The Executive Brand Podcast

Finn Thormeier
  • 5.0 (3)
  • MARKETING
  • UPDATED MONTHLY

In this podcast, Finn Thormeier, Founder of Project 33, shares the best Founder Branding and Executive Thought Leadership strategies & playbooks. Prior guests include Jason Fried, David Heinemeier Hansson, Henry Schuck, Megan Bowen, Guillaume Moubeche, Josh Braun, Todd Busler, Peter Caputa, Chris Walker, Greg Head, Adam Robinson, Gal Aga, Alina Vandenbergh, Alec Paul, Melissa Kwan and many more. Key Topics: Demand Gen, SaaS Growth, B2B Marketing, B2B Content, Linkedin, Personal Branding, Founder Branding and Executive Branding. www.executivebrand.org

  1. How to Stand the F*ck Out with Louis Grenier

    6D AGO

    How to Stand the F*ck Out with Louis Grenier

    Louis Grenier is the founder of Stand The F*ck Out, and one of my recent favorite new follows on LinkedIn. In this episode, we talk about what a real POV actually is (and why 99% of LinkedIn creators don’t have one), why low likes on a post don’t mean what you think they mean, the one marketing truth most companies are completely ignoring in 2026, and much much more. --- We discuss: * The 4-step Stand the F*ck Out framework * Differentiation vs. distinctiveness * What a good POV actually is * How he closed six-figure contracts from Linkedin posts that got almost zero engagement * The “100% intensity” thesis to standing out * Marketing truths too many B2B / SaaS companies are forgetting (again) * Spending over $10k on a YouTube miniseries - for B2B?? * Why he stopped his podcast after 2 million downloads, and what he’d do differently if he starting a new one today --- Connect with Louis: LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/louisgrenier/ Stand The F*ck Out: https://www.stfo.io/ Stand The F*ck Out Book: https://www.amazon.com/Stand-Out-No-Nonsense-Positioning-Business/dp/B0DVH5C8SP The Roost Community: https://www.stfo.io/roost --- Connect with Finn: LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/finnthormeier/ Project 33 - LinkedIn Agency for CEOs: https://www.project33.io/ --- My personal takeaways: * A point of view is not a hot take machine. Louis draws a sharp line between having random opinions and having a point of view, and most people on Linkedin are doing the first and calling it the second. A real POV is a consistent thread baked into everything you put out. His: “What you’ve been taught about marketing is mostly wrong. And it’s not your fault because you’re surrounded by b******t.” He never names names, but he calls out the culture of the category. * Louis has closed six-figure deals from posts with almost no likes. His whole LinkedIn philosophy is that posts are just a signal flare. The real value is the one DM it triggers from the right person, and that DM turns into a real conversation, which turns into a deal. He genuinely doesn’t care about like counts, because he’s watched low-engagement posts lead directly to five- and six-figure contracts. * Differentiation vs. distinctiveness are two completely different games. Differentiation is positioning: we solve a problem others don’t. Distinctiveness is branding: we get noticed through assets that could be completely arbitrary (orange profile pic, a swear word in the name). Louis’s point is that past a certain company size, true differentiation is rare, but distinctiveness is always available. Most large companies are working on a differentiation problem that doesn’t exist for them anymore, when distinctiveness is the actually problem. * Nobody buys because they're in pain. They buy when a trigger event causes them to move. Louis's example: back pain for 10 years doesn't get someone to the physio. Grandkids visiting and wanting to walk to the park does. The marketing version: stop obsessing over the pain your customer has and start obsessing over the specific moments in time that make them go from not moving to moving. He believes that a half-page of trigger events beats a 50-page strategy deck every time. * Louis’s writing advice: start by posting a lot, because the feedback loops on Linkedin are fast and you learn quickly what lands. Then move to quality, but don’t over-optimize to audience response, because chasing engagement too hard turns you into someone who only says what people already want to hear. “If you optimize the website too much, it turns into a porn site.” Once you’ve built taste, then you can think about systems and volume. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.executivebrand.org

