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#54 - Over the last few weeks, a lot of people in my network have been laid off. And almost every one of them has told me the same thing: "I'm open to fractional or full-time."I wince a little every time. Building a fractional practice that lasts takes commitment and focus, and if you back into it as the safety net, it tends to be a hard road.I've been fractional for about two and a half years, and I fell into it. My first year I said yes to everything, because I couldn't imagine turning down revenue. Eight clients. Forty billable hours a week. And I was more drained than I'd ever been working full-time. I had built myself a second job, and I came close to going back in-house.Then I made four changes. A year and a half later I had the practice I actually wanted: no Fridays, one or two marquee clients on retainer, project work I choose, and a practice that scaled past $40,000 a month in recurring revenue.In this episode I walk through the four moves I'd make if I had to rebuild it from scratch tomorrow: Set the vision for how you want the work to feel, then do the financial modeling behind itPick one market and go deep, because deep expertise is what lets you charge moreTurn your expertise into repeatable systems, with AI as the engineDiversify where the work comes from, before you need itPlus the rule of thumb I use for setting rates, why I don't work Fridays, and the $50,000 chalk mark story.If you're thinking about going fractional, or you're a year in and it isn't going how you pictured, this one's for you. Come find me on LinkedIn if you want to talk through your version. Thanks for hanging out with us today! Come build with us: The CMO Operating System is a six-week live cohort where you build one connected foundation for how your function plans, decides, and reports, with AI partners running on top of it. The system is yours, and it goes with you wherever you go next. The founding cohort is small and first by design. Enrollment closes September 30 and we start October 12.  👉 Join the CMO OS waitlist  Come say hi on LinkedIn: Mandy Hornaday Visit us: growthactivated.com Keep activating growth for yourself and your company. 💪

#53 - For most of this year I got better output out of AI than my team did. Same tools, same access. It turned out the gap had nothing to do with how good anyone was at using them. Every time I open AI I bring the whole business with me without thinking about it. The strategy, the buyers, the deal mechanics, the politics. Nobody else has that, so they start from nothing every time. So I started building what I call a marketing brain, one documented source of truth per client that everyone on the team and every AI partner works from. I have built four of them now. In this episode I walk through what goes in one, where I start, and what happened after. What we get into: What a marketing brain is, and the 14 files in the strategic core I build firstThe one file in there written for the AI rather than for people, and why onboarding and RFPs can run off it tooWhere it lives, and the desktop setup that takes a team from single player to multiplayerWhy skills, agents and scheduled tasks keep underdelivering, and the layer underneath them most people skipSaying yes to a pre-revenue startup in an industry I knew nothing about, and the founder reaction I did not see comingThe rebrand I would have turned down six months ago, running now with a writer, a designer and a developer at half what an agency would costTearing up a campaign playbook for a 15 person team, the channel a division leader told us to skip, and the multimillion dollar opportunity that came out of itWhat I got wrong, starting with the stale brain that did more damage than having nothing at all And if you are fractional taking on new clients, or in house a few years into a role trying to get a whole team pulling the same direction, this is where I would start. Mentioned in this episode:  Episode 51, I Spent $9,000 on an AI Course. Here's What Happened. Episode 52, A CMO's AI Partner: How I Unblocked My Team and Got 10 Hours a Week Back.This is one piece of the CMO Operating System I'm building. A founding cohort of senior B2B marketing leaders, in-house and fractional, comes together this fall to build the full system together. Thanks for hanging out with us today! Come build with us: The CMO Operating System is a six-week live cohort where you build one connected foundation for how your function plans, decides, and reports, with AI partners running on top of it. The system is yours, and it goes with you wherever you go next. The founding cohort is small and first by design. Enrollment closes September 30 and we start October 12.  👉 Join the CMO OS waitlist  Come say hi on LinkedIn: Mandy Hornaday Visit us: growthactivated.com Keep activating growth for yourself and your company. 💪

