Goal Setting, the Customer Journey, and the Future of AI with Bruno Bertini of 8x8

Speaker A: The Next CMO podcast explores topics that are on the minds of forward thinking marketing leaders, from vision and strategy to leadership in emerging technologies. The Next CMO is sponsored by Planful, a platform to build, manage and measure your marketing plan. Track all your marketing spend and connect your budget with outcomes to measure your ROI. Check it out at planful.com marketing. Your CFO will love you for it. I'm your host, Scott Todaro, a 32 year marketing veteran, seven time head of marketing and co author of the book the Next cmo. Hello and welcome to another episode of the Next CMO Podcast. Today we have a fantastic, uh, guest. We have Bruno Bertini and he is going to go through some amazing points today, not only on goal setting, but also getting right down to user experience. Because I know a lot of you marketers are out there trying to figure out exactly what to do with user experience. So some of you have had it thrown on you. Uh, just a, just a little plug for us. Um, recently we've been recognized, uh, by both Feedspot and Million Podcasts Put in the top 25 CMO podcasts out there. So that was, that was a little plug for us.

Speaker B: And well done.

Speaker A: Yeah, we were ranked, we ranked, uh, number 10 and number 11 respectively. So pretty good. Uh, we're getting there. We still want to be number one, so please keep listening out there. Also, thank you all for all the five star ratings. We have a five star rating on Apple and hopefully we continue that. Uh, please don't give us a four star rating just to stick it to us. All right, so, uh, Bruno's got a great background today. He is a CMO just like all the rest of you probably listening or those out there that are trying to reach that. Trust me, it's a great job if you can get it. Right now he's the CMO of 8x8. Uh, they are a platform that integrates AI at every level in a personalized customer journey. So for those of you that are trying to improve your customer experience, take a look at them. Uh, but Bruno's got a great background. He's um, been in marketing a long time, uh, eight last eight years in leadership positions. Um, but what I think is most impressive about Bruno is just his thirst for learning. Um, if you look at Bruno's background, he has gotten certificates and programs, um, from amazing business schools like the Kellogg School of Business at Northwestern, Harvard, mit, London School of Business, Wesleyan. He is a lifelong learner. And what I love about Bruno in his perspective is that he just, every day he just Keeps adding to his repertoire. And you all need to do that. Hopefully those of you that are attending this podcast, that's exactly why you're here. So he's going to give us a whole bunch of great input. So welcome Bruno.

Speaker B: Thanks for having me, Scott. Happy to be here.

Speaker A: Great to have you here. So let's, let's kick you off with a nice softball question.

Speaker B: Here we go.

Speaker A: We all need to. Yeah, they're all softball questions. As for cmo, right. Uh, you know, we all need to set marketing goals. And you know, it's funny because out there in the marketplace, we actually run into CMOs that don't set really clearly defined goals and up planning. So when you go about planning and you're, you're looking at setting those goals and you looking at the company goals, how you go about matching them up and making sure that marketing has that full alignment.

