How to succeed in Product Marketing

Meet Jamie Mackenzie; the story-telling extraordinaire, Chief Marketing Officer and best-selling author of 28 Bags of Sprouts. Jamie has worked in Product Marketing for brands such as Samsung, Toshiba and Pluxee. In this episode, Jamie shares insights into the realities of product marketing, building lasting relationships through marketing and inside secrets to his unique storytelling framework.


How to Succeed in Product Marketing

Introduction to Jamie Mackenzie

Claudia Gasson: Well, Jamie, welcome to the Waddyado podcast. It's an absolute pleasure to have you here today.

Jamie Mackenzie: Thank you very much, Claudia. Pleasure. Pleasure to be on it. Looking forward to our chat. Very much so.

Claudia Gasson: Fabulous. Well, firstly, Jamie, obviously you've had an incredible career from some wonderful brands covering Samsung, Toshiba and Pluxy. Now, obviously you've launched your career throughout wonderful pivots and into obviously a Chief Marketing Officer position. I'm really keen just to get into the nitty-gritty of your background, all about you and kind of go from there really and then also talking into your most recent endeavours of becoming an author. Very exciting times.

So without further ado, Jamie, would you like to just kind of describe what you do for a living to someone who isn't necessarily in your field or industry, perhaps what you would have told your grandparents or something like that?

Jamie Mackenzie: So thank you, Claudia. Well, I think, I think my answer would have changed if you asked me it seven months ago, kind of versus today. So maybe if I take my seven months ago answer, um, where I was the chief marketing officer, um, at Pluxee, which had rebranded from, from Sodexo, a project that, a rebrand that I actually, led in the business.

So at the time, the best way to describe it to my, my Gran, bless her, is that I take products and I market them to people, ultimately. That's what I do. So my role there was to create something based on the need of someone else and to package it in a way that is attractive enough and adds value enough for that individual to buy. So in a nutshell, that's what it would be. The complexities of that are much more detailed, which I'm sure we can unpack.

That's ultimately what I did functionally.

What I also did from a leadership perspective, I'd tell my grand that my responsibility was to care for, lead and support and grow people that worked within my teams. You know, that probably would have been my answer then. If you skip forward to today, what I tell my Gran, who knows actually anyway, she's kind of super proud of what I've done. I describe myself as a best-selling author in business communication. So I released a book two months ago. And yeah, I'm proud to say that it was a top five bestseller on Amazon in the first month. I also go and speak at companies about the importance of my topic, which is storytelling, and also help people and businesses to level up their communication skills to better storytell in everything that they do. So that's what I do today, in hopefully layman's terms.

Claudia Gasson: No, that was a fabulous introduction. Thank you so much, Jamie. So I'm keen to get into, I guess, the beginning of your career to understand exactly what attracted you to go into marketing to begin with.

Jamie Mackenzie: So kind of my journey, it's a funny one actually, because I'd like to say I fell into it, but actually there is a story behind it. So I left school, I went to sixth form at school and I was presented with four options at the time.

I could have taken over the Greengrocers that I was working in at that moment.

I could have done an apprenticeship at BT as part of their kind of call centre works, my cousin worked there. I could have joined an apprenticeship scheme around quantity surveying, or I could have gone to university.

So I kind of had these four pathways open to me, and I decided that I wanted to not go into the world of work just yet. So I decided to go to university. And I went down to the University of Solent, as it's called now. And during that time, I did business studies. And so I was able to get exposure to kind of different modules, different functions of kind of business. So we did everything from law to HR, to finance, to operations, and also marketing. And for some reason, I think it was more, I just quite enjoyed the variety of marketing more than anything else. Not so much, you know, understanding people and matching needs. It was just, I found it was quite a varied role, a varied type of function.

So as part of that course, you did a placement year in the third year, where you did a bit of a year's work experience, finished your last year, and then you went on. And so I had to apply for jobs for my placement year. And I didn't really take it that seriously. But one of my friends was applying for a role. And he said, look, I'm driving up there, Jamie, you haven't done much. So apply for this role and come with me. I'll drive us up there, we'll do the interviews, good experience. So we're driving up there. I said, Oh, I'm really excited. You know, I'd love to work for a car manufacturer. And he said, Jamie, it's Toshiba. I thought it's Toyota.

