025: How Do You Give Good AF Marketing, Mentoring, and Music Advice? It Depends. With Amalia Fowler

Danny Gavin    00:05 

Hello everyone. I’m Danny Gavin, the host of the Digital Marketing Mentor, and I’m super excited to have Amalia Fowler here today. I’ve known Amalia personally for not so long, but I’ve been following her for a very long time. And the fact that we joined a founders group at the Foxwell Founders Group brought us together even closer. Amalia is the founder and principal strategist at Good AF Consulting. She began Good AF Consulting in August of 2021 because she wanted to help business owners navigate the world’s digital marketing. Good aF Consulting specializes in assisting agencies, Google Ads audits, digital marketing, strategy development and in house PPC training. Amalia is a marketing expert in strategy and paid media focused on bringing clarity to our clients. Her core belief is that no two clients are alike and therefore no two marketing strategies should be the same either. Her favorite saying is it depends. She’s also a digital marketing professor, and we’re going to dig deeply into that. I’m also a professor. It happens to be that we both became professors five years after we left school, so I can’t wait to talk about that. How are you?

 

Amalia Fowler    01:27 

I’m good. I’m really good. I love the human element of your podcast. I’ve listened to a few episodes, so it’s like, let’s get human. Or for that particular phrase, I’m so ready to get human.

 

Danny Gavin    01:39 

All right. Well, let’s do it. So let’s first start off about where you went to school and what you studied and obviously how that’s shaped to where you are today.

 

Amalia Fowler    01:47 

Yeah, it’s a long story and I’ve actually, I was practicing in the car yesterday about how to make it shorter, like I was talking to myself as I was driving. So my undergraduate degree back in Ontario at Wilfred Gloria University, Go Golden Hawks, is in psychology and international relations. Like I never ever thought about the world of marketing. When I was in my undergrad, and it’s so interesting. And as a professor too, you’ll know. They think that they have to know exactly where they’re going at 18 or 19. And I love that I can tell my story and be like, it’s totally fine. Like you don’t know where you’re going to be in five years, 10 years. Because I didn’t. So I did that. I was going to be like an international something diplomat, whatever. But I seemed to conveniently forget at the time that Canada has two official languages and. That I needed to learn the other one if I wanted to do that. So I didn’t learn French and instead I left school and ended up working at Starbucks and Fairmont hotels. Eventually when I moved out to Vancouver, which is where I am now, and in that interim period, I became fascinated with how Starbucks and the Fairmont could charge like three times as much as everybody else for what was essentially. The exact same product as like a Tim hortons, for you know, the Hyatt down the street and it was one of the HR reps at the Fairmont that was like, oh, you seem to be interested in your psychology background and in branding. You should go to this program. So I went to the British Columbia Institute of Technology in their marketing management program, which is. Also now where I teach. So i closed that loop. I spent two years there and then it was their internship program at the end of the second year that paired me with my very first internship where I just like fell into digital. It was a total. It was not on purpose. I remember crying to my instructor’s office and being like I don’t know whether to do social or strategy or. And they were like, you’re a strategist through and through and I didn’t listen. And ended up just doing Google ads in agency. Was there for three years, left to go to another organization through hard work, luck timing. Ended up being a director of marketing three years after I graduated, which was a wild ride so I had no idea what I was doing at first. Learned very quickly, had an amazing team, and then three years after that decided I wanted to teach and ended up going back to teach. So I was like, I love mentoring students and new marketers. I love that was my favorite part of it, being a manager and agency. And I love strategy. So I opened my consulting firm and went back to teach and now that’s what I do. I’m going to change a single thing because I’m super happy. And I think if you take out any of those pieces, I don’t end up where I am now.

 

Danny Gavin    04:38 

I think we each have our own path of how we get to where we go. And yeah, if you take out one spot, it’s not gonna happen. I love how the internship was a really big part. And as you know, internships are key in order to get into where you wanna go. And I find most of the people that I’ve interviewed have no marketing background from an undergraduate degree perspective. So you know, if anything you wanna get into marketing, do not get a marketing undergrad.

 

Amalia Fowler    05:01 

Well, no i teach marketing to undergrad students. So I’m going to counter that there is this narrative, I think this barely binary narrative in our field where it’s like you have to get a degree or you shouldn’t get a degree. And honestly, it’s case by case, person by person. I teach in a marketing program. I’m a huge advocate for the connections that sets up for the students that I work with. I am also completely like, I’ve hired people who never took a marketing class in their life. So I think it’s so much more about a person’s individual journey, but both. Ads have equal value in some way and we don’t. We get into this narrative of like programmed good, programmed bad, not programmed good not program bad and it I don’t think it helps us at all. But there can be a success with an undergrad in marketing totally you see, i’m biased because I teach graduate students. So I don’t have a lot to do with undergrads. But I’m all yours like the best teacher ever. So eat whether it was a bad. That’s what I hear through the Through the Grapevine yeah i mean I imagine all your students are really lucky to work with you. So you mentioned before that you know, obviously you’re at school. I know you’re a member of Toastmasters and peak leadership program. Tell me a little bit about those like. Extracurricular activities that kind of helped and pushed you.

