Hey Reader,

As we hurtle terrifyingly through 2025 (and since there are a lot of new faces here) I thought I'd reintroduce myself and share why I launched Building Rocket Ships - a platform dedicated to bringing together founders and marketing leaders to help the wider community find growth.

About me:

My name is Shaun and I founded BRS in 2024: partly as a creative outlet to share some of my experience in marketing and growth through my career, but also to build new connections with founders and marketing leaders globally.

Since 2014, I've had a cool side hustle: I've build a personal brand around travel. Specifically, a Scottish guy traveling the USA. On YouTube, TikTok, Instagram, Facebook and others, I've had over 50 million views, and have enjoyed incredible opportunities to work with awesome organizations like Superdry, Lush, Tesla and the US State Department because of my content, while I was also awarded honorary citizenship to the city of San Antonio, Texas.

On the other hand, I've worked in marketing since 2010, holding several leadership positions in content and communications, working for a range of global firms including BlackRock, BNY Mellon, Standard Life and Investec.

I live in Edinburgh, Scotland, with my wife, travel often (especially to the US for work, and Brazil, where my wife is from), and enjoy fishing, 35mm film photography, and eating good food.

The problem with marketing...

One thing I'm learning about current times through conversations with founders is that businesses are finding marketing increasingly hard, especially with the changes we are seeing in technology. Do I need to mention AI?

I think we (and by we I mean marketing world) are overcomplicating things.

It's my firm view that the whole game is about getting attention, and if we can aim to remedy this single challenge, we will achieve desired results.

To get this attention, you have to create content at scale across the platforms where your ideal viewers spend most of their time. For some, that will be LinkedIn, for others, TikTok or YouTube. For most, it will be a blend of the half-a-dozen platforms that control information flow today.

The key is knowing how to find your voice: what to say and who to say it to.

How Building Rocket Ships will help you:

As I share in my new free masterclass, Power Up Your Personal Brand, which is available now, this is what you need to do:

• Focus on sharing things you know, expertise you have, and things you are passionate about.
• Aim to share this information with likeminded people. Usually, this will be someone in the same profession as you, but perhaps a few steps later than you down the knowledge ladder.
• Create as much content as you can answering questions your audience will be asking.

Building Rocket Ships combines my experience as an influencer and a marketing director to share insights. But more than that - it's a place I want to have meaningful conversations with founders and marketing leaders about the things they are seeing in their businesses, and how they are tackling the many challenges we face in the age of AI.

So, with that said, welcome. I'm looking forward to sharing weekly insights with you, as well as interviews with those who are building their very own rocket ships.

I apologize if you were expecting actual rocket ships or missions to Mars, but I'm told the irony is that marketing often feels like a similar kind of endeavor. It's time to put that right!

It's great to have you here. Feel free to connect on LinkedIn.

Speak soon,

Shaun

>>> P.S. - I'll be developing a number of free resources for the community in 2025. The first of which is the Power Up Your Personal Brand Masterclass mentioned above. More to come!

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