Recorded on January 6, 2026

‍Lisa Martin: 0:00The CMOs that are are really leading now are operators. They're growth operators. They're not campaign operators because they own, I mentioned SDOs, they own revenue impact, they own alignment with other teams, they own that customer experience, and they also own being able to use AI to drive transformation. So, really, that growth operator, a number of CMOs I've spoken with on the program have elevated from the CMO world to the chief good of market officer or the chief market officer. So it's really about orchestrating and operating at a much more global scale. I don't mean global geographically, I mean global across the organization versus running a three-month campaign or a six-month campaign, and then you change it in second half and that sort of thing. It's about really driving growth for the organization and not just at a tactical level because that doesn't work anymore.Kevin Kerner: 0:50

Hey everyone, this is Kevin Kerner at Tech Marketing Rewired. Hey, I just had on a fantastic guest to start the new year. Her name is Lisa Martin, and she runs the Lisa Martin Agency, and she's also the podcast host of CMO Unscripted, and formerly was even a NASA scientist. I called um Lisa last year because I was curious about her moving from her marketing role, senior marketing role, to a to a podcast and media hosting role. And I thought, what a great way to open the year up with someone who has such a great background, but also a fellow podcaster. So on the episode, we talked about our past 12 months worth of podcasts. She talks to a lot of great CMOs, and you'll hear a lot of the different stories she has from the CMOs she's talked to. I really wanted to dig into what the gaps were that CMOs were facing last year and what she thought those gaps would be this year and how a lot of the CMOs she was talking to are addressing these challenges. So it was a fantastic conversation. And Lisa is an awesome podcast host. So I really recommend you listen to her a podcast and check her out. But um, I'm excited to get into this one. Before we get started, I wanted to mention that Mighty and True is my company. We're an agency that helps technology CMOs fill gaps in strategy. So if you're a CMO that has a specific gap or strategy that you're trying to get to that involves revenue performance, we can help. So uh that's it. Let's get to it. I'm really excited about this. Happy New Year and welcome to Tech Marketing Rewired. All right, Lisa, welcome to Tech Marketing Rewired. Great to see you.

Lisa Martin: 2:20

Great to see you too, Kevin. Thank you so much for having me on the program.

Kevin Kerner: 2:23

Yes, I was looking forward to this one. Happy New Year, by the way.

Lisa Martin: 2:31

Same. Excellent. I'm happy to be happy to be the first.

Kevin Kerner: 2:34

Yeah, I'm shaking off the dust from a long break. Well, too long, but uh I was really looking forward to this. This is gonna be an interesting one for me because you I'm both both talking to a former employee at NASA and also a podcast host. So this is gonna be very interesting. Um I wonder, uh, you know, I know your background. I was wondering if you could give a little bit of uh your background, then we'll get into it.

Lisa Martin: 2:56

Yeah. So for the last 20 years, I've been in tech and marketing specifically, and then kind of got into Martech and analyst roles. I started my own marketing agency about 12 years ago now to really focus on helping CMOs really identify things like getting their executive voices to market faster and better, um, and really being able to get the voices of their customers to advocate. But I started out as a scientist. You mentioned NASA. Back in the day, my degrees are in biology. And I got into NASA after getting my master's degree in molecular biology and realized that really kind of what we were doing there was storytelling. You can take really, you know, cryptic scientific data, but what you have to do with it is really make a data story that people can understand and act on. And so I brought that into the technology field and into marketing and into eventually broadcasting and podcasting.

Kevin Kerner: 3:49

So cool. You're the first uh NASA scientist I've had on the podcast. Former NASA scientist.

Lisa Martin: 3:54

Former, yes, yes.

Kevin Kerner: 3:56

Yeah, very, very cool. Um, okay, so one of the reasons I wanted to kick off the year with you is we both talk to CMOs regularly through the podcast. So I thought maybe we could riff a little together on what we're hearing the themes were from last year and how they're carrying into this year. Um, I'd be really interested in your perspective. So I'm gonna ask you for, as we talked about kind of in the pre-call, I'm gonna ask you for just your perspective on a few things. Like I'll have I'll have you set the themes and then we'll kind of riff on them. And I can give some too, because I've had on this, I think this is episode number uh, this will be in the 30s for me. So I've got quite a quite a few people. So so yeah, let's just get right into. Does that sound good?

Lisa Martin: 4:33

Yeah, that sounds great.

