Curiosity is the single biggest advantage in marketing, entrepreneurship, and honestly, staying sane while everything keeps changing.
The year everything changed
This past year has been a year of intense growth going from a full-time job to running a business as a marketing consultant. The hardest part has not been strategy or client work; it has been managing time, protecting focus, and knowing when to step away from a project that has had my full attention for 4+ hours. It has been a challenging, messy, incredibly rewarding beginning, and it is very much only the start.
Ego, imposter syndrome, and learning
One of the most valuable lessons this year has been learning to set ego aside without sliding straight into imposter syndrome. The balance, for me, comes from committing to being a lifelong learner instead of needing to be the smartest person in the room. When the goal is learning, “not knowing” stops being a threat and becomes an invitation.
A neurodivergent superpower
Curiosity is effectively a built-in feature of my neurodivergent brain. The more “irrelevant” something seems to my daily life, the more fascinated I become with it, precisely because it feels like a complete mystery. That curiosity makes it easier to set aside ego, because there is always more to discover especially in marketing and technology, where the tools, platforms, and possibilities evolve daily.
Why unrelated topics matter
There is huge power in learning about things that appear completely unrelated to your work. You don’t know what you don’t know, and you cannot see the connections that are possible until you give your brain new raw material to work with. Often the insights show up later while you are working, building, or problem-solving and suddenly something from a “random” topic becomes the missing puzzle piece.
How this shapes my work
As a marketing consultant, curiosity is the reason I do not niche down into a single industry. I work with small and medium-sized businesses across an eclectic mix of spaces: tribally owned government contracting firms, architects, bookstores and boutiques, personal trainers, reiki practitioners, real estate agents, construction firms, speakers, AI companies, and more. Every new industry teaches me something I can bring back to another, creating unexpected connections and giving my clients an edge they would not get from a siloed approach.
If this resonates, here are some interesting rabbit holes to go down.
- Caño Cristales, Colombia’s “liquid rainbow” river and the plant that makes it change colors. (https://www.geologyin.com/2014/07/the-river-of-five-colors-why-and-how.html)
- The science of wool: why it resists odor, regulates temperature, and doesn’t easily catch fire. (https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC12523852/)
- Bioluminescent bays where the ocean glows when you move through it at night. (https://www.treehugger.com/incredible-places-where-the-ocean-glows-4864191)
- Extremophile life forms that thrive in boiling, acidic, or deep-sea environments. (https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC4187170/)
- “Frozen smoke” and other ultra-light materials like aerogel. (https://www.cas.org/resources/cas-insights/aerogel-applications)
- How writing systems and reading directions (left-to-right, right-to-left, vertical) evolved. (https://vividmaps.com/writing-directions-of-the-world/)
- The hidden design psychology of everyday things like doors, grocery stores, and crosswalks. (https://tianpan.co/blog/2025-08-31-the-design-of-everyday-things)
- Undersea internet cables and how the global web actually travels across oceans. (https://www.kentik.com/blog/diving-deep-into-submarine-cables-undersea-lifelines-of-internet-connectivity/)
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