It’s been a crazy two months as I finish up my tenure at SEOmoz. I’ve met with dozens of entrepreneurs and had more coffee meetings than I thought humanly possible in that amount of time. I’ve talked about big ideas, following dreams, and getting after it. I’ve been inspired to say the least.

During all of that I’ve watched as my team at SEOmoz nears the big launch we have been working on for a year. It will be, in many ways, a new beginning for our awesome company, and I’ve been lucky to see it through. I’ve been fortunate to see all those hours come to fruition, and truly couldn’t be prouder of what is about to go live. The team has worked so hard, and we’ve built something pretty special. I’ve been honored to work with that team to say the least.

I’ve also spent the last two months asking myself what I really want, and perhaps more importantly what I don’t want from the next move. I’ve weighed a lot of opinions from very smart people. I feel like I learned more about myself in the last two months, while asking myself hard questions like who do I want to work for and around? What industry excites me? What do I want my day to day to look like? How big or small a team do I want to join? It’s been enlightening to say the least.

The best part is through all of this I was some what of a hot mess. Okay, okay…quite the hot mess. I was here and there and all over the place. I would wake up in the middle of the night and wonder if this leap was a crazy one, I’d roll into weekends tired and weighing all the offers and options. Settled was not a word I can say I felt the past two months. Somehow I managed to turn these amazing opportunities into something to stress over rather than something to embrace and be thankful for. 

What the whattttt.

I was lucky enough to grab coffee with Andy Sack, a local entrepreneur and VC, and he brought up this idea of “serendipitous clarity” and how if you just open yourself up to it, it will find its way to you. Things will make sense. I love this idea. I’m a planner. I’m Type A. I calculate and spreadsheet the hell out of my life. But I am also a dreamer, a creative, a wanderer in many ways.

My moment of serendipitous clarity over the past few weeks came unexpectedly about a week ago. I’m not sure it’s exactly what Andy had in mind, but I certainly think it had the impact he spoke to. A moment that made me go “whoa. yes. be thankful.” Continue reading →

A friend of mine reached out and asked me my thoughts on product marketing the other day. Little did he know that question would send me off on a tangent. Because it did (and I thought I would piece together that tangent for this post).

For one reason or ten, I am insanely passionate about product marketing. I think it’s because I have seen the shift over the years from “two teams” to “one team”, from “hands off marketers” to “all in marketers”, and I couldn’t be more stoked about it. Today product and marketing need to be so closely tied, you can barely separate them. I believe that with my whole heart.

But alas there is a problem. The intersection of  the two functions often causes more friction and deeper silos than we could imagine. There is a turf war happening at a number of companies, and it’s too damn bad. The companies that solve for how these two teams can work together are going to win. They are going to win every time. Luckily for us there is a traditional function that helps lace us together for a common goal — product marketing.

Enter the second problem — most marketers don’t know what the hell that means. [facepalm] So let’s run through it shall we?

What is Product Marketing?

Product marketing as it traditionally exists solves for – what to build, who to sell it to, how to sell it, and what to price it at. Its a four cornered web of awesome that helps companies build something valuable for the right people, sell it well and make money. Wait a minute — that sounds super important? Why yes, yes it is. I have put together a magical picture (ridiculous attempt at a pun intended) to stress its importance…

So how come so many companies screw this up? Enter the where should it live dilemma.

Where Should Product Marketing Live?

You know what I love? Cold, hard truths. So here are a few of them: Most of today’s marketers suck at what to build and how to price it. While most product managers today suck at who to sell it to and how to sell it. Don’t hate the messenger. It’s true. FWIW it’s not their/our fault, marketers weren’t trained in product planning, and product managers weren’t trained in market research and acquisition/take to market strategy. Let’s all just blame the system and move on.

So if it shouldn’t live on either team, then what? This is where it get’s interesting. I think you’ll see the rise of growth teams, or product planning teams that try to really drive those core functions (this is a lot of what growth marketing was at Moz for me and what you see growth teams do at other companies – FB, Dropbox, Pinterest, etc.). I think these hybrid teams will hire in curious cats that don’t want to do one or the other. And I truly believe that in a few years we may just see the structured “two team system” as we know it — be uprooted altogether.

With today’s companies being more product driven than ever and offering more products than before on more channels than ever before, the cornerstone that is product marketing has become the inflection point between success and failure. I’m seeing it. You’re seeing it. It’s happening.

Continue reading →

Two of the most important things you can have: passion & curiosity. #fact

Hey friends! I am helping a friend out with some market validation. Can I grab two minutes of your day?

My friend Kate Matsudaira is working away on her new startup popforms (you can signup to be notified when it launches!) and she is looking for some information into how you all develop yourselves professionally. She has a quick survey for you to take that seriously is only 6 questions long around how you spend money on your development, what you use to track goals, etc.

This space is near and dear to my heart, so I am really excited about what she is working on. I’d love for you to take it and share with your networks so we can try and collect as much information for her as we can. Out of all of this should come a pretty cool product we might all want to use down the road. So thanks so much for your help!

It’s been a crazy few months for me.

The big things: I’ve been heads down prepping for a launch I’ve been working on for a year, I have put in my month notice at SEOmoz, I’m a few weeks out from launching my ISITaYES shopping app, I’ve been working away on my advisory board responsibilities for Attendly, I’ve had a close friend tell me she is moving to another state, I’ve been speaking at conferences, teaching at startup incubators in town, and my boyfriend has been down in the Valley for weeks on end investing in his startup’s crazy awesome trajectory of growth.

And you know what? I am on fire. In the best possible way.

I kept saying for weeks I was so tired, and I honestly wasn’t sleeping that well, but then I just had a few very clear moments. I’m not that tired. I have an energy that I haven’t felt in a while. I am having big ideas, dancing my dance, and grooving the creative wave late into the night. It’s pretty freaking fantastic actually. I’ve had the most amazing moments. The sort of moments that are rare. The big moments. The life-changing ones.

