4 ms·

"If you’re bootstrapped and have an email list of 1,000 people and want to grow that list, you don’t need a full-time email marketing manager, a writer, a desig

"If you’re bootstrapped and have an email list of 1,000 people and want to grow that list, you don’t need a full-time email marketing manager, a writer, a designer and a junior marketer to execute on a content marketing strategy for you...You need a motivated, scrappy content marketer who can do all of those jobs at once." I agree about the time-wasting meetings, but not about the above, since I'm directly in that situation. You could hope to find one person to fill any two of those jobs, but all you'll get out of a 'scrappy content marketer' is a vacant position and a series of burnouts. That's hard work, where you have to invest resources to reap rewards.

joshdotsmith 10y ago
To add to your point: people often make the mistake of trying to replace former team members with people who fit the exact skill profile of the person who left. It's highly improbable you'll find the perfect match. Instead, identify the bundle of tasks that person did and find people who can take them on separately, and perhaps accomplish other tasks you didn't even realize your team could do. If you were to identify every task your business needs, then you have the flexibility to direct those tasks to the right people. Further, if you're in a high-growth environment, you can continue to scale by motivating your people to fire themselves from their worst tasks and focus on their best expertise. If your team continues to evolve in this way while your company keeps sound unit economics, then congratulations! You've solved the scaling problem.
dibstern 10y ago
Does that not depend entirely on the size/stage of your business, the size of your customers and your industry? I don't think it's unusual for an email list to be managed by one dude at an early stage tech startup.
smitherfield 10y ago
I think the idea is that it's worth "overpaying" for a single exceptional employee in a given area, as opposed to underpaying for several. (Which seems to be a definite truism in my observation of which businesses and teams succeed and fail).
- cookiecaper 10y ago
  It's hard enough to find a single semi-competent employee by "overpaying". I don't think it's as simple as increasing the salary on the job listing by 20% and watching the super qualified candidates pour in.
  - coredog64 10y ago
    I'm not privy to what my employer is advertising for senior DevOps positions, but I can tell you it's not nearly enough: I get resumes where "installed htop" is a prominent bullet point. Literally. The last two hires have been somewhere between oxygen thief and chair warmer. TL;DR: If you are getting crappy candidates, you are likely offering too little and could tempt better candidates with a better offer.
    - cookiecaper 10y ago
      I've looked into the market for Sr. DevOps positions lately and unfortunately found exactly that to be the case. No one is willing to offer enough to lure me away from my current gig, where I'm reasonably happy. The employers that don't immediately scoff at the proposed salary tend to give me grief about it, which makes it not worth the time.
      - morgante 10y ago
        What do you think is a reasonable salary for Senior DevOps engineers these days?
        thecrazyone 10y ago
        Use glassdoor my friend, the salaries vary a lot by location and company. You should checkout what competitors are paying in your location
  - BrandonM 10y ago
    When you say "overpaying", what is that number for you? For context, in 2011, Clorox and other established Bay Area companies paid marketing managers with a few years of relevant experience ~$120,000. Visa is starting fresh Economics grads at $70,000 for marketing roles. If you're not in that neighborhood, good luck. Startups don't seem to value marketing as much as the big companies, and then they wonder why they need 4 people for one job. Offering under $100K for a Director of Marketing (sadly common in startups) is a joke.
mseebach 10y ago
I'm not in your situation at all, but it does not pass the smell test that you need more than one person, much less four, to work on growing a 1000 person email list without burnout.
BrandonM 10y ago
A good marketing manager with a few years under her belt should be able to do this without breaking a sweat. Unfortunately, like a non-tech company hiring programmers, non-marketers seem to be pretty bad at recognizing good marketers.
davemel37 10y ago
>You could hope to find one person to fill any two of those jobs, but all you'll get out of a 'scrappy content marketer' is a vacant position and a series of burnouts. One person can easily manage all of this and more very affordably with freelancers, tools, and a decent process. Where you go wrong is when the person managing is "figuring it out on the fly." Use canva or stencil for design, use textbroker or copypress for content at scale, all that is left is building an editorial calendar, planning content promotion, blogger outreach, all of which can be done with tools, etc... ...if you have clarity about what exactly needs to be done from ideation to promotion, its really not that hard for one person with tools and freelancers to execute on.