Speaker B: Yeah, it's a really good question. I think, um, there's a little bit of the obvious on starting from the top with what's important to the company. I think as a cmo, to me, one of the most important things before we even start with the company goals is what are the right company goals that should be marketing sponsored or actually marketing driven? Uh, we have one, for example, in our brand transformation that is one of the most top five importance for the company to transform us and all of those things. So it starts from there because then it becomes strategic to the entire C team. It goes back to the board and from there a lot of the other ones grow. The revenue, bookings, access adjacent markets. Then we will link back to them in our strategy. So we'll have our own okrs aligned to the company. Okrs. I think we all try to do that as cmos. I would say it's pretty basic. Um, my advice would be to have one that is 80 to 90% marketing driven at the top because it will give the CMO that edge. But I also think how we make them operational into the teams. I love the combinations of OKRs and MBOs and the difference because, for example, if you think about marketing and I was talking with my HR business partner this week and she was like, oh my God. I was in your all heads. How can you do this job? This is crazy. They all have different priorities, they all have different teams. Uh, all of your different teams are doing different things. How do they align? I'm like, well, welcome to, you know, welcome to BNM marketing. So I think building the right kind of specific functional krs that tie us back to performance that tie us back to delivering, to the pipeline, to the quality, to the stage, to the convergence. But also, um, what are the MBOs that drive the culture of alignment, that make my leaders make sure that they're doing the right things? I think those are extremely important. Um, some of those, for example, there are areas like creative, that's a service center for the entire organization. But when you get the head of demand gen and the head of creative in the same room, how do you make them serve each other in a way that matters? So getting to that level on the MBOs to say, hey, my job is to make the head of demand gen successful. The head of demand gen has a job as a part of our brand expansion. That's usually not a direct thing for the head of demand gen. So I would say build the right structure that starts by putting marketing at the table in the top five OKRs. Then as you build your KRs that are associated with leading the top five of the company, back them up with cultural MBOs that force the organization to cross over.

Speaker A: Uh, that is amazing advice and I want to key on a couple of things that you said there. So the first thing you said was like, oh, we all set these goals, um, based on the company goals. It's interesting because we had this thing called the operational marketing index and we had CMOs fill it. Over 2000 CMOs filled out this index and did you know that only 39.5% of heads of marketing self reported actually build their marketing goals off of the company goals? Isn't that unbelievable? Like you just assume like this is stable stakes. Aren't CMOs just following, you know, they sit at the executive table, they help shape these goals for the year, are they not? And they're not aligning. They, they have their own set of goals that they go to. So your approach there is awesome because it, it takes that structured thinking. Start with your company goals and then figure out what are those okrs that you have around that. Um, and so it's interesting. And the other thing you brought up was around the teams, which I think is also fascinating because, you know, if you go to an accounting department, if you look at the people, and this is a generality, so go ahead, you can go ahead and beat me up for this. But they all kind of look and act the same way, like you don't want to invite these people to a party, they're not going to hang out. I mean, but if you look at the marketing team, like you said, you have a designer and you have a marketing Ops person. The ops person is deep in numbers. And the designer probably can't add two together. But these beautiful designs and you have these wonderful people on the, on the, on the numbers side that don't care about colors or anything else. And you got to get these people to work together. And like, it's this diversity of thought from strategy to tactics that's just all over the place. Like you're a magician, you know, trying to get all these people to work together. Either that or psychiatrist, which, you know, we all as, ah, CMOs need one. So, uh, speaking of psychiatry and working with people because, uh, you know, this, this job, you have to work with the other executives and CEOs. If I hear one thing, I hear a million is that, you know, CMOs having trouble with their CEO', they're having problems with the head of sales, their CRO, they may even be having trouble working with their CFO. What is that you do? Because I think this is an area where I think a lot of CMOs need some help. What is it that you do? What's your approach for working with these other executives to get the whole collaboration working together?

Speaker B: It's a very good question. Um, I think when I look back at my experience, I've been in sales before, and I've been in consulting before I've been in sales. So I think the most important thing is how do you see marketing not in service of marketing, and how do you see marketing service of the organization? And it's simple to say that, but why is it so hard to align with the CEO? Well, because the CEO, like the cmo, is trying to align all of the different things to converge into something that grows the company, that creates shareholder value, takes care of our customers, et cetera. So I think that understanding that the marketing is the glue between go to market and product, that builds around the company and that differentiation, but also approaching that from a sense of capital allocation with your CEO. Uh, you're in the business of capital allocation. I'm spending this amount of millions of dollars in opex and this, this, this, this, this, this is the return. This is where we're going. This is how it plugs back into the company strategy. We're in this category with this percentage of awareness. We're jumping in category that we have maybe negative percentages. So how are you part of that strategy? Not as a passive member of that strategy, but as someone that's helping drive that strategy? I actually get crazy excited about doing that myself because I learned from the CEO, I learned from the CRO and I helped put marketing as that force multiplier factor so that they see that they're just not alone. They actually have marketing walking with them. Um, and that's my CEO, my current CEO always jokes that that's why I hired you, because you're an operator. You're not just a cmo, you're a business operator. You can think about from my perspective, from the CFO's perspective, I also think there's a little bit of an element that I want to win with my C team. I want to win as a company. So it's not just, I don't want to win as an organization, I'm here to win as a company. So if you put company over function and we all, again, we're going to say, yeah, we do that, but we'll usually go back to our team. So I. Oh, my team, my team. But if you think about like the company's strategy, like that C team thinking, um, I think that puts you in the right direction.

