My loneliest moment as a misunderstood marketer

What my first day as a first-time marketer taught me about loneliness, storytelling, and why no one is coming to save you

It was my first day at my first startup.

We were about twelve people, crammed into a tiny LA office. I was 22, maybe 23 years old. This was my first startup job and I was the first marketing hire they’d ever had.

No one to delegate to. No one to ask. Just me, sitting in the middle of the sales pit, surrounded by AEs and SDRs making calls, trying to look like I belonged.

I remember getting ready that morning, stressed about looking the part. I’d bought a new outfit hoping that if I looked right, maybe they’d think I was a real marketing leader. I wanted them to believe I knew what I was doing.

Then one of the reps turned to me and said, “So… what’s marketing? What are you going to do?”

That’s when the panic hit.

I had no idea.

I smiled and said something like, “It’s a little bit of math and a little bit of magic.” But my brain was screaming at me. I could tell they all thought at best that marketing was this mysterious force and at worst that it was arts and crafts.

I knew it was about driving pipeline and building brand awareness, but I didn’t know how to explain how that was going to help them do their jobs.

Looking back, a better answer would have been: I’m here to make your job easier. I’m going to build the brand so you have more leads to work. And when someone knows our name and trusts us, it’ll help you at every step. Higher response rates. More closed deals.

But I didn’t know how to say that yet.

I sat there doing some onboarding tasks while the reps filed in and got into the flow of their day. They had a rhythm. I had nothing. No framework for thinking about my impact. No plan. Just some tactics I’d used at my last company and no idea if they’d work here.

I remember walking out that day wondering if I’d made a huge mistake. Maybe my last job was just a fluke.

I’d wanted this job so badly. In my interview, they told me I was the youngest and least experienced candidate they were considering. They hired me anyway. It felt amazing that they were taking a bet on me, but it also felt intimidating. I was already afraid I’d let them down.

Marketing is misunderstood, and it’s your job to solve that

That feeling of sitting in a crowded room and realizing no one understands what you do doesn’t go away just because you get more senior.

Years later, as a CMO at a company with hundreds of people, I saw a strategy meeting disappear from my calendar. Then I noticed it was still happening, just without me.

I sat on the bathroom floor crying, convinced I’d failed to say anything useful in the last hundred meetings. That I didn’t deserve to be in the room anymore.

Different office, same ache.

The loneliness of being a marketer isn’t about being alone. It’s about being misunderstood. And here’s the thing: no one is going to fix that for you.

Marketing is about bringing things to market. Not just your product, but your culture, your people, your ideas. That means it needs to be interwoven with everything inside the company. And that means the people need to be interwoven too.

If you have people on the journey with you, the external marketing becomes a reflection of everything inside. It gets people bought in. Internal marketing is at least as important as external marketing.

Build in public, starting inside your own building

The only way I got out of that alone zone was by being proactive about connection.

I started running marketing brainstorms with leadership.

Ops, sales, CS. We’d begin by aligning on the levers we wanted to move most: churn, win rates with certain deal types, average deal size. Then I’d bring a menu of ideas for how marketing could help move each one.

That simple shift changed everything. When people contribute to the story, they believe in it.

I started working directly with sales and customer success.

Not through dashboards, but side by side. I’d fly out for an event in a rep’s territory, run the campaign together, follow up on every lead as a team. I’d go to them and say, “We have this budget to help you. What do you want to do?” Then I’d offer a menu of ideas to spark thinking.

Suddenly I wasn’t the marketing person anymore. I was a partner helping make deals happen.

I found mentors and peers.

Early on, I had a call with a CMO who was advising our company. I walked her through everything I was doing, half expecting her to tell me I was way off track.

She said, “You’re doing all the right things.”

One sentence. Suddenly everything felt clear again.

That’s when I realized how few people inside a company will ever say that to you. They don’t understand marketing deeply enough to recognize good from great. You need people who do: other marketers, advisors, communities like Exit Five or CMO Coffee Talk.

Know your customer means knowing your internal customers too

If you’re the first marketer, the real work isn’t just building campaigns. It’s building understanding.

You’re teaching your company what marketing actually is, why it matters, and how it helps them win. You’re telling a story about your work that makes people want to be part of it.

Here’s where to start:

Run a brainstorm with leadership.

Bring ops, sales, and CS together. Ask, “Which levers matter most this quarter?” Then show how marketing can help move them. Make it a shared mission, not a marketing project.

Partner one on one with sales.

Sit in on calls. Shadow demos. Run a campaign together. Show up with budget or resources in hand and ask what they need. It makes collaboration real.

Join a community.

The validation and insight you need won’t come from inside your company. Find your people outside.

Get a mentor.

Schedule a call with someone a few steps ahead. Walk them through your plan. Sometimes one sentence from someone who’s been there changes everything.

Storytelling is everything

If I could go back to that twenty-two year old sitting in the sales pit in her new outfit, I’d tell her two things.

First: storytelling is everything. You can have all the data and tactics in the world, but if you can’t tell a clear story about what you’re doing, no one will follow you. Pick one story about why you’re there. Repeat it until everyone around you can repeat it back.

The story you tell about your work sometimes matters more than the work itself. Make it a mantra.

Second: it’s OK to feel alone, but don’t let it stay that way. I spent so much time working harder to prove myself instead of having open, vulnerable conversations. But talking about what’s not working and working together on what you can do about it actually makes people trust you more.

You’re not there to have all the answers. If you pretend to, you’re probably missing something. Don’t go into the basement to come up with the perfect strategy and surprise everyone with the right answers. It doesn’t work that way.

The answers are in the room. You just have to be open enough to find them. People will tell you what they need. You just have to listen.

Why this matters

Zero to one is lonely work. But it doesn’t have to stay that way.

You can tell the story. You can build your people. You can make the noise that reminds everyone, including yourself, why you’re there.

No one is coming to save you. But that’s also the freedom: you get to decide how to show up.