Summary

Chelsi Smith is a marketing manager halfway through a Level 6 apprenticeship. While out on a training run for an upcoming half marathon, she shares 15 updates about her apprenticeship experience, covering her progress in hours, goal-setting, growing confidence, delegation, strategic thinking, and areas where she feels the course could improve.

 

Transcript

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Chelsi Smith (00:03):
I am halfway through my marketing manager's level six apprenticeship course, and I need to give you an update on how that's all going. I also need to go for a run because I am training for a half marathon that is in just four weeks. So I though let's do something a bit different and I'm going to give you 15 updates for every kilometre that I do for the next 15 hours. So let's go. There's one kilometre down. So first we'll talk about the numbers. I've completed about 310 hours off the job learning, which does put me at about 30 hours behind where I'm meant to be. But I'm not too worried at this point. It's just due to things like annual leave and some big projects taking priority. So I'm slowly working my way through it. Two goes down and the next thing I wanted to speak about was the expectations I had going into the apprenticeship.

(00:51):
So I think I though it'd be very heavily skills based, theoretical, the different frameworks and things like that. But actually the recent courses on how to negotiate, how to listen, how to manage change, all those kinds of behaviours have been really helpful and it helps really give me that context around being a good manager. Comment three. And the next thing I want to touch on is my goals. A lot of checking with them. So I couldn't actually remember what my goals were. I couldn't find where I saved them. Don't even know if I did them to be honest. So I thought I'd just make some new ones. So first goal is that every month I want to push myself to do something a little bit out of my comfort zone, whether it be one of my new skills, because the best way to get comfortable with being uncomfortable is to just do it.

(01:45):
Four kids down. Now my second goal is probably the most straightforward out of all of them. I just want to get a distinction grade at the end. So to do that, I've got to stay on top of my portfolio to prove both my skills and behaviours. And that's something I'm doing. So on track. Come to five. And my third goal is to be seen as a trusted strategic marketing partner within the business. And I do think this is already happening. I've seen it with people like the business manager at LPC come straight to me for any marketing support and ideas. The head of the orthotics quality always comes straight to me whenever we've got anything that needs to be sent out or needs any ideas. And same with the director of the services side of the business as well. So I'm very happy with that.

(02:40):
So reflecting back on where I've come over the past year and a bit, I'd say coming up a year in the course is definitely my confidence. Before I started this apprenticeship, I was terrified of having a seat at the table and the responsibility that came with that. I really love the creativity that comes along with marketing and I was happy just to stay in that kind of space. But since starting it, I've now got that kind of knowledge to back up giving my opinion and challenging other people's ideas and things like that and the status quo. So I think it's having that knowledge that's really pushed me forward that way. Okay seven, done. And the next thing I wanted to touch on was the delegation aspect. It's something I really wanted to improve from the get go and I feel like that's definitely something I have done within our team.

(03:38):
The way that the structure's set up is we have an assistant who helps to service the three officers in our team. So I've definitely been making the most of her kind of support, which has been really helpful and it's not something I've had the confidence to do before. Whereas letting go, trusting someone else with the job is definitely something I feel a lot more comfortable with now. Eight is done. And my third reflection is I feel like I can feel the natural transitioning happen of me being someone who creates the marketing to someone who kind of makes marketing happen. For example, whenever we get a new distribution agreement with a supplier and we've got new products that need to come to market, I feel very confident enough to gather the product information, make sure we've got the thing and then hand that on to our assistant for her to create the content instead of me.

(04:28):
And then that way I can oversee the project while doing other stuff, collect all the marketing data and say what's working and what's not working. 9K is done. And the next thing on my hit list is measurable impact. I'm already working on a project that I have been leading on. It was my initiative to connect our marketing communications platform with our patient appointment system because we don't operate with a CRM and that's something I've identified that just isn't working. So I'm working with three different stakeholders on this project and watch this space. 10K's in, I'm just having a jailbreak. So another thing I wanted to touch on is how confident I am in challenging the status quo. For an example, we had a project that we're in the middle of recently, basically in the industry. There was only one supplier of footsticks that our clinicians use to measure feet for major measure orthotic footwear.

(05:25):
And they decided to stop operating. They retired, closed up the business, all done. So there was an opening in the market for it. We had an issue because we couldn't supply them anymore to our clinicians so we though we would make our own. There was one other supplier, but they were really expensive. So we ended up using one of our old ones and sticking a plastic piece on the end and then a metal bit on the side and it basically looked like a child's art project. And I was just like, "No, this is not acceptable. It's not up to our standard. We should not be doing this. What do the other people do?" And they said they 3D print them. We 3D print things in house. It's just not something we can look at. And what do you know? It was. So that kicked that ball rolling and now we are getting ready to launch our own footsticks, which we can brand as other people's.

(06:10):
So not only can we supply them to our own clinicians, but we can sell them externally as well. So I like to think that I was a little bit of a catalyst in that one. 11 kilometres, done. Wow. So one of the areas that I've been looking at differently since starting my apprenticeship is stakeholder communication, specifically internally. I'm hoping that the results from this collaborative, I guess, project between LPC and the internal marketing team will garner some good results and inspire other people to want to collaborate more because I've identified that currently we really work in silos and I just don't think it's in the best interest of our employees or our customers to be honest. So yeah, fingers crossed this project brings in some good results. We can convince other people that it's the right change to make. 12 kilometres done. I'm also starting to think of marketing beyond my own role as well.

(07:05):
I've been encouraging people from other departments within the company to get into content creation so we can increase our user generation, our user generated content. And it's been working. We held a half day session with them to give them best practises, ideas, all that kind of stuff. And I've already seen them posting a lot more, which obviously helps us because it takes a lot of our plate as well. So great success, 13 days. So the biggest benefit that I've found taking my course so far is that it's not just the theory that you're learning. It's not just the how-tos, it's the why. And I find that so helpful. All the content I've learned from the course so far was so relevant to my day job as well. So it's easy to put into practise and see the real benefits. 40 kilometres in and I'm just about dead.

(08:07):
If I had to reflect on one way I feel like the course could improve, I would say that I do feel very supported in my learning and the content is great. The one thing that I have really enjoyed was the interactivity of the AI course and the carbon literacy course during a full day out in the classroom. I've really enjoyed that way of learning. I though the content was really easy to take on board and being able to ask questions and things like that. So I'd love to see some more full day classes on specific topics. 50Ks done, halfway through my apprenticeship, 310 hours on the clock. Let's go.