612. Pressure 🦈
Some honest thoughts on the influence of pressure at work
Hellooo 👋 So happy to have you here. I’m Kevan. I have spent 15+ years as a head of marketing for some cool tech startups. Now I’ve co-founded a brand storytelling business called Bonfire. We do coaching, advisory, and content. If you identify with creativity and marketing, we’d love for you to join us.
The pressure is on, always
How to navigate pressure-packed situations as a marketer (which is kind of every situation, right?)
I made something in an Instant Pot the other day. It’s nice because you throw a bunch of ingredients in, close the lid, press some buttons, and out pops your meal a few hours later. Which is kind of like how some leaders think startup marketing teams work. Yikes!
Throw together your ingredients (product marketing, growth, brand, content), close the lid, press some buttons, and voila: an iconic, revenue-generating brand. 😅
But do you know what happens inside an Instant Pot? It is a literal pressure cooker. You crank up the heat, seal the doors so nothing can escape, and hope for the best. They say pressure creates diamonds; yeah, by crushing a piece of coal until it no longer resembles itself! Instant Pots create meals by transforming all the foods inside into something new—via intense, DNA-altering pressure!
I’ve probably exhausted the metaphor at this point, but I think you get it: Startup marketing is a pressure-packed space.
There is pressure to ship things quickly.
There is pressure to generate pipeline or sales or signups or revenue.
There is pressure to prove ROI.
There is pressure to keep up with the Joneses on LinkedIn.
There is pressure to be a cool brand.
There is pressure to climb the corporate ladder. Pressure to navigate your career in a way that your peers would admire. Pressure to bring in money to support your lifestyle or family or fur babies. Pressure, pressure, pressure.
Maybe this is just the Millenial in me talking (oh to be a carefree and balanced Gen Z), but I have spent years navigating these pressure-packed situations, to varying degrees of success, and wish that we all could find some rest and relaxation away from the startup marketing Instant Pot. But until that day comes, here are some ways I’ve tried to survive and thrive through the pressure, as a manager, a team-builder, and a creator.
How to handle the pressure
1 - Use your PTO.
2 - Set a North Star goal with your boss. Ignore all other goals.
Sometimes pressure can be a byproduct of too much responsibility. When every single KPI is your most important KPI, then no wonder you’re constantly on edge.
Because of this, I like to create KPI scoreboards for my teams, particularly ones that communicate a hierarchy of metrics so that everyone has a single KPI to own and that all the KPIs ladder up into a team-wide target.
Ideally, if you and your boss are aligned on what’s most important, then it should give you the permission to focus on just that one thing and don’t stress about the rest.
3 - Choose a career path that prioritizes what’s most important to you, not others.
Being deliberate about my next career steps was one of the most important things I’ve ever done. Prior, I was making career moves out of fear and ladder-climbing. This job search spreadsheet really set me straight.
4 - Talk to someone. Therapists are great.
5 - Related to the above: Detach your self-worth from work.
6 - Spend the extra time early on to build attribution and infrastructure so that you can be confident and assertive—not hesitant and plate-spinny—when asked how it’s going.
7 - Know yourself better by reading a book.
I just finished Radical Acceptance by Tara Brach. It is very soul-searching:
Whenever we reject a part of our being, we are confirming to ourselves our fundamental unworthiness. Underneath “I shouldn’t get so angry” lies “There’s something wrong with me if I do.”
Other great ones include The Mountain Is You by Brianna Wiest or Essentialism by Greg McKeown. These can help reframe how you think about stress, priorities, and personal growth.
8 - New mantra: “There’s never been a marketing emergency.” (source)
9 - Use Coca-Cola’s 70-20-10 framework to balance your pressure work with non-pressure work.
You can use this 70-20-10 breakdown in so many ways, but as it relates to pressure, identify which parts of your role are pressure-packed and then build in 20% and 10% time to do the less pressure-filled work that brings you joy. If you’re a team leader who’s feeling the pressure to hit a target, rally your team around 70% focused effort on that goal and then spend the remaining 30% investing in your team in other ways.
10 - Schedule time on your calendar to do non-pressure things.
Block time for deep work, but also for deep rest, aka doing nothing.
Pro tip: Sign up to join a bunch of webinars, which will give you built-in time blocks on your calendar. And then maybe you accidentally miss a webinar or two and you use the time for you!
Over to you
What have you found works well in the pressure-packed world of startup marketing?
I’d love to hear how you survive and thrive!
About this newsletter …
Hi, I’m Kevan, a marketing exec based in Boise, Idaho, who specializes in startup marketing and brand-building. I previously built brands at Oyster, Buffer, and Vox. Now I am cofounder at Bonfire, a brand storytelling company.
Each week on this substack, I share playbooks, case studies, stories, and links from inside the startup marketing world. Not yet subscribed? No worries. You can check out the archive, or sign up below:
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