An embedded marketing and technology partner, not an agency retainer

I grew up around business. Having family who built and ran their own made success feel achievable rather than abstract, and gave me a genuinely supportive start. I'm grateful for that.

University taught me one thing clearly — I learn by doing, not in theory. Case studies and hypotheticals never landed the way real client stakes did, so I stopped waiting for the classroom to catch up and went looking for real work instead: internships and placements wherever I could get them, including one at a travel-tech startup, where I met a mentor who went on to run a startup SEO agency. A sports marketing internship in China and a half a pandemic later, that connection became my first role out of university, and it's where I caught the entrepreneurial bug.

I didn't act on it straight away. I deliberately spent the next few years building real, tangible skills, first agency-side across SEO, PR, and paid media, then in-house running marketing solo for an international recruitment agency, before I trusted myself to be genuinely useful to a client rather than just available. I launched Marley Marketing in January 2025 after some travelling and reflection for exactly that reason, and it's still how I decide what to take on: only work where I know I can make an impact, not just fill a retainer.