New Shoes

Welcome to The Beat by Rockstar CMO. I’m Ian Truscott, a CMO and trusted advisor, and in this newsletter, I’d like to share a mix of marketing street knowledge that I hope will help unlock the rockstar marketer in you.

Hello!

This week is a bit of a personal update, as I am doing something new. You could say I am trying on some New Shoes, as the Paolo Nutini song goes, which has given this email its subject line.

In 2019, I interviewed Dennis Shiao, now a friend of Rockstar CMO, who at the time described himself as an “accidental freelancer”, as the work chose him, and his agency Attention Retention was born.

That phrase has stuck with me, as I think, especially now, it seems many senior marketers are becoming accidental freelancers, or “fractional CMOs” as is the buzzword du jour, as (anecdotally and what I perceive on LinkedIn) churn in the senior ranks of marketing seems to be getting worse.

However, this is not another lament about the tenure of senior marketers. I suppose I have accidentally become “Rockstar CMO”, as I frequently point out that I might be a CMO, but I am not a rockstar; it hasn’t sat well with me lately.

The brand was created as a publication, not a personal brand, and I have found this problematic when I started selling my accidental freelance work under the same brand. So, I am making a change and have launched Velocity B, as the brand for my services.

The other change is that while I dipped in and out of freelancing over the last decade, including being a fractional CMO twice, I was like Dennis, accidental in that these gigs found me, I had no serious long term aspirations to create a business, it was just how the organizations that I was helping wanted to pay me.

That has also changed, as I have business partners, and so the “our” on the website is not a way for a solopreneur to make themselves seem bigger, but genuinely, there are other people.

I need to be purposeful, develop business, all those adulting business things.

If you like this newsletter and the podcast, I’ll keep doing it, normal service will resume next week with a marketing topic - but I’d love for you to check out my new shoes - Velocity B.

As someone I’ve been emailing for years, it would be great to get your feedback.

Cheers!

Ian Truscott | Managing Partner | Velocity B

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