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Most marketers believe great work leads to great business.  David C. Baker would disagree.  In this episode, Drew Neisser sits down with The Business of Expertise author to unpack what really separates thriving expert firms from struggling ones. From positioning and pricing power to the myths of growth and creativity, this is a candid, no-BS look at what it actually takes to build a successful expertise-based business.  If you're a B2B CMO trying to sharpen your company's positioning (and prove marketing's impact on the business), this one will hit home.  Key Mistakes:  Staying a generalist instead of narrowing your positioning  Assuming talent or creativity alone will drive success    Chasing growth without understanding the tradeoffs    What You'll Learn:  Why saying no is the real starting point for positioning and pricing power   How to tell if you're acting like an expert or just an order taker   Why most firms overestimate creativity and underestimate discipline   What AI is actually changing—and what it's not  How to build demand so you're not forced to take every client  One idea to stick with:  If clients can easily compare you to alternatives, you're not positioned.  If you want to go deeper, David shares more at punctuation.com—but fair warning, he might tell you to stop reading business books altogether.  For full show notes and transcripts, visit https://renegademarketing.com/podcasts/ To learn more about CMO Huddles, visit https://cmohuddles.com/

Do humor and serious leadership belong in the same room?  Most leaders default to staying "professional" and miss one of the simplest ways to build connection and improve communication.  In this episode of Renegade Marketers Unite, Drew Neisser talks with Jan McInnis about how leaders can use humor effectively—without telling jokes or trying to be someone they're not.  The conversation reframes humor from something perceived as risky to something practical: A tool leaders can use to make teams more comfortable, conversations more effective, and workplaces a little more human.  What You'll Learn:  Why humor can make leaders more human and approachable  Why humor makes leaders more approachable   How humor can acknowledge tension without derailing the moment   When humor helps, and when it can backfire   How small moments of levity can improve communication across teams  The takeaway: Humor isn't about being funny. It's about being human.  If your meetings feel a little too stiff—or your communication isn't landing the way it should—this episode offers a simple place to start.  For full show notes and transcripts, visit https://renegademarketing.com/podcasts/ To learn more about CMO Huddles, visit https://cmohuddles.com/

A tough CMO job search can mess with your confidence fast. The search runs longer than expected. A role looks right on paper, then gets murkier as the conversations unfold. The company says it wants growth, but the real issue may be churn, product, or a CEO still figuring out what kind of marketing leader the business needs. That's what makes this market hard.  You are not only trying to tell a strong story about yourself. You are also trying to judge whether the opportunity in front of you is one you can win in. Executive recruiter Erica Seidel, founder of The Connective Good, has a front-row seat to how CMO hiring is working right now. In her conversation with Drew, she gets into what CEOs say they want versus what they are really hiring for, how to frame your story when growth is hard to prove, and how to spot the signals that a role may be shakier than it first appears.  What You'll Take Away:  Why every hire is a set of tradeoffs and how to position yourself  What CEOs mean when they ask for a "growth partner"  Why business context matters as much as headline results  How AI fluency is showing up in CMO hiring  How to shape your story before others define your narrative  Signals to Read:  If the role is built for growth or cleanup  What a CEO's reaction to pushback reveals  If the job spec reflects reality or an "11 out of 10" wish list  If the company can make tradeoffs  How culture and pace show up before day one  If your CMO job search has you questioning your story, your fit, or your instincts, this episode will help you get more confident on all three.  For full show notes and transcripts, visit https://renegademarketing.com/podcasts/ To learn more about CMO Huddles, visit https://cmohuddles.com/