 

Amalia Fowler    06:19 

I’d have to go back to Loria for that. There’s a joke. I mean nobody listening to this is going to know anything about Loria. It’s a smaller Canadian Barry, Ontario school. There’s a joke. It’s how many Loria students does it take to put in a light bulb And the answer is all of them because they make it a campus event. And there was that was there’s so much opportunity there. I really credit a lot of my leadership skills to Loria. I was a leadership mentor there. It’s actually. Through that program that I met my now husband, I was a Residence Life Dawn I. There was so many opportunities to build relationships and skill sets like we went to conferences on leadership. It was such a great experience outside of the classroom. And then at BCITI did some more of that with like peak leadership and then also the Toastmasters club that was at BCIT at the time. They really provided me with an opportunity to hone. Some of my speaking skills, although I will say the class load is really different from university to college. The university I would say place a lot more credit to my a lot less credit to my academics and more to the leadership opportunities. And it’s the reverse where I went to college. Like everything, BCI T’s whole thing is hands on applied learning. So everything that we do there is really applicable to the real world and so it was being in the classroom. And working with other students in groups and doing 3 or 4 presentations a term. And then in our final semester we actually have students present to a real life client like pitch, like there are many agency. So it was all of that in the classroom work that really made a big difference for me and my second go around at school.

 

Danny Gavin    08:00 

But I think what it does show is, you know, we often have students who go to college and they don’t get involved with either activities outside the classroom. Or don’t take advantage of those classes that bring real life and experience. Those could be the keys to success of having you know, a successful college experience first, not having one.

 

Amalia Fowler    08:19 

Yeah, I also like to just acknowledge that some of my students don’t have the time. Like, it’s like they have to work or they’re in certain circumstances where. That extracurricular element is not something that they can do. I would also argue that, like working through college and that time management that brings and maybe you’re in the leadership role at your work is just as valuable as being in those extracurricular things, just because. I know that there’s some students who can’t because of time or other responsibilities, but I find that they also operate. Really organizationally well and should emphasize those project management skills as they try and go into agency because it’s tough. It’s tough to do any degree and be working practically fulltime hours to support yourself at the same time.

 

Danny Gavin    09:02 

All right. So I want to jump into mentorship. So, Amalia, how do you define a mentor?

 

Amalia Fowler    09:07 

This is such a good question and I don’t know the answer. So there’s the formalized mentor relationships, which I think are a lot less frequent than people believe them to be. The narrative of like, find a mentor and it’s like you have to sit down and hammer out a contract. That doesn’t usually happen. It does happen sometimes where you have, like, I’ve officially, formally mentored someone, but I find mentors to me are also not even somebody like who’s somewhere you want to be, but it’s someone who has made an impact on your life that you are going to recall long into the future. That’s how I define a mentor, I believe. That the definition should be wide enough that it can even be somebody that you’ve had very little personal interaction with. And I find sometimes too, like my students end up as like these mini mentors for me because they say something or they approach something in a way that I’ve never thought of before and I continue to think of and then tell future students like to me that’s a similar vibe. So it’s I’ve given you a lot of like what it’s not, which is unhelpful. But I think that it is someone who leaves an impact, a positive impact. On you in some way as you move forward through your career. That’s how I would define it.

 

Danny Gavin    10:23 

I love your definition and sometimes, you know, we can describe something the way it is or what it’s not. And I think both give a, you know, an accurate portrayal. So I like how you’re piercing a lot of different parts together because it’s really not clear cut, right. I think you know, part of the podcast is exploring this and. We see that so many different experiences and people have different perspectives on what a mentor is. As you described, it can be a lot of different people, but what are the most important traits that you find in a mentor?

 

Amalia Fowler    10:52 

It obviously differs like my catch phrases. It depends. So I feel like I have to drop it at least once while we’re recording. I would say mentors are experts in something, even if that’s just themselves. Like there’s a high degree of selfawareness in all of at least all of the mentors that have crossed my path. I would say authenticity slash vulnerability and people mistake. They think vulnerability is like telling everyone everything about your life and that it’s not. Vulnerability and oversharing are not synonymous and so many people believe that they are so selfawareness, vulnerability, authenticity, and I would say some level of expertise. In a field, some level of life experience, and I don’t associate life experience with age because I also know some 18 or 19 year olds who have been through so much in their short time that I would argue they have more life experience than someone a decade older than them.

 

Danny Gavin    11:50 

Sometimes, yeah. I agree. Mentor is definitely not tied to age. No, it’s more of the people.

 

Amalia Fowler    11:56 

Really think it is. They’re like, I have to find someone who’s been doing this for 25 years or who has been, you know? Has all of this life experience or has the exact has had the exact rule I want for at least five years. And it’s like that’s the it’s like when people build personas for marketing, Focusing on demographics and geographics and job title is not the way to go in that situation or with a mentor.

 

Danny Gavin    12:21 

I love that. Let’s explore a little bit more. Yeah, Yeah. Why do you think people get stuck on the age thing?

 

Amalia Fowler    12:29 

Ok we’re going to open like a whole kid of worms here. I believe that it is one of those great, like shoulds of society we’ve been told since we were little. You have to find the like coach, the mentor, the like professor, the older person to like, look up to respect your elders, that whole narrative, which I’m not saying don’t respect your elders, just to be very clear, I am saying that respect should not be dependent on age. It should be. If someone is treating you respectfully, then you also treat them respect, like it should be a mutual thing. If somebody who’s 2 decades older than you is treating you poorly, we have this, like societal narrative that you just have to put up with it. And I think that’s very problematic. I believe that we’re so focused on age because we’re told to be so focused on age from when we’re young, like all of those narratives of like, respect your elders and make sure that like, you know, you find the right coach or the right teacher or the right career path, or like do all of these things in this way, in this order. I think that just plays into that narrative interesting and I’m going to flip it a little bit, but I’ve noticed a little bit in my agency that, you know, when you have a lot of people who are young, sometimes they, I don’t want to say, don’t respect their elders, but sometimes like. They kind of push them off. They don’t want to listen. You’re so much older, you don’t understand us. So it’s kind of interesting that sometimes that happens as well, right?