    52 min
  2. How to Measure Brand Marketing & the Power of Founder Branding

    FEB 25

    How to Measure Brand Marketing & the Power of Founder Branding

    Pranav Piyush is the CEO of Paramark, a marketing measurement platform. Prior to founding Paramark, he was VP Marketing at BILL, VP Growth at Pilot.com and VP Growth at Magento during its acquisition by Adobe. After 10+ years in marketing and growth, he has strong opinions on why most marketers are getting measurement wrong. In this episode, we talk about why the brand vs performance marketing distinction is a false dichotomy, how to measure channels that don’t produce a click, the exact experiment framework Pranav is running at Paramark right now, and much more. --- We discuss: * Why complacency killed brand marketing, and what a book from 1923 about broomstick-selling has to do with it * Pranav’s case for why brand marketing is a false concept * The two metrics every new CMO should align on with their CEO and CFO in month #1 * Why he believes that for 90% of companies their win rate wouldn’t change if product marketing, enablement, and customer marketing all stopped tomorrow * Pranav’s “10 experiments in year 1” playbook * How Paramark is geo-testing Google competitor ads in New York only - at a small scale * Pranav’s approach to LinkedIn founder branding * Why Pranav’s posts get “only” 20-50 likes but he’s getting inbound from public companies and AI hyperscalers who never liked a single post * The signal that your organic LinkedIn has hit its ceiling and it’s time to go paid --- Connect with Pranav LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/pranavp/ Paramark: https://paramark.com/ --- Mentions Scientific Advertising by Claude Hopkins (1923): https://www.amazon.com/Scientific-Advertising-Claude-C-Hopkins/dp/1453821082 --- Connect with Finn: LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/finnthormeier/ Project 33 - LinkedIn Agency for CEOs: https://www.project33.io/ --- My personal takeaways: * Pranav on why brand is suddenly “back”: it’s not that brand became more important, it’s that digital channels saturated. When Google and Meta were growing from zero to billions of users, you could ride those channels’ growth without great creative. Now user growth is tapped out, CPMs are climbing, and the only differentiator left is - again - creative, storytelling, and emotion. * “Brand marketing” as a category is basically just “stuff that’s hard to measure” and Pranav hates that definition. It’s a self-fulfilling vicious cycle, because your measurement framework defines what counts as brand vs. performance, not anything inherent about the channel. A direct mail campaign in the 1920s selling broomsticks through artistic positioning was simultaneously brand AND performance marketing. * The two metrics a CMO should report on: search volume (Google + LLMs + everywhere else people type your name into a search bar) and hand raisers (demo requests, sign ups etc). Everything else is noise * For a new CMO’s first year: plan 10 real experiments, expect 7-8 to fail, and the 1-2 winners will fuel your growth. But the key detail is what counts as an experiment. It’s not think that could bring a 5% optimization gain, he means bets that could drive 50-100% growth. And where do you get ideas for those bets? Research your audience’s media consumption habits. Literally ask them: what’s on your phone home screen, what’s the last podcast you shared, what TV show are you watching? That tells you where to show up. * Pranav’s geo-testing experiment shows you can do incrementality at small scale. They’re launching competitor Google search ads only in New York, keeping every other state as a control. If New York traffic spikes and Texas stays flat, the only variable was the search ads * Pranav gets around 20-50 likes on his LinkedIn posts. It’s good, but far from viral. Others in his space get 10x that. He doesn’t care. Why? Public companies are booking demos. Heads of Paid Media are DMing him after his podcast episodes. An AI hyperscaler reached out who had never liked a single post. Views and likes are not the measure of success when you’re selling into enterprise. If your ICP is CMOs spending $20M-$100M+ on marketing, those people are not impressed by fluffy “10 cool ChatGPT prompts” content. They’re trying to improve their conversations with their CFO. It’s obvious when you say it, but you need to match your content to the buyer, not the algorithm. Then use thought leadership ads to amplify reach beyond your organic network. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.executivebrand.org