Too many companies treat every failure the same. That makes people more cautious, more guarded, and less willing to take the smart risks innovation requires.   Amy Edmondson argues that not all failures deserve the same label. Some are preventable. Some come with complexity. Then there is intelligent failure, the kind that comes with thoughtful experimentation in new territory and produces the learning that moves innovation forward.  In this episode, Drew Neisser brings in Harvard Business School professor Amy Edmondson, author of Right Kind of Wrong, to look at what leaders need to do if they want teams experimenting and learning in unfamiliar territory. For Amy, that starts with a clear goal, a bet no bigger than necessary, and the kind of questions that create enough psychological safety for people to share what they're seeing early. So even when the result falls short, the learning is still useful.  What You'll Take Away:  The difference between preventable, complex, and intelligent failure  Why intelligent failure belongs in new territory  What makes an experiment smart, small, and worth running  Why high achievers often need a better frame for failure  How playing not to lose distorts innovation  What This Asks of Leaders:  Stop treating every miss as proof someone messed up  Make the goal clear before the experiment starts  Keep the bet no bigger than necessary  Ask questions that invite candor instead of caution  If your team needs a smarter way to think about failure, risk, and learning, this one is worth a listen.  For full show notes and transcripts, visit https://renegademarketing.com/podcasts/ To learn more about CMO Huddles, visit https://cmohuddles.com/

Search is starting to behave differently. More buyers are asking AI tools direct questions, getting synthesized answers, and making decisions without following the old click path. That creates a new challenge for marketers. Content now has to be structured to show up in the answer.  In this "Drew-on-Drew" episode, host Drew Neisser pulls together what surfaced in recent CMO Huddles Strategy Labs around Answer Engine Optimization (AEO) and focuses on the questions marketing teams are already starting to wrestle with. Which buyer questions should be turned into structured Q&A first? Which strong existing pages are worth updating before you create anything new? And does this sit with SEO, or is AEO becoming part of a broader content conversation? If you've been hearing more about AEO and trying to figure out what deserves attention now, give this one a listen. Drew lays out what's changing, what teams should look at first, and how to get moving!  Where To Start:  Identify the buyer questions already shaping search behavior  Turn those questions into structured Q&A on pages that already perform  Add schema before you spend on anything more elaborate  Let SEO lead the first pass, then expand if the test shows promise  What You'll Take Away:  Which questions belong on your site first, including comparisons, "best tool for X," and "how does this work?"  Why this is still early, and why benchmarking now matters  Why your SEO team can likely own AEO too  How to start with strong existing pages instead of building from scratch  For full show notes and transcripts, visit https://renegademarketing.com/podcasts/ To learn more about CMO Huddles, visit https://cmohuddles.com/

Most companies say they put customers at the center of their business. Few actually operate that way.  In this episode of Renegade Marketers Unite, Drew Neisser talks with JD Dillon (Tigo Energy), Carlos Carvajal (Anaqua), and Nikhil Chawla (Resilience) about what it takes to turn customer voice into real organizational change. Together, they unpack what customer-centric leadership looks like in practice—from retention programs and executive briefings to listening to real sales calls and turning customer signals into action across the business.  The result is a more operational view of customer obsession, one where the voice of the customer shows up not just in dashboards, but in meetings, decisions, and everyday habits. The big idea: Customer centricity becomes powerful only when it shows up in everyday habits—meetings, messaging, and decisions. If you want to move from customer-aware to customer-obsessed, this episode delivers practical strategies you can apply immediately.  What You'll Learn:  Why customer obsession must show up in company habits, not just strategy decks  How marketing leaders are using customer voice to shape planning and priorities  Why stories and quotes from customers often move teams faster than dashboards  How narrowing customer centricity to a clear job-to-be-done makes it actionable  Why customers should appear in all-hands meetings, planning sessions, and executive briefings  How marketing teams can turn customer conversations into a repeatable growth engine    This Episode Is For  B2B CMOs and marketing leaders who want to move beyond talking about customer centricity and start embedding customer insight into how their organizations actually operate.  For full show notes and transcripts, visit https://renegademarketing.com/podcasts/ To learn more about CMO Huddles, visit https://cmohuddles.com/

