Episode #10: Futureproofing Your Advertising & Marketing Career

In this episode about futureproofing your career, we dive into how you can become indispensable. Knowing change is always on the horizon, ensure that you will be marketable now and in the future. It starts with being introspective, and we [Kelly and Julia] are no stranger to business personality testing and how you can use the results to create value and longevity! We also drop some hot tips on how to become the top candidate for a job, a promotion, and how to translate that to a new hustle.


Futureproofing Your Advertising and Marketing Career Episode Recap

In this episode of the Two Marketing Moms Podcast, Julia and Kelly discuss the concept of future proofing one’s advertising and marketing career. They emphasize the importance of becoming invaluable in the industry, staying up-to-date with technology, and continuously learning to adapt to changes. They share personal stories related to future proofing and the impact of the pandemic on technology adoption and work-from-home practices.

Kelly defines future proofing as becoming indispensable in one’s current job and preparing for changes in the workforce by staying updated on industry trends and technology. Julia adds that future proofing also involves making deliberate moves to be adaptable and flexible for change.

To achieve future proofing, they recommend self-assessment of skills and personality traits. They share experiences with skills assessments, personality tests, and aptitude testing to understand individual strengths and preferences better. Julia also emphasizes the importance of building a professional network and maintaining connections to leverage during career transitions.

The hosts stress the significance of touting one’s strengths, developing soft skills, and becoming invaluable at work. They encourage continuous learning through various resources like Masterclass and online courses to keep pace with evolving trends and technology in the marketing industry.

The hosts go on to share a couple of examples to illustrate the idea of future-proofing one’s career. They discuss how certain skills can be translated into different career paths. For instance, someone with social media management skills could become an influencer themselves. They also mention examples of individuals who successfully transitioned from their current careers into completely new fields, leveraging their existing skills. One example is an account person who shifted from working in an ad agency to a career in real estate, utilizing his client-facing and customer service abilities.

The hosts emphasize the importance of adaptability and self-awareness in finding and pursuing one’s passion and plan B. They encourage listeners to explore different interests and consider how their skills can be applied in various industries. They highlight that planning for the future is essential, and having a backup plan is valuable in case the current career path doesn’t work out as expected.

The conversation ends with the hosts sharing their personal plan B ideas. Kelly lists various interests, such as trend spotting, investigative reporting, working for the CIA or FBI, being a news reporter, and more. She also expresses her passion for interior and home design, and Japanese and Chinese culture, hoping to combine these interests with marketing someday. Julia reveals that she had no specific plan when starting her own business but trusted in her ability to make it work by learning, building connections, and showcasing her portfolio. She mentions her interests in music, crafts, and creative endeavors as potential Plan B options.

In conclusion, the hosts encourage listeners to think about their own Plan B options and explore their passions and skills beyond their current careers to ensure a future-proof and fulfilling professional journey.

Episode Transcription:

Julia 

Welcome to the Two Marketing Moms Podcast with hosts Julia McDowell, myself and Kelly Callahan Poe. We are women with 50 plus years of marketing experience between us. And on this podcast, we talked about our struggles, our fails, our wins, all while balancing being a boss, our home life and being a mom. So, today’s episode is a great one. It’s called future proofing your advertising and marketing career. Some of the questions Kelly and I started talking about is, if you weren’t in advertising, what else would you do? What else could you do? What if what you do if you’re a mom who wants to keep one foot in the door while focusing on family? So, Kelly, my question is, what is future proofing your career?

Kelly

To me, future proofing is becoming so invaluable that you cannot be eliminated from your current job, or that your resume and your experience is going to float to the top of the pile based on your reputation in the industry, your skill set, your years and types of experience because you have taken the extra steps to prepare yourself for the changing workforce, not just how it is now, but also how it’s going to become in the future. Technology usage and continuous learning is a key part of this.

There’s this quote that I love from Deepak Chopra. And his quote is “all great changes are preceded by chaos”. And we are in chaos right now in a never ending pandemic and what seems like a never ending election cycle. And everybody knows someone who’s lost their job this year, multiple people who’ve lost their jobs, right. And at the same time, the pandemic has really pushed technology forward in massive ways in the last 11 months, and really accelerated the rise of the digital economy. You know, if you look at the rise of telehealth, if you look at working from home and zoom meetings, and what we’re doing now, and online delivery service and digital content consumption, we’ve all been really forced to embrace technology faster than we anticipated.

