Two Executives Living Under One Roof: The System That Keeps Them Sane

Summary

Marketing Trends Podcast: "Two Executives Living Under One Roof: The System That Keeps Them Sane"

Date: December 3, 2025
Host: Stephanie Postles
Guests: Nikki and Dale (both veteran tech marketing executives, married couple)

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Episode Overview

In this unique episode, host Stephanie Postles sits down with Nikki and Dale, a powerhouse marketing couple who have both navigated demanding C-level roles while raising a family together. The discussion opens the curtain on how two high performers lead, support each other, strategize in tech marketing—and manage not just teams and growth targets, but also the daily chaos of home life. The pair offer wisdom on leadership, career management, marketing’s future, and the real interplay of partnership and ambition.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Challenging Assumptions About Dual-Career Households

(00:00–02:22)

• Outdated Advice: Early in their careers, Nikki was told, “You both can have a career, but at some point... one of you is going to have to take a backseat.”
  • Dale: “At the time, I was probably a little bit naive, but I'm like, screw that.” [00:19]
• Coordinated Career Moves:
  • When one spouse is on the hunt for a new CMO-level position, the other deliberately maintains stability to keep family life manageable.
  • Their kids have gained independence from this approach, and the couple applies work-discipline to family systems.
• Gender Expectations:
  • Dale has actively resisted industry pressure for female leaders to step back for the family:
    • “If Nikki had wanted to stay at home, great. But she didn’t. I feel like my job, not just as a partner, but as a marketing leader who recognizes talent: you should go for it.” [01:47]

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2. Career Origins & Relationship Backstory in Tech

(05:07–11:24)

• Meeting at Cisco:
  • Nikki and Dale began as colleagues at Cisco—she in corporate, he in European field marketing.
  • Fun anecdote about early flirtation over audio conference lines “back when Justin Timberlake and Britney were dating.” [07:39]
  • The duo spent years working together before becoming a couple and eventually both transitioning to other roles.
• Cisco as Foundation:
  • Both describe Cisco as a formative environment—likened to “being in college” for young marketers.
  • They keep in touch with former mentors and peers who have since become industry leaders.

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3. Making High-Achieving Dual Careers Work

(11:50–15:51)

• No “Backseat” Required:
  • The couple have managed to avoid one spouse completely stepping down – instead, they “plan ahead, communicate, and never both jump ship at the same time.”
  • Quote: “We’ve never had to say, one of us has to take a step down. We’ve kind of managed it through the last 10 or 15 years.” [12:59]
• Kids Thrive on Independence:
  • Applying management principles at home, their children have become more self-sufficient.
  • Nikki: “You take your same discipline that you do in coaching people for success at work and coach your kids for success at home.” [01:26]

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4. Gender, Ambition, and Modern Family Support Systems

(15:51–19:20)

• Industry Gender Bias:
  • Dale: “There's a pressure on female leaders… if you have kids, you're the one that should be at home… I’ve never bought into that.” [15:51]
• Community Support:
  • Both advocate for relying on trusted friends/family—a “village” approach is key for professional parents.
  • Stephanie: “I think it also pulls at the power of community… many people raised your children, not just two.” [16:55]

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5. Evolving Leadership & Parenting With Career Transitions

(19:31–22:38)

• Strategic Timing:
  • Nikki made job choices around her kids’ ages (“best time to do it is when kids are young”) and adjusted travel as they grew older.
  • Emotional complexity acknowledged—leaving young children for work is difficult, but manageable with the right support.

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6. What’s Next in Marketing—2026 and Beyond

(23:18–31:26)

Dale’s Perspective: The Age of “Augmented Intelligence”

• Embracing Change is a constant.
• Experimentation with AI: SnapLogic team incentivized ($500 bonus) to demonstrate practical use of AI/LLM/agents to drive impact.
  • “Marketers… try and be more innovative… See what this new technology can do for you.” [25:05]
• Not Just Replacing People: “Don’t think it’s about replacing people. It’s about, how can you be better, serve the customer, better serve your business...” [25:39]
• Contrarian Innovation:
  • Automated account research agent for SDRs—reduces prep time, improves targeting and outreach. [27:19–31:07]
  • “This is the human in the loop part. We’re not automating all the outreach… but now… the response rates are going up significantly.” [30:16]

Nikki’s Perspective: Org Design & the New Content Playbook

• Customer Marketing is Priority: “Always, always, always customer marketing—retention and expansion within the base.” [31:26]
• Content Strategy Shifts (SEO > GEO):
  • Classic SEO is waning—searches move to LLMs; people find info via trusted third-party content (Reddit, YouTube, Bloomberg, etc.).
  • “It’s no longer our own thought leadership… what are people doing or saying in Reddit, on YouTube…” [32:52]
  • “You can’t have gated pages anymore because you won’t be found.” [33:45]
• Analyst & Influencer Landscape:
  • High-authority sources matter most for LLM discoverability—even if that means earned media, respected analysts, or select independents.

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7. Rethinking Marketing’s Influence and the Death of the Forum

(50:16–56:26)

• Customer Journey Understanding is Crucial: Dale critiques Salesforce’s “Customer360”: “CRM is not Customer360.”
• Community Platforms are Changing:
  • Traditional forum-based communities are obsolete: “The forum-based community platforms are dead.” [52:44]
  • Real-time, Slack-like communities are the future, paired with direct tagging and LLM search integration.

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8. Leadership Philosophies & Interpersonal Dynamics

(57:26–68:34)

• Challenging Each Other:

  • Nikki values Dale’s feedback, especially on messaging and creative direction. Example: Pivoting from “Do Better” to “More Human Understanding” based on his input [58:53-64:23].
  • Their process for decision-making is collaborative and occasionally competitive—but always constructive:
    • “If I know she’s had a successful campaign... the competitive spirit is not me against her. It’s me to try and be better...” [64:23]
  • Honest feedback after tough workdays is valued—even if hard to hear at the moment.

• Work-Life Boundaries (or Lack Thereof):

  • They rarely fully “shut off” work at home: “I don’t think I ever actually... shut off.” [61:27]
  • Family time, vacations, and even carpooling mix with work conversations.

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9. Lightning Round: Hot Takes, Trends & Titles

(68:59–74:44)

• Which gets more budget: Brand or Demand Gen?
  • Both answer demand gen—but highlight importance of balance.
• When things break: Fix Process or People?
  • Both: Fix the process first to understand the “why.”
  • “If people understand what success looks like, most will achieve it.” – Nikki [71:12]
• Marketing Terms to Retire:
  • Nikki: “First touch, last touch, and also ‘CMO’ as a title.” [72:13]
  • Dale: “Influence. Attribution.” [75:19] — Both see marketing’s value as much broader than these metrics.

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10. Career Advice for the Next Generation

(77:05–81:30)

• Would you encourage your daughter to be a CMO?
  • Nikki: “I would suggest she becomes a chief customer officer... be close to the customer and help their success.” [78:26]
  • Dale: Recommends considering sales for greater respect and impact, or being an entrepreneur. [78:53]
  • Both see the modern marketing role as increasingly multi-faceted—possibly merging with Chief Customer Officer in the near future.

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On Defying Tradition:
  • Dale: “Screw that. There is no way we can’t have it all.” [00:19]
• On Gender Norms:
  • “It shouldn’t be gender related, it should just be, you know, who’s actually bringing in the bacon, as it were.” – Dale [16:21]
• On AI in Marketing:
  • “At SnapLogic, we call it augmented intelligence… This connection, human in the loop: we can be better because of it.” – Dale [25:15]
• On Changing Channels:
  • Nikki: “You can’t have gated pages anymore because you won’t be found.” [33:45]
  • “It’s not about our own thought leadership… it’s Reddit, YouTube, earned media, all of that.” [34:13]
• On Data:
  • Nikki: “Without data, it’s just another opinion.” [47:56]
  • Dale: “If you have access to data, it helps… I feel like you get the authority and respect if you build strategy based on data.” [46:23]
• On Retiring ‘Forum’ Communities:
  • Dale: “The forum-based community platforms are dead.” [52:44]
• On Role Titles:
  • Nikki: “I believe a Chief Marketing Officer and a Chief Customer Officer will become one… everyone’s job in an organization should be helping our customers succeed.” [73:22]
  • “How come marketing has an ‘-ing’?… Chief Revenue Officer, not Chief Selling Officer!” [74:44]
• On Work-Life Mix:
  • “I don’t think I ever actually… shut off. Having another marketer in the house can sometimes be harder because then I’m like, if I have something in my brain, I will ask her.” – Dale [61:27]

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Segment Timestamps

• 00:00–02:22: Dual careers, managing ambition, “backseat” myth
• 05:07–11:24: Cisco history, meeting story, influencer mentors
• 11:50–15:51: Family logistics, discipline at home vs work
• 15:51–19:20: Gender roles, industry expectations, community support
• 19:31–22:38: Parenting, career transitions, emotional side
• 23:18–31:26: Future of marketing, AI, “augmented intelligence”
• 31:26–37:42: Content, SEO to GEO, influencer credibility
• 50:16–56:26: Tech stack, community platform evolution
• 57:26–68:34: Collaboration, work-home boundaries, mutual feedback
• 68:59–74:44: Lightning round: budget, process vs people, “CMO” as a dying term
• 77:05–81:30: Would you want your kids to be in marketing?
• 81:47–end: Wrap-up, where to connect

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Episode Takeaways

• Two C-level careers can coexist, but it takes intentional communication, thoughtful timing, and support networks.
• Resist old gendered narratives—leadership and opportunity aren’t zero-sum.
• Tech marketing is entering the “Augmented Intelligence” era—embrace AI, but keep humans in the loop.
• Build marketing teams for the times: prioritize customer marketing, agile content, and actionable data.
• Titles are in flux—marketing may soon be synonymous with customer leadership.
• Even at home, high performers push each other—a little friction fosters growth.