Claudia Gasson: Great start, Jamie. Haha.

Jamie Mackenzie: Rule number one, if you're going to work in marketing, do your research. Very, very important. But clearly at the time, I didn't. So I was like, okay, fine. So we drove up there.

Anyway, we did the interviews and two weeks later, I got a letter, when you had letters back in the day, which was over 20 years ago, to say that I got the role. I've been offered the placement, which was amazing. And it was in the marketing department at Toshiba as their marketing assistant.

So anyway, just skip forward a few months and I turned up for my first day and I spoke to the two recruiting managers, Jeremy and Steve, and I asked them why I got the role because I wasn't giving that feedback, you know, just the fact that I got the role. And I thought it was about talking about Porter's Five Forces of marketing, Maslow's hierarchy of needs, you know, the kind of the suit I was in. It had nothing to do with it. It was about a story I told about selling 28 bags of sprouts on Christmas Eve in my greengrocers. They said, that's why I got the role.

And I said, well, I didn't talk about marketing. He said, it wasn't about that. It was the fact that the story that you told stood you out from everybody else. Everyone else talked about the same stuff, but you were different and we thought you'd really fit well in. So the story got me into the role, but the interest in the diversity of marketing was kind of first attracted me.

And then I stepped into that and I spent the year there as a placement student and actually ended up going back there after I graduated. They said, Jamie, you know, whatever your result is, We'll give you a job here, which is probably the worst thing they could have said to me.

The Power of Storytelling in Marketing

Claudia Gasson: I'm keen to hear about the sprout story now. Are you going to tell it to me now or are you going to dive into it later when we get to the book?

Jamie Mackenzie: It's directly linked to the book, but I'll tell it now. But basically, I go back to, it was the Christmas of 1999 and I was working at the Greengrocers. It was Christmas Eve. And on that day it was absolutely crazy busy in the shop, a brilliant place to work. Greengrocer was probably my favorite job to be honest I've ever had. And I was out there we were just churning through sprouts and we were selling so many that I had to set up a table out the front of the shop because for whatever reason it was the vegetable of choice at the time.

And anyway, throughout that day, it just felt like all I was doing was literally putting sprouts out, filling them up, refilling, refilling. And at the end of the day, I was really intrigued. So I went to the bin at a big bin in the backyard and I pulled out all of these green nets, empty nets, sprout nets, and I counted them out and there was 28.

And I went to my boss at the time and I said, Mike, you know, is that a record?

He said, Jamie, I don't have documented records of how many sprouts are sold on Christmas Eve, but I think it could be a record. So I told this story with such enthusiasm, passion, and pride in the interview. And it was more me as a person that was lifted through that story that kind of really connected with them because I was authentic, honest, and just beaming with pride. And that was the story. And that kind of leads onto the book and the topic of storytelling, but that's what I told. And that kind of started me off on my pathway into the world of marketing.

Jamie’s career in Product Management and Product Marketing

Claudia Gasson: So then obviously you then returned back to Toshiba once you graduated, is that right?

Jamie Mackenzie: Yeah, that's right. So I returned back to Toshiba in 2003 after I graduated. So they offered me a job and I walked straight into a product manager position, which at the time was amazing. So, you know, in terms of salary at the time, so this was 2003. So I was on a basic of £25,000, which over 20 years ago was pretty cool.

Claudia Gasson: Even graduates get that kind of salary these days, which is crazy.

Jamie Mackenzie: I know, which is crazy. And I also got a company car with that as well, albeit at the time I couldn't drive. So I had to quickly learn to drive. And because my role was as a product manager, and as maybe some of the listeners as product managers, it's a really diverse role. One minute you're presenting a product, next minute you're pricing it, next minute you're training on it, next minute you are building a strategy around it. I think it's a wonderful role for people in marketing to be really grounded in the full 360 business interactions of a product. It's really good.

So I started off in that role and through the five years I was at Toshiba, I was growing in seniority. So I then became Senior Product Manager, then I was Head of Product Management. So it would have been around the ages of 27, 28, working a lot with the dealer network and the direct sales people. It was a really great grounding for me at that age.

Claudia Gasson: And so, so on a day to day, just for people who aren't very familiar with like what product management is, can you just talk through just a little bit more detail about what you would have been doing?

