What up, marketers. Welcome to this marketer deep-dive edition of Adam’s Letter. Thanks to the 718 of you who have joined the community! The march to 1,000 continues. It’d mean the world to me if you take a second to forward this to a friend or colleague who would enjoy it.

Here’s to the crazy ones. The moms holding down full-time jobs and families. The marketers turned founders. The creators who never stop improving.

This one’s for you.

Today’s story is about Amanda Goetz. As the Brand Leader of The Knot, Founder of House of Wise, and Creator of Life’s a Game - you’ve certainly heard of her.

Here’s what you need to know about Amanda:

• She left her role as Brand Leader at the Knot to found, House of Wise

• She speaks openly about the challenge of raising kids and a career, shifting career focus, and co-parenting.

• She writes a weekly newsletter to help ambitious people win at work AND life

In true super-mom fashion, Amanda does all of this in addition to working a 9-5 as the marketing lead for a wellness company AND prioritizes fitness and health alongside her family.

I’m exhausted just typing all of that. Here are 3 lessons I’ve learned from Amanda:

Build a Holding Company of YOU

“Hold Co’s” are all the rage right now.

Every twitterboi with a cleaning company is also building a Hold Co of service companies or courses to bundle together a myriad of income streams - oh, and they can teach you how to build a Hold Co too for just $3k and 3 weeks…

Ya, ya I’m a little salty. Or jealous. Either way.

I much prefer the way Amanda approaches the same concept. Instead of building a “Hold Co” of businesses, she’s bundling a variety of income streams around her core product of…her.

Here’s the breakdown of her Modern Marketing Business of 1:

• works as a VP of Marketing with her 9-5

• consults with companies navigating marketing or brand challenges

• writes a weekly newsletter sponsored by Morning Brew

She has at least 3 sources of income. Not to mention other projects or brands she works on at any given time. In this way, she’s built a “Hold Co” around her various skill sets.

The product or service is always Amanda, but it can come in a variety of packages and products.

The lessons learned from building a brand, serving her customers (readers and followers), and refining her product offerings have a direct connection to how she improves the brand experience for her employer.

More marketers need to think this way.

This isn’t our parents’ era of pensions, retirement plans, and social security checks. Even if it was, there is too much opportunity accessible to people with our skill set to merely trust your future to the hands of someone else.

I’m actively pursuing this strategy - and you’re helping me by reading this newsletter (thanks!). It makes me a better marketer, business owner, and writer.

Stop behaving like you’re an employee on an assembly line at a factory.

What can your Hold Co offer?

Structure Your Time To Support Your Objectives

If you want to know what’s important to someone, look two places:

How do they spend their time and money?

Money gets the headlines, but time is something we often ignore our control over - especially as full-time marketers. That’s why I love Amanda’s advice on taking control of your time.

I liked it so much, I re-structured my day to employ parts of it.

The idea is simple enough.

Prioritize spending your energy on the most important tasks throughout the day, including work and family.

For me, this requires an early morning session to knock out core tasks that move my business forward. That frees me up to spend a couple of hours with family “before work,” and then to react to the realities of business throughout the day.

Everyone’s version of this will look different - but Amanda is onto something here.

We say we value X (x = family, fitness, health, friendships, a business idea, etc.). If we do, we’ll make time to pursue those things with vigor.

Build in Public

The thing I appreciate most about Amanda is her willingness to build in public.

So many marketers fall prey to believing everything they read online about someone’s success.

REMEMBER:

You don’t know their background.

You don’t know their financial situation.

You don’t know if they’re even making money right now.

There are so many people saying so many things about how to build, and what to build, and how easy it is if you’re just focused…

It’s all bs.

The realities of building a brand, earning customers, providing a product or service and charging (and receiving) a fair price for all that work is an incredibly challenging experience.

There is a reason most people aren’t self-employed.

So, when an authentic creator like Amanda comes along and shares the steps of her journey as she’s building - we ought to pay attention. She’s shown her work from being a highly productive employee, to the founder of a company, to a creator and author and more.

We need more marketers building in public.

Some of you would argue with this. “Too much content!” or “Stop sharing details online!”

I agree.

But the actual details behind starting, building, and maintaining a modern marketing career is messy. No generation before us has built the way we are today. We’re on a different playing field.

As such, we need more voices to shed light on the details and share the journey for others who will come alongside and after us. It’s a major intent of this newsletter.

Not to mention, it gives audiences skin in the game to support and potentially join your customer base as they get to know your journey and learn from your experiences. Win, win.

My takeaway: Defining career goals for yourself is critical to pursuing critical work. Having the confidence and knowledge to set objectives that fit your life is not easy. Most people follow the broad path. The hard work is figuring out the role work plays for the rest of your life. Amanda is a case study of a job done well in this area.

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