My marketing career in 28 sentences:

1. Quit job at Sam's Club to start an eComm business

2. Borrow $40k from my dad

3. Lose $35k in the first four months

4. Realize you suck at marketing

5. Spend $4k+ on useless marketing courses and masterminds

6. Use your last $300 to buy Breakthrough Advertising (yes, it cost $300 in 2013)

7. Read the book three times in 2 weeks

8. Make $200k in 6 months

9. PayPal shuts down your account and keeps half the money for another six months

10. Quit eCommerce and spend a year reading, thinking, and writing

11. Start freelancing and get fired from your first client

12. Double down on consulting and double your rates

13. Get three retainers and feel on top of the world

14. Blow up your retainers by taking on too much work

15. Get so stressed you get shingles at 26 years old

16. Take a month off to heal

17. Get hired as a full-time content marketer at an agency

18. Spend a year and a half learning the ropes of content marketing

19. Start a content marketing consulting business on the side

20. Get so busy you have to quit your agency job

21. Marketing starts to make sense

22. Close a 6-figure content marketing deal with a big brand

23. Rethink everything you knew about marketing

24. Design a "unified theory" of marketing and put it together into a 20,000-word PDF

25. Get better results for clients and yourself

26. Post about your experiences on Twitter and LinkedIn

27. Build a following of people who are interested in what you're doing

28. Learn to deal with haters and trolls

---

Want a content engine that converts right off the bat and positions your brand for the long term?

Shoot me a DM.

Josue Valles

Founder at The-Flyer-1™

The best creative work doesn't come from staring at a blank page. It comes from staring at two different things and finding the connection between them. It comes through curation, synthesis, and lateral thinking.

Subscribe for weekly frameworks 👇

https://curationlabs.substack.com/

Founder

I build curated assets that last.

If you're a founder or C-level exec looking to build your personal brand, I can help you build a curated library of assets that'll help you grow fast without sacrificing quality.

If you're a consultant or agency who wants to incorporate curation into their marketing arsenal, I offer a 12-week workshop where I guide you through my entire process.

Want to learn more?

Send me a DM.

The best book on creativity I've ever read is 48 pages long, was written in 1939 by an ad man who left school in 6th grade, and takes about 30 minutes to read. Here's his entire method:

The book is "A Technique for Producing Ideas" by James Webb Young. 

Young wasn't an academic...he was a copywriter at J. Walter Thompson who created one of the most controversial ads in history (a 1919 deodorant ad so blunt that 200 women cancelled their magazine subscriptions and female copywriters told him he'd insulted every woman in America. Sales went up 112%.)

Here's the method:

Step 1: Gather raw material (both specific and general).

Young says the quality of your ideas is directly tied to the quantity and diversity of what you feed your brain. 

* Specific material is research about the actual problem. 
* General material is everything else: history, psychology, random conversations, unrelated industries. 

The more pieces you have, the more combinations are possible.

Step 2: Mentally chew the material.

Take the facts and turn them over. Look at them from different angles. Try fitting pieces together like a puzzle. Young says most people quit here because it's uncomfortable...you're holding a bunch of disconnected information and nothing clicks yet. That discomfort is the process working, not failing.

Step 3: Drop it completely.

Stop thinking about the problem. Go for a walk. Watch a movie. Sleep. Your subconscious is still connecting the pieces even when your conscious mind has moved on.

Step 4: The idea shows up on its own.

Young says it'll come to you "while shaving, or bathing, or most often when you are half awake in the morning." This only works if you did steps 1-3 honestly. If you skipped the research or rushed the chewing, nothing shows up in the shower.

Step 5: Test it against reality.

Take your idea to other people. Let them poke holes in it. Young says most people are so attached to the flash of insight from step 4 that they skip this entirely, and the idea dies on contact with the real world. Good ideas survive criticism, but great ideas get better from it.

The underlying principle is simple: 

An idea is nothing more than a new combination of existing elements. 

You can't combine things you haven't collected, and you can't connect dots you've never seen.

Senior Partner Manager at Hootsuite | Enterprise Alliances with MarTech SaaS | Head of Sales & Marketing at MyRisk | Board Director | Author of "Connect & Act - Systematic Social Selling"

I spend my days working with boutique marketing agencies across Australia, New Zealand and Asia Pacific helping them build businesses that feel lighter, clearer and more scalable.

Agencies don’t struggle because of a lack of talent; they struggle because they’re carrying too much alone. That’s where I fit.

ActiveCampaign gives them the tooling. I help them build the engine, the rhythm and the confidence to grow.

After moving to Australia nearly a decade ago, I found myself drawn to the agency world — the conversations, the creativity, the honesty, the challenge of wearing ten hats at once.

