Travis’ career has been the definition of a ‘portfolio career’ with experience in sales, recruitment, and marketing. He’s the Founder and Principal Consultant at RainierDigital, a marketing operations consultancy and HubSpot Gold Partner. He’s also the Founder of Winding Road Careers —a place for people on a non-linear career path—and the host of a podcast of the same name.

Questions and topics we covered include:

• The case for learning both sales skills and marketing skills
• Are career ladders “dead”?
• If someone wanted to become a consultant, what should they be doing today to prepare themselves for that transition?
• What makes marketing resumes suck? What makes them get ignored?
• What’s the best way to use LinkedIn to find new marketing jobs?
• How to learn new marketing skills over time? Who to follow? Where to search and learn?

And more!

You can connect with Travis on LinkedIn here – https://www.linkedin.com/in/travisscott24/ 

Our Podcast Partner – MarketerHire

If you’re looking to hire expert freelance talent this year to scale your business (and impress your boss), check out MarketerHire. MarketerHire vets freelance talent so when you hire an SEO expert, Email Marketer, or even a Fractional CMO—you’re not wasting your money or your time. You can hire your first freelancer and get a $500 credit by visiting: www.kennysoto.com/hire 

Music for this podcast comes from www.davidcuttermusic.com

Full Episode Transcript:

Kenny Soto  0:00  

You’re about to listen to episode 134 of the people Digital Marketing podcast. If you’re a marketer or aspiring to become a marketer, and you’re interested in this career field and all it has to offer, this is the podcast for you. My goal with each interview is to help you impress your boss and eventually become your boss, whether that be starting your own business or becoming the CMO. And today we will be talking about career ladders with Travis Scott, not the rapper, Travis. His career has been the definition of a portfolio career with experience in sales, recruitment, and marketing. He’s the founder and principal consultant at Rainier digital, a marketing operations consultancy and HubSpot Gold partner. He’s also the founder of winding road careers, and the host of a podcast with the same name, with the goal of creating a place for people on a nonlinear career path. On this episode, we talk about his experience as a recruiter, how to level up your marketing skills with sales experience, how to get a job without a resume, and much more. So if you’re interested in growing and scaling your career in a nonlinear fashion, this is the interview for you. Welcome to Episode 134 with Travis Scott. Now, let’s start the conversation. Hi, Travis, how are you?

Travis Scott  1:29  

Good. Thanks for having me on looking forward to this conversation.

Kenny Soto  1:32  

Awesome. So I have context about who you are based on how we were introduced by a previous podcast guest ally swanky as well as I was a guest on your podcast. However, that doesn’t mean that the listener has context into who you are. So my first question for you, Travis, is how did you get into the world of digital marketing?

Travis Scott  1:57  

Now it’s a good question by brute force. I got an MBA in marketing. But prior to that, you know, I was in sales, I was in an environmental, I was an environmental consultant right out of school working for the government cleaning up hazardous waste sites. And that just was not what I had in mind. When I got my environmental science degree, I thought it’d be playing in the dirt in a forest somewhere and not cleaning up plutonium in Colorado, but went into sales. It wasn’t my thing, got an MBA, focus on marketing, got an internship, during that time with a staffing agency to do a marketing plan, they got busy. Next thing I know, I’m a recruiter, and I’m in recruiting for a long time. And in the back of my mind, I’m just like, this isn’t my path. This isn’t the path I intended to be on. I want to be in marketing. And so I had let too much time go between when I graduated from my MBA to really start looking. And now I didn’t strike while the iron is hot when I had a degree and say, Hey, I’m new hire me with no real experience and take a chance because I got an MBA, right? That time it passed, and now is just a recruiter on paper, right? The recruiter with an MBA, which is like a waste of money. And so I was, I was like, Alright, I No one’s gonna hire me. So I’ve got to hire myself. And so my cousin owned an agency in Indianapolis, she used to work for Google in the Google Ads back in the early days, when it first started, I learned a ton from her that’s got really got interested in paid media, through her and then just started getting into it, acting like I knew what I was doing, get some clients at figure it out. All right, kept learning. And then I could do more and more and, and then I was a recruiter at Microsoft, and had a side gig and this was 2013. And really before side gigs were really a thing. And it got to a point where I had so much work, that it felt like I was working two jobs. And I would just go to the office in Redmond, work all day, come home, do marketing stuff, evenings and weekends. I got to a point where I told my wife, I’m like, something’s got to give because I can’t. It’s like I was living two different lives recruiting at a fortune 500 company and marketing in my own little world. So I decided Microsoft was what was going to give and went out and just went full time into my own thing and did that for a while. And so that’s really how I kind of got into it just kind of had to hire myself, pick myself.