Speaker A: No, I completely agree with you. I mean, I always say to CMOs, look, you're an executive first and your department happens to be marketing. And the other thing that you pointed out that I really want to stress is that marketing, when done properly, actually is the most strategic position at the company. If you think about it, you're defining who the target audience is. You're defining what the product should be and how we're going to message the product or service that you're doing. You've got all of the elements, pricing, packaging, how you're going to promote the product. All of that stuff is pretty strategic. I mean, the sales team and I've run sales four times. Please don't kill me if any salespeople are on this. But it's a very tactical position, right? You're like literally hand to hand combat on all the deals you're doing. And that's in B2B and B2C. You kind of run the whole thing, right? Don't need a sales team to sell a candy bar, right? Or if you do have a salesperson selling a candy bar, I wonder what their commission is going to be on that. So, um, but nonetheless, I mean, you have a lot of power when done, right? And I think what I've seen with a lot of CMO positions is they've kind of been whittled down to just, you know, uh, demand generation, branding and pr, Right? And that's not the full, the full strategic landscape. And if you do it like Bruno, what you're talking about with a much larger lens and looking at the business as a whole, you'll become more strategic, it'll be more impactful to the organization. And I think at the end of the day, you'll find yourself having a lot more success and the company will too, because that's your job as an executive. All right, so let's talk about, uh, leadership. And you know, you've had a lot of experience here, um, and it's, the experience has shaped your approach and it breaks us all. Uh, now the question is, what have you taken from your learnings and how have you applied them to become a better leader?

Speaker B: I'm a very curious person myself. I like to learn. And one of the biggest benefits I think of being a leader is that you, you get in contact with so many people, uh, from execs to customers to partners to employees, you have the ability to see, and it's not just the ability, it's a privilege to see so many lives fast forwarding at the same time. So I think I've always seen it that way since it was like, uh, earlier in my career, but when I became a C level executive and you see how much you can help shape people's trajectory and shape people's career. There's a lot of hungry people out there, um, that I think for me, um, need advice and that sometimes you can give them that advice and help mentor them. So I think that's something that from a leadership perspective is really important for me. But I think something that I, one of the big things that I learned as a public company, cmo, uh, which I would say it changed my leadership style. And I heard this from my CEO multiple times. And it took me a while to really understand. People overestimate what they can do in a quarter, but they underestimate what they can do over two or three years. Because when you're a public cmo, you want to hit the quarter, you want to hit the transformation into three quarters. So you ramp the first year. And you know, some things take time, some things require time. And as the other thing is, we age like whiskey, you know, as we age in the seat, we get better. So don't underestimate the importance of giving yourself the right time. And it's hard when you're public because you have, you know, you have the kind of Wall street, you have like all street to manage and all of those different audiences. But, um, make sure you have a short term plan and a long term plan, um, because that will save your life and I think will save Your sanity as well?