Julia  

Thank goodness.

Kelly

So, for me, and we’re going to give some personal stories in a minute, but I just wanted to kind of give my feelings based on hard numbers. And you know, the last 11 months have eliminated my nearly two hour commute. And so, I gained back two hours of my day, and I commuted four days a week. I did the math. And the math on that is eight hours a week, 32 hours a month, or 352 hours that I have gained over the last 11 months.

Julia

or 352 hours that you have lost not listening to podcasts.

Kelly

I mean, when you do the math, it’s an extraordinary amount of time. And I hope people use that time and I’m calling it “gained time.” And I’ve used this time for experimentation and learning. I started reading one business book a week, we’ve talked about that, I launched the Williams Whittle media club #WWMediaClub. I’ve read and done reviews of I think 44 books, I think I have, you know 8 to go to get to 52, we launched our podcast, even though we didn’t launch it till November. We actually started on it in the summer and we had seven in the queue before we launched. I started writing a book on nonprofit advertising, you launched your own book. I mean, we wouldn’t be able to do all these things with a normal ordinary commute. And so, my goal has always been to stay focused on what I do best with the ultimate goal of working until I no longer have to introduce myself.

So, what is what is future proofing for you?

Julia   

Well, I was introduced to the word “future proofing” by someone that I worked with. And he uses this as kind of a prompt for his clients just thinking about their business, like how do they future proof their lines of revenue? How do they future proof their membership within, for an association audience and making sure that their organization is viable over the change the changes of time, right. And so, I think future proofing boils down to fundamentally change that will always happen. People change, industries change, businesses change. If you’re on the agency side, leadership changes that eventually trickles down into other changes. So, I don’t want to say this to keep you on the edge of the seat of your seat and have all this anxiety. But I believe you have to make deliberate, moves to future proof. To basically be ready for the change to be adaptable and flexible for change. And there’s no other industry. Well, there probably are. But you know, in the advertising and marketing industry, you have to be very aware of future proofing.

Kelly

Well, let’s start with some personal stories. Can you tell me some of your personal stories about how you future proofed your career?

Julia 

So, I was thinking about this, and its kind of goes back to one of the stories that bubbled to the top is in high school, I talked about on a podcast episode that I’ve always wanted to be in marketing, I was very focused on this. But I also play the viola — I have since I was nine years old. And I’m still a musician. And in high school, I thought perhaps I wanted to be a professional musician. I was very serious student. So, I was thinking that I was going to go to college and make all the decisions for my life. And so, I tried out at many schools, I went and auditioned to be part of the orchestra there to be a music student. And through that process, I just decided that I really did not want to practice every day, all day. And, you know, 1% of the musician students actually get a seat in a professional orchestras, it’s so cutthroat. Thank God, it’s not that way in advertising and marketing. So, what I did was I started to kind of shift my mindset of, I really wanted this creative outlet that music gives me and it made me start realizing that that really is what marketing is for me. And so, in a way, that mental shift, really future proofed to me for being okay with not becoming a professional musician, and instead really pursuing my passion of marketing and advertising. And still staying in that creative space that I love so much.

Kelly

And do you still play?

Julia

I do.

Kelly

How often do you play? Not the six hours a day?

Julia  

Well, you know, that’s funny, because when I became a mom, I was like, Okay, guys, I cannot play 90 events a year on top of my full time job. And so, we actually found another violist so we kind of share the duties. And I think my quartet maybe plays like 50 or 60 events a year. I probably play once or twice a month. It is but it’s nowhere near what I what I used to play, but it is always I miss it. And sometimes in some ways I miss it. But you know, with a pandemic, we’ve been doing a live stream performances, which have been so fun and actually, I mean, so much more fun than gigging really.

Kelly

Oh, wow.

Julia 

I know. So, what is your future proofing story?

Kelly

I have four. I always have multiple ones. I’m going to start with you know, we always talk about your personality is formed before you’re 7, years old, right. And I’ve always been so stressed in terms of raising my kids making sure nothing bad happened to that before they were seven. And now they’re teenagers. And we have a whole new set of problems, potentially.