Kevin Kerner: 4:34

Okay, well, let's focus on some gaps that you're seeing from your conversations. Why don't you give me your number one, your first gap from the conversations that you've had? And maybe uh before you get started, a little bit about your podcast too, so we can set context for that.

Lisa Martin: 4:47

Yeah. So the podcast, we launched it in the middle of 2025. It's called CMOs Unscripted. We filmed 13 episodes in season one, season two just launched, and we'll have another suite of episodes there. And really, I think one of the key, a number of key themes came up from the CMOs I talked to last year on the podcast and also in my marketing agency work. And there's a lot of anxiety around AI and speed and relevance. The message is loud and clear, and you've probably heard this a ton from your CMOs that it's and it's blunt. If you're not actively experimenting with AI, you're falling behind because the winners are in the execution phase. Like last year, a couple of years before, was all about experimentation, and now it's got to be about execution. But then there's tension kind of underneath that urgency because we know that a lot of AI initiatives don't stick. And the jump from generative AI to agentic is moving so fast that teams are concerned with how do we keep up and absorb it culturally, not just technically?

Kevin Kerner: 5:45

Yeah. Yeah. Do you think I totally agree with the anxiety piece? In fact, I just launched, we just launched a uh blog post this week or last week on the whole idea of speed and initiatives and launching. I do think there's this, there's this um anxiety among every CMO I talk to about not moving fast enough. And one of the things I've thought is like, is that really true? Are you really like, are you really falling behind? Do you think that maybe the hype is such so great now? And certainly the platform providers are sort of pushing a lot of this. But do you think that they're falling behind? Or do you think it's just a feeling of, you know, the hype versus reality?

Lisa Martin: 6:23

I think it's more of a feeling because every CMO I spoke with in 2025 is really everyone's leaning into AI, innitive for sure, now Agentic, and they're achieving some amazing results, like two to three X faster content production. They're they're dealing with a better conversions. A lot of CMOs also, I'm finding in the last year or so, are now owning that the um SDR function. And so they're using Gen AI to really help educate and enable those SDRs in a in a more precise, more personalized way in terms of the customers. So I don't think they're falling behind. I think one of the challenges is from a cultural perspective, they're all really leaning into ensuring that their teams are embracing it. In fact, several of the CMOs that I talked to have had their teams initiate marketing AI councils and really leading with, we want to try to experiment with this next. So it's it's really about kind of like balancing the experimentation phase of the execution in what's proving value to the organization. The ROI proof point is also challenging because there's a lot of productivity gains. I mentioned a few of them. But in terms of really the real value that you want to bring to the board, that's an area where CMOs are really doubling down to determine where the value is, how they prove it's related to being being able to drive revenue and ultimately impact the business going forward.

Kevin Kerner: 7:44

You know what I find that was really interesting in the people I talked to this last year, a couple of people from Qualified, which is sort of a gentic SDR, and they're doing so much cool stuff. I talked to uh personal AI, so the the CEO of personal AI and a few other platforms, Gong. Um, and it was really interesting that those companies that have AI pretty much embedded in their product were doing the most innovative things inside of their own products and the surrounding ecosystem. Yes. So if you're an if you're a CMO inside a platform that are like HubSpot that already has AI built into it, you're you may be way far ahead. But the CMOs that I talked to that were not in those platforms and using those platforms as customers weren't as far ahead. Super interesting.

Lisa Martin: 8:28

It makes sense. I I think I've been fortunate that everyone that I've talked to, you know, whether it's um Snowflake CMO or Dynatrace or Absolute Security, for example, Palo Alto Networks, they all have AI infused into the technologies and services that they deliver. So you bring up a great point that they're using AI in ways that are really helping them to manage that speed with which AI is evolving and the speed with which their customers are consuming content. Not offline, but in ways that are disconnected from sales folks. So they're really, really leaning into those pragmatic small experiments, those real workflows, those keeping humans in the loop and those AI councils that I talked about to really develop a culture where the teams are embracing it, they understand, and they can explain how the AI and their products and services works to benefit customers and partners.

Kevin Kerner: 9:22

Yeah, they almost like have a superpower because they have the platform, they got the product people and those things. It's kind of a disadvantage right now to not be in those companies. Although I do feel like if you're a CMO and you're not in a snowflake and you're just in a brand that doesn't have a a relevant AI product for marketing, starting with the stack that you have is really important, like from a speed perspective. Rather than um uh feeling like you're behind and trying to buy everything and you immediately build a data lake and you do all the things. It seems like the platforms that you do have, HubSpot, uh, we use Apollo, we use Clay. Those all have a gen, they all have AI in them. So just using what you have versus looking outside is kind of a speed play. It's like slowing down and looking at what you have versus speeding up.