#52 - I spent about 20 hours building an AI partner for one of my marketing teams, and it gave me back five to 10 hours a week and got my team moving work forward without waiting on me. The team is roughly 15 people at a $500 million company, and work kept stalling on everyday questions. Who owns this. Who has to approve it. Is this even ours to do. We had RACI charts. We had SOPs. We had process flows. None of it stopped the questions, and I was the one answering them. So I went under the hood and built what I call a Momentum Maker AI partner. In this episode I walk through the whole thing. What we get into: Why all the documentation in the world doesn't fix it, and the macro gap I found underneath oursThe three friction points that were stalling work, from blurry scope to overlapping skill sets to approvalsWhat went into the build, and how it snowballed from job descriptions into business strategyThe two iterations it took, and why my first instinct was wrongWhat happened when I demoed it live and the answers came back wrongHow AI became the referee between two teams who'd been operating in the gray for monthsRollout, including what to do when people tell you they don't need itWhat the documentation unlocks beyond the partner, from capacity planning to hiring to career conversationsAnd if you're fractional, solo, or running a small team, I get specific about your version of this early in the episode. This is not a big team problem. Mentioned in this episode: Episode 51, I Spent $9,000 on an AI Course. Here's What Happened. This is one piece of the CMO Operating System I'm building. A founding cohort of senior B2B marketing leaders, in-house and fractional, comes together this fall to build the full system together.  Thanks for hanging out with us today! Come build with us: The CMO Operating System is a six-week live cohort where you build one connected foundation for how your function plans, decides, and reports, with AI partners running on top of it. The system is yours, and it goes with you wherever you go next. The founding cohort is small and first by design. Enrollment closes September 30 and we start October 12.  👉 Join the CMO OS waitlist  Come say hi on LinkedIn: Mandy Hornaday Visit us: growthactivated.com Keep activating growth for yourself and your company. 💪

#51 - This spring I spent $9,000 of my own money on a twelve week AI course, and the most valuable thing I walked out with won't cost you a dollar. I'm going solo to share what actually changed across three months of building with AI as a fractional CMO. Why I was heading toward burnout in the first place, what the class paid back and how fast, the AI partner I built that gives me back five to ten hours a week, and the part that surprised me most: the hardest work had nothing to do with AI. It was making decisions, and then getting them out of my head and documented so my team could move without me. If you use AI every day and still have the nagging feeling you're not doing enough with it, this one is for you. In this episode: How consuming everything about AI and activating almost none of it created real overwhelmWhat made a $9,000 investment in myself worth it, and how I knew within three weeksNegotiating a 30% rate increase, and signing two new clients at 70% above my old rateWhy I'm moving away from hourly pricing, and how to think about which IP is yours to carry from company to companyBuilding Scout, my Momentum Maker AI partner, for a 15 person marketing teamWhy decision fatigue, not technical difficulty, is the real bottleneck in AI adoptionThe free thing you can do this week to start pulling yourself out of the day to dayThe tools that changed how I work: Wispr Flow, Granola, connectors, and HTML artifactsWhat I still haven't figured out, including a living marketing brain and going multiplayer with AI instead of single player Mentioned in this episode: Automate to Accelerate by Callan Faulkner, The Uncommon BusinessMy AI hackathon episode from Snowdonia, WalesMy conversation with Liza Adams Next week I'm breaking down exactly how I built Scout, in case you want to build your own. I'm building a room for CMOs who are ambitious, who care about their growth, and who want to be AI fluent in a way that matters at our level. The waitlist is open at https://www.growthactivated.com/cmo-operating-system. Come tell me what you're working on over on LinkedIn. I'm rooting for you. Thanks for hanging out with us today! Come build with us: The CMO Operating System is a six-week live cohort where you build one connected foundation for how your function plans, decides, and reports, with AI partners running on top of it. The system is yours, and it goes with you wherever you go next. The founding cohort is small and first by design. Enrollment closes September 30 and we start October 12.  👉 Join the CMO OS waitlist  Come say hi on LinkedIn: Mandy Hornaday Visit us: growthactivated.com Keep activating growth for yourself and your company. 💪

