11 Years of Growing the Digital Marketing Institute - Ken Fitzpatrick, ex-CEO of DMI

Ken Fitzpatrick led the Digital Marketing Institute (DMI) - the largest global digital marketing training and certification body with 75k+ certifications and 330k+ members - for over 11 years until he moved on to a new role at BPP 2 months ago. He’s also led companies to 3 successful exits.

The focus of DMI was always  to create a standard that raises the bar for digital marketing skills - and over the years they achieved that goal. The business was initially hard to scale as an in-person model, but once they transitioned to a fully online service they finally unlocked scale. After that they hired established executives who helped move them even further until they hit their biggest growth spurt by partnering with the American Marketing Association.

AI is really causing shockwaves throughout the education industry. Ken isn’t quite ready to take a stance on its potential impact, but for now he sees it as a positive that can reduce a lot of the gruntwork that goes into a marketer's daily workflow. Marketers should embrace AI as a tool, not as a single source of truth for all of their insights and knowledge.

Tune into the full episode to hear Ken’s journey running DMI!

HIGHLIGHTS:
0:00 Intro
2:15 Why people turn to DMI
3:51 Ken’s journey with the DMI
6:01 11 Years of challenges
9:24 The role of AI in marketing education
14:41 Universities vs Certificates 
16:27 Ken’s CEO Playbook

Connect with Mikael - https://www.linkedin.com/in/mikaeldia/
Connect with Ken - https://www.linkedin.com/in/kenfitzpatrickdmi/