One thread that runs through everything I do is the belief that business moves at the speed of human connection. It’s why I’ve created my #42coffees series: slowing down enough to hear people’s stories, understand their direction and find the right doors to open for them.

The same energy shows up in the in-person events I run across Asia Pacific. When people meet in real rooms, things shift: ideas get clearer, partnerships form faster and growth feels more human.

Since then I’ve supported partners at ActiveCampaign and beforehand at Hootsuite, GoTo, Noggin, KeepItSafe and across the broader MSP and MarTech landscape. The work is always a mix of:
→ partnerships (finding the right doors)
→ automation & lifecycle systems (removing friction)
→ Social Selling (building visibility without becoming someone you’re not)
→ productised services (so the business stops feeling heavy)

What I enjoy most is watching agency founders realise they don’t need to grow through burnout — they can grow through structure.

Moving to Australia was not a straight line. A layoff opened a moment of pause which became an inflection point. I studied leadership using the time to understand the emerging SaaS ecosystem. That allowed me to transfer my experience into a new market, build a partnership-focused identity from the ground up, and develop the human-connection mindset that defines how I work today.

I’m also a long-time writer with 28 books from travel guides to Social Selling and personal development. Writing helps me make sense of things and help others do the same.

Outside work, I serve as a Board Director of Sydney’s historic Castlereagh Boutique Hotel. It’s a role rooted in community, heritage and looking after something that matters — values I try to bring into my work with agencies as well.

If you’re a boutique marketing agency founder trying to shape the next stage of your business, I’d love to hear your story. Every agency journey starts differently and no one builds it alone.

Gunnar Habitz

Did you ever return to a place that played a significant role in your life?

Alexandra and I knew each other only for half a year when we decided to go from Europe to New Zealand for a couple of month, right after uni. Here we're sitting in Auckland at a lunch break from learning English at the Auckland University. Little did I know that I would move to an English speaking country.

Exactly ten years ago we returned to Auckland, stayed with the same kiwi family and travelled - this time without learning English but figuring out if the South Pacific suits us (hint. it still does!).

Now I will come to Auckland again for the ActiveCampaign #EvolvingAgencySeries event on Thursday 19 March.

This is the perfect change to discuss with local marketing agencies the role they play with clients in an AI world to keep the human connection.

And for me it means reconnecting again with the place that built our journey already so long ago.

Looking forward to meeting our partners, my host family and fellow professionals who still remember me.

Any marketing agency who wants to explore #autonomousmarketing, please check this out:
https://bit.ly/47kxi5j

What's your impression when you returned to such an important place in your life?

Helping boutique marketing agencies scale through human connection, automation & AI-powered workflows | Agency Ecosystem Lead @ ActiveCampaign (APAC) | Ghostwriting educational email courses for authority & conversion

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Imagine this: your marketing activities focus only on social media - and nothing converts. Or you write very good emails - but nobody reads them. That's a sign of a missing element. Which one?
💡
I'm talking about customer journeys. Most businesses are deep in their services knowing the benefits for the clients in and out - but they're coming from a view of the solution, not from capturing the problem.

That's the space for an expert who understands customer journeys. One of my favourites in that area is Mando Anderson who runs his boutique agency Yeah Mando after his successful term as onboarding specialist at ActiveCampaign.

Mando and I met at my favourite café in Sydney's famous Bondi beach, the legendary Gertrude & Alice Cafe Bookstore.

Here are my thoughts from the 92nd episode of my #42coffees series:

1. Keep the human connection in digital channels without expecting to squeeze people thought static processes.

2. Turn subscribers into raving fans with the right approach from capturing leads on social media bringing them into email nurturing.

3. Show behind the scenes with customers stories alongside those customer journeys to be relatable and personalised (ActiveCampaign can help with that).

4. Don't just talk about authenticity, act as your true self even if it is quirky, raw and unpolished. Subscribe to Mando's newsletter to you see what I mean.

How do you describe the customer journeys for your business?

#emailmarketing #CRM #autonomousmarketing

Imagine you're a creative pro and enjoy working with modern AI companies? Now you have the chance!

I could observe the power of this type of role when I got a stretch assignment at Hootsuite to improve their Social Selling online course. I created the concept of new lessons while their animators, editors, narrators and video experts created magic out of it.

Now this type of role becomes available within the creative team at ActiveCampaign! We’re searching for a talented Animator & Editor to help us bring the brand to life.

This is an exciting opportunity to architect motion designs from scratch, partner with Product Marketing, and push the boundaries of what’s possible in SaaS. 

If you live in After Effects and Premiere Pro and have a meticulous eye for typography and colour theory, you’ll fit right in.

Check it out here: https://bit.ly/4rV15K4

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