 

Amalia Fowler    13:54 

Yeah, and I think my response would be to an employee who said something along those lines. If I got that vibe, it would be. Help me understand. I think sometimes when they do push off and a lot of it is historical too. So I’ve had employees who have had terrible bosses before me and I think as bosses we forget to take into the context of where an employee is coming from. So if my employee is sitting week after week not talking to me in a one-on-one not disclosing things to me, but I know that they’re over there talking to like Brad from accounting about it, I’ll call it out, I’ll be like. I can’t help you if I don’t know what the problem is because I am not psychic. So I need you to tell me and not tell Brad so that I can fix this. Like let’s brainstorm this together. And I think a lot of the time all behavior has a root regardless of how old you are. And I see this sometimes with young people I teach or young people I like have hired in the past where it’s past experience that tells them their teacher doesn’t want to listen to them or their boss isn’t going to listen to them or people like. The narrative around Gen. Z, it used to be the same for the narrative around millennials. Like, I eat avocado toast and I bought a house, thank you very much. Like, it’s when you’re coming up against so much. And they grew up in the age of social media, too, which a lot of them don’t love. Like in the conversations I’ve had with them, they’re like, I don’t think that this was good for me or good for my generation. They’ve grown up constantly comparing. So I think it’s about putting yourself in their shoes. And it’s like, I’d be a little bit jaded too, I think. If I was younger.

 

Danny Gavin    15:29 

Yeah, that Sparks. I just watched a video last night. Dove just came out with a new campaign. I don’t know if you caught it on LinkedIn, but man, I yeah, I watched it before I went to bed last night and maybe I shouldn’t have, but for those haven’t seen the video, you know, we’ll definitely put a link. But, you know, it’s about this cute, beautiful young girl, you know, growing up, and then as she gets her first phone and then starts, you know, comparing herself and it takes snapshots of her journal complaining about her weight. And yeah, and sadly she eventually has a real eating disorder And it looks like she, you know, at the end she gets help and you know, pulls her life around. But the pressure that the kids have these days, it’s really scary. And I think the number they give at the end is like 3 out of five kids have like a mental, I don’t know if the term is like mental issue or mental challenge due to like the society and things that we live in. It’s crazy.

 

Amalia Fowler    16:20 

There was one that I saw earlier this week. It’s Canadian specific and it’s. I this is not the exact number, just to be very clear, but there was something like a hundred and forty thousand Canadian teens got Botox last year, something like that. Like social media is not like it’s powerful and there’s a lot of positive things about it. Like I have some of my best friends I’ve made on social media, but I really benefited from not growing up being constantly compared. To other people on or constantly comparing myself to other people on those platforms, I should really believe we’re lucky to not grow up in that space. So and again like to bring it back to it. Not being about age is I’ve had employees of all ages confront me or like be a little bit, you know, frustrated with the environment. And it boils down to like there is always a reason. There’s always a reason. Whether or not that reason is your fault, whether or not that reason is, they’re just having a bad day And so approaching that situation with curiosity about and then like I am on your side, like you don’t have to fight me, like I’m here to actually work with you has been the best thing that I found across, I guess anybody I work with, regardless of what generation they come from.

 

Danny Gavin    17:36 

Man Amalia, like I know your mantra is like, it depends. But like you don’t just apply that to your agency, but it’s to life as general. Like I think a lot of us, we know in the back of our mind that it’s important to not judge someone to face value. Dig deeper. It seems like you really live that and that is so cool. And it’s a great reminder for myself that, you know, it’s very easy to get frustrated at points when you’re dealing with people and individuals, but it you always have to dig deeper and see like what’s the situation, why are they there?

 

Amalia Fowler    18:05 

I will say I’m not perfect on it like. I get it wrong all the time, but one thing I learned from like years of therapy is that the repair is more powerful than the rupture. So if you make mistake, if you yell at your employees, if you don’t approach a situation the way you want to, if you know in a moment call out a student in front of other students and you regret it, an apology goes a long way like you shouldn’t have done that. But I also shouldn’t have reacted the way that I did. Or I shouldn’t have yelled at the whole team when it was one person’s issue. But thank you for coming to me and reminding me or telling me how that made you feel. Trauma happens. This is the psychology nerd in me. But trauma happens when there’s an incident and it never gets resolved on the other side. So there’s the incident. There’s that feeling, there’s that rupture between you and a caregiver, you and a friend, you and whoever. And there’s never a resolution. There’s no apology. There’s no I shouldn’t have done that. I know this isn’t to say that if you apologize every time and it becomes a behavior pattern that that’s okay. That’s a different set of like, not okay. But I’m not perfect. Like I aim to approach all situations of curiosity. I also can sometimes just be frustrated and angry, but I try to circle back in those instances. And my first leadership job taught me a lot of this. And those five people who I was their manager were like essentially Guinea pigs. Like I was 27 and new to Google ads and new to digital. And like within three years, our agency went from 8 to 85 people. So that explosive growth, you see your eyes. And I was the only female middle manager. And so, like, I made a lot of mistakes, a lot of mistakes. And so they’re going to happen. I’m not perfect, but I try to learn from them when they do.

 

Danny Gavin    19:54 

But I think that’s why it’s important to have a, you know, an acceptable culture where communication is allowed as well as the room to make mistakes. Because the way we grow is through mistakes, but we also have the communication available that when someone does make a mistake, to let them know, and it’s OK to let them know. So I think if you get those two ingredients correct, you know you got a good place. A good organization, a good.

 

Amalia Fowler    20:20 

Workplace, yeah, I’d agree.

 

Danny Gavin    20:24 

All right, so let’s now talk about the influential mentors in your life. I know you’ve given me quite a few, but I can’t wait to hear about them. So let’s talk about Kirsty Holst first.

