The Jason Salas Experience

The genius that is venture captitalist Guy Kawasaki blogged a memorable manisfesto when talking about maintaining a high batting average for business success:

The short answer is called “Guy’s Golden Touch.” You might think this means, “Whatever Guy touches turns to gold.” If only this were true. The actual definition is, “Whatever is gold, Guy touches.”

In a similar vein, I was asked recently if I had a magical formula that I use in building sustainable victories through the course of my career as a product marketer. And it only hit me this morning in the shower (the place where most great moment of clarity come) that the three shared characteristics I've injected into the companies I've worked for, the firms I've independently consulted and the projects I've worked on, are as follows:

• Product Development. I'd classify my career growth in my formative years as "accelerated retroactive progression", to be understood as taking a step deeper into the value chain as I rose up the ranks. I started in sales, but hated it because I had no say in the marketing message. So I started doing that, too. Then while in marketing setting pricing strategy and designing distribution strategies, I got miffed that I wasn't involved in designing the actual products, so I started doing engineering as well. But at any phase, it's key to be able to have a direct hand in crafting that which your firm will be putting out to market. You understand your stuff better if you've personally built it.
• Branding. Central to anything I've ever done as a marketer has been aggresive marketing - really getting awareness of the existence of a product out there and really creating a psychological bond with the consumer that our stuff's top-notch.
  
• Attitude. Drawing upon my athletic experience and having been affiliated with a team that won a lot at all levels, I noticed that champions share a certain mindset: certainly confident, moderately arrogant, definitely focused. I've instilled a very forthright, very bold & brash - but justifiable - mentality everywhere I've gone that we are the best. And then concentrating on doing what we can from a product standpoint to back it up. My greatest accomplishment at KUAM, for example, is having fostered an attitude of wanting to webbify everything we do on the air.
  

So that's me. My Holy Trinity of factors I carry with me into any job. It's worked so far.

What are yours?