Lisa Martin: 10:13

Absolutely. And I I one of my favorite conversations, in fact, we have the HubSpot CMO on CMOs unscripted in a couple of weeks. But I had a conversation with the CMO of NetApp, Gaby Boko, and she talked about NetApp being a data storage and infrastructure company, but really kind of unleashing genius within their technologies and leveraging not just all the data in the world, but using AI to cull through what's the most relevant data, because we all know the data, data lakes are everywhere, data swamps, whatever you want to call it, whatever it actually is. But there's so much noise and junk out there that organizations need to use AI like NetApp is to really glean the valuable data so that they can not only optimize their products and services, but deliver more value to customers as customers are also facing the same AI pressures. But Gaby Boko, the CML of NetApp, was very clear on we have to be very careful about AI washing. And that's something that popped up. You've probably seen this over the last couple of years, where I would go to conferences and you'd hear like the Michael Dells and the Jensen Wongs saying, if you're not into AI, you're too late. And so that's that's where that speed and that urgency and that sort of tension popped up. But organizations need to be clear that they understand how they're using AI to market, but also how AI is being infused into their technologies and what the values are for the customer ecosystem. It's not about just saying AI inside, it's about proving the value.

Kevin Kerner: 11:39

Yeah, 100%. And um I'm curious from your conversations too. I've heard a lot about workflows, automations. And I like before this call, I was working on a make automation and it was driving me crazy. I couldn't get it to work as well as I wanted to, which is kind of the normal gig for me. Yeah. It just never works quite the way you you expect it to. It seems so easy. Have you found anyone is that same frustration uh with AI? Does that lean into also the all the hype around agents and automation and those type of things? Is anyone doing that well yet from from any of the people you've talked to?

Lisa Martin: 12:17

They're all talking about it. And they've been talking about it for the last, I'd say, six, nine months about we want agents all over our org charts. We're going to be tasking employees with doing that. Well, what are those agents doing for the employees? What are they doing for the technologies and the products? I think the only concern I heard when I was speaking with Jennifer Johnson, the CMO of CrowdStrike, about just the speed with which we went, as I mentioned earlier, from generative AI to agentic. Can culturally organizations keep up with that? It's more, I think, the concerns on the cultural adaptation and evolution of how tech is evolving so fast versus the technical acumen. I'm thinking that we're going to see a lot more. We're seeing a lot more going from experimentation in the last couple of years to execution and impact. So I am looking forward to hearing more Agentic AI stories in 2026 where they're actually able to surface value for the organization from a revenue perspective and of course from a customer perspective.

Kevin Kerner: 13:13

Yeah, fantastic. Yeah. And I think there'll be more evolution in the platforms out there that that make agentics simpler. I'm talking to one of the podcasts I talked to last year. I'm about ready to launch it in the next month or so, is the uh CMO of Assemble Assemble. And she went from a large job at Salesforce where she had all these people. So I think she had a staff of like 60 or 80 people to herself and a couple other people as the CMO of this small business. Really cool company. But um, she, they're an agentic AI company, and so that she had the advantage of that. But she had this great idea to actually, if you're gonna have an agent work on your behalf, and context engineering is really important. When you're when you actually hire the agent and train them just like you would a new employee, like literally have an onboarding like a new employee. So spent and how much time would you spend on a new employee? You'd spend at least a couple days, at least, you know, a few days. And most people expect these agents to just work immediately. But that idea of an agent as employee, I picked that up in a bunch of different conversations, but that was the one where I was really like, wow, she's really got this figured out.

Lisa Martin: 14:19

We've talked about that as well when I was speaking with Manny Dollywall. She's the CMO of Nutanix, and she talked about last year before we even did the podcast the need and the idea to have agents all across the org chart. And and I talked about that like you were just saying. Well, do you treat them as employees? How do you manage them? What does the onboarding process look like? Um and how are they gold, if you will? Because I think you're right with the woman that you were talking to, and I think Mandy Dollywall is right as well, is they have to be treated as employees. There can't be this assumption that they're going to be on minute one nailing it. There needs to be that onboarding and that kind of coaching and training process. And another thing we talked about from a training perspective is bias. Emily Foley was on, and she was the CMO at the time of Cisco Capital. And she talked about the importance of language when you're training and talking with AI so that we don't build in the obviously we already know there's a ton of bias out there anyway. How do we start identifying that and talking to the models in ways that are much more favorable, much more diverse, really create that accessibility so that the agents themselves, once they're trained, are ideally trained really efficiently, really effectively, and in ways that are really supportive across different types, groups of people and other agents.