Kenny Soto  4:37  

I love that. I love the idea of hiring yourself, just to find a way to create your own opportunities. I think that’s very important. And this This leads me to ask what is it that you are doing today?

Travis Scott  4:52  

That’s another good question. And the timing is interesting because I’m in the middle of kind of pivoting. I’m a HubSpot gold partner do a lot of implementations onboarding, a lot of training, a lot of audits and fixing their HubSpot, if they got it and got messy with it, or feel like they’re not getting what they’re getting out of it with a should. But I’m in the process of kind of pivoting back to kind of my roots a little bit and getting back into more advertising. But really more demand gen, which is a lot of what I did when I was a director marketing, just before kind of going back out on my own again, and 2021. And so, so really starting to take what I learned, during my time doing HubSpot on the back end on the ops, you know, marketing ops, DevOps stuff, and now pairing it with what I know about demand gen. And ABM, had really pulling it all together to help people change the way that they they market no more lead gen and passing shitty leads across the fence to sales, right. And I’ve been in sales, so I know what it’s like to be on the other end of that. So I can come in and help sales and marketing teams, work better together, kind of help define a better customer journey. Customer experience. So So yeah, I’m in the middle of pivoting now got a few projects that I’m starting to kind of build frameworks in. And now I just have to do my own demand gen. And that’s always the toughest part, right? It’s marketing yourself. So

Kenny Soto  6:23  

absolutely. And you you have a very unique vantage point in your career. You’ve done sales, you the marketing, you’ve been an operator and a leader in those two domains of expertise in those professions. You’ve also had the unique point of view and perspective as a recruiter, which leads me into the overall theme of today’s podcast, what I want to discuss with you based on all of these different experiences that you’ve had in your career is helping the listeners as marketers think about their careers. Let’s start from a high level. Can you define what a career ladder is? And can you speak on whether or not career ladders are, quote unquote, dead?

Travis Scott  7:11  

Yeah, I think I’ll start with whether they’re dead or not. I think I think I mean, I’ve been in OPS long enough to where my go to is, it depends, right? They get depends on who you are and what you want. Right? For me, I don’t, I never really wanted the ladder. I wanted some leadership ship experience, but didn’t really want the ladder. I think there’s more people out there who, I don’t know if they necessarily want that. And in one of my podcast episodes, that just, I just published like two, two weeks ago, three weeks ago, I talked with April Rennie, who is the author of a book called Flux. And we’re talking about the career ladder. And she used the example of kind of a career like jungle gems, you remember the the, like the little house spiritual things that you can go any direction, I think that’s a better representation. Because sometimes you have to go over to go up, sometimes you go up and then over, sometimes you go down and over it up. Like, I don’t think there’s a linear path anymore, I think you need to put yourself in a position to where you can be agile, and move in different directions. Because I think, just like with anything else, I found this out on my creative side, in writing, and then also just getting into things by pushing myself into out of my comfort zone and into things that I had an understanding of, but didn’t quite know. There’s things you can’t see until you do it. And you bump up against that thing. And then you’re like, oh, shit, I didn’t know that was right there. I didn’t know that was part of this journey. But that might be a lateral move. That might be a pivot. laterally, not a pivot in a career to like something different. But a pivot next to what you’re doing right. And so I think you have to put yourself in a position to be able to see those things, and take advantage of those things. And that’s kind of what I’m doing now. Where I got into HubSpot. I got into ops. And as I was in it, I was seeing like, Hey, there’s this opportunity over here. This aligns more with how I feel. Marketing should be done. I think demand gen, like educating building awareness. Like people want leads from people who don’t know who they are, like, how’s that gonna work? Doesn’t. So to me, demand gen feels like real marketing, like what marketing should be what marketers should be focusing on. It’s a long game, building your brand and awareness. And so by getting into the upside, I was able to see how should a CRM be set up? How should it be configured to capture demand. And then how do you show followed demand through to revenue. And now you know how to set that up. So now I can go help people with demand, get in an area that I feel like sits better that I couldn’t really see the connection until I went to a different path. Right. So I think I think the ladder is dead for a lot of people, but not all. But I think it’s more of a I don’t even know what the name of those things are jungle jam, but I think they have a different name. But I think it’s more of that, right? Like a spiderweb type of thing. So,

