LEAVE YOUR MARK: Freshly Brewed Career Advice Aliza Licht

Respectfully challenging the status quo and advocating for change in a large corporate organization can seem impossible. In this LEAVE YOUR MARK "snack segment," Andrea Wasserman, a visionary, outcome-driven executive with over 20 years of experience across consumer and B2B2C sectors, shares her secrets to intrapreneurship. Intrapreneurship is when you have an entrepreneurial mindset within a company that is self-motivated and proactive.

In this episode, we discuss how to be a change agent in a corporate role, how to bring people on board, work cross-functionally, and motivate people who don't report to you to help execute a strategy. Andrea shares tips on being a project leader with vision, making each team feel essential to the outcome, and customizing the communication approach based on each audience's specific needs and preferences. We also discuss how mid-level employees can manage up by understanding their manager's goals better and ways they can be supportive.

Dr. Marcus Collins is an award-winning marketer and cultural translator with one foot in the world of practice—serving as the Chief Strategy Officer at Wieden+Kennedy New York—and one foot in the world of academia—as a marketing professor at the Ross School of Business, University of Michigan. His book For The Culture: The Power Behind What We Buy, What We Do, and Who We Want to Be examines the influence of culture on consumption and unpacks how everyone, from marketers to activists, can leverage culture to get people to take action. 

Marcus's understanding of brand strategy and consumer behavior has helped him bridge the academic-practitioner gap for blue-chip brands and startups. He is a recipient of Advertising Age's 40 Under 40 award and Crain's Business' 40 Under 40 award and an inductee into the American Advertising Federation's Advertising Hall of Achievement. Most recently, he was recognized by Thinkers50 and Deloitte among their class of 2023 Radar List of 30 thinkers with the ideas most likely to shape the future.

Before joining Wieden+Kennedy, he served as the Chief Consumer Connections Officer at Doner Advertising and led Social Engagement at Steve Stoute's advertising agency, Translation. Before his advertising tenure, Marcus began his career in music and tech with a startup he co-founded before working on iTunes + Nike sport music initiatives at Apple and running digital strategy for Beyoncé. 

In this episode, we dive deep into marketing and where brands go wrong. We discuss why balancing short-term activation with long-term brand growth is essential and the danger of doing things to be seen rather than heard. Marcus shares his expertise on culture, why we need a language to define it, and the importance of perspective in shaping your worldview.

Welcome to the LEAVE YOUR MARK snack segment on direct-to-consumer marketing for creative entrepreneurs and small business owners. Sam Safer Valentine is the co-founder and COO of Norby, an intelligent marketing and communications platform for creative entrepreneurs that helps them grow by amplifying their work through a lightweight website, collecting leads, hosting events, sending text and email campaigns, and analyzing everything.

This episode will specifically focus on how to build a database from scratch and all the tools Norby has to offer- all of which I use for my marketing and especially my launch campaign for my new book, ON BRAND.

PLUS THIS EXCITING NEWS! LEAVE YOUR MARK x Norby are thrilled to announce the Brand Builder Grant, an unrestricted grant of $2,500 to a brand builder or small business owner looking for funding to achieve their marketing and business goals.

From the beginning, Norby's mission has been to lift up creative entrepreneurs. It started as a community; they know what it's like to build something from the ground up and how precious your resources are when you're just starting.

Our goal with this Grant, just as with Norby, is to lower the barrier to entry to marketing and growing your brand and business. To give small business owners, authors, podcasters, consultants, personal brand builders a place to showcase their work, create meaningful relationships with their audience, and grow their business.

Apply by June 2, 2023 for the LEAVE YOUR MARK x Norby Brand Builder Grant by texting BRAND to +1 888- 291-4241 or at leaveyourmark.norby.live.