Kevin Kerner: 15:39

Yeah, it's really cool. There'll probably be uh agent training roles in companies. Or there probably are now actually just to train. They probably are.

Lisa Martin: 15:47

Yeah.

Kevin Kerner: 15:47

Yeah.

Lisa Martin: 15:48

Yeah.

Kevin Kerner: 15:48

Yeah, yeah. Um this is fascinating. I I couldn't have guessed, I wouldn't have guessed that AI would have been your first, would have been the first uh trend that you see. Oh, yeah. Of course, I'm just kidding. AI is like, it's crazy. If you had to go to the second, this is you, I mean, this was this was a really good topic, but if you had to go to the second topic that might not be AI related, what would what do you think the trend is that you that you were seeing from the CMO group?

Lisa Martin: 16:12

It's an oldie but goody, and that's integrated marketing. One of the great things that I was hearing is integrated marketing really as becoming the company's operating system to do things like unify brand and demand, product marketing, comms sales around one coherent narrative that moves pipeline. We've been talking about integrated marketing for a very long time, but some of the conversations I heard about really building it as the foundation of an operating system and ensuring that marketing is speaking the language of the CRO, of the CFO, the CEO, and the board so that that alignment doesn't slow things down. It actually accelerates things so that marketing then can get to the board and be able to share what they care about these days, which is not MQLs or campaigns. It's ASP, it's revenue, it's win rates and things like that. That marketing is now being able to show how they're impacting that in a positive way.

Kevin Kerner: 17:09

Yeah. And are they doing that with their teams, you know, training their teams about integrated marketing? Yes. And or have you seen them actually trying to go farther into the company to product?

Lisa Martin: 17:20

Oh, all the way to service, all the way to product, customer success, support sales. Yes. That's what that's what Mandy Dalywell talked about from Nutanix. And I thought she had such a brilliant way of describing integrated marketing as doing just that, really helping CMOs really demonstrably boost productivity. I mentioned that the SDR functionality, a lot of it moving to CMOs. Some CMOs don't support that because they think, hey, the sales job, they want to be in a sales track. But really, the winning model from an integrated marketing perspective is marketing being that orchestrator to align with all across the organization, from the bottom up, from the top down, not just within marketing per se, but to sales, to support, to customer success, to operations, to finance, et cetera. That's where they're seeing tremendous success. And they're really changing the narrative because marketing isn't about giving marketing speak to finance or to sales. They're they're talking in their language, and that just brings a lot more trust into the equation.

Kevin Kerner: 18:22

Yeah. I interviewed the CMO of Sederis, Josh Leatherman. He had written a book called Scalable Acts of Marketing, which is really good. And it's a fable. He talks, the book is kind of a fable of this CMO who's really frustrated and he doesn't have a great relationship with across the company, and he hires these people and puts in place a system that allows him to go basically go into the rest of the organization and build relationships. And my conversation with him, I thought it was really interesting because it was part system, but it was also part that he was courageous enough to actually go and have the conversations with these other people that some marketers just don't feel empowered to have. So it was a really interesting uh more personal relationship was happening between the different departments to make go to market work.

Lisa Martin: 19:10

I think it's it's not non-negotiable these days, basically.

Kevin Kerner: 19:13

Yeah.

Lisa Martin: 19:14

From all the conversations I've had and for how long I've been in marketing, the relationships, and we talk about like customer relationships and how important they are and partner relationships, but relationships internally are increasingly more important. So leaders have to be willing to maybe step out of the comfort.

Kevin Kerner: 19:30

Yeah, that's right.

Lisa Martin: 19:31

And and learn the language and the narratives that other departments are speaking so that they can converge so that ultimately when they get to the board and the board cares about win rate and ASP, they can all talk about that and demonstrate the collective impact that they're making. I think it's just table stakes.