Jamie Mackenzie: Absolutely. So as I said, it's incredibly varied. So I would be, I would typically start the day, you know, at that time, emails were a thing, a couple of years, they weren't really, but emails sort of came in. And I'll be dealing with emails at the start, it will be maybe pricing offers that the salespeople wanted to use or offer, because I was in control of all the pricing of the product. So that that kind of responsibility sat with me. So I could approve up to like a 20% discount dependent on the deals that were being offered. And if I wanted to go above that, I then had to move to my manager to get that approved. So that would be normally the first hour or so of the morning. They always knew that was a time when I was available to do that.

Typically on the days we would have someone coming into the showroom. I was product manager for photocopiers and printers. I would go to the showroom along with the salesperson or the dealer with their customer and I would do a demonstration of the product. I would always do that late mornings. do a demonstration of a photocopier, which was super exciting at the time, for me at least. And it was a great way to kind of practice your public speaking, engaging with people, you know, taking challenging questions, showing what it can do and just helping the salesperson manage the process. So that usually be for a couple of hours.

Claudia Gasson: And just to clarify, this is obviously with B2B market, not B2C, so you're not selling a big photocopier too.

Jamie Mackenzie: Yeah, absolutely. It was all, it was a really great point. It was all B2B, so it was all, it was all with sort of businesses, you know, so you'd have business owners, procurement officers, you know, general managers of office managers that were making, and at the time, you know, there weren't small purchases, you know, they typically be bought on a three-year lease. You'd have all of the toner consumables with it, et cetera.

So, you know, it's quite a complicated deal, especially if you've got more than one product that you're buying. So I would then do that usually. And then I'd always be good, certainly as a student, sorry, not as a student, in my early years, I've taken a lunch break, wrongly, I've got less as I sort of grow in my roles. But I typically spend a bit of time with the team in marketing, we'd have a bit of lunch together.

And then the afternoon was typically dedicated on, you know, creating a promotion. So obviously we had to work on selling the products. So I would work with the marketing communications team that would sort of work in the graphic design. So Adobe at the time, and they would create brochures, they would create promotional materials, marketing materials, which would then be shared. So typically we would always have changes to those, or we'd be looking to create another campaign. So I would be working with them on that as the product lead. So to make sure that the messages were right, the content was aligned to the product, the right specifications are in there, things like this.

And then usually at the end of every day, we would have a sales meeting. So what I would do, these weren't team schools at the time, these are physical meetings where the leads would come in, and myself along with the other product manager would join. And we would listen to how the sales were going, we would listen to what some of the objections were, what people are looking for, what's working well, what isn't. And then we would use that information to kind of feed in, feed into the next day. So the days were always, engaging with lots of different types of stakeholders, absolutely and the days were always focused on how you can sell more products, how you can find opportunity, resolve issues.

Key Skills and Attributes Needed for Product Managers and Product Marketers

Claudia Gasson: Thank you. What would you say are good attributes for this kind of position? Let's say someone's looking to get into product marketing or product, what would you say is a good fit in terms of someone's skill set, personality type, all that kind of thing?

Jamie Mackenzie: So I would say I'd split it into two. I think you've got, and actually I'd probably answer this question to any position I've been in. There's the core element and then there's the technicalities. I believe the three most important core elements needed to be successful in this role.

Number one, storytelling. And I'd answer that question to anything because I could never do anything in that role or any role I've done unless I could communicate with people. If I can't communicate with people, I couldn't do anything. So with that being such a currency in business, you know, storytelling is a pathway to doing it with impact. So storytelling would be number one skill.

The second is that I always cared about what I did. So I would, I could answer that and saying, oh, a strong work ethic, but I think, I don't think you need to work you know, 12-hour days, weekends, you know, I don't, that's what I don't mean. I mean that you just take pride and care in what you do. So I think that can really make a difference.

And then the third element of the core is be kind. I think kindness is super important. And it doesn't mean you say yes to everyone. I don't mean that, but, you know, you approach things with respect, understanding, empathy. And I think that kindness is important. The technical skills within product management. You need to be a commercial. I think it needs to be commercially orientated. So you don't necessarily have to be data obsessed, but you have to have a commercial awareness of action and impact. I think that's really important, number one. I think with product managers, you are the face of the product. So that means that you have to engage with people. You have to represent it. You're an ambassador for the product. So with that comes a sense of presenting yourself and being comfortable with being in meetings, speaking up. It's not always about being enthusiastic, but you know, have been having energy around your product, because people will see you as the product.

