Who I am
This page is all about me, my career, my hobbies, as well as my contact details.
My Career
My career journey, from my first working day, up to today.
I started my career 20 years ago, starting as a retail shelf stocker, working my way up to store manager within 3 months, a position I held for the next 3 years. As a retail manager, not only did I get to learn about team management, but I also was extremely hands-on, running the purchasing, bakery and butchery departments. Working with a budget of circa ZAR500,000 per month, I was wholly responsible for ensuring that the store was stocked properly.
After 3 years in retail in South Africa, I relocated to Cyprus, and started in online sales of FMCG, primarily targeting the US and UK markets. Once again, my work ethic, and willingness to do whatever was needed to get the job done saw me rise from sales, to marketing management, to eventually taking over the entire operation of the ecommerce company, a position I held for 4 years, before moving on to my next challenge.
My ability to gather and interpret data led me to a reporting and evaluation role at a financial services company, where I was responsible for building out their internal marketing reporting systems. As part of this, I worked closely with the development team to develop an in-house data capture system that would allow them to gather more data from their clients. This led to an increase in the accuracy of their reporting, and allowed better tracking of their ROAS and ROI.
After this brief contract, I moved on to a marketing and ecommerce executive role, that allowed me to focus more on the execution of the work, rather than just the reporting of results. Once again in this role, I rose quickly, assembling a team both in-house as well as internationally. Ending as Head of Digital and Managing Director of a digital agency that I had effectively built out by myself, with a few key members of my team.
It was in this role that I discovered my passion for all things digital, and got my first real taste of project and product management. In terms of project management, I learnt how to take base line requirements and turn them into detailed technical specifications and eventually how to break down these specifications into specific task for each sprint. Following a SCRUM methodology, I led a development team through multiple iterations. Each of the iterations followed was between 1 and 6 weeks long, with no sprint ending without delivering a fully working product / function.
In terms of product management, I learnt how to continuously improve on existing products, once again building out the backlog and sprints with the development team and prioritizing based on the business need.
Within this role I project managed / product owned the following: a job board, a CMS system, a psychometric testing platform, an educational matching matrix system, data and analytics platforms, affiliate marketing platforms and a web booking system. I was responsible for each of these systems from end-to-end, and was responsible for building them from the ground up.
Eventually I reach a ceiling in this role, in terms of the role and responsibilities, as well as the salary and challenge, and after 8 years I decided it was time to move on. I was offered a Chief Project Officer role, where instead of having and interview with the CEO I ended up having a strategy meeting, and a month later I started building out the projects we had been discussing. This was very much a start up role, and I was deeply involved in everything from technical project management, business development, marketing, sales and pitching. As part of this role, I ended up as part of a small team who pitched 3 blockchain concepts to the Cyprus Securities and Exchange commission. As this role was in an organisation with multiple business units, I also ended up working with cross functional teams, focusing on B2B events.
Later that year, the company sold off the events business, and it was decided to wind down the remaining business units. As part of this I was made redundant, however, one of the shareholders in one of the projects, a blockchain marketing agency, approached me with a Digital Product Director role for 4 new brands he was trying to build out. The agreement was I would build out the product over the next 6 months, and then move on. I completed the task in just under 6 months, and then is when I moved onto my most recent role.
Hired as the head of automation and acquisition for a financial services company, to act as the number 2 to the CMO, I was brought on board to help them building out their marketing automation and marketing technology toolkit. After just less than a month, the CMO who had hired me left, and the shareholder appointed me interim CMO, with an agreement that I would take over as full CMO after 4 months based on my performance.
Over the course of the next 22 months, I worked as CMO, driving the overall marketing strategy of the company. As part of this role, I spearheaded the development of a partner acquisition campaign and funnel, that helped to drive partner registrations and activities, increasing the number of partners working with the company by more than 20% (From 51,000 partners to 62,000 partners), and increasing the median partner value by 15% (From USD3,500 to USD4,100).
In this time, I also worked on acquisition and retention campaigns and funnels that increased the average LTV of clients by 30% (From USD1,500 to USD1,950). Finally, as the last part of my role, I built out the specifications for 27 pieces of marketing automation technology that the business would require to optimise their marketing operations. Although I did not stay to see them all developed, some of the more complex ones that were completed before I left put the company’s marketing team in a much stronger position.
This brings us up to today, where I am currently a full-time job seeker, looking to use my skills, experience, can do attitude and work ethic to help another company grow. I have just relocated to the UK, having taken a voluntary redundancy (this was instead of relocating to Malaysia, as my family was already relocating to the UK).
- 2001Started In Retail
- 2004Moved to Cyprus
- 2004Started in Ecommerce
- 2009Built out Reporting Standard
- 2010Started as Marketing and Ecommerce Executive
- 2012Became a Director
- 2016Launched Digital Agency
- 2018Became CPO
- 2019Digital Product Director
- 2019Became CMO
- Aug 2021Relocated to the UK
What I do when I am not at work
I am a braai (barbeque) addict, and I love spending time over the grill cooking for friends, family and colleagues. I also take a lot of joy in developing new and different ways of flavouring my grilling meat (I have developed a herb and spice mix that everyone loves). In addition to braaing, I enjoy spending time with my family, whether it is playing sport, going for walks, or exploring the city.
I also have an addiction to collecting and building lego (as you will see from my instagram account). This is paired with a taste for fantasty, in terms of books, movies and trading card games (I have a massive collection of Magic the Gathering cards).
The last thing to mention here is I have a thirst for knowledge, whether it relates to comic books, movies, geography, science, general knowledge, I just find that I really enjoy learning new things, and I am a great conversationalist because of my broad spectrum of seemingly random knowledge (it also includes sports).
Get in Touch with me
Use the contact details or form below to reach out and get in touch.
Contact
Email: jweaver14@gmail.com
Phone: 07456392093