Kevin Kerner: 19:49

Yeah, I was that was one of my gaps that I had on my list was I called it the translation gap, which was the gap between board what you do in marketing and the boardroom metrics and being able to have a A talk track that's beyond MQLs and those types. That was brought up so many times in the conversations that I had. Pipeline velocity, actual pipeline, end result sales, attribution back down to the sale was really important. So it's a it's a big, big uh part of my conversations as well.

Lisa Martin: 20:16

Yep. And we're having the same conversations. And the nice thing is now with the way that technology is evolving, even with AI, generative, agenc, there's so much more ability to do all the attribution that before was a little bit fuzzy and now it's becoming clearer, which I think I had a CMO on the program who was a CMO at Trellix. He's moved on to absolute security. But Trellix is PE backed. And he said the the differences between managing up at a PE backed company versus a pre-startup, a pre-IPO or a public company are very different. And so being able to leverage the technology to show and really accurately demonstrate your value from a metrics perspective. And he was very clear on no more vanity metrics. One of my favorite quotes, I think, in the whole series was from Ivana Karen's CMO of UiPath in APJ and Mia. And she said, I asked her, I said, is the MQL dead? And she said, yes. It was a mic drop moment. Because it's all about vanity metrics, impressions, no one cares. It's about, it's about the moving the dial on revenue to the organization, but showing your value as a marketer to the board, to sales, to finance, to the CEO, to everybody that needs to know what you're doing and how you're moving the actually moving the needle.

Kevin Kerner: 21:36

Yeah, this is fantastic. Okay, let's do one more uh theme from your perspective if you have one.

Lisa Martin: 21:43

Gosh, I think probably we talked about AI, we talked about integrated marketing. I think really the CMOs that are are really leading now are operators. They're growth operators. They're not campaign operators because they own, I mentioned SEOs, they own revenue impact, they own alignment with other teams, they own that customer experience, and they also own being able to use AI to drive transformation. So, really, that growth operator, a number of CMOs I've spoken with on the program have elevated from the CMO world to the chief good of market officer or the chief market officer. So it's really about orchestrating and operating at a much more global scale. I don't mean global geographically, I mean global across the organization versus running a three-month campaign or a six-month campaign, and then you change it in second half and that sort of thing. It's about really driving growth for the organization and not just at a tactical level because that doesn't work anymore.

Kevin Kerner: 22:41

Yeah. Very, very good. I was gonna I was going to um ask you about the questions that the smartest CMOs still they don't have answers for. But and something crossed my mind right as you were saying that, and that I read something recently, just in the last couple of days, about go-to-market um uh executives and how there was a significant amount of angst in in sort of job satisfaction in in in leaders that were running go-to-market. And I maybe the one of the things that I would say that some of the CMOs, maybe not on the podcast, but behind the scenes, have talked about is just so how hard it is to actually be a CMO, to be actually lead an organization. And I wonder if you've you've gotten kind of that same sort of tone of, man, it's really difficult to do this now. They're not giving up, but it's it's very difficult.

Lisa Martin: 23:29

I actually haven't heard that. But a number of things that I have heard in terms of where their angst is, is around this cult this whole thing, we talked about this a number of times already in the podcast, the shared currency of the CMO and sales leaders and finance and the board, so that they will accept marketing and the impact that it's making in what are often very long, complex B2B cycles. Another angsty area that I found was the customer journey. It's very fragmented. The buyer does get enterprise 17 plus touches on their own before they even contact an organization. So they've got multiple channels, they've got multiple messages, they've got LL and an LLLM-driven world. Where do we invest? Where do we overinvest? Where do we underinvest from a search perspective? SEO plus GEO and channels, because buyers are self-educated. So how do we really make sure that our message across channels follows them, is really clear and succinct because that buyer is really has been in the lead for a while. And now with AI, it's they're only going to be more in the lead, or there's too much AI slop out there and they will be confused. That's really, I think, some of the angsty things that I've heard. As well as still, how do we measure the impact of AI credibly and consistently across, you know, above and beyond productivity, but quality, pipeline velocity, and revenue, the anecdotes for how AI is boosting this or that, don't, they don't, they don't land anymore.

Kevin Kerner: 24:53

Yeah. Yeah, totally. I think there is a lot of angst around marketing inflation too. And that some channels cost you more and you get less out of them. And other channels, other channels seem free, but you got to put a lot of time into them, like uh like a GEO or something. And they're very uh they're very uh right now it's a little bit like Jell O. You just don't know exactly what you're doing in certain channels. So that that uh uncertainty about where things are headed from a channel perspective and costs is creating a lot of pressure in the system.