#50 - AI promised marketing leaders more time. So why do so many of us feel busier — and more stretched — than ever? That’s the honest question at the center of this conversation. Two experienced CMOs sit down, peer to peer, to make sense of what marketing leadership really looks like in the AI era — past the hype, the hot takes, and the tidy frameworks. It’s less playbook, more candid conversation about staying irreplaceable, leading teams, and protecting your edge when the ground keeps shifting underneath you. Heidi Darling has spent her career in marketing — from luxury hospitality, to founding and funding her own startup, to scaling B2B and consumer tech companies, including one that went public on the Nasdaq. A genuinely AI-forward operator, she recently moved from fractional CMO work to go all-in at Savo, a platform built on the belief that human intelligence should sit above AI, not beneath it. In this conversation, Heidi and Mandy get into: Why “work is not finite” — and how AI raises the bar instead of handing you time backThe “sameness problem”: why feeding identical inputs to the same models flattens B2B strategy, and why human intelligence is the real moatWhat to expect from your team (and yourself) when sustainable performance beats burnout-fueled outputOrchestration and agentic teams — and whether to hire a human or build an AI team firstThe traits, like curiosity and grit, that outlast domain expertise in the AI eraChapters Heidi’s Move Back In-HouseWhy Work Is Not FiniteRaising the Bar Without BurnoutOrchestration and Agentic TeamsTraits That Outlast Expertise Links & resources Linkedin: Connect with Heidi DarlingWebsite: Learn more about Savo.aiIf this one resonated, follow Growth Activated so the next conversation finds you — and if you have a moment, leave a quick review to help more marketing leaders discover the show. Growth Activated is produced by Mandy Hornaday. Thanks for hanging out with us today! Come build with us: The CMO Operating System is a six-week live cohort where you build one connected foundation for how your function plans, decides, and reports, with AI partners running on top of it. The system is yours, and it goes with you wherever you go next. The founding cohort is small and first by design. Enrollment closes September 30 and we start October 12.  👉 Join the CMO OS waitlist  Come say hi on LinkedIn: Mandy Hornaday Visit us: growthactivated.com Keep activating growth for yourself and your company. 💪

In this conversation, Mandy sits down with Liza Adams — former CMO, Human+AI org advisor, and one of the clearest voices on AI transformation in marketing — to unpack the four mindset shifts every marketing leader needs before AI can actually move the business. They go deep on what real AI transformation looks like inside a marketing org: how to scale beyond Q&A into orchestrated workflows, how to navigate AI sprawl, and how to lead change inside a quarterly pressure cooker without losing your people in the process. Liza Adams is the founder of GrowthPath Partners and a recognized leader in AI transformation for go-to-market teams — named one of the 50 CMOs to Watch and a Pavilion Fractional/Advisor of the Year Finalist. Her engineering background plus multi-decade GTM expertise gives her a uniquely pragmatic lens on AI adoption. Her bi-weekly newsletter is required reading for marketing leaders operationalizing AI inside their organizations. In this episode, you’ll learn: Why "people-first, AI-forward" is the principle that should anchor every AI decisionThe four mindset shifts CMOs need to unlock real AI transformationWhy "doing more with less" is the floor of AI value, not the ceilingHow to move from democratized building to orchestrated AI workflows (and avoid AI sprawl)A simple framework for thinking about AI risk so governance protects — rather than blocks — your teamThe "law of thirds" Liza uses to lead AI transformation without burning out trying to bring everyone alongRESOURCES: Connect with Liza Adams on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/lizaadamsGrowthPath Partners (Liza’s newsletter & advisory): https://www.growthpath.netReferenced episode: AI Agents and the Future of Marketing Teams — My Weekend Hackathon Wake-Up Call (E39)If this episode resonated, follow Growth Activated wherever you listen and leave a quick review — it’s the best way to help more marketing leaders find the show. Growth Activated is produced by Mandy Hornaday. Thanks for hanging out with us today! Come build with us: The CMO Operating System is a six-week live cohort where you build one connected foundation for how your function plans, decides, and reports, with AI partners running on top of it. The system is yours, and it goes with you wherever you go next. The founding cohort is small and first by design. Enrollment closes September 30 and we start October 12.  👉 Join the CMO OS waitlist  Come say hi on LinkedIn: Mandy Hornaday Visit us: growthactivated.com Keep activating growth for yourself and your company. 💪

