Two things that are foundational to me as a person (and that have made me the type of marketer I am today): 1) I can’t stand marketing. 2) It’s not about you (yes, I’m looking at you). Even before I started Nectafy, I kept running into what — in some circles — is referred to as marketing. As a web developer, I was told to add words to business sites by copying and pasting from company brochures. And my site development efforts were usually directed by business owners who made copy and design decisions based on their own personal likes and dislikes. Was this marketing? In my mind, it wasn’t. “[Marketing] ...you keep using that word. I don’t think it means what you think it means.” (A third foundational point about me: If I ever say anything that seems out of place, it’s usually a quote from The Princess Bride.)Eventually I honed my own approach to marketing, and as a web developer, I put special emphasis on the copy. My working theory was to look at it the same way I did nearly everything else in life: If you’re going to do something and want to do it well, you have a better chance of succeeding if you consider who you’re trying to talk to and what they care about. That’s when I began thinking of each company website from its customers’ point of view rather than as a company trying to sell something. Even today, I’d still say I hate marketing. But content marketing (and my company’s unique approach to it, which we call Growth Content) seems less like marketing and more like relationship-building—solving people’s problems by connecting the right people with the right businesses at the right time. That, I love, and it’s what my team and I do every day at Nectafy.