Erin Blaskie, Fractional CMO | 2x Entrepreneur, Startup Advisor, TedX Speaker, Forbes & WSJ Columnist on Entrepreneurship & Personal Brand

Welcome to another episode of the success story podcast. I have Aaron Blaski, who is currently a fractional CMO. She is scaling her own business in a big way. It wasn't always like that though. She has done entrepreneurship. She is pivoted and started working for somebody again, scaling SaaS companies and then she went back into entrepreneurship. We're going to break down her career story. She is a name in marketing. She's had her thoughts, opinions, ideas. They've been featured in Forbes, Wall Street Journal, entrepreneur, Globe and Mail to name a few. She is a marketing professor at the Telfer School of Business in my hometown Ottawa and she also sits on an entrepreneur council as an advisor at Algonquin College. She has some great branding, entrepreneurial and just general life lessons to share with people that are looking to build their own thing or entrepreneurs within a company. We also have two incredible sponsors for today's episode. So for CFOs, entrepreneurs, we have gusto. They have a special offer for everybody who's listening. If you've never heard of them, they are payroll solutions. This is going to make your life easier. And then our second sponsor is Story Worth. They have a special offer set up for everybody who's shopping for Mother's Day. So please stick around until around the halfway point. You're going to get both of these offers exclusive to success story podcast listener. I hope you enjoy it. Let's get right into the next episode. Thanks again for joining me today. I'm sitting down with Aaron Blaske. Aaron is a fractional CMO. She is a startup and scale up marketing consultant. She's an advisor. She is a TEDx speaker. She is a digital marketing instructor. She's been featured in Forbes, Entrepreneur, Ad Week, and Wall Street Journal. I'm really happy to bring her on. She's had an incredible career. She's gone back and forth between entrepreneurship and working for incredible companies. And Aaron, thank you for coming on. And I'm excited to unpack your story. But I'm also excited because when I'm speaking to you now, so today is what? We're Friday, March 26. This is a very important point in your career because you had some big changes recently and I want to dive into those as well. So thanks for joining me. I appreciate it. Yeah, no worries at all. I'm super super stoked to have this conversation. And we're talking about all my favorite things. So it's a good good day. Good, good, good. It's a good Friday. Okay. So let's let's queue it up for everybody who's listening. Let's just walk through your career where you came from. I just read off the stuff you have on your LinkedIn, but there's a whole bunch of other stuff that you've achieved over your career. So walk us through it. Yeah, yeah. So every time I do this, I always scare people because I say we have to go all the way back to 1986, which people are usually like, whoa, whoa, we don't need that much detail. However, what I will say about going back that far is really like my love of technology, my love of this idea of business and everything. It came really early on in my life. And in around 86, my dad brought home a Commodore 64, which for anyone listening that doesn't know what that is, it's a computer. I actually have one in my office on a shelf right above here, right above me. But anyway, he brought home this computer and I just remember, you know, I grew up in a very small town. I grew up. It was a very like blue collar town. Didn't have a lot growing up. But when this computer came home, I was amazed. I was so impressed, you know, with it. And I remember we set it up and my dad was like, yeah, just go ahead, like play with it. And my sister and I, we would set up like an office in our house. And of course, I was the older one. So I was always the CEO. And she was my secretary every time. And I would just like play office. And I remember, you know, I didn't have examples of it. I didn't have like anyone in my own personal life or even in our community, really, that had this like, you know, lifestyle. But for some reason, I was just obsessed with it. And that sort of continued on. And I remember like, even as I was growing up, I was very entrepreneurial. I used to like go and pick out like rocks and bark out of the forest and then go sell them to the cottagers nearby. They bought it, you know, probably because I was like this little like cute kid and they couldn't resist. But yeah, that just that this like trend sort of continued through my whole life. And, you know, it showed up in high school, showed up in college. And when I got to, you know, I went to school and I left school, I tried to get out of school as fast as possible, because I just wanted to work. So I left finished school and then ended up working in a company and realized like really quickly that I just didn't love being boxed in, you know, to one specific role and really just like, you know, kind of being limited by what I could do. And so at the age of 21, I decided to launch my first company. And so I launched at that time a virtual assistance business. And this was 2004. It was like pre social media, pre, you know, the internet as we know it today. And I got really lucky in some ways because my very first client in that company happened to be a startup founder in Silicon Valley. I did not know what Silicon Valley was. Okay, like I was like