There are many people with no formal experience or training who are brilliant marketers. David Ogilvy never graduated from college, for example. Neither did Steve Jobs. Few hold a candle to either of them.

But here's the problem implicit in your question: You're asking how to proceed. Do you have within you the intense curiosity and love of learning necessary to tackle this job? Do you know how to ask the right questions? Have you gone out there and read, for example, the 25 greatest marketing and advertising books of all time? What have YOU done already -- or are you doing right now -- to prepare for this? Because if you are fundamentally incurious, then you cannot do this job and you certainly cannot lead others. If you have a towering intellect coupled with an intense curiosity, on the other hand, and you have drive, passion and perseverance, you could very well succeed.

In other words, it's up to you. You need to ask yourself if you're in over your head. You need to ask yourself if you have the innate curiosity and drive to know, to investigate, to question -- things necessary for you to succeed and to lead others.

Your questions do concern me. You seem to want others to tell you what to do. Now if you'd come here and said you'd read the histories of marketing for many start-up companies; you've read the great marketers and advertisers of the last 50 years; you've watched or gone to talks by thinkers like Sinek -- and then you had questions about applying those ideas to your challenges, that would be utterly different. Until you aren't operating from a vacuum of knowledge, even the best advice in the world won't help you because you'll lack the worldview to apply it correctly.

So it's on you to decide which path you want to take.