But that for me, I futureproof my career number one, based on being adaptable. And I was forced to be adaptable, because my dad had a career where we moved many, many different times. And I was always a new kid in class. I moved a really, really difficult times, if you think about the trajectory of your school year, I moved in between first and second grade, several times before that, but in the middle of eighth grade. And then between my junior and senior year of high school, I went to two different high schools, my parents moved from Seattle to Denver. And so, I was always the new kid. And so, I was forced to become adaptable. And I was forced to throw myself out there and meet people. And I did that through sports. We talked about this in the past, because I was a runner, and I did track and cross country. And that’s how I was able to differentiate myself. And that’s how I was able to meet friends initially. And so that made me adaptable after college. I was like, Okay, I’m moving to LA. And then, you know, we talked about my progression, how I ended up moving to San Francisco, and then again to DC. So, I’m up for anything, really, I’m always the new kid, and I’m used to it, and I’m okay with that. And I’m not afraid of change.. And I think that’s really helped me in my career. Because, on a regular basis, you have clients who say, Okay, we got to pause this, we got to start this, we got to change this. And I’m always like, Okay, here we go — been through this, know what to do. So that’s my first story.

And the second one we’ve talked about in past podcasts. And that is embracing technology. And we talked about the fact that you worked at AOL, and I worked at an agency that managed the Netcom account. And so, in the .com boom, I purposely chose a job where I would invest in technology, work in technology and to work on the client side in technology. I also was the vice president of a web development firm in my career. I even became Scrum Master certified. And these are things that are really important for everyone to embrace technology. I think I also saw a stat that 35% of the workforce now is freelance, and that may be a future for all of us. So, we all need to be embracing technology.

Julia 

You have a gig economy is real.

Kelly

Yeah. I’m going to do one more, and then we’ll go back and forth because I could go on all day. The second thing I did was this idea of continuous learning. And when I was a mom, I mean, I still am a mom.

Julia 

Did you forget? It’s a Friday, so forgetful.

Kelly

When I was a young mom, how about that. I was working part time. I always kept one foot in. I never stepped out because I thought that that was important. But I wanted to keep my skill set going. And so, I jumped on the blog train really early on and I started a blog. I can’t say it out loud because it has a swear word in it. It’s called OM because I love yoga, you know that OMSH*T. It’s a nod to both Zen and bad things happening. And my tagline was “Mother of three seeking tranquility” I had really silly topics that were mom related like that back then was the only exercise stuff that you could do inside was we the Wii Fit. I don’t know if you remember that.

Julia 

Oh my gosh, I love the Wii Fit.

Kelly

So, and they talked about it on Twitter. So, I did a blog called Wii Fit Twitter Moms. I talked about superhero life lessons. I just posted that on Twitter. I did one on Murphy’s Law for parents of boys. And so, having this this blog really actually helped me get one of my full time next job because I ended up launching a blog for that company later. And it showed that even though the topics were silly and mom related and completely unrelated to work, it demonstrated my passion and my interest and that, I knew how to start a blog and I knew how to write. And then of course, we’ve talked about other ways to do continuous learning in terms of, our podcasts here, the media club, attending conferences and webinars women’s groups. And networking? Do you have some other ones before I go on and on?

Julia 

I love that I use the term ABL — always be learning. Oh, that’s, that’s definitely part of my mantra. If you’re a person, that maybe it isn’t into that yet, that is definitely something to be to use to future proof for sure. I think I’m kind of maybe another little second story for me is, I did, I found that I did several future proofing things that I wasn’t even aware of. When I left my full time job, and started on my own at Five Ones. And it wasn’t that long ago, it was almost four years ago. And one of those is making connections. And so obviously, when I graduated college and went out into the working world, there was no LinkedIn. The way you kept in touch with people really was through business cards, and email. And I guess I started collecting these things, and keeping in touch with people just kind of naturally, and I didn’t really intentionally do it, but it was such a key component of future proofing because, and I’ve talked about this too, even though I wasn’t the leader, I would go into a meeting and meet new people. I was just the secondary, the assistant, and I still acted like, I need to know you in the future. And those relationships really became pivotal to me. And when I started on my own, I went back to some of those people. And they ended up being a referral for so many different jobs. And quite frankly, sounding boards for just, hey, here’s what I’m thinking, what do you think? Give me feedback. And so, connections are a really great way to future proof. And it’s not that hard to do.