I said, small town girl in the Ottawa Valley in Canada. And here I am working with this company and this company and this founder were doing such incredible things like they were leveraging the internet to market their product and they were, you know, pulling at the time was a lot five figures a month. And then they grew to six figures a month. And I just remember experiencing all of that thinking like this is, this is incredible. Like I love this. And and my eyes, of course, like growing up with nothing when all of a sudden you're seeing all of these dollar signs on the internet, you're like, okay, I want to do this too. So I started like really cracking the code of, you know, what does it mean to market on the internet? What does it mean to create passive revenue sources? Like what kind of businesses can be built? And of course jumping on things like social media and, and you know, all of these different platforms as they were coming out. And I, over the next like 14 years, which is a hard bucket to sort of capture, I really spent that time working with about 300 different businesses again over like the 14 year period doing all kinds of crazy things like mostly, mostly marketing related. But I was working on personal brands for, you know, Hollywood actors and professional athletes, best-selling authors. I was also doing, you know, work with Disney and craft and, um, travelosity and different, you know, bigger brands. And just absorbing everything. Like I was, I was a sponge and I wanted to learn as much as I could about marketing. And, um, yeah, so I did that for 14 years, uh, before starting to consult locally. All entrepreneur, by the way. Yeah. Yeah. Is this still all entrepreneur? Okay. Okay. Yeah. So that was all just like me figuring it out, you know, um, yeah, made a lot of mistakes. A lot. Everyone does though. So that's good. Yeah. Yeah. And really grew that business to, you know, I mean, for me, in my 20s, like I grew it to about a quarter of a million dollars a year in sales with literally spending no money on advertising or marketing, um, just doing it all myself and building, you know, a referral network and that kind of thing. And, um, and then I started consulting locally in 2017, uh, with a sort of accelerator. And then I fell in love with like their business model and the company and the team and decided to close up shop and join them full time. Uh, so did that for a couple of years. Then I joined a B2B SaaS company called Fellow and then was there for a year, uh, really helped them build out a lot of their marketing foundations and, um, start to get ready to scale. Uh, and then at the beginning of this year, I quit. I quit my job with, well, that's when we first started talking, right? That's, yeah. I think you were like, when we first were trying to queue up this podcast, I think you were like, you were quitting or you like quit like the day before you got a chill. Yeah. I got to get my shit together. And then, and then we'll do it in a couple of weeks. So now, now you've, you know, had some time. We were talking about some of the successes you've had. Um, so we'll talk about where you're at now. Um, but let's, let's dive into some of the history because the history definitely queues up like what you're working on. So non non linear career path is one of the things that, um, you've definitely lived. Yeah. Why did you let's just figure out why after making 250k, did you ever want to work with somebody, 250k, you know, in your own business? Why would you work for somebody again? Over the benefits, what were the lessons learned? Was it difficult? Let's talk about just pivoting because I think people think the opposite of what you do, right? They want to escape the nine to five. They want to escape the company, right? Yeah. Well, I mean, here's the thing. Like when you, when people start businesses and like if they at all have this vision in mind that they're escaping a nine to five, I mean, like park that, that is, you know, that is just absolutely 1000% not true. In fact, you're going to work more than the nine to five if you start your own thing and a lot of what you do, you're not getting paid for, you know, so you have to do a lot of the business calls and the accounting and the bookkeeping and even if you're not, like even if you outsource that stuff, you still have to facilitate it and organize it and, you know, so there's a lot of stuff that you do when you're self-employed that you're just not getting paid for and you don't get the luxury all the time of just closing up the laptop at the end of the day and then, you know, not looking at it again until you go back. So for me personally, what ended up kind of happening for me is that in, in about 2015, 2014, 2015, somewhere in there, I ended up hitting a pretty significant wall of burnout and that burnout led to like I've always been predisposed to depression my whole life like I've dealt with it from the time I was probably 14, but I really was like impacted greatly inside of my business. I was, you know, I was going through a divorce. I was like, you know, kind of managing a lot of different things, obviously learning how to be a single parent, starting to figure out like how am I going to sustain this business and this, you know, raise my daughter and also do do this all on my own and there was just a lot going on and then at the same time I had a subcontractor that we were working on a lot of web development projects. He ended up bailing on me out of the