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Connect with Nikki and Dale

• Both are available on LinkedIn.
• Dale also hosts his own podcast.

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[End of summary]

Transcript

[A]

Someone told Nikki, you both can have a career, but at some point, when one of you reaches C level or that kind of level of responsibility, one of you is going to have to take a backseat. One of you is going to have to step down. And it wasn't like one of you is going to have to be at home and work in the house, but it was, both of you can't have these type of careers.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

And I think at the time I was probably a little bit naive, but I'm like, screw that. And I think that has actually driven both of us. We're not competitive with each other, but there is a little bit of that spirit within us where we're always trying to improve and we push each other along. You can't both be looking for a new CMO gig at the same time. And then once you join a new company, it's very intense at the start until you get your grounding, your footing in that company. And what Nikki and I, I think have done a pretty good job with is as one of us has been like, I need to look for something new. It's the right time. The other one, I said, okay, then I'm not going to look or I'm going to take more of that backseat. We've never had to have the conversation where one of us has said, look, we just can't do this. The kids are amazingly flexible and we've relied on friends and family, but we've never had to say, one of us has to take a step down. We've kind of managed it through the last 10 or 15 years and at least had the right conversations about what I need to focus on. And that goes all the way down to calendars, planning the calendar. There's a lot more planning ahead you have to do. But, you know, it's not perfect. But for the most part, I think we've done okay.

[C]

What it does is your kids become independent and they've had to learn to step up and you take your same discipline that you do in coaching people for success at work and coaching your kids for success at home. So luckily, neither one of us have had to really say, I can't become a chief marketing officer because I have to do X. We make it work.

[B]

Yep.

[A]

We're in tech marketing. It's very male orientated and I've always been a massive advocate. There's a pressure on female leaders. Okay. If you have kids, you're the one that should be at home. And there's like this. I don't know if it's pressure or expectations, and I've never bought into that. You know, if Nikki had wanted to stay at home, great. But she didn't. And I feel like my job, not just as a partner, but as a marketing leader who recognizes talent. Like, you should go for it. You should have as much opportunity, and you should go for it.

[B]

Nikki, Dale, welcome to the show.

[C]

Thank you.

[A]

Thanks. Great to be here.

[B]

I'm very excited since it is a new format never before done in mission history. And I'm just very grateful that the two of you said yes to this. And we're about to see where it goes.

[A]

Yeah, let's hope we can actually get on better than we do. If we're trying to decide what the kids are going to do this weekend and who's going to drive them here, there, and everywhere, we'll see how it goes.

[C]

No, it's more about you wanting to golf and you saying, nikki, you need to do X, Y, and Z.

[B]

Well, these things we're definitely going to get into. I have a lot of questions later on the interview about how the two of you navigate both being sea levels and all that, because I think it's very fascinating. But first, I want to start with something fun. Nikki, if you were to describe Dale as a CMO in three words, what would you say?

[C]

Compassionate. What are you? Growth. And very patient.

[B]

Oh, that's good.

[C]

Because you have to be patient to be able to grow a company from like a million to 100 million, which he's done in the past. So, yeah, a lot of patience. And he's a Libra, so he's the stamp.

[B]

He's a Libra. Yes. First time in marketing history that someone is. Is pulling out that.

[A]

Pulling out the horoscope.

[B]

Yeah, yeah, I'm here for it. If anyone's listening to my content, they know I'm definitely here for that.

[A]

That's funny.

[B]

Okay, Dale, you're up.

[A]

I would say thoughtful, passionate. We're talking about work, right? Yeah.

[C]

Okay.

[B]

I mean, whatever you want.

[A]

I guess it actually applies to both. I would say thoughtful, passionate, and driven. I mean, just in general. I mean, I think one of the things that attracted me to Nikki when we worked together originally was just how she's like, you know, we got to get shit done. We got to. We got to. You know, we got to go. She's. She's. And I. And I see it. You know, I see it in. When she's had a. All the positions that she says she's. She's inspirational for that, actually.

[B]

So good. Look I have like, couples therapy going on on marketing trends, and I'm here for it.

[A]

I have a couch. I have a couch over. I can go lie down.

[B]

Just migrate. We'll go over to your couch.

[A]

Yeah, yeah.

[B]

Oh, so good. Well, I'm excited because we're definitely probably going to see threads of this throughout the interview and see how, you know, Dale shows up and Nikki shows up. But first I want to go back. I mean, you just mentioned when you all met at Cisco, so I want to go back down memory lane and hear more about where you both were. And then what did this meeting look like?

[A]

Okay, well, I'll start on this one and then Nikki, you can chime in. So we were both at Cisco Systems at the time, and I was in Europe. So I was part of the European field marketing team and Nikki was in corporate. We're in the same kind of division of Cisco and of course there's a massive time difference. So I get this call. I mean, there was no, I know I'm going to date myself here. There's no social media, right? There was no, like looking at people on LinkedIn. And I get this call from this random person saying, hey, I need your list of attendees from sale for sales kickoff. And I'm like, I'm gonna be English here. I'm like, who the hell is this bird calling me up, asking me for this random thing at 6pm on a Thursday? Now what Cisco did have was an internal directory where you could look people up. So I'm like, who the hell is this? So I looked her up and she was so cute. I'm like, hey, how can I help? I immediately called her back. I'm like, I'd never met her before. But then it kind of. Then we became colleagues. You know, we worked together for two or three years before I actually moved out to. To San Francisco with Cisco. They. I had a transfer with them, so. And then the relationship blossomed. But, you know, we were. We were colleagues first worked together, did a bunch of event type things, and then the rest is history. Right, Nick?

[C]

Yep.

[B]

Dale, what was your role there at Cisco at that time?

[A]

I was in the European field marketing team.

[B]

Okay, Nikki, now tell me any version or pieces that he forgot. And what was your role?

[C]

I was in services marketing. So I was in the corporate function of services marketing and he was in the field. So I think at the time I was doing marketing communications. Marcom, if you remember that way back when, and which is now more like integrated marketing, I think. But yeah, I had to call him And I looked him up in the director, like, oh, he's kind of cute. And. And then we were just. We were friends for years and we would always kind of like see each other and flirt, but there was no video. So it was always meeting place. Press 1 for. But it was called Meeting Place was the audio solution they used for conferencing. And it was back when like Justin Timberlake and Brittany were dating. And like, we always like, like would flirt with each other like that.

[B]

Yes.

[A]

Can't believe you're gonna say that on the pod on the podcast. I mean, come on, it sounds great. Don't tell them everything.

[B]

No censoring.

[C]

No, but it was funny because it's like we were doing these marketing off sites around the world in Rome and Vancouver, and we'd really flirt with each other and um, and we didn't think people like, knew it. And you know, I was in my mid-20s and apparently they did.

[A]

Everyone, everyone knew it. Everyone knew it.

[B]

Yeah. Oh, that's, that's awesome. And how long were you all at Cisco together and then what did it look like when you both decided to branch off?

[C]

Yeah, I was there 12 years and I don't know how long Dale was there.

[A]

Nine years total.

[C]

And then when he moved over, so his boss Carl Mulama brought him over. Carl became head of channel for services and moved to the States and brought over Dale. He was one of his key hires. So once Dale moved over to corporate services marketing, that's when I decided exit stage.

[A]

Right.

[C]

Like we can't be both in the same team. And that's when I moved to was it analyst relations. I was trying to decide between public relations and anal relations. And I really enjoyed working with like Gartners, the Foresters, the world and moved over to an relations.

[A]

Yeah, I did. I did three years in, in Europe for Cisco and then, you know, moving to, moving to another country and moving to corporate. Actually, it felt like it was a completely different gig. It was, it felt to me like a different company. It was still called Cisco, but it was a completely different company. So I stayed for another six years, did different things, you know, moved into one of the business units, finished doing product marketing and then, you know, from that point, the. Actually one of our great other CMO friends of ours, a guy called Ben Gibson, I worked for him at the last gig and then he joined Aruba Networks and then he brought me over to Aruba Network. So eventually, you know, we left and you know, moved on from that. But it was, was a good run. It was I felt like someone described Cisco as, you know, as a young marketer. Someone described it as like it's actually like being in college. There's so many support pieces, you learn so much, there's so many other people around that you can call on and then you know, when you get the opportunity, then you graduate and you leave Cisco and then you go and try and do that in your, in the next gig to try and you know, take all the things that you've learned from that time at Cisco. But it was a great grounding for, for me, for both of us.

