My Pathway Through Communications & Marketing

So, I'm doing a thing.

What thing you might ask?

Or at least I hope you do!

I'm doing this thing where I am using the LinkedIn platform to write a lot of my content and marketing materials.

Why?

LinkedIn is the perfect platform to catalog your content.

Look at your platform profiles as portfolios that you can send an Ideal Client to.

Don't just look at the platforms for the vanity metrics and community they can build.

Those are certainly marvelous measures.

Look at platforms as a place to showcase you and your Brand Story.

With that perspective in mind, today I'm going to share what I call my CV Story so that it can be part of my catalog of content.

When someone is so inclined to research me and my offerings, they may come across this story.

It's the story I wish I could capture in a resume that I would love to share with Clients and Collaborators so they can see the nuances of my life journey and what brought me to the place that I am at in developing my systems & strategies.

It's the story that will give them a better essence of who I am.

I'm a service provider of very technical and particular information.

Yet, I want those I work with to have a glimpse of entire me.

I'm not looking to collaborate with just anyone and everyone.

I'm looking for my business tribe; those who see me as a human and not just a

part of the digital paradigm we call the internet.

Quite the juxtaposition.

Business is an integral and formative part of our every day lives.

I believe it should be honored as such.

By me sharing My CV Story, I'm sharing the story of how I came to be in the place I am at in my own business.

It's part of what you can take a look at to if we are the right fit to work together.

We won't all the the right fit for each other.

I truly believe that's ok!

We all have our own flavor to share and our own slice of uniqueness to add to the mix.

It's what makes our Collective the beautiful mosaic it is.

And I'm down for it.

My story line in the world of Marketing & Merchandising started at a very young. My mother was a manager of a 7-Eleven store and had us stocking Tootsie Rolls and penny candy in aisle bins when I was pre-kindergarten.

Eventually I was moved up to shelving candy cigarettes and bagging ice.

My mother continued to manage 7-Elevens most of my youth and eventually managed the busiest store in the country in her hometown of Toledo, Ohio.

I was schooled in product placement, signage and to understand customer traffic patterns just to name a few things.

The MDA telethon was huge at the time and my parents would put on fund raising carnivals every year (the dunk tanks were my favorite!) .

From those street carnivals I learned event set up, elements of news channel and radio station public relations and how to run gaming and contests.

On the flip side of life, I had a grandmother who was a hoarder of all things printed materials. She still had magazines from the year I was born (1970) when I graduated high school in 1988. I devoured each and every one throughout the years.

Better Homes & Gardens and Family Circle were my favorites of the day.

The National Enquirer and Star magazine were fun to flip through.

Not only did I read every single article cover to cover, I analyzed the advertisements for graphic placement, coloring and font selection.

I didn't realize then how much of my life revolved around me analyzing strategies and placement of marketing and branding.

I was more inclined at the time to pay attention to social issues.

The Berlin wall had just fallen.

The environment was really starting to show the wear and tear.

Large companies were being shown to be beyond mischievous.

I wanted to write about it all.

I wanted to communicate with others who were seeing the same things I was seeing and feeling the same things I was feeling.

I was told that I needed to get a paper route when I was 12. I got 2.

The Toledo Blade and The West Toledo Herald.

We had plenty of newspapers and advertisements floating around our home for me to look at until I turned 16 when I went to work at KFC with a friend (and gained 30 pounds! lol).

Then it was onto the Sears Catalog Department.

That was totally my jam because oh how I loved a good catalog!

Every nuance of photos and formatting would be dissected to understand the why behind the placement.

I'd revel in the divine structures and gawk at the poor presentations.

Everything about printed words and the design of ads and graphics intrigued me.

Throughout my lifetime of understanding all things Communications, I've always wonder how someone could be compelled to make a decision.

I studied Propaganda. Not to perform it, but to see how it was used to shift the matrix.

Eye gaze patterns have always fascinated me. What was it behind the gaze that caught the eye in the first place?

What colors made you happy or sad in an ad?

So many questions about how the mind worked when presented with the choice to believe or not believe an ad or element.

Even as an adult, I would spend entire evenings analyzing the layout of the photography of chronicles like Architectural Digest and Martha Stewart magazines.

I'd go to the library and often not make it out of the aisle.

I would just pop a squat amongst the shelves of pages and prose and look at the beauty in the layouts and photography.