blue, which is the complete risk you run when you don't have employees and you have freelancers and subcontractors and it was kind of like everything came to a head for me and I just realized how trapped I felt like I had this enormous amount of, you know, burnout and I really couldn't function and but at the same time I had no choice, you know, and I think it was in that moment that I really had to look at, you know, everything in my life. Like what was I doing? How had I structured this business? Was this actually set up in a way that could sustain my life and could sustain the ups and downs? And the answer was no, you know, the answer was absolutely, it was not set up that way. So I spent the next year after that, after I actually came out of that burnout and the depression and, you know, worked really hard to get through that. I spent the next year restructuring everything and really like evaluating what was important to me and when I started consulting with Elspark, the accelerator, I honestly, in that moment, I love the team there. Like I still do, they're still amazing and I loved what they were doing. It was very similar to what I was doing inside of four walls, right? And there was like team support and there was people and the founders were all in there and it was a co-working space. So it was dynamic and interesting and I had spent 14 years working by myself in a home office, just like this. You know, and so for me it was like because I had had that experience and began really began evaluating like what was important, it just fit, you know, and the moment was just right for me and it checked a lot of the kind of the boxes that I was after. So I decided, you know, I'm very much a gut person, like I will listen to my gut all the time and for me it was just like this is right. And so when they sat me down over lunch and asked me one day like, hey, would you ever consider coming on board full time? I didn't hesitate. I was like, yeah, let's do it. Let's do it. I don't care what it looks like, let's do it. You know, and then I closed up shop essentially and took a job. So for me it was right in the moment, you know, it was the perfect job in terms of like what I needed at that time, the community involvement, the level of, you know, just like deep appreciation that the team had for each other was exactly what my heart and soul kind of needed. And yeah, and then I mean, of course we can talk about like any lessons learned going into like the next kind of phase, like next full time company, but that was just like the perfect thing, you know, that my soul needed at the time. I do want to unpack some of those lessons. I just want to highlight something that resonated with me from that. And it's something that I see hurting a lot of people in their career or entrepreneurs. And it's that they feel like pivoting into something else. It could be in in their own business or going into or going from entrepreneurship back to working for somebody. Or even if they are in a role and they feel like they're burning out in that role in a company, there seems to be this stigma against changing or taking care of yourself or doing something that perhaps to some people may be less impressive or less, and I'm not saying what you did was less impressive. But for example, if you're in a role that's burning out, I use this example a lot and say you're a VP level or a director level at a startup and it's not going well and you just hate every single day. And you don't want to take a role at a larger company that perhaps could be a better suited role. You'd have more resources, more support because it's a different job title or something like that. Like just you you're afraid of changing because of what people will think of you, what, you know, I don't know. It just seems like that's something that we should champion more and make okay more because there is no right way to do life or do a career or do entrepreneurship and we have we think that like, oh, if you've achieved a certain status level, that's where we have to stay or up or bust, right? And you've proven you're you're you're you're living proof that you can pivot and do different things and take a step back and refresh and then look at where you're at now, which is a much better version, a much better iteration of where you were, you know, I guess two, three years ago. So just want to take a note of because I don't think it's talked about enough. That's that fact. I can't believe you're afraid. Hey, it's Scott here. I just want to pause for a second and thank the sponsor of today's episode Story Worth. What an innovative concept right in time for Mother's Day. 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This collection of thoughts beautifully bound in a book and a keepsake is going to be one of the nicest things you can give yourself, your family, and also your mother so that she can pass on some things that she wants to tell you that perhaps you never even thought about mentioning. A wonderful offer. Go to storyworth.com slash success story. Use it for Mother's Day. Use it for someone else, but this is a truly meaningful present. Anyways, let's get back to the and honestly I think like one of the best things I think I've ever done in my life is is completely ditch societal success, meaning like you know the typical version of what success looks like in society. I've taken that and like literally thrown it out. You know because for for some that's very motivating and it's very you