#48 - Most ABM programs don't fail because of tactics. They fail before a single campaign runs — because the accounts were wrong, the structure wasn't there, and nobody agreed on what success actually looked like. Brandon Redlinger has spent his career inside account-based marketing — from building ABM strategy at Engagio and Demandbase to running it across a portfolio of companies today as founder of Stack and Scale. In this conversation, he cuts through the noise on what ABM actually is, when it's the right strategy for your business, and the framework he uses to bring real structure and accountability to how resources get deployed against target accounts. If you're thinking about launching an ABM program or trying to understand why your current one isn't producing, this episode gets into the details most conversations skip. About Brandon Redlinger: Brandon Redlinger is a fractional CMO and the founder of Stack and Scale, where he leads marketing strategy across companies ranging from seed stage to $200M in revenue. He spent years inside some of the most influential ABM platforms in B2B — including Engagio, Demandbase, Chili Piper, and revenue.io — and now applies that experience across a wide range of go-to-market environments. In this episode, we cover: What ABM actually is — and how to tell it apart from just doing demand gen more carefullyThe ACV and TAM thresholds that signal ABM is the right motion for your businessThe account entitlements framework: how to deploy resources against target accounts with real SLAs and accountabilityHow to run a thoughtful ABM pilot — and the mistakes that sink most early programs before they get startedABM for expansion: why going deeper into existing accounts is often the highest-leverage starting pointWhat's actually working in ABM right now — events, direct mail, experiences — and what isn'tThe GTM engineer role and how it's changing what's possible in ABM executionStage-based attribution and how to prove ABM is working before the deal closesBrandon's emerging model for account-level sentiment analysis using AI — and why it may be where ABM measurement is headingWhy sales and marketing alignment still breaks ABM programs — and how incentive structure is almost always the root causeChapter Markers: (00:00) Welcome and Guest Background(04:13) Defining ABM and When It's Right(10:22) The Account Entitlements Framework(21:15) ABM Pilots, Expansion, and What Works(33:38) Measuring ABM and AI-Powered SignalsResources: Brandon Redlinger on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/brandonredlinger/ Stack and Scale newsletter: https://stackandscale.ai If this episode was useful, follow Growth Activated on Apple Podcasts or Spotify and leave a review — it's the fastest way to help other marketing leaders find the show. Growth Activated is produced by Mandy Hornaday. Thanks for hanging out with us today! Come build with us: The CMO Operating System is a six-week live cohort where you build one connected foundation for how your function plans, decides, and reports, with AI partners running on top of it. The system is yours, and it goes with you wherever you go next. The founding cohort is small and first by design. Enrollment closes September 30 and we start October 12.  👉 Join the CMO OS waitlist  Come say hi on LinkedIn: Mandy Hornaday Visit us: growthactivated.com Keep activating growth for yourself and your company. 💪

#47 - Most B2B marketing leaders know YouTube is the second-largest search engine on the planet. Almost none are actually using it well — and that gap is still wide open. Samu Kovacs, founder of KS Media, has built a YouTube-first agency that works with over 40 B2B clients — including Adam Robinson of RB2B — to turn YouTube into one of their top pipeline channels. In this conversation, he breaks down why B2B YouTube strategy is one of the most underleveraged opportunities in marketing right now, what's keeping most companies from cracking it, and what a real YouTube-first approach actually looks like in practice. If you've been circling YouTube but haven't been able to justify the investment, this is the episode that gives you a clear-eyed picture of what it takes. About Samu Kovacs: Samu Kovacs is the founder of KS Media (ks-media.co), a YouTube-first agency helping B2B companies build high-performing channels that generate measurable pipeline. His clients include some of the most recognized names in B2B SaaS, including Adam Robinson of RB2B. In this episode, we cover: Why 90% of B2B companies still haven't cracked YouTube — and why that gap is the opportunityWhat has to be true before YouTube is worth the investment (ICP, product-market fit, and beyond)The realistic timeline to results: the 90-day, 4–6 month, and 6–12 month milestonesYouTube-first content strategy vs. repurposing what already exists — and why the distinction mattersFounder-led channels vs. company-branded channels: how to decide what's right for your businessLong-form vs. Shorts: where B2B YouTube ROI actually comes fromHow YouTube is beginning to show up in LLM citations — and what that means for your B2B YouTube strategyChapter Markers: (00:00) Welcome and Episode Overview(04:25) The B2B YouTube Opportunity(12:25) Timeline to Results(20:53) YouTube Content Strategy(32:44) Case Studies and TakeawaysResources: Samu Kovacs on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/samu-kovacs/ KS Media: https://ks-media.co If this episode was useful, follow Growth Activated on Apple Podcasts or Spotify and leave a review — it's the fastest way to help other marketing leaders find the show. Growth Activated is produced by Mandy Hornaday. Thanks for hanging out with us today! Come build with us: The CMO Operating System is a six-week live cohort where you build one connected foundation for how your function plans, decides, and reports, with AI partners running on top of it. The system is yours, and it goes with you wherever you go next. The founding cohort is small and first by design. Enrollment closes September 30 and we start October 12.  👉 Join the CMO OS waitlist  Come say hi on LinkedIn: Mandy Hornaday Visit us: growthactivated.com Keep activating growth for yourself and your company. 💪

