Latest / Retail Media Breakfast Club / Career Sliding Doors: The Pivotal Moments That Changed These 4 Ecomm Leaders' Careers
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- Q3 Sliding Doors Moment - Audio Cleaned === [00:00:00] I love hearing about people's career journeys, and especially more so in the world of retail media where everyone seems to come from somewhere different. It's never a straight path for anyone. And on today's episode, I am sharing some of those pivotal sliding doors, moments that. You look back and you realize that moment changed everything in your career. [00:00:28] So I asked a few of my brand side retail media friends to share their sliding doors moments, and you're going to hear about the power of persistence, how annoying the right person can lead to a great role. The unglamorous. Amazon Grind. That paid off a surprising leap from shopper marketing to witnessing Amazon's grocery revolution firsthand, and how a formal mentorship program changed everything for one of our [00:01:00] panelists, these career defining moments remind us that sometimes the most important door is the unexpected one. [00:01:07] Let's go. Good morning and welcome to the Retail Media Breakfast Club. I'm your host, Kerry Masters. And every weekday at 6:00 AM Eastern, I bring you candid and real discussions in the world of retail, media and marketplaces. In just 10 minutes. So bring your own cup of coffee and we'll get smarter about retail media together. [00:01:28] Now let's hear from Julie Liu, director of Digital Commerce at Ghirardelli Chocolate Company. Yes, so a sliding doors moment for me was in 2022. I participated in the Adweek Mentorship program and I was paired with the one and only Sarah Hofstetter from Profitero. So I was really lucky because. One, she's so inspirational, but two, also from a career standpoint and her area of expertise just aligned so well with my passion and my [00:02:00] focus in e-commerce. [00:02:02] And I call that time that we spent together a sliding doors moment because Sarah introduced me to a framework that allowed me to understand how I can better leverage my strengths while managing my weaknesses. And before I met Sarah, my previous approach was making sure that I was well-rounded in everything. [00:02:22] So do I have experience in, uh, operations? Do I have experience in marketing and account management? But Sarah really taught me that I don't necessarily need, you know, a year in a certain role to get hands-on experience. But I can learn so much just through reading and listening and doing a lot of independent research and learning myself. [00:02:45] And so she encouraged me. More so from the lens of what I need to focus on are my soft skills to get me where I wanna be in my career. Whereas my previous approach was really focusing in on what hard skills I [00:03:00] needed to develop. So definitely a sliding doors, uh, moment for me because it really changed my perspective on how I see my career, how I see my influence in digital evolving. [00:03:11] And with that, it allowed me to find ways that I could practice soft skills more so like. Presenting in a large group or influencing through others and storytelling. Uh, so once I was able to focus on those things, I just saw the career opportunities and external opportunities just continue to come my way. [00:03:30] Now let's hear from Josh Clarkson. Global lead for retail media at Mars and Chief consultant at Edify Digital Commerce Consulting. Yeah. Uh, I was working at lint in the UK and I was working on drug channel customers and kind of department stores and things like that. Um, and I would just go and annoy our head of e-commerce and ask for guidance and advice on, on things all the time. [00:03:54] And this meant he knew I had an interest and. That I was vaguely capable and we started having [00:04:00] conversations. So when he was forming a new Amazon team and creating a new Amazon role, he asked me to interview for it. And that was just pre pandemic. So once I luckily got the job, it was a bit crazy. But um, yeah, that was definitely kind of the starting moment for me to accelerate the e-commerce career. [00:04:18] I think, uh, if you want your own sliding door moment. The best thing is to show your enthusiasm and your interest upfront, even if you're in a different role or you don't yet have the technical know-how, you know, upskill yourself, listen to podcasts, follow people on LinkedIn. Get involved with key stakeholders, and then you can have your own. [00:04:35] Now let's hear from Todd Wegen, director of Sales at Massimo. Yeah, so I was a project manager at a consumer electronics retail chain, uh, in charge of really kind of new store build outs. So not very exciting stuff, and I just decided at one point that I. I was going to just quit and didn't have a job and didn't have a really long runway. [00:04:59] But [00:05:00] then I saw an ad in a local paper for a.com startup, and it was, uh, an e-commerce startup. It was called eight hundred.com. And they, uh, eventually became like best of the web, uh, according to Forbes Magazine. And we grew that business and it was focused on consumer electronics, but it was before there were really any tools. [00:05:21] We were inventing the tools. As we went on, I was like employee number 12 and kind of learned e-commerce at that