Marketing the Marketer: A Conversation with Marketing Career Coach Emma Graham

Leonie Seysan (content writing agency, Article Writers Australia) and marketing career coach Emma Graham discuss the current job market and marketing roles, marketing career progression, fractional CMOs, AI, in-demand skills, and more.  Whether you’re just starting your marketing career or looking to make the leap into a marketing leadership role, Emma has some useful tips.

Transcript

Welcome to Content with Humans. I'm Leonie Seysan, Director of content agency, Article Writers Australia. For those who don't know me or Article Writers Australia, we've been around since 2009 and we specialise in written content, including articles, case studies, and white papers. In this episode, I'll be speaking with marketing career development coach, Emma Graham. We'll be talking about marketing roles and careers, frustrations, the job market, career progression in marketing, employer expectations, and more. Let's meet Emma.

Leonie: 0:49

Emma, welcome to Content with Humans.

Emma: 0:52

Thanks for having me.

Leonie: 0:55

So, tell me a little bit about your business and how you came to specialise in the marketing career space.

Emma: 1:02

So it's quite a long answer to that. Present day, I'm a career coach and I've worked specifically with marketers and creatives across a number of questions to do with career, whether that's around clarity on what they're trying to achieve, what those steps are going to be to get from A to B, how to articulate their value. 

If they're actually looking for a new role at the moment, how do you separate yourself from the crowd and how do you communicate all of those things via CV, LinkedIn, in person, in interviews. Via online brand all-of those types of things. 

So that's the short part of the answer. The long part of the answer Is I guess how I got here and how I ended up doing that role. i'm not one of the lucky people who always knew what they wanted to do. For me, there was a lot of, trial and error and trying to figure it out. And a lot of that came from the stuff that I was naturally good at was a lot of the left brain businessy, analytical, logical stuff, but it wasn't the stuff that I personally really enjoyed doing. So I, in my early career went between left brain, right brain trying to figure out like, how do I actually bring those two things together? 

So the early part of my career was spent in management training in the UK spent a lot of time working with the DiSC behavioural model. I trained in that myself and did a lot of coaching with fairly senior execs in terms of how they communicate, how they build teams, and that part of it I really loved. 

As part of that, trying to figure out what it all looked like, I then stepped away from that business after about five, five and a half years. It was actually my own business with a business partner. I was living up in Leeds at the time, I moved to London. And decided that I wanted to get into fashion cause that sounded really cool. I had no background in that whatsoever. My road into that was essentially through sales. So I took on various kinds of sales management roles in firstly Selfridges and then Harrods and led pretty large teams, certainly in Harrods, it was about 50, 55 people, so I got that little bit of the fashion side of things, but I guess sticking with the skills that I had in terms of, people and communication and sales.

I did that for about three, four years. And again, that same question reared its head and I went back in the more kind of businessy direction. Very much stumbled into recruitment. And in the UK that there used to be a site, there may still be actually called monster where you would upload your CV and employers would contact you if they thought something was of interest. And I got a phone call from Nicky, who is still my friend to this day who worked for this recruiter and said, have you ever thought about doing recruitment? I hadn't, I didn't really know much about it. So I went and met with them a couple of times and thought, yeah, this is the next stage in the journey. 

The area that they worked in was very specialised. It was working with Lean and Six Sigma professionals across various industries and actually globally. My role was financial services within the UK. I was there for about two and a half years and during that time, the first year or so, it was a pretty good kind of climate in the UK. At the end of that first year was when we called it the credit crunch hit which in the UK and London specifically was huge. It was a really big crash. And as my market was financial services that made the next year of my role really challenging. I wasn't enjoying it, but I didn't feel like I could leave because the economy was really pretty wrecked at that point. 

So I toughed it out and did, as much as I could. All the while the organisation I worked for was downsizing around me Myself and one other the gentlemen were pretty much the last two people, non managers, standing, got made redundant. And went off again in a probably slightly different direction, trying to get more of that kind of creative side out again. Started my own business doing kind of personal branding, styling Primarily with male clients, actually helping them in terms of, how they would present themselves in terms of their wardrobe and helping with things like that. Did a bit of training with a couple of large hotel brands, helping their staff to again, present themselves and how they would show up for work, which was really cool. 

During that time, I met my now husband who is Australian and originally from Melbourne. He'd been in London for quite a long time. It had been about probably, I think, nine or so years. And he was ready to come back to Melbourne. So I I'd spent quite a lot of time in Australia in I've got a cousin that lives in Byron Bay and I did a gap year here in Sydney, but I'd never been to Melbourne. But I agreed to move to Melbourne. That seemed like a good idea. So at the end of 2011. December it was, moved to Melbourne and I've been here ever since. 

When we first got here, neither of us had roles. Obviously he was coming back from, yeah, 10, 11 years having been overseas. Had a couple of months off while we, found somewhere to live. All of that stuff. And then if I'm honest, didn't really know exactly what I wanted to do, but felt like from what I could see in the market, the recruitment experience that I'd had in London was probably going to be the path of least resistance. There's quite a large demand certainly at that point in time for recruiters with experience in England. I knew though that I didn't want to go back into, that type of market. I didn't want to do financial services. I didn't want to do IT. 

Again, it was that I wanted to do something more creative, but I didn't really know what that looked like. I went on Seek and I was looking at jobs and saw an advert for what's called a rec to rec. So a recruiter that recruits recruiters and called him and he must've thought I was a bit of a nightmare. Cause all I could list was the things that I didn't want to do. Which I don't want financial services. But actually, I think the stars just aligned because he said, I think I've got the perfect role for you. I'm working with this American company who have a small office here in Australia and they work in the creative digital space. Maybe you'd be interested in chatting to them. And it was the only job I interviewed for and three interviews later, got the role. So I spent, yeah, about three and a half years with them. 

I then decided that I wanted to take on a new challenge. And for me, that was an opportunity to build my own team and build my own effectively business unit, and I was given the opportunity to do that by a company called Morgan Consulting. They'd never had a presence in that creative digital marketing space. So I went in as the first person and then built a small team around me, which I really enjoyed. I really enjoyed the team aspect of it and I guess the leadership aspect of it and building that team. Was there for about three and a half years again. 

At that point in time, I thought that I'd reached the end of my journey with recruitment. And just it was having a bit of an existential crisis of, is this really what I want to do? So I, I resigned with the plan of taking a couple of months off and just thinking about things and working out exactly where I wanted to be. Turned out that I wasn't burnt out. I was actually quite sick. I just didn't know that at the time. Turned out I actually had Hodgkin's lymphoma which I found out about two months after I'd left. So cue about a year in total of all of that. But yeah, six months of really intensive chemo. Came out the other side. I've actually just had my five years. It was in May this year. So very happy to enter to that part of the story.