Kenny Soto  10:39  

yeah, and this traditional career ladder, help helped me visualize it. What is it? What was it in the past

Travis Scott  10:47  

the career ladder? Yeah, you know, I think it’s more of like, a linear progression in responsibilities within an organization. Right. And like, you start in an associate role, you then move into a little higher role, you get a few more responsibilities than you aspire to be in a leadership role. So you move into a leadership role. But that might not be like, oh, man, I was a better individual contributor. And now this sucks, but now you’re stuck. Because like, you’re on that path, right? It’s like, you’re not going to come back down and take a pay cut. So now you’re stuck. Then you’re just like, well, I need some goals, I guess I’ll be a VP. And then like, this sucks even more, but you keep doing it, right? And then you’re done with your career. And you’re like, shit, that was not what I expected or hoped and a lot more stressed than I probably would have wanted. And time I didn’t spend with my family, all the climb a ladder, right. So. So that’s what I kind of had me that’s why I don’t want it. Because that’s how I envisioned it being like, the higher you go, the more demand on your time and the and I don’t know if it would necessarily be all that much fun. So. So, so yeah, that’s what I think the the career ladder, yes, there was

Kenny Soto  12:08  

a there. If you’re enjoying this episode, and you’re a first time listener, when I hit the Follow button. My goal with each of these episodes is to introduce a new marketing concept, or dive deeper into one, so that you can become a better digital marketer. Hopefully, through these episodes, you join me on this journey, the path to CMO. So I’d love it. If you subscribed. Thanks for listening so far. When it comes to these different paths, I know that one of them, among many, is becoming consultant. And even that may not be the ideal path for some, but there may be a listener, handful of them, who are interested in eventually becoming a consultant. What should they be doing today? Knowing in the context of that they’re probably in house. What should they be doing today to prepare themselves for the potential transition into becoming a consultant

Travis Scott  13:12  

number one thing is save money. Because when you get out on your own, it’s going to be peaks and valleys, and you got to be able to weather the downs, because they’re gonna happen. It’s nobody has ever gone into consulting, that I’m aware of in the history of mankind that has never experienced a dip. And in an inconsistency with projects and revenue, right. Especially if you’ve never done it before. I had done it coming into this second time. And I anticipated it, it still didn’t make it any easier. I was just a little more prepared financially, but it still is mentally hard. So I think just understanding that realizing, Hey, this is what I’m jumping into, it’s going to be unpredictable. And I’ve got to be able to fight through it. And also understand like, go read Seth Cohen’s book, the dip, he’ll talk about what you’re going to feel right before you want to quit. And most of the time, right when you want to quit, you’re so close to the other edge, so close to pulling through and making it you just can’t see it. So read that book. And then I would say find something to become an expert in and go very deep. I think it’s good to kind of be a T shaped marketer to where you the, excuse me, where the horizontal line is broad, a broad understanding of everything in marketing. And then the vertical is where you go deep and one specific thing because I think that’s what people will hire you for. Is to be a deep expert, or unless you can come in and connect a lot of dots. that’s in a unique way that other people really can’t. That’s where I come in. Sometimes I beat myself up, like, I see all these consultants that are really deep experts in this stuff. And I’m not that, but I actually come in. And it’s what I know, it’s the broadness of what I know, with my experience in different things, gives me these perspective, understanding that I was in sales, I know what it’s like, and I’m in marketing, I know what it feels like to get shitty leads. I know what it’s like to not be talking with marketing and marketing, that’d be talking about sales and that whole breakdown. So I can see it from both perspectives. And I can help pull those two teams together better than probably someone who’s never been on one or the other. I’ve also been in recruiting, like you mentioned. And even though I was a director of marketing, when we hired, it was second nature for me to just interview people and find people, because of the skills I had, and I could, we were a small company. And that’s what we needed at the time. And so I put my recruiter hat on and jumped on LinkedIn, and started finding people, right, interviewed him. And then I would use my experience of understanding people, and going through interviews, to make recommendations to the President of the company, like, here’s why I would hire this person, here’s why I wouldn’t hire this person. And I could offer that guidance as a director of marketing. And so like, those are the two areas to kind of either focus on being one or the other. But you have to pull something unique. That stands out or else you’re a commodity, right.