#46 - The CMO has the shortest tenure in the C-suite. The most scrutiny. And right now, more opportunity than ever — if you can see it clearly enough to seize it. Matt Heinz has spent 18 years helping B2B companies build more predictable revenue, and he talks to more CMOs on a weekly basis than almost anyone. In this conversation, he lays out exactly how the CMO role is evolving — from chief MQL officer to chief market officer to what he calls the chief market orchestrator — and what that shift actually demands of the leaders trying to grow into it. From how you tell your story internally, to where AI fits in the marketing org, to the one place in go-to-market where most companies are leaving the most on the table, this is a conversation worth your full attention. About Matt Heinz: Matt Heinz is the founder of Heinz Marketing, a B2B marketing consultancy focused on helping companies with complex buying journeys build more predictable pipeline. He's also the host of CMO Coffee Talk, a community of 3,700+ CMOs and heads of marketing. He has spent 18 years in the trenches of B2B go-to-market strategy. In this episode, we cover: The CMO role evolution — from chief MQL officer to chief market officer to chief market orchestratorWhy the CMO who best understands the market should own more of the business than most org charts allowRevenue predictability: how to approach it from the top down and the bottom upThe "messy middle" — the highest-leverage gap in most B2B go-to-market motionsHow to tell a smarter story to your CFO (stop showing where you're spending; show what you're buying)Where to start with AI adoption — and why the broad training session approach almost always failsWhat the future of marketing org design looks like as agentic workflows take over repetitive workThe most common places CMOs are still stubbing their toes right nowChapter Markers: (00:00) Welcome and Episode Context(05:03) Chief MQL Officer to Market Orchestrator(12:25) Revenue Narrative and Attribution(23:21) Future of Marketing Teams and AI(31:58) Where CMOs Keep Stubbing Their ToesResources: Matt Heinz on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/mattheinz/Heinz Marketing: https://heinzmarketing.comIf this episode was useful, follow Growth Activated on Apple Podcasts or Spotify and leave a review — it's the fastest way to help other marketing leaders find the show. Growth Activated is produced by Mandy Hornaday. Thanks for hanging out with us today! Come build with us: The CMO Operating System is a six-week live cohort where you build one connected foundation for how your function plans, decides, and reports, with AI partners running on top of it. The system is yours, and it goes with you wherever you go next. The founding cohort is small and first by design. Enrollment closes September 30 and we start October 12.  👉 Join the CMO OS waitlist  Come say hi on LinkedIn: Mandy Hornaday Visit us: growthactivated.com Keep activating growth for yourself and your company. 💪

#45 - LinkedIn would have you believe your competitors are running fully autonomous AI teams. They're not. The real picture of AI adoption in B2B marketing is far more varied — and far more instructive. Most marketing organizations are somewhere in the middle: using AI through a chat interface daily, but nowhere near the agentic workflows the feed suggests are already table stakes. Understanding where you actually stand, and where you intentionally want to go, turns out to be the strategic question most CMOs haven't stopped to ask. Nicole Leffer is an AI consultant who works exclusively with B2B marketing leaders and their teams — from Series B companies through Fortune 50 brands. She spends her days inside marketing organizations helping them build AI marketing strategies that are grounded, intentional, and built to last. This is her second appearance on Growth Activated, and a lot has changed in a year. In this episode, Mandy Hornaday and Nicole dig into the real state of AI adoption, why intentionality is the piece most CMOs are missing, the security risks of building without IT support, and the one AI strategy decision Nicole believes will separate teams built for the long term from the ones who will have to rebuild. What we cover: The real state of AI adoption across B2B marketing — not LinkedIn's version, the actual oneWhy intentionality is the most important thing most marketing leaders are skipping right nowThe security risk of expecting marketers to build like engineers — and what smart orgs do differentlyBuild vs. buy: when your core AI tools are enough and when they're notHow to build a platform-agnostic AI marketing strategy that won't lock you inChapter Markers: (00:00) Welcome & Real AI State(09:58) The Intentionality Imperative(22:21) Building Without Silos(31:44) A Framework for CMO Action(41:54) Build vs. Buy & Final AdviceConnect with Nicole Leffer: LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/nicoleleffer/ If this episode challenged the way you're thinking about AI strategy, share it with a marketing leader who needs to hear it. And follow Growth Activated on Spotify or Apple Podcasts so you never miss an episode. Growth Activated is produced by Mandy Hornaday. Thanks for hanging out with us today! Come build with us: The CMO Operating System is a six-week live cohort where you build one connected foundation for how your function plans, decides, and reports, with AI partners running on top of it. The system is yours, and it goes with you wherever you go next. The founding cohort is small and first by design. Enrollment closes September 30 and we start October 12.  👉 Join the CMO OS waitlist  Come say hi on LinkedIn: Mandy Hornaday Visit us: growthactivated.com Keep activating growth for yourself and your company. 💪

#44 - You're feeling the pressure. Every board meeting, every LinkedIn scroll, every all-hands - AI is the expectation. But here's what the data actually shows: as of mid-2025, only 7% of companies had truly operationalized AI. Not just handed out a ChatGPT license. Actually embedded it into how their teams work. So if you've been wondering whether everyone else is further ahead than you - they're not. And what you do in 2026 to close that gap will determine how far ahead you get to be. In this episode, Jonathan Kvarfordt (Coach K) joins Mandy Hornaday to break down what operationalizing AI actually looks like inside go-to-market teams - not the hype version, but the version backed by real conversation and pipeline data. Jonathan is VP of Go-to-Market Strategy and Marketing at Momentum.io, a conversational data platform recently acquired by Salesforce. He also teaches AI and sales at Bryant University and advises over ten companies on AI strategy and go-to-market. If you're a CMO or marketing leader trying to figure out where to place your bets right now, this conversation will give you a much clearer lens. In this episode: The 3 levels of AI change — optimization, amplification, and reinvention — and how to know which one your team is ready forWhy operationalizing AI amplifies what already exists in your systems (good and bad) — and what to fix firstA real example: how one sales team went from 15 BDRs generating 15% of pipeline to 4 BDRs generating 30% — and what it actually tookWhy your human genius may be the most durable competitive moat you have — even as AI gets smarterThe AI tools Jonathan recommends for marketing leaders right now, including MindStudio, Profound, and SearchableHow to stay cutting-edge when you're in a security-constrained enterprise environmentChapter Markers: (00:00) Welcome & Guest Introduction (05:43) The Real State of AI Adoption (09:08) 3 Levels of AI Change for GTM Teams (19:14) Favorite AI Use Cases in Marketing (27:14) Tools, Skills, and Where CMOs Should Start Connect with Jonathan Kvarfordt: LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jmkmba/GTM AI PodcastIf this conversation sparked something for you, share it with a CMO or marketing leader in your network. And if you found it valuable, leaving a review goes a long way in helping other leaders find the show. Growth Activated is produced by Mandy Hornaday. Thanks for hanging out with us today! Come build with us: The CMO Operating System is a six-week live cohort where you build one connected foundation for how your function plans, decides, and reports, with AI partners running on top of it. The system is yours, and it goes with you wherever you go next. The founding cohort is small and first by design. Enrollment closes September 30 and we start October 12.  👉 Join the CMO OS waitlist  Come say hi on LinkedIn: Mandy Hornaday Visit us: growthactivated.com Keep activating growth for yourself and your company. 💪

#43 - What if one person could run your entire go-to-market motion — marketing, sales, and customer success — backed by a system of AI agents? That's exactly what Amos Bar-Joseph is building at Swan AI — and in this episode, he pulls back the curtain on the AI-powered GTM model that generated over $1.5 million in pipeline in a single month. As CEO and sole go-to-market operator, Amos runs every stage of the funnel with a lean agentic system designed from the ground up for human-AI collaboration, not headcount growth. This conversation will reframe how you're thinking about AI-powered GTM — what it actually takes to move from system engineering to context engineering, and why the real opportunity for marketing leaders isn't replacing your team, it's scaling them. Guest Bio: Amos Bar-Joseph is the CEO and co-founder of Swan AI, a platform building what he calls the first AI go-to-market engineer — a coding agent designed specifically for GTM professionals. A three-time founder with two previous B2B startups under his belt, Amos is now testing a radical thesis: building a $30M ARR company with just three co-founders, powered by autonomous AI agents. What we Cover:  Why 90% of AI implementations fail — and the mindset shift that changes everythingSystem engineering vs. context engineering: the