Leonie: 9:01

So it was forcing you to take a step back.

Emma: 9:05

Yeah, absolutely. It was really interesting in hindsight, that the way that it worked out. And once I actually realised that I was actually sick. I was amazed how stupid I'd been and actually how many symptoms I had that I had just totally ignored and just pushed through. And I think, just that tendency of, I'm really busy. I've got a lot on, I'm stressed, yeah, I don't feel great, but, and just, yeah, ignored a lot of, yeah, quite serious symptoms, which was stupid. So

Leonie: 9:33

That's the lesson though as well, wouldn't it? You're not expecting to get something like that.

Emma: 9:39

No I think so. And just things like, it started off with, I had a cough and it was winter okay, I've got a cough. It's winter, everyone has a cough. But then you, three months later when you've still got that cough and now I had a pain in my chest. But I could explain the pain in the chest by the fact that I'd been coughing for three months. And, the stories we tell ourselves to justify what was going on. But it was a really interesting time and as hard as it was, it sounds a bit weird to say, but I do almost think about my life as a bit of before and after I think I'm a very different person probably than I was beforehand. 

It really forced me to really reevaluate what's the point of it all like what this, this thing called life Like what am I actually trying to achieve here? What's important to me? What are the things that I really value and I think what I discovered was that all the stuff that I was putting a lot of onus on meant nothing. And the stuff that I was probably taking for granted was all the stuff that was actually really important. And so it really led me to realign, priorities and how I want to spend my time and the things that are important to me. Ultimately. I did, I was probably I'd had about two years in, in the end off work. The second part of that was COVID. I probably was ready to come back to work about a year and a half or so after. But, small thing called a pandemic was got in the way of that.

Leonie: 11:06

An unexpected

Emma: 11:07

Yeah, very unexpected. Yeah, it was, I had a few years of kind of big unexpected events to deal with. And that actually ended up going back into recruitment, which is something that I didn't think I was probably going to do, but had the opportunity to go into business with a friend of mine who I've worked with previously at Morgan and spent two years, up until the end of last year in that business. 

And it really, for me, that two years really crystallised what it was within recruitment that I loved and the part of it that really resonated with me. And that was always the side of it of working with candidates and helping them to, whether it was career advice, whether it was helping them to position themselves more effectively. That was the bit that kind of always really resonated and something else that I learned during that time. 

If you're immersed in something things that seem very obvious to you, you assume that everyone knows that not everyone does know that. And that's what kind of really became evident to me that there was a real gap. With people needing help and support and naturally turning to the recruitment industry as the industry that was going to help them. But that's not what the recruitment industry is designed for It's there to service the clients and, all the KPIs and a lot of the structure is set up that way. And so when I left recruitment, again, with the intention of having a couple of months, I was due to go back to the UK for Christmas, actually. Spend Christmas with my mum for the first time since I left the UK. And just had this idea just going in the back of my mind. And over that sort of month or so, it just really crystallised of, but actually let me take those parts of recruitment that I love and let me just really focus on that and use the kind of the knowledge and the experience that I've built up over, yeah, as I say, it's probably 15 or so years in the end to work with people on their careers.

Leonie: 13:06

I can see now too, that your personal experience in being unwell and all of the focus that you then put into working out what your values are and, the difference between something that you're good at and something that you enjoy, all of those things in your background really contribute to what you're doing now. That has put you in quite a good position to have those conversations with people and try and work out what they want to do next.

Emma: 13:35

Yeah, absolutely. And I think there's a pretty decent proportion of people that are probably working towards a definition of success that isn't their own. I spent 15, 20 years working towards a definition of success that ultimately wasn't mine. And it was interesting, when I achieved the things that I set out to achieve, I felt nothing. And it was this huge anticlimax of, was waiting for the, the, the marching band in my head and all the, yeah, you've done it kind of thing. And it just, it felt a bit meaningless.

Leonie: 14:11

Yeah.

Emma: 14:11

And yeah, then pretty much straight off the back of that was with when I found out that I was sick. So yeah, it just really really led me to, to reevaluate that. And I think if there's two things that I'm super, super passionate about, it's one, helping people to really define that for themselves and to work towards something that is meaningful and has purpose to, for them, whatever that may be and also really helping people to take control of their careers and not just sit back and hope that they're going to be recognised for their work and, but really take control of it and put yourself in the driving seat. So I think those are probably the two, two real driving forces behind what I do now.

Leonie: 14:57

So what are some of the common reasons that marketers come to you for assistance?

Emma: 15:02

I think there's a few very common ones. I think there's a few people who come specifically because of that recruitment background, that they want some of that insight around actually what's happening on the other side. How am I being evaluated? I think there's a general lack of transparency. So a lot of people don't really understand what's happening behind the scenes as it were. So some people have questions around that. Some people have questions around the kind of the, how do I get from A to B? If I'm at this point in my career, say I'm a marketing manager and I want to work towards being a head of marketing or perhaps even a CMO, how do I get there? What are the steps? What do I do? What are the things that I need to put in place? So that's certainly a big kind of overarching theme. 

And then within that, there's lots of subcategories around, I mentioned it before the, how do you articulate your value? How do you position yourself for success? And it's a really interesting one as marketers because obviously they understand the principles of marketing far better than I do. I'm not a marketer. I've just spent a lot of time in the space, but as soon as it's you, as soon as you're the product you lose all kind of objectivity and it's very hard to see sometimes what makes you special. And I think ultimately in a pretty crowded marketplace, it's that differentiation, which is really key. And then once you've identified that, how are you communicating that? And how are you putting that out into the world? So that, if I apply for a role that two or 200 other people have applied for, how do I stand out from other people And also, again, really encourage people to take control. And a lot of the things that we talk about when it comes to actual kind of job hunting strategies is not just relying on applying for a job via a job board and hoping that you get a response. But what, again, what can you proactively do? What are the things that you can put in place to try and actually find opportunity for yourself as well.

Leonie: 17:05

So what sort of role do LinkedIn profiles and other social media accounts play when it comes to finding employment or potentially winning roles that have been applied for?

