The Year I Worked for Martha Stewart and Fell Back in Love With Marketing

When I think back to the year I worked on Martha Stewart’s e-commerce team, the biggest thing I walked away with wasn’t just a job title. It was a perspective shift.

Martha has this gift: she makes everything look easy. Cooking, gardening, decorating — she genuinely loves what she does, and because of that, she sees things others miss. She spots the little details that add up to a lifestyle. And when you have someone like that looking at your brand, magic happens.

That year, I realized the same is true in marketing. When you bring in someone who loves uncovering customer behaviors — who geeks out on patterns, who notices the moves customers make after their first purchase — you unlock strategy-level insights that can change the trajectory of your business.

The Gateway Product Effect

Take Martha’s product lines. It wasn’t just about selling “more pots and pans” or “more gardening tools.” What I saw was that customers often made their second purchase from a completely different category — cookware to bedding, or gardening to candles.

That insight became one of my favorite parts of marketing: spotting those “gateway products” that surprise and delight customers, and ultimately bring them deeper into the brand. It’s not about pushing the same thing twice — it’s about opening doors they didn’t know they wanted to walk through.

Why a Fresh Pair of Eyes Matters

You’re close to your business. You know your craft inside and out. But sometimes it takes someone on the outside — someone who loves strategy as much as you love your work — to spot the patterns, the gateways, the untapped opportunities.

That’s where the magic is. The right pair of eyes isn’t there to change who you are — they’re there to uncover the things that will help you grow in ways that feel authentic, human, and exciting.

✨ The year I worked for Martha Stewart reminded me that passion paired with perspective unlocks strategy at a whole new level. When you love what you do, and you partner with people who love what they do, customers feel it. And that’s when your marketing starts to work in ways you couldn’t have scripted.

👉 Want that kind of perspective on your business? Contact me — let’s uncover the insights hiding in plain sight.