As we ring in the new year and a new decade many of us reflect past the 10 years and to see all that we have accomplished. If you haven’t done this yet, please do so. For so many of us, we are just trying to get through each day and the next deadline, that we don’t take the time to stop, reflect, and celebrate all of our success—both personally and professionally.

I took some time to do this on one of my morning walks. As I was thinking over the past 10 years in my personal and professional life, it was a lot! I have had three jobs, moved to two different cities, helped my husband build and sell a business, and launched Marketers Take Flight.

I climbed to the top of my career to be a Marketing Director, Principal, and Board of Director of an architecture/engineering firm and then left that job voluntarily. Personally, we got a new puppy, welcomed new family members by marriage and birth, and lost loved ones.

While I was reflecting over the past decade, I did stop to think about the lessons I learned through all of this and would love to tell my 10-year ago self. Once my mind was flowing with these lessons, I literally stopped mid-walk to write them down so I wouldn’t forget. Then I thought I would share them with you in hopes that you can take some of my wisdom and learn them in less than 10 years!

Below are the most important lessons I learned from the last decade. I encourage you to take some time to reflect on your successes and failures from the past 10 years. What lessons can you identify from these experiences to move forward in the next decade?

Lesson #1: Don’t Take Things (Too) Personal

If you have worked as a marketing professional in the A/E/C industry for any time, you understand that sometimes our proposal deadlines or other internal deadlines don’t hold the same weight as project work or client deadlines.

When I first started out, it took me a long time to realize that it isn’t about me. The project managers weren’t ignoring my deadlines to attack or purposely sabotage my work. They were just plain busy, had conflicting priorities, or maybe didn’t really know what or how to contribute. It took several years, but once I learned that being ignored wasn’t personal, I let go of resentment and enjoyed working with my teams.

Lesson #2: It’s Okay to Lean Out

 The past decade women have been told to “Lean In,” thanks to Sheryl Sandberg and the push for more women in leadership. I read her book and completely agree that everyone wins when leadership is diverse. I was on that path. My goal was to be a Director of Marketing and a firm principal. I wanted to be an owner at an A/E/C firm. I did make that goal and became the youngest Board of Director at my previous firm, BRPH. I am very proud of that.

However, I believe there should be a story about after Leaning In. What comes after you get to the top and have achieved your goals, especially if you’re still early in your career? I am still not sure, but what I do know that I leaned out. I left my dream job voluntarily. I moved my family to a smaller town to live closer to family. I took a new job that I love. It’s not a director role. It’s not a part-owner. Heck, I am not even managing people. But you know what? It’s working for my family and me in the season of life we are in. I can be more active in their school and sports. We eat dinner together at our dining room table nearly every night. So, while I leaned out professionally, I am leaning into my family.

If you feel pressured to lean in or push for that next promotion that moves you up the ladder, make sure that it’s something you really want. Also, if you are already there (dream job at “the top”), it’s okay to lean out and try something different.

Lesson #3: Surround Yourself with Great People

You have probably heard the phrase by Jim Rohn, “You’re the Average of the Five People you Spend the Most Time With.” I whole-heartedly agree with this. We spend so much time at work, that we must demand that the people we work with are great. They must be smart, yes. But I have also learned that they must be people we genuinely like and have similar values to us.

A good test to see if you are surrounding yourself with great people at work is to see how much time you spend outside of work with them. If you can’t bear to spend time with these people outside of work, it’s no good. Life is to short, and we are too busy and stressed to try and separate work and home life. I am not saying you have to work with your best friends and be best friends with everyone you work with, but it makes a huge difference in your overall happiness when you have friends at work, especially if those friends are smart and pushes you to do greater things, and vice versa.

Take stock of who are surrounding yourself with. Are they great? Do you need to make some adjustments? If so, read on to the next lesson.

Lesson #4: You Are Not Stuck

If anything, that this past decade has taught me is that I am in control of my circumstances (well my husband and me together). At times I have felt stuck. I had a great job. We lived in a new house in a great neighborhood with awesome neighbors. On paper, it was the “perfect life.” However, something was missing. We were just floating through each year. Both my husband and I felt the same thing but just didn’t know what.