Emma: 17:16

LinkedIn is pretty key in this kind of day and age. I think you'd really struggle to find a recruiter. And an internal talent acquisition person who wasn't on LinkedIn, I think pretty much everyone is, and it's a key part of how how those people are searching and even the more kind of proactive headhunting that a lot of recruiters will do, particularly at the more senior end, LinkedIn plays a massive part in that. If you're not putting your best foot forward, as it were, I started using the phrase, and I don't know if it's quaintly old fashioned, but the phrase that it's your digital calling card, it's the thing that people will often see about you. from an online perspective first, even if you meet someone at a conference, no one really does business cards anymore. You find the person on LinkedIn and that's how you connect. So it's really important, not just from a job search perspective, but from a personal brand perspective that your LinkedIn gives a good account of of your experience and who you are. 

And the other thing that I think is really great about LinkedIn, probably in comparison to CVs, which do tend to be a little bit more generic and that sort of professional tone language, that you can be a bit more of yourself on LinkedIn. I think particularly in the about section, you've got an opportunity to really tell a bit of a story and give a sense of who you are again, which I think is part of that point I mentioned earlier in terms of differentiation. It's not just, I'm a marketer and I've got this many years experience and I do B2B or whatever. There should be, in my opinion some personality behind that. And if you can tie that all up in a really nice kind of narrative story, people are so much more likely to remember that. 

So LinkedIn is really key. And so not just when you're looking for a role. Other social media. Probably less. I guess it depends, if you're a social media specialist, then chances are people are going to be certainly looking at the brands that you've been working with from a social perspective. You do read, maybe it's just, horror stories that you read on LinkedIn of people that have got completely open Facebook profiles or Instagram profiles. And then someone's gone on and, seen some picture that they probably shouldn't have seen. And they've had a job offer pulled or whatever. I don't know if that's the real world, but maybe it's maybe it's best to have your private accounts private when you're looking for a job.

Leonie: 19:42

So how important is personal branding for marketers who want to progress their careers? And do you have any tips on that?

Emma: 19:50

I think it's really important. I think it's, it probably has an is in danger of becoming a bit of a cliche almost. And the phrase does get thrown around quite a lot. But I think it is important. And I think again, marketers know better than anyone that certainly people respond to the person, not necessarily that the overarching brand of an organisation that they've been part of. So I do think it's important. And I do think it as you said LinkedIn can play a big part of that, but also, people's day to day experience of working with you. Whether you're out and about going to conferences, perhaps or attending kind of round table events. 

And I think networking again is a word I don't love because I think it has a bit of a negative connotation for a lot of people. It can feel a bit little bit icky, a little bit salesy. But I think if it's done and done in the right way in terms of actually building relationships and building community, like that's what I mean when I say networking. So I do think all of those things really do play a part and particularly if you're someone that does want to take control of your career and ultimately move in a certain direction, all of those things do become really key and a really big part of how you can, again, position yourself for success and really make the most of opportunities and potentially create opportunities for yourself without just having to rely on applying for things that you see online, which you have very limited control over. So I do think it's important. I think part of the challenge for people and I completely understand it is, we're all busy. We're all busy at work. You've got a lot of demands, trying to balance that with home, potentially with, family. And then someone comes along and says, oh, you need to make time for networking. You need to build a personal brand. And it's yeah. In all my free time, I'll do those things. But I do think it is one of those things that your future self will really thank you if you can find even an hour a week whatever it is. And one of the very simple things that I often suggest to people is actually put the time in your calendar, block out an hour a week, an hour a fortnight, an hour a month, whatever it is you can spare. And actually dedicate that time to you, your career and the things that you can do to help yourself so that they don't just fall off the to-do list. But I do completely, understand, when people hear that, they're like, yeah, when's that going to happen? But you haven't totally gone behind the times.

Leonie: 22:30

It happens that building a network happens over time, but if you go about it a little bit more strategically and you put consistent effort into meeting new people and then maintaining those relationships, then over the course of a few years, you're going to build up quite a strong network which is going to be advantageous in terms of hearing, potentially hearing about opportunities that haven't hit the market yet.

Emma: 22:55

Absolutely. Absolutely. And not just that, but also all the advantages of doing that over time, all the shared knowledge, all the access to potential mentors being a mentor yourself. Having a community of other marketers that you can share your experiences with. And, they may have just, I don't know, implemented a particular piece of MarTech that you're thinking of using. And you've got someone that you can pick up the phone and say, okay, we're thinking about this. How did you find it? What were the pitfalls? So I think it's, I do think it's a big part of that sort of future job search strategy, but also there's huge advantages in the short term and medium term as well of just sharing knowledge. And I think that's when I say people don't the, don't like the word cause it feels say salesy. But I think if you're doing it in that sense of building relationships, building community and sharing information then, to me, that's a very positive thing.

Leonie: 23:51

It is. I think the people who see networking in that negative light, it's just because they have in their mind that, that picture of it as being, you go and have a few drinks and that at five o'clock in the afternoon, and then you don't connect with those people again.

Emma: 24:04

Yeah.

Leonie: 24:05

That's not networking. That's, that's going to an event.

Emma: 24:08

Exactly. Yeah. And I think also, I think it's important to find a way of doing it that feels authentic to you. And if you're someone who's perhaps a little bit more introverted. You're not going to go to those events. And if you do, you're certainly not going to enjoy it and probably not going to engage in, in meaningful conversation. So if you know that about yourself, then find another way of doing it.

Leonie: 24:33

Plenty of other, you can invite people for a cup of coffee and yeah.

Emma: 24:37

Yeah.

Leonie: 24:38

Go to lunches with a handful of people that you want to have conversations with.

Emma: 24:44

Exactly. And I think for a lot of people that don't do it, that's probably why they don't do it because they think of it as those types of events. I personally don't particularly enjoy those types of events either. I don't do that. I have done in the past and not really enjoyed it and not really got value from it. So now I don't do it, but yeah, again, it's about recognising that. And rather than just saying, I don't like that, I'm not going to do it. Find a way of doing it that is right for you and don't just ignore it and push it to the side.

Leonie: 25:15

Yeah, so because we deal with marketing teams on a daily basis, we often get a bit of a snapshot of the job market in that space, just based on the amount of movement that we see happening and how often people are changing jobs and how fast they're replaced and that sort of thing. It seems to have been a really wild ride over the past four years, going from one extreme to the other and back again. From your perspective, what has the last four years looked like and what's the job market like now in 2024 for marketers?