AI is forcing a leadership choice. You can treat it like a stack of use cases and end up with a lot of motion and a little progress. Or you can start with a clear vision of the future you want, make strategy visible, and use that to align decisions across the business.  In this episode, Drew Neisser talks with Brian Evergreen, author of Autonomous Transformation, about why the AI conversation so often collapses into tools and use cases, and how leaders can pull it back to vision, outcomes, and the kind of alignment that drives transformation. What you'll take away:  Why optimization can keep you busy while you stay stuck  How to make a future vision concrete enough to act on  What "no strategy without vision" means, and how to spot fake strategy  Why leaders default to scorecards, and how it stalls transformation  How Brian's "nindrant" separates "we can do" from "we need alignment"  Why use case first AI limits gains, and how to shift to value creation Plus:  A simple workshop to surface visions before projects  A clean split between what marketing can do now and what needs CRO and CFO alignment  How to move AI from tool talk to a value creation leadership conversation If you are tired of AI conversations that start with tools and end with small wins, listen to this episode for a vision first approach that changes what you do next.  For full show notes and transcripts, visit https://renegademarketing.com/podcasts/ To learn more about CMO Huddles, visit https://cmohuddles.com/

Marketing org design isn't an HR exercise. It determines whether your team spends the year reacting… or actually executing.  In this episode of Renegade Marketers Unite, Drew sits down with Charles Groome (Insightful) and Heather Adkins (Trimble) to unpack what a 2026-ready marketing organization really looks like.  Spoiler: It's not built around functional silos.  Instead, they explore campaign-led team structures, mindset-driven hiring, and operating systems designed for speed, adaptability, and accountability.  You'll hear:  How Insightful uses an effort + outcomes framework to evaluate performance  Why Trimble reorganized around nine global initiatives instead of functional silos  The rise of integrated campaign units to tighten alignment  How to hire T-shaped marketers who blend storytelling and data  Ways to give teams more autonomy without sacrificing accountability  How better org design can reduce burnout and increase clarity  If your team structure hasn't changed in years, your team may struggle to adapt when the market shifts.  This conversation will challenge how you think about structure, talent, and what it takes to build a marketing team that can pivot with confidence.  For full show notes and transcripts, visit https://renegademarketing.com/podcasts/ To learn more about CMO Huddles, visit https://cmohuddles.com/

Feature-and-function decks aren't winning anymore. In this episode of Renegade Marketers Unite, Drew sits down with Bob Wright (Firebrick) to break down how B2B CMOs can use positioning to drive growth, shorten sales cycles, and stand out in crowded markets.  They unpack why product-first stories fail, how to get to "one voice" across the company, and what it really means to own a key business problem that buyers care about. In this episode:  The three biggest positioning mistakes: product-first thinking, misalignment, and no owned problem  Creating urgency when "do nothing" is the real competitor  Why "why you, why now" matters more than "how it works"  When and how to rethink positioning after PLG, acquisitions, or expansion  How to stand out in a world of AI sameness  Building positions that sales actually uses If your messaging is drifting into "blah blah blah" territory, this episode will help you reset around problems, not products.  For full show notes and transcripts, visit https://renegademarketing.com/podcasts/ To learn more about CMO Huddles, visit https://cmohuddles.com/

Many CMOs face the same dilemma: You're asked to prove "brand," then told brand tracking is too expensive. So you invest in analyst relations, adjust PR, navigate layoffs, or shift strategy without a reliable way to show how those moves affect market perception.    RepuTracker was built to solve that problem. Developed for members of the CMO Huddles Leader program, RepuTracker provides a monthly, evidence-based view of your company's reputation so you can see whether it's rising, slipping, or holding steady, and why. In this episode, Drew is joined by Taran Nandha (Growth Natives) to demo the RepuTracker beta. They show how the tool tracks reputation month to month across multiple signals, then get practical about how to read the output, explain it to leadership, and see whether your moves are showing up in the market. In this episode:  How RepuTracker turns scattered public signals into a monthly reputation score with trends and competitor benchmarks.  What it measures across key dimensions: Power of voice, awareness, engagement, perception, and employee sentiment.  How sources and weighting work behind the scenes across dozens of platforms.  How to use trendlines and recommendations to move from "we dipped" to a clear next step.  Plus:  Why direction over time matters more than one noisy review or spike.  How to sanity-check dips using internal context and profile audits.  What could come next, from deeper source auditing to tracking visibility in AI search and LLM references. If you're curious how RepuTracker works, what signals it pulls from, and how to interpret the output month to month, this episode is the walkthrough.  Learn more about the CMO Startegy Labs ➡️ https://cmohuddles.com/strategy-labs For full show notes and transcripts, visit https://renegademarketing.com/podcasts/ To learn more about CMO Huddles, visit https://cmohuddles.com/

