Workshop · Teams & Culture · 60–90 min
Hire curiosity. Build the rest.
How a 35-person marketing function got built from a blank page — and the hiring rule I refuse to bend.
Given a blank page and a budget, the reasonable move is to hire an agency. I built in-house instead, because I’d rather own a capability than rent one. But the structure isn’t the interesting part. Who you let in is.
Hire for curiosity, not credentials.
The obvious hire was a finance-literate marketer. I went the other way and recruited for appetite — people who wanted to learn a category rather than defend a CV they already had. Everything else on a job spec can be taught. That one thing can’t, so it’s the only line I hold.
Built the function from zero to 35 people across brand, media, product, AI and community — in a category most of them had never worked in. Then protected the bar the way the best houses I’d worked in protected theirs: deliberately, every day, through every layer.
The metric I’m quietly proudest of isn’t on any award shelf: people who chose to follow me from one company to the next.
Built for working teams rather than audiences: the in-house-vs-agency decision, hiring for curiosity, defending a standard without becoming the bottleneck, and structuring a team around outcomes instead of channels. Runs as a 60–90 minute workshop, or a 35-minute keynote if you need the short version.
What the room leaves with
- When to build capability in-house and when to rent it.
- How to interview for curiosity rather than credentials.
- How to protect a high bar without becoming the bottleneck.
- Structuring a marketing team around outcomes, not channels.
The thinking behind it: how I lead · building the function.