Emma: 25:49

I think a wild ride is a good, it's a good a good analogy. It's yeah, it's been very crazy. And as you said, it's been one way, the other way and kind of everything in between, I think certainly, if we remember back to COVID times, which I've tried to do is as little as possible. Try to just remove it from my, remove it from my memory. Certainly in, in the early parts of COVID, certainly if you were any sort of online retailer or, we all remember a lot of tech companies going absolutely crazy at that point in time. There was a lot of hiring. See, the borders were closed, so there wasn't new talent coming in and there was a period of time there where the competition for talent was really tight, particularly at that sort of executional kind of marketing specialist kind of level. People were effectively naming their own price and people were, leaving to roles where they were getting really significant increases ridiculously so in, in some instances. 

And, as is the way a lot of things, as it goes up, it often comes back down which it did. Off the back of COVID, one thing that, that I saw a lot, which I thought would have corrected itself by now, but doesn't seem to have, that a lot of senior roles were made redundant. Some of those people took voluntary redundancy. I think, the challenge of getting a large team through COVID took a toll on a lot of people and they just wanted a bit of a break. And if there was a redundancy on the table, they, would put their hands up and say, great. Yep. I'll take the money and I'll have a bit of time off and I'll. And I'll get back into a role fairly easily because that's what had happened in the past. But a lot of those senior roles didn't come back to the market. And a lot of those senior people were out of work for probably longer than they would have expected to be. 

One interesting thing that happens off the back of that and you still see it now is quite a number of people took on these sort of fractional CMO roles and would effectively start their own consulting businesses doing kind of fractional CMO, which have to say, I love, I think it's a great idea. And I think it's a real win for both. both sides. But I would have expected certainly probably by last year that a lot of those senior roles would have started to have come back. Cause you can in the short term see it, you'd okay, that person's put a plan in place. They've set a strategy. They're no longer there. We've got a really well oiled team that are executing to that strategy. Yeah. 

Not too much time has to go by before that strategy isn't live anymore. It's no longer current. And if no one is revisiting that, if we're not interrogating whether we're actually continuing to do the right activity, who's steering the ship, and so I would have expected a lot of those roles to, to come back. I think that the more senior end of the market is by far that the tougher end of the market. That's always a little bit the case of just, it's a numbers game. They're just aren't as many of those roles as there are at the sort of more entry and middle levels, but yeah it's pretty tough. I think for some of those senior people at the moment, the market hasn't really sprung back in the way I would have expected.

Leonie: 29:06

Yeah. So you think there might be a few things impacting that as well. So I, I wonder. We see a lot of people now who got into more senior roles through COVID when the demand was there and people were desperate where they've ended up a little bit out of their depth, they've taken on a senior role and they really didn't have the skills and background for it. And then the expectations, the employer expectations are quite stressful then when they're out of their depth.

Emma: 29:37

Yeah. And also I think a lot of businesses are trying to do more with less. They've downsized teams, but they're still expecting the same outputs. More even in some cases. So yeah, I think there's a lot of challenges like that where as you say, perhaps people have taken on a more senior role that they perhaps weren't quite ready for and and once they're in the role, perhaps they don't have the level of support to help them get up to speed as as quickly as you would like. There's definitely, I would say an overarching theme of do more with less, which is having a number of different consequences.

Leonie: 30:13

So would you say that the job market's quite a different place at the moment for experienced senior markers than it is for graduates who are looking for an entry level position?

Emma: 30:21

Yeah, I don't honestly don't know that much in terms of graduate level. I don't really particularly have a network in that area or really work with people so much at that level. My assumption would be that it probably is still quite tough for graduates as it often is, there's a limited number of roles and, a lot of people are competing for them. But I also think a number of the same principles apply in terms of how are you differentiating yourself? It's not enough just to say, I went to this uni and I did this course. So did all the other people that did that course. It's got to be something more than that. And I think it's often difficult for graduates. It's that kind of chicken and the egg thing of how do I get experience? If everyone's telling me we can't hire you because you haven't got experience. If even if it's not experience in your chosen field even if it's, I don't know, you've gone and worked in retail or something for a period of time or hospitality it's still showing transferable skills, it's showing the types of things that employers want to see. 

So I think even if you can't, get work experience or certainly a lot of people, vast majority of people aren't in the position where they can take on an internship because they can't afford to do that. So even if you can't do that, do something. The other thing that I think often falls through the cracks and I sound like a bit of a broken record is networking, because you come into the workforce and you don't have a network But there's still, again, there's still things you can do. There's still people that you can connect with, reach out to, and try as much as possible to start to build that network before you get to that point, don't wait until you're graduating and then suddenly think, Oh gosh, I need to start building this network because it's better than nothing, but you're, if you'd have started a year before or 18 months before, like that's the time to do it.

Leonie: 32:15

Yes.

Emma: 32:16

Because then when you come to that point in time, you've got those relationships and and hopefully some people that can potentially help you.

Leonie: 32:23

Yeah. And I think it's, it is hard to see that value in doing that probably early on, but, Something that I've noticed over the years through looking through LinkedIn profiles and looking at how people move from one company to another. I quite often see scenarios and hear them as well, where one person has picked up a new job at a larger company and then over the course of the next couple of years, you'll find that a couple of their colleagues will follow them.

Emma: 32:53

Yeah.

Leonie: 32:53

And you think that has to be because they're being recommended into that role because they know somebody at the company.

Emma: 33:01

Yeah, absolutely.

Leonie: 33:02

I think if you're an applicant for a job and there's a senior marketing person in that company, who's worked with you before. They're going to be asked, what was this person like to work with? And if you get a good rap from them, then you're a shoe in for that position.

Emma: 33:19

It's just essentially common sense, isn't it? You would pick someone that you have worked with before and know that they're highly capable over someone that you don't know and haven't worked with before. Bit of common sense. Yeah. Why wouldn't you? Yeah.

Leonie: 33:33

So the COVID pandemic brought about a huge shift in attitudes towards remote working and flexibility, both in terms of the employer's attitude and employee expectations. How did you see that play out and have those changes lasted?

Emma: 33:51

I've got a few different opinions on this and some of them are probably slightly contradictory, so bear with me. I think as a starting point, the pendulum needed to swing. I think it was probably too fixed. There was, too much focus on time at desk, it's got to be five days in the office, which definitely affected people with families or people returning to work. There wasn't much part time and still aren't that many part time roles available. So I definitely think movement was needed. I don't think that scenario was particularly helpful. 