AI is now a standing agenda item. It shows up in QBRs, board packets, and 2026 budget plans with a big expectation stamp on it. CMOs are being asked to operationalize it fast, prove value in workflows, and keep risk, governance, and tool sprawl under control. To get specific about what to prioritize next, Drew brings together Guy Yalif (Webflow), Andy Dé (Lightbeam Health Solutions), and Kevin Briody (DisruptedCMO). Together, they focus on how CMOs can move from scattered experiments to intentional AI adoption across people, process, and technology, and what it takes to make AI a trusted part of how marketing runs. In this episode:  Guy shares an AI fluency maturity model and explains why the shift to operational excellence is a change management challenge.  Andy breaks down agentic AI and workflow automation with examples from CI, outbound, RFPs, content, and AEO, using "why, what, how, so what."  Kevin focuses on the people and platform side, from job anxiety and culture to vendor shakeouts and MarTech-level discipline.  Plus:  Centering AI plans on people and fluency so it feels additive, not threatening.  Using councils, fast-track approvals, and guardrails to scale safely.  Balancing efficiency with human experience and customer acceptance.  Treating AI tools like core MarTech, with scrutiny around contracts, integrations, and vendor longevity. If you want your 2026 AI plan to feel like a strategic advantage instead of a collection of pilots, this conversation will help you decide what to run, what to scale, and what to skip.  Learn more about the CMO Startegy Labs ➡️ https://cmohuddles.com/strategy-labs Check out Firebrick ➡️ https://firebrickconsulting.com/ For full show notes and transcripts, visit https://renegademarketing.com/podcasts/ To learn more about CMO Huddles, visit https://cmohuddles.com/

Most marketers worry about whether buyers trust their brand. Brent Adamson, author of The Framemaking Sale, argues that the actual issue sits somewhere else: Buyers do not trust themselves. In this episode, Drew sits down with Brent to challenge three big assumptions: That more supplier trust is the answer, that buyers have a neat journey to map, and that customer centricity is always the right north star. In this episode:  Why decision confidence matters more than supplier trust  How shifting from "trust us" to "trust yourselves" reshapes GTM  How to rethink buyer journeys through the "never again" and spaghetti-bowl lens.  Framemaking in practice, from nudges and checklists to maturity models.  The three Es, Establish, Engage, Execute, as a shared marketing and sales playbook. Plus:  Escaping the smartness arms race by editing content to reduce anxiety and build buyer self-confidence.  Turning social proof into a confidence engine, using "other customers like you…" stories.  Making content supplier-agnostic, helping buyers ask better questions and weigh tradeoffs. If you want your buyers to trust themselves enough to decide, start here.  For full show notes and transcripts, visit https://renegademarketing.com/podcasts/ To learn more about CMO Huddles, visit https://cmohuddles.com/

