119: I’m Back! Here’s What’s Changing (and What’s Not)

After over a year away from the mic, I wasn’t sure I’d return. It’s ALOT to be a one man band pod, plan a wedding, a full time senior marketer, hang out with my family (and of course my dog!) work out every day and achieve balance and not burn out!

This episode is your behind-the-scenes of why I stepped away, what’s fueling my return, and how this show is evolving to serve you even better.

It’s still me. Still raw, honest, and strategy-packed. But this time around, I’m zeroing in on the two things that have powered every winning marketing plan I’ve ever built—productivity and confidence. Because no matter what kind of marketing you’re doing, these two muscles change everything.

I’ve got over 30 episodes planned. New ones every Tuesday. 

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For more episodes visit my website

Transcript

Ep 1

 You're listening to marketing nuggets the mindset, methods, and momentum behind confident, high performing marketers. I'm Emma, your marketing mentor and biggest cheerleader here to share the unfiltered truth about building a career you are proud of. Whether you're deep in the B2B trenches, chasing creativity in B2C, or buried under a to do list that just won't quit. You are not alone. Let's talk about the systems that work, the stories that shape them, and the strategies that move the needle. This is where clarity meets confidence. Hello. The podcast is back and this time it's not just marketing tactics, it's the methods, the mindset and the momentum behind real growth. In this comeback episode, I'm sharing why I hit pause, what I've learned, and how this show is evolving to meet you fellow marketers exactly where you are. So let's do this. In this episode, I'm going to be covering why I left, what I've been up to, what's changing, and the two themes that will anchor this next chapter of marketing nuggets. So why have I stepped away? Firstly, honestly, the first reason is the amount of tactics that are available in marketing was becoming overwhelming to create episodes about. Because I'd be talking to you lovely listeners and you're in such a different array of fields. You're doing ecom, B2B, B to C service product. And so when I was teaching specific tactical things like how to create a TV ad, how to run an event, how to build LinkedIn ad funnels. You had to be doing that exact tactic at that time to feel relevant, and I just felt like I was trying to cover everything and therefore I wasn't covering everything. And so I always felt like I was chasing my tail. And I wanted to help as many of you as possible. And I think I just got mixed up in trying to be really, really tactical in some of those episodes. Now, I know that you go back and listen to them when you're doing that tactic, but I just felt like I got to in the weeds of tactical lessons. I also stopped doing my number one piece of advice of batching and planning episodes. So I used to be really good at sitting down for a couple of days each month, really planning out my podcasts, the bullet points that I would be talking about, recording and editing them and doing it all in one day. What actually ended up happening towards the end of the last season was it would be Sunday and I would be like, oh, I haven't got anything to go out on Tuesday. And so on a Sunday I would literally be doing everything, planning what the episode was going to be about, writing some bullet points because you all know if you are a faithful listener to marketing nuggets, that I just go off bullet points. I would then record it. I would edit every single thing, which is so funny. Now, even a year later, there's so many I helpful things to help podcasts that really help the editing stage that just weren't available when I was doing it. Sounds like I did it ten years ago, but AI is that quick, as we all know. I would then create the creative, the show notes, schedule the podcast, create the content for social and I just lost the joy in doing it. It was sucking out every reason why I did it, and I just felt like I was again chasing my tail, but in a different way. And honestly, I'd been doing it from 2021 to 2024, and I felt like I just needed a break to really step away and to understand why I was doing marketing nuggets in the first place. What I want to give to you all. And if I was even gonna come back and honestly, I didn't know if I was, but I'm so excited to be back and I've got heaps planned and here I am. So what have I been up to? Let me just give you a couple of things I've been doing, because this isn't why you've tuned in. But I wanted to start here. So if you'd have heard from the very last episode that I did in 2024, I am getting married. And so I've been planning a wedding. Now, as a former event manager of part of one of my marketing roles, I'm truly in my element. I have the biggest to do list of my life. It's got over 150 things on it. I have timetables, running orders and I love it. There has been so much negativity around, like when you get married, it's really stressful. But us marketing girls do not shy away from to do lists and I've really enjoyed every second of it. I'm actually so pleased I didn't hire a event manager slash a wedding manager, because I would have driven them absolutely mad. And I've really enjoyed it. I've been doing kind of a few things every weekend. Taking them off like the to do list is a big to do list, but we're not worried about that. So that's been really fun. I've really enjoyed planning the wedding. It's a whole other area of the world that I've never looked into