    1 hr
  3. How Vector Uses Content, Signals & Taste to Do Great Marketing

    FEB 18

    How Vector Uses Content, Signals & Taste to Do Great Marketing

    Jess Cook and Joshua Perk are the VP of Marketing and CEO of Vector respectively, which is a marketing signal platform. They also host “This Meeting Could Have Been a Podcast”, have a combined 50,000 LinkedIn followers, and actually have fun with their marketing. In this episode, we talk about how they built one of the most entertaining podcasts in B2B marketing, how they’re using LinkedIn holistically as a growth channel, and why the things that work best in marketing are always the hardest to measure. --- We discuss: * Why their first podcast concept ”Funnel Cake” flopped, and how Jess pivoted the entire show in 24 hours * The prep that goes into filming an entire season for their podcast in 2 days * Why livestreamers get the most applause, and what that means for your content strategy * How Jess uses Claude projects to turn bi-weekly interviews with her founders into LinkedIn posts + how they outgrew that * 58% of followers came from comments, not posts, and what LinkedIn is signaling us with that * How Vector… uses Vector * The micro-events strategy that closed 100% of attendees (yes, actually) --- Connect with Jess and Josh: Jess Cook’s LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jesscook-contentmarketing/ Joshua Perk’s LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/joshuaperk/ Vector: https://www.vector.co/ This Meeting Could Have Been a Podcast: https://vector.transistor.fm/ --- Connect with Finn: LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/finnthormeier/ Project 33 - LinkedIn Agency for CEOs: https://www.project33.io/ --- My personal takeaways: * When Jess asked marketer friends what they’d want to hear a VP of Marketing and CEO talk about, every answer was basically what was already on their agendas for their 1-on-1s. That has become the show. Some of the best podcast concepts come from what’s already happening, not what sounds good on paper. * $4,000 for a studio day that produces a podcast 80% of open opportunities listen to vs $6,000 in Clay credits for 10,000 cold emails that get a 0.1% response rate Founders get perceived value wrong constantly. * Attribution is a mechanism of control. As companies grow, they introduce attribution, not because it makes marketing better, but because someone five layers removed from the campaign needs to prove their dollars went somewhere. Actual great marketing takes courage, taste, intuition and, partly, doing the opposite of what everyone else / best practice says is the right approach * Jess’s LinkedIn workflow for her founders: interview them every two weeks, run transcripts through AI trained on their voice, hand them posts. Once Josh understood the mechanics, and got addicted to posts doing well, he started writing more of his own content * Every single prospect from their first dinner event converted to a closed deal. They mixed in existing customers to have advocates present, kept it small, and made the whole thing feel like a fun night out rather than a networking event. Now they’re scaling it into the “Ghost Tour Tour” (see their mascot) - a dinner plus a walking ghost tour in whatever city they’re in, with concert-style merch listing all the tour stops * People should be able to become fans from a single clip (Jess learned this from Devin Reed). It happened a couple times that someone saw one 60-second clip, walked up to them at an event, and said “I love your show.” When they asked what their favorite episode is, they didn’t have one - they’ve only seen clips. Which is ok. Don’t aim for subscribers/followers, but moments that stick. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.executivebrand.org