know it's very aspirational to drive towards all of the things we think are successful and to your point a lot of those things are upward trajectories, right? It's like you got to earn more. You have to have the bigger title. You have to have the bigger house and the better car and and like none of that none of that has mattered to me for over a decade and I think that has literally been I think the biggest driving fat like driving kind of forced for me to be able to make these decisions is I really don't care what anyone else thinks. I know people say that I actually don't care what anyone else thinks of like my career and like what my choices are because at the end of the day I'm making them based on you know fulfilling the needs that I have and and I was just actually talking to someone this morning and we were talking about goals and like setting goals for your life and I was saying like I'm in this weird spot right now because I actually feel so content with my life and like what I have and I'm so grateful for what I have that I actually don't have a lot of like those traditional goals that people have like I'm not striving for you know a million dollar business I'm not like trying to have the BMW in the driveway like I've had those things and they literally made my life zero percent better like you know they didn't because like at the end of the day I wasn't listening to like what was actually in my heart in terms of like what would make me feel truly successful and what I've realized is for me personally again this is a very personal thing for me personally it's like I just want to be financially secure like I want to be able to pay my bills without worrying about it I want to be able to buy myself something every once in a while um you know I want to have free time though like I want to be able to get out and hike and kayak and you know do the outdoor adventure stuff I love and I want to have time to spend with my daughter you know she's 10 now and she's at this beautiful age where she's like cool to hang out with you know like me yeah you can hang out and do stuff and like as long as I have those things and I have like a house over in my head and food on the table I'm good like I'm actually good and I don't really want for anything um which you know is kind of um it's a great place to arrive at but it takes really throwing out the comparison you know game that you might do with other people or um any of that like I I don't have any of that anymore and how did you arrive at that was it the burnout and just a two-part question I hate doing this but it's important to that I add on how would you recommend somebody try and and come to peace with what they have without having to go as far as you did yeah that's a great I actually really like how you phrase that question because I don't recommend that anyone do it the way that I did it um you know I actually did a lot of therapy like I've done a lot of personal work on myself with the help of um professionals like I've done you know psychotherapy I've done like a lot of different things that were very helpful to allow me to really start to unpack like what was important and I've also done a lot of like work on my own like I'm constantly reading I'm constantly um you know learning about other people's experiences and I feel like the more that I expose myself to the experiences of others and like you know the experiences in the world it's very easy when you do that to then have a lot of gratitude for what you have because you realize that but this isn't like you know the norm right and I also I honestly do attribute a lot to my humble beginnings like I didn't grow up with a lot I in fact like at times we were you know very poor um and that that humbles you you know in a way because I don't take anything I have for granted uh or at least I try really hard not to um and so I think if um if folks are kind of struggling with it I think you know realizing that stuff in your life is not going to fill the void that you might have and chasing things it won't necessarily bring you ultimate happiness I think you is really um doing some you know introspection on that trying to figure out like what do you really want in life if you actually put aside a lot of those materialistic things and that's not to say by the way that I judge anyone if they have like more materialistic goals like that's that's again it's a very personal thing and and that can be completely motivating for some people um but I do think that there's some value in doing the work you know that's required uh and honestly there's no real shortcut to it I think you have to just do the work um but honestly therapy is great on it like yeah totally great no I was gonna say it's by the way you mentioned some point about um about not you know if people have material goals it's fine but I do believe that there are far more people that speak about the hustle culture the you know the achieving material well through perhaps entrepreneurship or otherwise there's too many people waited on that side of the discussion and not enough people waited on the side of the discussion that you're are there lens that you're sort of looking at entrepreneurship in life and success through which is you can be successful you can you can achieve but understand what that success comes with as well right yeah and I've also seen those founders succeed and get you know the the million dollar plus exits I've seen them you know get on the other side of that and