Kenny Soto  16:46  

Yeah. And this ties into I’m glad you mentioned your experience as a recruiter, because I have this assumption based on just my own previous experience and my mistakes, when it came to applying to job applications that there are commodity candidates, and you don’t want to be that. And we are talking specifically to an audience of marketers. So some of it may apply, some of them may not apply. But from just a general overview, as someone who’s seen resumes, what makes some resumes stand out, while others just suck?

Travis Scott  17:26  

That’s a good question. The ones that suck, are one page. And I just feel like there is I’ve recently been seeing people send one page res, I did something with marketing ops.com, I did a workshop where, with more with marketing ops, professionals who were looking for jobs, where I broke down to resumes against jobs that they had applied for. And so they’re kind of guinea pigs, right? They were live, they sent me their resume, and they sent me links to jobs they applied for. And I went into it and acted like I’m a recruiter and working on this role. And I got your resume, how would I look at this, I was shocked at the one page resumes I got from people who were experienced professionals, I was just like, this doesn’t tell me enough, I have to make too many assumptions. And I’m not going to schedule a phone screen to get things out of you that should have been on your resume, compared to this job description that tells you here’s exactly what we’re looking for. And if this is missing, and you have it, because you wanted to get it to one page, because a professor who hasn’t been out in the real world for 15 years told you to do that. You’re gonna miss out man. And so So and time is the biggest enemy of recruiter. Because they have to get 10 phone screens. It’s all a numbers game. They’re STRS, right? They know they’ve got to email so many, so many people to get a certain reply percentage, like my reply percentage, back in 2013 was about 10%. And so that meant like, then you start to work backwards, right? If I have to get three to five people in the final interview stage. And if I have to screen 15 to 20, just to get that usually like a 30% of the people iPhone screen will make it and if I have to get 15 to 20, and I get a 10% hit rate. That’s a lot. And that’s every week and gear working on multiple roles. It’s not just one role. As a recruiter, you can be working on 20 roles. 20 different roles. And you’re just like, pivot pivot, email you me and that’s why they don’t follow up. Because it’s like, that’s why they send out one email. And that’s it. They don’t hear back from you. They move on. It’s one because their technology sucks. They should be pulling people into sequences right and like just have three follow ups already ready to go. But they don’t have the time and back when I did it. We didn’t have sequencing and none of that stuff exists. then. So it was, I was going to follow up with somebody had to go manually follow up with somebody, right. And it’s like, I email 150 people a week, at least or more, it’s too much time to go back and try to hit their inbox again. And again, like at least three or four times couldn’t be done, right. And then if you talk about, now, I’ve got all these interviews happening and all these moving pieces. And now right now, and the time frame we’re in, recruiters have been cut, you know, if a company is hiring, they’ve probably gutted half of their recruiting staff. So now the recruiters they have are doing more. And now there’s so many more people applying. So it probably overwhelmed, they’re probably not going to look at everybody that applies. Because the hit rate on that was even worse than my reply rate to InMails. Like I would probably in this is Microsoft, a lot of people would apply, and they had really tight standards on what who would even pass muster, do you even get a call from me, one out of probably 75 to 100 would ever be a fit. And if my time is going to be spent going through 100 resumes to find one or I can go into LinkedIn and I can do my own search put in my own criteria, and 100 people will pop up that are, for the most part a pretty good fit, I’m not going to look at the applicants, man, I’m gonna go spend my time where I can have the biggest bang for my buck. And so that’s why I did a workshop and marking ups.com about land your next job without a resume. Because I think that’s really how you have to approach it. Because if you’re just gonna apply, and it is literally a black hole, and you will probably not hear much. It’s probably because right now they’re getting 600 resumes. For every job they open. Just go look on LinkedIn. And I haven’t looked in a while. But I just know what happens when recessions hit. And there are there are a lot more candidates than jobs. Right. And it’s overwhelming. But if you go to LinkedIn, I think a lot of times they’ll tell you how many people have applied. There’s probably some out there that are probably ridiculous. To answer your question, make sure that your resume covers at least the basic qualifications meeting, they say it’s required. And you have it, make sure it’s on there. Because if you don’t have those, you’re out. If you want to stand out, make sure you have some of the preferred, right. And what I would say for people right now, because I think there’s also a lot of people who survived layoffs, who probably in a place where the morale is awful, because they had layoffs and they want out, but they feel like they can’t. So they feel stuck. And so for those people right now is the perfect time to start networking. I mean, you never want to have to start networking when you lose your job because you’re already behind. Right? It takes a couple of years sometimes to build up a good solid network, right? Get on LinkedIn now start engaging started, start being seen, right? That’s all it is just be seen, whether that’s comments, it doesn’t have to be posts, just be seen. build those relationships help people out. Because when you help them out, I just heard a podcast with guy I forget his name. But he was talking about how the universe works in a, you know, an interesting way. And that the more you help others, and he said he said something like helping other people is the most selfish thing you can do. Because whatever you do that, it always comes back to you even if you’re not intending it to, it always does. So get out on LinkedIn and be helpful, help other people. And it’s going to come back around. And now you’re going to have the place to go when you need to. But one of the things that I did when I was a director of marketing, and I thought, well, maybe that ladder could be something. If I moved from this company and stayed and continued to be an employee. What would be the next logical path, which would be a VP or director at a bigger company would actually be a promotion because it’s just different at a bigger company, right? It’s not even the same role, even though it has the same title. So I started every six months, I would go on LinkedIn, indeed, and look at VP roles at companies and then Director roles at larger companies. And I would look and see what technologies early talking about what kind of skills are they talking about? Where are there gaps with what I’m doing now? How can I fill those gaps because I’m not looking now but if I start see In patterns, job after job after job talks about this technology, I’m sure as hell gonna go find a way to get my hands on that technology, right, somehow some way and plug that gap in. And so I would do that every six months. And I would just kind of make my own new job description of here’s what I’m going to focus on for the next six months have been just like, tightening up some things, right? Making sure I didn’t get the marketing world in past me by that they’re all these technologies. It’s like, what the hell is this and everybody’s asking for it, I don’t even know what it is. I didn’t ever want that to happen. And so looking at job descriptions is a great way to kind of see in analysts do this at companies all the time, they scour job descriptions to look at, to try to get insight into what companies are building. So we’d have people looking at our Microsoft jobs, hoping that we would slip up and put some proprietary name or list something in the job description of some new technology we were working on. So then they could write about it. A lot of media people would do that a lot of analysts would do that. Job descriptions are a wealth of information into a company and what they’re doing. And we can do that too. So act like an analyst try to figure out what what is happening in marketing? Where’s where things shifting, and where do I need to shift to keep up and make sure that I’m not that that gap isn’t getting bigger? Right?

