Don McGuire

I had a lot of great people that helped me and taught me those disciplines, but I got to play across the marketing mix and

really, really early in my career, which I think also has contributed to me kind of understanding, because every CMO can't be good at everything or great at everything.

Everyone has sort of their secret sauce, but you need to have a basic understanding of the disciplines of marketing.

at least a basic understanding.

And so the more time you've spent across the spectrum of disciplines, I think the better overall CMO you can be.

And so I really valued that early on experience of rolling up my sleeves and learning how to write a press release, learning how to buy media across different channels, whether it's print or television or radio, those types of things.

So that was super helpful to me.

And that's helped me sort of grow my career up through the marketing ranks.

And then that coupled with your recipe of,

Being at the right place at the right time and being prepared when you get there helped me a tremendous amount because window of opportunity open, I literally would jump through and ask questions later.

That's one of my philosophical, I guess I would say things is like, always stay in control of your own destiny.

I think it's really easy, A, to kind of fall into an ethos of where you work or who you work for.

And it's super easy.

And it's not necessarily a bad thing.

It's just corporations or companies or environments, they want you to conform ultimately to what that entity wants you to do.

And so it's easy to get into a rut.

It's easy to get complacent.

And again, if people like kind of like the day-to-day and just want to be where they want to be and they're happy, peace.

But it's easy to sort of get lost.

And then you wake up one day and you're like, oh my gosh, it's been 10 years.