they're miserable because like they you know they don't know what to do with themselves and they're not fulfilled and and I think if you don't do the work to figure out like what does success actually look like for you beyond those materialistic things you're going to arrive at those moments and you're still going to be unhappy you know and for me like that's why I spend a lot of time really asking myself you know what what what do I want this to feel like like what do I want my life to feel like and as long as it feels right and the work I'm doing feels fulfilling and you know I have that security that I'm sort of makes me feel very comfortable the rest of it like yeah for me personally again it's a very personal thing but it just doesn't really matter okay so I want to just we've spoken about a few things that we were actually that I was actually going to ask you but you kind of just gone into these topics anyways so it's good um any other lessons that you've learned coming in and out of entrepreneurship that we didn't touch on yeah yeah so so in this uh okay so I want to talk a little bit about you know so I talked about obviously like landing at the accelerator and that that role being like exactly what I needed at that time right like it it was like sole fulfilling in so many ways and then I want to also talk about when it's not right because um I think that's equally as important because I think as an entrepreneur who may be going back and forth or even if you're an entrepreneur and you're kind of thinking like oh man the grass looks greener on that side um knowing that it doesn't always work out the way that you think it's going to and so for me when I when I ended up going from the accelerator which again was a very like relationship heavy community role uh I was surrounded by people I was very engaged with a lot of different founders uh I was not only working on the you know brand of the accelerator but I was also working as an embedded advisor for the startups so it was a very dynamic and interesting but people focused role and that's key because what I'm about to say is a is a is a shift and so when I went to um fellow which is like a SaaS um company you know I was so excited about that role I was so excited about taking on that work but what I didn't realize and and you know you don't know these things until you get in them to be honest what I didn't realize was just that being in a role that is actually not people focused you know that doesn't have that community element that doesn't have that dynamic nature it's not that the role wasn't dynamic I mean I was doing so many different things and working on you know very cool projects and I had an amazing team and the the company's great the software is great I still use it today like there was nothing about the actual like company that was bad or anything like that but it was just that I realized in the role that I was like dying on a vine a little like meaning I didn't have that like you know ability to connect with humans every day and and have this like really dynamic heart-feeling thing it was it was like analytics and you know landing pages and copy and those things are great it's part of marketing but for me it was just like I realized like wow I actually need a lot of that human you know kind of centric work to do much to feel like I'm doing my best work and I need that community involvement which I had so much of at Elspark and then had none of at fellow and so again it's not a there's no part of you know fellow that is is responsible for that it was literally just like a fit in terms of the role itself and so you know I had to kind of ask myself as I went into 2021 like is that what I really want you know for my career in my future or do I need to like make a hard decision now um to sort of get back closer to the type of work that I love to do so I think I think sometimes it also you know you can you can get into a place where you also have to be real with yourself and it's and again like to your point earlier it's not about like failure it's not about like oh my gosh I failed at this it's literally about like identifying okay this is it's going well we're achieving a lot you know all of our numbers are up into the right like this is good um but at the end of the day like does it feel right you know and and I think sometimes um a lesson that I've learned over the years as well is that you just have to listen and you have to be willing um you know to to to like zag when when you think you should be going a different way and um and I think that was uh yeah that was another big lesson for me it's like sometimes it's not going to be right you know sometimes you're going to get it wrong so you know all that I'm hearing out of this is throughout your career what's really contributed to your success and your happiness is this incredible heightened sense of self-awareness yes which I think it's important I think it's very important yes because that's what led your decisions and that's what's led and now I'm going to I'm going to ask what you're doing now and how it's changed from what you did in the past but I think it's all driven by self-awareness yeah and that's something people need to work on I love that you've said that I think honestly that's one of the greatest greatest things that you can work on um you know building in yourself is definitely self-awareness it's always helped me no matter what like whether it's you know been in parenting or work or in life and