 

Amalia Fowler    20:34 

Oh, I love Kirsty. I messaged her and told her I was going to talk about her on the podcast. So Kirsty, I don’t know if anyone is familiar with her. If you’re not, you should be. I love Kirsty for a few reasons. One, she’s so authentic. So her communications her social media just like screams authenticity to she’s funny as hell. Like i laugh every time we talk every time we’re on these calls. And then three is she really has like she has this program called Confidence Live and I took the program which is one of the ways that I connected with her. We were actually also both speaker coaches for an event what based out of Vancouver what we were joining virtually. So we connected we were like adjacent that way. And then I took her program. But one of the moments that, like, really stands out to me is she gave me her time. She’s an amazing speaker. She used to run an agency. She now does confidence coaching and training. She talks all about how, you know, she went from one to the other. But she gave me an hour for time right before I was supposed to speak at Mascon. I unfortunately got COVID. So I never actually spoke at Mascon, but I was so. Nervous about this presentation and telling her about it. And she just offered me her time. She’s so generous with her time and we spent an hour. I did the presentation for her, which was so nerve wracking. Like here’s this woman I admire so much and I’m just going to zoom presentation to her. This keynote. Well, not a keynote, but at Ma’s you have the whole stage.

 

Danny Gavin    22:07 

It’s pretty much a keynote it’s pretty much like pre, I was so nervous and we ended up talking about that. We ended up talking about some other things, but I would say. I end up with these, like, catchphrases that I find myself repeating that are not mine at all. They’re that come from all the mentors in my life. Three of the most powerful ones that I like pass on over and over and over again come from her. And to me that’s a sign of, like a really great kind of mentoresque figure in your life is if you find yourself reflecting on and repeating the advice that they’ve given you. So she’s had such an impact, like beyond. That one hour conversation and the program I took with her, which if you want to, you should check it out into all other areas of my life. Like I pass on her advice to students now. So it’s really this trickle down effect. And finally one of the things I admire the most about her is she has an idea and she goes to do it. Like she wanted to put on a conference this year and she went to put on a conference. And as someone who has historically overthought like every single thing she’s done, I love that about Kirstie and I try to. I mean, like, I almost like a what would Kirsty do? I have this idea, OK, I’ve sat with it for a few days, like, I’m going to actually do the thing now. And that’s like, it’s pretty accurate to say that a lot of our work together has changed my life and in like a big way. And how I run my business, too.

 

Danny Gavin    23:31 

It’s so lucky that you have someone like that. I mean, she sounds very special.

 

Amalia Fowler    23:34 

I mean, she’s great and to be like very clear, we’ve spent a total of her course together and then like 1 phone call. So this is not somebody I talk to on a regular basis. I mean, I told her that I was coming here, but those moments, like when she’s with someone, so there’s no, like, phone distracting her. She like, shows up completely in that moment. And that is a trait that I try to emulate when I’m with students. Or when I’m with an employee is like okay, this time is our time. So even though I’ve probably spend a total of like 14 hours and a majority of those I was taking her coaching program with her, the impact of those conversations have been so long lasting because of the intention that she brings to the spaces she’s working with people in. And I just I have so much admiration for that let’s.

 

Danny Gavin    24:22 

Switch over to your first boss in the marketing world, Nicholas Williams.

 

Amalia Fowler    24:26 

I was doing this podcast too so. This is an interesting one because he is simultaneously the best boss I’ve ever had and was the biggest pain in my butt for three years. His name is Nick. A lot of what I learned from Nick was very reluctantly learned, and there’s a few things where I still think he was wrong, but there is others that, as I grew in my career and became a manager, I realized was simply a difference of lens. So when I was there, reviews were like, you tell us how you bring value to the company. And I was like, this is an unnecessary hurdle for me to climb. But then I find myself as a manager being like, so tell me what you’ve done in the last year to deserve this race, you know? And then towards the end of my tenure at that particular organization, he was like, we need to like get on processes. Like I said, we’d grown to like 85 people and. Those of us who were there from the beginning because it was a startup automotive agency, so like all three wonderful things to put together in like a culture bomb, honestly. And no one was over 40. It was the time I learned a lot. But he was like, we need to start writing things down, like we can’t have a knowledge drain of all these OG people leaving and nothing being documented. Which is so true. And I was like, no, this is going to take up too much time and I don’t have any time. When I quit, I spent like a month writing processes. And then in my first job after that where I was the director of marketing, we had to shuffle like a shake up. So my team was like all brand new. I was like, we’re documenting everything from day one. And so all of these pieces where I was frustrated with him ended up becoming some of my greatest life lessons and. From a mentorship perspective, him just not backing down, which I’m totally going to regret saying if he listens to this, but him just not backing down on those key beliefs was a huge lesson to me and really informed the mentorship from a management perspective. So when I went on to manage my own team, I carried a lot of his advice and systems with me, but then I also learned from what he did that I didn’t like at the same time. And so I approached my team like similarly, but with my own tweak. And I think that really informed how I managed and how I still managed to some extent because I have team members in my agency.

 

Danny Gavin    26:52 

So and have you ever told him this like now after you left or is this going to be the first time him hearing about this?

 

Amalia Fowler    26:59 

We played disc golf earlier this week and I told him I’ve never said this to you and you already know it, but you were right about a lot of things. And he said I know. So that that’s how that conversation went.

 

Danny Gavin    27:14 

But you know what? It shows the level of maturity, and documenting and making s o p ‘s is the key to a successful agency.

 

Amalia Fowler    27:22 

Well, now I’m like, it’s one of the three things I teach, the agencies I work with. It’s so frustrating, honestly, to have taken such a stand at such a young age against something that I now advocate for all the time. It’s so it’s one of the great, like, ironies. I think of my career.