joshdotsmith 10y ago

To add to your point: people often make the mistake of trying to replace former team members with people who fit the exact skill profile of the person who left. It's highly improbable you'll find the perfect match. Instead, identify the bundle of tasks that person did and find people who can take them on separately, and perhaps accomplish other tasks you didn't even realize your team could do. If you were to identify every task your business needs, then you have the flexibility to direct those tasks to the right people. Further, if you're in a high-growth environment, you can continue to scale by motivating your people to fire themselves from their worst tasks and focus on their best expertise. If your team continues to evolve in this way while your company keeps sound unit economics, then congratulations! You've solved the scaling problem.

dibstern 10y ago

Does that not depend entirely on the size/stage of your business, the size of your customers and your industry? I don't think it's unusual for an email list to be managed by one dude at an early stage tech startup.

smitherfield 10y ago

I think the idea is that it's worth "overpaying" for a single exceptional employee in a given area, as opposed to underpaying for several. (Which seems to be a definite truism in my observation of which businesses and teams succeed and fail).

cookiecaper 10y ago
It's hard enough to find a single semi-competent employee by "overpaying". I don't think it's as simple as increasing the salary on the job listing by 20% and watching the super qualified candidates pour in.
- coredog64 10y ago
  I'm not privy to what my employer is advertising for senior DevOps positions, but I can tell you it's not nearly enough: I get resumes where "installed htop" is a prominent bullet point. Literally. The last two hires have been somewhere between oxygen thief and chair warmer. TL;DR: If you are getting crappy candidates, you are likely offering too little and could tempt better candidates with a better offer.
  - cookiecaper 10y ago
    I've looked into the market for Sr. DevOps positions lately and unfortunately found exactly that to be the case. No one is willing to offer enough to lure me away from my current gig, where I'm reasonably happy. The employers that don't immediately scoff at the proposed salary tend to give me grief about it, which makes it not worth the time.
    - morgante 10y ago
      What do you think is a reasonable salary for Senior DevOps engineers these days?
      - thecrazyone 10y ago
        Use glassdoor my friend, the salaries vary a lot by location and company. You should checkout what competitors are paying in your location
- BrandonM 10y ago
  When you say "overpaying", what is that number for you? For context, in 2011, Clorox and other established Bay Area companies paid marketing managers with a few years of relevant experience ~$120,000. Visa is starting fresh Economics grads at $70,000 for marketing roles. If you're not in that neighborhood, good luck. Startups don't seem to value marketing as much as the big companies, and then they wonder why they need 4 people for one job. Offering under $100K for a Director of Marketing (sadly common in startups) is a joke.

mseebach 10y ago

I'm not in your situation at all, but it does not pass the smell test that you need more than one person, much less four, to work on growing a 1000 person email list without burnout.

BrandonM 10y ago

A good marketing manager with a few years under her belt should be able to do this without breaking a sweat. Unfortunately, like a non-tech company hiring programmers, non-marketers seem to be pretty bad at recognizing good marketers.

davemel37 10y ago

>You could hope to find one person to fill any two of those jobs, but all you'll get out of a 'scrappy content marketer' is a vacant position and a series of burnouts. One person can easily manage all of this and more very affordably with freelancers, tools, and a decent process. Where you go wrong is when the person managing is "figuring it out on the fly." Use canva or stencil for design, use textbroker or copypress for content at scale, all that is left is building an editorial calendar, planning content promotion, blogger outreach, all of which can be done with tools, etc... ...if you have clarity about what exactly needs to be done from ideation to promotion, its really not that hard for one person with tools and freelancers to execute on.