relationships self-awareness is so key it's it's not easy you know because I mean it's led to me like getting a divorce it led to me quitting my business it led to me's quitting jobs like it's not easy to have self-awareness and sometimes it is hard for people to understand your decisions especially if they think you know you should be doing things a certain way but at the end of the day you know it's it really has um allowed me to get to a place where I do feel today happier than I've ever felt which is you know I'm so grateful that it's able to get there yeah so let's let's talk about that's let's talk about so a fellowship good good company doing all the right things but it wasn't your vibe yeah so what is your vibe what what prompted you to take the next steps and how how do you make this iteration of entrepreneurship of of the level next level in your life how do you make it better than what it was before hey Scott here we're just gonna take a second and thank the sponsor of today's episode gusto this is a one-stop shop one place you can go to take care of all the payroll issues all the payroll stresses that you have to deal with as a business owner look 2020 has been a rough year we can all agree on that in 2021 is pretty rough too but if there's one thing that small business owners don't need is more headache one thing that you've learned in the past year is that you have to focus on your business because gusto isn't just 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I'm almost positive it will all right let's get back yeah yeah great questions so in a lot of ways when I quit my job at fellow I actually had no idea what I was going to do oh no no it's okay so when I quit there I like honestly had no idea what I was going to do I just knew I was like okay like I feel like I've done a lot I feel like I'm gonna end on a high note you know like we'll go out when it's still still really really great and um but oh yeah I just kind of I quit and then you know I put on LinkedIn like hey I quit you know open to conversations like let's see what comes up and the next three weeks I had 70 plus phone calls like it was honestly overwhelming in so many ways and just like there were so many things there were full-time offers there were you know contracts being put in front of me there was like the potential to join some companies as their CEO and like you know others as their COO and like just all of these different things and I had to really sit and assess like what do I want because this is a lot you you would think that that's like a great position to be in and it is like I'm so grateful that I have a network that was willing to like step up and support me like that but like it's also very hard to have like that much choice um and I was afraid of like making the wrong decision but you know again I went back to that same thing where I just checked in with myself and thought like okay what do I really want and for me it needed to be a couple things I I knew I needed a role that was like people community dynamic doing different things I love working with startups and scale ups like a lot I love the beginning phases of of marketing in a in a business I love building foundations around marketing and so I just sort like allowed myself to kind of gravitate towards some of those things and the other thing I did very differently this time was I actually priced my services appropriately this time like I didn't undervalue myself or what I do and I also knew that I needed to price myself at a certain point if I also didn't want to have to fill a full 40 or 50 hours of work a week like I wanted to maybe fill 20 you know and then like have the other 20 to do things like this like podcasts and mentor and coach and you know work with accelerators or whatever the the the case might be and so it really was about like okay I need I need things that are aligned with like those you know they have the elements of what I love so foundations startups community people that kind of thing but it also needs to be companies that are are willing to invest in marketing and understand the value of it so what they know that when they're investing in me that you know what we're going to do together is actually going to exponentially change their business but they have to have that knowledge because otherwise you end up in a place where they're investing but there it there's a lot of fear or maybe like hesitation that that can come along and then that just makes things muddy and not so great but yes it's just about picking like really great clients doing work I love and and then just being open to whatever kind of comes up yeah and what what I guess you know you've learned lessons in entrepreneurship you mentioned things about pricing yourself and valuing yourself and sort of protecting your time and looking for the right like the right target clients that you don't waste your time are there any other things that you've done differently or you would suggest somebody sort of keep top of mind if they're going to entrepreneurship we're starting their own thing almost like as a service based or a consultant based business for the first time yeah outsource the stuff that is like business operational right away I mean a lot of people even myself in my first business I waited probably seven years before I actually you know hired an accountant as an example or got a lawyer to look over my contracts like I was doing all of that in business one I was doing all of that on my