My Thoughts As A Digital Marketer After 10 Years

I’ve been a digital marketer for over a decade now and if I’m honest, it sounds weird to say that aloud.

I’m currently 29 years old, and the thought of spending 34% of my entire life in digital marketing is crazy. This is the longest career I’ve had so far in my life. And what makes this even crazier is that I never intended or wanted to be a digital marketer – I happen to have built skills and a mindset that made me a good digital marketer.

So, In this post, I’m going to share my thoughts as a digital marketer with over 10 years of experience.

If you’re interested in becoming a digital marketer, this post will give you some insight into what to expect.

My Credentials

Similar to my “Thoughts As A Landlord” post, I’m going to list some information about me that can help you decide if my experience and perspective can be valuable to you.

• African American (aka black)
• I live in a LCOL (low cost of living) city
• I started learning digital marketing while owning a videography business in 2011
• I’ve made over $500k from working as an employee in digital marketing
• I’ve made over $100k from freelancing and creating online businesses (where digital marketing was the primary skillset)
• I’ve worked in the majority of digital marketing fields (PPC, SEO, CRO, Content, Social Media, Analytics, and Affiliate Marketing)
• I didn’t have any connections that helped me enter the digital marketing industry.

How It Started

I started learning digital marketing while I was running a videography business that I used to own.

Most of my business at the time was generated via word-of-mouth. However, I knew that if I wanted to grow the videography business enough to remove myself from the day-to-day operations – I needed more sources of leads.

This is when I first started learning about digital marketing (primarily social ads and content creation – and you can add web development in the mix even though it’s not digital marketing).

I failed to grow the videography business and decided to liquidate and move on to something else.

The next business I started was an eCommerce store. This is the business that developed my mindset and digital marketing skills to a level that started to make me dangerous.

I then grew that business and sold it.

However, after selling it – I didn’t really know how to do it again. I had decent digital marketing skills and had other skills as well but, partially due to not experiencing much life outside of the ghetto at that point, I was an empty shell. I didn’t know what was even possible.

So, I went and got a job (without a degree or formal training) that would cover my bills (so that I could confidently move out of the ghetto) and allow me to spend all the income from my side business on experiencing life and creating a new business.

How It’s Going

It’s going and has gone extremely well.

Working in digital marketing has been both annoying (hello Google Analytics 4) and amazing (hello friends and life experiences). I don’t think there’s ever been a moment when I wish I had chosen another skill set or career field to get into.

My favorite part about being a digital marketer is the flexibility.

Since I’ve worked and built skills in the majority of digital marketing departments – I’m able to choose projects and opportunities that fit my desired lifestyle instead of having to choose opportunities based on what skills they’re looking for.

That level of confidence and ability to successfully execute has given me a sense of freedom that not many skills in the world can provide.

If I were to lose my job today, I could easily find another job in my home country, internationally, or just go remote. Or, if I prefer, I can freelance full-time or go “all-in” on a business idea that takes advantage of my digital marketing experience.

Flexibility, in general, is one of my top 3 favorite reasons I love being a man of many things.

How I Expect The Future To Go

I’ve reached a point in my digital marketing career where I’m going to have to decide between doing more work (both execution and learning) and making more money or staying at my current “level” and maximizing my lifestyle.

During my entire digital marketing career, there’s been 1 rule that I’ve held myself to. It’s a rule that one of the most successful business guys I know in person shared with me:

Keep working a job until it costs you more money to go to work than it does to quit. This will help make sure that you never quit a job just to go work a job that you created for yourself.

That’s the rule.

Regardless of how much income I made from the freelance projects or websites I’ve built – I told myself that if I’m feeling overwhelmed with the amount of work I have to do but not making enough money to quit my job – I need to hire someone to do it for me.

That advice changed my life for the better. It’s led to some businesses failing but those failures have pointed out that I either lacked the ability to manage the people I’ve hired or that I didn’t really know what I was doing anyway.

Had I quit my job to pursue those businesses, I would have simply subsidized my inadequacies at the cost of my lifestyle and time.

So what does that mean going forward?

Well, for the past few years, I’ve been spending a lot of time learning how to be a landlord and house hacking.

Now that I’m in a good spot as a landlord and since I don’t have kids yet, I’ll probably focus on maximizing my lifestyle and growing my side projects. With enough focused effort (and some luck), my side projects will outearn my digital marketing job in a couple of years.

The only variable I have yet to figure out is how much work and money my side projects need to make before it becomes more expensive to go to my digital marketing job than to quit.

But, once I figure that out – I’m sure I’ll talk about it on this website.