new operating model for CMOsThe MQL-to-SQL handoff problem — and how AI agents can bridge the gapWhat "zone of genius" actually means for your marketing team — and how AI protects itChapters:  (00:00) Welcome and Episode Context(04:39) Building the Autonomous Business(13:03) The AI-Powered GTM System(28:05) Best AI Use Cases for CMOs(45:31) Advice for CMOs Bridging the GapResources & Links: Swan AI: swanai.comAmos Bar-Joseph on LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/amosbarjosephThe Autonomous Age Newsletter: swanai at Beehive (search 'Autonomous Age')If this episode shifted how you're thinking about AI and your go-to-market motion, share it with a marketing leader in your network. And if you're not already following Growth Activated, now's a good time — a new episode drops every week. Growth Activated is hosted by Mandy Hornaday.  Thanks for hanging out with us today! Come build with us: The CMO Operating System is a six-week live cohort where you build one connected foundation for how your function plans, decides, and reports, with AI partners running on top of it. The system is yours, and it goes with you wherever you go next. The founding cohort is small and first by design. Enrollment closes September 30 and we start October 12.  👉 Join the CMO OS waitlist  Come say hi on LinkedIn: Mandy Hornaday Visit us: growthactivated.com Keep activating growth for yourself and your company. 💪

# 42 - Most B2B podcasts plateau or quietly fade out. The difference between shows that stall and shows that build pipeline often comes down to three strategic decisions made before you ever hit record. Tom Hunt, CEO of Fame and one of the most experienced B2B podcast strategists in the space, joins the show to break down what actually separates the top-performing B2B podcasts from everyone else. After six years of building and running shows for B2B companies, Tom has seen the patterns — and the mistakes — up close. In this conversation, we cover: Why most B2B podcasts aren’t niche enough — and what Tom calls the "edge" that makes listeners tell their friends about your showHow to use your guest strategy to show ROI to your CFO within the first six monthsThe three roles every podcast needs (and what it actually costs to run a show)Growth tactics that work: vertical video snippets, best-of list placements for LLM discoverability, and podcast SEO basicsWhy Tom believes a podcast should be the last channel you launch — not the firstThe green flags that signal your podcast is working (and when to double down)A real case study: how Fame grew CFO Weekly into a relationship engine for their clientAbout Tom Hunt: Tom is the CEO of Fame, a leading B2B podcast agency that has spent six years helping companies turn their podcasts into pipeline and relationship engines. He previously built Famer.AI, an AI tool for podcast post-production, and hosts Confessions of a B2B Entrepreneur. Connect with Tom on LinkedIn. Timestamps: (00:00) Introduction(02:47) Tom’s journey from management consulting to B2B podcast agency(07:56) How the B2B podcasting landscape has evolved(10:26) The 3 reasons B2B podcasts fail: positioning, guest strategy, and consistency(14:50) What the top-performing podcast clients do differently(18:45) Guest strategy vs. building your own show(20:42) Investment, green flags, and proving ROI in the first six months(24:24) How AI is changing podcast production(26:17) Video-first strategy and YouTube for podcast growth(27:26) Growth playbook: snippets, best-of lists, and podcast SEO(32:50) Case study: CFO Weekly as a B2B relationship engine(35:07) Tom’s advice: why a podcast should be the last thing you launchIf this episode helped you think differently about B2B podcasting as a growth channel, share it with a fellow marketing leader who’s considering the investment. And if you haven’t yet, follow Growth Activated wherever you listen so you never miss an episode. Thanks for hanging out with us today! Come build with us: The CMO Operating System is a six-week live cohort where you build one connected foundation for how your function plans, decides, and reports, with AI partners running on top of it. The system is yours, and it goes with you wherever you go next. The founding cohort is small and first by design. Enrollment closes September 30 and we start October 12.  👉 Join the CMO OS waitlist  Come say hi on LinkedIn: Mandy Hornaday Visit us: growthactivated.com Keep activating growth for yourself and your company. 