own and the reason I did is I didn't have the mentality yet of like I should invest in my business and they're in these areas because if I do I'm actually going to be able to like spend that time making money versus you know I'm sort of doing it on unbillable but I was you know I just didn't have that mindset back then this time around the very first thing I did instantly was I emailed my lawyer and I was like hey we need we need to set up a corporation let's go and then I emailed my accountant you know that I used before and I said like hey look at me I'm actually engaging with you on day one I'm so proud of myself you know and I got I got him on board like immediately and I said listen I don't want to have to think about a single aspect of this like the the accounting side of the business I don't want to have to know when I need to file HST I don't want to have to like do that I want you to just take care of all of it I'm going to build it into my rates you know I know it's a hard cost and it's a cost I'm willing to spend spend money on so I think the thing I've learned this like especially and I'm doing a lot differently this time is just putting those systems in place from day one so that I'm not having to later transition that over or you know end up what this is what happened last time as I ended up with a $45,000 bill from the CRA that was very unexpected um and thankfully thankfully you only need one of those right yeah thankfully it turned out okay it was like a just an error but even still getting those bills in the mail are not fun and I didn't have an account then and you know it was just one of those things where I ended up like derailing a few weeks of my life and I just don't want to have any of that slow me down this time or get in the way of like my happiness so outsource as much of those things right away as you can even if it does feel like a cost you know it um honestly does pay off in spades down the line and the only the only other um we're coming up soon to to the hour or you know close to it so I don't want to go to a holder topic but you are an expert at this and um it's something that has allowed you to really hit the ground running so I know you're building a course on personal brand so you don't take a whole course but but advice advice on people personal branding how to do that preemptively like possibly while still in a role so that if they do want to do something they can do it like you're doing it right now yeah so I feel very bullish that every single human that's in business um should be like whether you're in an actual like career you know in a full-time role or you're running out your own business like absolutely I feel bullish that everyone should be building a personal brand and the reason is is because it's honestly the one thing that you can take with you whether you are self-employed employed coming back to self-employment like me um you know it it goes with you like it it follows you around you're building a network it's yours it's not your employers um you know the body of work you create around your personal brand like if you're doing some blog post let's say or simply posting on social um you know any of those things like those are yours you own that and yes I know it's on a third-party platform in many cases but you still own the content um especially if you do end up with like a like I built to site at AaronBlaski.com I put a lot of stuff there and and that's mine you know and and I think the thing that has always helped me to to both get clients without actually having to act market um to you know find jobs without having to apply for them it's all been through my network and it's all been just through the you know the fact that I've built and grown this online and so like there's easy things that people can do so you know you could put up a website like I did at AaronBlaski.com um you know you could throw up a blog there you could put up some media it mentions um you can start to maybe even outline some speaking um you know kind of uh topics that you would be able to talk about on a podcast or otherwise um you know you can use that as sort of your home base put your portfolio there whatever you know the case might be uh and then of course you can leverage social like there are today is so much easier than when I started in 2004 because we have platforms like Twitter, Instagram, LinkedIn, TikTok even you know TikTok is a obviously a very um fast growing platform and these all exist and they're they're free to use and they're free to create on and you can meet so many people um so I would say anyone watching this like if you're just looking for a few little things to do uh the first thing is like kind of come up with like your pillar uh topics or you know sort of like two to three areas of focus for you so for me it's usually marketing entrepreneurship and then you know some like sort of startup um kind of ecosystem stuff is usually what I share on uh you know on the more business focus platforms and then you know behind the scenes on Instagram I'm sharing a lot of like outdoor adventure stuff and you know things that I'm doing um but come up with your pillars and this will give you like a bit of a guiding light to follow and then from there just show up consistently on those platforms like post regularly it doesn't have to be five times a day but if you're just like showing up consistently I promise it will grow over time and then the other thing I'd recommend is like wake up every day