Speaker A: Yes. We don't like being insane. We've been insane far too long. So, uh, sanity checks are always great for, uh, CMOs, because I tend to find that every single one of these CMO roundtables I go to, it turns into a therapy session. Uh, as I'm sure we've all been down that path, it's a tough job. All right, so one of the things that you wanted to talk about today that I think is really relevant is that we've seen that marketing now, uh, has been kind of tasked with customer experience. Um, you know, it probably owned this all the way through now, when I look back at it. Um, but it just wasn't called that. Right. Uh, because really, marketing, when I started back in 1992, really owned the understanding of the customer at an intimate level because of the surveys and focus groups and interviews that we would do constantly with customers. A lot of that got lost over time as we talked about how the role of the CMOs changed. So talk to us about how do marketers now that do get this task of shaping customer experience. How do they go about it? Like, what is that customer journey, that cohesive customer journey that they're looking to create?

Speaker B: Yeah. So remember, I'm in B2B, um, and in B2B SaaS. So take this with a grain of salt that B2B is, of course, more niche on that thinking. But, um, the world that we live in today, especially with software getting way more commoditized, I think before we could say that the experience was shaped across the multiple touches, you could do something wrong at the beginning of the experience and then, oh, uh, we'll fix it when it hits sales, or we'll fix it when they become a customer. I think because of the way the customer expectations from a sense that the barrier of jumping between software solutions today is getting so low. Um, and the barrier of entry through cloud is also making that so low that, uh, if you don't shape the experience from the beginning, which is usually where the CMOs on the prospecting side would play a bigger role, um, but also from a sense of elevating NRR or net retention revenue from increasing customer lifetime value. I think as you shape that experience across their journeys. And also, let's think about the other important thing. Acquisition cost, because of advertisement cost, has been blowing through the roof. So I think the context of that is it's been more important than ever to not only acquire them with the right expectations, which we do set as the CMOs, but also maintain them along the way. One of the things that we've been building is a way to put together all of the information that our customers have since the promise was made and they started on the journey with us all the way that they become a customer and we put that data together in a way to measure what's their sla, not our company sla, the SLA that they have with our platform, how is their utilization? How is like, uh, and this is not my product, I'm saying it's my CMO strategy. So how do we put behavioral, with utilization, with um, engagement together so that we can say, are they interacting with me across their journey? Are they expanding with me across the journey? So I think that we got to expand our thinking that it's not just the acquisition, it's not just the renewal. We got to start putting them together. And it's hard because not all the tools help us put that in an easy way. But I do think with AI is now easier than ever to just kind of add all of those data from multiple sources and then put it together. I think that's where I'm excited that marketing is going.

Speaker A: It's interesting you bring that up because I've long advocated that LTV is actually a marketing number. Um, and I've had debates with board members and other people along those lines. And especially you're in a SaaS business, which it's all about subscription, it's all about retention. You know, you gotta have that 85 plus percent retention rate in order to really grow. It really helps your acquisition efforts because you don't have to grow as much every year if you can retain and grow your existing customer base. And it's interesting because I don't think a lot of marketers actually measure ltv. I'm not even sure a lot of them measure roi. So, um, you know, this is an opportunity, you know, if you do have a reoccurring revenue stream, you know, get a subscription or something else. And a lot of companies right now are moving towards that repeatable revenue, uh, stream. Even in industries you didn't expect to have a subscription, uh, it's because of that, the ability to retain those customers. But now the question is, what does marketing do to help in that vein? Because primarily marketing is shifted more towards acquisition. Right? Most of the money is spent towards acquiring new customers. And the question is, how do we go about making sure that that's working?

Speaker B: And so, and Scott, to jump in on that, we were talking about how can the CMO become more strategic and be Seen as a more of a, like a business partner talking about increasing the retention rate and increasing, like the LTV is probably one of the most strategic things with the cmo, with the chief customer officer, with the CEO. So if we can build to that and start owning that, oh my God, like that's, that strengthens your position, but also strengthens your impact dramatically.