    57 min
  4. Clio CEO ($400m ARR) on Moving from “classic” SaaS to AI-native

    FEB 11

    Clio CEO ($400m ARR) on Moving from “classic” SaaS to AI-native

    Jack Newton is the founder and CEO of Clio. He started the company in 2008 in Canada, and has since grown it to over 400,000 customers, 2,000 employees, and $400M+ in ARR. They raised a $500M Series G in 2025. In this episode, we talk about applying lessons from having navigated the Cloud Era to the AI Era, why the best SaaS companies are moving from selling software to selling work, what 17 years of building in legal tech teaches you about selling technology to skeptical buyers, and much more. --- We discuss: * Jacks learnings from cloud adoption in 2008 and how they translate to AI adoption today * The Slack message Jack sent his CTO the day ChatGPT launched * Why “cool technology is less than half the battle” - and why education and movement-building are the rest * The Steve Jobs approach to product launches * How Clio went from a system of record to a system of action, and why every vertical SaaS founder should be thinking about this * The “Sell Work, Not Software” thesis and how it expanded Clio’s TAM from $20B to $1T * Why your MAUs dropping might actually be a good sign in the AI era * Jack’s advice for first-time SaaS / AI founders * Bonus - How he never missed a single day of running in over 20 years (that’s over 7,000 days in a row) --- Connect with Jack: LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jackbnewton/ Clio: https://www.clio.com/ The Client-Centered Law Firm by Jack Newton: https://a.co/d/0hrcAvfA The Hard Thing About Hard Things, Ben Horowitz: https://www.amazon.com/Hard-Thing-About-Things-Building/dp/0062273205 The Four Steps to the Epiphany, Steve Blank: https://www.amazon.com/Four-Steps-Epiphany-Steve-Blank/dp/0989200507 Sell Work, Not Software by Sarah Tavel: https://www.sarahtavel.com/p/ai-startups-sell-work-not-software --- Connect with Finn: LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/finnthormeier/ Project 33 - LinkedIn Agency for CEOs: https://www.project33.io/ --- My personal takeaways: * AI is compressing a decade into a year: What took cloud adoption 10 years to achieve in legal is happening in 12 months with AI. And the impact is at least an order of magnitude bigger. * “Sell work, not software” is the new SaaS playbook: Clio’s TAM went from $20B (software + payments) to $1T (global legal services spend) by shifting from helping manage work to actually doing the work. Every vertical SaaS founder should be asking: what does my “sell work” version look like? * Education was Clio’s real moat, not the technology. When no one else in legal tech was publishing research or running events, Jack invested in white papers, a conference (ClioCon), keynotes - basically a full-blown education movement to get lawyers comfortable with change. The AI chapter is following the same playbook. He’s touring the country doing live demos of AI features in front of lawyer audiences and showing them what’s possible * Only talk about what’s shipping today: Jack’s approach (inspired by Steve Jobs) is to never announce future products, only demo what customers can use starting today. Very different to most AI startups who overpromise and underdeliver. He believes, long-term, his approach builds lasting trust when everyone else leans on hype * Five of Clio’s six acquisitions started as integrations in their app ecosystem. It’s a brilliant acquisition pipeline because you get to see real usage data, real product-market fit, and how well the team integrates before you ever write a check. Hadn’t thought about an app marketplace as a sourcing strategy for M&A, but it makes a lot of sense * Lower engagement can be a feature, not a bug. If your AI agents are automating work for customers, they might spend LESS time in your app. That breaks every SaaS engagement metric we’ve been taught to optimize for. Jack is actively rethinking what “good” usage looks like when the product’s job is to make itself invisible This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.executivebrand.org

