885. Building a Career on Her Innate Talents and the Skills She Learned Along the Way

Andrea Fryrear

“From early on I really liked to write and read a ton. That’s been something that’s been part of my DNA from the start, but I also have never been the starving artist type either. I’m not the person who is compelled to write the great American novel or to have a need to have a creative outlet, so it’s an interesting sort of place in which I find myself. I enjoy writing and I enjoy communicating, but I’m not an artist per se in the way that you would think of a poet as an artist.”

Andrea Fryrear is the world’s leading authority on Agile marketing and a co-founder of AgileSherpas. She is co-author of the ICAgile Certified Professional in Agile Marketing curriculum, author of “Death of a Marketer,” and an internationally sought-after speaker and trainer. She holds numerous Agile certifications, including Advanced Certified Scrum Product Owner (A-CSPO), ICAgile Certified Instructor, Certified Professional in Agile Marketing (ICP-MKG), Certified Scrum Master (CSM), Certified Agile Leader (CAL-1), Certified Scrum@Scale Practitioner, and Certified Professional in Agile Coaching (ICP-ACC). Nothing makes her happier than seeing a marketing team move from high stress to high performance.

The Most Impactful Turning Point?

Background: Andrea went to work for SurveyGizmo, where the software development team was using Agile software to build their service. Andrea talked her boss into allowing her team to trial the Agile marketing software as well.

“Because I am a writer, I was put in charge of the blog for our company. I was writing about what we did and what was working and what wasn’t working for our teams. And eventually people started to reach out to me and say, ‘Hey, this is really great. Could you help us do the same thing with our marketing team?’ Over the course of a couple of years, I realized there were enough of those people who wanted help that I could turn it into a job. So I left the company and started being an Agile coach and consultant. I then joined forces with a man who had a lot of experience in training and facilitation course work and, as business partners for AgileSherpas, we married our two different backgrounds and now train and coach marketing teams all over.”

The Most Powerful Lessons and Experiences?

1. I have very strong role models in my family that showed me the power of consistency, of showing up day in and day out, and committing to something. And then really following through.

2. I still remember an English teacher that I had in junior high. We had an assignment to write an alternate ending to one of the novels that we had read. She wrote on that paper something like, “You could be a novelist. This is really strong writing.” And that was the first time I had really thought that not everybody can do this. You kind of assume when you are young that everyone has equivalent skills to yours. And then you start to realize that there are things that you’re particularly good at. And that was a cool, “aha” sort of moment for me, and a thing that I still remember and refer back to today.

3. I started playing volleyball when I was 12 in junior high and I cannot say enough about how big an impact it has had on my whole life. I think it’s amazing for young women to be involved in sports of any kind, because it makes us so much more comfortable and confident in our bodies. It was great to be an athlete as I grew through the awkward junior high and high school years. I still play today, and it has been a great way to meet people. I played in grad school at Oxford in the United Kingdom, and it was amazing to be able to immediately connect with people who have a similar interest. When my husband and I moved to Colorado, playing volleyball is how I met a lot of the friends that I still have 13 years later.

4. It was really the first time I did something I had no idea how to do. And so a lot of it was just learning and trying to figure it out. A problem would present itself that I had literally no idea what to do about. I had to learn what to do and how to experiment and solve it, which turned out to be kind of addictive. That was a great experience for me, because I think a lot of us have a tendency to gravitate towards what we’re already good at and what’s easy for you. But here was a good, forced scenario where I couldn’t do that. I had to really tackle things that were new and kind of scary.

5. Something that as a business owner I had to realize is I can’t do everything, and I’m not good at everything–for example, like working on videos. I can record the video. I have tapped into experts who have given me advice about what camera and the lighting and all of those little things, but when it comes to the editing part, I am not good. I’ve tried it. It’s not my skillset, so I pass that part along to someone else.