Kendal McMullen

I've been in my field for over 8 years now, and I started really young. I began with freelancing because I didn't have a degree and couldn't afford one - I had nothing but a high school diploma, so I couldn't compete for corporate jobs. I went on YouTube and Reddit and other free resources to learn digital marketing skills myself. I was helping small service-based businesses generate appointments, and I had to figure out everything - Google Ads, building websites, SEO, HTML, every little stair step it takes to be successful digitally. I learned by doing, back in the days before it was Google Ads, it was AdWords. My first break into corporate was in oil and gas, like everyone does, working with engineers on technical articles and the behind-the-scenes work in Google Tag Manager and tracking code. But it just wasn't fulfilling, so I made the switch to the supplement industry based on a company I truly believe in. I was a product of the product first, a customer, and then turned employee. I started out as a digital marketing specialist on the team that I now manage - really the definition of starting from the bottom. I had budgets of $50 a day to now managing 7-figure budgets. I've been with Global Healing for just over 3 years as their e-commerce manager, managing the D2C department and all the marketing. My main area of expertise is creating brands that speak for themselves - humanizing brands that have elements of identity so customers can find themselves and make it easy to interact with that brand. My strength is being able to lead the team from the point of view of a customer. On my team, I have all sorts of functions of marketing - loyalty, retention, acquisition, paid media, organic SEO, front and back-end dev. I own the channel's P&L, so I'm prioritizing top-line revenue and profitability in every conversation. I consider myself in management really a support role to my team - they're the experts in their field, and my job is just to have all the resources they need to exceed. Once I was able to cut my teeth in corporate, I went back and got my bachelor's degree in interdisciplinary studies, which is business and communications, and right now I'm working on formalizing more education at Rice University.