    50 min
  5. Lessons from the ex-CIO of Microsoft, Disney and the U.S. Government

    FEB 4

    Lessons from the ex-CIO of Microsoft, Disney and the U.S. Government

    Tony Scott is the CEO of Intrusion, a publicly traded cybersecurity company. Before joining Intrusion in 2021, he served as the Federal CIO of the United States under President Obama, as CIO at VMWare, CIO at Microsoft, CIO at Disney, and as CTO at General Motors. Yes, let that sink in. In this episode, we talk about what Tony learned from working with Bill Gates, Obama, and other world leaders, what it actually takes to land a C-level role at a Fortune 5 company, and why he predicts a major AI disaster is coming in 2026. --- We discuss: * The three most stressful weeks of his career (and there were many) * Why he chose to become CEO of a struggling cybersecurity company after serving as the Federal CIO * What Bill Gates really meant when he said “that’s the dumbest thing I’ve ever heard” in meetings * How to actually get a C-level role at a Fortune 5 company * Tips for founders trying to sell into the enterprise or government and the phrases that immediately kill deals * Why he predicts a major AI disaster in 2026 * What flying taught him about business * Why someone who’s already “made it” still invests in LinkedIn --- Connect with Tony: LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/tony-scott-intrusion/ Intrusion: https://www.intrusion.com/ --- Connect with Finn: LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/finnthormeier/ Project 33: https://www.project33.io/ --- My personal takeaways: * What gets you a meeting with a CIO at a Fortune 100 company is doing your homework & finding a top 3 organizational problem they're trying to solve. If you come to pitch on innovative tech, you won't get far. And if you start the conversation with "what keeps you up at night?" you've already lost. It shows you did zero research. Tony had a secret signal with his assistants to get rescued from bed vendor meetings. That question was usually the trigger. * Tony's prediction for 2026: there's going to be a very big disaster as a result of the abuse, misuse, or accidental use of AI. Something attention-grabbing. And people are going to go "oh my god, we didn't know that could happen." We're building so much on top of AI without understanding all the points of failure, so when that failure occurs, it'll bring on a bunch of governance and regulatory inspections. It happened with every big invention we've ever had. * What impressed Tony most about interacting with Obama: his questions. He’d ask surprisingly deep questions about technical topics. When Tony’s team would send in a draft white paper (about something cybersecurity related), they’d often overnight get back a markup from the president with all kinds of notes & questions in his handwriting in the margins. * At Microsoft, Tony interfaced with Bill Gates, who would often say "that's the dumbest thing I've ever heard” in meetings. Tony saw it as a test to see if the person had done their homework on their idea/proposal/opinion, and were able to stand their ground. Problems happened when other executives tried to copy that style without context and without being Bill (Tony decided not to emulate it) * None of the things Tony did in his career were direct predictors of the thing he was gonna do next. He went from Sun Microsystems to startups to being the CIO at Microsoft, Disney, VMware, then Federal CIO under President Obama, and finally, CEO of a public cybersecurity company navigating headwinds. Recruiters kept finding him because he had an unusual combination of tech experience + a law degree. That made him stand out. His advice if you want unique opportunities: build a unique skill stack. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.executivebrand.org

    53 min
  6. Claude Code's new Head of Marketing on Founder Branding & Developer Marketing

    JAN 28

    Claude Code's new Head of Marketing on Founder Branding & Developer Marketing

    Kacie Jenkins is the new Head of Marketing for Claude Code (she joined a couple weeks after this recording). Before joining Anthropic, she was SVP Marketing at Sendoso, VP Marketing at Sourcegraph, and VP Marketing at Fastly, where she helped take the company from Series A to $200M ARR and an IPO. In this episode, we talk about how she built executive brand programs before it was a thing, what actually drives pipeline from LinkedIn, and why anything that sounds corporate is dead on arrival. We discuss: - Why she felt like she had to perform a “TV version” of an executive when she first got promoted - How Fastly built their brand around their CEO’s personality and why they let him swear in F1000 meetings - How to turn LinkedIn DMs into pipeline - Where ghostwriting works & where it breaks - Anything that sounds corporate is dead on arrival - The organic content playbook that made her paid ads perform 50% better - Why developer marketing starts with credibility --- Connect with Kacie:LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/kaciejenkins/Claude Code (Anthropic): https://www.anthropic.com/ --- Connect with me:LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/finnthormeier/Project 33: https://www.project33.io/ --- My personal takeaways: 1. Corporate is dead upon arrival. Anything that sounds or feels corporate, developers will write off immediately 2. The worst thing you can do with a CEO who doesn’t naturally want to do founder brand: try to make them sound more formal or executive-y. Everyone will know because that’s not how they show up in person. At Fastly, their CEO swore all the time. He’d roll into Fortune 1000 meetings and drop an F-bomb when he really meant something. People found it endearing because he was exactly the same in every room. 3. She spent way too long performing a version of herself she thought should be at the table without emotion, very serious, and didn’t ask for help. People told her no one wanted to be around her anymore. What got her there was that she was different than everyone else. She was a writer, a singer, understood how to build communities and scale human connection. 4. Building trust is now more important than it even was 10 years ago. No one will listen to you if they don’t think you’re credible and trustworthy, and they can learn from you. You start with great documentation, technical writing, your subject matter experts sharing in public, and building in public 5. Kacie tracks how many connections each exec has with their ICP in target accounts. She puts it on a dashboard. Most CEOs are competitive and they don’t want to be the lowest on the board in front of the whole company. It had a rising tide effect on all other channels. 6. Her two tools for mining content ideas: Granola to record & transcribe every meeting, then use AI to surface patterns across calls. And a weekly brain dump call: “What pissed you off this week? What do you think needs to change? What are we hearing in customer calls that shouldn’t be happening to them?” 7. Asking for help brings people closer to you. It doesn’t make them think you’re incompetent. Lean into what got you there. You don’t have to have all the answers. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.executivebrand.org

