Marketers Take Flight: Origin, Vision, and Future

In celebration of seven years since founding Marketers Take Flight, I wanted to take time and reflect all the changes, lessons learned and successes.

I also wanted to take a moment to thank you, my readers, for being here, supporting me and keeping me motivated to keep this going. Your words of support and encouragement, along with hearing about your progress and career wins are why I do this!

Reader Acknowledgement

I get great feedback from my readers. Even a note that may seem little or simple to you, means the world to me. It can turn my entire week into sunshine and rainbows.

With Me from the Beginning

I wanted to give some very special acknowledgment to some of my readers from the beginning. These folks had faith in me from day one and continue to read and engage seven years later.

• Stacy R. – Orlando, FL
• Sarah R. – Orlando, FL
• Kari N. – Orlando, FL
• Katie B. – Orlando, FL
• Barbi S. – Orlando, FL
• Stephen V. – Orlando, FL

You will notice they are all from Orlando. That’s because I officially launched Marketers Take Flight while presenting at a Central Florida SMPS Marketing Mechanics Lunch event. It was my first public presentation entitled: “Set Yourself Up for Success: Grammar & Proofreading.”

Feedback from this presentation gave me chills. Stephen wrote:

Born from a Frustrated Marketer

Marketers Take Flight was born out of a frustrated marketer. A marketer who was working late trying to get a proposal done and couldn’t find resources. A marketer who was tasked with coming up with a marketing plan for her transportation engineering office and couldn’t find one that wasn’t for software or products. A marketer who so wanted to prove their marketing efforts were working but couldn’t find the right metric or report. Does this sound familiar?

As you probably guessed, this frustrated marketer was me. I had been working in the industry for about five years and heavily leaned on my SMPS buddies and firm colleagues to learn and discover new resources to help me and my firm. I had attended countless events and conferences. I was even invited to a three-day sales training for my firm. I had learned a lot.

Web 2.0 – A New Opportunity

At this time, web 2.0 came. This was the evolution of the internet from static HTML pages to more dynamic web experiences. This was the emergence of social media, digital marketing, and online communities. I was able to find information for marketing every other type of service and product. However, I still had a hard time finding proposal management and marketing strategy resources for our industry.

The Great Recession & Charting Our Own Path

This was also the recession. With my husband and I both working in the A/E/C industry, we saw many layoffs and downsizing. We had two kids. We had a mortgage and car payments. We were scared. While both of us were lucky and weren’t laid off, it made think differently about our careers and how we needed to readjust our personal financial outlook to be stable beyond our jobs, as we can see around us at that time, we could lose them any day.

We refocused our personal finances using Dave Ramsey’s Baby Steps. We eliminated all our debt except our mortgage and upped our retirement accounts.

Then, we started focused on the other lever of financial independence, our income. We both had our jobs but wanted to have multiple streams of income. I read the book Four Hour Work Week and took an online course called B-School.

Those tools gave me the how. The how combined with the need in the market – helping marketing coordinators learn proposals and marketing strategy specific to A/E/C industry – and my passion led me to launch Marketers Take Flight.

The Vision

My vision is for Marketers Take Flight to be an online resource for training, tools, guidance, and inspiration for all marketing professionals in the A/E/C Industry. By using the power of virtual and online delivery systems, I could make this accessible and affordable to every A/E/C marketer.

For the past seven years, I have written nearly 100 articles, a few eBooks, numerous guides and templates, and presented at dozens of workshops and conferences across the country. Some years were up and down due to my day job demands and then moving and renovating a house. I also successfully launched my first online proposal training course in Spring 2019. That was met with such success from the students, I will be doing this again.

The Future

Reflecting on these past seven years, made me realize that there is still so much more I want to do. There is still so much more help I can provide to marketers in our industry. So, you’re not done with me yet!

In the future, you can continue to see regular blog articles on topics you are struggling with as well as insight to marketing trends. I also plan to continue speaking at SMPS conferences and chapters. I love attending these because I get to meet you and talk to you about what’s going on in real-time.

I also am planning to launch another online proposal management training course. I feel that online training is the way of the future for professional development. We see it in every industry. I want to continue to provide this to help you in your job and career.

Other ideas I am tossing around on future wish list include writing a book, starting a podcast or YouTube channel.

What do you want to see?

To help me better plan my limited time, what would be your preferred way to learn? Reading, Video, or Audio?

Is there one thing, you would absolutely love to see from Marketers Take Flight? Comment below as I want to make sure I am providing what you want and need.