Backchannel 26 min

Is There About to be a Mass Exodus of CMOs?

Lots of marketers aspire to be CMO one day. But once they get there, many time they quickly realize it's not what they thought it was going to be. In this episode Mike and Anthony talk about the role of CMO and why a lot of CMOs are choosing to part ways with the role.

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All right.

0:01

Okay.

0:02

I, this, this is very, very much behind the curtain, but.

0:08

I want to talk to you a little bit about.

0:14

Something that I've been hearing a lot from the.

0:18

CMO brain trust.

0:21

And it's really, really interesting to me, especially as someone who's like.

0:27

Aspired to be a CMO for a long time.

0:31

I know you have to.

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Now you're on the founder side, but I know that like that was the path that you

0:35

were on for a long time.

0:37

Most people who make it to the CMO seat.

0:40

Have had that same kind of like career aspiration, a career arc.

0:45

Now that a lot of the people who are in my.

0:49

In my peer set, our CMOs in my conversations with them.

0:56

I've been more and more hearing them say.

1:02

I don't want to do this again.

1:05

And I'm obviously not going to like go through the list of people who have

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heard that from.

1:09

But a lot of people are like, yeah, like the, the job.

1:12

It's been going good.

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Like it's, it's, you know, I've learned a lot.

1:16

You know, the team's great.

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But then I'm like, what's next for you?

1:20

And they're like, I don't think I want to be a CMO again.

1:23

I'd rather go do something else.

1:26

Either whatever, like part of the marketing stack they came up in, whether it

1:31

be like, you know, field and brand and events or whether it was in demand or

1:36

whether in product marketing or whatever.

1:38

They're like, I want to go back to that a little bit.

1:40

Or people who are like, I want to do something completely different.

1:43

Like now that I made it to this step.

1:45

I've learned that maybe this isn't for me and I'm going to go do a complete

1:48

career change.

1:49

And that's just been like, at first it was just like one or two people talking

1:52

like that.

1:53

And now it's totally a pattern in my conversations with, with other CMOs in the

1:58

space.

1:59

And I'm curious, like, one, have you kind of been hearing the same sort of rumb

2:03

lings?

2:04

And then two, like what's your, what's your reaction to that?

2:08

Yeah.

2:09

There's a lot to say on this topic.

2:11

I'll try to keep it succinct.

2:14

Um, first of all, even going back several years, um, it's been widely

2:22

publicized that the CMO 10 year at a company is very, very limited.

2:27

Right.

2:28

It's one of the smallest, shortest kind of runs within the exact three, 13

2:31

months.

2:32

Or I think actually I think it was like 11 months, like not even a year most of

2:35

the time.

2:36

Right.

2:37

Then, you know, in recent news, you've seen like, I think it was like consumer,

2:42

or C.B.G. companies are like big consumer companies.

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I think Donald's being one of them.

2:48

I think Red Bull have fired their CMOs and are not backflowing them.

2:52

They are decentralizing that role into specific kind of sub functions at the

2:55

executive level.

2:57

Um, so all this to be said, the CMO role has been probably since its existence,

3:04

or at least in this digital Internet age that we're in.

3:06

Um, widely, um, you know, under some, some pressure, I think in general.

3:13

Now we're blind to that early career because we're young and hungry and

3:18

ambitious.

3:19

And we, uh, I think for a lot of us starting your career and marketing is hard

3:22

enough.

3:23

It's my person, like, it's hard to start a career in tech when you think about

3:26

it.

3:27

Because typically if you're not an engineer, you're coming in through an SDR

3:31

program or some of these like early career roles and then to break it.

3:35

And then to bridge and find your way into marketing or find someone that's

3:38

willing to take a chance on you and marketing is actually quite difficult.

3:42

Um, and I've had several conversations I'm sure you've had over the years of

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like, how do I get into marketing? Um, so, so you get into marketing and then

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you start enjoying it.

3:53

Maybe it's your point. You find your sub function that you really like.