 

Danny Gavin    27:41 

I’ve been blessed in my agency because one of my departments, 2 of the people are going on maternity leave that pushed them and us in general to get SOPS really tightened up. So it’s been awesome. And then it’s also given other people in the agency and other departments to look at and say, oh wow, that that’s really awesome, look what you’ve put together. So, you know, sometimes you need a little pressure in order to get those SOPS out because like you said, you can always be like what I, you know, I need to work on a client and you do something else.

 

Amalia Fowler    28:10 

There’s always something else more important until that’s the most important thing. Because s o p ‘s and processes are for people who are training and people who are taking over a role or someone who doesn’t know what they’re doing. And the only time you need them is when the person who knows what they’re doing isn’t there. But the only time the person who knows what they’re doing isn’t there is when someone quits unexpectedly or there’s an accident or a like a lottery win. So those things, it’s like unsought goods in the marketplace. We don’t think we need insurance or wills or coffins until we need them. And then if we haven’t done the planning, we’re in a bit of trouble. It’s very similar.

 

Danny Gavin    28:49 

Let’s talk about Julie Friedman. I don’t. I think it’s Bachini or bikini.

 

Amalia Fowler    28:53 

I think it’s bachini but I actually don’t know what I should know. Julie has become a very good friend. So this is 1 case where someone who has been a mentor. To me, has become somebody that I am very close to and you know, love dearly. And we talk about our lives. And when I was sick with COVID in Italy, she was one of the people who zoomed me to make sure I didn’t die of loneliness in a different country. Julie is the current manager of PPC Chat. She is not the founder, if I’m correct, manages a bunch of PPC communities, always shows up for everybody in the space, new or old. And Julie? Along with Jenny Marvin, just to give credit where credit is due, those two are the reasons that I started speaking on the PBC speaking circuit. And Julie, if she’s at the conference I’m at, she’s front row and she’s clapping and she’s making eye contact with me. So I’m not freaking out and it’s like having a supportive mom. I don’t want to call her mom. She’s like an older sister. Like a having a supportive older sister all the time in the space. But early on in particular, she was instrumental in me feeling comfortable and what is an established space. I was so lucky that Julie just, like, welcomed me into the PPC space the way she did and extended a hand. And so from Julie in a mentorship perspective, I’ve learned a lot about generosity and passing on knowledge and not gatekeeping. And so I learned from Julie. In particular to share and to be generous and to offer that helping hand. And it’s been such a pleasure of like because I’ll never repay her. The reason that I’ve now so successful in my own business is because I spent five years in industry building a personal brand. And the reason I was able to build a personal brand was because Julie and Jenny opened doors for me that would have been closed otherwise. And so I’ll never be able to repay the two of them in particular in the. Same way. So the way I look at it is I now open doors for other new people who are coming into the industry as and create a safe space to learn.

 

Danny Gavin    31:06 

Let’s switch over to you. Obviously now you are mentoring lots of people, whether it’s your freelancers, students, people are up and coming in the marketing space. How do you enjoy being a mentor and do you sense any? Difference between how you mentor a student first a freelancer yeah so first, I don’t think of myself as a mentor. I remember the first time I’ve had one, like I said, official, like documented mentor, mentee relationship and that was fantastic. Hi, Jesse. Outside of that, like, I don’t just like the label expert. Like I don’t put that on myself and then people will be like, oh, you’re a marketing expert. And I’m like, I’m a what? Like I don’t think of myself as a mentor, the same way that I don’t think of myself as an expert. So I don’t actively try to mentor in situations. Generally the conversation, regardless of who it is, goes like this. They go, I’ve got a problem, I’ve got something. Can I pick your brain? I’m not sure what to do with my career. I’m not sure what to do with this particular problem, and all I do is behave as a sounding board. That’s literally all I do every single. I’m never telling anyone what they should do because just like no two, digital marketing strategies are the same or should be the same, it’s the same with people. No two people have the same experiences or should move in the same direction or should do the same thing so someone, the other day, it came to me and was like, I don’t know if I should go into the workforce or if I should travel. And I was like, what do you want to do? And they’re like, I want to travel. And I was like, OK, like I just do that and they’re like, but what if this, what if that? And I’m like, but what if you don’t go like, how are you going to feel about that in a decade? And then I’m usually will throw in like a personal anecdote, which for me is I went straight from school to the workforce. And one of the I don’t believe in regrets because I wouldn’t be where I am now. But one of the things that I wish I had done is travel between school and working. That’s one of the things I wish I had done, and I didn’t. And so I tell them that, and then they’re like, okay, thank you. But it’s like I didn’t say anything profound. I didn’t actually come to the conclusion myself. I didn’t tell them what to do. I never enter those conversations. With like an end goal, If there is an end goal for me, it’s not a conversation that I should be having about someone else’s life. I forget what your original question was if we’re being honest, but I don’t purposefully mentor. I just do a lot of listening and reflecting and maybe that is where my psych degree comes in handy.

 

Danny Gavin    33:45 

But I want to challenge you. I think that is mentoring, you know, and that’s what that’s we’re trying to redefine here, you know, it’s that it. The fact that you are who you are, and the fact that people feel comfortable with you, they want to open up and obviously they know that you have that wisdom. You have that path of success that you’ve traveled. So they feel safe and comfortable asking you these questions. And by you leading them to come up to the conclusion on their own is actually the right way of doing it, that is. That is a mentor.

 

Amalia Fowler    34:19 

I do think the conversations come up more frequently with students just because they’re in a learning environment. They’re making all these big decisions. But like, if one of my employees asks me, one of my friends asks me if someone asks to pick my brain from, like, the PVC community. Same general thing. I think of them all as like tiny cave explorers where they’re looking for something and all I’m doing is holding up a Lantern. That’s all I’m doing. My job is to shed light. I’m not doing the exploration. I don’t even know what they’re looking for. I’m just holding like the camper light. That’s what I’m doing in those spaces. And also trying to be aware of how much I share my own anecdotes. Because I love to tell, I love to talk, I love to tell stories. So I’ll often like be in my own head, like don’t say anything else, don’t say or I’ll be like, can I share a story with you that may like from my own experience, like I’ll ask. Because I don’t want to make their question about me, but I’m not. I’m it’s a work in progress.