    56 min
  7. Marketing Lessons from the CMO of G2, Salesloft & Drata

    JAN 21

    Marketing Lessons from the CMO of G2, Salesloft & Drata

    Sydney Sloan was previously the CMO at G2, Drata, and Salesloft, prior to which she spent 16 years at Adobe in a variety of marketing leadership roles. She is currently an advisor at G2 and Executive in Residence at Scale Venture Partners, working with early-stage founders on go-to-market strategy. In this episode, we talk about her biggest lessons, how buyer behavior has fundamentally changed, why brand matters more than ever, and what the 2026 marketing playbook actually looks like. --- We discuss: * Why this is the biggest transformation in 30 years of B2B marketing * Buyer research shifted from 29% to 50% on AI chatbots in 4 months, and what that means for you AEO strategy * Why you probably don't need marketing automation the way you used to * “Human in the loop” vs “human in the lead” * How to build brand in 2026 - and why it matters more than ever * The Show-Up-Bigger-Than-You-Are playbook * Reorganizing GTM teams around outcomes, not functions * The advice Sydney would give herself before her first CMO role --- Connect with Sydney: * LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/sydsloan/ * G2: https://www.g2.com/ * Scale Venture Partners: https://www.scalevp.com/ --- Connect with Finn: * LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/finnthormeier/ * Project 33: https://www.project33.io/ --- My personal takeaways: 1. The shift to AI search is happening faster than we think. Internal G2 data showed that in April 2025, 29% of buyers said they started their research in of of the AI chatbots. By August that number hit 50%, just four months later. In 2026, every company needs to focus on their AEO strategy making sure their brand is the citation source LLMs use. 2. Marketing automation as we know it is dead. Companies need to capture high-intent signals using tools like Clay or Common Room, and immediately deploy AI agents to act on them. Speed is the new currency. 3. Show up bigger than you are. Sydney got this advice from the CMOs of Okta and Snyk, and used it to scale Drata and Salesloft. You don’t need a massive budget, you need one anchor event or one bold move. At Drata, they bought out every ad space for two blocks around Moscone Center for RSA Conference so attendees couldn’t miss them. At Salesloft, they bought a billboard on Highway 101, but the ROI didn’t come from the traffic driving by, it came from leveraging photos of it online. Big one-off events, if properly leveraged, signal momentum to investors, customers and potential employees. 4. We’re entering the “Rick Rubin Economy”, because AI lowers the barrier to entry for content and code, so the only differentiator is taste. You can’t prompt your way to good taste. We need to hire for context and judgment, or leverage advisory boards of influencers who actually understand the market. AI provides the speed, but humans provide the creative direction that determines if anyone actually cares. 5. Do we need GTM Architects? Everyone is rushing to hire GTM Engineers and build AI workflows, but in software development, you need engineers and architects. They work at different levels of abstraction. Software Engineers build and maintain software, Software Architects design the system as a whole. We need this for GTM. You need someone to map the strategy, choose the agentic platforms, and decide *what* to automate before you build it. Sydney said she sees this as a separate role, likely sitting in RevOps, not something for the CMO. 6. The biggest mistake new CMOs make is obsessing over their domain of the marketing department. Sydney’s advice for someone stepping into a C-level role for the first time: Spend your first 90 days building deep relationships with your peers - the CFO, CRO, CEO. If you don’t understand the business context and have alignment with your peers, the best marketing strategy in the world won’t save you. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.executivebrand.org