My own personal opinion is I actually feel that it's swung way too far the other way and that there is a middle ground there that we probably need to get back to I can remember conversations certainly immediately after COVID, where it was probably a degree of entitlement of people just saying, I want this, I won't do this. I want this. And it just doesn't really sit that well with me, to be honest. I think, if a company they're employing you, that they're paying you they do have certain rights to say we would prefer it if you were in the office three days a week or I think that's fair enough. And I think there are a lot of people who, as I said, when it was super challenging and the market was very tight during COVID, they were given everything that they wanted and probably more and they came out the other side expecting that to continue and it hasn't, so I do think there's a kind of a middle ground that needs to be found. 

I think flexibility is important and we need to find a way to be able to offer people that, particularly working parents but also I think there are a lot of advantages to being in the office. Not least of which from a personal development perspective, I think certainly for more junior, people and it's interesting in my experience the more junior ones have often been the ones who don't want to come into the office. But I think actually for them the benefits are probably far more obvious. I think back to when I started in roles and the amount that you learn just by observing and listening to your colleagues, if you haven't got that I think of even just back in the days in recruitment of how to have a difficult conversation. If you're constantly listening to people and taking in that information. And it's incredibly valuable. If I was just sat at home I wouldn't have learned anywhere near as much.

Leonie: 36:23

It's hard to teach somebody something online. You can get them online and have a conversation. You can give them instructions. But I think in the office scenario, someone's more likely to ask questions. You can look over your shoulder and say, Oh, I'm having trouble with this, is anyone able to do it. Or have you got any ideas for this? I think you're less likely and I'm very pro remote working because I've been doing it for a long time. But I can see the differences and the disadvantage of it as well in that you just don't have that turn around and ask somebody a question. You're going to try and work it out on your own, which is going to take you longer and lacks the input of everybody else at the same time.

Emma: 37:04

Yeah. I think it's often just the ability to be able to observe and model behaviour. That is, is gone. I do also think it has an impact on culture and kind of team dynamics and in some cases, just efficiency, of being able to just turn to someone and say, Hey, can we just sort this out quickly rather than jump on a Teams and it becomes an hour conversation and it's a whole thing. And so I do think there's a middle ground to be found there, I'd say, I think flexibility is important. And but as I said, I think it's, I think it's gone too far because I think a lot of the people who say I want flexibility are also being incredibly inflexible in the sense that they're saying, I will only come into the office on a Tuesday and a Wednesday. That's not flexibility, like it's a two way, it's a two way street. I think, yeah, maybe we've just forgotten some of the benefits of that. So I guess in short, 

I don't think there's a simple solution. I think it is a complex issue. I don't know that we've necessarily found the solution yet. But it is definitely starting to swing, swing back the other way. And my hope is that we do manage to retain that, that middle ground and not just go all the way back to where we where we were.

Leonie: 38:19

So almost every type of business imaginable needs some type of marketing help. What are some of the most exciting or perhaps unusual options for marketing careers?

Emma: 38:32

That's a really interesting question there. I think I mentioned it before, but I think it is really exciting that sort of fractional CMO role and the reason I think it's exciting is to me. It is a real kind of win as the best solutions often are, that smaller businesses who wouldn't normally be able to have access to someone that senior with that level of kind of experience or kind of strategic thinking have access to that person one day a week or on a project basis or and also for the person doing the work. I think it gives them a really nice kind of idea of what they can work on. So I think that's really really interesting. 

I still don't, I don't know that there's that many kind of really different and unusual types of roles. It's probably based a little bit sometimes on the business or the industry. I think what you definitely do see and they're unusual, but not in a good way is there is the kind of the I mentioned it before they're needing to do more with less where you just end up with these totally bizarre unicorn roles of someone that just doesn't exist where they've probably taken three job descriptions and just shoved them together and gone, Oh, here's a role. Let's go and try and find this person.

Leonie: 39:50

Yeah. Which actually ties in with what I was going to ask you next. Cause I sometimes scan through the marketing job ads because I find it's quite a good way to spot emerging trends. And something that strikes me every time I do it is the number of job ads that sound unrealistic, whether in terms of this really long list of expertise that they're looking for, or an equally long list of responsibilities for the role that they're describing. So is that something that you hear about often?

Emma: 40:19

Yeah, absolutely. And I think it's really interesting to me. It's something that does seem quite innate within marketing. There's just such a lack of standardisation across kind of job roles, job titles, equivalent salaries and it makes it incredibly hard for people when they are looking., You can't look at a title marketing manager and feel confident that's going to sit within a particular salary band. It could be anywhere from$70000 to$170000, And if people aren't putting salaries on jobs, that's a whole other thing. But yes, absolutely it happens. 

I think it happens for probably two main reasons. One of them is the businesses wanting to do more with less and think that, we can downsize the team and then just shove it together and that'll be fine. We'll get someone that can do all of that. That definitely happens. But I think the other side of it is that there's still a lot of misunderstanding or a lack of understanding as to what marketing actually is. So I think a lot of businesses that don't necessarily really understand marketing and that's how those jobs come around and you still hear, you hear the horror stories of marketing being the colouring-in department and that's all anyone thinks of it or, oh, you're a marketer, make me a PowerPoint, ridiculous. That's not fair. And I think it's probably a combination of those things that are often happening. And I think often if it's maybe a smaller business or there isn't a senior marketer there, who's saying actually, no, like that's not reasonable to ask for all of those different skill sets. That's actually two different job roles or. So I think, yeah, sometimes it's just a lack of understanding and sometimes I think they're just maybe trying to get away with getting as much as they can into one role, but it does make it very challenging for people in the space.

Leonie: 42:20

Several marketing managers I've known over the years have moved on from a role because they felt that the company didn't take marketing seriously and there was a general lack of respect for the role of marketing and for marketing expertise. Is that a common frustration?

Emma: 42:35

It is. I think particularly again, amongst more senior marketers, because they're often the ones that are at the front end of that and having those conversations. Again, I think there's a couple of things. going on. And some sometimes you just can't turn the Titanic. If it's one or two people's opinions who are ultimately always going to win, you can try and influence as much as you like. 

And sometimes you're just never going to get there. So I think sometimes that is the case. I also wonder if I think partly it sometimes feels like there's two different languages being spoken. So there's the language of the business that, commercial outcomes, results, deliverables, numbers, percentages. And if marketing isn't thinking and delivering in those terms, then there can be a bit of a disconnect. I think that's why so many businesses were, so excited when the digital marketing kind of revolution came along because suddenly, oh, we can see the numbers. We understand what's happening. We can see, we've invested X and we got back this output. And that's great, but I also think that there's still a place for brand and comms and all of those other things, but it's, how do you. How do you try and quantify some of those more intangible things and how do you talk about them in a more, using more commercial language so that you're taking the business with you. If you just go into I don't know the exec or maybe you're talking to board or whatever and you're just talking about brands and. It's not that tangible, those, that isn't language that those people are necessarily going to resonate with. So I think sometimes it's that the business just doesn't see the value and they're never going to.

