Hey folks, it's your content friend Eric here.
I’m guessing that, like me, you were a front-of-the-classroom kid?
I was listening to this Search Engine podcast episode about Jensen Huang, the CEO of Nvidia, a few weeks ago. The guest, Stephen Witt, Huang and Nvidia’s biographer, described Huang with a career analogy that intrigued me.
He called Huang a natural “front-of-the-classroom kid” who succeeded just as much because of his “back-of-the-classroom” skills.
Of course, I let this analogy rattle around in my head just long enough for Huang to make international headlines for all the wrong reasons, but I am not one to let a little extramarital affair with an alleged Chinese spy get in the way of a useful career lesson.
Long story short: Witt says Huang is a front-of-the-class kid by nature. He’s the type to sit up front, get perfect scores, do all the homework, and his teachers love him.
But the microchip business is wildly competitive (Witt calls it a “knife fight”). Nvidia had over 40 competitors in the mid ’90s. Winning the market took what Witt calls back-of-the-classroom skills, which Huang built as one of the few Asian kids at a tough reform school in rural Kentucky. Skills like grit, standing up for himself, comfort being the underdog, and social/political savvy.
Witt says Nvidia won out not because they had the best engineers or microchip designs, but because Huang was willing to get to market first with a scrappier product, stick with a big bet on AI that investors hated, poach competitors’ engineers, and, more recently, work the Washington political scene.
I personally wouldn’t call Huang the ideal career role model, but please humor the analogy.
Many content marketers are front-of-the-classroom people. We’re good readers and writers, and enthusiastic learners. We love learning the rules of a system and following them. And we’re idealists. We believe good work should speak for itself, that the best content should win, and that if we’re thorough, honest, and put in the effort, it’ll get noticed.
But here’s what I wish I’d realized sooner: to go from a great individual contributor to a senior content/marketing leader, you also need those back-of-the-classroom skills. For content marketers, those skills might look like:
Grit: DMing a few people the day new content goes live and asking them to share it (a little embarrassing every time, and it works). Building backlinks/citations, even when it feels a little grey, because that’s what’s actually required to make SEO work. Following up with that busy SME a third time when they’re ignoring you. Working around a slow approval process instead of waiting on others.
Comfort being the underdog: picking a small, overlooked audience and serving them better than anyone else. Choosing the unglamorous channel your competitors skip. Asking for a favor from someone you’re not sure will say yes.
Navigating social/political situations: Being ready to defend/elevator pitch your budget. Sending your boss a short monthly recap on what results you’ve driven. Building rapport with your sales, finance, and legal teams before you need it.
I’m sure you can think of better skills and examples from your own work. To be clear, I’m not advocating for shady, backroom tactics or hustle-tech-bro culture. And none of this means giving up the front-of-the-classroom strengths that got you here. But sometimes you have to accept and work within the gritty realities of business.
I’ll always be a front-row person at heart. But the content leaders I admire all seem to know their way around the back of the classroom too.
- Eric
PS. Don’t miss Jimmy’s new blog below!
📆 Upcoming Superpath Community Events
To get the invitations to our member events, join Superpath Pro. You get 30 days free, so you can attend all these events!
Change My Mind (Today!): We'll debate two to three hot takes we're hearing in the world of content marketing. Be prepared to change your mind!
Slack AMA (Nov 18): Ross Hudgens, founder and CEO of Siege Media and author of the new book Generative Engine Optimization, will join us on Slack to answer all our questions about GEO, running an agency, and writing a book.
Superpath Social (Dec 2): A fun virtual networking event with other content marketers. We'll divide everyone into two 20-minute breakout groups, so you'll have a chance to meet a bunch of people within the hour.
AI Show & Tell (Dec 9): Two to three community members will jump on to showcase how they’re toying around with AI.
✍️ New on the Superpath Blog: Where should you publish thought leadership? Not the blog.
Jimmy Daly is back with the most “do as I say, not as I do” advice of all time. His new blog on the Superpath website suggests that your company’s thought leadership belongs anywhere but your company website’s blog.
Here’s a quick preview:
One thing I love about thought leadership is that it typically succeeds or fails based on the quality of the ideas, not on how well it’s optimized for the channel…
…thought leadership content itself must be authentic and I think to accomplish that, it deserves a home that ensures it can be…
It’s been years since the company blog stopped being the best place for every type of content. Most SaaS companies have divided up content into a resource center, an academy, as well as sub-folders for customer stories, webinars, etc. As a general rule, I think that any type of content that you plan to publish on a regular basis deserves its own space to keep the site tidy but also so you can create different types of experience for each content type.
I’m certainly intrigued!
(For the record, Jimmy does explicitly state that a blog like Superpath’s, that is not oversaturated by 10 years of SEO, is a perfectly good place to do some thought leadering.)
💬 Great Slack Threads This Week
Here were some great discussions in the Superpath Slack community this week:
Who's using GitHub with Claude/ChatGPT? How long did it take you to get a hang of it? I'm still scared of GitHub.
Is anybody here freelancing while holding down their day job? I’m looking to take on a freelance client or two, but it’s been a few years since I freelanced, and I’m feeling a little rusty. Looking for some tips, tricks, or tools for managing both without going coocoo bananas.
For anyone working at a larger company (for reference, I work at a 200-person company), what does your content team’s structure look like? Also interested to hear from others regarding who (and how many people) internally review/edit content before it gets published?
📙 The Reading List
Here are some links that got the Superpath Slack community talking this week:
Fable 5.2 and Jagged AGI | Ethan Mollick, One Useful Thing
'Reverse Engineer Anything': AI Companies Crack Down on the Coolest Thing People Were Doing With AI | Jason Koebler, 404 Media
The internet turns good taste into bad taste | Kyle Chayka, One Thing
💼 Who's Hiring?
Check out the Superpath Job Board — a mix of jobs we've curated from the open web, plus exclusive featured job listings from companies looking to hire the best content marketers.
This week’s featured roles:
Jobs are posted on the job board 48 hours late. Superpath Pro members get them within hours of posting.
Want to post a role? Feature your job here.
🆓 Get a free 30-day trial of Superpath Pro
Superpath Pro is our paid community membership. On your free trial, you'll get access to:
A private Slack community with 400+ in-house and freelance content marketers
Monthly 1:1 peer networking calls
Monthly group events with breakout sessions
Monthly AI Show & Tell workshops
Early access to the Superpath Job Board feed
Niche channels and events for freelancers, content leaders, and more
"Most professional groups boast about their member numbers. Superpath intrigued me for the opposite reason: they deliberately shifted from a massive free community to a much smaller, paid one - so they could focus on it, nurture it, and make it genuinely excellent. And they absolutely deliver."
— Farah Cormack, Senior Marketing Leader