    52 min
  8. How the CMO Role is Changing w/ ex-CMO of Calendly Jessica Gilmartin

    JAN 14

    How the CMO Role is Changing w/ ex-CMO of Calendly Jessica Gilmartin

    Jessica Gilmartin was previously the CMO and CRO at Calendly, Head of Revenue Marketing at Asana, and Head of Product Marketing for Wildfire at Google. Today, she works closely with founders and first-time CMOs from pre-revenue through $100M ARR, advising them on everything from hiring, org design to GTM focus and executive communication. In this episode, we talk about how AI is changing the CMO role and marketing org, where it’s wildly overhyped vs working, and many other topics. Listen on: YouTube, Spotify or Apple Podcast We discuss: * Why CMO + CRO combo roles usually fail * Why companies now hire CMOs from smaller, scrappier startups * Where AI is truly useful vs pure hype * Why random acts of marketing kill momentum * How Calendly moved from viral PLG to focused enterprise ABM * The real reason CMOs only last 18 months * Why taste, courage, and focus still matter more than tools Connect with Jessica: * LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jessicagilmartin/ Connect with Finn: * LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/finnthormeier/ * Project 33: https://www.project33.io/ My personal takeaways: * We’re overvaluing AI right now: Jessica believes we’ll replace most of our day-to-day work with AI in 5-10 years. But right now board members are mandating AI adoption without specific use cases. The reality is AI is making teams 10-20% more efficient and that it works as an enabler, but not as a replacement. The best use cases she’s seeing are data enrichment for lead prioritization, competitive research for product marketing, and using LLMs as synthetic customer panels. * There are three paths to CMO and CEOs keep hiring wrong. 50% of B2B CMOs come from product marketing, 50% from demand gen, brand CMOs are rare in B2B. CEOs want a unicorn who’s great at both strategic messaging and technical growth. Jessica’s advice: “It’s like asking a backend engineer why they can’t code mobile apps.” Hire for your actual problem right now, not the one you’ll have at $100M. * The only mistake with bad hires is keeping them. Jessica repeats this constantly to clients, that you will always make bad hires. Or you hire people who were good then but aren’t right now. The mistake afterwards is keeping them too long. When you bring the right person on board, your life gets 10-100x easier. * Attribution is broken and that’s okay. You’re getting 70-80% accuracy at best. Jessica’s approach is to use the 80-20 rule. Get directionally correct data so teams understand where they can make impact and then work from there. The bigger issue is that companies wait too long to implement basic data and reporting infrastructure. * Random acts of marketing kill focus. At Calendly, Jessica pivoted the entire team to one thing: repositioning for enterprise customers. Because their CAC was zero for casual users due to viral growth. Marketers hate focus and they want to sprinkle seeds everywhere. But the winning strategy is making big bets, being explicit about trade-offs, and ensuring no one does random acts of marketing. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.executivebrand.org

    55 min
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Ratings & Reviews

5
out of 5
3 Ratings

About

In this podcast, Finn Thormeier, Founder of Project 33, shares the best Founder Branding and Executive Thought Leadership strategies & playbooks. Prior guests include Jason Fried, David Heinemeier Hansson, Henry Schuck, Megan Bowen, Guillaume Moubeche, Josh Braun, Todd Busler, Peter Caputa, Chris Walker, Greg Head, Adam Robinson, Gal Aga, Alina Vandenbergh, Alec Paul, Melissa Kwan and many more. Key Topics: Demand Gen, SaaS Growth, B2B Marketing, B2B Content, Linkedin, Personal Branding, Founder Branding and Executive Branding. www.executivebrand.org

Information

  • Creator
    Finn Thormeier
  • Years Active
    2022 - 2026
  • Episodes
    151
  • Rating
    Explicit
  • Copyright
    © Finn Thormeier
  • Show Website
    The Executive Brand Podcast

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