and try to connect with at least five to ten new people across those platforms and this is so simple because it doesn't have to be a big deal you can just like go on Twitter search up people that you would like to connect with and then follow them there's a good chance they're going to check you out follow you back and now you have a connection that you can start to nurture so there's a lot that can be done um and I just think it's just so important and again it's the one thing you can take with you and it's totally 100% yours and no one else's and I think that's so so critical yeah no good advice good advice and you're and you're preaching to the choir um okay before uh before we cut off um a couple rapid-fire questions um just about your career like like lessons you've learned is there anything else that you want to bring up we'll get like the social stuff at the end but anything else that you want to bring up you didn't touch on yeah I mean I think I would just say it's like you know if there's anyone watching or listening to this watching this that you know it's sort of feeling stuck at all you know don't be afraid to make a change is the only thing I'd say you know I've done it so many times and as long as you trust yourself and you you know you bet on yourself and you know that no matter what like you're gonna come through for you um you know I think like don't be afraid to make the change you know just do it good advice good advice um okay uh a myth about entrepreneurship that you want to debunk uh that it's easier than or like you know more freedom more flexibility like those things aren't true and the this isn't like a myth but I do think it's one of the things I'd like to say that's important is surround yourself with other people like other entrepreneurs when you're an entrepreneur especially if you're like a solo printer you know running your own business with no you know if you don't have a team and that kind of thing get yourself some people that um you can connect with often who also understand what you're going through okay so that was a perfect segue into the next question what's what what's a person that's uh been a mentor or help to you oh honestly like this is a hard question for me to answer because I really do feel like yeah I feel like I learned something from everyone honestly like I do and even today for example I was having a conversation with someone who was actually um you know inquiring about my like kind coaching advisory services and and then we got into this like more deeply psychological conversation about goal setting and like what to do when you don't feel like you have any goals anyway so I think like if you're if you're willing to be an open person in general and very transparent and authentic with like other people you can find those mentorship moments everywhere if you're willing to just like lead with openness I I find if I do that at people are more open in response and yeah everyone becomes a mentor good um a resource book or podcast that you'd recommend oh my gosh uh also so many I would say um there's a podcast called everybody hates marketers I think is what it's called oh no I'm gonna probably I'm probably but you're in the title anyway it's a really great one if you're looking for a tactical marketing podcast that's like actually tactical walking through like tactics super I really like that um I just read a book called um the courage to be disliked life changing and I quit my job immediately after reading that book so read with caution and I also think if you're a bbb marketer Dave Gerhardt's podcast is also incredibly great it's very very practical yeah I just I google it everyone hates marketers learn to stand the fuck out by uh Lewis Grenier yeah that's litter that's what the podcast is called exactly yeah and it's honestly like I don't love like I really I like like very tactical marketing podcasts because like they're you know you can put them in practice right away and and that one is exactly that cool okay um a lesson you tell your younger self hmm don't don't I mean I guess it just goes back to that success thing like don't be don't be don't follow other people's definitions definitions of success like create your own and then uh last question asks asks this everybody what does success mean to you uh I mean I think I've already defined it but really it's like you have but it's the last question on this list I gotta ask it again you gotta go yeah I'll do it um so for me it's literally just like having that financial security you know they don't have to worry about paying my bills and then I have I have the time in my life to spend with my daughter and my you know my partner and that we can do outdoor adventures and um and just like really absorb life that's it good yeah it's a good answer I know you already said it I just I ask everybody at the end and you just you just preemptively answered it that's not my fault okay uh where do people connect with you online how do people email you contact you socials all that yeah so I mean I'm pretty easy to find on the internet you just have to google my name and honestly I'm my you know at Aaron Blasky just about everywhere email address is the same Aaron at AaronBlask.com and I honestly love getting questions and things by email so if you're ever like you know curious about anything you've got a question about marketing it's great um inspiration for me for like my YouTube channel my TikTok like all of it so never hesitate to reach out