3:56

Um, and then the further you get in your career, and I know you've got

3:59

something to say about this, the less marketing you do.

4:03

And the more time you're spending dealing with like the HR work, which is, by

4:07

the way, it's part of the job.

4:10

Like I'm not trying to like apologize for it or whatever. Um, but you're

4:13

dealing with, you're almost like, like an ambassador to the rest of the

4:18

business cross functionally or public facing kind of person.

4:23

Uh, you're, you know, speaking on panels, doing podcasts like these. Um, um,

4:29

you're managing up to the CEO, you're managing down to your team and making

4:33

sure that their mental health is all good as well as their productivity, of

4:37

course, which takes a big toll.

4:39

Um, and depending on your company stage or where you're at, you might be doing

4:43

a little less of the creative kind of zero to one type stuff and your job is to

4:47

hit the number cheaper and more efficiently than you did last year.

4:52

Um, so I've got some more things to say, but what I'll say is, you know, I

4:55

definitely want to hear your thoughts on this, because we've talked about it is

4:59

CMOs don't really do a lot of marketing.

5:04

Mm hmm.

5:05

Is my, yeah, that's my hot, that's my hot tick.

5:07

Yeah.

5:08

No, I don't even, I don't even think that's hot tick.

5:10

I think that's just facts.

5:11

Like I do less marketing, like what you'd consider to be core marketing work

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now.

5:19

Then I probably have in my entire career.

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And, um, I think that that, that realization is pretty jarring.

5:30

One, it's like jarring because it's not probably what most people expect.

5:35

Yeah.

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Two, it takes time to figure out like what stuff you're going to be rewarded

5:40

for doing, like when you get into the new role and you're like, okay, what,

5:45

what, what things is the business actually need for me.

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It's like turns out they're totally totally different.

5:50

Um, what I would say, and I feel very grateful that I enjoy this part of the

5:55

job, but, um,

5:57

I think like a lot of what the CMOs job is, is to like understand the market

6:04

and what the customers are talking about and thinking.

6:08

And to like figure out how to make sure that that is interlocked with the

6:13

company's strategy very, very tightly all the time.

6:19

But a lot of that's about like the strategic work and like, how do we talk

6:24

about what we do to the broader market?

6:27

And that's obviously a part of marketing.

6:28

It was like messaging and positioning and like the company narrative and the

6:31

company's story and making sure those things are aligned.

6:35

But like it's definitely not like, you know, coming up with like the next great

6:41

, you know, ad campaign, like, you know, obviously I'm in the approval process

6:46

of that sort of thing.

6:47

But like the team we're working on that stuff.

6:49

Like, you know, when someone comes to me and they're like, check it out.

6:51

We did this like, you know, landing page experiment where we tested, you know,

6:55

we built five new versions of this and drove these conversions and here's what

6:59

worked and here's what doesn't like.

7:01

I'm, I used to be like the person in the middle of that.

7:04

Now I'm just the consumer of it.

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And I'm just like, whoa, that's awesome.

7:08

Like, great.

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Like, what did we, what did we learn?

7:10

What are we going to do next?

7:11

And I'm trying to help, you know, think about how we're going to ratchet those

7:15

results up to, you know, our next most important goals.

7:19

But it's really weird being not the person who's doing that stuff anymore.

7:26

And the person who's really mostly focused on delivering a number and focused

7:31

on the company level strategy.

7:34

I think that transition is just hard, you know, especially people who are like,

7:38

my identity is that I'm a marketing person.

7:41

Yeah.

7:42

And you just don't tell you that right on the way out.

7:44

No, they don't tell you that like, you know, yeah.

7:47

But I like what you said. You said something there about like, I'm grateful

7:50

that I like this part of the job.

7:52

And I think that's super important.

7:54

That if the way I kind of envisioned it too, I love what you said about

7:59

marrying kind of opportunity with company strategy and how we sort of like tie

8:02

it together.

8:03

Huge, huge part of the role.

8:05

The other part I think about too, kind of like a, and forgive the sports

8:08

analogy, but a little like a GM as well.

