Alright – so today we’ve got the honor of introducing you to Becky Mariano. We think you’ll enjoy our conversation, we’ve shared it below.

Becky, looking forward to hearing all of your stories today. So, let’s start with a hypothetical – what would you change about the educational system?

As someone who went to a “traditional” university to prepare for a “traditional” career in the public relations / marketing field, and who then realized 8 years into that career that the “traditional” career wasn’t for her and pivoted to being a solo-preneur, I feel that I have a unique perspective to now speak on what I might change about how we could better prepare students for a more fulfilling life and career.

When I began college in 2006, it was the thing to do! You would go to a 4-year college to get a degree, then you would get a good job, you would hope to work hard and make good money, then buy a house, have a family, and “live the dream.”

But, as millennials it wasn’t as easy to live out the dream of simply working hard and getting the white picket fence that our parents once preached about, and it seems that this next generation (gen-z) is having an even more difficult time than even we did with fulfilling that dream.

While using a predictive calculator with a financial planner, my husband and I learned that our children might be able to expect a $750k bill when it comes time for them to attend a traditional 4-year college, even at an in-state school like Boston University. To me, that is completely unthinkable!

If I could change anything about the educational system, today, I would break the traditional college mold and would encourage educators and administrators to offer more specialized classes and courses focused on more specific areas of interest. Rather than attending the traditional 4-year college that often doesn’t actually prepare students for work-life after school, I would love to see them take more of the courses similar to what I took when I started my own business 6 years ago.

I of course did learn, and did a lot of growing up away from home during my four years at college, but most of what I needed to know in order to actually thrive in my career was learned on the job, and while taking further education courses provided by my companies in the areas where I truly had interest.

Once I left the corporate world to go out on my own, I was able to learn even more from educators in my specialized area of expertise that they had learned from working one-on-one with their own clients over the years. That’s where my real growth exploded.

I feel like with the rising cost of education, as well as the rise of AI and how it will take previously held jobs away from humans, while simultaneously creating all sorts of new opportunities and advancements for humans, that the traditional four-year college won’t exist in the same way that it does today.

I actually also hope that it doesn’t exist in the same way for future generations, and that young people are able to learn more from specialized courses in areas of specific interest, and less from the highly overpriced, highly accredited, and in my opinion often highly overrated colleges and universities of old.

Awesome – so before we get into the rest of our questions, can you briefly introduce yourself to our readers.

My name is Becky, and I am a mom, a wife, and a digital marketer living in Brookline, MA.

I grew up in a suburban farm town in Connecticut, and went to college in Rhode Island where I studied Communications and Public Relations.

I spent my first 8-years after college working in Boston at corporate public relations, advertising, and marketing agencies, learning everything I could about the digital media world while working with a multitude of world-class brands that I held in high regard.

After building up my digital skills and expertise over close to a decade in the corporate world, I moved away from agency life and stepped into the role of founder and CEO of Mariano Media, which is to this day my own very digital and paid media consultancy.

I spent the first year working as a social media and marketing jack-of-all-trades, as I had the experience across platforms and industries to offer just about anything from strategy and implementation to creation and execution of just about any marketing campaign requested.

It is notably hard to be a master of everything, however, and my love of paid advertising and the requests for my paid media expertise began to evolve and increase over my first year in business. I started niching into the paid media space (primarily Meta advertising) shortly thereafter, and haven’t looked back since.

My clients range from solopreneurs, all the way up to large annual multi-six-figure companies and other agencies, consulting and implementing paid strategies from conception to execution and beyond, but my real passion lies with helping the smaller solopreneurs and business owners grow their own businesses through paid amplification.

I have such a sense of pride for other entrepreneurs when I see their visions come to life, and when my paid ad strategies add the fuel to their already burning fires, setting them on the paths to meeting some of their wildest financial freedom goals, and business impacts.

My 5-10 year business goal is to continue amplifying the reach and revenue for my high impact clients that have the power to touch thousands more lives, and make a difference in the world.

Where do you think you get most of your clients from?

Truly, the best source of new clients has always been most easily found from my already existing pool of contacts, networks, former colleagues, family members, and friends. These are all people who have known me at one or more stages of my life, and with whom I have had lasting relationships.

My first client was actually the employer I was leaving to embark on my own path, who still needed supplemental help before they were able to find someone to replace my position in the organization. My second client was someone I had known from when I was 18 years old, and whom I had gone to college with. His family owned three pizza shops north of Boston, and he trusted me with and hired me to run all of their organic social media and paid advertising accounts, since he and I had had such a long-standing friendship and mutual respect.

Up until present-day I have been able to foster and uphold countless working and personal relationships with folks who were in previous jobs with me, in school with me, and whom I met while simply networking that have been able to either work directly with me, or to connect me with friends and colleagues of theirs that have become incredibly valuable to my business and to theirs.

Learning and unlearning are both critical parts of growth – can you share a story of a time when you had to unlearn a lesson?

A lesson that I had to unlearn is that I am not a natural-born entrepreneur, and that I’m not capable of running a business on my own. Although, my dad has been a serial entrepreneur his whole life, as have my three brothers, I never thought that would also be my path.

I had always been someone who thought that I would be working for someone else at a 9-5 job my whole life because that’s what was comfortable, and what I had gone to school for. I hadn’t considered the possibility that I would ever be cut out to be an entrepreneur, let alone someone running my own business.

Unless you go to business school, I do believe you are programmed to think you will be working for an employer of some sort for the rest of your career. Going to school for communications / public relations I had just always assumed I would get a good job at one of the big corporate agencies I had admired during my college years, and would just continue down the employee road for the foreseeable future.

It had never once occurred to me that I would or could be capable of working for myself, and being equipped to run a successful business until working in the corporate world no longer served me, and I felt like I had no other choice but to try becoming an entrepreneur.

After six years being on my own I could now never imagine going back to the corporate grind, and am so happy I was able to prove myself wrong.

Contact Info:

• Website: www.mariano-media.com
• Instagram: @beckygmariano
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/marianomediasocial
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/beckygmariano/

Image Credits
Emily Tebbetts Photography