I'd analyze the words used in books and literature, sometimes reading them over and over again to try to hold on to the feels they brought about in my soul.

I'd sing jingles and catch phrases, not always because I particularly loved the product but because the joy it brought to simply sing the story the brand captured in catchy tunes and wording.

Interestingly, the Oscar Meyer Weiner song still holds strongest in my memory.

The fun of that song!

If you're old enough to remember it, I'll be the tune is in your head right now!

I waited for Calgon to take me away, I wished ancient Chinese secrets would show themselves apparent in my laundry chores and I wanted to splash Jean Nate' all over my body as I grew from childhood to adulthood in the modern Golden Era of the 80s.

Marketing and advertising has moved our culture in ways that we rarely think about any longer.

And that's probably because there's just soooo much to think about now in our modern day and age.

Just about the time I started high school things made a big shift in our culture.

Now we had MTV. We thought the videos were so cutting edge!

We had gaming introduced large scale. Pong will forever be my favorite.

Cordless phones, microwaves and automatic windows in vehicles were some of the biggest innovations ever and yet we rarely even think about life before them now.

Marketing took on a whole new dynamic, too.

The "Me Generation" began an era of look at me!

Look at me and what I have.

Look at me and what I can do.

Look at my car.

Look at my house.

Look at me, me and me and then look at me some more.

Disposable cameras and Polaroids captured images on the go and on the cheap compared to the old way of doing things.

Businesses started to implement computing and digital strategies to allow them to create mass mailers and printed materials in new ways.

Fast forward.

We all know what happened.

Computers became the game changer.

Vanity metrics and virality became hot topics and the accolades everyone desired for their business or themselves.

Now almost all literature is written on a computer.

When was the last time you had to change typewriter ink?

We began capturing images and sharing them in new ways.

We began Marketing in new ways, too.

No longer were we confined to jockeying ourselves to get the best and most eye-catching Yellow Pages ads (remember when they introduced red?! oh, the scandal!) or late night infomercials to capture attention.

When I was in college for Communications back in the day, no one I knew had a computer except for one attorney and my PR instructor. She was pretty hip for an "older woman" of probably 32. I did have one friend who had a huge bag she'd carry around a car phone in. She was dating the attorney.

If I wanted to type a term paper on a computer, I would have to go to a computer lab at the school and hope I could get a time slot that I needed.

I remember my first group chat experience online was with some wonderful classmates and a fabulous instructor in my Women's Studies class.

It all seemed so very chic at the time.

I got pregnant my Senior year of college and dropped out due to some underlying health issues the pregnancy ignited.

A Spanish class, an Algebra class and elective are the only things between me and the actual paper of my Bachelor's degree.

So, when I say I have a Bachelor's education, this is what I mean: 5 years of full-time school with every single "required" field accomplished and accomplished well sans 21 hours of non-Communications related course work.

I did try to go back and complete my degree when my daughter was young, but I had moved to a location that the Communications was accredited and the University of Toledo was not. My credits would not transfer. Whomp. Whomp.

Go figure. UT was a hot mess during my time there. President after president came and went. The Student Aid and Counseling departments were in shambles. Graffiti regularly showed up on campus denouncing the latest shenanigans of the policy makers.

College was one of the best things to ever have happened to me.

It took my mind and motivations away from my trauma-bonded family and way of life and allowed me to see different perspectives in a way I would have never been exposed to had I not pursued education.

I so wish our current system of education was truly there to service society.

But that's a thought to share for another time.

What I can tell you is, at the time, I didn't much "care" that I couldn't complete my education.

I loved being a mom and my entire life focused around that.

All those years of looking at magazines and books and watching shows to capture their beauty made me a pretty fantastic cook, decorator and stylist.

My love for gardening and plants sprouted with a green thumb beyond even my wildest imagination.

If we are friends, I will probably water at least one of your plants every time I come to your house.

I developed a want for the simpler things in life and how to design them.

If it were natural elements, I would learn how to make them look their best through proper care and placement.

If it were food, I would learn how to pair flavors and colors to make the meal an experience rather than just food to eat.

I painted every free piece of furniture I could get my hands on to take something that was raggedy, dull and lifeless and turn it into mini-masterpieces by contrasting colors in the crooks and crevices.

I even registered an LLC to open a second-hand store and had thousands of dollars worth of materials I had already collected and prepared.

I went looking for store fronts.

