1. Accelerating my learning path by embracing a new role
I’ve been envisioning this moment for quite some time.
I’m happy that everything aligned in the end, and I can now share the story behind our next move in delivering value-based marketing to our impactful clients.
But first, let me introduce myself.
Natalia Dărăbăneanu here, Storyteller & Content Marketer, and from October 2, 2023, the new Head of Marketing at Stoica.co.🥳 I must warn you: I’m a long-form content writer who has experienced much in her career!
Read my story if you want to know more about me or like to partner with us to drive revenue and scale online with conversion-driven websites and value-driven marketing.
2. Background
With a Master’s Degree in Management and Business Communication, I’ve been in the MarComm industry for over ten years.
My experience spans several types of organizations and roles, from digital marketing agencies to market leaders, startups, NGOs, TV media, and solo entrepreneurship.
Throughout my career, I’ve helped companies tell their story and translate their knowledge and expertise into simple words, building trust, empathy, and stronger connections with their audiences.
3. Some experiences that guided my path
My parents were very keen on me focusing on my studies and not getting any job while still in school. And I truly, madly, deeply hated that. I wanted to experiment with adulthood early on. 😅
Oh boy, little did I know back then.
Long story short, we ended up meeting somewhere in the middle, and I got to experiment with independence and earn my first money by working some project-based, part-time jobs at real estate fairs and by getting scholarships.
I’ve always been curious to uncover stories by listening to people, learning from them, and sharing the findings with others. I could do this for hours and hours and not get bored.
Translating this into work, I became very good at conducting research, market analysis, finding out what people need from a service or a product, and communicating to them what they could benefit from should they choose the company I was working for to help solve their pressing needs.
I consider myself extremely lucky.
First, my parents made it easy for me to delve into every book and resource I could access as a student (imagine I even studied Chinese for a whole year🤘). This helped me develop a learning practice and systems to summarize and deeply learn new concepts.
Secondly, I could choose which role, employer, and mission I would support further.
Knowing this, I’ve always pushed myself to learn, grow, and achieve more.
While this might be tiring and anxiety-driven sometimes, in the long term, it helped me build a thriving business around my knowledge and expertise, work with some of the most inspiring companies and teams, get to help my parents when they retired, and discover exciting cultures and people around the world.
Above all, the main benefit I gained from frequently exiting my comfort zone was creating new opportunities and building self-confidence. It took a while, though. 😅
I started my career as a sales and marketing representative for a small promotional products agency. I had weekly, monthly, and quarterly targets that I needed to achieve. After many cold calls and “NOs” when trying to sell what I had in my portfolio, I realized that was not my cup of tea.
I prefer to avoid bothering people or selling them anything, and I didn’t want to thrive in direct marketing or sales. I then discovered another intriguing path—journalism in a post-communist country with many issues and ideas to fight for.
I L-O-V-E-D every second of my time as a documentarist, journalist, and producer.
I documented and produced over 2000 news stories on societal, economic, and political issues, co-produced an investigative TV documentary on road infrastructure issues, and 2 special edition TV shows.
Building various contacts to maintain a flow of news, researching and editing TV news stories, verifying information, ensuring the accuracy of any news report, and being in touch with current events worldwide sounded like a dream job.
After all, I didn’t dislike bothering people and asking many uncomfortable questions. 😅
I just had to find the right politicians to annoy.
Another opportunity knocked at my door and checked everything I was looking for back then. Education and personal development, challenging the comfort zone, recognition, and building a context to support my dream of becoming a voice people would remember over time – a training scholarship granted to only the top 10 young journalists in Romania and Moldova.
The selection process wasn’t easy, but I had the proper mentors (🙏George, Alexandra, Nicoleta) to guide me, and ultimately, I secured a spot among the best promising journalists of 2015.
While I was participating in a training session, the speaker said something about journalism not being an easy job, not even a job, to be honest, more of a way of living, and that we were there to have inflection points. And I did.
At 26 years old, I left this interesting path that hides all the burden of fighting against corruption and a complicated public sector while trying to make ends meet.
Seriously, have you seen reporters going nuts or being sad on TV?
Unless it’s an emotional story or moment for them, I don’t think so. That’s because they respect their vocation and know they are there to inform people, help them make better decisions, and influence the public agenda. And they stand by that even though things aren’t easy in their personal lives.
My salary when I left (I had some promotions over the years) was around 350 euros per month, to which I added gigs I was doing in my free time for about 100-200 euros (not every month, though). That amount wasn’t enough to help me move out from where I grew up and provide myself with a sufficient way of living.
Impact Hub was the place that shaped the entrepreneurial mindset I have today, and that built my network of relentless advocates for the greater good. There, together with extraordinary people, I developed projects that had a real impact and helped shape my country’s public agenda and direction.
Startarium, which equips entrepreneurs with resources, inspiration, funding, mentors, investors, and a community of like-minded people, is one of them.
I resigned from my content and mentorship program coordinator role when I was extremely tired of being able to bring any additional power to fuel the growth of this tremendous project.
And I left my close-to-heart team with tears in my eyes. Getting to know each person building this courageous and impactful project, I’ll always vouch for them and support Impact Hub Bucharest in any way I can.
This journey on memory lane is challenging; it brings up all the inner turmoil and “Did I make the right decision?” second-guessing moments. Thanks for reading it this far.
I will only take a little more of your time.
4. What’s next
At Impact Hub, I met Andrei, who was one of the most supportive people I’ve got to know so far. He helped me navigate the freelancing realms and provided much-needed advice and projects to work on; we’ve been growing side-by-side in the past 4 years.
Now, the time has come to accelerate the growth of what he and the team here envisioned for Stoica.co.
I joined their mission to build a culture where amazing people can do their best work while helping B2B tech and health companies drive revenue and scale online with conversion-driven websites and value-driven marketing because I genuinely believe we have everything we need to make it happen.
Learning-every-day-and-health-and-family-come-first way of conducting business, creating value and making the most out of every day, caring for others and the projects we say "YES" to. Providing clarity and guidance for our clients and building alongside them like true partners would do.
These are not attributes you’ll find everywhere.
And I adhere to these wholeheartedly.
5. How you can benefit from getting in touch
Marketing intrigues me. I spend a lot of time reading, writing, learning from professionals who are smarter than me, experimenting, and crystallizing my thoughts.
Then it’s the growth. And the real impact.
Marketing a tech-oriented product or service that delivers value by putting its customers at the center is where I love to be. Being customer-led is what brings repeatable and scalable growth. 📈
How technologies, people, and companies come together to build a better future excites me. And I want to bring more companies looking for value in everything they do into our network of happy and trustful clients.
We would work together to improve your:
✅ Website and landing page messaging
✅ Social messaging and community building
✅ Positioning and strategic narrative
✅ Go-to-market strategy
✅ Nurturing or outbound emails and sales demos
I will help you turn more website visitors into paying customers. We will make your messaging clear, relevant, compelling, and differentiated. By tapping into your audience’s fears, hopes, and desires, we present your product or service as the optimal solution to their problem, all through persuasive storytelling.
This will drive strategic business growth through content and personalized inbound practices.
If you still think you haven’t found out too much about Stoica’s new Head of Marketing, then be my guest and check my LinkedIn profile, where I frequently post insights and thoughts on growth marketing and share the learnings I get from experimenting with different strategies, or sign-up for my bimonthly newsletter Marketing Takeover (maybe later, I’ll tell you more on the other project close to my heart).
Thank you again for being a part of this journey of revealing my path, and don’t settle for less, do what you need to do to make your life and your clients’ lives better. Or you can hire me to help you. I would be happy to show you how we would do it.
