Pinning Down Success with Tina Gammon

Kristy: Welcome back to another episode of the Free Dive podcast I’m your host Kristy. Thank you so much for being here we are just having so much fun and we hope that you are too um this week we have a very special interview for you back in March we started a very special series for women and marketing and we started this series uh for women’s month of course and it’s a series that we plan to continue in the future. Back in March we did two interviews with two very special ladies and we wanted to highlight the first for this week’s uh podcast interview so we are going to share the interview with Tina Gammon from Neurohacker so please enjoy.

Maddie: Well Tina thank you so much for joining us on our ongoing series on women in marketing we’re really happy to have the chance to talk to you.

Tina: Yeah I’m happy to be here, thank you.

Maddie: Would you be able to share a little bit with us about your journey into marketing what got you started and what has happened to you since then.

Tina: Yeah, I’d love to so it’s a little bit long-winded so I’ll try to keep it short, but it is a very cool story.

Maddie: Okay, we’re here for it.

Tina: Okay um so it all started back about 15 years ago when my husband and I were getting ready to go backpacking in Switzerland.

Maddie: That’s a good start.

Tina: I know right it’s always a good start it was the best trip ever but that’s different. Um but anyway at that time our family and our friends were very like we want to be connected with you and we want to know you’re alive and all the things and I thought I don’t want to be sending out text every day and international phone plans so I decided to have a blog like a little word press blog.

Maddie: Nice.

Tina: And that kept everybody happy so each day I would do that and share something and it it worked perfectly but you know social media things get shared on social media and the blog found itself to the hands of um a friend of mine who also owned a marketing agency Alisa Meredith um she’s incredible and when we got back she reached out to me and said hey like would you like to write for my company like I- I would like to have a writer and we don’t we’re always looking for writers and I can remember thinking at the time like I’m not a writer right
like that was for fun and I had a job I was working at a busy chiropractor office as an office manager and that felt safe to me so um but I was also kind of raised my dad always raised me to like take your shots in life so I thought and I also really like food and I thought well what if I just write a couple articles a month and it picks up the tab for my husband and I to go out to eat a couple times like win-win right so I started writing for just a couple articles a month and then but at the same time she was training me about marketing like I was picking things up as we were going which felt kind of like a hobby to me but I think she saw the potential that I didn’t see in myself and so after a few months it came into like I think you have skills that we could use for social media marketing or for email marketing like would you consider if the agency paid to have you certified for HubSpot and all the things that you need to would you do it? And again I can remember thinking I have a job this is a big change do I want to do this but I really loved marketing like everything that I was eating up about it fascinated me so I said yes and so I went through that and then at the same time decided that there were some other skills that I could use that I didn’t have so I started to take some courses at like main media college and Photoshop and design and things like that and that went on to me managing a few accounts for her and at that time Pinterest was just making its face like in the social media world it was back when it was invite only.

Maddie: Oh I remember that.

Tina: Right. Saying something I think I had to get an invite from her to even have an account so um but she was so Savvy about this and she said like let’s write the Playbook on Pinterest marketing no one is doing it let’s do it together and I thought well that’s kind of cool and we did and we started to write out all this strategy and I had a creative side for the pins and uh so we did that we- we started to offer that you know Pinterest marketing to her clients and it like took off and it was doing well so that went on for a little bit too and then the accounts went away you know how it is in an agency they come and they go and now I had kind of invested in this but it was gone so she mentioned that she had seen in a Facebook group that somebody was looking for someone to create hundreds of of pins for Pinterest.

Maddie: Wow.

Tina: And she was like Tina like do it you know how to do this so I re- I was nervous about it I reached out to the guy his name was Mark how which I didn’t realize it at the time was one of the biggest things in my career ever was meeting this guy and so he was like yes we have a startup we need you to create hundreds of pins each month and I was like great so I came on as a sub-contractor now was connected with another woman who I consider to be a great in the marketing industry Sandra um and learned a bunch from her and Mark saw potential in me and was like setting me up with skills there and that quickly turned into doing social media marketing
for them and paid ads so I was building again there and then that startup went under.

Maddie: Oh wow.

Tina: But when it did I had the best two years of my life working for that place but when it did Mark has been incredibly loyal to me and I’ll always be grateful to him and he went on to launch another startup and when he did he brought me with him.

Maddie: Oh that’s cool.

Tina: And fast forward seven years later and I’m you know managing content and all the things for Neurohacker Collective.

Maddie:That’s fantastic.

Tina: Yeah.

Maddie: That’s very cool.

Tina: Yeah.

Maddie: How do you think that the assistance of and support of other women in marketing um
got you where you are today?