So I think that's a really important component of a product manager.

The importance of resilience in Product Management

And then and then the final thing is that I think there's with product management, there needs to be an element of resilience because depending on how much you get involved in your product it's your baby you take it really personally so you'll have good days where sales are great you'll have bad days where sales aren't great and people are telling you all the faults of your product so your ability to be resilient with that I think is really important, because you'll always have good days, you'll always have bad days, you'll always have everything in between.

But try not to let that get to you and take it personally. Because sometimes the hand you get dealt with a product isn't a reflection of you, but how you manage it is a reflection of you. So I think that's, that's important. So those are probably some of the nitty gritty elements I would share with that one, Claudia.

Claudia Gasson: My question for you just on that is, where you're exposed, say for example as a customer success manager or you're an account manager or you're a product, what I guess my question is probably how do you overcome that and not then see the product in a really negative light because you're getting all these, like say, say you're getting some negative feedback. Um, obviously you can pass that onto the tech teams to develop, but how, how do you sort of not take that on yourself? What would you recommend for people?

Jamie Mackenzie: I think that's a really great question. Um, it's a hard one. It's, it's try. It's going to happen, I promise. And actually, I'm talking about hardware products here. See, and don't get me wrong, I've led teams on software products as well, kind of in the last 10 years. And that opens up a whole different can of worms of challenges, especially when you're developing it yourself, right? You're working with suppliers, you've got expectation manager, I mean, crikey, I've made so many mistakes in that area, which you learn from, right?

But I think you need to try and you need to just try and create a barrier to protect yourself from those feelings. How do you do that? I think you just need to ensure surrounding yourself with the right people, that you've got a positive attitude around it. So there are going to be bad days. You do have to deliver bad messages. Storytell it in the best way you can. Don't lie, don't manipulate, don't sugarcoat things. Just be honest and authentic in yourself. And I think people will understand. You sometimes need to create this barrier so it doesn't hit your heart, which is hard, but equally you're human and it will do.

And I think that's okay because going back to my first skill, which is about caring, when you do care, it will hit you. There's no question about that. So I just think, you know, be aware of it. I think walking eyes wide open in these types of roles. And I think, you know, yeah, you can try and manage it yourself. You know yourself better than anyone, you know.

Claudia Gasson: Definitely. I think also it's quite good to tap into like positive case studies or try and, you know, speak to customers, like maybe off the phone to someone who was, it was maybe difficult, but then pick up the phone to a customer that, you know, is really enjoying it, really enjoying the product to like give you back that, okay, actually, this is a great product. But also take on board that feedback to obviously make

Jamie Mackenzie: Do you know what, that's absolutely, that's a really great point. And I think, you know, looking for the positives, absolutely. Because I think there'll always be a negative, there'll always be something more you can do. But I think, as you say, keeping a vision and exposure to the positives can really help us. Yeah, absolutely.

Claudia Gasson: Definitely. Awesome. So let's have a guide on to Samsung. So you went and worked from Toshiba to Samsung. So what led you to Samsung?

Jamie Mackenzie: Well, so it's interesting. So I think when I reflect back on my moves through my career, they've been triggered by happiness. I talk about this concept of playing hide and seek with your happiness. I think sometimes you can kind of stop listening to it and it goes hiding. And then you've got to go find it.

And so I try and listen to my happiness as much as possible. And in my 20s, to be perfectly honest, I wanted to get experience, but I was all about the money. I wanted the money in my 20s to be honest. So as I got to my late 20s into my 30s, I wanted to kind of get a balance of more money. And then what would have been, you know, a bit later on influence.

So Samsung came along in my late twenties, you know, I wanted a bit more influence, wanted more money. There was a glass ceiling at Toshiba, but that was cool. And they headhunted me for a role in their, in their, um, kind of printing B2B divisions and slightly more products, um, within the European team at the time. And then I moved when I was there into the UK team. Um, and it was all, it was heading up their product marketing and then their B2B marketing for the UK. But they dangled this opportunity in front of me with succession and a ton more cash. And at the time, I was warned off a little bit being open about Samsung because of the, at the time, the working culture there. But I was really eager with the money and the responsibility. So I was like, yeah, I do it. And that's honestly why I kind of jumped and went. Obviously the opportunity as well as there.