Lisa Martin: 25:20

And the fluidity, you mentioned Jell O, which you know, kind of you wiggle it. I I think that's a great parallel, the fluidity with which things are moving or operating right now, and that there's so much we don't know. But I think my favorite thing, my first podcast I did a couple years ago is called Marketing Art and Science. Because from a former science perspective, but also the artistry, but those two coming together and really kind of not necessarily balancing, but really how it's more of a pendulum how how organ CMOs need to lean into the artistry piece, the creative piece, but also the science. Where are we being successful? Where are our customers going? What are we missing? To your earlier point, where are the gaps? And we have the technologies. There, there sometimes there's too many of them.

Kevin Kerner: 26:02

Yeah.

Lisa Martin: 26:03

And you mentioned this earlier. Orgs have to really, how do we really leverage what tools we have, not overbuy, but make sure that we are maximizing what we've already invested in so that we can deliver what the customer ultimately wants when they want it and ensure that what we're doing is building and extending a trusted relationship.

Kevin Kerner: 26:24

Yeah, very good. Really good stuff. Uh, before we get on to the next topic, which I want to talk a little bit about your transition from being a marketer to the to being in the media side, but um, I was I was curious, you you've been doing the pot, we've both been doing the podcast with CMOs, to CMOs over the last, let's say, year or so. What do you think they're gonna want to hear this year? Like how's your podcast gonna change? Do you have any plans for the next year? Uh, what do you think is uh what's what do you think is on the table for the next year for you?

Lisa Martin: 26:50

We're really leaning into uh the ROI of AI and really helping other CMOs understand how their peers are doing, are demonstrating such. Um, we talked about this a minute ago, you and I, the agentic movement. Where is it going to be successful? What are those puzzle pieces that CMOs are putting in place to ensure that Agentic AI is delivering to the organization and to its ecosystem what it expects? I think there's there's a lot of this the speed factor is always something that we talk about too, because we talked about going from when, I mean, when was ChatGPT three years ago and how it's it's just catalyzed this movement, whereas AI has been around for decades, but it be just accelerated and that pedal to the metal is not going to change. So, how are CMOs really dealing with the speed and the evolution of change in ways that allow them to build build that trust that I talked about, not just trust externally, but trust internally as well. So I'm very curious to see how that's going to happen and what some of those levers are that CMOs are pulling to use advancing technologies to deliver really personalized but not creepy messages across channels to really ensure that the omni-channel experience is working so that they can actually use technology to speed conversion and impact revenue in a in a more relevant, I think more demonstrable way.

Kevin Kerner: 28:14

Yeah. Sounds like a great future few next few months here for the for how you're changing things or maybe revising things a bit. Um I would see that say the same thing for ours that we're looking to do more that's a peek inside how others are doing, actually doing things. Uh not necessarily theory, but the actual like I am doing this is the strategy, this is exactly how I do it. It's just a great peek inside the you know the tent of someone else uh that that gives you that just sparks ideas. So it's all all good stuff. And we're I think the ones that have trended most for us are the ones that are more tactical in some way. It's like we're here's the exact things that we're doing for hiring, for agentic, for training AI, those type of things. So it's really fun to hear how some of these CMOs are innovating. It's incredible.

Lisa Martin: 28:54

And also to be able to, uh the reason I launched the podcast last year was I wanted to be able to have this community of CMOs who would open up the Kommando and Share because a lot of folks don't. But we learn collectively together. Uh, I think there's so much value in the network and being able to have this platform that is opening the doors for so many more has been a a big benefit that we hoped to achieve. And I think we're achieving it, but we'll level it up for sure for 2026.

Kevin Kerner: 29:21

Yeah, that uh so that's a good pivot because I was really curious about your move from being a marketer to in the media. And you do the podcast, I think you're on iHeartRadio and do some other things. It's really impressive that you put yourself out there like this. I'm sure there are other CMOs and marketers that listen to this that just think, golly, I wish I could do that. I wish I could do what she does. How do you make that move? How did you do it? And how do you overcome the fear of just putting yourself out there like you have?

