« We’re Giving You the Keys to Upward Mobility. Are You In?
Fear is a Career’s Worst Enemy, UpMo tells New York Times »

How a Startup Junkie Got Her Start: Q&A With Natalee Roan

February 20, 2009 | Author: Jessica Howard | Filed under: Mentoring

UpMo.com wants to help you get behind the wheel of your career. And we know it’s much easier if you’re not alone.

That’s why we’ve got a team of UpModels waiting to help co-pilot. These are professionals who have had long, varied and challenging career paths in business, academic and non-profit arenas. We’ve used a patented system to break down and map their career paths for you.

We’ll run a series of UpModel Q&As that provide an intriguing glimpse into the habits of highly successful people.

Today, we introduce Natalee Roan, who has helped transform a number of startups into multi-billion dollar companies, such as Nextel Communications and Sprint’s wireless division. More recently, she has held the role of chief marketing officer at Earth Class Mail and Entellium. You can watch her leadership skills in action on Startup Junkies, an 8-episode TV docuseries which aired on Mojo HD Network. She also runs a business blog for women called Vjournal.

This is someone who failed typing in high school and went into college thinking she would become a teacher because it was one of the few professions women pursued. Having graduated with a degree in finance and minor in psychology, Roan says psychology set her apart and helped her convince others that she could do the job.

UpMo: It looks like you started in finance and then went into marketing and telecommunications. Is that the basic progression?

Natalee: I came out of college focusing on finance but I had a minor in psychology. So I joke with people that I’m all about the psychology of making money – which really is marketing in a lot of ways.

UpMo: If you had to identify some of the biggest events that got you to being a marketing executive, what would they be?

Natalee: My entire career has been one of convincing people to take a chance on me. There has been a constant theme of taking on positions that I haven’t done before but I know I’m the right person to (assume).

For example, I had never done any pricing analysis in my life, or a rate plan, but I knew that my financial background was the right fit for determining how to come to the right decision. My (financial) models were beautiful because I considered more factors in my decisions than the previous marketing analyst did.

UpMo: Can you think of another example in your career where that – convincing other people - came up?

Natalee: From the point that I was a lowly pricing analyst, it wasn’t very long after that that I felt a need to be challenged and there was no belief that I could do any more in this particular marketing department … they had a narrow view of me as a financial analyst because I came from that department. So I went looking for another job specifically in marketing and was able to talk my way into a director-level position at Nextel, which was a startup. The position was for a director of marketing analysis so it built on my strengths but I felt it was a great foot in the door to give me greater exposure to marketing.

The guy I interviewed with at the time, the CEO of Nextel Communications … he was analyzing me to death and scaring me to death, because I was a very young kid. He said, “If you do this job, do you realize you’ll hold the entire revenue stream of this company in the palm of your hand?” That was scary. He also was the first to explain what a startup junkie was, by saying “You will find out in the next six months if you are a startup junkie, in which case it will follow you for the rest of your life.” That turned out to be very true for me.

I managed to talk him into taking a chance on me – and I used those words. But they were in startup, and so their whole business was about taking chances.

I interviewed with 8 people within the company that day. I’d never been through that kind of experience for a job before. Usually, when you’re early in your career you talk to the hiring manager, or one or two other people.

By the end of the exhausting day, they let me go, and I was so sure I’d get job that I went shopping at Nordstrom to get my new wardrobe. I actually ended up negotiating an offer from the pay phone in the Nordstrom bathroom. I couldn’t afford a cell-phone back then.

UpMo: So you did get the job?

I did get the job and I pushed for a serious raise from what I was making - so that was my first experience learning about negotiation tactics. I went from a $46,000-a-year job to an $80,000-a-year job in one fell swoop.

I had gotten great advice that no matter what number someone gives you, give them a higher number back – much higher. They gave me a number of $50,000 and I was so excited because it was already more than what I had been making. But I took a chance and followed the advice I was given and so I threw out $80,000. He said he had to get back to me, and during those few hours I was so nervous – Did I blow it by asking for so much? But then they said “yes” and I walked out of Nordstrom going “Oh my God!”

I wouldn’t call it ego … I followed rules that people had given me. I had a mentor who told me no matter that what number anyone gives you for anything … it’s expected that you go for something more. It was gutsy to ask for 60 percent more, but that’s also a mistake many women make – they barely negotiate and instead settle for a 5- to 10-percent increase from the number that’s been given to them.

UpMo: You’ve said your grandfather was your mentor at that point?

Natalee: Yes. He was a brilliant man who had escaped Nazi Germany. He was in business and accounting. He taught me, but I don’t know that he thought I would do much with it, because my family and I thought I was going to become a secretary. To us, that was a “business woman”.

But I failed typing in high school, and my mom patted me on the shoulder and said, “It’s OK, you’ll have to have your own secretary one day.”

At that time, my mother and I couldn’t think of a business woman who had her own secretary. All we could come up with was Golda Meir and Margaret Thatcher as women in prestigious positions. But I said, I can’t type, so I might as well go to college - so I just went from there. It was not necessarily the expected career path.

I had to prove I deserved it, and in my first semester I got straight As. So I kept going with the idea that if I can’t be a secretary then I might as well be a teacher, because I didn’t know what else women did. But I took classes in finance and heard you could make a lot of money in finance. It reminded me of my grandfather so I went for it. I didn’t expect to be in marketing but the combination of finance and psychology gives me the ability to understand people and their buying decisions in a unique way.

Share/Save/Bookmark

This entry was posted on Friday, February 20th, 2009 and is filed under Mentoring. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

xygoxen

1 person has left a comment

[From Promise, UpMo CEO]

I had the pleasure of meeting Natalee through another woman I respect who runs a company called Corefino. What is amazing about Natalee, that rings true in these troubled times, is NOT that she’s been incredibly successful in her career but that she’s been able to do something I call “the hinge.” It’s like a stunt… taking one set of experiences from one industry or role and using it as a hinge to “pivot” from a role in finance to another in marketing & sales.

This is an incredibly important capability and allows people like you to never get stuck in a role or a career path. What you’ll learn from Natalee (above) and Tony Nemelka (CEO of Helpstream, a VC-backed company) an upcoming UpModel is that hinging can help enable more paths of upward mobility.

If I take what Tony, Natalee and other successful role models have done, they look at their career as a series of “projects” or professional engagements… as you look at your career, be thinking about what skills you need to enable your next 1-2 or 3 career “engagements.”

Promise

Promise Phelon wrote on February 23, 2009 - 6:18 pm | Visit Link

feel free to leave a comment

Comment Guidelines: Basic XHTML is allowed (a href, strong, em, code). All line breaks and paragraphs are automatically generated. Off-topic or inappropriate comments will be edited or deleted. Email addresses will never be published. Keep it PG-13 people!

XHTML: You can use these tags: <a href="" title=""> <abbr title=""> <acronym title=""> <b> <blockquote cite=""> <cite> <code> <del datetime=""> <em> <i> <q cite=""> <strike> <strong>

All fields marked with " * " are required.