Kenny Soto  26:25  

Yeah, a tangible example I can share, which I’m trying to do right now, because there was a change in in headcount at the company I’m working at, I’m more and more thinking about how can I create a defensible career, where I’ll be honest, I would like to be a CMO one day, but I gotta think about 2023. And in 2023, I need to make sure I can a keep my job. Or be if I get laid off. I am presented with opportunities inbound rather than outbound. Or if I’m going outbound, my chances of increasing those opportunities or, or better. So what I’m personally doing, and this is for the listener, just as an idea, I’ve taken upon myself to be the AI guy, not just the SEO guy. That’s my role. I’m the SEO manager at that organization I work at now, I’m the guy in Slack in our culture, chat constantly bringing up ideas on how to use shout, GPT, constantly bringing up tools that not only marketing can use, but other departments can use, and just asking questions. Have you used this? How are you using it? Do you have any ideas on maybe what you’ve seen on LinkedIn or on YouTube or on a podcast that might be useful for the marketing team. And it’s just being the emcee, the master of ceremonies around a specific topic, great internal marketing tactic, not original to myself, either. I don’t I think it was Zapier, the CMO who was talking about this, who was saying, Hey, you don’t need to be the expert, because technically speaking, this is only less than a year old. Just be the most curious person in the room about the topic, and be the person who strikes up the conversation all the time, not just with AI, whatever’s next after AI, do the same thing, rinse and repeat. That way, you are not only the expert in whatever marketing domain, or channel or channels that you’re responsible for. You’re also the expert in what’s trending, what’s on the horizon. And that keeps you top of mind for promotions. It keeps you top of mind when they say oh, layoffs are happening. Who do we need to keep? At the end of the day is also good for mooning yourself on LinkedIn.

