CMOs Should Think Bigger - Bruce Hershey

0:00Bruce Hershey:Hey, welcome to the CMO Whisper Show. I'm your host, Steve Olenski. Part marketing practitioner, part ad agency veteran, part journalist, I was a writer for Forbes for 10 years. I've had so many insightful conversations over the years with business leaders, to athletes, to celebrities, to of course, CMOs. The only difference now is instead of sharing those insights through written form, I'm doing it this way. My guest today is Bruce Hershey, co-founder and partner of the CMO Whisper Advisory, and someone I've known, oh my gosh, it's got to be at least 15 years. He's a brother, he's a mentor, he's a friend, he's a confidant, he's everything.

0:39Bruce Hershey:He's also one of those rare leaders who has sat in just about every seat that matters. He's a former global CMO of the year, a senior executive, operator, entrepreneur, and business builder whose career spans more than three decades across major brands, agencies, startups, and founder-led companies. Can you see why he's a partner? But what has always stood out to me most about Bruce isn't just the resume. Oh, no. It's the way he sees around corners. He has this incredible ability to connect leadership vision to operational reality, marketing to revenue, catch that, and strategy to actual. A big reason the CMO Whisperer Advisory exists the way it does today is because of the conversations Bruce and I have had over the years about what companies, CMOs, and leaders are really doing behind closed doors.

1:29Bruce Hershey:Not the polished conference room version. Oh, no, no. The real version. Bruce, my brother, welcome. Thanks, my brother. Thanks for having me on the show. And I mean, I just got all these tingly feelings while you were talking. I was like, wow, that's me. So thank you for the nice, awesome intro. You can't see this because it's audio only, but Bruce was looking behind him as if I was talking about somebody else when I was. Exactly. Absolutely right. All right. We got to stay focused because you and I, you know, we'll go down different paths. Okay. So one of the reasons I wanted to have this conversation is because everybody talks about growth.

2:05Bruce Hershey:That's nothing. Everybody talks about brand. Everybody talks about transformation. But very few people talk about what actually changes when you move from leading a department to helping lead the entire company. Now, you've sat in both seats, CMO and COO. And I think a lot of marketers believe they understand the business because they understand their part of the business. But the enterprise lens is something completely different. So the first question is, what changes, if you will, when the scoreboard changes, if you will? Yeah, Steve, it's a great question. I mean, look, I really thought, I think it was sparked this.

2:39I really thought I understood business as a CMO and I did, but I realized becoming a COO is as I understood business mostly through the lens of marketing, right? And for me, the CEO role has really forced me to really understand weight and the interconnectedness of the business and, of course, consequences of the entire enterprise. Not my department anymore, right? It's the enterprise. And so to me, that's really what has really opened my eyes up and saying, was I ready for this transition? Absolutely. But am I learning a lot? Has it given me a lot of amazing energy? And, of course, I don't need any more.

3:18But my point is, is that it's given me this whole extra level of I want to learn. I want to grow as an individual, but also as a professional, because once again, it's not about just my department. It's about I'm building culture. I'm building solutions and processes for the whole entire organization. And it's just it's amazing. It actually fills my heart.

3:39Bruce Hershey:So take us back to that transition period. Right. Right. Do you remember the things that, you know, jumped off kind of quickly with surprise you? Yeah. You know, I think that I once again, I thought I really knew it all. Right. And I think the biggest thing is, is that becoming a COO, you know, now I have a, you know, a marketing team reporting to me. Right. I have an operational and security teams reporting to me. And I wish I would have, you know, when I was a vice president, as an example of marketing before I came a CMO, I wish I would have known what the CAEO and the COO was thinking. Not the C-suite as a whole, because they come together united, but they all have their own opinions.

4:19And I think if I would have thought or understood them more and really gotten to their heads, I think I could have been a better partner. I thought I was a bad partner. I just think that I could have moved much faster, maybe more agile. And I think that there could have been a lot more tension too, right? Who knows?

4:34Bruce Hershey:Yeah. And I assume, you know, there were things that you thought, air quotes, you understood as a CMO that you really only understood from one side, right? A hundred percent. Look, I had a P &L as a CMO, right? And so like, it's different because you're looking at, you know, once again, your department, you're not looking at how am I supporting the overarching company? company? How am I making sure that we all have a, you know, we're all striving for as leaders that focus on EBITDA, right? That bottom line. But at the end of the day, like I'm still focused on my department, right? And not that I'm not trying to grow the team because as a leader of a C-suite member, you have to look at the aspect, but you're still condensed, right?