8:11

In the sense that like, you have to find the marketers that are really good and

8:17

put them in positions to win and to make an impact.

8:21

And a lot of that does have to do with HR, right?

8:24

In the sense of like, you know, finding compatible roles and people to fulfill

8:30

those roles who are human beings and have their own kind of giftings and, you

8:34

know, communication styles and whatnot.

8:36

But your job is to effectively like put a team together that could be high

8:41

efficiency, but high throughput, high output in order to achieve that

8:45

opportunity that you're capturing.

8:49

And then to defend that, to defend the actions of the team internally to un

8:54

block them where necessary to advocate on their behalf.

8:58

And for some people, they look at what I just said and they're like, that's not

9:02

what I thought the job was.

9:04

I thought I was going to, you know, really just like do a lot of more of the

9:07

creative campaign work or the demand work or whatever.

9:11

And, you know, to answer your original question, I think a lot of people are

9:16

waking up to that and saying, I don't want to sign up for that, actually.

9:21

Like, I don't get my energy off of that.

9:23

I rather get my energy off of having my hands dirty in the actual programs.

9:27

And that's great.

9:28

I don't think there's any, I don't think this is a bad trend either.

9:31

I think this is probably a good thing, net net.

9:34

But that people are kind of like figuring it out as they get there.

9:39

Well, yeah, because I think we've sort of like create, we've created this up

9:46

into the right American dream expectation.

9:50

By the way, this sounds so like privileged and weird to talk about, but like, I

9:55

think it's okay for someone to have high ambition.

10:00

I think that I want to be a top performer and also not want to be a CMO, but

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want to stay within their discipline, whether that's again event marketing or

10:10

field marketing or product marketing or whatever and double triple down on what

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they're great at.

10:17

And I think sometimes that there might be an internal lie or thought or

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perception that like that must mean I'm not moving up into the right in my

10:26

career or whatever the case is.

10:29

That's not necessarily true.

10:32

I think you could be a world class event marketer and build a career off of

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that.

10:38

That is very noble and something that one should be very proud of.

10:42

Yeah, I think one of the, one of the things that's like kind of counter

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intuitive about the GM side of things is you kind of end, if you do it right,

10:53

you end up firing yourself from the marketing job, right?

10:58

Because you want to find people who are smarter than you at the domain

11:01

expertise that you want to build on the team, right?

11:05

And then very, very good people want to be high autonomy, high ownership.

11:11

That means they need you a lot less than maybe before they work there.

11:19

And they need to know that they're working on the right stuff at the right time

11:22

and understand the company strategy, but the actual execution of the marketing

11:26

stuff.

11:27

And if you hire the right team, those functional teams don't really need you to

11:33

be a part of their actual process, I would say.

11:37

And so like the way I would like sum it up that I think a lot of marketers to

11:41

deal with when they get to the CMO role is like, when you're like the top

11:45

marketing executive, the job is way more about being an executive than it is

11:50

about being a marketer.

11:51

And that is for some people, I think just not where they want to be.

11:59

I mean, it feels kind of like leaving your core competency not behind, but just

12:05

like, there's not the focus of your day to day.

12:08

And I think that combined with the pressure that's on a lot of marketers,

12:14

especially people who get hired as CMOs from the outside,

12:19

like a lot of the jobs that people are getting now are like turnarounds right

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it's like, why are they looking for CMO it's like okay the last one got fired.

12:28

And are like pipeline is down 50% year over year. And so you're coming in to

12:36

like change that.

12:38

And like, that's just a really, really, really tough thing to do. And I think

12:45

like a lot of the CMO jobs that are out there, they should they appear that way

12:51

So then people who have some experience as a CMO are like, whoa, that was way

12:55

different than I thought. Maybe it was way harder than I thought.

13:00

And then the jobs that they're looking at to go continue to be a CMO are not, I

13:08

would say, not like the ideal situation that you want to walk into.

13:13

And so I think the fact that like a lot of companies are distressed, the jobs

13:17

not really about marketing.

