Wise Woman on the Rise: Meet Amanda Natividad

Oct 14, 2021Maria West0 comments

Amanda Natividad is a prime example of how leaning into your strengths and vulnerabilities can lead to the most fulfilling chapters of your life. For this LA-based content marketer, toddler mom, and former chef, taking control of her wellness was the next step in the recipe.

Amanda’s involvement with House of Wise started with a personal interest in CBD as she dabbled in cannabis products to help manage her anxiety and sleep. The marketer in her was drawn to the community-led aspect of HOW, so she interviewed our CEO and founder, Amanda Goetz, on the Growth Machine Marketing podcast.

We must’ve made quite the impression because Amanda decided to become a Wise Woman after falling in love with the HOW products. She also made friends with a few of the Roomies after engaging with the HOW community (including Jess Sanfilippo, Ingrid Read, and me, Maria West.)

A Wise Woman Amanda admires is . . . me?! After meeting via a HOW marketing project and taking our friendship further on Twitter, we’ve become cross-continental friends bonding over content marketing and toddler parenting life. In Amanda’s words: "I admire her effortless writing style, and the fact that she runs her own business, cares for her toddler, is pregnant with her next baby, and she still finds the time and headspace to be thoughtful to her friends. (She surprised me with a gift the other week and it completely made my entire month!)"

Amanda’s proudest accomplishments

Amanda’s career has seen peaks and valleys. She’s had moments in her career where she felt overwhelmingly empowered and seasons where stress left her feeling helpless. “I worked at cool companies, rubbed elbows with celebrity ambassadors, planned million-dollar conferences, and even got to experience my employer becoming a publicly traded company,” Amanda said.

She eventually tried out the "funemployment" life but found it hard to jump back in after a few years off. An aimless job hunt, a layoff, and a pandemic furlough led her to the brink of a breaking point last year.

Amanda worked full-time while splitting childcare with her husband as they chose to keep their toddler home while muddling through the pandemic.

"I was essentially working 16-hour days," she said. "I was feeling those inklings of helplessness again but decided to step up to the plate in a new way. I didn't want to go through any sort of traditional job hunt again."

Amanda turned to Twitter to grow her personal brand strategically (and now has more than 25,000 followers). She shares hard-won lessons in marketing best practices and sees Twitter as a community instead of just an echo chamber of hot takes.

“I'm proud that I showed up for myself. That I found a way to share my marketing insights in a way that's true to who I am, and that I opened up new doors for myself.”

Twitter helped her find her current role at SparkToro. Amanda grabbed lunch with Rand Fishkin, the founder of startup SparkToro and former co-founder and CEO of Moz, and his wife, Geraldine DeRuiter, becoming fast friends. They knew they just had to work together somehow, so Amanda became SparkToro’s marketing architect. She is re-energized by work in a way she hasn't been in years and is the most mentally healthy she’s felt at work.

What she’s up to

At SparkToro, Amanda is helping make audience research more accessible to everyone (because not every business can drop $25K on it). SparkToro's tools help people discover key audience attributes, online behaviors, and which sources influence them so they can be more creative in their marketing. Create a free account at sparktoro.com or subscribe to their audience research newsletter.

You can also subscribe to Amanda’s personal newsletter, The Menu, where she writes about marketing-adjacent thoughts, curates interesting content, and shares an original recipe (without an annoying backstory). And, of course, you can follow Amanda on Twitter (@amandanat).