5:11And now I'm just, for me, the aha was, oh shit, my P &L just grew much bigger. Oh, my team just grew much bigger. It's not about, I have these other departments I have to worry about. And coming into a 25-year-old company, a cybersecurity company at BSI, that has taught me so many things. And I like to move fast. And when you run a department, you can move your department as fast as you want. When you're moving a company, you've got to pace yourself because they're not used to that reaction. And I think the analogy I've used in the past is when you work with a big company, it's like moving three aircraft carriers versus a small company.

5:47You can move that much fast, more agile. I would say the same analogy applies for a department, right? Versus running a company. Yeah. If that makes sense.

5:55Bruce Hershey:You said something, one of our conversations, which we have all the time, but you said the difference between a CMO and a COO is the scale of consequence. Unpack that. What does that mean? Yeah. I mean, my consequences, when I make decisions today as an operator, right? A COO is not just going to be inward and outward, right? It's going to actually enable it. decisions I make today impact everybody versus decisions I make as a marketer impact my customers, right? Impact, it can impact the revenue and can impact my team, right? And so, but it's much different because if I'm, if I look, I remember making decisions as a marketer and we would have fun things.

6:34We would go do photo shoots that culturally worked within our team, still within the company, but culturally within our team. But you could never go do that outward because the The company has a different level of culture that you have to respect. And so I guess I hope that's answering your question. If I unpack that, is that the consequences for me are much greater, much more severe if I make a bad decision. Right. And look, I'm going to make bad decisions. I'm going to make mistakes. I know they're going to happen. Right. But are they are they calculated mistakes? It's as close as you can make it.

7:04That makes sense.

7:05Bruce Hershey:Yeah, it's it's not to make this incredibly simplistic, but it's a bigger scale, much bigger scale. I don't care how big the company is right at the end of the day. It's still at a much greater scale. It just amplifies. It's like times five or times 10, depending on how many departments and how big the org is, if that makes sense. How would you say being in this new role as a COO, has it changed your decision-making? Oh my gosh, it's really good. It has. I mean, I think I'm much more methodic now about what I'm doing. I'm actually being a lot more curious than I ever have been. I'm just curious in nature, but I'm asking the questions like that were asked to me, like, Bruce, why do you want to spend this money?

7:45Like, what's the strategy? And, you know, why does that content matter? Like, I'm the one asking that question now, right? Which is fascinating. And I have, you know, I'm like, do we want to spend money? You know, and now that question is coming to me versus, hey, Bruce, I need a budget. Whoa, what do you mean? You know, and so, but now I can articulate and help my team understand what they need to develop, if that makes sense, versus a lot of leaders don't drive that or show you that and you're sort of thrown out in the, in the, to the wolves, if you will. And unless you have been taught and trained those things, it doesn't always come off that easy.

8:21Bruce Hershey:One of the things you said too, uh, in the past and, and, and among many, many things you've said that were really provocative was you said a department can survive disconnected from the business for a while, but a company can't. No, no. Well, I mean, look, I think when we as marketers, you know, we go through seasons, right? And campaigns, right? And not all, as much as we want our campaigns to always win, win, win. We know that we're going to have some challenges and they may always thrive the way we want them to thrive. And I think, you know, and if we have a blip in the marketing or a content and driving volume, growth, sales, all those wonderful things, we can recover, right?

9:00We can spin up another campaign. We can alter it and we can potentially recover the next quarter or the next month, right? But, you know, when you make these, when you look at, you know, a different level when it comes to SEO, I can't recover that fast. It could be a PR nightmare that I have to really uncover, right? It could be a customer that, you know, may have gotten breached as an example. And now we're looking at legal issues. There's just so many different consequences now that it goes back to the word consequences that we have to really think of differently and say, wait a minute. Like if I really make the decision and this is the forward thinking now, it's what happens?

9:36What's the reactions that I'm that expected potential reaction? So I'm being a lot more diligent, a lot more thoughtful and not reacting just out of the gate. Yeah, let's go do that. It kind of sounds cool. Right. And I'm like, whoa, whoa, whoa. Like why? Why? Give me the why. And so, and give me the how, right. And the when and the where and the who and all those things now, which you ask those questions as marketers, but sit in a different seat. I'm a lot more thoughtful about those answers that come back to me.

10:04Bruce Hershey:Yeah, it's building a department versus building a company, right? Again, it's simplicity. That's really - Yeah, look, I'm not fighting for my department anymore. I'm fighting for balancing an enterprise, if that makes sense. It does. Right? Yeah. So from your COO lens, what does something like healthy cross-functional leadership actually look like? You know, we hear those buzzwords all the time, right? Cross-functional leadership. Oh, yeah. That's why I knew it was going to enlist a response. Yeah, I mean, look, we all need to work cross-functionally. And I think that's just a name that's been battered and bruised a couple times.