Leonie: 44:25

Comes from the top down, maybe.

Emma: 44:27

Absolutely. And sometimes it is because if marketers aren't using that type of language or playing the game, trying to show the results in a way that the business needs to see them. And part of that, sometimes I think one of the other frustrations I hear a lot is that if marketing isn't valued it can be very difficult to do that because marketing gets involved, halfway along two-thirds along, when the decisions have already been made and they just get told Oh execute this campaign. Well If you actually really want the value of marketing needs to be there from the beginning and needs to be part of that conversation and you know be advocating for the customer and bringing their knowledge and expertise to that conversation. So I think again sometimes that can happen if marketing's just being handed something and say, deliver this, it's pretty difficult because you're going to be expected to own the result, but you actually weren't part of the

Leonie: 45:24

The strategy.

Emma: 45:25

Yeah. You weren't part of the conversation or the strategy. So I think it is very challenging. And I think, yeah, there is a lot of the frustration, as you say, with certainly senior marketers, because I think sometimes they just feel like they're banging their head against a brick wall, but.

Leonie: 45:40

Yeah. Yeah. I see that. I think there's a bit of a common issue with marketing and writing actually. There are people who assume anyone can do that.

Emma: 45:50

Absolutely.

Leonie: 45:51

Everyone can write. Everyone understands marketing, but it's actually not true.

Emma: 45:55

No. And the same even within marketing. Oh, you're a marketer. You can write. No,

Leonie: 46:02

Yes, exactly. A lot. We hear that a lot. We get senior marketers who come to us because they need the help with the writing. But we also see a lot of particularly junior marketing people who are just expected. It's just assumed that's what you do. You're a junior marketer. You do the writing.

Emma: 46:24

Yeah, absolutely.

Leonie: 46:25

Which of course, even with professional writers, there are writers who are really great with long form copy and white papers and articles. They're not necessarily the same writers who are great with nice, short, crisp copy for brochures and that sort of thing. There are different strengths even within professional writers. So I think you can't grab a junior marketer and expect them to have the skill of a professional writer across all formats.

Emma: 46:53

It's not reasonable. And I think, yeah, I think also, and I saw this a lot when I was in recruitment that, you'd be talking to a client and here's the job description. I think, the onus is on. the recruiter, whether internal or external, there to push back and actually share their knowledge and expertise and be a true consultant and say, that's actually not realistic. All of those things you're asking for there, that, that's not an actual person.

Leonie: 47:22

Which might be hard because they might not know that it's not realistic if they don't have any sort of an in depth knowledge of the marketing sector, then they're not really going to know what's realistic and what's not realistic.

Emma: 47:34

And I think that's part of what happens, that maybe, if they're expected to recruit across all different. It'd be the same, if someone handed me a really complex dev role, I don't know, like I wouldn't know, I wouldn't, I just wouldn't know, I wouldn't know where to start. So I think sometimes that happens where they don't have the in depth knowledge and don't know enough to say, look, you're asking for two very different things there. What's actually, what are the must haves? What are the nice to haves, all of that kind of thing. And also I think you do often get a lot of relatively junior consultants in recruitment and perhaps they don't, or haven't yet developed the consultative skills necessary to actually have that conversation and to actually push back on the client and say, Yeah, I don't actually think that's reasonable and have that dialogue. So I think there's, again, it's complex. There's a lot of kind of different things going on there.

Leonie: 48:29

All that comes with their comfort with their own expertise. If they're comfortable with their expertise and they've been around for a while, they probably are going to push back as you say, if they're junior they don't feel that they're in a position to push back.

Emma: 48:44

Yeah. Yeah.

Leonie: 48:45

So a lot of companies are currently identifying use cases for generative AI, and plenty of them are already using AI tools for some task. What sort of reaction or sentiment are you noticing among marketers about AI?

Emma: 49:02

I think it's really interesting because I think in the beginning, and I say in the beginning, it probably wasn't that long ago, was it two years ago, whatever, maybe 18 months ago, I think there was that initial kind of fear that actually this was going to fundamentally change markets, take people's, jobs away, all of that kind of thing. I think that has subsided as people realised that, as you say, it's a tool and there are great uses for it. It is still, certainly from a writing perspective, very generic, I think companies that thought they might be able to, not have comms professionals anymore or, not use an organisation like yours and replace it with AI. No.

Leonie: 49:46

Yeah. And you can see people discovering that now where now they have played with it. Yeah. I think it's a bit similar for the strategy side of things as well, because I think quite a few people thought that something like ChatGPT was quite good at turning out strategy documents, but it actually suffers from the same problem in that it doesn't have anything original to add to it. It's just producing content from what's already out there.

Emma: 50:12

Yeah.

Leonie: 50:13

And I, that might even be harder to spot than the fact that doesn't write all that well.

Emma: 50:18

Yeah. Yeah.

Leonie: 50:19

I think the strategic side of it might be harder to see.

Emma: 50:23

Absolutely. Yeah. Generic and quite repetitive as, as well. I find, and it's interesting, slight aside, but you see it in people's CVs, you can spot within about three seconds because CVs. People tend to use the same type of language anyway. They tend to write in that very kind of this is my professional serious tone that I will never use in real life and they'll write their, they'll write their CV like that, which is one of the reasons that you shouldn't really write your CV like that as an aside. But as soon as you add ChatGTP into that, like it's just so generic. And in a crowded marketplace when your goal should be to differentiate yourself. Just don't use it. So I think, yeah, a lot of that sort of initial fear didn't really come about and actually having a conversation in the next couple of months on my podcast and you might be interested to do the same, this lady called Catherine Toms. Who is a marketer herself and now does a lot of kind of marketing training it's herself and her husband, do a lot of training around AI and how marketers can really utilise AI. So I think if that's something that someone's interested in yeah, have a look at her on LinkedIn and follow her. She's doing some cool stuff.

Leonie: 51:39

Okay. So at the moment, what seemed to be some of the most sought after skills for marketers?

