There’s a question I ask myself a lot in this job:
“What the hell am I even doing in marketing?”
First, it was CNC machines. Then EV chargers. Later, 7-figure yachts.
I used to feel embarrassed about not knowing everything. Now I treat that confusion as a starting point — a compass.
Because if you want to be a great marketer, you need more than skills.
You need obsessive curiosity.
Start With “I Don’t Know”
When I first worked on a CNC account, I had no clue what a CNC machine even did. The client brief made it sound like a robot with a drill. I Googled it. Watched some videos. Still didn’t get it.
Then I typed into ChatGPT:
“Explain CNC like I’m five years old.”
Boom. Lightbulb moment.
That five-word prompt taught me more in 30 seconds than an hour of forced research. And that unlocked everything else — the messaging, the targeting, the pitch.
Turns out, pretending you know stuff doesn’t get you anywhere.
Admitting you don’t? That’s where the real work begins.
Great Marketers Study What Others Skip
Let’s be honest — most people skim the product page and call it research. But curiosity doesn’t stop when the brief ends.
When working on a clean energy client, I started listening to niche industry podcasts. You know the ones — just technical enough to be boring, but packed with the gold no one else bothers to dig for.
I even dropped a reference to one of those podcasts in a client call. The client lit up. Not because I was an expert — but because I gave a damn.
Curiosity builds trust. It shows up in better copy, sharper strategy, tighter targeting.
Research Is Great. Real People Are Better.
Some of the best insights don’t come from research. They come from random conversations.
I once met a woman at a spa who said she stitched a phone pocket into her pajama pants — just in case she didn’t want to go downstairs.
She wasn’t elderly. She wasn’t mobility-impaired.
She was a convenience-first, comfort-obsessed, tech-using upper-middle-class customer.
And she was exactly the kind of person my luxury home lift client was trying to reach.
Forget personas. Real humans are better.
Get Weird With It
When I ran ads for a yacht broker, I didn’t just study keywords. I took sailing lessons. I got my Day Skipper license.
Not because I had to. But because it gave me intuition.
I could tell which search terms were mismatched. Which brands sounded premium. Which phrases would resonate with real sailors — because I was one now.
That’s the thing about curiosity. It turns data into insight. It turns campaigns into conversions.
Build Tentacles
I think about it like this: my curiosity grows invisible tentacles.
One reaches into wine and spirits (client). Another into EV infrastructure (client). Another into sailing culture (client). Another into the psychology of wealthy retirees who buy boats, lifts, and bespoke furniture (yep — client).
With every project, those tentacles reach a little deeper. The more I learn, the better I sell — and the faster I can speak the customer’s language.
Final Thought: Give a Damn
If you only read what everyone else reads, you’ll write what everyone else writes.
But when you go a level deeper — into the niche forums, the awkward YouTube explainers, the conversations with real humans in spa lounges — you uncover the stuff that actually moves people.
Marketing isn’t magic. It’s empathy at scale.
And empathy starts with caring enough to ask:
“Wait — what even is this?”
Curiosity doesn’t just make you smarter.
It makes you dangerous.