Only when I injured my knee and realized that I did not want to do such physical labor long-term, did I re-evaluate and walk away from that.

I knew I would not be able to tolerate the paint and chemical fumes long-term either.

More on that later, but I didn't know at the time that I had a severe histamine intolerance.

So, I continued to work as an elite server in the 100-year-old steakhouse.

I made amazing money for just 25 hours a week.

For many reasons, I knew I didn't want to be "stuck" in that position until I retired.

I started to ponder what to do next.

I had so many choices and so many interests and so many directions I knew I could take.

I got a yoga certification.

That certification is, interestingly, what lead me down my Digital Journey and into path of Digital Strategy.

In the years since I had left college, I had lead a relatively tech free life by choices I had made.

I loved all things natural and tech just didn't fit into my life.

I didn't feel like I would need it.

I hadn't even participated in the MySpace or Vines crazes from back in the day.

I've never online dated.

Heck, I didn't even get a cell phone until an ex-boyfriend bought me one so we could better co-ordinate plans.

I haven't even owned a television in about 15 years.

We didn't know what we would need to know is one of the phrases I use often when I'm reassuring a Client that they are not alone in their frustration or lack of understanding.

I also saw my brother develop a severe addiction to gaming that I cannot even begin to describe how that changed him during that time.

I also knew it was a topic that was confusing AF, because there was literally no actual data base within the data base to take us through the basics and show us our own personal next best steps.

Not just me, but for most of the rest of America, it seems.

Once I got that yoga certification, it was game on.

My classes were online and I was able to see parts of how the Digital Landscape was used in the more modern era since my tenure with WordPerfect 5.0 in the early 90s.

I also had a boyfriend at the time who was a executive and I saw how he was so very reliant on email, sales data analysis and internal messaging in his position.

I wanted to market my classes on Facebook.

That shouldn't have been hard for me, right?

I was president of my high school Deca class, for Pete's sake.

I've lead every team I've ever been a part of in sales and metrics in one way or another.

I know a thing or two about marketing and branding.

Geesh.

Holy cow.

I was so wrong.

Little did I know that barely anyone else knew what TF was going on outside of their information silos either.

Sure, lots of people were experts within their own little slice of life and how they functioned in life with it, but ask them a simple question about anything outside of that and people were just as clueless as I was.

It was comical and frustrating.

And I could see how nervous it made them that they didn't fully understand the technology that they were putting themselves into lock, stock and barrel.

I started paying a hundred bucks a month to be part of Sandi Krakowskis Inner Circle so I could learn from someone who walked the walk.

Sandi is an OG in email marketing.

But that wasn't enough because what I needed to do was not only keep up with emergent tech and marketing techniques, I needed to bridge my knowledge gaps.

I'd just learn how to strategically accomplish something an algorithm would change or some sort of shit would hit the fan as Big Tech wielded it's new power.

Tech didn't care that I had a job, or daughter and a granddaughter or an injury or an illness or a boyfriend or that I just didn't want to think about it every day of my life.

It just kept changing.

And growing into our every day lives in ways that those of us born in the analog generation would never have dreamed of.

Today we can't even get gas without a computer and some people's refrigerators talk to them.

Take that Algebra teachers of the past, we do actually hold little computers and calculators in our hands every day of our lives.

In the midst of all this, I had a light bulb moment.

I realized that I did not want to be part of the bullying and sexualization of online fitness providers that was very prevalent at the time and discontinued that venture.

Though, I yoga is still one of the great loves of my life and I practice almost daily!

I wanted my quiet life back, but I also knew enough to future cast and see where tech was heading.

The Tech writing was on the wall; the new best way to market to the masses was on the world wide web.

There was no getting around that.

I wanted to understand the entire system.

Not just parts of it.

If you don't understand the basic tenets of directions

Originally, I was all situated and set to be mainly a lifestyle brand.

As I approached 50 in 2020, it just made sense to me.

I loved fashion, food, fitness, health and wellness; all the stuff that made for great lifestyle brands back then.

I spent a few years researching and educating myself on everything Digital Strategy.

I devoured the likes of Russell Brunson, Jasmine Starr, Amy Porterfield, James Wedmore and Jenna Kutcher.

I spent every moment I could developing a plan for my future.

And I wanted to help others understand how to market online, too.

I wrote my first course.

After thousands and thousands of hours over 3 years of study, I had it all laid out.