10:38And, you know, now it's on people's resumes, right? And there's titles, cross-functional leader, right? I think that's all fine. And I'm not berating those things. But what I would say is that from a COO lens is that if you're not, look, if there's anything that's taught me so far of being a 25-year-old cybersecurity company is that if I'm not at the intersection of the technology, the operations, the customer trust, the business transformation, if I'm not at the intersection of those things, that's where it all breaks. And that's where sometimes companies don't really pay attention to. And I can tell you this, that, you know, at BSI, I've learned that growth without operational alignment creates a ton of risk.

11:20I think that's the biggest thing I've unlocked is that you think you got people, you go around the horn, you have your big company meetings, you have your department meetings, you disseminate down and you think everybody's got alignment. But I can tell you that I've learned in my career that not everybody gets alignment through those exercises, right? Number one, number two, I've also learned that if you want to really, you know, sustain the growth and you want to validate that to me, it's not about what, you know, I think another strong line for me, I guess I'm moving around a little bit, Steven, I'm sorry, but marketing really can create that momentum.

11:55That's, I guess, if you go back to the two where corporations is really determining whether a company can sustain it. Right. And so I'm sorry I bounced around a little bit there, but if I think about what I've learned that if I don't have that alignment and the risk that can create, look, I've been in this role for six months, Stephen. What I'll tell you is that I just came off of a company meeting. OK, before this call. OK. And my first mission was to really get the security and the operations team that or departments really dialed in. right? We were failing. Guess what? Today in our company call, I got to celebrate three people on that team that has never been celebrated in company.

12:31Not three people at once. And so I had, when I came in, I was able to rebuild their and re-justify why an internship program for analysts and bring these young cyber students into a funnel to learn how to do security the correct way. And so we rebuilt it. Two of them that have been in the program for two years graduated. They got their certificates. One's being interviewed right now to go in the FBI. One converted to full-time. And we just brought on a third brand new intern that just graduated from high school that has more certifications in cyber than I've seen people that have been doing it for 20 years.

13:06So it's just really cool to have that cultural impact in a department that never had three celebrations at once. It's pretty incredible, right?

13:15Bruce Hershey:I love that. The passion is just coming out. Okay. Here's a question I've been dying to ask. How did your view of marketing change, if at all, now that you're in this role? It changed a lot, right? It changed more so than I thought it was going to be because that goes to go back to that. I wish I would have been in my CEOs or CEOs head before, right? Because now I understand when they said, really, or why do you want to do that? Or maybe you should do it this way. I think it goes back to that conversation earlier, whereas, you know, as a CMO, you know, I was really focused heavily on growth. That was the goal.

13:52Growth, growth, growth. As a COO, I've realized that growth without that operational alignment is really dangerous. Right. And so that's, I think that's really been my biggest thing is that when the, when our vice president of sales and marketing, which is awesome, she comes in and we start having conversations, I know that all too well, unlike CEOs and CLOs. And so they were asking questions because they really didn't understand why they were asking them. Maybe a board member asked them, maybe a friend asked them to ask that question, whatever it is. But what's really interesting is that I can actually help my VP much greater than any CEO or COO or help me through that lens, right?

14:32Because I can help them versus, you know, I can expect what he or she's going to say. I can expect it, right? And it's pretty incredible. And now I can sit there and say, whoa, okay, it's all good. We're going to work through this, but this is what we expect. This is how we should be moving forward as we think about your growth, but also how we're going to be able to sustain that growth for the company.

14:54Bruce Hershey:Correct. Correct. So talk to marketers for a second. Where do you see marketers unintentionally creating friction, if you will, for the business without even realizing it? Yes, great question. And I'm going to go back to data because I think data is a part of it is that they're looking at the data of their department. They're looking at the data of their customers or seeing how their campaigns are performing and they're making the right decisions because they're held to budgets. They're held to the activities behind that budget. And once again, driving that revenue. So if they're not, what I would say is make sure you understand the full scope of the business.

15:26What is the business really trying to do, right? What is the business really trying to achieve? What is that growth? Now, if the business is really trying to grow to 3%, 5%, 10 % growth, great. But where is that growth coming from? Is it all hinged on marketing and sales? I don't know, right? And I think that's a better view is that we all have, as leaders in an organization, we all should have, not equally, but we should all have parts of driving those revenue streams. And I think that's the biggest miss to go back to what you asked me is, you know, what's the friction they create? is that they're blindsided and you're thinking about what you're doing and not what's really going to help overall the company growth, if you will, and sustain growth.

