Today we’d like to introduce you to Brianna Skiffington – Chief Product Officer (CPO) at full-service local service marketing agency, Ad Leverage & datacube.ai, a data visualization company creating data dashboards with beauty AND brains (AI).
It’s an honor to speak with you today.
Why don’t you give us some details about you and your story. How did you get to where you are today?
Yeah, it’s a funny story honestly. My Mom has been in advertising since I can remember. When I was directionless on my highschool electives she suggested Marketing, which turned out to be my favorite class. Long story short, we had a fashion show as a class project, and I did literally nothing but pick the song. And I remember the event, hearing the song and watching the models walk down the runway to it at the perfect rythm and something in me felt alive. I was a real introvert, so I had no interest in being visibly involved, but I got a great deal of satisfaction watching it come together. That was the last cool thing I remember about high school. After that, I hated it and eventually dropped out. Fast forward to hacking my way into college without a real diploma or GED, I turned back to that love for production and events I discovered in HighSchool and started booking DJs and throwing my own events as a side hustle. Obviously to make those events profitable, you need people to attend, you need to get awareness to the right audiences and compel them to buy tickets, voila, marketing. I got pretty good at it, I was building my own audiences, doing my own ads, remarketing, emails, had a street team doing flyers, had a photographer out taking free photos to build a website gallery audience and build a subscriber list. Eventually, one of the venues I held events at hired me as their marketing director, for 5 venues. But nightlife is not a life. I decided I wanted to move to CA and took my talents to ziprecruiter. Some guy Andrew at an agency called Ad Leverage, didn’t seem so interested in my interview because my experience was primarily hospitality and his clientele was less… hospitable, more diverse, so I asked him if he would consider a test project and he did; create a social media plan for a funeral home. He hired me 7 years ago based on that test project and since we’ve built out the digital business from a minority to majority of the agency services + revenue, and have now strategically added in product as my focus where we now have about 6 SaaS companies under our belt.
I’m sure your success has not come easily. What challenges have you had to overcome along the way?
More than I could count. I mean so many, from being so paralyzed by anxiety and imposter syndrome I could barely have a conversation with other humans, let alone a meeting, let alone a pitch, let alone public speaking like I do now. Just to add atop a very insecure and anxious person, drop in a thousand real costly mistakes along the way that made me question my competence and worthiness at all, it’s a pharmaceutical miracle I’m even here today. But no, really, for the reasons I just described, I try to advocate for mental health any opportunity I have where I get the rare personal questions around my own challenges. I think it’s important to be vulnerable and vocal about what you’ve overcome to normalize the conversation and show others it is possible to persevere in spite of whatever you are going through whether literally or figuratively and self inflicted. Mine certainly was, but it is conquerable.
What’s your best piece of advice for readers who desire to find success in their life?
If I could choose the 3 most impactful things on my professional journey thus far, 1. Brene Brown’s Netflix Special where she doubles down on vulnerability, and I bring that practice into work. If I fuck up, I try to be the first and loudest person to say it. That builds trust, and establishes a culture of, we are here to own our shit, imperfectly, and move forward as best we can in spite of it, whoever does that best does it best, we are a team and we can speak open and honestly without fear of toxic blaming, shaming or competition. 2. The 4-Hour Workweek, learning the value of my time and how to leverage time value across currencies to make the most of it, which allowed me to free myself from routine tasks and focus on being a visionary. 3. Goals. You have to have goals. There is some Harvard study with ridiculous stats that (I’m paraphrasing and being dramatic but) 99% of people who don’t write down their goals don’t achieve them and 97% of people who do, do. I thought it was silly because I knew my goals so I did it once, 3, 6, 12 month goals and came back to them a year later and had actually achieved most of them. I don’t remember actually having done that before.
Speaking of success, what does the word mean to you?
I think success is simply happiness. If you are happy, you are successful, you have won life, that’s the entire point of it. Some people are happy just existing in the experiences around them, others are happier when they can create the experiences around them, some aren’t satisfied until they can create experiences for others that transcend generations. I don’t think any of it matters in the end except the core question of the purpose, were they happy? Then they succeeded, therefore are successful. The end.
What’s next for you?
Well, with 5 SaaS products on my plate, on top of my CPO/executive role at the agency and our internal products, quite a bit. We’ll continue to develop and launch innovative software solutions for our clients and beyond. Anyone who knows me knows I am infatuated with reaching a collective $1B valuation goal, so I don’t intend on stopping until we get there.
Media Contact
Company Name: Ad leverage
Contact Person: Brianna Skiffington
Email: Send Email
Country: United States
Website: adleverage.com