13:19

There's tons and tons of pressure just like put short term results on the board

13:24

instantly.

13:25

So marketing is like so multidisciplinary now like you have to be able to do

13:29

everything.

13:31

Like it's just like, I think a lot of scenarios people are in are like set up

13:37

for them to lose and they see that now.

13:40

And then they're not getting joy out of it either so they're just like, why am

13:43

I going to do this again.

13:45

Yeah, it's like, now you're being a CMO is like really nuanced and like a lot

13:49

of things have to be going in the right direction for it to be as rewarding as

13:54

people think it's going to be. And like, I don't know about you.

13:58

I put a very, very big premium on.

14:05

So I like the team of people I'm with and I like the company and I like the

14:10

customers and I feel like I have like established trust with with with folks

14:16

like I'm putting a huge premium on that because you do you never like the space

14:21

is so dynamic like you never know what's going to happen.

14:24

And then I'm also, if I'm if I'm looking for a CMO job.

14:29

I'm the whole thing is like about picking the company in my opinion, like you

14:33

have to pick the right company in the right circumstances where you have a

14:37

chance to be successful over the medium and long term.

14:41

And like that that pool of companies that are probably worth joining to be the

14:46

CMO of right now is probably a pretty small group, honestly, if we're being

14:50

totally honest. And so that's right.

14:54

So I think there's a lot of pressures on the role and it's, it's, most of the

14:59

roles are not as as glamorous as you think they're going to be a huge chunk of

15:03

them are probably not that much about marketing.

15:07

And like I feel really grateful to be in the position that that I'm in I love

15:11

my job I love my team I love the opportunity that we're tackling.

15:16

But I when someone hops on the phone with me to do just a check in and they're

15:20

like, yeah, I don't know if I want to do this again. I'm like, I totally get it

15:24

. I totally understand why you would be in that position.

15:29

Because it's not it's not always what it's cracked up to be. So, I'm you, I'm

15:36

important.

15:38

So I'm going to take an appointment here to about like, there's something

15:41

happening right now in the market that is making this exacerbating all of this.

15:46

Yes. And I talked about this a little bit at at golden hour.

15:51

But if we look back at what we've been through over the last four to five years

15:56

as a marketing community more broadly CMOs included as well as practitioners.

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Is There About to be a Mass Exodus of CMOs?

