As a young professional I have always been fascinated by talking to other people about what they do, and why they do it. It could be at a social gathering, in business meetings, or at my kid's soccer game.
I always want to understand what things in life took them down the journey that eventually lead them to the career that they now have. Was it parental pressure to pursue a specific vein of higher education? Was it a long term girlfriend/boyfriend that encouraged one school choice over another? Or was there a chance encounter at a coffee shop that may have taken you in a new direction. From these seemingly inconsequential decisions, how did that shape your professional journey?
Making Intentional Career Choices
Life can appear to be random if you don't take a step back and see how your path winds and turns. Take a moment to determine where your long term goals are and then build an intentional plan on how to get to those goals. This is not to say that you have to be inflexible and unwilling to embrace emerging opportunities, but if you do not have a vision of where you would like to end up then you will never get there.
After almost a decade in retail management selling technology hardware, I began to see how technology can fundamentally help people, and businesses in their day to day lives. After this realization I made an intentional goal of pivoting from selling technology to building it.
How Will You Get There?
This decision set me on a path of educating myself in what the needs of the market were, how I could deliver value to the company I wanted to work for, and then taking steps to be a natural fit for what they needed.
I joined Texada Software in 2015 with the goal of helping customers every day be more efficient, and be able to make better decisions for their business. I was immediately introduced to great people to work with, a fun, collaborative environment, and a drive to deliver on the values I believed in.
Appreciate the Journey
From my time in customer support, I got to know our customers, their daily procedures, and what operational challenges they faced on a regular basis. As I transitioned into a Product Marketing Manager role, I was able to apply this knowledge to help our customers.
One of the first things I did was set up recurring webinars that would help teach our users more about our software, solutions, and best practices from across the rental industry. There was no shortage of eager team members willing to step up and offer their time, expertise, and skills to deliver value to our users.
From the great attendance, feedback, and engagement on these webinars, this has been a very rewarding project with helping our customers be more efficient, and maximize their business.
The second part of my Product Marketing Role was to bring the product to prospective customers and define it's position in the marketplace. Through this ongoing customer and prospective customer feedback loop, we identified areas where we were strong, and areas that we could further develop to meet their needs. This lead me to work closely with the development teams, sales teams, and the prospects themselves to build a development pipeline of value added features.
The Next Steps
Although I have been working on product management unofficially for over a year, I am now officially transitioning to Product Manager and will be hiring a new team member to take over the Marketing Management full time. I am excited about this transition, and my increased ability to work with customers, prospects, and our team to build great products that will help businesses grow.
So that is why I work where I do. Why do you work where you do? Let me know in the comments below.
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