.

James Dooley: I've actually said to you again off-air that it was like I believe you should be trying to get existing successful CMOs on and explaining what their pain points was initially to starting, what they wish they would have done sooner or what they wished would have happened faster because that might help aspiring people who want to be a CMO. But then also getting some in-house, let's say SEOs or marketers or PPC people that might aspire to be a CMO, getting them on and asking them why haven't they taken the leap? So I think understanding that and letting others listen to that will help so many people because some people might resonate going I'm an in-house SEO and I feel exactly the same way as you. And sometimes your answers could be, sometimes it is better to take the leap or do it part-time, do it over weekend. Like the amount of times I say some people go, oh yeah, I work nine till five. Yeah, what do you do from five till nine? Like you've got five till nine every single night that you could be doing more at learning, cloud code like Mads talks a lot about cloud code being a really important skill. Why are you not learning that for an hour every single day? I own 17 different companies and I spend 90 minutes every single day on learning AI. So someone says I ain't got time to do it. You have got time to do it. I've got three kids under five and I've got 17 companies and I'm taking 90 minutes of my day to learn AI. So anyone who's watching this that says I've not got time, that's the default setting of you're a lazy fucker, right, in my opinion. And this is where I say you're not a tree, you can move and therefore you can aspire to be a CMO. For me, I prefer the entrepreneurship route. It's not built for everyone. There's a lot of risk. There's a lot of stress. But some people kind of thrive and they get the fuel from the hard times and that's kind of what entrepreneurship is. Where, sometimes the creativity part, that's just I don't source that because I'm like I think it's a difference left side and right side of the brain. I'm not good on the creativity side.

Anna: I disagree. I think we're really creative.

James Dooley: Yeah, yeah, ever since I've known you I think I, I don't know, I don't like, I couldn't do the so a lot of stuff. Let's say animators with regards to the viral videos and what you're doing, it's not it. It doesn't make me tick like I I'm about numbers like art, visuals and stuff like that. It just doesn't. I try, I'm gonna try to and I love it and I think it's very important. But I'm more of a numbers, business, sales, profit that kind of role. Then the creativity side just helps me build that, that part. On it's very very important to do it, but it's inspiring what you're doing. I think you, I need you to carry it on because I think you're gonna elevate so many people within your community. Anyone that's not heard it, listen to it. How can people kind of subscribe?

Anna: Thank you so much. I think you guys, you can find me on YouTube. You can find me on Apple podcast.

James Dooley: What's the handle on YouTube?

Anna: It's anyone anymore, anyone marketing, but you guys can find me the aspiring CMO. It's on the aspiring CMO. Subscribe and thank you very much.