0:00 - All right. ::: 0:01 - Okay. ::: 0:02 - I, this, this is very, very much behind the curtain, but. ::: 0:08 - I want to talk to you a little bit about. ::: 0:14 - Something that I've been hearing a lot from the. ::: 0:18 - CMO brain trust. ::: 0:21 - And it's really, really interesting to me, especially as someone who's like. ::: 0:27 - Aspired to be a CMO for a long time. ::: 0:31 - I know you have to. ::: 0:32 - Now you're on the founder side, but I know that like that was the path that you ::: 0:35 - were on for a long time. ::: 0:37 - Most people who make it to the CMO seat. ::: 0:40 - Have had that same kind of like career aspiration, a career arc. ::: 0:45 - Now that a lot of the people who are in my. ::: 0:49 - In my peer set, our CMOs in my conversations with them. ::: 0:56 - I've been more and more hearing them say. ::: 1:02 - I don't want to do this again. ::: 1:05 - And I'm obviously not going to like go through the list of people who have ::: 1:08 - heard that from. ::: 1:09 - But a lot of people are like, yeah, like the, the job. ::: 1:12 - It's been going good. ::: 1:13 - Like it's, it's, you know, I've learned a lot. ::: 1:16 - You know, the team's great. ::: 1:18 - But then I'm like, what's next for you? ::: 1:20 - And they're like, I don't think I want to be a CMO again. ::: 1:23 - I'd rather go do something else. ::: 1:26 - Either whatever, like part of the marketing stack they came up in, whether it ::: 1:31 - be like, you know, field and brand and events or whether it was in demand or ::: 1:36 - whether in product marketing or whatever. ::: 1:38 - They're like, I want to go back to that a little bit. ::: 1:40 - Or people who are like, I want to do something completely different. ::: 1:43 - Like now that I made it to this step. ::: 1:45 - I've learned that maybe this isn't for me and I'm going to go do a complete ::: 1:48 - career change. ::: 1:49 - And that's just been like, at first it was just like one or two people talking ::: 1:52 - like that. ::: 1:53 - And now it's totally a pattern in my conversations with, with other CMOs in the ::: 1:58 - space. ::: 1:59 - And I'm curious, like, one, have you kind of been hearing the same sort of rumb ::: 2:03 - lings? ::: 2:04 - And then two, like what's your, what's your reaction to that? ::: 2:08 - Yeah. ::: 2:09 - There's a lot to say on this topic. ::: 2:11 - I'll try to keep it succinct. ::: 2:14 - Um, first of all, even going back several years, um, it's been widely ::: 2:22 - publicized that the CMO 10 year at a company is very, very limited. ::: 2:27 - Right. ::: 2:28 - It's one of the smallest, shortest kind of runs within the exact three, 13 ::: 2:31 - months. ::: 2:32 - Or I think actually I think it was like 11 months, like not even a year most of ::: 2:35 - the time. ::: 2:36 - Right. ::: 2:37 - Then, you know, in recent news, you've seen like, I think it was like consumer, ::: 2:42 - or C.B.G. companies are like big consumer companies. ::: 2:46 - I think Donald's being one of them. ::: 2:48 - I think Red Bull have fired their CMOs and are not backflowing them. ::: 2:52 - They are decentralizing that role into specific kind of sub functions at the ::: 2:55 - executive level. ::: 2:57 - Um, so all this to be said, the CMO role has been probably since its existence, ::: 3:04 - or at least in this digital Internet age that we're in. ::: 3:06 - Um, widely, um, you know, under some, some pressure, I think in general. ::: 3:13 - Now we're blind to that early career because we're young and hungry and ::: 3:18 - ambitious. ::: 3:19 - And we, uh, I think for a lot of us starting your career and marketing is hard ::: 3:22 - enough. ::: 3:23 - It's my person, like, it's hard to start a career in tech when you think about ::: 3:26 - it. ::: 3:27 - Because typically if you're not an engineer, you're coming in through an SDR ::: 3:31 - program or some of these like early career roles and then to break it. ::: 3:35 - And then to bridge and find your way into marketing or find someone that's ::: 3:38 - willing to take a chance on you and marketing is actually quite difficult. ::: 3:42 - Um, and I've had several conversations I'm sure you've had over the years of ::: 3:44 - like, how do I get into marketing? Um, so, so you get into marketing and then ::: 3:51 - you start enjoying it. ::: 3:53 - Maybe it's your point. You find your sub function that you really like. ::: 3:56 - Um, and then the further you get in your career, and I know you've got ::: 3:59 - something to say about this, the less marketing you do. ::: 4:03 - And the more time you're spending