The tweet said "Marketing's true currency is ideas."

That's one of the reasons marketers get fired every two to four years.

Marketing's true currency is profit ... the ability to generate more profit than was spent. I'm continually disappointed in how few people understand this

There was one time at Nordstrom when layoffs were being discussed.

So I got proactive ... I created a one-page Powerpoint Slide that showed how much profit each employee on my team was responsible for, with links to the work that yielded the profit.

When the "rumors" of layoffs would surface, I'd just update the slide ... a slide that showed that my team of 24 people generated an incremental $9,000,000 of annual profit (above and beyond what would normally be generated ... which was something like $50,000,000).

$9,000,000 incremental profit / 24 employees = $375,000 profit per employee.

Then I'd get prickly about the topic ... "You want to fire Haley? She generated $350,000 profit on a salary of $60,000 ... after benefits she's worth about $250,000. Why would you get rid of her?"

You should have seen the blank stares and silence in those Executive Meetings.

Know how much you are worth, if you are a marketer.

If you manage an email marketing program and you add personalization and you take the program from $10,000,000 to $13,000,000, that's $3,000,000 of sales and a likely $750,000 of profit.

That's because of YOU!!

So know your worth.

You aren't about ideas.

You are about profit.

And you generate lots and lots of profit.