before, and it's been really fun. Is it been stressful at times? Yes. Is the wedding industry the craziest when it comes to budgets? Yes. It's now making my event budgets look much, much better than a wedding one. But yeah, that's been really exciting and that's taken a lot of my spare time up. I've also been over still head of marketing over at Alexa, and we've been hitting some really awesome milestones, like creating a brand campaign for listing on the main market of the London Stock Exchange. And just in general, I've been ensuring forward momentum in our global marketing strategy and plans, leading the team over there, which is one of my favorite things. Again, this is the reason why I started this podcast, was to Marketing Mentor. And so I've been doing all of that, helping all of my incredible team and their careers develop and flourish. A step away from marketing staff. I have also started a few hobbies. The first hobby I started was paddle, which I can only describe as the lazy version of tennis. It's actually so fun and I find it much more social. If you'll have listened to some of the earlier episodes of Marketing Nuggets. Back in the day, you might know that I went to a university on a tennis scholarship. Tennis was very much a big feature in my childhood, and a couple of years ago I thought, let me start tennis again because I really wanted to make some new friends in the new area that I was in, but I just found that people took it way too serious. I'd be like, guys. So Wednesday night it's club night. We're not at Wimbledon. Like, let's dial down the seriousness a bit. So I stopped doing that because it was just too much. But paddle, I found, is much more social and it's easier to pick up. It's not as hard as tennis. Maybe paddle players will. Disagree with me, but it's easy to pick up. It seems more fun, so I've started that. I also started Pilates Reformer Pilates, which was a bit scary because I've never done that before. I went to a class all on my own and I really enjoy it. I prefer the harder classes than the easier classes, but it has been a really nice addition to my workouts and I am going to talk about padel and reformer Pilates in another episode coming up, because they are very poignant, I think, to one of the new pillars of marketing nuggets. I also went to an NFL game. NFL is one of my favorite sports to watch, I love it. I credit that to my four years in America. I absolutely love American football. And not only did I go to an American football game, I actually went to a Dallas football game. So anybody that's watched Dallas Cowboys Cheerleaders on Netflix, you better believe I was front row watching thunderstruck. Okay, I wasn't front row, but I was about ten seats back and it was incredible. It was just as amazing in real life as on the TV. It was so fun. I had the best time. Now I have a bit of a story from the NFL game, so I obviously went to watch the game, but there was a Dallas Cowboys Cheerleaders all there, and I'd watched the series on Netflix. But because I was watching the NFL game at the time, they were filming season two of the Cowboys cheerleaders, and so I'd watch the first one. So I knew a lot of the the girls, not myself, obviously. I just knew them from the show and I was like, oh my gosh, I want to spot them. So I was like going around spotting them. So after they do, thunderstruck, they come to the sideline and then that's where they are for the game. But they rotate every quarter. And so every time a new like batch of girls came, I was like trying to see who I could recognize. I was probably about 20 seats back from the pitch, so it was just a little bit too far to actually see who they were. So I'm sat on my row, I'm the end of the row, and some new people come over, and my favorite person from the show was Reese. And I was like, I'm sure that's Reese. So I got my phone out and I'm like, I can't actually see. So I got the camera app up and I'm zooming in on Reese's face. Trying to see if it's Reese. So I'm zoomed in on this. Cowboys cheerleaders face. Oh my gosh, it's Reese that at that time someone goes, can I get to my seat, please? And I realized I was stood up on the end of my row. My phone like, tilted kind of away from me, and the person that wanted to get back into my row was literally looking at me like being an absolute weirdo. Scrolling in and zooming in on this girl's face. And I wanted to be like, no, it's not as weird as you think. I was just seeing if it was Reese because I love Reese, but he was also a stranger, so I thought that might be even weirder. So yeah, that's what I was doing. So I. You better believe that for the rest of the game, there was no zooming in to see if it was Reese or not. I'm pretty sure it was Reese because I just watched season two and she was on it, so that was awesome. Going back to a marketing thing that I've done, I also took some time to understand how I create campaigns Pains, because the campaigns that I create, both in my B2B and B2C marketing life, is something that has been a pillar in every single strategy that I've done, and they are really the highlights and the success in my entire marketing strategy. That is kind of like the thing that I can pin it down to. And so I really took some time to step by step, right? How I create campaigns, because I thought that would be really helpful to people that don't know where to start. And I've actually created my campaign method, and I've called it the System and Spark method. And I created a keynote speech around it. So I've been delivering that as well, which has been super fun pushing myself out