 

Danny Gavin    35:17 

Sometimes it’s all a work in progress, so let’s talk about your three keys to mentoring success. When we went over these, you seem pretty excited, so I’d love to dig deeper.

 

Amalia Fowler    35:29 

Ok. So number one is self-awareness which again anybody who’s never spoken to me will understand that is one of my favorite things I in one of my early lectures in the semester. I ask students what the most important quality of marketer needs to have is and I get everything from like communication skills, research, excel, understanding, glancing. But my answer is Selfawareness and I tell them it’s not the be all end all. But Selfawareness is so important in general, but when you’re mentoring, especially because if you don’t know what you don’t know. You are not capable of providing advice within the realm of your experience. There is a lot of times when people ask for my advice and I tell them that I’m not the best person to have the conversation with, and if I was not somewhat selfaware, I don’t think I’m fully selfaware. But if I was not somewhat selfaware, I might give them advice in a space where I have no business giving advice and so that that’s the first key. The second is also one of my key management philosophies, which is just approach with curiosity. We’ve talked about that a little bit earlier, but it’s okay asking questions for like why is this the way that you feel like what happened that you couldn’t do your work on time. Can you explain to me why this, you know, campaign wasn’t adjusted? Within the time frame we agreed upon, and it’s never approaching with like, anger. I try not to approach from a place of like being upset, but I try to approach from a place of being curious. Because everyone has those backgrounds, everyone has those different stories, everyone has these like beliefs. These solid core beliefs that are formed when we’re growing up that sometimes are not true or sometimes are beliefs that we don’t actually want to subscribe to anymore. You know that you shouldn’t travel before you work because it’s a waste of time and money and it’s like okay. But do you believe that? Or is that coming from somebody else in your life? And if it’s coming from somebody else in your life, do you want to believe it? Like, do you want to make that your rule too? Because if not, why is it? Why are we clinging on to this thing that doesn’t necessarily reflect your own experience and opinion. So approaching with that curiosity of like, where did these feelings come from? Is that second key? And then the third key is just I tell them to follow their sparkle okay. If you don’t like the word sparkle, you can use the word joy. Or you can use like, the feeling of like the big yes, but that’s how I got to where I am. So I, like Notoriously, had no idea who I was, like you wouldn’t know it now. But I was quiet. I did not know what I wanted to do. I did not know who I was. I did not have any understanding of what it was like to be me or what I believed. And someone gave me this advice. No, it was a woman named Sashi. She owns a dance studio here in Vancouver and she was one of my mentees for the speaking program that I was speaking about earlier. And she developed her talk about following the sparkles. This actually came from her. I was like, okay. So I really like mentorship of new marketers okay what is a job that I can have where I’m doing a lot of mentorship or teaching and it was like, hey, I really love strategy, but I hate client comps. I’m good at it, but I hate like the repetitive. Reeducation month over month over month over month. And so it’s like, i hate HR talks. So where can I mentor but not do HR talks? I where can I do strategy but not do the like. Daytoday communication. And it’s taking those pieces that work for you, taking those yeses and stacking them up. And every time you move jobs, every time you make a decision, every time you go to have a new conversation, it’s taking the yeses with you and looking for something that has more of that. And less of what you don’t want to do. That is how I just rediscovered my hobbies. It was like, this is something that feels like a yes, so let’s do that. It’s kind of about learning to listen to your intuition again. And I don’t know where this one came from, but I know that it was not my it’s not an Amalia original, but I tell all of my students at the end of every term when we’re saying goodbye, that final lecture, that if you have to disappoint someone, don’t let it be you. Like, if you have to disappoint a parent, a teacher, a boss, don’t go against what that core yes feeling is to please someone else, because life is way too short for that. And I have finally figured that out. Slash I think maybe earlier than other people. So I’ve got a lot of, like, yeses living, yes, living left to do. But that’s the third key.

 

Danny Gavin    40:16 

So we’re going to transition now to talk a little bit about your professorship. So a lot of people know my story. And I did my MBA at the University of Houston. I graduated in 2010 And then five years later I get this random email, hey danny, you want to come teach? We don’t want the theoretical people teaching the digital marketing, but we want the real life experts and we’ve been following you and we want you to come. So I would love to know what’s your story? How did you get invited five years back to become a professor?

 

Amalia Fowler    40:41 

So it’s the last mentor on my list. I think she would legitimately like, maybe murder me if I mentioned her name on a podcast, so I’m just going to. I’m just going to call her Whitney because I need a name, but her name is not Whitney. So she was a teacher of mine when I was at the school and taught me digital. And then like when I was in the program. And after I left, we kept in touch and she reached out about a freelance project that she was on like two or three years after I left, asking if I wanted to partner with her on it. So we worked together on a couple projects. And then when I had realized that I really wanted to make a change from my last agency, I reached out to her and we had coffee. And I was like, how do I do this? How do I do what you do? Because I think this is what I want to do. And so she helped me start teaching part time. In our part time studies were flexible learning programs. And then from there, when there was an opening, like, you know, let me know. Very boundaried at that point because when you’re on the hiring committee, you can’t obviously, like, there’s a separation. And she was very good at that. But then even when I started, she was instrumental in like helping me figure out the learning system, like the LMS and helping me organize my courses and all of that. But she’s the reason. So Whitney’s the reason from between like being a student and then coming back to teach. The thread that binds in that space is her, and I have so much admiration for the way she works with students and how she preps and the amount of effort she puts in. Because as you know, as digital marketing instructors, there’s two kind of paths. There’s the you can be lazy and not refresh your content whenever Google decides to make a decision, which is like every other day. Or you can change your decks and stay up to date like. We get paid the same as a math teacher like Pythagorean theorem or whatever hasn’t changed for thousands of years. And we can like you can phone it in or you can actively work to continue to provide the best information for your students. And all I see her doing is actively working to continue to provide the best information to her students. And so she’s very much a mentor to me in that sense as well, but she’s the reason that I ended up teaching again.