Kelly

No,

Julia 

I know, we’ll talk about this one in another episode, but also creating a portfolio? You and I really want to talk about creating your own personal brand, which I think is another huge key component of future proofing your career. Because as you just said, when we opened up this podcast episode is that it’s you that you will have to market it, when things change, whether it’s, you lose your job, you want to move on from your job. It’s that just the market changes so drastically that your position morphs into something brand new, so I really pushed myself out of my comfort zone, and started writing blogs, like just like you said, like I started writing at the agency for the blog, and I did not want to write, let me be honest. But it pushed me to explore that creative part of myself. And then I was able to use those blogs as writing samples, and to showcase my abilities. I’ll piggyback on that one that you just said.

Let’s get into the nitty gritty Kelly, because I know you have a lot of good advice about future proofing. So, you’re so much more deep into this, even though I’ve kind of dabbled in it, like understanding your journey of understanding your skills, and personality traits and where you work best, and how does that lead you to the insights that can then future proof your career.

Kelly

My advice for future proofing your career starts with knowing and investing in yourself. Knowledge is the power and you need to have the basic knowledge of what your strengths and weaknesses are. And you can find them out in a variety of ways. You can ask your friends, you can ask your family, they’ll be the first ones to tell you. You can ask coworkers, former bosses, you can look at your reviews, the good ones and the bad ones. You know, you may have been a part of a 360 degree review with co-workers and people work underneath you and next to you.

LinkedIn skills and endorsements that you may have. But the first one is really for your current job. You need to understand how you’re being reviewed. In your own job, get a copy of your annual review template and find out what the what the ratings are based on and even what the derailers are. And I of went through some of these old ones that I had in my huge, gigantic plastic box of stuff. And I found–  I couldn’t believe this, but I found one company, the actual derailers of how you could lose your job and some make sense. But there’s one that kind of surprised and shocked me. So, one of them was lack of ethics and values. I think that’s really important.

Julia 

Yeah.

Kelly

That was actually written as a derailer. And insensitivity to others. I think that’s important. It needs to be written in there. Betrayal of trust was another one. Now, here’s the one that was the kicker that threw me off. Overly ambitious!

Julia 

Man.

Kelly

Yeah, that was in there. So, you need to understand these things may be in there. And unless you ask, you don’t know what those derailers are, right. So, knowing how you’re being reviewed is important.

And then this is my visual aid section (if watching our video on YouTube). Getting third party help through skills assessment. We’ve all done our Myers Briggs skills assessment, I am an ENTJ, And I’ve done this multiple times. I skate the line between introvert and extrovert. Personally, I’m an introvert, but professionally, I have to be an extrovert. So that’s important information to know, because it also tells you what’s your occupational areas should be through, these reports that you get. Some of these you might have to pay for. I’ve done these classes through Alumni Resources, — my good friend, and I did this 20 years ago, and we’re actually looking through all the results. And they’re all exactly where I am today. It’s funny, the interests that I had then, are still there now, actually, it was from 1997. How many years ago was that? I can’t count, but 24 years ago, we went through some of these exercises.

Julia  

And you know, I am an ENTJ too.

Kelly

That’s funny. not totally surprised. I guess now that I think about it. But we’ll have to discuss that offline. I think that’s interesting.

The other one that I talked about in an old session that we did was aptitude testing. And I did aptitude testing through something called the Johnson O’Connor Research Foundation in DC, and they’re all around the US and I talked about this, they’re not interests, they’re not interested personality tests, or IQ tests but actual skills assessments. It costs like $750 or $800, depending on the market that you live in. But what they say is that people’s natural abilities actually remain fairly stable throughout your lives. And so, we talked about, it’s everything from your basic knowledge of vocabulary to math to telling the differences between various colors to your manual dexterity, I mean, all sorts of things. And that’s where I found out that ideation is my number one skill, so that really helped me.