Emma: 51:47

It's an interesting one because I think there's two answers to that. I think there's the sort of executional level skills. And then there's the, those more kind of senior strategic skills that we mentioned that haven't come back yet. I still think one of the most sought after things is probably the thing that the thing I mentioned earlier that. Not everyone is great at, is that integrating marketing with the commercial thinking and actual business outcomes. And I think if you're someone that can do that, can integrate that and has a language to speak to that is a real differentiator, cause that is something that that people at all at some marketers do find quite difficult. I think there's still a, there is still a lot of demand in terms of digital, social you get some real kind of specific ones, obviously with, things like TikTok going, going gangbusters, people want, and you hear this going back to businesses, not necessarily understanding marketing. You'll get the things like we just want to go viral. We want someone who can make us go viral or we should be on TikTok because everyone's on TikTok. Are your customers on TikTok? No. So I think that's still out there, but I still think there's, as much as there's always kind of new skills and new technologies and certainly, MarTech has been a huge kind of part of that. I still think it goes back to those fundamentals of marketers that can really understand business and commercial outcomes and integrate that with customer business outcome. That's actually a real, still a real differentiator.

Leonie: 53:27

So let's talk about resumes. What are some of the common mistakes that you see people making on their resumes or CVs? The type of simple mistakes that could see them being overlooked for something that they'd actually be a good fit for.

Emma: 53:42

I think there's a couple of probably overarching points there. I mentioned one before and just using generic language and just saying, I'm a strategic marketer. Everyone says that, again, when you read a lot of CVs and I don't know, tens of thousands of, I've probably read over the years, people use the same language. They use the same phrases and it does become very repetitive. So I think firstly be conscious of your language. And as I said people do tend to write in this very kind of slightly formal business voice that no one talks like that And one of the things, piece of advice that I give is write it as you would speak it. If you wouldn't say that in real life, then don't write it on your CV And I think people do find that quite difficult. I think often it's easier to. Again, just record yourself into your phone, talking it out loud, and then write it from that, often gives a much more personable kind of tone to the CV. 

So I think that, and probably the overarching point there is just being too generic and not actually focusing on differentiating yourself enough. The other thing that I think a lot of people sometimes forget to do, they talk about their experience and that, that their CV will, whether that's their educational experience, their work experience, that's all great. 

But again, it doesn't actually cover your value and it doesn't articulate the value that you're bringing to the organisation. The thing that does that is impacts, results, deliverables. What have you actually done in those roles? It's all very well saying, you know I was here for four years and I worked on campaigns and I did this. Yeah, but what was the result of that activity? What was the impact that you had? And again, that can be a little bit challenging depending on the area of marketing you're in. You're not always going to have a nice little percentage that you can put at the end, but as far as possible, try and focus on results. By all means, you're going to cover, responsibilities and that kind of thing, but I would make that no more than half and then I would make the results and the achievements the other half of that. So I think that's often a mistake that a lot of people make. 

A really obvious simple one spelling. I'm dyslexic so I get it like I can read something till I'm blue in the face and I just won't see the mistake because my brain just fills it in And even if you've spell checked it, if you've got the wrong word, the spell check's not going to bring it up. So just having someone else read it, check it it does make a difference, particularly if it's a glaring error. And if you're, if you have English as a second language get someone else to double check and go over everything and make sure that it's as clear as it possibly can be. And actually that's probably another point of not trying to overcomplicate and just making it clear. And I think often marketers and creatives can be too concerned with how it looks. And as long as it's clear, it really doesn't matter. 

People don't actually really care so much about the format, but they care if you've used such a small font that you can't read it which people often do when they're trying to cram it onto two pages. But as long as it's clear, as long as it's understandable, how it actually looks doesn't matter. And on that, CVs can't be longer than two pages thing, I don't know who said that, but I totally disagree. I think certainly if you're, you've got more than 15 years work experience, you can't get that on two pages. So you can't say anything that means anything in two pages. I'd say if you start to get over five, that's maybe getting too long. Don't be obsessed with trying to just cram everything into two pages. It's more important that it's legible. And as I say, that it's talking about your value and what you can deliver.

Leonie: 57:39

And, or definitely, I agree with you about the second pair of eyes, because even we have a professional editor who checks everything that our writers do before it goes to clients. And, part of the reason why that's even necessary is because when you're, you've written something and you've edited it yourself six times.

Emma: 57:55

Yeah, you just can't see it anymore.

Leonie: 57:57

You're in the blank and you can't see it. You can't see those errors or typos. And some things that are even quite obvious that you won't see any longer because you've now got six versions of it in your mind.

Emma: 58:08

Yeah. Yeah, absolutely.

Leonie: 58:10

The editor will pick it up on, on first run.

Emma: 58:12

A hundred percent. Yeah. So I said I'm dyslexic. And spell check often. I use Grammarly, which does help me quite a lot. But sometimes I can't, yeah, I'll read something 10 times and I just can't see. I can't see the mistake. It happens often. I'll put something on LinkedIn and then I'll perhaps see it a day later and I'm like, Oh my God, how did I not? How did I not see that?

Leonie: 58:35

Yeah. And look, I do that occasionally. I'm guilty of that as well. I'll put things up. I'll write something for our blog and I'll think, Oh, I want to put that up. I won't, I won't send it to the editor today because she's busy. I'll just put it up myself. I'm sure it's right. And then I'll, as soon as I put it up, I'll see an error.

Emma: 58:50

Yeah.

Leonie: 58:51

In there again and fix it.

Emma: 58:52

Yeah.

Leonie: 58:55

So should marketers be actively planning a career path as early as they can?

Emma: 59:03

Interesting question that. Again, I think there's two answers to it. I would say in the very, very beginning, I wouldn't get too hung up on it. I think when you're in the first certainly five, six or so, maybe even slightly more. I think it's really useful to, to try different roles and work out, do I want to specialise? Do I want to generalise? Do I prefer working with a certain type of customer? Do I like B2B? Do I like B2C? I think in the beginning, it's good to have that breadth. So. But equally, I think doing that is in itself a career plan, is a strategy. Try and keep a breadth for as long as you, as long as you can. Or if it becomes, really obvious to you after your first role, that actually I don't just want to be in, in this specific niche. I really would like to have more of an overview of, projects start to finish or campaigns start to finish. So I think in the short term try and keep it a little bit

Leonie: 1:00:03

So marketing focus can be quite different across industries and even from B2B to B2C. And once you've got a little bit of experience in a particular area, it's potentially easier to make progress in that area rather than change. So what are your thoughts on that?