My first ad for the course was to run that next Monday.

That was the Monday in March that most of the country shut down.

All of the copy work I had done to positively cheer others on in their Digital endeavors now seemed defunct.

No one wanted to be cheered on.

Everyone was scared, confused and/or pissed.

And the job I was at actually got busier and my personal life got more hectic.

I continued on researching and practicing online.

I was once again ready to go!

I quit my job of 11 years and was ready to travel for the following year; a dream I had had my entire adult life.

The following Monday I got a near deadly cocktail of Covid, radical food poisoning and my already run away histamine intolerance that injured my brain and body and sent me into anaphylactic shock every time I would eat.

I don't remember almost two months of my life.

I still have some memory loss of events and items from prior.

It took me almost two years to fully recover.

Only when I actually did fully recover did I realize how bad my "every day" brain function had been.

I say it like that because while I walked through those two years, I studied Quantum Physics, extraordinarily complex technical topics, systemic marketing and so many other things of high value to my now life, yet I couldn't get my sh*t together enough to make normal life happen fully.

I had several think I was just depressed.

I looked fine (unless you were with me when I was having a hard-core food reaction then I looked jacked up, to say the least!).

I talked fine (unless I was slurring my words from too many histamines).

I could do almost everything I had been doing before.

I just couldn't do it all in the order needed to be fully on point.

It was scary.

The first few weeks, everyone thought I had left town to travel and I laid in my condo almost dying. I could not "figure" out what to do. But what was intrinsic to me was to research. So I figure out that if I radically changed my diet, it would keep me from having anaphylactic shocks. From there I just kind of winged it in life. Except I kept up with Digital Strategy. I pushed forward. I truly believe it is the biggest thing that allowed me to rewire my neural pathways. I actually feel smarter and more at peace than I've ever felt in my life. Blessings in disguise they say. Even if that blessing looks like a shit storm at the time.

Three years later, here I am.

Healed. Healthy. Whole.

With what I know is an amazing merging of classic and technical marketing.

I wanted to chuck the entire project many times through all the bumps and bruises of life.

Most recently, the week after I had yet again published my latest course, my younger brother died from a rare from of cancer that crossed him over in just 4 weeks.

I took a hard look at my life after Joey's death.

And I decided I would once again pivot.

Not away from the Digital realm and strategies I had developed, but towards the niches and tribe I know are out there so that we may share our stories with each other, build our brands together and truly shine online.

#ShineOnline isn't just a cheesy tagline and hashtag I use because it sounds catchy.

It's at the core of what I believe is our mission as a human and purveyor of goods and services within the Digital Landscape.

It is my belief that more people need to know how to Market online so they can share their light. Their wisdom. Their knowledge. Their power. Their brand. Their story.

Using stories to inspire and build community is an art and a skill handed down throughout generations.

Entire people groups get moved by stories.

Those stories lead to inspiration.

That inspiration leads to action.

Those actions lead to clarity.

That clarity shows the abundance available to all of us.

It is with my whole soul and being that I believe we should all know the story of how function online.

We've been Living Through the Learning Curve.

And yet, no one has educated us as a collective in any way, shape or form on technology.

Even school aged children and college attendees do not know how fathom the full landscape of technology.

I won't go into much about this now, but I believe gaining clarity of vocabulary used is important.

I also believe that it's simply mainly Knowledge Gaps that need filled to get people unstuck.

Most simply don't know where to turn for answers.

It is my hope and my dream and my vision that I will honor the knowledge that Source has bestowed upon me.

I do not take cavalierly that all we are and all we know is not only for our own selves, but for those we can share those knowings with.

I pray for and pray about those whom my business and teachings will reach and connect with.

And I so look forward to connecting to others who can teach and guide me further so that I may teach and guide others futher.

For the next few years, I will share as much as I possible can for free while coaching clients and teaching in group memberships.

It may sound "strange" but I do hope that some take every single thing that I teach and train others.

As long as you don't plagiarize me or take my paid programs and try to make them your own, I truly, truly hope you teach others what you learn about Digital Strategy from me.

We all need this information.

Tech is not slowing it's roll for anyone.

And I am a firm believer in Ohana - no one gets left behind.

Aho.

Check out the next part of My CV Story where I share how I finally landed on the services to offer that best suit my lifestyle and brand!

#DigitalStrategy #ContentMarketing #Marketing #RoseKellerAndCo