And the next one is going to be interesting to a lot of people and may surprise you. This was actually recommended to me to someone who worked in the White House, the Obama White House let me clarify, and he wanted to get out of government and work in for profit to make some money, right. And he read What Color is Your Parachute? Which you know, is like from the 80s, but they update it every year. But he recommended is something called the Flower Exercise, and so I did the Flower Exercise — I created my own version or you can download it. What it is it you can see the various steps of what you want — your values, your goals, your purposes, your transferable skills, your special knowledges and interests, your strongest traits, the environment, and something called the Holland code. Are you enterprising? Are you social? Are you artistic? What  working conditions do you want? What level of responsibility and salary, geography etc.

So, having this is really important to figure out what are those things that you that are mandatory for your next job, and there are different petals (to the flower).  And then another class I took was on communication styles. Are you a thinker, a doer, a friend or an actor?

And then the last one was my favorite. I had a client have us all take us take an Emergenetics class. I don’t know if anyone has heard of Emergenetics. But Emergenetics is another thing where you actually take this test and this is mine, we all had to wear these badges to find out  what percent you are conceptual, social, analytical, or structural.  I am 43%, conceptual 26%, analytical, 16% social, and 15% structural. I will die in a highly structural environment — do not put me in a structural environment, I must be in a conceptual environment. So, this is information that’s good for you to learn. To know about your co-workers or your clients. So, for example, if your client is highly analytical, they want the details. If they’re highly conceptual, don’t give them the details. So those are my favorite things that you can do right away to assess your skills. What tell me some of yours?

Julia 

Well, I have recently done two of those types of skills. One of them is through the culture index. It gives you a report about how you operate in a work environment. So, for instance, some of my feedback was I’m a person who likes to initiate and finish activities in quick succession. I prefer variety in their circumstances. Hello, that’s so me. And I like working under pressure. And, you know, it also said that I am probably a reserved person who needs time to become comfortable with others, which is totally right on for me/  And I require a work culture with a great degree of detail orientation. I could go on, it was a lot, it was a lot of feedback. But knowing that, I guess the question is, how do we transfer these into insights for ourselves, where we can then future proof our careers, because so in this crazy pandemic world, when people when literally work has just stopped right out of the blue, and people have lost their jobs for no other reason that other than that the economy just couldn’t sustain it. It really probably threw a lot of people into tailspins and, and also young up and coming kids or young professionals who have either just left college or starting out in the workplace, there may not be a plethora of jobs, or opportunities available. So, I guess my question back at you, Kelly is how do we take all of these really great things and turn them into actionable things that do help us future proof.

Kelly

Once you know your strengths, you need to tout them. And we’ve talked about self-promotion in the past. And so, you need to inventory your accomplishments, you need to tout them on LinkedIn, maybe parts of them go on your Twitter profile. You know, this is my area of expertise. I’m a nonprofit ideator, is what I think I have on mine.

Julia 

And I think also, just to interject, I think what you’re saying is also not to just do these when you’ve lost your job, or you’re looking for a job. These should be something that you regularly do. Obviously, you don’t want to be the boaster. But there’s a certain cadence of this that you’re talking about that you need to do as as a future approver.

Kelly

You know, I’ll give you an example of that, of something I’m obsessed with right now. And I think I’ve told you about it, I’m going to give a little shout out to Marketing Twitter #MarketingTwitter.

Julia 

I don’t know, Kelly, your deep into it.

Kelly

I got deep into it. And I’ve been a little obsessed, and I’ve got a stop. But it’s this amazing group of people who all types of people who talk about marketing are obsessed with marketing, and each one has a different area of expertise. And I am on there because I want to learn. And I want to know, you know, I need to know as the as the leader of an advertising agency, down to the bottom level, what is a Twitter thread, everything that you need to know, I always need to be learning and so I’m learning a lot from this group, and they all tout their experience, and it’s a matter of lifting each other up. And what else can I learn here and so you know, we’re not in an environment where we can collaborate on a regular basis. So, I found that as a really great way to follow people, ex this person because they really know about UX, I’m going to follow this person because they really know about social media, and I need to get myself going. And all of them are really good at knowing their strengths and touting them. And they actually call out experts in different areas, this person really knows about XYZ. And I love that.

So, I’m going to keep going on to the next one, which is, you know, develop your soft skills. These are things that you don’t you don’t put on a resume, but come out in an interview, your leadership skills, your communication skills, your collaboration ability, your time management. And the next one is to be invaluable. We’ve talked about this as well.