Emma: 1:00:22

I have to say, this is a real soapbox topic for me. I find the Australian market to my mind really overly obsessed with industry experience and wanting people to stay in their lane, stay in this. And I've never really understood it. I think there's maybe a couple of industries that I would say maybe like an FMCG or something, which is very specific, but I do think there's actually huge value in, in having people with outside experience fresh eyes, seeing things from a different perspective, bringing in ideas from other industries. 

I think if you're only ever employing people from within a certain industry, there's the danger that it just all becomes very myopic and group think because we're doing it that way because that's the way we've always done it and no one's actually challenging the norm or the status quo there. But that mentality does very much exist in the Australian market and some industries Super for example I used to do a bit of work in super and they would constantly only want people. Super is a tiny industry if you only want comms people from within super that's not very many people. And actually going back to that consultative thing, over a bit of time, chipped away and said, what do we actually, why? What's actually underneath that? What are you trying to solve for by saying we only want? And it was it was experience of working and writing specifically within a highly regulated environment. I'm like, okay if it's that, then what about someone from energy? Because that's a highly regulated environment. So you can again, start to chip away and rather than just the blanket statement, like what's actually behind it, what are we trying to solve for? And then is there another way that we could we could get that skill.

Leonie: 1:02:13

And that potentially comes back to not understanding the role of the marketing person as well, doesn't it? Because if they're expecting that, they don't realise that the marketer, has a great deal of strategic knowledge that can be applied to many different sectors. They're not necessarily the person who's going to be writing the piece of content and needs to be aware of the language requirements, etc.

Emma: 1:02:41

Yeah, I just think there is huge value in bringing in people from different industries that have, say, just a fresh lens and fresh set of eyes. Because marketing principles are marketing principles, they, they apply across the board. And I think anyone coming into a new role is going to take time to understand, the business, the dynamics of the team, the company, they're going to want to understand the customer, they're going to start from those first principles. So does it really matter if they've never worked in a particular industry before? I don't think so. And I'd actually go further and say, not only does it not matter, I think in a lot of cases, it's actually a positive but the Australian market,

Leonie: 1:03:23

It's for diversity really, isn't it?

Emma: 1:03:25

Yeah, it's just different. It is. Yeah. It's just a different a different approach, but it can be. It can sometimes be a little bit challenging. I think particularly at the moment, I'm hearing that from people a lot. That employees are just being so specific, because they can, because there's a lot of competition for roles, but I'm not sure that it's actually helping them. I think it's actually probably detrimental to to what they're trying to achieve in my opinion. But yeah, it is an issue in the market here.

Leonie: 1:03:53

So what does career progression look like in marketing? Is there a typical pathway from entry level position to corporate CMO?

Emma: 1:04:04

No, I think it's the short answer and I think going back to that, as I said at the beginning, defining success for yourself, I think is really important and having, a having a goal in terms of knowing what that is, just because you work in marketing success doesn't necessarily mean that you're going to be a CMO. You might not want that level of kind of stress and responsibility. It's not going to be for everyone. So I think that is a starting point, actually understanding what it is that you personally want to achieve and what your sort of version of success looks like. I also think there is no, quote unquote right way. 

Certainly there shouldn't be, there might be parts that are perhaps a little bit more well trodden, and sometimes you do occasionally see people that have had that really nice kind of linear next step up.They're probably getting rarer and rarer these days. I talked at the beginning about my career history. It was a bit all over the place while I tried to figure it out. But actually, all of those experiences built a toolkit, which I now use on a daily basis. So I actually really like that way of thinking about careers and something that might look like an odd deviation or perhaps you've went left in a really strange way. You may have actually learned something and picked up some really valuable skills there that will later help you. 

So I think in terms of paths, that there's no right way. I think a more useful way to look at it is what are the tools and skills that I need to get me to the place that I want to go and how will I learn them and how will I pick them up along the way? And sometimes, as I say, that may not be the next step. It might actually be a step to the left or right to gain some really valuable experience and then take that into the next phase, I think probably we talked about the kind of specialising or generalising, and I think that's entirely a personal choice, but for someone and what they enjoy doing. 

I think the one thing if you do want to reach a level of seniority and go into kind of, senior marketing manager CMO. It would be a pretty unusual situation where you weren't managing people. So if that's the direction that you want to go in, you need to be comfortable with the fact that you're probably going to end up spending a lot more time managing people than you are actually doing hands on work. Even strategic sort of level work. So if that's not something that sort of personally resonates with you, then I would be questioning whether I necessarily want to go in that direction. If you want to do that level of thinking and that level of work, but you don't want to manage a team again, the fractional CMO thing might, might be an option for you. So I think it's about unpicking a little bit and actually understanding the component parts and going what am I actually trying to get to here? Do I want that part? Do I want this part? Do I love managing people? Is that something that really gives me a sense of purpose? In which case, that's the direction I'm going to want to go in. If that's something that I'm less interested in, maybe I'm going to build more in a specialist niche. Maybe I'm going to be much more kind of project focused in, in the work that I do. And much more kind of executional because I'm less interested in the people side. 

So I think to me, there is no right or wrong answer. That there's no right or wrong way. It's about understanding the components and ultimately where you want to get to, I think.

Leonie: 1:07:43

So the difference between generalists and specialists, what are the pros and cons really of going in either direction in that regard?

Emma: 1:07:55

Like everything, there's pros and cons to both. And I do think it really comes down to the individual and actually what is more interesting work for them. And I've heard both versions of it. I've heard people that have been specialists and actually decided that it wasn't for them, that they actually wanted more breadth and diversity in terms of the work, or to say they wanted more of that kind of overarching. For other people, they love that. They love getting into that level of detail and that level of kind of expertise. I think it really does depend on the individual and what they actually enjoy. Doing and again where they want to get to and how they want to progress and there's nothing to say that if you're you know, deepening a specialism in one area that you might then want to broaden that specialism and take on again, going back to that toolkit idea, take on additional tools within that. Pros and cons to both A time and a place for both, there's instances when one, a specialist role is going to work better than a generalist and vice versa. I think it's actually really down to the individual and the types of businesses that they want to work in.

Leonie: 1:09:04

Emma, thank you so much for sharing your insights. If people would like to have a chat. With you how can they contact you? What's your website address and what's the best way for them to reach out to you?

Emma: 1:09:15

Oh so LinkedIn's probably the easiest one. Emma Graham, G R A H A M. And then my website is just egconsulting. au.

Leonie: 1:09:26

Fantastic. Thank you very much for speaking with me today.

Emma: 1:09:30

You're very welcome. I've really enjoyed it. Thanks, Leonie.