16:03So I think that's where the friction comes in is the data points are really on this side and not bridging the business data and the marketing data all together and just say, are we really on track? Are we driving? Are we working together? Right? It's more of it's, this is what I'm doing. It's, it's the brand, but the marker should always understand that the brand is owned across the entire company. You're just responsible for making sure the brand grows, the brand stays positive, right? The brand does what it needs to do. And so I think that's the why I look at it, if that makes sense. And I would encourage just get in with your, you can spend time in the C-suite, that's great, but have those intimate conversations with your CEO, with your COO, with anybody that you can leverage to get a view of what's going to work collectively as an organization.

16:50So you went - Sounds simple, though, right? Sounds simple, though. Exactly. It's not though. It's not, right? And we say it's, and I'm always a building off this because people have said this before. I'm not saying something that different, right? It's different, but not that different. And I guess that from my view is that it goes back to that fundamental question at the top, you know, the shift and really looking at this in a much cleaner, different way. Because if you do, and you really start to have those true intimate conversations, I think you'll start to really peel the onion back and say, I got it.

17:22I got it. Okay. And that's what happened to me. The light bulb went off, especially as I'm sitting in the seat, Steve. I like literally like, I'm like, shit, I've been here before.

17:32Bruce Hershey:It's just a different view, right? It's a different view. So you, you, okay. You went from CMO to COO, as we know. Okay. Do you think the best CMOs will naturally evolve into operators over time? Or is it just not for everybody? Some might go from CMO to CEO. We've seen that, right? We've seen some of our colleagues, my peers, our peers, Steve, that have leapfrog like that. And I think it depends on the individual. I really do. It depends on what their mission, what their purpose is and what they want to do. I mean, we both have friends that have been CMOs and marketers for their entire career and they love it and they stay there, right?

18:08For me, it was an opportunity. To me, when you're a CMO, you're an operator as well. You're not just a marketer, right? And I think that is the building block for anybody that wants to transition to the next layer of the C-suite. And I say the natural one is the COO. It could be the CEO, obviously, for sure. And it depends on their technical chops if they can play anywhere else or not, right? And I've seen crazy things like that. And that all works because good leaders can work in any role as long as they're good, right? And I think that's the big component a lot for me was when you're a good leader and you can lead people, you can lead a company, you can lead culture, those things really matter, right?

18:49And so I don't have to be, as an example, and I guess I would say is that I don't need to be the expert at being a CEO today because I'm learning. I'm taking the skills that I've learned over the last 30 years and I'm bringing that forward. Look, and I've made some mistakes, brother. I have. But you know what? I won't make him again. I won't make him again. And I've had to pivot this transition a few times because, you know, when you're the new guy coming into the organization, what's the big fear? You're going to whack people, bring his own people in. kind of things. I made a very big constitution.

19:22That was not going to be my, my game plan. I really learned the org. I want to understand where the opportunities really laid. And by doing that, I built followers. I listened, right? I, I, I just pulled levers and dials because the nucleus was there. I just brought it a little tighter and cleaner.

19:41Bruce Hershey:So a CMO right now is listening and And they have aspirations to become a broader business leader like you are. What should they do? What are the first things they should do? Yeah. Find your passion. Okay. Find your passions first. Right. What gets you going? I think that's the most important thing. And then I would say also become a student again. Learn the business. If you want to stay in the vertical you're in today, learn it. Learn it upside down, inside out. Not from a marketing because you already nailed that. Right. Not from a marketing lens. You can speak to it. You're an expert. You got it.

20:13but learn the other aspects. Learn the operational side. If there's production, understand that. If there's manufacturing, understand that. Get to know the team. Get to know the people. Hear them. Talk to them. Listen to them. Because when you do that, that's going to say, wow, there is an opportunity here. How can I learn? And guess what? As you hear these things, and now, once again, you're a member of the C-suite or close to it, you can start driving these things in and making recommendations. And people can start noticing that, right? And then when they start noticing that, guess what? You're going to start bringing closer into things.

20:46Maybe they'll get, maybe you'll get a special project that's outside of marketing, right? Which would be really cool, right? And so to me, trying to learn, build those relationships, listen to the organization, not just your C-suite, right? Listen to the organization, start at the bottom and work your way up. A good book that I have been leveraging about every day as I've been on this journey is Good to Great. Good to Great has been an amazing book for me. and it's enabled me because to not just to look at people and a big component of that in the beginning of that is about right people in the bus then it's the right people in the bus on the right bus in the right seats right and then and so I've gone through that journey it's been great and to the point where we're even creating an amazing new product that's about to go to market and I got to use the hedgehog concept in there for the first time ever and it was awesome I'm identifying your numerators and denominators and knowing how you're going to bring that product.