point. Um, and then, you know, certain things happened and the bubble burst and that went away. We grew to a fairly sizable organization and then I went on to, to become a sales rep for one of the brands that called, uh, on us. [00:05:43] And so got on the sales side, but then I had always kind of had a in at Amazon because. A lot of people that I worked with at that startup ended up going to Amazon, and so I ended up like being a regional account manager that said, yeah, I can go knock on that [00:06:00] door and see what that's all about because my pure set on the rep side didn't want to have anything to do with Amazon. [00:06:06] It's like I. That's not glamorous. I'm not going golfing to go get a po I, I, I'm actually having to like, do things like resize images and find keywords and things like that. Um, but I, I, I didn't mind it. So I've worked with Amazon for, uh, probably 20 plus odd years at this point. Um, but you know, I think it's great because it changes all the time. [00:06:29] I mean, the stuff that you and I are talking about. It'll be different next week. I mean, odds are. And so that was kind of my moment I got fed up with just kind of doing normal things and kind of fell into e-commerce and learned it along the way. You know, I love that start. I love the irony of, um, finding a job at a startup in a newspaper run. [00:06:51] Now let's hear from Jace Ree, national Account Manager, e-Commerce at Red Bull. I'd say the moment was [00:07:00] about 10 years ago, and at that time I was at Coca-Cola. I was a shopper marketer on the Kroger customer team, and so I was living in Cincinnati in that role. I had moved up from Atlanta to Cincinnati. I was there for three years. [00:07:14] I. My wife has a lot of family in Georgia, so she wanted to move back before our son was born. So I started trying to find marketing roles at Koch in Atlanta. Uh, and then one day by happenstance, I ended up talking to a colleague who I used to work with in a different shopper marketing role, and she was on a newly formed e-comm team at Koch. [00:07:32] And she told me about a role calling on Amazon, specifically on Amazon Fresh. Uh, it's kind of funny to think, but that role had been open for a few months. They hadn't found anyone they liked for the role, and it was classified as a sales role, which is why I didn't even know the role existed. I, I didn't really have a desire to be an account management there, so I just never chose it as a filter for open jobs. [00:07:53] So I really had to think about this. What I'll say was that sliding doors moment like. What was I going to pursue? Was it these [00:08:00] marketing roles that I'd been pursuing for a little while, or this Amazon role? So just ultimately, um, I couldn't get the thought of working with Amazon outta my mind. Just my curiosity was raised, thinking about what they were doing in the grocery space. [00:08:13] So I prioritized the e-comm role. I interviewed and I got it, the hiring manager. He said he liked me because of my shopper marketing background. Ironically, he felt like the vendor managers at Amazon that they didn't really need account management person, uh, just because of how they managed the category. [00:08:30] It was so different from traditional retailers. And so he just really was wanting someone that had a good experience with a mix of customer marketing and general management, and he just thought I fit the bill. So really in that time, it was amazing, right? I, I reveled in my role. Working with Amazon Fresh because just really, I think about the five years I really focused on when I started, I mean, they changed and evolved so much with what they were doing with grocery, right? [00:08:56] 'cause I think they were in four markets when I started, and then they [00:09:00] launched Prime Now. They launched these Amazon Go stores. Then they opened up these Amazon Thresh grocery stores, and so I just got a front seat working with them and really just seeing how they changed grocery, both online and offline. [00:09:14] So all of that, it just really changed the trajectory of my career and I just never looked back. I just, I. Really have focused being an e-comm person rather than just a, a corporate person. Right. And I'd say it's funny 'cause I noticed that back when I started, like 10 years ago, the people who came into e-comm roles at that time at Koch, none of them had e-comm experience. [00:09:33] Right. Because it was so new. They came from a different area of the company and then they worked and maybe they. Were promoted into a new role in a different part of the company and then they left e-comm. And then you kind of fast forward now, right? And I can say with my current experience at Red Bull, like everyone on our e-comm team, they've got a plethora of e-comm experience, right? [00:09:52] And it's very different to see the maturation process happening here within e-comm. There's so many people now with great eCom experiences from [00:10:00] different companies and all, and there's still a long runway there, which I think is exciting. Well, that is it for today. I hope you enjoyed this episode of the Retail Media Breakfast Club. [00:10:10] We meet here every day at 6:00 AM Eastern, so be sure to subscribe and get your daily dose of insights, trends, and hot takes in the world of retail, media and marketplaces.