 

Danny Gavin    43:06 

I had a.

 

Amalia Fowler    43:07 

Again, teaching period.

 

Danny Gavin    43:09 

I had a professor like that as well, a similar concept. His name was Steve Koch. I’ll say his name he knows, but he’s not going.

 

Amalia Fowler    43:16 

To get mad at you for talking about.

 

Danny Gavin    43:18 

I hope not. It’s awesome to have something to look up to, and hopefully we both will have students who want to become professors as well because of us.

 

Amalia Fowler    43:26 

Some of them tell me that already they might can’t give it a few years. Kids like i love certain things about our job. And then there’s how there’s room. Like, why am I here? So what am I doing? But I always comes back to what I call adjacent joy. I love watching students have that light bulb moment. Like, you know exactly what I’m talking about. They discover something about themselves. And it doesn’t have to be for my class. It doesn’t even have to be related to academics. But I love watching that, like, click. In their brain as they figure out another piece of like their own puzzle to their own life and they get so joyful or invested in what they’re doing and I feel so privileged genuinely to stand and like watch their growth that brings me so much joy And so as much as I’d like joke like sometimes like what are we doing? Like this is a lot and I could make a whole lot more if I wasn’t teaching, to be honest. Sometimes I have those thoughts and then, like, a student emails me to tell me that, like, they got their dream job or that, like, they have found the confidence to apply for a scholarship or they’re going to go traveling for your whatever it is. And I’m like, Oh yeah, this is why I’m here.

 

Danny Gavin    44:42 

Yeah, I feel the same way when I’m on LinkedIn and I see a student get it, especially digital marketing job. But like when they get that, I am like, I just, I’m jumping for joy. Especially when they came into the program like as a teacher or something that’s like totally left field and they’re like, oh, this is what I want. And it’s just it’s nothing better in the world.

 

Amalia Fowler    45:01 

I think it gives us a boost too in some way. Like not in like a I’m taking credit for it way, but in like a it kind of reminds me this is going to sound so cheesy. It kind of reminds me there’s like hope in the world. You know what I mean? It’s like kind of reminds me like the next generation is going to be OK they’re going to get through this and like it’s all it kind of reminds me that.

 

Danny Gavin    45:20 

I like that you mentioned changing curriculum. So this wasn’t officially on the schedule, but are you thinking about incorporating chat gpt sort of lessons or modules within your core curriculum?

 

Amalia Fowler    45:33 

Yeah so there’s, I mean there’s a few things. There’s institutional policy around that type of thing, which varies from institution to institution. And then in terms of like changing curriculum, like I can adjust what’s within a course, but changing the like overall learning objectives of course is like a whole other thing that’s out of my scope, I have decided. Mostly because I’m not all the way there yet, mostly to embrace it. My general philosophy in my classes is if they can Google it while they’re outside of my class in the workforce, then I need to teach them how to use it responsibly while they’re inside my class. Because it’s all well and good, and this is just my opinion, I’d like just to any professors that do this differently. It’s a whole new world. Like, we’re all figuring it out. I have no judgment on what other people are doing in their classrooms, but for me, I am like, Okay. They’re going to use Chachi Petit. Like there’s no way that they’re not going to go into their careers and use it in some capacity. I used it the other day to brainstorm business names like I’m using it. They’re probably using it, but can I teach them? That it is not always accurate? That it doesn’t have access to the Internet? That it can’t actually pull from sources. Can I teach them all the limitations? Can I teach them that because it was coded by a specific group of people in a specific country that it has inherent biases within its programming? Can I teach them about the ethical implications of a I? Can I? Research all these elements and bring them into the classroom in a way that when they do go out into the world to use it, they have a lens from which they’re seeing it. Because I was the first voice they heard on the topic. And so we had an email marketing assignment in this one class I teach and I the assignment was get Chachi Boutique to write a sales email for you and your job is to critique it. I want you based on all of the best practices we’ve talked about in class to tell me what Chachi BT said. And tell me why you would do a better job as a human. So it’s like go use it, go do this with it, and then tell me where it’s flawed. So that’s the that’s the one thing that pops to mind.

 

Danny Gavin    47:39 

Yeah, I love that in some of the courses that I’m doing, it’s like you know the regulars, let’s say homework. But then now trying to do some of the same things with chat g p t. And I think an essential question that you have to ask each time is what’s wrong with it, right what point out the problems. And I think that if we train our students and people in general to look for that, no one’s going to just copy and paste, but they’re going to right have to look Mull over and see what are the problems and how can I make it better.

 

Amalia Fowler    48:08 

Yeah, it’s not perfect. It is not. There’s so much misinformation out there about it too. So if I can teach them, we’re going to find good information. Who to listen to? To check their sources? Sources i personally, and again, this is my opinion and not that of my institution or any other professors that I work with. But my personal opinion is if it’s something that they’re going to be able to use in the real world, then we should be using it in my classroom so that they can figure out how to use it responsibly. That’s just one professor’s opinion.