Travis Scott  28:40  

Yeah, absolutely. I think a podcast is one of the best things you can do. Right? And I think a lot of people don’t do it. Because I think they feel like, well, I have to be an expert in something. And in fact, you’re probably going to be better at podcasting. If you’re not. Because, like myself, let me do like, you know, like the art is in the questions you ask your guests. Yes. And then the ability to listen and find a thread, right, like, I never have a lot of pre written questions. I have some. I have one that I opened with. And I have some in case the conversation gets weird, and I just need to like it’s not flowing. And I need to just like ask questions and move on. Right. But my goal going in is ask a question, get the conversation going and listen, find a thread that seems interesting. And follow that like okay, this sounds great. Let’s tell me more about that. Let’s dig in there. And I and you become like he just said an expert. by interviewing experts. You don’t have to know anything about the topic. You just have to know how to ask questions about the topic and be curious it’d be a good listener. Yeah. And you learn, and by the time you talk to have 100 episodes, if it’s a very specific niche and topic, you’re gonna come out of that having just had conversations with people who are, are the experts, and you’re not, you’re gonna learn something, right? Like, you just will. And so, again, people will associate you with those guests, and just by default, lump you in as an expert. And so I think podcasts, yeah, there’s a ton of them. But as far as like, learning and breaking into a new field, there’s no better way really.

Kenny Soto  30:40  

Two more questions for you, Travis. you’ve alluded to this in passing, but I think it’s important to highlight it as his own specific subtopic. Your experience with sales? I have to assume it made you a better marketer. What can the listener do to learn the essential skills around sales to help them become better marketer?

Travis Scott  31:08  

I would say get a sales role, like volunteer to be in sales, right? Like, go do it. And I think people here’s another mental block, right? They think, well, if I do that, what will it look like on my resume? Like, who cares? Like, because here’s the thing. Hopefully, you don’t need your resume to get your next job. Hopefully, you’ve built network, you’ve engaged with enough people that they know kind of what you know, and they’re not gonna care about your resume until they have to meet any like, oh, HR wants your resume on file? Like, can you send it over? Like, they’re not gonna care, right. So that relationship, and that’s what you’ve demonstrated, you know, so don’t let that hold you back. And I would say like, sales is such an important thing, even though it wasn’t my thing. It was more like a hamster wheel. To me, I just kind of got bored with it. The same thing, every time like, you make a sale, and you got to start over. It’s like, I like to climb mountains, and then be done and go off to the next mountain, not just climb the same one. But I think if you can say, hey, for a year and a half, I’m gonna go be in sales and immerse myself in that world. Especially if it’s with the company you’re already at, if you say, Hey, can I move into sales for a year? Because then you can, you’re close to the customers now you can start to ask them, what do they really care about? Because I think that’s the biggest gap between marketing and sales, is marketing never talks to the customers, they never, they’re always making assumptions, and they never really talk to sales. Now, even if sales is asking the right questions, some marketing should be leading that here’s what questions you need to find out. Here’s what information we need at a minimum, when you have a conversation with people and feed that back to me, so I know what to hit what people care about. So I would say get a sales role. And and it’s just such an important skill. That kind of coming back to when you had said, what if someone wants to be a consultant, guess what you’re gonna have to do as consultant sales, and a lot of it. And so if you have that experience, now you’re prepared to know how to do sales, right? And then, if you work end up working at a big company like Microsoft, guess what you have to do there? Internally sell, right, you’d have to sell ideas. And it’s a process. I mean, you’ve got to convince people like this is a good idea, because that ship doesn’t move very quickly. Right. And they are very, for the companies that shouldn’t be risk averse, because they’ve got so much money are the most risk averse is what I’ve found. Smaller companies that probably shouldn’t be spending that much money making these risks will do it. The companies that could make it Microsoft could lose $5 million. And they wouldn’t know they can raise 5 billion. And they will often be Yeah, yeah. But they won’t risk it, right. That’s where innovation goes to die as a big company, for that reason. And so to make change happen in a big company, you have to learn how to sell internally. And I have a podcast episode about that as well, when I talked to someone who was a marketer in large companies like HP and in big companies like that. Stacy Dan Heiser, and she made that point that I hadn’t really thought about in a long time. It’s like you got to sell ideas internally. So if you go and get a sales role for a year, tough it out, you might find you like it because you might be competitive and you might be like I love this winning all the time. Right. And, but I think it will make you a better marketer to be on that side and understand what goes into a sales call what goes into prospecting and qualification. What a good lead looks like what a badly looks like. It And I think you will just come away with, you’ll be a better marketer. In the long run. It’s a step. It’s a lateral. It’s one of those lateral steps on that jungle gym, right, to then move up as a better marketer. So you’ll see things you didn’t even know existed.