Speaker A: No, without a doubt. And the other thing is, LTV is a much larger number than revenue, right? Yes. So you want to talk about the value of marketing, show the LTV number. Like, whoa, this is huge. And now you, now you understand the impact. And some people will sit there and say, well, well, what do they, what does marketing really do after they acquire the customer? And it's like, well, wait a second. And it was funny because I was posed this question once while I was at a user group meeting that marketing was running, right? And it's like one of those things. It's like we keep sending out information, we keep upselling cross selling, we keep sending out how to use tips and tricks on how to use the product better. So we helping with retention, we do use group meetings, we do customer satisfaction activities. All of those things help with it. It's not just the people in customer support that try to save a sale. You know, that's, that's a very reactive function. Marketing is the proactive function of making people happy and satisfied with the product, making sure that retention works. So one of the things that we want to talk about, and we know that right now AI is super hot, right? Uh, everybody's trying to figure out what to do with AI. I'm seeing all these courses out there on, you know, figure out how to use AI for HubSpot and all these other things. How do we go about using AI for this? Right. We have customer experience. How are we going to automate these things in the future to really improve the customer experience to make sure we have those retention rates where we need them to be.

Speaker B: Yeah. I think for me that this has been one of the, like, parts of the job that I got the most fun, I should say, over the last two years. There's a lot. I think the other thing from an AI perspective, everyone is stamping, you know, you go into, you go buy a washing machine. Oh my God, it's an AI washing machine. I'm like, okay, what is it going to do? Is it going to, you know, take, take it out of there and put it in my closet? So, so I think the concern there is everything is AI for us. We are going A little bit deeper in building, uh, and using custom workflows that are not specific from a system. So we're building our own AI into the systems that uh, that we think are relevant from a marketing perspective. So we're building enrichment, we're building the systems that help us answer and build nurtures. We're building the systems to help us with targeting. And when you start to do that and integrate your own AI workflows, you learn so much from the models, from the temperature, from everything that helps you code them. Um, so it's been a fascinating journey on how, how can you use something to really generate impact. For example, scoring. AI basically kills scoring because you don't need to put things in different buckets anymore. Everyone is a specific one that follows that customer. So there's a lot of very interesting things happening there. I think, uh, from a capture enrichment, from an analytics and getting data together, uh, we struggle because not all the data sometimes is in Snowflake, but now with AI, ah, it doesn't matter. You can get it from 10 different systems and then it's going to auto populate and generate a dashboard for you and it's going to cost you 10 cents of a token. Great. Um, not mentioning video production, which we're seeing V03, which costs a dollar for 10 seconds. And it's actually pretty awesome. Imagine, uh, where we're going to be six months from now. So last year before we rebranded, for example, we did an AI photo shoot. A lot of our photos are AI generated because it was like I think 30% of the cost of buying licenses of real photos or doing a photo shoot. So I think the sky's the limit. The challenge that I have that I'm very radical with is are we doing this for the sake of experimentation, which I think is important. But how does this connect to something that really generates a specific ROI and a specific transformation for the company?

Speaker A: Yeah, measuring ROI is absolutely so critical. So have you run any campaigns that you feel, uh, right now that have had a huge impact on customer success, that you've gotten some ROI or have hit the goals that you've looked to set?

Speaker B: The strongest campaigns in our space right now are actually the ones that are very simple from an AI perspective. For example, um, and there's a difference with my products. One thing, our marketing strategy is a little bit different on the AI, uh, workflows. But when you think about AI, even our customers entire market is struggling to, hey, beyond the bus, what do I do? So one of our most successful campaigns is actually what are the 3, 4, 5 basic steps so you can get your strategy going? Because I think everyone, there's so much noise that at the end of the day people struggle to find a good land and expand model with AI. Right. So that has been one of our most successful ones. And then of course it's a nurture over a sequence of webinars. And then we go physical events and things like that. Um, and it's been really successful and I think it's helping a lot of lower enterprise or kind of fortune 3,000, 5,000 companies get going in this direction.

