Marketing Leaders Network

I've had to say no a lot lately, and honestly, I hate it. We've had a lot of really talented marketers reach out about joining the Marketing Leaders Network: people with great experience, strong careers and a real desire to keep growing. However, MLN was built very intentionally for senior B2B marketing leaders in enterprise organizations — typically leaders with 7+ years of experience who have led teams, owned budgets and are navigating the challenges that come with senior leadership. I know that's a high bar, but it's also intentional. One of the things our members tell us they value most is being in a room with people who understand the challenges they’re facing because they’ve been in a similar seat. So sometimes I have to say no to someone I genuinely think is fantastic simply because they just aren't at the right stage in their career in order to join MLN. So when I say no, it's not a knock on you. Sometimes it's simply, "not yet." Keep growing. Keep taking on bigger challenges and please come back. Because I would much rather say "not yet" today and wholeheartedly say "yes" when the time is right.

Sometimes a conversation starts as one thing and becomes something completely different. I had a call this morning with Vivian R. from Marketing Leaders Network. The intention was pretty simple — connect, talk about where I am professionally and what I’m thinking about moving forward. But the conversation went much deeper than that. We talked about career, leadership, uncertainty, purpose, faith, relationships, life — and questions that don’t necessarily have immediate answers. And I walked away thinking about how important the right connections can be. Not every conversation needs an agenda. Not every connection needs an immediate outcome. Sometimes the value is simply being in conversation with someone who sees something differently, asks the right questions, or reminds you of something you already knew but needed to hear again. I’ve talked a lot lately about relationships and connection because they’ve been such a consistent part of my career. This morning reminded me that their value goes far beyond business development, sales, partnerships, or networking. Sometimes connection creates opportunity. Sometimes it creates clarity. And sometimes it simply shows up at exactly the right time. Thank you, Vivian, for a conversation I didn’t realize I needed this morning — both professionally and personally. #Leadership #Connection #ProfessionalGrowth #MarketingLeadership #StrategicPartnerships

If you're the kind of marketing leader who likes to push the envelope, this is a tricky time to be doing it. Everyone can feel that AI is a turning point. The only problem is no one knows exactly where it's turning. We don't know what it's going to mean for each of us, our companies, or even our respective fields and industries. It all feels enormous and vague at the same time. So organizations wait for the dust to settle. The appetite for risk isn't there, because nobody wants to commit a year and a budget to a direction that might not exist by spring. That's an awkward place to stand if you're a marketing maverick who wants to innovate. You can push, but you're pushing without cover. Plus, you might simply be wrong, because there are mavericks and then there are fools, and right now, the two look identical from the outside. This all reminds me of back in 2005, when there wasn't a lot of appetite for major transformation. No one knew where the internet was going to go and how that was going to impact marketing. However, by 2010-2012, it became pretty clear what was happening and where you needed to go. By 2015, it was a no-brainer, which is where all the big enterprises started jumping in. During that stretch I watched a few of our own clients go all in early. From the outside it looked like a big risk, but the timing was right. They were late, they were feeling pressure, and they knew they had to modernize. Once a threat is that apparent, the executives see it too. There was buy-in and there were budgets. It started as a threat. It ended up being an opportunity. That's the difference between a maverick and a fool. It usually comes down to timing. I'll admit my bias here. I've always loved the big swing. That's where I thrive, but a big swing only works when you can see what you're swinging at, and right now you can't. So right now I'd experiment (that's what we're doing at Veryn). Run the pilots and get your organization comfortable with the technology, so that when it does become clear what to push for, you already know where to aim and you can push hard.

Start with something that costs you nothing when it goes wrong. That's what I shared last week at the end of my session with Marketing Leaders Network. It was an hour-long session with 30 minutes of presentation and 30 minutes of conversation and questions. It was a lot to share and walk through 😮💨 TLDR: seven agents, across three phases, with two gates (human review & approvals), and one loop. In those 30 minutes, I did my best to not overwhelm the audience, because AI is a lot (and always evolving). When it comes to trying to bring it into your day-to-day or your organization, the key thing is don't do it all at once. Pick something small and start. Better yet, pick something where you already know what the answer should be. That way you can see if the agent is working as it should, and start understanding what it can and cannot do. You'll have this "aha" moment, which opens up everything else that you could build. If/when it gets it wrong, then you have to look inward: What is the criteria? What is the rubric? What are the instructions, guardrails, and provided examples - the good and the bad. All of that setup upfront allows you to test. That's why I point folks at the research phase. Testing there means you can pick your best client, share them as the first run, and see if it comes back as someone worth actually pursuing - that's how you know it's working. If it's wrong, well it cost you nothing but the time it took to look - and now you can fix it before it goes downstream and compounds. I'm happy to get into the weeds with anyone building something similar, thinking about it, or considering how they can bring this into their organization.