Julia 

Yes, go check out our other episodes. Yeah, especially the one about being an account manager, we talked a lot about being invaluable there.

Kelly

That’s going the extra mile, make your boss’s job easier, take the lead, be known as an expert, you did a great job talking about always be learning. And so, there’s so much out there. I mean, I also subscribe to Masterclass, and there’s so many good masterclasses out there. It’s like an app that you can order through Apple TV, and they have one with Jeff Goodby and Rich Silverstein. There are documentaries, Helvetica, Art and Copy, the Greatest Movie Ever Sold, Objectified. So many different docs and online classes and things that you can do to continue to be learning. We need to learn more about AI and cyber technology and automation — things that we might not be thinking about every day now. But just as we need to think about how our iWatch handles ads, and Facebook and Twitter and all that sort of stuff. And we need to start future thinking about some of those things. We also talked about embracing technology in the past. Learning Canva, learning all these technologies, and you did a great job talking about growing and developing your professional network. So those are all of mine. I’ve got a couple more points to make. But you know, do you have any additional so before we kind of wrap everything?

Julia 

I also wanted to talk about like, all of those skills like that you are trying to hone and learn. They’re fundamental and can translate to other jobs. So, I know a handful of people who have, whether it be pandemic related or not, who have left their jobs and kind of been in a holding pattern, what do I really want to do? And I’ve been hearing a lot about how people are hearing don’t follow your passion, your passion won’t make you money.

Kelly

Not true

Julia 

I think that’s a bunch of doodoo. Because I think figuring out if you are a person that is looking into the future, and you really don’t know what it holds, finding that intersection of passion and purpose, and skills are what’s going to help you kind of figure out where you want to go. And in a way that’s future proofing. So, I kind of wanted to talk about how skills are fundamental, and they can translate to other jobs.

So here are just a couple of examples. Here’s my funny one, if anyone has ever watched Emily in Paris, very cute, Netflix show. It’s totally not realistic for an ad agency, anyone who is watching, but it does kind of like in a general sense show that if you’re someone who’s a social media manager, one of the ways your skills can translate is to become an influencer yourself. I also worked with a couple of people who really did such a great job of translating their skills into completely new career paths. So, I worked with an account person who I just adore, he’s just such a people pleaser, in a good way, loves customer service. And he was kind of growing weary of working in an ad agency, but he decided that his passion was real estate. And what a what a great way to translate those account manager skills to then becoming into real estate because he had to be client facing he had to listen to the needs of his customers to help them find their next dream home. So, I just want to I want to throw that out there in case people are thinking, well, if I’m in marketing or advertising, I have to stay in this lane, you know, but it’s not untrue. Like you can I can totally switch lanes and still use all of the skills and all of these future proofing, you know, tips that we’re talking about. I also worked with a woman who was in media planning, and kind of on the side, she did jewelry design. And now she’s a full time painter. And I love that I think she uses her marketing and advertising skills to promote herself, and to sell her art. And to do commissioned paintings, which I think is really where you make your money as an artist. And so, this is someone who probably didn’t think she was going to be a painter when she was a media planner, working in an ad agency, but she was able to find her creative outlet, and then eventually transfer her skills into becoming a painter. And I think that’s the ultimate example of future proofing your career is being ultimately adaptable, and taking those skills. And also, that knowledge of what you love to do, right? Like, you take these skills assessment, and you find out, like you were saying, you don’t want to work in a structured place. So that could be a key insight for if you ever had to move on. Or if you wanted to move on to a new job or a new career, or whatever that is, you know, okay, well, I note to self don’t need a place that is very structured, I don’t want to be structured –all of those little key insights build up to, you know, your next move.

Kelly

And that’s why we’re having this podcast is because we can kind of riff off of each other. And, maybe we’ll kind of end with I think I may have mentioned this before, my dad always said, always have a plan B. And he would always ask me, if this doesn’t work out, what’s your plan B? And I had to know what my plan B was going to be always like, if you didn’t get into this school, or if you didn’t get this job, what is your plan B? And he’s retired, but he was a businessman. He was really great at his job and very assertive like I am, where I got it from. And so, he was really into this. And I always had to think ahead. In fact, during my wedding, before my wedding, he said, what if the caterer doesn’t show up? What’s your plan B? I just was like, I don’t have a plan B. So, I that’s always been in my head.

