Jessica's Journal: From Drug Launches to Dog Groomers, What Corporate Marketing Taught Me About Your Small Business

When I talk about my previous work experience, whether during a consult with a potential new client or just meeting someone for the first time, I have a tendency to refer to it as "my old life." And I don't mean that jokingly. It truly was like a different lifetime for me.

My last job before I ran maniacally away from Corporate America was as a Brand Launch Manager in biopharmaceuticals. People likely underestimate how many people are involved with a new drug leading up to FDA approval. It's... a lot. An entire brand team, sure. But also a new sales team that stretches across the entire country and needs to be trained. The people working with expert physicians to trial the drug and present findings. The team talking to payers and insurance companies about what coverage will look like. A team dedicated to patient services. Regulatory, compliance, legal, communications, software and training teams. Status update meetings. Strategy meetings. So many meetings. Planes and trains and automobiles to dozens of cities, to gather in generic hotel conference rooms and have more meetings.

And through all of that, do you know what the most critical detail was for every one of those thousands of people? Consistent messaging. The message coming from every single corner needed to be consistent. If the team working on patient marketing materials was describing the benefits of the drug differently than the sales teams or the payer teams...well the whole thing could have gone off the rails.

It truly didn't matter how large the international corporation was or how many billions of dollars had been poured into developing, testing and launching this new drug. If the teams sent out to represent that brand were not consistent and concise with their messaging, the likelihood of success was dramatically reduced.

In the spring of 2019 as I sat in a Las Vegas convention center at a company-wide sales meeting, I gave up my dream of climbing the corporate ladder. It wasn't one specific interaction or moment really. I didn't even hate my job. I just felt burnt out and disenfranchised, overworked in an industry that was always demanding more. More profits, more promotions, more hustle. We had just moved down to the South Shore from Cambridge and I wanted to make human connections. I wanted more time with my dog and husband. The commute was soul-sucking. So I quiet quit, and then I really quit, without much of a fallback plan.

When I started freelancing, I had a true epiphany moment. I had started with just helping some local business owners with their websites. But then it dawned on me: these folks didn't need new websites as much as they needed consistent messaging. That was where all the opportunity lied.

When you work for a large corporation, those thousands of people I mentioned earlier all have an opinion and perspective. And as crazy as it may sound, that does help. Nobody is ever too close to it, or has blinders on, because they're constantly being faced with other's interpretations. When you're a solopreneur, well, things are the opposite. You are too close to it and you do have blinders on. You see your business as an extension of you and something that makes complete sense. You see marketing as tactical. You need to post on social media. You need to send out email marketing. You need a logo. But when all of those things are treated like silos to be individually checked off, the message gets lost. It is inconsistent and it doesn't foster trust - two major building blocks of consumer behaviors.

My life now is different. I traded my shift dresses and carry on luggage for garden clogs and dog hair. And while I'm not presenting strategic plans in board rooms, the marketing strategies really aren't that different. Because that's what the key to effective marketing was all along, for billion dollar pharmaceutical products and local dog grooming services. It was always consistent messaging.

---

Jessica's Journal is where strategy gets personal. After years managing brand launches in the pharmaceutical industry - aligning marketing, sales, legal, and regulatory teams around a single message - I walked away from corporate to do that work for the businesses I actually care about: the local shops, service providers, and nonprofits that make our communities worth living in. These posts are my honest take on what it takes to market a small business well. No jargon. No fluff. Just the stuff that actually works.