Speaker A: Well, that's interesting. So what metrics are you measuring right now? What are you seeing right now is the key metrics that you're measuring and

Speaker B: getting from a campaign perspective, you mean? Yeah, well, most of the basic ones on first of all on um, amount of capture people for webinars, amount of engagement, amount of questions, all the basic ones. But what we've analyzed is conversion rate at the end of the funnel, depending on the source of the program. And the nurture track along is one of the most interesting ones because usually if it comes from a, uh, good knowledge track in that sense, to say, hey, the qualification when it lands in sales development and then it lands in sales is much, much better. And also the time that opportunity seats in as a lead versus the time that it sits in sales, stage one sales, let's say it exits as a valid opportunity with a demo at stage three in our case. So let's say the time that it takes, it's also heavily accelerated because we're being very specific with our use case that people can actually land, expand, they understand we're not selling the whole world of madness. So I would say just to recap all the basic, uh, engagement ones from open rate, if you're using email to engagement in terms of webinars to scans and participation, if you're doing physical on that same journey. But most important than that, when that becomes a lead journey that feeds into an opportunity journey, what's the time to revenue and the conversion rates? That's where I get, get very excited depending on the source inside the marketing campaign.

Speaker A: Okay, and what are some of the metrics that you're looking at from a customer satisfaction and retention?

Speaker B: So for us, um, we look at utilization. How much are they using versus they bought? We, we look at engagement. When, when was the last time they engage one of our either virtual or physical or cab events if they are in a cab, not all customers are in cabs. Um, we also look from a CSM perspective. When was the last time they did a QBR with us? Then we look at outages. Did they have an outage with us? Because we know every time that happens, it triggers an entire spike that lasts three quarters until it calms down. Um, and then we look at the last time they bought something from us in terms of upsell. Those are kind of the main things that we're looking. You add, um, NPS to that, and then NPS is one. We also have, uh, NPS when the last time they access support. So we put all of that together into a weighted average and we come up with a score. Um, and that's how we put two and two together to say we got to work on this once we got to work on this one. Or hey, CSMs, we've got to refocus here. Hey, campaigns. This is our sweet spot in the middle. That's how we address it. Um, it's been actually very interesting putting this together. It's one of the things that I've been working for a while in terms of this model of not benchmarking, but kind of a health score. And it's been very helpful for us.

Speaker A: Oh, really? That's interesting. So using NPS score, I mean, uh, NPS has been around a long time. Um, and are you still finding an effective vehicle to work with?

Speaker B: I think it's in isolation. No, but as a point in time of their lifetime journey, I think it's valid.

Speaker A: Now, are you using things like ratings and reviews or, or anything along those lines?

Speaker B: We do, but we don't bring the review back to them. Most of the times it still is an aggregate of our product. Um, but the other thing that we use, which is individual, is the community. So if they use our community and they post about a problem, a challenge, or is a negative feeling or negative post on the community that does go back to their profile.

Speaker A: Yeah, yeah. It's interesting with those types of measurement tools and even like ratings and reviews, because when I came out of college, you know, the greatest marketing companies always won because the only place you could get any information about the company was from the company. Uh, now, I mean, has anybody ever bought anything that's over 200 these days without finding some sort of ratings or reviews or some sort of ranking, uh, of a particular product? The answer is probably not, um, you know, because if you're going in and buying something blind, so now the power has gone back to the buyer, right? So now the question is, how do you make sure that the product is as perfect as you can make it because that's really, um, in my opinion, that's one of the key jobs of a head of marketing. And they don't do it like, well, we got a product team and they take care of all this. But a lot of them, a lot of times they're disconnected from the actual buyer. And you know, this is uh, an opportunity. If you understand customer experience and really understand what people are getting from the product, you bring that information back to the product team and you say, you build this and when you see that happen, you're going to get better ratings and reviews and then marketing is going to work exceptionally well. It's awfully hard to fight against a bunch of one star reviews. Right.