dealing with like the HR work, which is, by ::: 4:07 - the way, it's part of the job. ::: 4:10 - Like I'm not trying to like apologize for it or whatever. Um, but you're ::: 4:13 - dealing with, you're almost like, like an ambassador to the rest of the ::: 4:18 - business cross functionally or public facing kind of person. ::: 4:23 - Uh, you're, you know, speaking on panels, doing podcasts like these. Um, um, ::: 4:29 - you're managing up to the CEO, you're managing down to your team and making ::: 4:33 - sure that their mental health is all good as well as their productivity, of ::: 4:37 - course, which takes a big toll. ::: 4:39 - Um, and depending on your company stage or where you're at, you might be doing ::: 4:43 - a little less of the creative kind of zero to one type stuff and your job is to ::: 4:47 - hit the number cheaper and more efficiently than you did last year. ::: 4:52 - Um, so I've got some more things to say, but what I'll say is, you know, I ::: 4:55 - definitely want to hear your thoughts on this, because we've talked about it is ::: 4:59 - CMOs don't really do a lot of marketing. ::: 5:04 - Mm hmm. ::: 5:05 - Is my, yeah, that's my hot, that's my hot tick. ::: 5:07 - Yeah. ::: 5:08 - No, I don't even, I don't even think that's hot tick. ::: 5:10 - I think that's just facts. ::: 5:11 - Like I do less marketing, like what you'd consider to be core marketing work ::: 5:18 - now. ::: 5:19 - Then I probably have in my entire career. ::: 5:24 - And, um, I think that that, that realization is pretty jarring. ::: 5:30 - One, it's like jarring because it's not probably what most people expect. ::: 5:35 - Yeah. ::: 5:36 - Two, it takes time to figure out like what stuff you're going to be rewarded ::: 5:40 - for doing, like when you get into the new role and you're like, okay, what, ::: 5:45 - what, what things is the business actually need for me. ::: 5:47 - It's like turns out they're totally totally different. ::: 5:50 - Um, what I would say, and I feel very grateful that I enjoy this part of the ::: 5:55 - job, but, um, ::: 5:57 - I think like a lot of what the CMOs job is, is to like understand the market ::: 6:04 - and what the customers are talking about and thinking. ::: 6:08 - And to like figure out how to make sure that that is interlocked with the ::: 6:13 - company's strategy very, very tightly all the time. ::: 6:19 - But a lot of that's about like the strategic work and like, how do we talk ::: 6:24 - about what we do to the broader market? ::: 6:27 - And that's obviously a part of marketing. ::: 6:28 - It was like messaging and positioning and like the company narrative and the ::: 6:31 - company's story and making sure those things are aligned. ::: 6:35 - But like it's definitely not like, you know, coming up with like the next great ::: 6:41 - , you know, ad campaign, like, you know, obviously I'm in the approval process ::: 6:46 - of that sort of thing. ::: 6:47 - But like the team we're working on that stuff. ::: 6:49 - Like, you know, when someone comes to me and they're like, check it out. ::: 6:51 - We did this like, you know, landing page experiment where we tested, you know, ::: 6:55 - we built five new versions of this and drove these conversions and here's what ::: 6:59 - worked and here's what doesn't like. ::: 7:01 - I'm, I used to be like the person in the middle of that. ::: 7:04 - Now I'm just the consumer of it. ::: 7:06 - And I'm just like, whoa, that's awesome. ::: 7:08 - Like, great. ::: 7:09 - Like, what did we, what did we learn? ::: 7:10 - What are we going to do next? ::: 7:11 - And I'm trying to help, you know, think about how we're going to ratchet those ::: 7:15 - results up to, you know, our next most important goals. ::: 7:19 - But it's really weird being not the person who's doing that stuff anymore. ::: 7:26 - And the person who's really mostly focused on delivering a number and focused ::: 7:31 - on the company level strategy. ::: 7:34 - I think that transition is just hard, you know, especially people who are like, ::: 7:38 - my identity is that I'm a marketing person. ::: 7:41 - Yeah. ::: 7:42 - And you just don't tell you that right on the way out. ::: 7:44 - No, they don't tell you that like, you know, yeah. ::: 7:47 - But I like what you said. You said something there about like, I'm grateful ::: 7:50 - that I like this part of the job. ::: 7:52 - And I think that's super important. ::: 7:54 - That if the way I kind of envisioned it too, I love what you said about ::: 7:59 - marrying kind of opportunity with company strategy and how we sort of like tie ::: 8:02 - it together. ::: 8:03 - Huge, huge part of the role. ::: 8:05 - The other part I think about too, kind of like a, and forgive the sports ::: 8:08 - analogy, but a little like a GM as well. ::: 8:11 - In the sense that like, you have to find the marketers that are really good and ::: 8:17 - put them in positions to win and to make an impact. ::: 8:21 - And a lot of that does have to do with HR, right? ::: 8:24 - In the sense of like, you know, finding compatible roles and people to fulfill ::: 8:30 - those roles who are human beings and have their own kind of giftings and, you ::: 8:34 - know, communication styles and whatnot. ::: 8:36 - But your job is to effectively like put a team together that could be high ::: 8:41 - efficiency, but high throughput, high output in order to achieve that ::: 8:45 - opportunity that you're capturing. ::: 8:49 - And then to defend that, to defend the actions of the team internally to un ::: 8:54 - block them where necessary to advocate on their behalf. ::: 8:58 - And for some people, they look at what I just said and they're like, that's not ::: 9:02 - what I thought the job was. ::: 9:04 - I thought I was going to, you know, really just like do a lot of more of the ::: 9:07 - creative campaign work or the demand work or whatever. ::: 9:11 - And, you know, to answer your original question, I think a lot of people are ::: 9:16 - waking up to that and saying, I don't want to sign up for that, actually. ::: 9:21 - Like, I don't get my energy off of that. ::: 9:23 - I rather get my energy off of having my hands dirty in the actual programs. ::: 9:27 - And that's great. ::: 9:28 - I don't think there's any, I don't think this is a bad trend either. ::: 9:31 - I think this is probably a good thing, net net. ::: 9:34 - But that people are kind of like figuring it out as they get there. ::: 9:39 - Well, yeah, because I think we've sort of like create, we've created this up ::: 9:46 - into the right American dream expectation. ::: 9:50 - By the way, this sounds so like privileged and weird to talk about, but like, I ::: 9:55 - think it's okay for someone to have high ambition. ::: 10:00 - I think that I want to be a top performer and also not want to be a CMO, but ::: 10:05 - want to stay within their discipline, whether that's again event marketing or ::: 10:10 - field marketing or product marketing or whatever and double triple down on what ::: 10:15 - they're great at. ::: 10:17 - And I think sometimes that there might be an internal lie or thought or ::: 10:21 - perception that like that must mean I'm not moving up into the right in my ::: 10:26 - career or whatever the case is. ::: 10:29 - That's not necessarily true. ::: 10:32 - I think you could be a world class event marketer and build a career off of ::: 10:37 - that. ::: 10:38 - That is very noble and something that one should be very proud of. ::: 10:42 - Yeah, I think one of the, one of the things that's like kind of counter ::: 10:47 - intuitive about the GM side of things is you kind of end, if you do it right, ::: 10:53 - you end up firing yourself from the marketing job, right? ::: 10:58 - Because you want to find people who are smarter than you at the domain ::: 11:01 - expertise that you want to build on the team, right? ::: 11:05 - And then very, very good people want to be high autonomy, high ownership. ::: 11:11 - That means they need you a lot less than maybe before they work there. ::: 11:19 - And they need to know that they're working on the right stuff at the right time ::: 11:22 - and understand the company strategy, but the actual execution of the marketing ::: 11:26 - stuff. ::: 11:27 - And if you hire the right team, those functional teams don't really need you to ::: 11:33 - be a part of their actual process, I would say. ::: 11:37 - And so like the way I would like sum it up that I think a lot of marketers to ::: 11:41 - deal with when they get to the CMO role is like, when you're like the top ::: 11:45 - marketing executive, the job is way more about being an executive than it is ::: 11:50 - about being a marketer. ::: 11:51 - And that is for some people, I think just not where they want to be. ::: 11:59 - I mean, it feels kind of like leaving your core competency not behind, but just ::: 12:05 - like, there's not the focus of your day to day. ::: 12:08 - And I think that combined with the pressure that's on a lot of marketers, ::: 12:14 - especially people who get hired as CMOs from the outside, ::: 12:19 - like a lot of the jobs that people are getting now are like turnarounds right ::: 12:23 - it's