Lisa Martin: 29:45

Yeah. Yeah. That that's a fear that's always there too. And it and it goes kind of up and down. But I didn't, I didn't move into media to switch careers. I moved because storytelling has always been my differentiator. I mentioned back in my NASA days of being able to take really complex, cryptic scientific data and and and really, what does it mean? How do I explain this to people in a way that allows them to not only understand it, but act on it? And I think from a media perspective, that's where influence now lives. It's been really something the way I even got myself into tech in the first place from being in science where I had, and I had no experience in marketing or sales when I got into HP back in the 2005. But I thought, you know what I've been doing? I've been translating this complexity into clarity for a long time because I I had this, I don't know where it came from, this ability to take that esoteric data and turn it into a story. And then when I got to NASA, I was able to sharpen my skills there because you learn very fast in an environment like NASA. Because literally, if you can't tell the story, the work doesn't travel, it doesn't fly. And so it kind of carried that same muscle into marketing and business analyst roles. But then, you know, the world started changing and I saw trust shifting from the institutional level to the individual level. Like buyers and leaders are following voices, not necessarily logos. So I stepped into broadcasting, gosh, about 10 years ago with a show called The Cube that I was a host of for about eight years, because I thought that's the highest leverage place where I think I can do what I'm best at. And that's showing up, helping to cut through the noise and really help pull the truth out with conviction. So that's really kind of the pathway that I took.

Kevin Kerner: 31:30

Yeah, that's great. How would what what advice would you give other marketers or CMOs that want to do what you've done? Like just put themselves out there.

Lisa Martin: 31:37

I'd say, well, you mentioned, you know, the fear of putting yourself out there. It's there. And and I've I've learned that it never really goes away. What you do is just because No, tell me it's not so, Lisa.

Kevin Kerner: 31:48

Tell me it's not so.

Lisa Martin: 31:49

You know, I thought it's so funny. Like years ago, I thought I finally beat an imposter syndrome for good. And then every time I stick my neck out and I do something new, I went to work with Future M Group and started doing network television as an analyst. I've done Schwab Network and Bloomberg in Arabic, where I'm translated into Arabic live, BBC News, Fox News, other things. Every time I stick my neck out, that imposter syndrome kind of creeps in again. We just think, really? Do I have the credibility? But it's one of those things that I'd say consciously work through it because at the end of the day, you'll never know if you don't try. And I think that, you know, just start small. It's it sounds so simple and trait, but it's true. Share one insight, see what happens. Host one conversation, see what the engagement is. Or write the post that you wish I wish I'd seen this six months ago. Because I think what you do ultimately and what I've experienced is you earn confidence by doing, not by wanting to feel ready, because you may never will, but you'll get there time and again. And and sure, you risk some ego slapping when you put yourself out there, but there's so much that you learn from it at the same time. I just, it's a win-win at the end of the day.

Kevin Kerner: 33:00

Yeah, I read something just recently about posting on LinkedIn that like, well, if you if you have a bad post, no one's really gonna notice it. It just goes, it just goes through the stream. But if you write a good one, and some it's just pride some value, people notice it, but they really don't notice the stuff that's not that good. It just doesn't, nothing happens.

Lisa Martin: 33:16

Because there's so much. Yeah. And it's a learning curve. It's I have people that help me understand I'm really good at certain things. I can break down complex technology on TV or on the radio. The radio is really fun with iHeart because it's more consumer.

Kevin Kerner: 33:28

Oh, I bet. Yeah.

Lisa Martin: 33:28

Like this morning, we were talking about, you know, the big fear in the consumer space across the world is AI taking jobs. And I covered a story this morning where the jobs of electricians and trades are booming because of the need to construct and maintain and evolve big data centers. So it's fun to be able to help people understand what this means. And I tell them straight and I tell them the good stuff, the middle stuff, and the bad stuff so that they have more of a comprehensive understanding that there are good things that are happening. There are gonna be bad things. It's it's technology is inherently neutral. And having the ability to have a platform to share that is something that I really take very seriously. But I'm still learning how to communicate it with different audiences, and I think that's gonna be just a part of it ongoing learning.

Kevin Kerner: 34:14

Yeah, well, I think you're fantastic at it. I love your podcast. And I think you're I think you're great at it. So you've done really well. I would have never guessed the imposter syndrome. Never, never guess.

Lisa Martin: 34:22

Oh yeah. Oh yeah. It came it came back in the other day and I'm like, really?

Kevin Kerner: 34:26

And then I realized you gotta start this again? What's happening?

Lisa Martin: 34:29

It's it's about managing it. Yep.