Speaker B: I also think that to add to that, uh, in a world where it's getting easier to develop software with AI coding and all of that, the product differentiation over time is going to collapse dramatically. Right. So with less product differentiation, what actually really will drive more differentiation is the brand is the experience on top of that brand. And we know that, but I think we'll see a shift of like everyone will be able to develop all of the features, uh, you know, probably as development gets easier. Um, so I think that becomes over time to m a company, uh, a way more important differentiator.

Speaker A: Yeah, I guess differentiation is the key. If you're not differentiated, I don't know how you're going to win. Right. That's how you win. So we come to that last question that we ask every guest. It's is our signature question is if you had one piece of advice that you could either give to an aspiring CMO or an existing cmo, what would it be?

Speaker B: Buckle up. Um, I love the position. I think my biggest advice would be put your head around the business. So make sure what you're doing from a marketing perspective is connected very well to what the business is trying to do. Because sometimes we get so deep into the marketing transformation of the specific parts of mops to the main gen, to creative, uh, or a lot of CMOs. I see them rebranding the companies. I'm like, why are you doing this? How is this connecting back to where the business is going and what's the purpose of this for the business? So I think my biggest advice is become crazy about your business. Become a business operator. Spend time with your cfo, with your CEO, understanding where they're taking the business to the CRO. Where do you want to win? Why is this important? Um, I think that's the biggest advice that I would give because I think if you do that, you become a core part of the organization and you're going to get way more respect and your job is going to be way more fun because you're touching the outcomes of the business.

Speaker A: Yeah, I couldn't agree with you more. Uh, you don't want to be the party planners. You don't want to be the team that makes things pretty. You want to be the team that's driving the company. And you know, that is your God given right as a CMO to drive that agenda. Because frankly, you know, usually find the head of sales will follow the lead if marketing is identifying where to go fish and what tools to use to fish with. Um, as well as, you know, the product team is always looking for, you know, that feedback from the customers and that can be part of your journey as well. So, you know, get great advice, Bruno. I mean, really get involved from an executive standpoint. Shape the goals. Like I hear a lot of times, you know, marketers will be sitting there, well, I'm waiting to get the goals from the executive team. You're on the executive team. And here's the thing is, like, people will sit there and say, well, I, I tell them right now you need to start planning for 2026. And they're like, it's so early. I don't have my budget or my goals. Like, dude, you are an executive. If you need the goals in order to shape your goals, call the meeting. You can call the meeting. Invite the CEO to the 2026 planning meeting, and I can guarantee you one of two things will happen. They'll either gladly show up or they'll tell you, no, no, no, I run that meeting and then they'll schedule it, mission accomplished, right? And get yourself involved. Get those goals nailed down. Build your plan now. Figure how much budget you need to achieve the company goals. Report that that budget is helping you achieve the company goals. And you know what? You get the full budget, right? The reason why you don't get your budget is because they have no idea where your money's going. So they just cut it 20% or 50%. But if it was aligned to the company, goes just like Bruno talked about at the beginning with, at the start of this. If you align it to those company goals, that's where you're going to have success. Bruno, this has been an amazing conversation. I've enjoyed every minute of it. Guys, you've got to take this advice. You know, Bruno has kind of outlined a lot of things here, not only from the leadership standpoint, goal setting, Also figuring out customer experience. What does that mean to you? What does it mean to your business? How do you become a better marketing leader? Does your business have repeatability? Um, as far as selling and subscription based elements of it that you can start to drive revenue over time and show value over time. That ltv. So keep all that stuff in mind. Bruno, love to have you back on another one, uh, when you come up with all new material, which I'm sure will probably be one week from now. But, uh, we'd love to have you back.

Speaker B: Thank you. Thank you, Scott. Thanks for having me.

Speaker A: It was great having you here. And so everybody else, uh, please tune in to all the 130 other episodes that we have up there. Love to have you as part of the family and if you have any ideas on great, uh, CMOs out there that you think could add to the. To the great content that we have. Hopefully just trying to get everybody up the line a little bit because being a CMO is difficult and we want you all to be successful. So thanks again and, uh, we'll see you on the next episode.