like, why are they looking for CMO it's like okay the last one got fired. ::: 12:28 - And are like pipeline is down 50% year over year. And so you're coming in to ::: 12:36 - like change that. ::: 12:38 - And like, that's just a really, really, really tough thing to do. And I think ::: 12:45 - like a lot of the CMO jobs that are out there, they should they appear that way ::: 12:51 - So then people who have some experience as a CMO are like, whoa, that was way ::: 12:55 - different than I thought. Maybe it was way harder than I thought. ::: 13:00 - And then the jobs that they're looking at to go continue to be a CMO are not, I ::: 13:08 - would say, not like the ideal situation that you want to walk into. ::: 13:13 - And so I think the fact that like a lot of companies are distressed, the jobs ::: 13:17 - not really about marketing. ::: 13:19 - There's tons and tons of pressure just like put short term results on the board ::: 13:24 - instantly. ::: 13:25 - So marketing is like so multidisciplinary now like you have to be able to do ::: 13:29 - everything. ::: 13:31 - Like it's just like, I think a lot of scenarios people are in are like set up ::: 13:37 - for them to lose and they see that now. ::: 13:40 - And then they're not getting joy out of it either so they're just like, why am ::: 13:43 - I going to do this again. ::: 13:45 - Yeah, it's like, now you're being a CMO is like really nuanced and like a lot ::: 13:49 - of things have to be going in the right direction for it to be as rewarding as ::: 13:54 - people think it's going to be. And like, I don't know about you. ::: 13:58 - I put a very, very big premium on. ::: 14:05 - So I like the team of people I'm with and I like the company and I like the ::: 14:10 - customers and I feel like I have like established trust with with with folks ::: 14:16 - like I'm putting a huge premium on that because you do you never like the space ::: 14:21 - is so dynamic like you never know what's going to happen. ::: 14:24 - And then I'm also, if I'm if I'm looking for a CMO job. ::: 14:29 - I'm the whole thing is like about picking the company in my opinion, like you ::: 14:33 - have to pick the right company in the right circumstances where you have a ::: 14:37 - chance to be successful over the medium and long term. ::: 14:41 - And like that that pool of companies that are probably worth joining to be the ::: 14:46 - CMO of right now is probably a pretty small group, honestly, if we're being ::: 14:50 - totally honest. And so that's right. ::: 14:54 - So I think there's a lot of pressures on the role and it's, it's, most of the ::: 14:59 - roles are not as as glamorous as you think they're going to be a huge chunk of ::: 15:03 - them are probably not that much about marketing. ::: 15:07 - And like I feel really grateful to be in the position that that I'm in I love ::: 15:11 - my job I love my team I love the opportunity that we're tackling. ::: 15:16 - But I when someone hops on the phone with me to do just a check in and they're ::: 15:20 - like, yeah, I don't know if I want to do this again. I'm like, I totally get it ::: 15:24 - . I totally understand why you would be in that position. ::: 15:29 - Because it's not it's not always what it's cracked up to be. So, I'm you, I'm ::: 15:36 - important. ::: 15:38 - So I'm going to take an appointment here to about like, there's something ::: 15:41 - happening right now in the market that is making this exacerbating all of this. ::: 15:46 - Yes. And I talked about this a little bit at at golden hour. ::: 15:51 - But if we look back at what we've been through over the last four to five years ::: 15:56 - as a marketing community more broadly CMOs included as well as practitioners. ::: 16:03 - And we were in the middle of the pandemic in the middle of the pandemic. ::: 16:08 - And we were in the middle of the pandemic. ::: 16:11 - And we were in the middle of the pandemic. ::: 16:14 - And we were in the middle of the pandemic. ::: 16:17 - And we were in the middle of the pandemic. ::: 16:20 - And we were in the middle of the pandemic. ::: 16:22 - And we were in the middle of the pandemic. ::: 16:24 - And we were in the middle of the pandemic. ::: 16:26 - And we were in the middle of the pandemic. ::: 16:28 - And we were in the middle of the pandemic. ::: 16:33 - And we were in the middle of the pandemic. ::: 16:36 - And we were in the middle of the pandemic. ::: 16:38 - And we were in the middle of the pandemic. ::: 16:40 - And we were in the middle of the pandemic. ::: 16:42 - 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