For a long time, I assumed the goal was to keep moving up.

I started as a junior, worked my way into a senior position, and before I knew it, I was the CMO at a startup.

When I joined, they were doing about $20,000 in ARR. The entire marketing database was a google sheet with ~1,300 email addresses a sales rep had collected over the year. The field was green.

I really didn't know enough to be a CMO. But none of us at that company really knew enough. We were all just figuring it out together.

We tried things, failed, tried again, and made progress.

In this particular industry, conferences were king when it came to marketing and sales. They drove 80%+ of our pipeline, and there were conferences happening all over the country, all the time.

Because we were bootstrapped, we had a very small, scrappy sales team, which meant there were often more conferences happening than we had people to attend them.

Many times, I'd put my sales hat on and go run a booth myself. I'd do demos, talk to prospects, answer questions, hand out flyers, collect leads, and do whatever needed to keep things moving.

I didn't particularly love being at the booth, but I loved that I could support my team. And there were plenty of times they'd step in for me the same way I'd step in for them.

We were all figuring it out together. There wasn't always someone whose job it was to do the thing that needed to be done.

It was really fun being at a company before it got big. There wasn't much time for corporate fluff (like "energizers"). We had a lot to build, a lot to figure out, and a very small number of people to do it.

Four years later, the company was doing around $5 million in ARR. We'd grown the team from four to 45.

During this time in my life, when people found out my title was CMO, they'd kinda give me a look like, whoa, really? Including myself!

A couple years in, I hosted a customer dinner with our CRO. Most of our customers had brought their spouses along. I joined a table with some of our bigger enterprise customers, and one of them looked at me and asked, "are you the CRO's wife?"

Taken aback, I said, "Oh, um, no. I actually work for the company that's hosting this dinner." Our CRO stepped in and said, "she doesn't just work here. She's our CMO."

I thought, wait, I am? Oh yeah.

I never really thought about my title. I cared more about having fun building a company with people I enjoyed being around and building with. And, we had actually grown it into something. That felt pretty neat.

That's when I realized I care more about moving forward than I do upward. Learning new things, getting a little better, and building with people I like.