Growth Activated | The B2B CMO and Marketing Leadership Podcast

#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:

1. Set the vision for how you want the work to feel, then do the financial modeling behind it
2. Pick one market and go deep, because deep expertise is what lets you charge more
3. Turn your expertise into repeatable systems, with AI as the engine
4. Diversify where the work comes from, before you need it

Plus 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 first
• The one file in there written for the AI rather than for people, and why onboarding and RFPs can run off it too
• Where it lives, and the desktop setup that takes a team from single player to multiplayer
• Why skills, agents and scheduled tasks keep underdelivering, and the layer underneath them most people skip
• Saying yes to a pre-revenue startup in an industry I knew nothing about, and the founder reaction I did not see coming
• The 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 cost
• Tearing 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 it
• What 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 ours
• The three friction points that were stalling work, from blurry scope to overlapping skill sets to approvals
• What went into the build, and how it snowballed from job descriptions into business strategy
• The two iterations it took, and why my first instinct was wrong
• What happened when I demoed it live and the answers came back wrong
• How AI became the referee between two teams who'd been operating in the gray for months
• Rollout, including what to do when people tell you they don't need it
• What the documentation unlocks beyond the partner, from capacity planning to hiring to career conversations

And 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 overwhelm
• What made a $9,000 investment in myself worth it, and how I knew within three weeks
• Negotiating a 30% rate increase, and signing two new clients at 70% above my old rate
• Why I'm moving away from hourly pricing, and how to think about which IP is yours to carry from company to company
• Building Scout, my Momentum Maker AI partner, for a 15 person marketing team
• Why decision fatigue, not technical difficulty, is the real bottleneck in AI adoption
• The free thing you can do this week to start pulling yourself out of the day to day
• The tools that changed how I work: Wispr Flow, Granola, connectors, and HTML artifacts
• What 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 Business
• My AI hackathon episode from Snowdonia, Wales
• My 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 back
• The “sameness problem”: why feeding identical inputs to the same models flattens B2B strategy, and why human intelligence is the real moat
• What to expect from your team (and yourself) when sustainable performance beats burnout-fueled output
• Orchestration and agentic teams — and whether to hire a human or build an AI team first
• The traits, like curiosity and grit, that outlast domain expertise in the AI era

Chapters

• Heidi’s Move Back In-House
• Why Work Is Not Finite
• Raising the Bar Without Burnout
• Orchestration and Agentic Teams
• Traits That Outlast Expertise

Links & resources

• Linkedin: Connect with Heidi Darling
• Website: Learn more about Savo.ai

If 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 decision
• The four mindset shifts CMOs need to unlock real AI transformation
• Why "doing more with less" is the floor of AI value, not the ceiling
• How 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 team
• The "law of thirds" Liza uses to lead AI transformation without burning out trying to bring everyone along

RESOURCES:

• Connect with Liza Adams on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/lizaadams
• GrowthPath Partners (Liza’s newsletter & advisory): https://www.growthpath.net
• Referenced 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 carefully
• The ACV and TAM thresholds that signal ABM is the right motion for your business
• The account entitlements framework: how to deploy resources against target accounts with real SLAs and accountability
• How to run a thoughtful ABM pilot — and the mistakes that sink most early programs before they get started
• ABM for expansion: why going deeper into existing accounts is often the highest-leverage starting point
• What's actually working in ABM right now — events, direct mail, experiences — and what isn't
• The GTM engineer role and how it's changing what's possible in ABM execution
• Stage-based attribution and how to prove ABM is working before the deal closes
• Brandon's emerging model for account-level sentiment analysis using AI — and why it may be where ABM measurement is heading
• Why sales and marketing alignment still breaks ABM programs — and how incentive structure is almost always the root cause

Chapter 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 Signals

Resources:

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 opportunity
• What 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 milestones
• YouTube-first content strategy vs. repurposing what already exists — and why the distinction matters
• Founder-led channels vs. company-branded channels: how to decide what's right for your business
• Long-form vs. Shorts: where B2B YouTube ROI actually comes from
• How YouTube is beginning to show up in LLM citations — and what that means for your B2B YouTube strategy

Chapter 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 Takeaways

Resources:

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 orchestrator
• Why the CMO who best understands the market should own more of the business than most org charts allow
• Revenue predictability: how to approach it from the top down and the bottom up
• The "messy middle" — the highest-leverage gap in most B2B go-to-market motions
• How 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 fails
• What the future of marketing org design looks like as agentic workflows take over repetitive work
• The most common places CMOs are still stubbing their toes right now

Chapter 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 Toes

Resources:

• Matt Heinz on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/mattheinz/
• Heinz Marketing: https://heinzmarketing.com

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. 💪

#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 one
• Why intentionality is the most important thing most marketing leaders are skipping right now
• The security risk of expecting marketers to build like engineers — and what smart orgs do differently
• Build vs. buy: when your core AI tools are enough and when they're not
• How to build a platform-agnostic AI marketing strategy that won't lock you in

Chapter 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 Advice

Connect 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. 💪