[C]

And if you think about Cisco back in the early 2000s, like 2020, like that era it was Cisco was to the tech industry maybe what like Salesforce or Meta is today. I mean it was networking. Like people were trying to figure out how to communicate via this thing called the network with routing and switching. And so all the talent was there and we were young marketers and working with these like this amazing talent like we still keep in touch with like Blair Christie. You've probably know Blair Christie, Stephanie, right. She was CMO of Cisco, started her own company and blah blah, blah. Melissa Selker, she was my direct boss. She went on to be the chief communications officer at Cisco and then went over to LinkedIn and she started out as brand and then their chief marketing officer most recently. So all these just like really inspiring people. Cara Wilson, you know Cara is 8 time CMO now. She's no longer an operator but sits on 10 boards and she's someone I'm lucky enough to call a friend and you know, she mentors me. Ben Gibson. So many people. I shouldn't list names because you're going.

[A]

To leave someone else, you're going to miss someone else.

[C]

Yeah, but it was great. Yeah.

[B]

Wow. Okay. So during this time period when you all were leaving Cisco, exploring other paths. I think Dale, you mentioned that someone told you at one point like you two are going out and exploring, you know, probably a CMO role or these sea level C level roles and one of you is going to have to take a back seat. And so just keep that in mind as you progress through your career. Tell me more about that and then how you have thought about that throughout the years.

[A]

You know it was so it's actually someone that told and I'm not going to mention who it was, but it was someone told Nikki. Like you know, you both can have a career but at some point when one of you reaches C level or you know that kind of level of responsibility, one of you is going to have to take a backseat. One of you is going to have to, like, step down or, you know, and it wasn't like one of you is going to have to be at home and be, you know, work, work in the house. But it was. Both of you can't have these type of careers. And I think at the time I was probably a little bit naive, but I'm like, screw that. There is no way we can have it all those kind of things. And I think that has actually driven both of us. I think we're not competitive with each other, but we. We do. There is a little bit of that spirit within us where we're always trying to improve and we. And we push each other along. I think what we've realized, though, is there are times where one. One of the careers, for example, you can't both be looking for a new CMO gig at the same time. And then once you join a new company, you have this, you know, you're trying to get to know the team, you're going out on listening tours and really understanding where the business is. You're meeting with customers. Like, it's very intense at the start until you get your grounding, your footing in that company. And what Nikki and I, I think, have done a pretty good job with is as one of us has been like, okay, I need to trans, you know, I need to look for something new. It's the right time. The other one has said, okay, then know I'm not going to look or I'm going to take more of that backseat. And I think that's where we've never. We've never had the convers. We've never had to have the conversation where one of us has said, look, we just can't do this. We. And now there's a lot of challenges with that. There's a lot of things we've had to do. There's, you know, things we have to do. The. The kids are amazingly flexible now in terms of, you know, our daughter drives our son to school because that helps us. If we have calls and we've relied on friends and family, we've never had to, at this point, say one of us has to take a step down. But we've tried. We've kind of managed it through the last, you know, 10 or 15 years and at least had the right conversations about who should be, you know, like, what I need to focus on. And that. That goes all the way down to if it's, you know, calendars, planning the calendar, not just the family calendar. But, you know, we have to make sure that if one of us has a trip abroad for. For work, it's got to be on the home calendar. We got to talk about it six weeks ahead of time. We got to make sure we have coverage.

[C]

Like, the EA knows to put it on Dale's calendar.

[A]

Yeah. It's like those are things you have to. There's just. It feels like there's a lot more planning ahead you have to do. But, you know, it's not perfect. But for the most part, I think we've done okay.

[C]

But, you know, I think what it's done. Um, so Sheila Jordan, I think she's still at Honeywell. She was the CTO or CIO at Honeywell. I worked with her at Cisco. Another great leader. She wrote a book called Working Moms can have It All. And it's so true. Like, you know, you can have your career and help grow your team and. And what it does. And if your husband's working as well, what it does is your kids become independent and they've had to learn to step up and you take your same discipline that you do and coaching people for success at work and coaching your kids for success at home. And, you know, hand in heart, like, you know, I feel so blessed that the kids are just like good kids and they're independent and they understand consequences and you put out. You get out what you put in. Just all the lessons you learn at work. Yeah. So luckily, neither one of us have had to really say, I can't become a chief marketing officer because I have to do X and we make it work.

[A]

I also think it's a little bit, you know, we live. I mean, we're in tech marketing. It's very male orientated and I've always been a massive advocate. There's, like, there's a pressure on female leaders to, okay, if you have kids, you're the one that should be at home. Or. And there's like this. I don't know if it's pressure or expectations, and I've never bought into that. You know, if Nikki had wanted to stay at home, great, but she didn't. And I feel like my job as, not just as a partner, but as a. As a marketing leader who recognizes talent. Like, no, don't. Like, you should go for it. You. You should have as much opportunity and you should go for it. And, you know, if, you know, if she ended up being, you know, I would. I would absolutely. If I would have had to, I would have stepped back if she'd have got to a position where we just couldn't make it work because it's not. It's. It shouldn't be gender related. It should just be, you know, like, who's. Who's actually, you know, bringing in the bacon, as it were.

[B]

Yeah. No, I mean, I love this conversation because I feel like this is something that a lot of people aren't talking about right now. But, I mean, high performers attract high performers, and a lot of women are stepping into these leadership roles more now than. Like, more than ever now than we've seen in the past. And so figuring out this balance. And, I mean, I know. I personally also have never thought, okay, I better take, you know, a step back and just let my husband shine. And so I. It would have been hard for me to hear that and be like, yeah, you're just not my people, because I still have ambition, and I don't want to dim my light. And I. I like this. Like, I'm not doing it because I have to. I'm doing it because I'm choosing to. So I think it's fun seeing how you all have figured this out. And I think it also pulls at the power of community, something that we've lost that back in the day, many people raised your children, not just two, and you had family and friends, and it was a very normal thing. And hopefully there's a movement to getting back to that. I know you guys are a little past it now, but for people with young kids, like, finding that community and also relying on people and knowing you don't have to do it all as parents by yourself.

[C]

And it's cyclical. I mean, it's ebbs and flows. Right. Sometimes we can step in and help others. There's times where we're both at customer events. Mine's in London, his is in New York. And we're like, okay, friends need. I need help. It takes a village, and everyone just steps up, which is awesome.

[A]

I have a. There's a very talented marketer that works for me right now, and his wife is very successful in real estate, and he's been working very hard here for four or five years. And he is at the same, you know, position, but he's conflicted about, you know, should he be at home a little bit more? Again, his wife is very successful. And he. Actually, we. I've talked to him about how we. Nicky and I, have managed these situations, and I'm encouraging him. I. You know, he's ready to be a cmo. He will be on one of These podcasts at some point, and he's, you know, he's ready to be a cmo, and I keep encouraging him. I think, you know, now's the right time. There's the things you have to do, and there's always compromises, but you can, you know, you can have it all. You know, you can make it work no matter. No matter who you are. And I think, you know, you just have to. If you've got a good partner at home in your relationship, I think you can. You can definitely make it work.

[C]

And I think there's times where, like, you to your point, Dale, about Tim. Whoops. I don't know if I.

[A]

His name's Tim White. He's very talented. He's going to be a good.

[C]

Talented.

[A]

Yeah, yeah.

[B]

We can also cut this out if you don't want that.

[A]

No, no, it's fine. He will appreciate that. He'll probably, you know, like, I'm going to send that to a prospective employer.

[C]

But I, you know, I was the same. I first became a VP and the kids were one in four, and I'm like, oh, my gosh, how am I going to do? And. And I was switching companies. I went to Polycom, and. And what I learned is the best time to do it is when the kids are that young. And then you can lean in a lot more because guess what? They don't really miss you that much. As long as they have toys and they have this and they have that and they have food, it's when they get a little bit older. I actually had to make a decision my two companies ago. Love the company, love the leader. I was there three years, built the team, and it was just. It was Renton or peak driving, you know, a lot of pipeline, meeting with customers. Just loved it. But I was traveling 80% of the time, and my daughter was going to be a sophomore in high school, and I'm like, wow, I have three more years left and then she's going to go off to university. So I made the decision at that point, even though I love the team and we. We built so much together. My boss was amazing. Jonathan Cherke, Content Square. He's still amazing. I made the decision time to leave. So I think it just depends, right? And I found a job closer to home, five minutes from home, so I could be there for the kids. But when they were young, one in four, they didn't miss me. If I was traveling to Paris and London and New York, they barely knew it, Right. Or leaving to go to Cisco at 5:30am so I'd miss the traffic.

[A]

Now, I'm gonna. I'm gonna add something to this, though. Nikki's. That's very true. And I think in. As you get older now, in hindsight, I think you see it that way. What I will tell you is, at the time, going through that as a mother, it was really hard for her to be away. And this is where I. I also completely understand and appreciate why people don't want to work. And I'm not saying you should work or you shouldn't. Everyone. It's their personal situation, but the wrench on Nikki's heart when she had to leave and when she was away and when she came back. And again, I think there was a little bit more of that, I think from a mother's side, because it's a little bit. Because you carry the baby for all that period of time, there's a little bit of a different connection. But it was hard. And we've had moments where she was traveling when they were younger or even when. Even when you're at Content Square, where you just, you know, you're upset because you miss the family so much and it's hard to be away. So there's no easy answer. And it is, you know, it's all about compromise and keeping communications and so on. But it's, you know, I respect. I respect everyone. Whichever. Whichever position I'm not. I'm not on here saying, no, everyone should just keep working. You know, the kids will be fine. They're resilient.