Kenny Soto  35:17  

Travis, my last question for you is hypothetical because time machines do not exist. But if one did, and you go back into the past about 10 years, knowing everything you know, today, how would you specifically accelerate the speed of your career?

Travis Scott  35:30  

Gosh, if I went back to the 13th, that’s about when I decided to make the move. You know, when I first left Microsoft, it was 2014 ish. I dabbled in HubSpot a little bit. They were only they were all about inbound. And all they were was marketing automation, right? All about SEO blogs, and inbound. And I was just like, this is cool. And all but I want to I kind of like ads more, right? And they were kind of almost anti ad at the time. So you don’t need ads just do inbound. And it was expensive. And I was like, Yeah, that’s cool. And all. Had I known that 10 years later, I would be a HubSpot consultant in the weeds and what it would grow into of being a CRM and everything else. If I had that foresight, I would have said, All right, I’m putting all my chips in HubSpot. And I’m just going to learn it and ride with it right. And where I would be now if I would have done that. It would be totally different then, because then once I got back into it, HubSpot, it changed so much. That was like holy shit. This is not even. I don’t remember any of this stuff. Like I had to relearn so much about the platform because it had changed so much. That, yeah, my career would have accelerated significantly in that time. Had I done that. Travis,

Kenny Soto  37:03  

before asking if anyone wants to find you online? Where can they go? Can you plug your podcast?

Travis Scott  37:11  

Yeah. The podcast that Kenny was a guest on that actually is going to be coming out soon. Probably you will be out by the time this is out. It’s called winding road careers. And I have another podcast called Marketing unbox. It’s about to get a rebrand. And Allie Sharkey, who introduced Kenny and I she was a co host with me for a while. It’s about to get a rebrand soon, and I’m going to be pivoting my time into that. So keep an eye out for that if you want to register or subscribe to that. It’s on Rainier digital.com You can subscribe. And then you’ll know what it changes to which I don’t know what it’s going to be called yet. But it is going to be very focused around demand gen ABM, rev ops and marketing ops together HubSpot, heavy HubSpot elements. to it. It’s gonna be a little bit more focused than what marketing unboxed was, which was pretty broad. So

Kenny Soto  38:08  

and if anyone wants to reach out to you, where can they go?

Travis Scott  38:10  

LinkedIn is where I’m most active. And you can just find me look for Travis L. Scott, I think that’s what I have. Because Travis Scott, don’t google it, you’ll never find me. You’ll learn about the concert that went bad. And Kylie Jenner, but the Twitter I’m on Twitter, 509. marketer is my handle there. And those are the two places LinkedIn is where I’m at 90% of the time, and every once awhile popping Twitter.

Kenny Soto  38:39  

Awesome. Thank you for your time today, Travis, and thanks to you, as always the listener for listening to another episode of the people Digital Marketing podcast. And as always, my requests, if you’ve gotten to this point, are always very, very simple. And I’d be very grateful if you did them. Please subscribe if you haven’t done so. Please rate us on whatever podcasting app you’re listening to this on. And please share this podcast with one co worker who you think would benefit from learning from the best of the best like Travis Scott. And as always hope you have a great day. Bye. On the next episode, Episode 135 of the people Digital Marketing podcast I will have Jack Monson on the show. Jack has more than 1000 podcast episodes for this podcast called Social geek. It’s a top 25 marketing podcast on Apple and the number one podcast in franchising. This is the first time I have a guest on who can talk about franchise marketing. And boy is it a big topic. It’s something that I haven’t had experience firsthand. So it was a great time for me to sit down with an expert and learn something new, which is the goal of the podcast. I learned something new and hopefully you do too. So if you enjoyed my conversation with Travis Scott on episode 134 I agree really do think you enjoy this conversation I had with Jack on episode 135. And if you haven’t done so please subscribe. Thanks for listening so far, and have a great day. Bye