It was a few of these moments that led me to put in my notice at one of the top startups in Seattle. SEOmoz has been an amazing adventure for me. I’m sure Ill write more on this later, but I simply could not have been luckier to have met with Rand back in Capitol Hill 3 years ago and convince him over cupcakes to take a chance on me.

I’m proud of the impact I’ve had on the SEOmoz team, culture, and community. I only hope they all know how much I have learned from them, and how honored I am to have been a part of that ride. But tis the time…new adventure time.

What new adventure? I’m not 100% sure yet to be honest. I have some great opportunities to work with brilliant people, and I’m still considering others. I am going to take the next few weeks to really ponder what I want from it all. It will likely be an early stage to mid-stage venture with passionate people doing something I can really get behind…much like SEOmoz was for me a few years ago.

I can’t help it. I love to build companies. I love to build brands. And I love to build communities. Continue reading →

Personal mission statements are important. What is yours?

This advice is best followed today & every day.

Something has happened friends. We are in the middle of a neon revolution (you know…like the eighth one in the history of revolutions). We are seeing it everywhere. I personally couldn’t be more happy. I believe in the power of neon. 

What the hell does neon mean? Some things that might come to mind: Kelly Kapowski, lava lamps, leg warmers, and drugs. All of which do very much have their roots in neon. But then again so do I. When I was younger my sister and I were told we could pick the color of our bedroom. Like most young ladies our age we did the most obvious thing — we picked a different neon color for each wall. We also wrote in pen across our current walls in big letters what color each wall should be.

My mom and dad were not amused.

Neon has something. It’s electric and I adore that. It’s unmistakable, impossible to ignore, and larger than life. Much like all things should be if you ask me. So why do I believe in the power of neon? Because I believe that life is short, and color matters. I believe that how we visually shock this world should reflect the impact we hope to have in it. I believe that neon colors could very well change the course of any day.

And drape myself in it I will. I’ve bought shoes, nail polishes, shirts, and phone covers. I’ve embraced Neon so much I am wearing it as makeup. Hell to the yes. I’ve talked about the power of a color before, and I do very much think Neon has the same possibilities. Why not be bolder? Why the hell not.

FWIW I think the current Neon phase might just become the norm. I don’t think we will see this one fade. Much like we saw with chunky gold watches, and studded boots, I think we may just find that Neon is setting up shop in our 2013 world. I, for one, hope so.

Looking for more Neon inspiration? I’m pinning the hell out of it right now.

I love beautiful things. I mean all of them. I love anything visually striking. It can be a photo, a painting, a splash of color on a wall, or a bright red lip on a confident woman — I love visual moments that shake me at the core.

To me “visual moments” are at the center of everything really meaningful on the web. We could talk all day and share the hell out of the words — but nothing stretches as far as a photo…a visual moment we can all relate to on some primal level.

So the other day when I saw Shutterstock released Spectrum, its new Labs tool that allows you to search their photo archives by color, I all but jumped out of my chair. Well done Shutterstock, well done.

For years I’ve used Shutterstock to discover beautiful photos for presentations, backdrops, cover shots, and more. I have lost hours of my life to that site. They have done some good things over the years — improved their drop down suggestions, improved the customer feedback capabilities and allowed me to suggest alternatives. I’ve thought many times — “they are really nailing this photo search experience.”

Then they jumped on up there and introduced color based search. #yesssss

Why Is This Such a Big Deal?

I truly believe we’ve seen a shift over the past 18 months. Social platforms are investing more in the visual experience then ever before. From the expansion of our Twitter backgrounds, to the increasing of our Google + cover shots, to the rise of sites like Pinterest — the big players know that we want more room to visually represent ourselves.

I believe this shift in empowering us to better visualize who we are and what we love is leading to a fundamental shift in how we are looking for information on the web. It won’t be just a search or even a discovery – consumers and users are turning to the web to simply be inspired. Continue reading →

No. Really.

The last few weeks have been long. Like really long. The quick story is I was offered an opportunity to put my hat in a ring (a ring I previously very much wanted to be in) and after a lot of sleepless nights, frustration, gut checks, and more…I decided to pass.

Of course there is much more to the story, but for the purpose of this post, that’s the gist of it. It has been a growing experience to say the least. I have always been the “lean in” type. I’m the “go after it all” woman, the “you can do this, just try harder” person. I was brought up with that mentality. I very much believe that if you work hard for things, and you do good work, you’ll get where you want to go.

Well that’s true, but along the way you often find where you wanted to go has very little to do with that open door in front of you. Talk about a confusing time. I mean a “who am I, what do I want from life, have I really fucked this up” type of confusing time.

As a woman in tech I pride myself in knowing what I want. I pride myself very much in doing the hard work and long days it takes to get there. I have never passed up an opportunity to be considered. I’ve never passed up an opportunity to be tested, or challenged, or anything “more” really. I can honestly say…I have absolutely never passed any of that up.

This week I did.

And guess what? My world did not shatter. I repeat — MY WORLD DID NOT SHATTER. me = surprised.

I am at SXSW this week, and I had an amazing conversation with an ambitious, brilliant woman at a top tech company. She has worked her way from the bottom to the top. She leads a huge team. She handles global issues, she carries the weight of a growing company on her shoulders, and she does it with a remarkably humble, beautiful grace about her.

We were chatting, and I talked through this situation, and you should have seen her face when I said “I passed.” I had built myself up…I had talked through the startups, the years, the love of the marketing game. Then I dropped it…”I passed on this opportunity to stay just where I am.”

She said, “I’m shocked.” I told her…so was I.

Continue reading →