of my comfort zone. I am loving public speaking. I've always loved it. And you better believe I have boiled down that keynote to ten podcast episodes, so that is coming up later this season as well. And I think the other thing that I've been doing before, I talk about why I'm coming back, is I am an audiobook girl. I love listening to audiobooks. I really try and read books, but I just get like 2 or 3 pages in and then I just pick up my phone. But I got into a really bad habit last year of listening to, like, romance books all of the time. Not necessarily just romance books, but like, I always get confused by fiction and nonfiction. The one fiction, I think the made up ones. Anyway, the problem was I was listening to fun books all of the time, and so I wasn't really using my time wisely. I felt like I wasn't learning and I wasn't getting motivated from listening to these books. So what I did is I've actually been a lot stricter at myself. And then on the weekdays, I listened to some absolute incredible audiobooks and podcasts that are about marketing motivation. Lots of different areas where I've been learning, but then also allowing myself to listen to the fun books. But maybe at night, if I am driving somewhere and I'm tired or on the weekends, and that has really helped me level up my game because it's helped me in pockets of time. When I'm walking my dog every single day, I'm learning, and I think that's really helped me to. Show up better, both in work and in extra things I want to do, like this podcast. So of course I will be sharing the gems of the audiobooks and podcasts that I've been listening to. What's really interesting is I actually cannot listen to British accents. I just can't I listen to American accents, only I don't know what it is about them. It also transpires all the way to other areas like peloton. Can't listen to British people. I have to listen to an American person. My favorite instructors is Robyn. I also love Kendall. Even though she left, her classes are still on there. And yeah, hopefully you don't all have this same quirk, because otherwise this podcast will not be the one for you. But I don't know what it is. I just much prefer learning from American voices, so I will be sharing all of those in due course. I'm gonna do an episode right on those because there's some really good ones and I want to do them justice. So let's move on to why I'm coming back. So the biggest reason is. I kept every single podcast that I've ever done. The 118 live. Now, I didn't do anything with them. They're just live and I haven't done anything with them. But every week I get an email and there's still weekly downloads every single week. And I cannot believe that I'm like, wow, people are actually listening to this. And that has been so amazing, especially because there are some incredible marketing podcasts out there. The fact that people are still finding those episodes, finding them useful, and listening to them has really given me that like final piece of motivation to be like, yep, there's still demand. You can still create a podcast. I think sometimes it becomes overwhelming when people have podcasts. It's their entire life and jobs and they're incredible with amazing setups and actually doing videos and all of those things. So that has been like my number one reason why. I also went to an event, a marketing event. And it reminded me of something that's so fundamental to why I started this podcast is because when you're in a marketing role, you might not have a marketing mentor. But also the other thing that I don't talk about very often is usually when you're in a marketing team, you are the only person in your discipline. And so sometimes it can feel really lonely. Now you might be in a bigger marketing team, and you might be so lucky as to have somebody else that is your same exact job title, but that is really rare. So if you're in one of those teams, I'm very jealous of you. Every single marketing role I've ever had, I've been the only person with that job title. And. When you go to marketing events or listen to marketing podcasts, you realize that you're actually not alone. A lot of the problems that you have. A lot of the solutions that you might find other people are going through as well. And I zoomed out and thought, stop getting caught up by teaching tactics by channel, because there's so many fundamental things that I can still talk about that is going to help many people, and it's my passion and it's just nice to be like, oh yeah, surrounded by more marketers and everyone just knowing what you're going through, I think is such a really nice community. So after that event, I zoomed out and I thought instead of getting caught up by tactics and teaching them every week, how else can I help? And really looking at what has been fundamental to my success and also what do I love to talk about? And so that is how I came up with this slightly new look and feel to marketing nuggets. Now, as long as you're a driven, ambitious marketer, this podcast is still for you. That is not changing. So let's get into what is staying the same and what is changing. So what? Staying the same. It's still bite size. There's still absolutely no fluff. I know that I've been talking to you a little bit today about what I've been up to, but going forward after this episode, we're going to get right into tactics from the get go. I know your time is really precious. The fact that you listen to me in that time where you could be listening to millions of other podcasts, I want to get right to the strategies, and I want to get right to things that are