[B]

There's the tldr is do whatever you want. Whatever feels good to you.

[A]

Yes, precisely.

[B]

Yeah. Okay. All right. So I want to get into some marketing and how we're thinking about marketing, and I'm going to position it going into 2026, because I just feel like we're entering into a very different era. Nikki, you and I were talking, you know, before Dale hopped on about GEO and SEO and the changing world. And then, Dale, I'm sure you have a lot to share, too, but I'd love to hear from each of you going into 2026, how are you thinking about. Maybe, Dale, I'll start with you first. How are you thinking about marketing and, like, the work that you're doing at snaplogic and just the environment, like, what's changing? What's different? What are you experimenting with?

[A]

Well, I think the only. The only constant in life is. Is really change and style. Style and constant is the only constant. You know, I think the changes that we're seeing in just in general with how we operate on a daily basis is immense in the marketing realm, I think, I actually think a lot of marketers are more predominantly ahead of the innovation curve. And I don't mean, I don't mean we're the smartest people in the company to use some of this technology, but I do think, you know, when the first LLMs came out, marketers were all over it. They were like, okay, now I'm going to figure out like, this is going to help me create better emails for the sales team. This is going to help me, you know, you know, create more blogs for, you know, for my company that I put out, that I post on LinkedIn. So we're all over it. I don't think any of us truly anticipated just how big the impact could be, not just on the work that we do, but in the markets we serve, the customers that we're, we're trying to reach and, and portray. So I think the, going into 2026, I think that it's still going to be very heavily about trying new things, trying, you know, try, you know, try and be innovative. Look at every part of your business where you think you might be able to leverage some of the, some of the capabilities and the technology that's out there. There is, I don't believe there is any part of our role in marketing that we can't be more efficient using some of the technology, AI or LLMs or agents and all those things. That being said, I'm also happy that some of the, some of the initial doom and gloom around we're all going to lose our jobs and so on. I think that there's still an element of, you know, what's it going to mean for employment. But there's definitely, you know, we, we use this term at snaplogic Augmented intelligence. So it's, it's not we're doing everything ourselves and it's not we're being replaced by AI, but augmented intelligence is. This connection is like, you'll hear the phrase human in the loop. It's this concept of we can be better because of it. So I think, you know, what I'm tasking my team with is thinking about it that way. And I actually put a bounty. We did our last QBR and I said to the team, I will give a bonus. It's $500, it's nominal, right? I will give everyone a $500 bonus if you can come to me and show I'm using this AI tool or I'm using this LLM or we're creating this Agent, I'll give you $500 if you can show how it is materially impacting you to be, you know, you know, better, more efficient, more capable, what are you learning? That kind of thing. And. And everyone's like, yeah, let's do it. This is absolutely right. This is exactly so. So they're super excited. So I think going into 26 is really about, you know, keep, keep. I think, again, marketers, I feel like they try and be more innovative, I would say try new things go out and, you know, see what, what this new technology can, can do for you. I think you'll be surprised. And I don't think, don't think it's about replacing people. I think it's about, you know, how can you be better serve the customer, better serve your business, all those kind of things.

[B]

Yeah, I love that. Okay, before I move to Nikki, I have two more questions to dig a little deeper. When you say that you want people to be experimenting, what's an experiment you're running right now that's a bit contrarian, where people are maybe pushing back and they're like, dale, that's not going to work. But you're like, more people should be trying this. This is awesome. And what is a project someone submitted to you that you were actually surprised and you're like, that's pretty good.

[A]

It's actually the same thing. It's about how we support the sales development team. So I think sdr, right? These are the people that on the front line, they're trying to cold call, they're sending. These are the emails you get. And it's one of the hardest jobs. I think they also sit at the, you know, they're not a silo, but they have one of the hardest jobs because they're supposed to work with AES to generate interest, to open up accounts that they're targeting. They have to understand all the pieces of marketing and what's coming out and what they can leverage. And they're supposed to drive to shows, you know, drive to some of the activities. So one of the things that, with the SDR team, they're building a. It's an agent that basically automates a lot of the account research that they, that they do. So there are tools out there I'm not going to name. There are tools out there that help to enrich data, but the emphasis then is still on the SDR to take all that, build it into a plan, work with AES, give that feedback to marketing. And I think that when we talked about, like, could we Is there something here that we could automate? I think there was a little bit of reticence thinking, no, you can't do that because how, you know, how you know it's the right information, how are you going to make sure that, you know, it's the right target, the right Persona? But you know, the, our Amir SDR team working with them, they're, they built, literally, it's an agent that they've built using an LLM where they can type in who they're targeting, the company, potentially names, and then the agent goes, not only pulls all the research together, but aggregates it into what they're trying to do. So for example, if we say it's, you know, we're trying to say a seller employee onboarding workflow, that sounds real and that's what snaplogic does, by the way. So it's, I'm not going to go into details because it can get a little bit technical, but you can be very specific now with the company, the target, it will do research on the. If the company's a public company, will look at all their filings, it will tell you what their key. Because they, they talk about their top 10 IT initiatives, right? It's like it's all out there. But the amount of time it takes for someone to pull that together and create something that's more meaningful to a, to a target, it's taken forever. So now and again, I think, I think at the time we were talking to them about this and how they were going to use was like, no, it's not going to work. Some of it's proprietary. It can't, you know, can't go to all these places. And then of course, you have all your internal data. You've got your, you know, the internal tools you use, you've got your CRM, you've got all the marketo that you've, you know, outreach them in the past. But it's. Again, I think this was one of those where the initial idea was, yeah, that sounds like, I don't, I'm not sure that's going to work. And we're actually seeing, seeing a fair bit of success because of it. So I don't, I think there was. The contrarians were probably people who didn't think it would actually bring back anything meaningful. But the sales, the, the sales team are using it. And again, if they're, this is the human in the loop part. We're not automating all the outreach pieces. So it's not like now AI is doing all the outreach it's still the SDR team. They're still making cold calls, but now when they make the call, if they get a person, if they have a response to an email, it's generally better targeted and the response rates are going up significantly because of it.

[B]

Yep. Man. Epic. Okay. I want that for my own personal needs. I tried to build this myself one time in ChatGPT and it was hard of trying to pull from the sources. So that's amazing. Okay, Nikki, your turn. I want to hear. So that was Dale talking about his, you know, view of 2026 in the world of marketing. Now I want to hear from you, like what are your thoughts? What are you seeing right now?

[C]

As I do like org design and I think of like, you know, different roles that you hire immediately when you start a new gig to make sure you have, you know, what you need. I always start it with kind of the same. It was like customer marketing and that's still like the top one. I look at that because when you have the customer marketing role, you can help to retain the base and expand within the base and make sure they're happy and you're lt. I'm just all the good stuff for the nrr. But the second one changed and this was actually because content is so important when it comes to geo. Like I never really. I think my second hire now would be a super strong corporate marketing leader. And I know that's a kind of a cop out because corporate marketing is broad. But within corporate marketing, because like when you look at geo, because what happened to us is, you know, we were SEO. SEO. SEO, SEO. Marketing contribution to pipeline increased 5% over two years from 36% to 41% of the mix. Reduced the cost for opportunity 19%. Amazing. But all of a sudden like what Dale said, right? You have people starting to search and ask questions on these LLMs and people are not even coming to your website anymore. It's no longer about the, you know, you know all about this and. But what drives it is the right content from trusted sources. It's no longer our own thought leadership. It's no longer our own blogs. But what are people doing or insane in Reddit? What about on YouTube? What about. It's so funny. Like you used to always think about strong backlinks. This was like mid 2000. I remember when search like started like long like 2000, 2, 2, 3, 4, 5, something like that. And you're like, you have to have a strong backlink strategy from a trusted authoritative person. And. And we're. It seems like we're back to there. It's like focusing. So within corporate marketing you have content. So your content strategy needs to completely change from what it was in the past before it was like, who thinks content is king? Well, conversion's ace and you need to make sure you have a gated page and it converts. You can't have gated pages anymore because you won't be found. Right. And then the Gartners, the Foresters, the idcs, those industry analysts or even independents like Aragon Research, they are like a bunch of ex gartner alum, like 10 of them or something. Right. So they have a high authority when it comes to LLMs and reasoning and who I've tested, I've searched and different tools.

[B]

So you've seen Gartner and those sources. Because that's actually a question I've had. Is these more pay to play? This is a very, maybe I might throw too much shade here, but like the pay to play sources that, you know, people are paying to get in, I wonder if they're eventually not going to be showing up in LLM results because they're like, I'd rather trust someone on Reddit talking about that's a great CRM than Gartner putting me in a magic quad quadrant thing.