Kevin Kerner: 34:30

Yeah, yeah. I had a um Jacob Bank, who I had on the podcast a while back. He's the CEO of uh Relay, but he before he did Relay app, he was like, he he ran uh Gmail. He was the prop main product guy on Gmail. Like I was like, man, that is so cool. Yeah. And he told me, I said, What's the one thing you wish you would have done at Gmail that you did that that you would have known then that you'd take into your business now? And he goes, Can you say, Kevin, I wish I would have used, I wish I would have actually outreached to someone other than my team when I was at Gmail. He was doing all this cool stuff. They were completely innovating the Gmail platform. And he never wrote a single post, did a blog, did any speaking on it at all. And he then when he started his company at Relay, he's like, golly, I had to start from scratch. I had all this intelligence and capital built up. I never told any, I never shared it. And so I had to start from scratch. So he was like, You've got to get out there and speak. You have things that people want to learn. They can learn from you to get out there and do it. So there's maybe both ways. In one way, it helps other people, but in other ways it actually helped, would have would have helped him a bunch. So I totally agree with you.

Lisa Martin: 35:35

Absolutely. Yes, I do too.

Kevin Kerner: 35:36

Completely. Okay, so I do I do one thing on this show that uh I'm gonna put you up to. This is uh called AI Roulette. So I'm gonna I've got your bio and a little bit about our talk track here. I put it into perplexity and I'm gonna push send and it's gonna give me a question for you. So this will be the first first new question of the year. Probably the best question. It's always the best question. Good. Okay, here we go. Okay. This is interesting. There's actually basically what we've already talked about would be interesting. I want to settle a debate about difficulty. You've held three roles that seem completely different. Oh, I don't know if they are based on our conversation. NASA scientist dealing with biology and physics, podcast host dealing with live conversations on media, and B2B marketer dealing with strategy and revenue. Of those three, scientist, host, or marketer, which one is actually the hardest to execute successfully, day in in and day out, and why?

Lisa Martin: 36:27

Oh gosh, I would say marketer. Because there's so much data out there. You know, the there's a common thread that I I discovered, I guess a few years ago when I when I was really kind of turning my marketing agency, Lisa Martin Media, now what's called, into an agency. And it's really about what what is the commonality of of being a scientist, of being a marketer, of being a broadcaster, a podcaster. And it's that it's that storytelling theme. So that part I understand pretty well. The marketing part is challenging because there are so many moving parts. Yeah there's so much data coming at you so quickly. There's so much evolution of technology. And like I mentioned earlier, customers are self-serving in terms of education. So we have to be really good at understanding where they're going, what they're looking for. Are we telling a consistent story across channels to the right verticals in the right hands? Exactly internally, yes. So that people can understand what is our elevator pitch. Most so many people don't know it. It's crazy. So it's really about fundamental storytelling that I think is where I accelerate Excel. But that marketing piece, I'd say out of those three is probably the one that's the most uh fastest changing.

Kevin Kerner: 37:42

Yeah, that's amazing. Versus NASA.

Lisa Martin: 37:46

Yeah. NASA can be slow. Trust me.

Kevin Kerner: 37:49

It's maybe bureaucratic, a little bit.

Lisa Martin: 37:51

Yep.

Kevin Kerner: 37:52

But it kind of makes me feel better as a B2B marketer. I'm like, I could be a NASA scientist, I think. But I chose to be a marketer. I chose to be a B2B.

Lisa Martin: 37:59

Yes. Yep.

Kevin Kerner: 38:00

That's good.

Lisa Martin: 38:01

Good choice. Good choice.

Kevin Kerner: 38:02

Yeah. Well, uh, Lisa, this has been fantastic. I I have not had anyone on that's both a marketer and a podcaster. So we both have the same thing in common. It's great talking to you, just hearing your perspective. Thank you so much for the time. To be able to reach out to you and definitely I recommend to follow you. I'll put it all in the show notes, but how should people get a hold of you and then listen to the podcast?

Lisa Martin: 38:22

Yeah, so LinkedIn, Lisa Martin, Lisa Martin Media is the name of the company on Twitter and I still call it Twitter and uh Instagram. It's at Lisa Martin Media. You can find me there. And then, of course, search CMOs Unscripted on YouTube to find all of our playlists and our content there. And you can find all of my portfolio as a marketer, an analyst, an MC, and a host on Lisa Martin Media.

Kevin Kerner: 38:44

All right, Lisa, thank you so much. And I hope to talk to you again soon.

Lisa Martin: 38:47

Meet you. Thank you. Bye.

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