I read the book, Living Forward, by Michael Hyatt. I also listened to the audiobook and did the Life Planning Exercise. That really helped me get clear on what I wanted, and I started to design the life I wanted for our family.

After that, we made some really big changes in my career and our family. It was scary. We did second guess our decisions at times, but it has been really good for all of us.

I saw this not to encourage you to leave a job or move your family across the state. I talk to so many people who feel stuck in their job, their relationships, and their house or location because of one circumstance or another. I want to know that you are in charge of your life, even if you have a spouse or a family. You need to do what will make your life happy. Yes, you need to coordinate and communicate with your spouse. You need to make sure your decisions are safe financially and physically for your family, but life is too short to feel stuck in your place in life without making a plan to get unstuck.

If you feel like you are just drifting through life, I would highly recommend reading Living Forward, taking the Living Forward Assessment, and completing the Living Forward Life Plan.  

Lesson #5: Get Your Financial House in Order

We all know that credit card debt is bad and that we should save more money. However, what the last decade really taught me is that I was carrying so much stress about our financial situation without even realizing it. We were lucky in that we came out of college with no student loan debt, but we made the silly decisions to both get new cars and rack up some credit card debt immediately after college. This on top of having our son and have crazy daycare expenses while working entry-level jobs. We were barely saving or contributing to our 401Ks. It took nearly 10 years to get everything paid off.

What I didn’t realize until we had everything paid off (credit cards, cars, etc.) is how much stress and anxiety I was carrying around because of these debts. Now, I look back and do the math of the lost 401k savings or other investment savings we could have had and almost get sick. Ironically, since I left the high-paying job and we moved to a lower cost of living, we have all our debts been paid, we are contributing the maximum to our 401K, HSA, 529s and putting aside some for savings. All that stress is gone.

I am not saying this to brag, but to let you know that it takes time to get out debt and it is possible when you don’t have a huge salary. I also strongly encourage you to pay yourself first. This means contributing the maximum to 401K and HSA (if offered by your company) via your payroll deduction. This way you are paying yourself before you even get a chance to spend it or pay your bills. Even you think you can’t afford, you probably can because it’s pre-tax money.

After you are paying yourself first, then attack all debt – student loans, car payments, credit cards, etc. Cut back on everything until those are paid. You will relieve so much stress and open up new opportunities or options with your life with this debt gone. If you need help or don’t know where to begin, we applied Dave Ramsey’s baby steps to get out of debt and have been following the ChooseFI principles to maximize our financial resources.

Lesson #6: Be Flexible

I can attribute my early career success to my ability to bring organization and process to our marketing and business development efforts. In fact, in all my new jobs I was brought into the firms to set up their marketing department and develop a business development process. Early in these efforts, I was strict on the process and following every step in the exact order.

However, through this experience, I have learned to be more flexible. Instead of a rigid process that needs to be followed step by step, it has become a set of guiding principles or frameworks. By making this shift in thinking and approach to my work, I have been able to work with different markets, industries, geographies, and even internationally. I wasn’t pigeonholed as a marketer who only worked with DOTs or Education clients or who only produced proposals or led strategy. This has led to other opportunities I couldn’t have even imagined a decade ago.

While we learn marketing and sales processes and do generally want our firms to follow a process, learn to be flexible. You never know where this flexibility may lead you.

Lesson #7: Leave Each Place Better

My daughter is a Girl Scout and one of their principles is to leave a place better than when they found it. I love how this principle can be applied everywhere. Whether it’s our workplaces, our home life, a conference, a joint pursuit with another firm, or anything. Contribute your best to that effort to know that you leaving it better than when you arrived.  

I like this lesson better than the old saying “don’t burn bridges” that we often say when you are leaving one job for another. By leaving that firm knowing that you have improved its marketing, proposals, etc. during your time, you are leaving it better than when you arrived. You are not only “not burning the bridge” but you are building them a great new bridge that is better than before you arrived.

This way you know you can leave having done your best and the firm that you leaving only has great things to say that you contributed to, which helps build your personal brand and reputation.

Lesson #8: Done is Better than Perfect

I spent countless hours perfecting a proposal cover, picking out just the right color, font or image, or rewriting a cover letter for the hundredth time. What I have learned is that my idea of perfect is different than others’ perfect. This misaligned of expectations has caused so much stress and late-night hours at my computer. While I still want high-quality products, I have focused on getting them done first, and work on the improvement later.