[C]

Well, there's some pay to play influencers that. So it's funny, analysts, industry analysts have been around for a very, very long time and their revenue is like extremely. Well, like Gartner has double digit growth in all three revenue streams, which is consulting, events and research. But then all of a sudden influencer marketing became a thing where these independents who felt as though it was who has the most followers. But how do you know if they're real followers or if they get paid for it?

[B]

That too.

[C]

Right. So these kind of like talking heads, right? Squeaky. But they don't have a lot of, you know, credibility because maybe they don't have the right insights. They're not talking to customers, they're not talking to vendors. Sheila McGee Smith, she's an independent vendor but she's constantly talking to vendors. So when she's giving you her point of view, you know, it's trust it. Mirabel Lopez, she's ex forester, she's independent, but she's always on Yahoo Finance or Bloomberg. So these LLMs are looking to scrape from the Bloomberg, the Yahoo Finance. So it's no longer, I think we're seeing a shift away from the independent talking heads without trusted authority, if you will. Independents are still important as long as they have a platform that's trusted like a Yahoo Finance or Bloomberg or like a Sheila McGee Smith. You know, she's at Dreamforce this week, so, you know, Salesforce will be talking about her. So that elevates her authority. Right. Dale wants to say something. I can tell.

[A]

No, no, I'll let you. I know you're doing your 2026 thing, but to answer your question about Gartner Magic Quadrants, I think what Nikki said is a prime example of if an analyst gets quoted on a Bloomberg that now adds a level of credibility beyond what you would think what a Gartner Magic quadrant would be. So I don't think the. And there's a lot of talk about this, like, is the analyst world, is it a high? It's just a race to the bottom? I don't think it is. But I think what we've used in the past, like my MQs, to make purchase decisions and to drive influence, I think the analysts will still potentially be important, but how they get to us and how they influence is going to slightly shift. I'm not saying the mq. I'm certainly not going to go on this podcast and say the Gartner MQ is dying because I have a lot.

[B]

Ah, now he's canceled. There goes Dale. He's not a CMO anymore.

[A]

Yeah, wait till, wait till I'm filling in the next Gartner rfi. My analyst is going to remember this, this podcast. Well, I do this. No, but I think the analysts will be important. I think that. And they will start to find other ways to, you know, maintain that relevancy. But I think that is another example of as the world changes, so does how we, you know, how we see information, how we trying to put information out there and. And how other people consume it.

[C]

So anyway, it's only because of what's feeding the LLMs, right? I mean, what feeds them and makes you discoverable is quality, not quantity. We moved to this world of quantity years ago where you had like all these talking heads and I have this many followers, but who cares? Are they even real, right? I mean, God, so many folks. You wonder, okay, how do you have that many when you have like engagement of three on this post?

[B]

To me, that's going to be a world that dies very quickly of just, are these real or not? Because it is so obvious. It's such a clear metrics of, oh my gosh, you have 10 billion followers and one, like on your post. Like, it's so obvious. I'm like, I think in the future models Will look at that and they'll be able to pull in. Okay, let me look at the data of how this person's showing up online. And are they a trusted authority? Nikki, like you said, like, I'm sure if Bloom Bloomberg is featuring someone, they've probably done deep research. That person is probably a good thought leader versus someone on LinkedIn, you know, saying they're, let's just say a CEO of some random company. And then they have a tons of followers but no engagement and no one really knows them. Like, I think that world will be gone very quickly because of how easy it is to analyze things and pull data in and, yeah. Pull metrics on people.

[C]

Yeah. And it comes to the quality. I mean, it's, you know, in the past it was subjective. It's like, ooh, who's quality and who's not? Like, there's an anal. Another analyst, Cravala, he came from Yankee Group. And then when John Chambers was leaving Cisco, I mean, John, we all know John, he's like, what is like of his era, he was like, what Marc Benioff is. And he left Zia a voicemail saying, thank you for all these years of guidance and advice. But that's like behind the scenes. I. He played it for me. Zias did. But, you know, people would say, how much value does he bring? Because you didn't have. It was more subjective. But now when you with the LLMs, you could do a search and see because he's quoted in these earned media publications, often he's quoted high value. Right. So I think if the North Star is growth, and that's usually my always my North Star, like, what will help a company grow? You have to figure out the mix. I always say, always, always, always. Marketing is definitely like, like, you're a chef, you're Thomas Keller, or you're. Who's the guy you like? Dale English Jamie Oliver. You open up your fridge and you're like, okay, what do I have today? Right? And it's a mix of things. It's not just one thing. So to achieve that North Star of growth, you always have to keep your pulse on what is now driving demand. Things have changed. It's content, it's industry analysts with high credibility or influence, like independence with high credibility. It's. I never thought about it, Stephanie, until I listened to your top five thing, the podcast. If you got whoever's listening, go listen to it. I spent like an hour yesterday listening to it. But it's like people on Reddit and. And then you need the tools to be able to like as a cmo, we've always had to cobble together. You're like, okay, what is the industry analyst sentiment? What's the financial analyst sentiment? I would go to Blue Shirt Group. What is our channel partner sentiment? What is the earned media? And I would have to then give it to my ops person. They would create a domo dashboard. But there are other tools out there that I've just discovered. There's other tools out there that will pull it all together for you. Like brandwatch being one of them where you can actually see everything. Super cool. So I think my prediction for 2026, the org chart will change a bit. Different things will be higher importance. Definitely customer marketing, always my first hire because that's retention within the base and helping them to be super satisfied with your solution. But number two, corporate marketing because of the ar, PR and content. And then finally demand gen. Always still demand gen. And operations. Operations. Oh, that's a whole nother webinar.

[B]

Yep. Dale's looking a little antsy over there. Is there anything that you heard that you're not sure about?

[C]

Are you getting bored with me, Dale? My voice, because I'm your wife.

[B]

Hear this every day at 5pm p.m. over our chicken and sweet potatoes.

[A]

If she talked to me one more time about geo. No, no, look, I think this is where, you know, she, you know, again, I think what Nikki just highlighted in the hires that, you know, she would focus on, if you do that, you can't go, you can't go too far wrong. I think the blessing and the curse of being in this type of leadership position for this type of function is I don't think you're ever really comfortable with your marketing strategy ever. Yeah, I think, you know, I use the, I used to talk about like, it's like being in a, you know, the space shuttle or an airplane. There's so many buttons and knobs and dials and levers. And I think the big challenge to be in marketing is you're constantly moving things around. You've got to look at all of them at once. And you know, something that worked six months ago, now that's not working anymore. And you've got to really look at it. I think whilst I say I think being an SDR is one of the hardest jobs in the enterprise as a marketing leader, the amount of things you have to be responsible for and really think about, you've got to look at brand and reputation. You've got to look at now new, these new tools and how you know is if SEO is dropping. How do we start appealing to LLMs? You got to help on customer retention and customer events and, and webinars and do you run a community and what's your social media strategy and which digital channels are working. And by the way, did you talk to the analysts again last month?

[C]

Like, you have to be right brain and left brain at the same time.

[A]

The amount of functions and the difference in thinking, I think is, has always been a challenge for marketing. And I do believe again, that some of these tools that we have now, some of the things that are coming, are going to help us spend less time pulling in the information so we can actually do more on the, on the insights and action. I mean, I don't need another dashboard and I think you're seeing a lot of companies out there that they're not, not struggling. But like, if you're a company that just basically just does dashboards, guess what? No one needs any more of that. What they need is some real insights and then how to take action.

[C]

Well, if your dashboard could be agentic, right. And if it can take action, if you set it up and you program it with the what if statements, if someone says this, respond like this from a brand perspective and then if you have trust and governance to make sure that it's actually, you know, the adhering to the content context that you put in Dale, then it could be good to have that dashboard.

[A]

I agree, I agree. But what you're talking about is building an agent on top of a dashboard. If you just, if you're a dashboard company, and I'm not going to mention them, but like, if you're, if that's what you do, like, you better have some kind of.

[C]

They have to take action.

[A]

They have to, they have to have something now that, that is going to help people take action because just the passive looking at things, sure, those, those days are gone. Those days are gone. Those companies won't exist.

[B]

That's a theme that I've heard throughout this show is. But it's interesting because I think CMOs are on different sides. Some of them are just more metrics, more dashboards. Like now we have so much more data. It's exciting. Then I fall into. I really just like to trust my intuition and get into my customer's head and meet them and feel them and then build something great. And then, you know, you've got Nikki over here talking about agentic dashboards and taking actions and I wonder, yeah. What the right call is knowing that we will have more data than ever. But then Dale, like you said, at a certain point you just have so many numbers in front of you, it's probably, maybe less helpful unless you've built out rules to say once you see all these 20 things happening, then yes, move forward. But until then, like, yeah, I just, it's an interesting balance thinking about these worlds.

