Where do you see yourself in five years?

I always hated this interview question. It’s not that I’m against planning; it’s that I’m for flexibility. And I don’t want to get trapped in a five-year plan.

I try to focus on delivering value today helping people out, and improving my future self for tomorrow, and from there, opportunities naturally arise.

So a lesson from this episode’s guest really resonated with me – ‘be open to where your path takes you.’

To hear the story behind that lesson, along with many more lesson-filled stories, I talked to Melinda Marchesi, Chief Marketing Officer, Prosper Marketplace (https://www.prosper.com/).

Since its founding in 2005, Prosper Marketplace has originated $28 billion in loans for two million customers. Prosper Marketplace is backed by leading investors including Francisco Partners, Institutional Venture Partners, Third Point, and Jefferies.

Marchesi manages a team of 30 and a $50 million marketing budget at Prosper. Throughout her career, she has managed teams as small as five and as large as thousands, and marketing budgets from $20 million to hundreds of million dollars.

Stories (with lessons) about what she made in marketing

Here are some lessons from Marchesi that emerged in our discussion.

• Be open to where your path takes you
• Marketing can lead to many other things
• Know the numbers and how your work impacts them
• Surround yourself with people who are smarter than you
• Respect people’s lives outside of work
• What are YOU going to do about it?
• Passion and curiosity fuel the best work

Discussed in this episode

Get a Quick Start AI Productivity Kit when you apply for your free three-month scholarship to the AI Guild (https://join.meclabsai.com/) – courtesy of MeclabsAI, MarketingSherpa’s parent company.

Marketing Career: How to become an indispensable asset to your company (even in a bad economy) (https://marketingexperiments.com/value-proposition/marketing-career)

The Data Pattern Analysis: 3 ways to turn info into insight (https://marketingexperiments.com/digital-analytics/episode-2-using-data-as-a-force-for-the-good)

Enterprise Solutions Marketing: You can make a big career, and still stay human (podcast episode #99) (https://www.marketingsherpa.com/article/interview/enterprise)

Get more episodes

This article is distributed through the MarketingSherpa email newsletter (https://www.marketingsherpa.com/newsletters). Sign up for free if you’d like to get more episodes like this one.

For more insights, check out...

This podcast is not about marketing – it is about the marketer. It draws its inspiration from the Flint McGlaughlin quote, “The key to transformative marketing is a transformed marketer” from the Become a Marketer-Philosopher: Create and optimize high-converting webpages free digital marketing course.

Apply to be a guest
If you would like to apply to be a guest on How I Made It In Marketing, here is the podcast guest application – https://www.marketingsherpa.com/page/podcast-guest-application