Episode 244
I want to share three experiences I’ve had and I want you to see if there’s anything off about them:
A while ago I sat with a RevOps leader, while they scrolled through a CRM where every single lead was tagged as an MQL. “Marketing sets them all to that,” they said matter-of-factly. Sales knew, marketing knew, and everyone went along because the company was venture-backed and under executive demands to produce. Marketing simply bent the metric so the dashboard would look healthy.
A Director of Marketing I knew understood that he could put a large budget bump in his annual plan. His boss, the VP of Sales, had encouraged him to think big. So he did, and it was approved. Long after budget season had ended, the purchases were denied and the money went to sales expenses. He understood what had happened and didn’t push back, because his job depended on the VP of Sales. The budget had looked real until the moment it turned out not to be.
A marketing leader once walked me through her martech budget. The marketing automation system, with its data-append module and a long list of add-ons, cost far more than I thought was reasonable. I asked if it was worth it. “It’s everything to us,” she said. I asked if they could drop the data-append module and use an intern, which would cost much less. “Finance would never approve us asking for more headcount.” The software subscription flew with no problem, and even though hiring a person was cheaper, they didn’t want to rock the boat with finance.
The same pattern runs through all of these situations: marketers contorting themselves under pressure from some outside force. Our guest argues that force is structural. Marketing is saddled with baggage that keeps it from meeting what today’s organizations expect, and the only way to keep up is to restructure.
My guest is the Chief Marketing Officer and Head of the AI Center of Excellence at 2X, where she helps enterprises use strategic outsourcing, AI and marketing performance management. Before that, she spent two decades with agencies, then went brand-side in C-level roles at several large brands. There she worked alongside major consulting firms, which changed how she thought about the way marketing should be organized. She has written three books for growth leaders: Brand Gravity; The Revenue RAMP, which has been spun off into the Revenue Accelerator course; and The Limitless CMO, published in 2026.
Join me as we head to Detroit Michigan to talk with Lisa Cole.
Timestamps:
00:00 Intro
01:40 Meet Lisa Cole
02:57 AI And The Resource Paradox
05:31 Why The Old Model Breaks
07:44 Stop Adding More Work
10:36 Run Marketing Like Services
14:51 Handling AI Change Resistors
17:38 Outsourcing As A Lever
20:57 Ad Break And Offer
21:56 Human AI Orchestration
25:46 Velocity Over Perfection
31:08 Agility Pilots And Wrap Up
32:58 Where To Follow Lisa
33:41 Getting book, contacting Lisa