 

Danny Gavin    48:36 

So I literally have a million and one questions we didn’t get to and we are definitely going to have to do episode two three or, four even amalia, but it’s time for the Lightning round. And I would like to know your top three. We can either do Taylor Swift albums or songs, whichever one you think is going to be better neither good okay. I love Taylor Swift. Did you know that I’m 3 degrees of separation away from her? It’s true. Tell me one day I’m gonna meet Taylor Swift and it may be in a decade. But I will get there. I know somebody who knows Ryan Reynolds, whose wife is Best friends, or like, really good friends with Taylor Swift. So maybe it’s just the Canadian connection in me to Ryan Reynolds. But I tell students that at the beginning of the semester I’m like, also, fun fact about me, I’m 3 degrees of separation from Taylor Swift. There’s a lot to be said about the, like, the character of people who like certain albums. So I’m probably going to reveal a lot about myself with the following statements. My number one favorite album of hers is reputation. I’m very much a reputation girl and in the sense of like the Swifty world, like revenge but Not unhinged is kind of how I would like describe that album. Like just I say the sentence like I’m in my reputation era all the time. Like i am all about reputation. It gets a little harder after that because I am a fan. I am. I’m a real big fan of 1989 That was a formative album for me. Like, we’re only one or two years in age apart, Taylor Swift and I. So it’s very much like I grew up with these songs. And 1989 both came out at a time and like, had a lot to say. That was very in line with how I was feeling in that. Era of my life. So I’d say 1989 is my second favorite album. And now it’s like, you’re just asking me to choose between like another child. My instinct says that Red is my third favorite album. But also Speak Now is there. So i don’t know. And I love her newer stuff like I love folk, folklore and Evermore and Midnight’s like, I think they’re all. Amazing albums but the like OG ones kind of for the older ones kind of have my heart. So reputation. My final answer is reputation 1989 and Red Taylor’s version. Thank you.

 

Danny Gavin    51:02 

I love it and I’m sure that depending on the mood and where you’re at, that could switch, but we want to use.

 

Amalia Fowler    51:08 

Always number one, always that never switches. But the rest? Yes, they can. I saw in Tiktok the other day someone had like a whole ranking system in Excel. Like the only official way to find your favorite Taylor Swift albums. And now I’m going to have to do it like this is what I spend my time doing. Spreadsheets to rank Taylor Swift albums. This is how cool I am.

 

Danny Gavin    51:29 

It helps create spreadsheets for PPC as well, so you’re OK. So what is your next big project?

 

Amalia Fowler    51:35 

Oh my nice big project. Like right now I’m audience building on LinkedIn, so my whole thing with my. Consultancy is kind of down with cookie cutter like none of this cookie cutter stuff. I’m working a lot with agencies and with clients on strategic like just strategic thinking for in particular their ad accounts but it’s not siloed. So we talk about I see we talk about email. If I need to bring in other experts to fill in the gaps I will like I know what I’m not good at. I’m aware of it from a strategy sense but not an implementation person So I’m trying to enter this space of. You can’t hire an agency. You don’t want to do it yourself. Like I am the perfect like middle gap filler consultancy. So I’ll do like the setup of the account and the setup of everything as a one time project and then teach someone internally. For those people who can’t afford an agency but also don’t have the time or energy to do it themselves, I’ll teach somebody and write those processes of like how to maintain. And then once every couple months, like check in with them. So I’m building an audience on LinkedIn, talking a lot about audits, talking a lot about strategy, talking a lot about all these pieces and putting them together and. Then there’s going to be offerings in that space like coming down the pipeline. But really this summer I’m traveling a lot. So I’m kind of focused on that as a big life project who’s traveling. Yeah, that’s really where I’m at right now, kind of audience building.

 

Danny Gavin    53:04 

Love it. And are you seeing direct ROI in those efforts or as it’s still in the in process?

 

Amalia Fowler    53:10 

I’m seeing direct our way. So what’s really interesting is I heard someone the other day, a businesswoman I very much respect and admire, called herself a Chaos Muppet in her business. And i have always shed the knee into niche. I’ve always shed all that like traditional business advice because it’s just not how my brain works and at the end of the day I am authentic before I am anything else and so my business is very much a representation of me. I am a bit of a chaos muppet where like this is what I’m doing right now, but I am getting leads like off the side unintentionally and for audits in particular. My audit series is really popular at the moment and then I get a lot of leads off Reddit. People, I just comment on people’s posts and then they DM me and then I end up working for them.

 

Danny Gavin    53:55 

That’s so cool.

 

Amalia Fowler    53:56 

In the PPC space. So yes, the gold right now is honestly a follower count. And so I’m seeing a director turn there, but I’m seeing like an ROI business wise as well.

 

Danny Gavin    54:07 

Very cool. So where can listeners learn more about to you and your business?

 

Amalia Fowler    54:10 

Just LinkedIn. I actually don’t have a website. Chaos muppet. I don’t have a specific home. Online, yes. I will later this year, but LinkedIn is the best place to find me under Amalia Fowler. I think it’s just if you do like linkedin dot com slash in slash amalia Fowler you can find me. I’m also on Twitter, but ever since a certain billionaire decided I had to pay for reach, I don’t actually use it as much. It’s really just me being quippy or like tweeting something that comes to mind in my life. So if you want the like, more authentic, funny, but not related to ads. Version of me Twitter is there, My dad is on Twitter and so he responds to everyone of my tweets. So if you want to see like that father daughter relationship play out in real time, you can also be there. The other day I tweeted I bought a whole case of mangoes and he could I eat them and he was like, good luck. Thanks stuff. So yeah, Linkedin’s the best spot for business stuff. Twitter if you just want to feel like we’re buddies.

 

Amalia Fowler    55:09 

Love it? Well Amalia, this has really been so awesome. Like I said, we need to do it again. So thank you for being a guest on the Digital Marketing Mentor and thank you listeners for tuning into the Digital Marketing Mentor. We’ll speak to you next time.