Theresa Ebagua pursued her dream of becoming a luxury shoe designer after studying computer science, getting her MBA, and working in corporate America for ten years. As a Nigerian-born, LA and London-based luxury footwear designer, she founded Chelsea Paris, a luxury footwear brand, in 2012 inspired by her African heritage and named after her two daughters. Her mother's passing made her realize that life is short and there is no better time than the present to pursue her passion. 
Many celebrities, including Zendaya, Beyonce, Lupita, and Selena, have worn Chelsea Paris. Theresa acknowledges that the footwear industry is tough, but her initial ignorance of its difficulties helped her persevere and realize this dream. The ethos of her brand is craftsmanship, sustainability, and giving back. Chelsea Paris shoes are designed in London and expertly handcrafted in small artisan factories in Italy.
In this episode, we discuss Theresa's determination to make it in an industry dominated by people who didn't look like her. As an outsider in a white male-dominated industry, Theresa faced challenges. She recalls people assuming she was the salesperson at trunk shows and even some advisors suggesting that she had a new "face" of the brand represented by a white man. Theresa shares her journey of making it, her early supporters like Barneys, who took a chance on her, the importance of community and paying it forward, the role of identity in fashion, and the challenges of managing a successful business. Lastly, Theresa shares her approach to self-care and the importance of giving herself that one hour.

According to serial entrepreneur, author, and Harvard Business School Senior Lecturer, Christina Wallace, pouring yourself into a single full-time job is the riskiest move you can make. Focusing on one career path doesn't work anymore for reasons ranging from recessions to student loan debt, the gig economy, climate disasters, and a global pandemic (to name a few). We need a dramatically different relationship with work that allows us to define ourselves beyond our paid labor.

In her new book, The Portfolio Life: How to Future Proof Your Career, Avoid Burnout and Build a Life Bigger than Your Business Card, self-described "human Venn diagram," Christina Wallace adapts tried-and-true practices from the business sector to help you eschew the cult of ambition and experience the freedom of building the flexible, fulfilling, and sustainable life you want. Drawing on research, case studies, and her own experience, she walks you step-by-step through designing a strategy for the long haul. Because you deserve rest, relationships, and a rewarding career—not someday, but today. After all, you only live once.

Wallace talks about building a life like a portfolio rather than a linear career as disruptions become more frequent and diversification and flexibility become more valuable. The Portfolio Life is an anti-hustle, pro-rest approach to work-life balance, built on three tenets:


You are more than any one role or opportunity.
Diversification will help you navigate change and mitigate uncertainty.
When (not if) your needs change, you can and should rebalance.

In this episode, we discuss the idea of a portfolio career and how having multiple areas of expertise can be beneficial. Christina emphasizes the importance of recognizing the value of diverse experiences and networks and how a Venn diagram can identify areas of opportunity and help you connect the dots between many areas of expertise. Christina shares her startup failure story and how it's now a case study at Harvard. Though crushed and paralyzed, she got back on her feet by committing to 70 coffees in 30 days. You'll learn the three crucial questions she asked her network that brought her back in touch with her self-worth and clarified her next steps. 

Jane Green has written twenty-one novels including 18 New York Times bestsellers published in over 25 languages with over 10 million books in print worldwide. She is now giving busy women audio dramas as the new head of Emerald Audio, a new podcast network producing shows from some of the best-loved writers in the world. As if that wasn't enough, she's also navigating her Dear Jane column in the Daily Mail. How does Jane Green manage to do it all? The answer lies in how Jane describes herself, an energizer bunny with only two moods: on and off.
In this episode, Jane takes us behind the scenes of her creative writing process, how she manages her day, her career, and her relationships. We talk about burning bridges, anxiety and fear, and how to let go of the negativity. We discuss the power of discipline in writing and how a single photograph inspired Jane to write her newest novel, Sister Stardust. Her advice for aspiring novelists is to write what you want, not what you think will sell. Don't be put off by rejection. And don't hand your book out for everyone to read and seek validation. Jane says, "Whenever we think we'll write something capturing the zeitgeist because we'll be a bestseller. The moment is gone, and you're not writing from your heart."