Tina: Oh it was everything and I think that if you’ve ever had the situation where you’ve worked in a toxic environment with other women it makes this look super special that to work with women that were like at the top of their Industries and were not uncomfortable with sharing because they were afraid that would make them less than but were willing to train me and to kind of raise me up alongside of them and even today the woman that I work for I work like to along with the senior vice president of marketing and Lauren is one of the smartest and savviest people I’ve ever met and yet she’s always like what can I give you to help you succeed what skills do you need to do more uh which is smart right because then she gets more out of me it works but it’s just a very supportive relationship and again without the schooling that so many people launch from four years of marketing into this like without these people taking shots on me showing confidence and- and not making it a competitive environment like I owe all of this to all of them.

Maddie: Yeah I- I totally agree uh having a supportive environment creates such better results than a combative or um where people feel like they have to fight against each other.

Tina: 100%.

Madde: Yeah definitely. Were there any particular challenges that you’ve faced or had to overcome since you got involved in marketing?

Tina: Yeah I would say there’s a couple so I think at first now that you know my story there was a little bit of like Imposter syndrome right because I was working alongside people that had been to school for four years or whatever and I was trying to find my value in that or my voice and learning that I just because I didn’t do it in the traditional fashion did not mean that I didn’t have something strong to bring to the table.

Maddie: Yeah.

Tina: So I think that was a challenge and then I think what continues to be a challenge for me and I don’t have to really explain this to you because you work in marketing but marketing like there’s a high level of burnout in marketing um as marketers we touch a lot of things and things are changing constantly.

Maddie: Very true.

Tina: Right and there’s never going to be a zero inbox and you finish a project and there’s another one waiting for you and I think to be like healthy and to learn how to prioritize and to pivot in marketing is something that I’m continuing to learn with age and with time um but it doesn’t mean that it’s I’m always successful at it.

Maddie: Right it’s a work in progress.

Tina: For sure.

Maddie: Yeah I agree with that could you share a project or a campaign that you’ve worked on that that you’ve been particularly proud of.

Tina: Yeah I love this question. So I think that one of my favorite things like my pride and joy
are our social media channels and when I started at Neurohacker seven years ago like we were just building the channels I think it’s kind of cool to be with a company from that point on right and I can remember when we hit 10,000 followers and like we thought we were the best thing ever like we’re a supplement company that’s not sexy right and 10,000 people are interested in us like that’s amazing and now I sit before you about seven years later and we have 531,000 followers and it continues to be one of our strongest traffic drivers and like that excites me I still get excited about it and I love leaning into learning from our community as our community has changed like over the time when we first started it was very male-dominated very alpha male we were focused on uh brain nootropics or cognitive enhancers and it was a bunch of Meatheads who were trying to you know not really there were also other people using it but now we’ve
shifted and like watching our demographics change to women as we’ve increased our product line and seeing how those serve their needs and what they need and like I take great joy in
going through the feeds and like feeling like these are my friends like what are they telling me they need um but I am incredibly proud of our social media channels and not just the traffic that they drive but they’ve opened up doors for us to use in marketing because someone will be more inclined to come on our podcast if they know that we have you know x amount of followers that this content will be shared on.

Maddie: It legitimizes.

Tina: Right or working with influencers like they’re more inclined to say yes when we have that
compared to other supplement companies that might have 20,000 it’s not worth their time so I think so often social media can just be like the thing that anybody can do but when it’s done well
there’s so much power in it and those numbers just continue to excite me.

Maddie: That’s fantastic.

Tina: Yeah.

Maddie: Are there any skills or traits that you think are important to succeed in the field of marketing?

Tina: I-I think that one of the most important things is being really comfortable with analytics like what we can’t optimize what we don’t understand is working or not working right so I try really hard to take that approach and thankfully the company and the marketing team that I work with we very data driven so it works that way but I think sometimes people operate in a space where they’re intimidated by analytics or they think I’m a creative so I- I can’t really understand that but I think they’re not mutually exclusive to be creative and to have analytics work for you and I think there’s even more power and being able to really understand them yourself versus just someone on the team giving you a print out of what’s going on and then to use that to inform how you create how you talk to your audience and the articles and all the content
you’re creating I think that’s incredibly important.

Maddie: Yeah taking a holistic approach to marketing so to speak.

Tina: Yeah.

Maddie: That makes sense.

Tina: Yeah.

Maddie: How do you think that companies can create a more supportive and inclusive environment for women?

Tina: So when I was originally sent the questions for this interview I this is the one that I sat
with the longest to be honest because I started to think about the company that I work for and I was like man I work with a lot of dudes like there’s a lotof them like on the executive team there’s only one woman yeah my boss our marketing team just we just had a hire a couple of weeks ago but it had always been slanted towards men but then I thought like maybe the fact that I didn’t notice it is a good thing.

Maddie: Yeah.