[A]

I think part of that, part of the marketer's dilemma is we're, we're always it, we're held accountable to many things. And because marketing, everyone thinks they can do it because it's like, oh, it's just how you look or it's just a thing that you say. I think, I think, you know, the marketers that, that I've talked to and there's some really talented marketers out there that are doing some great work on, you know, using data. But we feel, I think as a marketer, if you have access to data, it helps to not justify what you're doing. But I feel like it's one of those roles where you get the authority and respect if you use the data behind the scenes. Which is why I think we always, we're always trying to look at it because I feel like it's one of those roles. We're always questioned on why we made a decision. And I feel like that's why data is super important. I know it is to Nikki, it is to me because you have to say, with the data I have at the moment I made this decision, did it turn out to be right? You know, we'll see. We can change the strategy. But it's like if sales go into a deal and they pitch something, no one says, well, why did you pitch it? They're like, they don't have to prove the data behind that. They just said, well, the customer said this, so I did it this way. It's not one of those roles that you have to show all these little minutiae, you know, minutiae, pieces of data. That's why you made this decision. So I just feel like you get the authority and respect in this role if you build a lot of this strategy based on the data.

[C]

Well, it's more than just why did you make the decision, but understanding all of the impacts to move the customer through the journey, like all the touch points, I really, really, really wish. And Stephanie, if you know of one, let me know. But an amazing multi touch campaign attribution, like, you know, there's first touch, there's last touch, and I mean there's. So that's why I said like the third hire would be no one can.

[B]

See him right now hanging himself. Carry on, Nikki. Just a little dramatic over there.

[C]

Like, the third hire would be the operations because there's so much data now. And if your North Star is growth, like I always say, without data, it's just another opinion. And I learned that at Content Square because they're an analytics company. So it was all about data. And you can't argue data, but it also guides you of where to invest, where to double down, triple down, quadruple down. Right. Where to pull back from. I love data.

[B]

Yeah, I like the differences here, by the way. This is awesome.

[A]

Yeah, yeah, but no, but you just prove the point. It's like you have the data, right? And if you have that, you can make the right decisions. Whether it's. Whether you're building an agent to take some action based on the data that it sees or you're still analyzing it. Again, it's still amazing to me. Sometimes you talk to certain groups of marketers and they're not looking at all the data points to make decisions. And it's like, yeah, they struggle in their role or they struggle having the right conversation, having a seat at the table with the CEO because they're not using data. Everyone has to.

[C]

And even with brand, like, brand used to be this squishy, soft thing, people are like, how do you measure it? I had a CEO that was super numeric. His name is Peter Leaf. And if there was one wrong data point on a slide of, like, a thousand numbers, he could figure it out. So I learned early on, like, you have to be able to measure everything. So, like, everything you can be able to measure as long, too. That was a mistake I made one time I didn't do before and after where I didn't measure the perception, like, before the campaign. And then you put it in market and see where it performed. A quarter, six months, three quarters. So then I didn't have the compare. I'll never do that again. But you can measure everything, whether or not it's ADA awareness, unaided awareness, what you think you're known for. Then you take that and you're like, okay, we thought we were known for X, but we're not. Ease of use. Let's say that was one. At Polycom, we weren't known for that according to our icp, in our target, in our top verticals. So we had to adjust. Right. So, yeah, data is great because it gives you a ton of information to be able to do something with.

[B]

All right, so I want to pull in my producer, Matt. He's been listening to the conversation the whole time and he has some burning questions that he wants to ask. Matt, take it away.

[D]

Burning questions. So, Dale, you mentioned going into 2026 marketers, the importance of technology and are there any specific tools that you would recommend for a marketer that they need to add to their tech stack now to make sure that they're successful going into 2026? Maybe outside of necessarily using LLMs in that whole world. But any specific tools that you would drill down on?

[A]

Yeah, there's. So there's something that, you know, Nikki said around the hire that she had that she would focus on and this is the. Around the customer marketing. And I feel like whilst we all as marketers, we all talk about understanding the customer journey, I feel like there's still there isn't something out there that really gets you that close to the customers that is, you know, tool based. And what I mean by that is, you know, I think the biggest oxymoron in tech is when Salesforce launched Customer360. I'm sorry, but CRM is not Customer360. I cannot find anything on as useful in my Salesforce. Right. And that's. Okay, that's a little bit of an exaggeration. But customer, I mean they just launch, you know, they just launch Agent Force 360 and like Benioff's the best marketer out there hands down. But the whole point of really understanding the customer and the customer journey, as Nikki said, it's crucial technology wise. I think that, you know, I was at a company called Lithium and one of the best experiences of my life. You know, I work for. It was actually working for a woman called Katie, Katie Keim. She was the best CMO that I worked for. Led with such heart but also very creative and so on and this. But this company was. Was a community software originally and it was, you know, forum based ideation, Q and A, those kind of things. And I think that in. In 2026 and we have a. We actually have one of their. One of a forum based community. And I hate to say it, but I think that technology, that platform is. Is dead.

[C]

Why? So like you said that and I'm.

[B]

And restate that. Yeah, restate that in a sentence, Dale, just so we can use that as a clip of like community forums are dead and just like get it.

[A]

Okay. Yeah, yeah. I don't know. It's not, you know, I'm sure if someone listens to this they're going to like, oh, they're also dramatic with that I honestly believe that the, and I was at a company for five years that did this. The forum based community platforms are dead and there's a bunch of reasons for that. And we are, we are going to migrate from our forum based community platform to something new. And I'll kind of get, I'll tell you why it's. Nikki, to your question. I'll tell you why it's dead. I think because in the past, used to have, you know, your company would engage in these forums, customers would answer questions, customers would ask questions, people would come on and provide answers. And then another expert, some industry may weigh in, but that whole process could take a day, two days for you to get an answer to your question. Who out there now is waiting a day to get an answer to a question? And I just, I just don't think people want to hang around that long. Now I'm not saying LLM search is the be all and end all because we know some of those, there's some hallucinations and so on. So I'm not saying that is the pure answer. But what we're looking at here and what we're going to launch probably end of this year into next year is a front end to a community that will probably be based more on a Slack type community.

[C]

I was about to ask you that.

[A]

Yeah, yeah. Like now again, I'm not, I know everyone doesn't use, doesn't use Slack and you know, I'm not again saying everyone should go out and buy it. But if you can have this similar interface that you expect from a community which is, you know, it's, you know, no, you know, trying to keep a track of Slack is a nightmare too. By the way, how many, you know, red lights do I have pop up? But if you can have the ins, if you can put a front facade on it and actually don't remember the name of the company, but my customer marketing person is looking at this, you can put a facade on it, but behind the scenes it's basically a Slack community and it's a way that you can tag people in your company and they're going to get immediate responses because we're all on that tool every day. We're not logging into a separate community. You can also have custody, you can have external communities where you invite customers to be part of it. I'm actually, I've, I have no clue if this is actually going to be a better experience. But I do know the thing that we hear from customers is they don't want to wait. You know, if you can't answer, if you don't have like a hundred people like, looking at those questions and answering them, they're going to go to another source. And it pains me because I did five years at this company and I love this thing, but it's like things have changed.

[C]

It's not dead. Right. It's just evolving. Right.

[A]

Community is not dead because they still.

[C]

Want, like, our CAB members. At my last company, we use Slack and they loved it because they knew each other. They knew each, like, each other's birthdays and what they struggled with and anniversaries and they loved getting ideas from their peers versus just this LLM. And then you're like, is it hallucinating? Like, you know, we're still, you know, struggling with that. So it's. Community itself is not dead. Just the traditional sense of the.

[A]

But the forum, the forum type, software and platform will not exist in its current shape or form. You know, I just, I don't think anyone's out there asking those questions about forums.

[B]

You think of, like, Adobe.

[C]

Yeah.

[B]

And you always go there and find a question and there's no answer. And you're like, what the. I just spent five minutes looking for my answer and it said it had an answer. And everyone actually was on the forum saying they all didn't know. And they were all also looking for an answer. I'm like, all right. That was exactly. Oh, man. All right, Matt, what else you got for us?

[D]

Yeah, okay, so send something Nikki's way. Okay. Yes. So, Nikki, you mentioned. Well, one of you mentioned early on that you guys are not competitive with each other in your, in your marketing strategies. But has there been a time. Oh, I see, I see. Yeah. Dale's ready. Has there been a time where one of you caused the other to pivot what they originally thought was going to work or an idea they had? And then Nikki, you came in and said, I think you might be looking at this the wrong way, Dale, or be approaching. Approaching this in the wrong way. What if you tried this?

[C]

The only thing that comes to mind, you know, I. So Dale, I definitely tap into him for his, like, creative sensibility and what will resonate with audiences. He has always said. And am I allowed to share this, Dale, if he wasn't a marketer. Yeah, if he wasn't a marketer, he would have went to school to become like a psychiatrist or something. And understanding.

[A]

I didn't know where you were. I didn't know where you were going to go there. So, yes, you could share that because.

[C]

He like he really understand, he's passionate about people and the message resonating with the audience. So I tend to run things by him that like when you work with an agency and you're looking to reach reposition a company you have to develop what is your point of view? What is your point of view based as for that company based off of the competitors out there and how it stands out and is differentiated. And usually an agency worth their salt will give you a few options. I use someone called John McNeil Studios, JMS out of Emeryville. They're awesome. They're like X McCann Ogilvy Super. And they come out with great ideas and I will always put it in front of Dale and see what he things. So for at Content Square there was two I was torn between. One was do better and the whole notion of you could do better if you had the insights and the analytics of people moving on your, your website, your mobile app. Because Content Square is a digital experience analytics company. So behind every mouse move and click is someone trying to achieve something. And the other one was more human analytics, more human understanding. I kind of like the notion of do better because it's like we can help them be better and do better. Right. Coming from that. And then Dale gave me his perspective of. Well, it almost. And it could be because he's British too, but it like you feels like you're saying you do better or you know what I mean, Maybe because we're married or something, I don't know. But he got me to think like.

