Her Story
About Kristin
My journey into marketing started in an unexpected way. I was in college as a pre-med major, working as a trainer at a women's gym called Curves, when I started selling gym memberships. I was so good at it and loved it - it was like an adrenaline rush. The owner mentored me and showed me more about the business, and I fell in love with business in general, so I switched my major. After getting my marketing degree from Augusta University in 2011, I built a 17-year career in marketing. I spent seven and a half years at iHeartRadio as a Senior Account Executive, then five years as a Senior Marketing Strategist at a marketing agency. Now, for the past 10 months, I'm the Marketing Director for an IT and cybersecurity company that's been in business for 33 years. Every day is different - I work on strategy, develop content for ads and social media for our clients and employees, work with vendors on advertising tactics, and make sure everything creates a consistent brand and image for our company to drive more sales. My biggest challenge is communicating marketing concepts to the highly technical owners and team who are all computer people focused on specific numbers and charts. I'm one of only 4 women out of 34 employees, and I'm very outgoing and like to talk, while they prefer not to talk to people and sit at a computer all day. It's about speaking their language and showing them the results in terms of money made and leads generated.
Her Interview
Ten minutes with Kristin
01What do you attribute your success to?
I learned early on, even when I was young, that the worst someone can do is say no. It never hurts to ask. The worst they're gonna do is say no, but you can always try to get something, and usually you're surprised and you get it if you ask. If you never ask, you're never going to get it. This applies to everything - whether it's a job, whether it's part of your budget, whether it's something to do in your personal life. If you can't ask for it, you're never gonna get it. I just learned a long time ago that you never know what you can get if you don't ask.
02What’s the best career advice you’ve ever received?
I don't even know if this was advice - I think I just learned this on my own when I was young - but it's that the worst someone can do is say no. It never hurts to ask. You can always try to get something, and usually you're surprised and you get it if you ask, but if you never ask, you're never going to get it. If you don't ask, your answer's gonna be no regardless. Whether it's a job, whether it's part of your budget, whether it's something to do in your personal life, if you can't ask for it, you're never gonna get it. You never know what you can get.
03What advice would you give to young women entering your industry?
For marketing specifically, the greatest opportunities are always going to start in a sales position. You learn so many different things about how to communicate with people, buyer behavior, how people hear you, what people relate to, things like that. Then you can develop your career in marketing from there - you could sell advertising like I did, or you could go into a marketing agency and sell clients there, or you can do just about anything when it comes to sales. You can make a lot of money with that, you can meet a lot of people and open more doors, so I feel like that's probably going to be the biggest opportunity. And then, of course, everything's going digital, so if you can understand the basics of marketing and understand the digital side of things, you pretty much have a leg up on everybody else, especially if you understand AI and know how to use it.
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