going to help you. And so it's still really focused on real world marketing that works. Stories, of course, the good, the bad and the ugly, real life experience and actionable strategies. So you leave every podcast going, I'm going to try that, or you feel inspired to do something different that day. They're also going to come out every Tuesday like they did before, and it's going to be about 20 to 30 minutes every episode. It's also going to be available in all of the places where you listen to the other ones, and it is still me, Emma, as your host. So you're like, Emma, that sounds pretty similar. What is changing? So. There's going to be two core themes that I'm anchoring a lot of episodes around, and that is because I really sat down and thought, what am I passionate about and what has made me successful in my 12 years in this career? And what am I still learning every single day, week, month? And they are productivity and confidence, the big pieces of productivity all the way to the small pieces and in how that fits in a marketing career. The same with confidence. I think confidence is such a word that you think every single marketing lead, once you get to a marketing manager, every single marketing manager and above has abundance of confidence. Confidence shows up in so many different ways and you need it in so many different scenarios. And I have so many stories, good, bad and ugly with that one that I really wanted to show. And the third anchor is my campaign method, the system and spark method. And so in those three areas, I'm really going to be talking about the mindset shifts, systems behind all of the marketing strategies in the 12 years that I've been doing it. I will of course be giving you examples for my own work and how these played out. So what's also changing is I will only be showing up on LinkedIn, my website and this podcast. I realized something when I was zooming out about how it went from 2021 to 2024, and I realized something that is very bad to admit when you're a marketing lead, and that is that I absolutely hate creating short form content, video content specifically. It's never been my forte. And when I think back to when I was starting in my career, when I was running social, it was Twitter and Facebook. Yes, I'm that old. By the time short form video content was part of our marketing strategy, it was someone else creating the actual content. I never really did it and I hate it. I don't, it's not for me. I don't enjoy it. And I think that the reason why this is difficult is because as a marketing lead, I know that this is a really important part of a strategy, but. That is the problem with being a marketer. You know what you should be doing. But I need to remind myself I can change the rules. I don't need to do every single thing. It really helps when people are still downloading my podcast and I'm not marketing it anywhere. And so I don't want to spread myself too thin, but I also want to show up where I enjoy. And so it's linked in, which is going to be linked in the show notes. My website, which is just relaunched, which is Monster.com, where all of the podcasts will be held, and of course all the places that you find the podcast. So absolute big kudos to everybody that does create content like that. I think it is a skill. It is really difficult, I think, to show up all of the time. Full props to everybody. It's just not me. And so I've deleted my marketing nuggets. Instagram. In fact, I deleted it and then like two weeks later, somebody already has the new handle. So that's not me. If you want to reach out to me, talk about episodes. My LinkedIn is the place to do it, so go over and do that. So in saying that, please note that all the 118 previous episodes are still staying live, but if I mention any courses no longer live, I've closed the door on all of my old marketing courses to focus on my new approach. Now, if you purchased one of my old courses, you can still have access. You have lifetime access to them. But if you listen to any of the 118 episodes and there's any call to actions, please ignore them. I talk about my Instagram. I talk about other courses. Honestly, I've never gone back and listened to them. I can't remember what other CTAs I have talked about. If I had an editing team, I would make them zip back and do it, but I don't. I'm sure there is an AI that could do it for me, but I'm just hoping that everyone listens to this. So no more Instagram, no more courses. Currently, nothing like that. The only things that are alive are my LinkedIn and my website and Monster.com. So yeah, let's just hope everybody listens to this exact moment. Otherwise it's going to be super confusing. But my website, I'm only going to be doing episode 119 going forward. So that's it. Episode one of this new era. Done. I have some really exciting episodes coming up. I have planned 30 across productivity, confidence, and campaigns. All of how it pertains to marketing. The next episode coming out a week today is going to be on productivity. I'm going to set that one up. One of my favorite topics to talk about. So thank you. Thank you for listening to my first episode back. This is incredible. I'm so pleased that you're listening. If you know any fellow marketers that might struggle with productivity or confidence, please do share this podcast and this episode with them so that they can join us in this little corner of the internet to help us become better, more productive marketers. So all that's left to say is, until next time, I'm cheering you on. Whatever your challenges are this week. You've got this. Bye for now.