[B]

Is this a personal attack? Is this about our laundry earlier?

[A]

She's constantly telling me, dale, do better.

[B]

Do better, do more chores, do someone else's best. Dale, not your best, someone else's best.

[C]

That's usually him with me with the dishwasher, like that's another story.

[A]

But he doesn't like, don't get on the dishwasher.

[C]

Like no one can load the dishwasher. Well, he's going to start saying do better. He's going to say that in the kitchen out to all of us.

[A]

I saw a meme one on online and it's like there's two people in a house. There's a person that loads the dishwasher like a Swedish architect and there's someone that loads it like a drunken raccoon. You can guess which one I am. I'm definitely the architect. Everything has to look nice.

[C]

And I guess I'm the raccoon. Okay. I know it all. Same same.

[D]

Have you guys ever seen the show Parks and Rec A long time ago.

[C]

Yeah.

[D]

Okay. So Leslie and her husband Ben, they work together in Parkside department. And there's an episode where they're arguing about a particular topic, and they have to make like, once we get on the sidewalk of work, the work conversation ends, and then we're at home. And then they do the same thing when they go back to work. Have you guys ever been in that situation where, okay, we're at home now. Let's stop talking about marketing.

[C]

Probably. If you're a carpooling, I would. Don't you think, Dale? If we're carpooling home and then we have to pivot to talk about kids and their schedule.

[A]

I don't know if we ever really stop talking about it. I mean, we don't talk about it 24 7. There are other priorities we have in our lives.

[D]

Sure, sure, sure.

[A]

But again, I think the nature of our work, the nature of. Particularly what happened on Covid, where people are now, you know, working from home a lot. I mean, I personally. And I think it's the same with Nikki. I don't think I ever shut off, actually. Shut off.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

And I think actually having another marketer in the house is. Can sometimes be harder because then I'm like, if I have something in my brain, I will ask her. So there's. Yeah. I think when we. When we actually take vacations, we then try and have some downtime. But even that, I. I don't think we've taken a vacation in the last 10 years where one of us didn't have a board call or a QBR deck chew or we had to be something. I don't.

[B]

Wow.

[A]

So I. I don't think we. Again, it's not 24 7. We talk about it, but I don't think either of us are actually ever shut off from. From the role.

[C]

And I'm not disciplined enough, like, on vacation, like, so I just love work work. I really do. I love, like, building my teams. I love helping them achieve all they can be. I love focusing on the customer and helping them be successful. So it's really hard to shut off. Really hard. I always tell Dale, I said, we need to go on a vacation where there's no wi fi. Let's go camping or something. Where.

[A]

Which I'm like, I'm not going camping.

[C]

Anyone that knows me knew only because when he used to go camping when he was young, it was wet and cold. I want to take him camping in a beautiful beach or something, but he won't go.

[A]

No, no.

[B]

I'm Conscious of our time. But I also know we didn't finish the story of the do better part.

[C]

So Dale got me to think differently about what that means, what it would mean to the audience, which I didn't even think about. And I was looking at it of, okay, you can give them all the insights and information to enable them to be better. So we did pivot and we moved and we ended up with more human understanding, more human analytics. One platform can tell you the difference. Content Square. And it worked well because I made the mistake in the past of not measuring pre. Definitely did some measurement pre and understood the awareness. ADA awareness, Unada. What we were known for all the different measures. And yeah, it's. After a quarter, I had this slide. Denise Pearson helped me with it. How this campaign would take Content Square to the bank was the title of it, because I had to present it to the board where we had Six street, we had SoftBank on the board, and we had. We had like four times more traffic. I know traffic can be vanity metric, but then it's like engagement conversion. We had all these metrics. And when you come down to true conversion and then what turned into Pipeline, it was a pretty good story. So I'm happy I listened to you. Dale. Thank you.

[A]

You're welcome. Very cool. I have some uses other than loading the dishwasher properly. So, you know, look, I don't. We're not competitive. I mean, when I mentioned that earlier, I was really talking about, like, in our careers, we're not competitive. One of us generally doesn't say, you know, I'm more important. Because to be fair, Nikki's worked at much bigger companies and mine are smaller. But again, it's just. It doesn't mean one's more important than the other. But I will say we do have. When we're talking about the campaigns that we run, as Nikki talked about, and the results, we do share those. And there was probably a little bit in us where if one of us has had a really successful event, we're supportive. But then I think that also, if anything, it kind of spurs us along to kind of also on our side. Yeah, well, if. If I know she's had a successful campaign or an event or something, that definitely the com. The competitive spirit is not me against her. It's me to try and be better and use some of the things that. That she's done and learn. So I want to achieve more and then kind of, you know, share that with her. I think the only other thing, one of the other things that pops to mind when we talk about giving each other, like, guidance and advice. And this is sometimes hard. Is hard for me, anyway. Nikki can argue whether it's hard for her. There's often times where if something hasn't gone right or we're angry about something or we're disagreeing with someone else in our organization, it could be on our team. It could be me getting annoyed with our CEO or something like that. There are often times where I think if I approach this with the right, say it to Nikki and tell her what's going on, or she overhears potentially one side of the conversation, or, you know, she's walking past the office where we are and she can kind of hear it. There are times where she will find me after that call or give me that advice. It's like you're being completely. You're overreacting. I didn't hear what you heard. This is what I heard. He's actually trying to give you the right advice. They're not arguing with you.

[C]

I wouldn't say it that way. I'm a little more empathetic. You do?

[B]

No, no.

[A]

You do. No. But you're. Okay, maybe you sound a little bit more empathetic.

[B]

I like it that way. That would work for me.

[A]

What I hear is daily being stupid.

[C]

That's what he hears. That's not it at all.

[A]

That's what translates to me. And that is sometimes, again, this is holding us accountable in our role. But sometimes that's really hard to hear. It always. Always is right. And I think as a couple, when you're in the same house, when one. Like, I know I've had situations where she's given me that advice, and I've been like, you have no idea what you're talking about. You don't know who. You don't know what I'm dealing with or whatever. And I guarantee by the end of the day or the next morning, I'd be like, hey, by the way, you know, you were totally right. It's just sometimes you have that visceral reaction of like, she doesn't know what I'm going through. Right. And that's. But that's. I think as a. I value it. I value that honest feedback, and I value that relationship probably, you know, just as much as being a partner in life. But sometimes hearing that is really tough. But it's all. It's always, always right. And I think because of her unique situation, my unique. Because we are in a similar role, I can't really argue that she did like, you know she doesn't know what she's talking about. You know, we don't, we have the same role. So I know she's coming from a position of empathy, b of experience. And she probably loves me too. So, you know, you put those three things together. You know, whilst sometimes I don't react in the right way, I know, you know, I generally come around and I think, I wouldn't say, Matt, it's not competitive as such, but that's kind of sometimes where we have a, we have a disagreement. But it's not, it's not like, well, you know, why did you know this PR is rubbish? Why did you send that out? But it's usually just giving each other advice on how we handle situations that we sometimes have. We're a bit prickly. Yeah. Yeah.

[D]

That's awesome. What a great resource that must be. That's very cool.

[B]

Yeah, I love it. So y' all were not prepared for this, but I'm about to take you into a very different style of a lightning round because I normally don't have two. Normally I have one. But I don't want you both talking at the same time. So I'm going to ask you a question and then you write down the quick answer. It should be a one or two word answer on a piece of paper. And then when I say go, you hold it up and we see what you both said.

[A]

Okay. I feel like there was a TV show that was. You have to try and guess what the other thinking, great, go for it.

[B]

Yep. All right, first one. Which one gets more budget next year? Brand building or demand? And when I say demand, demand gen, type of. And I'll tell you when to go and I'll read it so people can. Who are. Whoever's not looking at the YouTube video can also know what's happening. You guys ready?

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

Okay, go.

[C]

What did you write?

[B]

All right, Nikki's demand. And hold on.

[C]

What do you do?

[B]

Yeah, I see both of you. Okay, next up, when things break, do you fix the process or fix the people?

[A]

Are you writing an essay?

[B]

You all ready?

[C]

Yes.

[B]

All right, 1, 2, 3. Let's see.

[C]

I say process to understand the why.

[B]

Show me.

[C]

Yep. And Dale's process too.

[B]

Okay.

[C]

In Dale's process too.

[B]

Nikki's over here adding like extra details.

[A]

Yeah, Nikki's. Nikki's giving you a full out plan.

[C]

It's important to understand the why. So sometimes it's process. You understand the why and it's not people related. Right. I always try to coach for success. That's huge. For me, coaching for success. But then once you realize they can't get there, then it's better to exit and both are happier later on.

[A]

You know, I have this philosophy. I think people. People in a role generally fail for. You know, it's usually a couple of reasons. One is they don't have the right skill set. It's a mismatch of. Of skill set. You know, they may not have the right experience or some, you know, something like that. They just don't know who to go to or whatever. Second one is, it's the. You know, there's something broken in the process. And the third one is they're just not working hard enough or they just don't want to be there. It's rarely the third one. There are times when it's that and you have to make a change to the team. But it's usually a skill set or process thing.

[C]

Yeah. And part of process is expectations. Understanding what the North Star is. If people understand what success looks like, most people will achieve that.

[B]

Yeah. I love it. Okay, next up. What is a marketing term that should die in 2026? A word. A KPI. This came from. I was in studio with Nick Tran the other day, who was super fun, if y' all have heard of him. And he. He listed, like, 15 words that should die. I'm like, whoa. So anyways, now I'm adding it to my question list.

[A]

Hang on. I gotta get this right.

[C]

I have a good one.

[B]

I like how seriously you're taking it. This is good.

[C]

I have a few.

[B]

Okay. I like a few. All right, if you have a couple, Dale, you can put a couple, too. Now, it's a competition. Don't just bring one to the table.

[C]

Okay, I have a few.

[A]

Honey, I'm sure you do. Overachieve. Overachiever.

[B]

All right, are we ready? All right, one, two, three, go. That's yours. All right, go for it. And then read them off if you want. Nikki.

[C]

Mine is first touch, last touch, and also cmo.

[B]

Oh, my gosh. Someone just said this. Yes, I did. Okay.

[C]

Because I feel like the role we're in. I think I told you this, Stephanie. My prediction is the CMO and the Chief Customer Officer will become one in the next three to five years. Because if you're doing your job very well, it's about always focusing on the customer and their success. How you achieve it is everything else. But we do more than just market. We bring insights in to inform the product. We bring insights in to inform acquisition strategy. This was Cisco Constant Insights for John Chambers and his team to inform acquisitions or stop acquisitions. We employee morale. Right. And your brand ambassadors, the employees, make them feel good, get them pumped. Like we service almost every single function within the organ, the field. We have to make them successful to achieve their targets. I mean, the list goes on and on and on.

[B]

Yeah, I like this. Nikki, you should check out my post on LinkedIn. I just wrote about this that kind of talks about this, but we were trying to figure out what term should be used because cmo, that was one of the words that a previous guest just said should die, the word cmo.

[C]

So I think Chief Customer Officer, I think it should combine into one because at the end of the day, everyone's job in an organization should be helping our customers succeed. Marketing is not just about acquisition, but it should be about retention and expansion. And by the way, if you do that, they're going to tell others in their communities and their Reddits and their. Wherever they are, their forms, their Facebook forum on it people. Right. I. Stephanie, I heard you talking about that, so I think it's. It will become a win, win.

[B]

Yep. I love it.

[A]

I agree with everything you said around the. What the head of marketing or this function should focus on. I'm just a little bit more of, you know, I've seen this over the last 10 years, you know, chief market officer, chief growth officer. Like they've, there's. They've created titles to try and capture more than what people understand as marketing. I think in principle it doesn't really. It could be chief customer office, it could be cheap, it could be anything. Like, I think as a, as an operator, if you. Exactly what you said, Nikki, is if you focus on the customer side, it doesn't matter what, what you call the role. I think if and if you have that understanding with the rest of the leaders and the company, I think you'll be successful regardless of what it's called.

[C]

But you know what I don't like? I don't like the ing. How come marketing has a ing like you were just talking. Chief Market Officer. We don't see Chief Revenue Officer, Chief selling. Right.

[A]

Chief Selling officer, Chief.

[C]

I mean. Right. So it's like, it almost like makes marketing seem like it's like activities that we're doing versus the impact that you're driving for the organization based off the insights you have from your customers, your partners, your industry analysts, the insights from the website, how people are engaging, or of the forums, LLMs, et cetera.

[B]

I love it. All right, Dale, you're up.

[A]

Well, I only had one, but it kind of. It kind of comes back to the first one that Nikki had, which was like, first touch, last touch. I had influence, so. Influence, because there's this. It kind of comes the. Actually attribution, influence and attribution. The. The whole concept. You know, you could say first touch, last touch, you can say multi touch. What I think people have to recognize is that, you know, if you're in this type of role, you are touching so many pieces of the customer journey and the acquisition funnel and how you help sales. Like, it's not about. We can just all agree and assume that you're gonna. As a marketing leader, you're gonna have influence and you're gonna drive attribution, but it's how you delivering value to the business. It's exactly what Nikki talked about, about understanding the customer journey, or it's, you know, working closer, closer with the sales team to be more successful. So this whole concept, and it's really tough in. In marketing, you're always trying to point to, I did this, I put this out, and we got to, you know, these kind of results in the funnel and so on. But this whole area of like, we are. We. We have. We. We touch all pieces of that journey. So let's not worry about, you know, showing specific results for one specific thing. Let's show the broader impact across the business. Let's show all the places we were able to engage with customers and kind of, you know, almost, you know, regardless of the title up level the role, so people understand that it's Is a real critical piece across the business. It's not. It's not less important than the product development, you know, organization. It's not less important than sales. It's because we. We do have so many touch points. So influence and attribution. Let's get it rid of that.

[B]

Yeah. So you mentioned that you have a daughter who is, you know, on her way to college earlier in the episode. And so if she were to ask you both right now what you would think if she was planning to become a CMO or that was her career path, what would you both say? And you can write it down and then you can also explain it too, but I'd love to. Yes, think about it yourself.

[C]

If she wants to become a cmo, well, that would have changed because she usually says she wants to become the president of the United States, but she hopes there's a female president before her is what she always says. But, yeah, I would probably dissuade her. And I mean, I Love marketing, but I would suggest she becomes a chief customer. See, I believe a chief marketing and a chief customer officer will become one, and I think they should. I would probably have her continue to focus on business, but stay really, really close to the customer and help their success. And she doesn't need to major in poli sci or anything. I mean, we have politicians who've been actors who've been on TV shows, blah, blah, blah.

[B]

You can do anything you want nowadays.

[C]

Exactly. Right. She can still drive change. Go Sophia Hall. But I don't think she should do it as a marketing. She's very strong and she's driven and so I could see her driving change and. But she has a big heart. So helping customers. That's what I would say. I would say probably don't get into marketing, but be a chief customer officer.

[A]

I think. Look, again, Nikki mentioned this earlier. I got into marketing, I think ultimately because it was either psychology or marketing and I think, or business. And then I got into marketing because it's the psychology of buying behavior. So I think for me it was, it was right. But I think as we've talked about on this podcast, there's, there's so many elements that you have to understand. I don't. And I'm not like, I'm not whining now as like poor marketing leaders. Right. I'm not, I'm not saying that, but I feel like if you're going to go into a business role, if she still wanted to go into business, the people that I think get. It's a tough job, but I think get the most respect. If you're, if you're a sales leader, if you're selling, you know, that's where the credit and the kudos really comes. I worked at Oracle years ago and Larry Ellison, who's an amazing, you know, technologist, stood on stage and said, you're either building product or you're selling it. Everything else is overhead. So I don't care whether you're here or not. Right. So that kind of like, oh, I'm in marketing. I guess I'm screwed. No, but it was, it's like I would advise her if she was going to go into this, either do something like, you know, if you think you can be a, you can be a marketer or a sales person across any company. But I think the, the kudos, like, if you close those big deals and you're good at it, I think you get a significant amount of credit and impact if you're in that sales type of role. And no, it's not for everyone. And again, I. I don't want to be a salesperson, but that's. That's what I. If she really wanted to go into business. And then the other thing is, Nikki's about this before. It's like there's so many people who think they can do your job, and I feel like, you know, be an entrepreneur. Go and start your own company, build your own company. You can still do some of that marketing thing, but then you can also do some of the product and some of the sales and maybe some of the legal and actually be a leader, be your own boss. I think Nikki, you've always talked to her about that.

[C]

Yeah. I think a path like the cmo, because you touch so many aspects of the business, operations and creative and the employees, it's almost like your next step is CEO. Like, one day in life, I would love to be a CEO, whether or not it's like a founder, CEO or. But there is one place it would be fun to be a marketer, and that's a Salesforce, because Mark Benioff is, like, the best marketer, like you talked about, Dale, earlier. So if she did want to go into marketing, I would say do it at Salesforce.

[A]

Yeah. Learn a lot.

[B]

There you go. I like it. Okay, well, Nikki, Dale, this was so fun. Thank you guys for coming on the show, playing all the games with me, doing all the things I wanted. This is really fun. So until next time, where can people find you? Yeah, guide people to connect with you if you'd like.

[C]

Sure, yeah. LinkedIn. You can find me on LinkedIn. Same with you, Dale, right?

[A]

Yeah. I have a podcast. It wasn't as much fun as doing this with Nikki, but I have to say that because otherwise she'll shout to me when I get home today. No, this. This was a lot of fun. You know, it's. Again, I think we have a. There's a level of respect we have for each other, and I think we've always been learning from each other, so it's nice to just get on these and we realize that we actually. Maybe we do like each other, not just as. As husband and wife, but actually as. As marketing leaders, too. So it's good to reaffirm that.

[B]

Now we know.

[A]

Thanks, Stephanie.

[C]

Yes.

[B]

This episode proved it. That's what I was aiming for. There we go. All right. Thank.