#76 – Pain is Knowledge Rushing In: Fail, Learn and Thrive with the Tag Digital Team
Introduction:
In this podcast episode, the Tag Digital team discuss the concept of “pain as knowledge rushing in,” using their personal experiences to illustrate how professional hardships often lead to valuable lessons.
Each speaker shares moments where things went wrong in their jobs—whether due to poor organisation, difficult feedback, or the sudden changes brought about by the COVID-19 pandemic.
Through these stories, they explore how pain and mistakes lead to growth, the development of resilience, and the importance of learning from every challenge encountered in the workplace.
Today Laura is joined by some of the Tag Digital team to share their most painful experience at work and the valuable lessons they’ve learnt from them.
- Laura Davidson – CEO
- Craig Davidson – COO
- Jack Butler – Head of Paid Social
- Adam – Senior Paid Media Manager
- Zane – Paid Social Manager
- Gemma Whyte – Marketing Executive
- Lewis Currie – Digital Content Creator
Key Topics:
- Keeping Marketing Simple in Event Planning
- Learning the Importance of Respect in Professional Relationships
- The Importance of Organisation in Event Management
- Redefining Identity and Career After Redundancy
- Dealing with Non-Constructive Criticism in the Workplace
- Managing Perfectionism and Prioritisation in Marketing
- Resilience in the Face of Harsh Professional Feedback
Keeping Marketing Simple in Event Planning
Laura opens the podcast by sharing a painful experience from earlier in her career, 7 years ago, when she led a large marketing initiative for Tag Digital by exhibiting at a major industry event in Las Vegas.
The team invested £30,000, a significant portion of their marketing budget, into this event, hoping for great returns. However, upon arrival, Laura realised that the messaging and branding for their stand were overly complicated.
People didn’t understand who they were or what they offered, leading to minimal engagement and no real business results from the event.
This disappointment taught her a valuable lesson in simplicity: customers don’t have the time to decode complex messaging.
“Make things easy to understand. Make it really easy for customers to buy from you.”
The key is to make your offer clear, easy to understand, and accessible, so potential clients can engage without confusion.
This experience shaped her future approach to marketing—keeping it simple, direct, and focused on removing obstacles for customers to drive better results.
Learning the Importance of Respect in Professional Relationships
Craig reflects on a formative experience during a corporate graduate programme, where he worked on a business development team bidding for large contracts.
While happy to take on any tasks assigned to him, he encountered a manager whose behaviour left a lasting negative impression.
Craig describes incidents where the manager was dismissive, impolite, and even rude, such as throwing his phone and money across the table without acknowledging or respecting Craig’s efforts.
Although Craig didn’t mind being the “runner,” fetching coffees and helping with menial tasks, these actions felt unnecessary and disrespectful.
This experience taught him the importance of building respectful relationships in the workplace.
He strongly disagrees with the notion that being ruthless and tough leads to success.
Instead, Craig believes that whether internally with team members or externally with clients, professional relationships are built on mutual respect and kindness, and these are fundamental to success.
“The lesson I’ve ultimately taken into building Tag Digital was that it’s all relationship building, and you can’t build good relationships by being rude.“
The Importance of Organisation in Event Management
Jack shares a story from early in his marketing career where poor organisational skills led to two painful yet pivotal experiences.
Both incidents involved major logistical issues during events, such as losing a key to important equipment and struggling with malfunctioning equipment in a pop-up shop.
These setbacks revealed the importance of preparation and detailed planning in event management. Jack initially took these mistakes personally, blaming himself for forgetting key elements, but over time, he realised that the issue was not about specific incidents but rather a lack of a solid process.
Jack learned that taking a step back to assess and improve processes is essential in avoiding similar mistakes in the future. The key lesson he drew from these experiences is that when something goes wrong, it’s crucial to evaluate the process, not just the situation, to develop sustainable solutions.
“The way to solve that is to take a step back, look at the process and that’s where you’ll find the most productive solutions to problems.”
Redefining Identity and Career After Redundancy
Adam recounts the painful experience of losing his job during the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020.
Being made redundant from his first post-graduation job shook his sense of identity, as he had placed much of his self-worth in his role. This forced him to re-evaluate what truly matters in a career and life.
Adam realised that being indispensable in a job is about contributing unique value and making an impact, rather than simply following the rules.
Adam’s key takeaway from this difficult period was the importance of not tying one’s happiness solely to a job. He learned to find joy in other areas of life and to ensure that he had a strong sense of self outside of work.
“It’s important to not place total value in your joy and happiness in the job you currently have because the world can change like that and it can be gone.”
Dealing with Non-Constructive Criticism in the Workplace
Zane describes a challenging experience from his early career in marketing and media communications, where he faced a lack of structured onboarding and a barrage of unhelpful criticism from his colleagues.
This led to intense anxiety and a weekend filled with overthinking his every action at work. He learned the hard way that not all criticism is valuable and that some feedback may come from a place that isn’t constructive or supportive.
By seeking advice from colleagues who had the time and willingness to help, Zane developed his own processes and learned to leave work stress behind when the day was over.
His lesson was that self-belief and the ability to discern useful feedback from harmful noise are essential to personal and professional growth.
“I was taking it personally and thinking, why am I not doing well enough? But I realised it’s not always about me; sometimes the criticism isn’t coming from the right place.”
Managing Perfectionism and Prioritisation in Marketing
Gemma reflects on the challenges of perfectionism in her role within the marketing team. Early in her job, she spent significant time perfecting graphics and other projects, expecting flawless results.
However, as she navigated the fast-paced environment, she realised that efficiency and prioritisation were more valuable than perfection.
This mindset shift led to an overhaul in how she approached tasks. By experimenting with different processes and ideas, she found that it’s better to test large concepts and refine them over time than to focus narrowly on perfecting small details from the start.
Gemma’s story emphasises the need for flexibility and learning from trial and error.
“You have to throw a lot out and see what sticks… it’s about trialling ideas and not being pigeonholed by perfectionism.”
Resilience in the Face of Harsh Professional Feedback
Lewis shares his experience working in a fast-paced design job where his boss’s unprofessional and personal criticisms eroded his confidence.
Over time, Lewis learned not to take such negative feedback to heart, recognising that it wasn’t always constructive or coming from a place of expertise.
His lesson was in building resilience and understanding that others’ opinions do not define his worth or abilities.
Now, Lewis is better at filtering feedback, taking on constructive criticism, and using it to grow, while discarding the rest.
“Don’t let other people’s opinion of you affect how you feel about your own work… not everyone knows everything.”
Conclusion:
The episode wraps up with a collective reflection on the importance of embracing mistakes and hardships as opportunities for learning and growth.
Each speaker’s story highlights that failure and pain are inevitable parts of any job, but they also present crucial moments for self-improvement and resilience.
From learning to be more organised to navigating a difficult workplace culture, these challenges have shaped them into more capable and adaptable professionals.
The overarching message: mistakes are valuable, and they can lead to profound personal and professional development if approached with the right mindset.
“We take the pain to get better and get stronger, and a bit more resilient, and have some fun along the way.” – Laura