Julia 

I feel like really that’s like the ultimate takeaway for this podcast is like, you yourself need to go on the journey of finding your plan before your career. And there is no it’s like a jungle gym, like you said in one of our first podcasts like, it’s a jungle gym, because you might have to, you might end up going from this to that. But that’s okay. But it’s up to you to figure out your plan B.

Kelly

Well, tell me your plan B ideas, what would you do? Or could you do if advertising wasn’t an option? Or you got tired of it? Or what are your plan B’s? I want to know.

Julia 

Kelly, I don’t have a plan. To be honest, I’m such a planner. And when I decided to strike out on my own and do Five Ones, it was the first time that I had no plan. And I always tell people,  I was just at a point where I had that inner confidence that I was going to figure it out and make it happen. But I actually had no plan. And obviously now I have a huge plan. And I think you and I were talking about this; I don’t have a plan other than working for Five Ones.  I always feel like with what I’m doing, I can pivot and I can be a chameleon sometimes. I can take on copywriting jobs, which I wouldn’t have done several years ago. But I’m confident and I really have found my strength in that now. What’s your plan B Kelly?

Kelly

I always have a plan B as you know, because it’s been ingrained in me. So, I have a long list. I mean, if I didn’t do what I do, on the agency side, I loved account planning, I loved copywriting all aspects of advertising.

But outside of that, at one time, I wanted to be a trend spotter. You know what a trend spotter is, you know, they were sort of big in the 80s, where they would like, go to Japan and go to China and find out what a cool new hip thing is in culture and kind of amplify it. So that sounds super fun. Because I’m analytical. I would love to be an investigative reporter. I would love to be worked for the CIA or the FBI. I’m very analytical, I love crime documentaries, and crime shows and solving those sort of things. News reporter anything to do with writing. A production manager, being a TV producer, any of those things, a book reviewer going into, you know, related categories, publishing, design, TV production, artistic industries, like fashion, or even home design. So, I’m obsessed with home design, that’s like my secondary thing, I have a Pinterest board. And I am a major pinner with a variety of categories. And if you look on my Pinterest board, you can see where my areas of interests are,

Julia 

I will be doing that right after this podcast.

Kelly

It’s a little a little crazy. It’s all about Zen, and I love anything having to do with Chinese design, Japanese design, you can see some Ukiyo-e Japanese prints behind me, my new acquisition is a on Facebook marketplace at this fabulous new chaise lounge, got a great deal on that at Facebook marketplace. So, if I could one day, marry my passion for interior design and home design, and Japanese and Chinese culture, with marketing, that would kind of be like the ultimate for me someday. So, I have lots of interests and lots of areas where if I lost my job tomorrow, throw me into something else. And I’ll make it happen.

I feel with as many failures that I have had in my life, you know, the loss of different jobs, I know that I will land on my feet. And I know that I have enough interest areas and plan of ideas that I could do something else completely different if I wanted to.

Julia 

I mean, that sums up where I was like three and a half years ago, with no plan, I just knew that I would be able to make it happen, through all those things that we just literally talked about on this on this podcast, through learning through connections through all the things that I had, created basically, as a portfolio that I could share and tout. I was active on social media, and making my outward persona colorful and rich. But I mean, like you, my plan B would absolutely be to pivot to something creative in some way. You know, whether it’s playing more music or making something –I love crafts, not anything in particular, but I love making something with my hands.

Kelly

So that’s your assignment to come up with a future Plan B in case you need it one day. And everyone should work out their plan B outside of the regular job and raising children and all that stuff, as if we didn’t have time. So, let’s end with that.

Julia 

Thank you.

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Kelly Callahan-Poe

Kelly is a true admom, an advertising and digital marketing executive with 30 years of both agency and client-side experience on the West and the East coast, and a mom for 16 years. Kelly is currently the president of Williams Whittle Advertising in Washington, D.C. Find Kelly on social:

Julia McDowell

A DC-agency girl, Julia’s career blossomed while working up the ladder at a top ad agency in the mid-Atlantic region, from account coordinator to President! Since 2017, Julia has been building Five Ones, working with many associations as well as continuing work for prestigious nonprofits.  Find Julia on social: