Ep #146: Taste, Discernment, Experience: Why AI Won't Replace You (But It Might Expose You)

Transcript

[00:00:00] I wanna suggest that some of you listening are saying, “I don’t know, Casey, I think I can build the software. I’m smart enough and I’m m- experienced enough.” And listen, I’m sure you are.

Just don’t do it. Just don’t be a software developer. If you wanna be a software developer, go be a software developer, but don’t call yourself a CMO and build software. It’s silly. It’s the wrong move. It’s the wrong use of your time. It devalues your marketing insights because you’re building software to justify your fees or something like that.

Just work with clients that can afford you, and define the software that you need, and then have someone else build it and maintain it for you. You don’t want the late-night call when your idea breaks. You want someone else to take that call because it’s their job and their responsibility. So I’m seeing the world of bespoke personal software as being the most interesting thing to come to us in marketing, which is a certain dashboard that has certain intel on it that can run reports for us, where I can plain language and ask for a report.

I can say show me a report of everyone that came from this event who booked a call that’s a no-show that hasn’t clicked on any links in the emails.” I can just type that into, [00:01:00] wherever my data is, and it can give me that report. That’s big, and we can then pull the list that we need to be able to get the sales team to call certain folks or run emails to a certain list-

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What’s the big idea here? AI’s here. It’s not going anywhere, , except it’s gonna be more and more useful, and we’re going to feel the pressure of AI and AI-enabled tools that are able to do things that have never been done before in the marketing department.

We’re gonna get access to data and be able to make insights on that data faster than before, and if you live in a world where that is coming after your job, where you’re feeling scarce, where you feel as though, y-you’re losing your edge, you got your head in the wrong place. Look at this as a gift.

Look at this as companies are working ardently to create stuff. People, entrepreneurs are building new tools, new features that are gonna allow you to get insights faster to help your clients faster. Because after all, the client wants to grow their business, and they want a person who is responsible for marketing.

They want a responsible party. This is a critical component. This role is a requirement for [00:03:00] certain companies, and if you’re finding yourself in a position where your clients are considering dropping you or you’re talking to prospects that never really even wanted you in the first place, it’s because they don’t have a need for someone that is a responsible party at the head of marketing.

They just don’t need it. There are company types that do need that, and that should be one of your baseline positioning pieces when it comes to identifying the right fit client for you. , This client has to need a CMO. They have to need someone in the seat for some reason. We talked about that on a recent episode.

That’s a critical requirement. All this AI stuff salespeople, they’re gonna sell what they’re gonna sell and it might not be the right fit for the client. They need someone with the taste and discernment and experience, which is you, to know if it’s the right thing for the client to buy and adopt or not.

Remember, if a salesperson is selling something, they could state a case that this is the most critical thing for the client to have. But if you were to go in there and just rank the most important things to focus on, the thing the salesperson is selling might be number twenty-five on your list of priorities.

And number one might be getting the sales team to use the CRM correctly so that we can report on marketing [00:04:00] effectively. And the next thing is getting our forms on the website to capture everything without having lag and issues with form submissions. And the next thing is a better offer or a USP, or it’s a different avatar to go after.

There are so many marketing things that are a requirement for you to focus on. However, all of these cool tools are coming online, and companies are feeling compelled to adopt them because they wanna be AI first or whatever. They need you. Your pitch must include your discernment, taste, and experience, and your ability to know what’s right for them and to help them prioritize it and, above all, to be responsible for it.

I hope you’re taking that away from this. For the right companies, there will not be a time in the future where there isn’t a CMO. Not in our lifetime. For plenty of companies they’ve never needed a CMO and they won’t. But think of the ones that need someone in the leadership position.

That’s you. If you have the taste, experience, and discernment, you can help them get to the next level and be that responsible party. So the best vision I have for you is one of gratitude and excitement that these AI tools are [00:05:00] here, that they’re here to help us, that people are working late nights and on the weekends and sacrificing time with their family to deliver to you tools that you can use to get a better result for your client faster so they can grow faster.

What a lovely place for us to be. That, I think, is our head on right and being appreciative of the future that’s in front of us, and that brings a sense of excitement and good vibes that clients wanna be around. I think we can get worried about AI, and I think for the role of the fractional CMO, AI helps us.

I think for a lot of folks it’s gonna hurt their jobs, but it won’t hurt us if you know how to use it effectively. So remember, I’m not gonna ever tell you to develop software. I’m gonna tell you to develop the idea of what you want and take it maybe one step further than you’ve ever been able to before to get that technical design doc built to hand off to someone to build it or to finalize it, build it, and then maintain it.

All right and this is the stuff that we do. So in the CMX Accelerator, over the last few weeks we’ve done AI calls where we’re building software together. We’re, like, literally prompting software. I’m sharing my screen. I’m walking them through how I would do it. And we [00:06:00] came up with an idea for software, and we built it.

And then we got back together the next day, and we took it to the next level, and we installed it locally on a machine. Then we push it up to a GitHub repo, and then our CMO members have access to it. And they get to see the full life cycle so that they can see what it’s like to develop software with the deep encouragement not to develop software.

Know how to do it from a high level, know what GitHub is, know what a commit is know what a private repo versus a public repo is. Understand those basics. But you don’t have to develop software. That’s not where you have to go. The people developing the software for us is a gift.

And it’s an awesome time to be alive, I think. If you want my help becoming a in-demand fractional CMO that knows how to use AI tools, that can actually generate a positive result for their clients month after month so that you stay onboard with them for years on end, then I encourage you to see if you’ve got what it takes to be a fractional CMO under the CMOX umbrella by going to cmox.co/call and just book in a 15-minute call with Justin on my team.

He’ll ask you some questions and see if we think you have the experience required to be an in-demand CMO. And we’ve got heavy hitters, like former [00:07:00] CMOs of brands that you know. But I’ve also got folks in there that are just like- hardworking, smart marketers who never had the title of CMO. Maybe they were in an agency and they served multiple clients.

Some agency workers are working like 25 clients a week. It’s crazy or more. But other people were, the marketing director of a company and they’re finally ready to own the title of CMO. And not this crazy made up title that I hear, fractional marketing executive. I hear that and it’s just I don’t even understand what it means.

I’ve never heard of someone hiring a marketing executive. They hire a CMO or a marketing director or a VP of marketing or a VP of brand and creative. They don’t hire a fractional marketing executive. I don’t know. So my belief is that the safest place is at the top. That’s it. Safest place is at the top.

You’re not going to lose your job when markets shift because the company will need a leader in the marketing department, someone who’s accountable to marketing. Be the top person. Don’t build an agency of this stuff. Don’t overcomplicate it. It’s you serving three to five clients at $3,000 to $15,000 a [00:08:00] month or more per client to hit your revenue goals where you’re working no more, preferably, I think, than 36 hours a week.

That’s the target that you’re after. You do that, you’re made in the shade. I think you got a great lifestyle. And then you’re just like working with companies that you can make a great impact with. So if you want to see if we can help you, book it a call, cmox.co slash call. And I’ll see you soon. Take care.

Thank you for sticking around for the full episode. As you know, learners are earners, but you’ve gotta take action on what you heard today. For more information in show notes, visit fractional CMO show.com. If you’d like me to answer your questions on an upcoming episode, you can share your question@fractionalcmoshow.com.

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