Tina: Like maybe the company had created a space where I always felt that I had a voice and that my needs were always met and these people were just sitting in the seats that they were sitting in because they were the best talent at the time that we hired right.

Maddie: That makes sense.

Tina: So um the company that I work for is inedible in that there’s not a whole lot of managing that happens they believe that if you hire the right person and put them in the right seat you do not need to micromanage them.

Maddie: Nice.

Tina: And they’re very focused on work-life balance so as long as you meet your deadlines and as long as you meet your meetings every week no one’s really checking on you about where you work and how you work and what you do they just trust you to do it and I would say like not just for woman I appreciate that as a woman some days you’re not feeling 100% And I can pick and choose what I’ll work on that for that day just knowing that the end goal is to hit deadlines.

Maddie: Yeah.

Tina: But they’re like that for gender across the board and I just think it makes me want to work harder for a company like that because they’re being so supportive of what’s important in my life it’s like well how can I- you know pay it forward and give it back to them.

Maddie: Absolutely, well when you feel trusted and comfortable your- your commitment to
your company is going to be extended.

Tina: Sure 100%, yeah.

Maddie: Well cool so that kind of answers the question about how your company has done that well so that’s really great that you have that environment how do you envision the future of marketing and where do you see yourself in that future?

Tina: Yeah so I feel like marketing has shifted I mean it always has right there’s ups and flows but I think about marketing approaches 15 or 20 years ago and how they were very like cold pitch it was just so sales driven and I think about like our generation of people and now I think authenticity is like king that’s where it reigns.

Maddie: Right.

Tina: And so I think that that can be a challenge for some marketers to like get in the minds of- of ideal customer and then ask the questions of if I was them what would I want and I think that we’re seeing companies pull away from other companies when they do that successfully.

Maddie: Interesting.

Tina: And so I mean we’re seeing it even there’s certain things that like we’re seeing when we’re testing them like on Instagram for instance if we share a branded post where a supplement company of a product it falls flat but if it’s in someone’s hand and it feels like it’s lifestyle I mean that goes for the platform too right right but I think there’s power and them being like hey someone just like me is using this and it solved the problem.

Maddie: Relatability.

Tina: Yes and so I think it’s going to continue to go in that direction I’m interested to see where AI plays in into that I mean there’s that’s a very saturated topic and we could spend a half an hour just on that um but you know how we can utilize that but without losing the human element in marketing because we don’t want to sacrifice authenticity and being human for efficiency.

Maddie: Yeah.

Tina: But we also need to get a lot of things done.

Maddie: Yeah it’s a hard balance for sure.

Tina: So I think we’re going to see how we’re going to make that work as we move forward and I think the successful ones will blend it really well.

Maddie: Yeah I agree because people are intuitive and they can they can tell what’s fake and they don’t want it.

Tina: Yeah, yeah.

Maddie: What advice would you give to young women who are interested in pursuing a career in marketing?

Tina: Okay so there’s a few things so I would go back to my imposter syndrome in the beginning and like know your value and add tax it’s a very Pinterest and overused quote but there’s truth to it right like find what you’re good at and then just don’t play small within that I think back like if had played small in some of these opportunities and talked myself out of these things I wouldn’t be doing something every day that I love so that would be number one number two I think would be like don’t check your inbox frequently leave your phone in the other room when you’re working on a project there’s been so many studies that have shown that even just having our phone on our desks like our brain is distracted because it’s waiting for a message to come in interesting yeah there’s really cool studies to support that so I have times it’s been a game-changer for me where I literally put it out in the living room and I silence it and I remind myself like there’s no marketing emergency right right I can have an hour and a half to work on this really important project right now and to do it without the slacks and the Facebook and Instagram notifications I- I mean that’s important for me in my personal life too but I would say in your career like learning that that balance that some projects like when you can give it a 100% distraction free the quality is so much stronger the company deserves that you deserve that um and then the last thing I would say I like be-be comfortable and take risks outside of your comfort zone growth really does live outside of our comfort zones and I think that like when we get up on our edges and we’re not just staying where we’re comfortable and it kind of pushes emotional and other growth career boundaries we kind of surprise ourselves and the confidence that comes out of that yeah is strong and I just think you know when we’re a healthy version of ourselves we show up healthier for work too.

Maddie: Oh that makes perfect sense.

Tina: Yeah so trusting ourselves whether it be in work or in other situations to challenge ourselves and to lean into the discomfort and become a better version on the other side.

Maddie: Yeah that’s great. That’s not only great advice for people who are maybe young women starting their career but that’s great advice for everyone no matter what point you are in your career.

Tina: Yeah.

Maddie: That’s great yeah well thank you so much for joining us today we really appreciate you taking the time to talk to us and it’s been great talking to you Tina.

Tina: Thank you