💪

#41 - Your team is producing more content than ever, but pipeline isn’t reflecting it. That gap between output and impact usually isn’t a volume problem — it’s a strategy problem. And it’s exactly what this conversation is built to solve. Brendan Hufford, founder of Growth Sprints, helps B2B SaaS companies scale from $10 million to $100 million — largely through content. He’s a former high school teacher turned SEO director turned founder, and he brings a refreshingly direct take on what it actually takes to make content drive revenue. In this conversation, Brendan breaks down his four-part growth framework and gets tactical about what’s working right now across search, social, and newsletters in B2B. What we cover: Why naming the problem you solve builds more trust than any product page — and how to workshop your own Content IP using the 3S strategy (sales, success, support)Discovery loops: how to get found in Google and LLMs, starting closest to the money with competitor and product pagesVirality loops: why your executives need to be posting (even when they’re resistant) and how to overcome the objectionsRelationship loops: what the best B2B newsletters actually look like, with specific examples to studyHow to quantify content’s impact so your CFO stops questioning the spendWhat “checkbox marketing” looks like and how to break out of it for goodWhy smaller marketing teams with strong strategy are outperforming larger ones stuck in channel silosAbout Brendan Hufford: Brendan is the founder of Growth Sprints, where he helps B2B SaaS companies scale from 10 to 100 million primarily through content. He previously served as SEO Director at a web design agency, helped scale a B2B SaaS marketing agency from 10 to 25 million, and worked in-house at ActiveCampaign. His background as a 10-year high school teacher gives him a unique perspective on communication, structure, and cutting through complexity. Connect with Brendan on LinkedIn. Timestamps: (00:00) Introduction(02:19) Brendan’s journey from teacher to SEO director to founder(07:19) The 4-part growth framework: Content IP, discovery, virality, and relationship loops(10:10) Content IP: why naming the problem beats naming the category(14:00) The 3S interview method for workshopping your Content IP(20:09) Why AI analysis can’t replace real customer conversations(23:30) Discovery, virality, and relationship loops in practice(29:57) The best B2B newsletters to study right now(32:46) How to bring the loops together without silos killing your strategy(37:56) Quantifying content’s impact and proving ROI to the CFOIf this episode gave you a framework to rethink your content strategy, share it with a fellow marketing leader who’s tired of checkbox marketing. And if you haven’t yet, follow Growth Activated wherever you listen so you never miss an episode. Thanks for hanging out with us today! Come build with us: The CMO Operating System is a six-week live cohort where you build one connected foundation for how your function plans, decides, and reports, with AI partners running on top of it. The system is yours, and it goes with you wherever you go next. The founding cohort is small and first by design. Enrollment closes September 30 and we start October 12.  👉 Join the CMO OS waitlist  Come say hi on LinkedIn: Mandy Hornaday Visit us: growthactivated.com Keep activating growth for yourself and your company. 💪

#40 - The landscape isn't just shifting — it's splitting. Buyers are choosing vendors before they ever talk to sales. AI is rewriting the rules faster than most of us can keep up. And budgets? Still flat. So instead of adding more to the list, I asked myself: if I could only make four strategic bets this year — four investments of my time, energy, and resources — what would they be? In this solo episode, I'm walking you through the 4 bets I'm making in 2026 as both a fractional CMO and the founder of Growth Activated. Each one is backed by data, grounded in what I'm seeing with clients, and designed to compound — where one investment feeds the next. What you'll walk away with:  A visibility + trust filter to pressure-test your own channel strategy Why I'm shifting from audio-first to YouTube-first podcasting The operational readiness gap that's causing 60% of AI projects to fail Why your personal learning speed may be your biggest leadership advantage right now The thread that ties all four bets into a system (and why it matters more than any single bet)Chapters:  (00:00) Why Strategic Bets Over Trend Chasing (03:23) Bet 1: The Visibility + Trust Filter (15:13) Bet 2: Optimize for the Human Experience (19:21) Bet 3: Invest in Operational Readiness (26:17) Bet 4: Speed as a Leadership Advantage (30:21) The Thread That Ties It All TogetherIf this episode resonated, I'd love to hear which bet landed most — send me a message on LinkedIn. 🎯 Join the CMO Operating System waitlist → growthactivated.com Related episodes mentioned:  AI Hackathon in Wales: Episode 39Community-Led Strategy with Ridhi Singh: Episode 38 Employee Advocacy with Gabe Lullo: Episode 37LLM Optimization & Search Everywhere: Episode 22Growth Activated is hosted by Mandy Walker — a fractional CMO with 15 years of marketing leadership experience helping B2B marketing leaders elevate their strategies, lead with confidence, and build careers they love. Thanks for hanging out with us today! Come build with us: The CMO Operating System is a six-week live cohort where you build one connected foundation for how your function plans, decides, and reports, with AI partners running on top of it. The system is yours, and it goes with you wherever you go next. The founding cohort is small and first by design. Enrollment closes September 30 and we start October 12.  👉 Join the CMO OS waitlist  Come say hi on LinkedIn: Mandy Hornaday Visit us: growthactivated.com Keep activating growth for yourself and your company. 💪