How Stuart McKeown's try, try again attitude helped him go from college dropout to head of growth marketing powerhouse Gleam.io. If at first you don't succeed, run a new beta test and see where it goes. Isn't that how the old adage goes? It's for Stuart McKeown, anyway. An engineering student who dropped out of college after just a year, McKeown never believed failure was something to be feared. Rather, it was another, often more effective way of gathering information in order to grow. Over a winding journey fraught with setbacks and even a brief stint behind a DJ deck, McKeown and his longtime business partner, John Sherwood, have amassed a wealth of knowledge on all things marketing. growth, culminating in a globally known platform – Gleam.io. Used by over 20,000 brands monthly, Gleam helps businesses grow their customer base through email capture campaigns, contests, and rewards programs.
McKeown is living proof that with the right combination of honesty, persistence, a can-do attitude and a fearless approach to employee email database cold calling, success is possible. Even if it takes a little time. Looking for a goal McKeown didn't know what he wanted to do with his life, but he knew that wasn't it. Growing up in the UK he thought he wanted to be an engineer, or at least the people around him made him think he wanted to be an engineer. But once he got to college, he recognized something was wrong. He found himself adrift. "As you get older, a lot of kids don't know what they want to be," McKeown says. "I was one of those kids." So after holding on for a year, he gave up, went home, and got a part-time job to give himself time and space to figure things out. He soon realized that what he really needed was a shock to the system and to strike out on his own.
So he packed his bags and left for Australia, with the perfectly rational project of becoming a professional DJ. This decision started a pattern in McKeown's life. He tends to realize quickly when something isn't working and has no trouble putting it behind him, learning valuable lessons learned. When he realized that despite his passion for the art of making music, life as a professional DJ wasn't really sustainable unless you hit it hard, he decided to move on to something new. . Australia, however, was definitely a good choice for him. He decided to stay in Melbourne and look for work, willing to try anything, and eventually found his way into retail marketing. Then, in 2005, he started working as an SEO analyst for Hitwise, an audience analysis tool for businesses, which gave him his first insight into the strategy behind building and marketing web platforms.