Every great product should have loops built in, and your career is no different.
The context of “loops” stems from growth and marketing, originally coined by the Reforge crew. The basic idea is that the best companies understand how one cohort of users leads you to another cohort of users.
Said differently, loops are what lead to sustainable, compounding, growth. Building a company without a loop means you have to keep pushing to get output, and, at some point, that becomes unsustainable, especially if your company is disrupted by external factors.
Now, take this same concept of “loops” in a company mindset, but instead apply it to how you might make career decisions.
In the early days of building a product, you want to focus on a wedge to creating a product 10x better than the competition. Building that moat will allow you to find more defensibility, and a natural bridge to stronger retention. It’s only after that when you can begin doubling down on your investments in marketing, sales, and other growth tactics.
Similarly with your career you want to:
Get so good they can’t ignore you
Capitalize on unfair advantages, insights, or relationships
When younger, take on more market risk; when more experienced, take on execution risk
Keep a steady eye on the important balance of acquisition and retention
Build a defensible moat
Avoid choosing overly-regulated markets (e.g. career paths without much mobility)
Avoid too many sounding boards that aren’t your direct customers
Ship often. Iterate quickly.
Early on in my career a manager put this idea into my head that I should think of my career much like a product. And it stuck.
Finding product market fit
In my first gig I was very much so finding my own “product market fit”. Having no precursor to the considerations of B2B vs B2C, or even which industry, or types of business models I might find interest in, I landed a marketing coordinator role at a healthcare company with a very traditional org structure.
While there I was exposed to all faucets of marketing functions, traditional field sales, a spiderweb of a tech stack, and in all stretches of the meaning, the most traditional corporate 8-5 gig. I was very much so finding my own “product market fit” for my career and quickly building a log of all the things I knew weren’t for me vs. the areas I couldn’t wait to dig deeper into.
Establishing a parallel path to growth
Typically, we think of career growth in a singular stream geared towards seniority progression — coordinator —> manager —> director —> VP —> CMO. But how does this make you so good people can’t ignore you, or help build that defensible moat? Those concepts didn’t feel binary to me.
I decided I’d think of career growth in the frame of a parallel path— a) growing in seniority within each org, taking on more responsibility and broadening scope, etc. and, this part was equally as important, b) build a career as an operator for software that solves marketer’s biggest problems. This viewpoint would allow me to dogfood software most critical to marketing success and gain exposure to customer datasets at scale.
And so it began. The journey in a quick list:
Kindful (CRM) — to become an expert in CRM best practices
Campaign Monitor (Email Marketing) — to learn the mechanics of moving rented audiences to owned platforms with higher, more predictable deliverability
Consulting — small blip in the timeline to pressure testing my early skills and seeking balance in my workload as I entered into parenthood
Chili Piper (Inbound Conversion) — to optimize marketing to sales handoff and close the biggest conversion gap most GTM engines face
brightwheel (Childcare Management CRM) — to see if skills hold up outside of MarTech in a veritcalized industry
Refine Labs (Demand Gen Agency) — to begin pattern matching my in-house learnings with all B2B SaaS businesses, understanding the agency business model, and client management
All to bring me here today.
I’m excited to announce I’ve founded DemandLoops. After spending years in-house building and leading demand gen functions one brand at a time, I’m now going solo to bring my learnings to you. I’ve been filling my days taking on projects ranging from interim marketing leadership positions, to advising & investing, and content creation.
It goes without saying that I’m thrilled you’re here, in Substack. From here on out you can expect a weekly column covering demand gen & marketing best practices, career acceleration, and B2B SaaS industry updates.
If there’s anything specific you’d love to see me cover in the column, or have a project you’d like to team up on, shoot me a DM and let’s chat!
Thanks for being part of the loop ➿
See you next week!
- Kaylee