Hey everyone,
Over a span of nearly 17 years, from 2008 to 2025, I would often return to my alma mater, Westminster University, to give guest lectures to senior marketing students. In the early years, my advice was what you’d expect: tactical, career-focused, all about climbing the ladder.
But as I gained more life experience—navigating burnout, learning hard lessons, and rediscovering the non-negotiable importance of sleep, fitness, and relationships—my message started to change. It evolved with me.
Towards the end, my entire lecture had distilled down to two core messages. The advice I wish I could have given my younger self. The first was about freeing yourself from the need for external validation.
The second was just as crucial: Commit to being a lifelong learner.
This isn’t just about keeping up with new MarTech tools. It’s a mindset. It’s about developing the curiosity to learn from your mistakes and the humility to understand you don’t have all the answers. I’m passionate about this because I learned it the hard way.
My Biggest Blind Spot
I’ve always had a knack for pattern recognition. My sister Mindy jokes that her husband, Josh, is an oracle because he can see things coming from a mile away. He knew I was going to “come out” months before I even did. I have a similar trait—I can spot trends, shifts, and even brewing office scandals long before they become obvious.
But that skill isn’t foolproof. There are times when tunnel vision sets in, and my natural self-awareness gets clouded. My own blind spots reappear, and this has happened on and off over the years.
It happened again after I transitioned to self-employment. The deepest irony is that at the time, I was literally telling students about the importance of prioritizing health and wellness—eating well, exercising, and getting enough sleep. Yet, I had convinced myself I was the exception, that I was “superhuman” and could get by on 2-4 hours of sleep. After all, I was so excited about business prospects that I was running on pure adrenaline. I wasn’t tired; I “felt great”.
In reality, that energy was an uncontrolled firehose. I wasn’t making real headway, and I didn’t realize my behavior toward those closest to me was changing for the worse. I was putting them through the wringer. And I couldn’t see it.
What made this particular blind spot so deceptive was the context. The prior times I’d dealt with issues like this, it was during very challenging parts of my life both personally and professionally, which I’ve written about before. This time was different. I was in a loving marriage and, despite the stress of navigating self-employment, I was genuinely happy. The warning signs I might have recognized in a storm were completely invisible on a sunny day. It was a powerful reminder that simply being in a different season of life can make you miss something you would have noticed before.
During a moment of reflection, feeling like I had failed my loved ones, I remember thinking: How did I miss this? I had tools to spot things like this before. How had this one slipped past me?
Then it hit me. Boom.
This personal shift, this struggle—it was new territory. I hadn’t experienced it, so I didn’t have a pattern to recognize. My tools could spot things that were similar, but not this. I was learning that just because two struggles seem to belong in the same bucket, it doesn’t make them remotely the same.
The Most Important Lesson: You’re Supposed to Learn
This wasn’t a new, earth-shattering realization. It was a powerful reminder of a lesson I already knew but had forgotten to apply to myself. As a recovering people-pleaser and perfectionist, it’s easy to forget to practice self-compassion. Those tendencies never fully go away; you just learn how to manage them.
As my sister recently reminded me, you aren’t supposed to see your own future coming, otherwise you wouldn’t ever really learn anything important. The lessons are in the learning, and the learning happens by being challenged with new experiences.
Your opinions and views should change over time. Being stuck in your ways is a fast track to disaster. It’s one lesson I often shared through a book I used to recommend to students, Stealing the Corner Office. In one chapter, It gives a great metaphor of a young marketing professional whose world is upended when a new leader changes the metrics for success—old wins like clicks and impressions suddenly meant nothing. She had to evolve or become obsolete. The game changed. That’s the real game for all of us.
But the biggest lesson is that you don’t always have to find your way back alone.
I am incredibly fortunate to be surrounded by brave people—my husband, family, and my “board of directors“—who were willing to ring the alarm bells. They noticed the changes in me and said something, even when they knew it might not be what I wanted to hear. I’ll be honest, I was resistant at first, especially to my husband. That adrenaline high was deceptive; I felt amazing. It’s hard to hear you’re on the wrong track when the engine feels like it’s firing on all cylinders.
I’m grateful that I eventually listened. And then I did the work. Many people talk the talk, planning to do something ‘tomorrow’, and that day that never comes. I made some tough personal changes that, frankly, I don’t think many people would be willing to make.
So yes, I’m incredibly thankful for my support system for telling me what I needed to hear. And I’m thankful to myself for having the strength to listen and act.
The Engine of Curiosity
But learning from our stumbles is only half the battle. The other half is proactively seeking out knowledge, driven by pure curiosity.
For me, this has been the engine of my career. After college, I mastered design programs by volunteering for the tedious catalog work at my first agency because no one else wanted to do it. I learned to build websites for pro-bono clients. I helped launch our first email marketing practice, teaching myself how to code HTML emails. When mobile became the next big thing, I dove into SMS, push notifications, and in-app messaging.
Most of what I do day-to-day didn’t exist in its current form when I started my career. Right now, I’m focused on learning everything I can about low-code app development, automation, and the new world of LLMs, Agents, and Model Context Protocol.
There is a lot of fear about AI right now, and rightfully so. But I’ve seen this play out before: the dot-com bubble, the rise of mobile, social media, the shift to streaming. Each wave came with massive changes. The job I do today didn’t really exist 20 years ago. It’s likely the one you’ll be doing in the future doesn’t either.
Remember that. It’s not about mastering a specific skill; it’s about nurturing your curiosity and your desire to constantly learn, grow, and adapt.
Your Turn
When I look in the mirror today, I’m proud of the person looking back at me. It’s been a wild ride to get to this point, and I know life will throw more curveballs my way. But I feel stronger and more prepared to deal with the next set of challenges that will inevitably come.
That’s the real gift. There is so much more to learn, explore, discover, and share. Your intellect, your consciousness, your mind—it’s a precious gift. Treat it as such.
Commit to being a lifelong learner. Not for a promotion, but for your own fulfillment. It’s the most valuable investment you will ever make.
See you next month, Seth
A Note on Process & Transparency:
In the spirit of full disclosure, I partnered with Google’s Gemini 2.5 Pro as a thought partner to help refine my thoughts and ideas for this edition for clarity and flow. As I’ve said before, AI isn’t going to take your job, but people who leverage AI to their advantage will. Be one of those people.
P.S. What’s the most important lesson a “failure” has taught you in your career or life? I’d love to hear your story in the comments.
