How the Intern Became My Boss – Adam Goyette (Growth Union, HelpScout, G2) on the Power of Internal Marketing
Adam talk about when the intern was promoted over him and the time his CFO walked out of a meeting after a disappointing month.
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“I was completely floored. I kept asking myself where I missed connecting the dots. Because I obviously missed something big.”
It was early in his career, but Adam Goyette thought he was killing it. He had become really good at executing — running campaigns, sending emails, writing copy — and driving meaningful results as an individual contributor.
Then one day, his boss quit.
Adam was the most senior person left on the team. He assumed he would be promoted. Or at least take on more responsibility.
He was wrong.
A week later, the leadership team announced they had promoted the summer intern to be the new Director of Marketing.
What?!?
“The intern had an Ivy League pedigree, but no marketing skill set,” Adam recalls. “I couldn’t figure out what I’d done wrong that I wasn’t even considered for the position.”
Eventually, Adam cracked the code and learned — the hard way — the “great unlock” for marketing leadership… Executing with rigor is great for individual contributor roles. But to become a leader, you also have to be great at communicating your work in a way that your execs understand.
(this is exactly why I help many of my new growth coaching clients improve this skill.)
“I naively assumed that doing a good job is enough, that people will recognize your work, but that’s not how the world works.” Adam explains. “The intern was 100 times better than me at navigating the room — at doing the internal marketing that got her seen.”
Adam now runs his own anti-agency growth agency, Growth Union, but he still refers to the experience of being leapfrogged by the intern as one of the most pivotal moments of his career.
“I decided I was no longer going to be a passenger in my career,” he says. “I started publicly celebrating my wins, losses, experiments, and at bats. Doing that not only changes your career, it can also unlock resources to help you do more good work.”
Our conversation covered a couple more big speed bumps in his career as well as his personal strategies for handling stress, managing self doubt, and building strong professional relationships. Highlights include:
How resigning from a job he hated, turned it into a job he loved
The time the CFO walked out on a meeting when Adam couldn’t explain a bad month
His moment of epiphany after struggling in his first VP role at a toxic company
Watch or listen below 👇
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