So I went into Samsung then for six years. So I spent two years in a European role, which was amazing. And then I spent four years heading up B2B marketing for the UK division of Samsung, which was equally amazing, because it was also at the time when the Galaxy phone was being launched for the first time, there's a lot of change that was happening. introducing that to B2B channels. It was a fabulous period of time. It was absolutely crazy and chaotic, but the next level of grounding of me as a person came from that environment. And that's something that I will always hold incredibly dear to me, actually, aside from crazy stories.

Claudia Gasson: When you say grounding, what can you elaborate? What do you mean?

Jamie Mackenzie: I think, so when I was at Toshiba, there was a level of grounding that I was getting, which was about business concept, business principles, how the operations of business were working, certainly in a product management role. When I moved to Samsung, it took it to a completely different scale. And I mean, in terms of sales numbers, in terms of coverage, European level, a broader UK level, certainly when you're dealing with more of the consumer type products, and the pressure. You know, because you in the world of Samsung, you know, it's all at the time, it's all about the hardware shifting as much hardware as possible. And you would have hardware coming over on boats that were landing in like six weeks, every week at a time. And that stock had to be moved. So I was there as like a product management and category management.

So I was still very much in that commercial mindset, moving products. And the pressure is at a completely different level. So when I say grounding, I'm not saying that pressure was a good thing in that sense, but the exposure I had, the types of initiatives I was working on, the budgets. The different types of stakeholders, the seniority of the stakeholders that I were working with, it all kind of just leveled up. And so it exposed me to a different ecosystem of business is maybe the best way to describe it. And so for me, I was working off core skills I'd had and built at Toshiba. but I was amplifying them to kind of different arenas.

Claudia Gasson: From Samsung, obviously, you went on to, well, Sodexo is now branded, obviously, as Pluxee.

Jamie Mackenzie: Pluxee, the division I was in, yeah.

Claudia Gasson: Yeah, so give us a little bit of an overview as to what they do and also, obviously, what your role involves.

Jamie Mackenzie: Yeah, absolutely. So I was, at that point, I was in my early 30s, and at that stage, what made me happy was Not so much money anymore. It's more about influence. And it's more about influencing a company, you know, its direction and its people and its policies and other things. And because I think with Toshiba and Samsung, it's absolutely amazing grounding, but you are part of a process. Unless you're at the very, very top, you really are a part of a process. It's operational. Whereas I was offered an opportunity, I was headhunted to become the director of marketing at Sodexo to sit on the board. And I was, I was at the time I was 32. And I saw that as an opportunity to really become more influential in my, in my role, you know, to have a broader impact on the company.

So, but in terms of financial, the finance, I mean, so sorry that the financial At Samsung at the time, I think I averaged out at the end on 65K, I think as a basic. When I shifted to become a director of marketing, so this would have been in 2013 at Sodexo, it was 70K. So it was only 5K more. but it was about the opportunity of the role. So I decided to go for it. And it was actually a time where they were exploring acquisition to expand in the UK as well. So when I joined, I was on a board and I had a team of four at the time, but with the planned expansion and acquisition, the team jumped to just under 50. So they wanted someone to come in to help with the M&A, but also to then help what is a period of enormous change; people, leadership, function, product, brand, go to market. So for me, I was like, I don't really care. It's only 5k more. This is an amazing opportunity.

And at the time, Claudia, I thought to myself, I'll do it for two years, get a board role on my CV, do a couple of cool projects and I'll move on for more money. I actually ended up staying for 10 years. Um, and because, because I think when you join a board, it's very different. It's very different than I think from not being on the board. And the reason why I say it, and not everyone might agree, but from my lens, the moment you join a board of a company, it's your company. You really feel as if it's your company. And when I made decisions, I made decisions as a marketeer, a strategist, and a product lead in terms of what my functional responsibility was. But I also made decisions as a leader in the business. which changes your decision-making, you know, because, because, um, before you'd make decisions, I don't care what the other departments say. I want to do this because marketing want this. Whereas now as making decisions was business empathy. I was thinking about the whole business and I would make decisions that weren't in favor of, in inverted commas, marketing budget or marketing activity, because it was right for the business, you know, at the time. So I decided to go into this role and in the 10 years I spent there, it's absolutely amazing.