If AI is only helping you write copy, you are leaving real leverage on the table.  Every marketing team is buried in invisible busywork; a trail of repetitive, manual steps hiding inside every task. So what happens when you take one of those messy workflows, map every step, and rebuild it?  In this episode, Drew talks with Dave Brong (Level Agency) about how CMO Huddles transformed a messy, 10-step post-meeting grind into an automated system that transforms hundreds of conversations into structured insight, searchable intelligence, and real business value.  In this episode:  How a manual, repetitive workflow became an automated intelligence engine  How transcripts, metadata, and semantic search unlock institutional knowledge  The reality: Only ±10% of the system relies on AI (code does the heavy lifting)  When to use low-code tools vs. engineers for reliability, privacy, and scale Plus:  A simple method to audit workflows and spot automation opportunities  How to balance build vs. buy for AI workflows  How to amplify human judgment instead of replacing it If you are tired of manual follow-up, underused data, and AI hype without impact, this conversation is for you.   For full show notes and transcripts, visit https://renegademarketing.com/podcasts/ To learn more about CMO Huddles, visit https://cmohuddles.com/

Growth targets keep climbing while cost lines tighten, and planning season starts to feel very personal for CMOs. AI threads through every conversation, zero-based thinking pulls against last year's baseline, and the goalposts never seem to hold still.  So the job becomes building a budget you can walk into the room with, own, and defend with conviction. To get there, Drew brings together Andrew Cox (Forrester), Lisa Cole (2X), and Alan Gonsenhauser (Demand Revenue). The conversation centers on tying spend to strategy, translating marketing into CFO-ready terms, and giving AI a role in the plan that the numbers can support. In this episode:  Andrew shares Forrester's view on moving past "last year plus X," building budgets around corporate objectives and campaigns, and forcing prioritization.  Lisa applies a zero-based mindset to business priorities, uses a 70-20-10 program mix for core, flex, and test, and frames marketing as an ATM of Audience, Trust, and Monetization.  Alan outlines the signals of strong and weak budgets, tying the majority of spend to growth campaigns and long-term value plans, and maintaining a year-round working relationship with the CFO. Plus:  Keeping tech spend in check, including guidelines for MarTech mix and contract flexibility  Positioning brand and PR in financial terms like pipeline influence, win rates, and pricing power  Responding to AI efficiency pressure by fixing workflows first and framing value in utilization, speed, and scalability  Why the budget should be the numerical expression of strategy, not a defense of legacy spend If you want to walk into your next budget review with a clear story, solid numbers, and conviction, this conversation will help you get there.  For full show notes and transcripts, visit https://renegademarketing.com/podcasts/ To learn more about CMO Huddles, visit https://cmohuddles.com/

Nine years in. 500 episodes later. Hundreds of CMOs on the mic. A deep well of marketing wisdom for anyone brave enough to draw from it. This milestone episode is a celebration of the bold B2B ideas, experiments, and hard-earned lessons that have filled the show from day one. Thank-you to every marketer who has listened, shared, and dared to try something new because of what they heard here.    Recorded live at the 2025 Super Huddle, Drew's conversations with Udi Ledergor, Denise Persson and Chris Degnan, and Carilu Dietrich anchor this milestone episode.  In this episode:  Udi shares how Gong pulled off a Super Bowl spot on a regional budget, aimed it at VPs of Sales, and tracked impact in traffic, conversations, and pipeline.  Denise and Chris explain how a CMO and CRO stayed aligned through four CEOs at Snowflake and evolved the story from "cloud data warehouse" to "data cloud," all in lockstep.  Carilu shows how Lovable is building a movement with real users as influencers, a CEO who lives on social, and a speed-first mindset tuned to the pace of AI and customer buzz.  Plus:  Why a "crazy ideas" budget creates room for standout plays that still satisfy the CFO  How empathy for sales and shared ownership of the number strengthen CRO-CMO alignment  How CEO-led social, customer stories, and edutainment power modern B2B brands  What it takes to move at AI speed while keeping product value and customer love at the center If you want a concentrated hit of CMO-level courage, alignment, and playmaking, this milestone episode is your highlight reel.  For full show notes and transcripts, visit https://renegademarketing.com/podcasts/ To learn more about CMO Huddles, visit https://cmohuddles.com/