For example, you will most likely find a typo or skipped word in this article. However, I wanted to get these lessons out to you quickly because the content of the lessons is more important than spending another week in editing. Don’t get me wrong, I reviewed the writing before publishing and I use Grammarly’s writing assistant but that’s it. Years ago, I would have read this article 4-5 times and spent a month to get it to you. Instead, I spend a few days.

What is on your to-do list that can just get done? Do you have a social media report that you are just trying to figure out the best graph or metric? Just get the results and share them. Is there a forecasting report that you need more info into your CRM before you can share? Just share it. Don’t wait for things to be absolutely perfect in your mind, because the results or work product is probably already perfect in someone else’s mind.

Lesson #9: Be Human

When I first started working, I never talked about my husband or children. I am not sure why I didn’t. I guess I felt like no one would take me seriously at work if they thought I was a mom. Maybe they would think that I would care about my family more than the job (LOL)? I would just say I had to leave at 5 pm and wouldn’t really explain it was to pick up my son from daycare. I had this limiting belief that I wasn’t a serious professional if I talked about my family.

Have you had these thoughts? Is it just women or do men have these limiting beliefs too? Is this a generational mindset (I am between Gen X and Millennial)?

Then, a few years ago I changed my thinking. I don’t have a specific point or story of when I had this mindset shift, but I did. It might have been after I read Lean In and Living Forward, but I am not sure.  Anyways, I let people know I had a family. I started talking about my kid’s activities and the reasons I needed to leave work early or work from home. Now, I am completely open my entire life. This has resulted in me feeling more human and making more human connections with my clients and co-workers.

Again, I am not sure if I am alone with these thoughts or not. If you have similar ones, it’s okay. It’s okay to start opening more about your life outside of work.

Lesson #10: You Are Never Done Learning

I think that almost everyone can relate to this lesson. Technology has disrupted every part of our lives. The rate of change is ever increasing. The way we do our work is completely different than 10 years ago and will be completely different 10 years from now. While some of the guiding principles of marketing and business development might not change, everything else about our work will.

This is exciting for someone like me who isn’t afraid of change and loves learning new things. However, most of us, especially in A/E/C don’t like change and are very slow to change. I work with firms every day that say they want to be the last to innovate or upgrade to new software so they are just going to wait. While there is being conservative to new software, the idea of not learning new things and the new ways to do business is hurting you and your firm. It will be interesting to see how those firms fare over the next decade.

However, you have control over your learning. Even if you have been in the industry for a decade or two, you are never done learning. The moment that you think you know it all, is the moment that new technology has come along to disrupt it and you’re at risk of being left behind.

Bonus Lesson: Lift Others as You Climb

I heard the saying, “Lift Others as You Climb,” on a podcast and I cannot remember who said it. But I absolutely love it. What it means is that as you are working on your next move in your career, make sure you are teaching and mentoring others. Even if you are “just” a marketing coordinator trying to move to senior marketing coordinator, what can you teach the marketing assistant to help him/her get to their next step?

I had an HR director tell me that I should always be training and mentoring the next person to take my position. She believed that we cannot grow ourselves until we grow the others below us to step into our role. If you want to become the marketing manager, who will take your current role? You should be mentoring and training that person to fill your role before you can move to your next position.

This is the number one mission of Marketers Take Flight. I want to help other marketing professionals in this industry learn from what I have learned. I encourage you to do the same.

Looking Forward

My next decade will be very different. The biggest change will be that both kids will be out of the house. I am tearing up a bit just as a type this sentence. Knowing this, my husband and I are making plans to prepare for this big life change both personally and professionally. We have big goals for our physical health, careers, investments, and financial health. However, we also have lots of travel and family time planned before they both go off to college.

Share Your Lessons

I hope that some of these lessons resonated with you. I wanted to share them, so you don’t have to spend a decade learning them as I did. 😊

I also encourage you to take some time and reflect on this past decade. Think about all you have accomplished, what you learned along the way, and what you want the next decade to look like. It’s even better if you can step away from the desk, go outside, and take a walk while you think of this. There’s something about being outside that really gets my thoughts flowing.

Once you have done that, please share your lessons below. We can all learn from each other.