The level of responsibility that I had as a member of a board is totally different than what I'd ever experienced before. I had compliance commitments because of the nature of the position I was in. I was dealing with so many different stakeholders You know, at times I was kind of stepping in for the CEO, you know, it's just part of my, my development path. And I was getting a flavor of what that looks like as an individual, which is exciting and incredibly lonely at the same time.

Best parts of being a Product Marketer

Claudia Gasson: Okay. So let's just go on to some, I guess, quick fire questions around the types of, I guess, career that people could follow in your lead, if that makes sense. So, what would you say are the best parts of, um, being a product marketer?

Jamie Mackenzie: I think the best parts are you get 360 degree exposure to the business. Absolutely amazing. One day you're working with communications, sales, dealer channel, finance, operations, R&D, development team. Amazing. You cannot get any more diverse and exposure than that. And I think that's superb. So I think that's one of the best things about it. And I think the other thing, it gives people the opportunity to find a fire of passion for something in a product, I think when you really connect with it. And I just, I think those two things are really important. I think they really, I think they ground you really well for moving sideways, horizontal, squiggly, up, down, wherever. I think they're really good grounders for you.

Claudia Gasson: Yeah, I would agree, actually.

Most challenging parts of being a Product Marketer

Claudia Gasson: And so we've kind of already touched on it in terms of, you know, you need to have a lot of resilience, but what are the worst parts of the job, would you say?

Jamie Mackenzie: For a product for product management, product marketing. Yeah, I think you know, yes, you are because you're so exposed across so many different areas. That means that you can also be exposed to the negatives of that. And I think that's probably one of the worst things, if I'm honest, I think because you can If you get two or three in a row from people that are disappointed in different functions, you suddenly believe that the world's falling apart and you have no idea how you're going to resolve this. And I think that's probably the big standout for me, if I'm honest, in terms of the worst, the worst things. And also if sales drop, that naturally happens in a product's life cycle. I believe that. And it's not always in your control, but you feel more exposed to it. So they're probably the two things, Claudia, that I would say.

Claudia Gasson: Awesome. Okay. And what would you say is the best advice you've ever received from a mentor, someone who is in leadership, someone that you've directly reported into?

Jamie Mackenzie: I think it's actually linked back to the three core skills that I talk about. The best thing they've ever said to me was they said, they didn't quite say storytelling, but they said, you know, Jamie, if you can't communicate, you can't get on with people. And that's it. You know, that's what you've done. If you can't get on with people, then you'll limit yourself. So that was one of the first things they said. And then the other thing they said to me, which is kind of linked was take pride in what you do because it's what stands you out. So, you know, uh, those would be the two I would say that, that stood out to me and I've kind of evolved them over time, but they still, I think, reign true today, to be honest. They're timeless. I think that I see that timeless, timeless tips, um, that regardless of changing technology and the environment, they still remain the same.

How to get into a career in Product Marketing

Claudia Gasson: Definitely and what actionable steps would you recommend to those looking to get into the industry? Firstly, do you need a degree or not and if not, what else would you recommend?

Jamie Mackenzie: So I needed a degree. Without the degree and without a story about sprouts that led onto a book, you know, I would never have done that path. So I would say, okay, let me take a step back. So in my previous role last 10 years, you know, I've recruited a ton of people, but with alongside my leaders as well, my management team that reported into me. We would never discount anyone because they didn't have a degree. You know, it's for us, it was more about number one, the person, their core skills as a person, then the technicalities and experience, then educational background. Because I think you can have the other two, but you can't work with anyone. You know, you can be really difficult to work with and then everything else collapses. So that would always be how we look at things.

So I don't think you necessarily need a degree, in my opinion, in this pathway into marketing. What you do need is to work your network. I think that's potentially a lot more valuable. So people need to get to know you. If they get to know you, they know what you're good at. And if they know what you're good at, they'd recommend you to someone else. And I think that holds a lot of value. So I don't think it's necessary, a degree. I think there are courses, technical courses that you can take now for free. I mean, you know, marketing.

Marketing is becoming more centered around tools, the use of tools and data. sometimes more than the actual person core skills themselves, if that makes any sense. So because you can hide behind the tools and tech, but you still need to work with people. So I think you can pick up free courses, Google do a ton, HubSpot do a ton, you know, and you can learn LinkedIn do a ton. So you can pick up on this. And I think technical skills are important to keep yourself relevant. but I don't think you need to have a degree to step in, in my opinion, in my opinion.

Claudia Gasson: Awesome. And I was, this is a similar-ish question, but I was going to ask around what resources that you recommend. I mean, obviously you've mentioned HubSpot, Google, et cetera, but are there any like podcasts that you would recommend that people will listen to and potentially your books?

The importance of finding a mentor in your career

Jamie Mackenzie: Well, so not to do a shameless plug here, but I will. I think there are a combination of different resources that you can do. I think first and foremost, before I get on to the book, is find a great mentor. Find someone that you can connect with. So I do some mentoring at the moment. I check in with people every month. It's nothing formal. It's nothing paid. It's just people that have reached out to me and said, would you mind sharing? And I said, of course I would. So I think that's really important for people that have been there and done it and can share some advice. That's the first thing.

I think, you know, not everyone loves a book, which is why I'm partway through my audiobook at the moment, but I think books are good. I would recommend my book if I may. 28 bags of sprouts storytelling with impact and because I've got a unique storytelling framework called the sprout model and I think you can use something like that that you can practice every single day so I think books are great resources you can find it on Amazon and those are really good.

Other books so I think maybe not technically linked, but there's one of the contributors, my book is a chap called Simon Alexander Ong. And he has a book called Energize. It's really good just about managing your personal energy, which then feeds into how you perform in the workplace, which I talk about in my book. So I think, I think that, you know, books like that are quite interesting, not always technically linked, but are associated with.

And I think, you know, there's, do you know what, there's no specific podcasts for me, I would call out technically for this. The podcast that I've been listening to more outside of yours, Claudia, is there's a chap called Jay Shetty, who does a lot of mindfulness self help. And I think depending on where you are in your career, technically, you might be on point, but you're going through a period where you just need a bit of different type of support. And I think maybe some of the messages on there are quite, I mean, for me, I've gone for a massive period of change. I've gone from very experienced to a student of writing, which, you know, it's worked out quite well so far, which is good. But I've needed some messages mentally just to help me keep me going. And I think sometimes that's important as well. Those would be some reflections, but the book would be a great buy for anyone that's interested.

Claudia Gasson: Now, I absolutely agree with you on that, Jamie. I think mindset and being in the right headspace in order to be your best self, also understand that you're going to go through periods of low, I think are really, really helpful. And to find that resilience within and find those building blocks that you can probably find within those podcasts too, to help you on your journey.

Jamie Mackenzie: And also just thought if I might very quickly jump in make a great point there because I think when when a lot of the listeners on this call if they're in leadership positions and they're aspiring to be leadership positions. I think one of the key things is being really aware of not just yourself but others around you, because people will go through life moments that will impact. who they are. And that doesn't mean that they're underperforming or that they've changed in skill sets. They're just going through a difficult time. And I think being a leader, being aware of that, having the emotional intelligence around that will allow you to help them and allow them time. But I've seen so many leaders that just think, well, they're not performing, let's get shot of them. It's the worst thing you could do. And I've had to help people through long periods But you know what, they come out the other end and the loyalty and engagement that comes from that is significant. So a key top tip for new or aspiring or even experienced leaders is be aware, you know, be aware of that. Sorry to jump in, but it's important.

Claudia Gasson: Wonderful point. And I absolutely love that. So thank you for that little sprinkle of wisdom there. Well, Jamie, it's been an absolute pleasure to have you on. Thank you so much for giving all your insights. And I hope everyone enjoys.

Jamie Mackenzie: Thank you, Claudia.

Claudia Gasson: Thank you so much for listening to the Waddyado podcast. Whether you're looking for a job or ready to find your latest inspired hire, head over to waddyado.com forward slash jobs or click the link in the description. Don't forget to hit that subscribe button and share with anyone you think would love this episode.

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