Senior Marketeer Crisis | E82 with Fiona Jensen

What’s causing senior marketing leaders to burn out, feel isolated, and lose their edge? 🤔 In this episode of Blame It On Marketing, Emma and Ruta sit down with the insightful Fiona Jensen—a veteran with over 20 years of B2B marketing recruitment experience—to break down the hidden crisis in senior marketing.

We get into: 

✅ The real reasons behind the burnout and isolation of senior marketers
✅ Why being the “glue” of the company can make your contributions invisible
✅ How unrealistic KPIs, shifting roles, and ever-growing pressure are driving top talent to quit
✅ The essential role of building a robust network and finding the right mentors
✅ Practical red flags and tips for spotting unhealthy work environments and preventing burnout

If you’re tired of seeing top marketing talent get crushed under endless pressure—or if you’re a senior marketer needing a wake-up call on how to safeguard your career and well-being—this episode is for you.

We’re Ruta and Emma, the marketing consultants behind Blame it on Marketing. 

If you’re in B2B SaaS or professional services and looking to do marketing that actually drives revenue and profit, we’re here for it.

Visit blameitonmarketing.com and let’s get this show on the road.

Transcript

0:00

we are going to be discussing the senior marketing crisis. I have interviewed thousands of marketeers And I've realized that actually there is a serious marketing fuck up going on at senior leadership level that nobody's talking about. you're under a lot more pressure with fewer resources and less budget and CMOs are being driven to be more like CROs, we do absolutely screw ourselves over by sticking our noses into absolutely everything. you're the glue of the whole company. But the trouble is glue sort of becomes invisible and Well, that's resonated. welcome to Blame It On Marketing with your favourite marketing podcast hosts, Emma and Ruta. Nearly couldn't say that then. and in this week's episode, we are going to be discussing the senior marketing crisis. And there is one, we're dropping that bomb straight out the gate. And we are joined by the awesome Fiona, who we met at the Marketing Tech Conference, who we met, fell in love with, desperately wanted on the podcast, hounded her until she came on. So Fiona, please introduce yourself to everybody. Thank you so much. I bumped into you ladies at the Tech for Marketing conference and just loved it. The whole chalkboard with all the gripes and the terrors that marketers are suffering right now to this day was just amazing. So thank you so much for having me on. My background, so I've got 20 years worth of B2B marketing recruitment experience. I have interviewed thousands of marketeers at varying levels within their career and then most recently have spent more time working with senior level leaders who are having a terrible time with it. So I've come on here to tell all. Before we dig into the topic of the marketeer, senior marketeer crisis, tell us about your biggest career fuck up. Okay, well, my specific example is hard because actually I don't have the marketing career to talk about, but I have really thought about the main problems that I've heard and pattern recognition has come into this, right? Because I've had so many interviews with so many senior level marketeers who are leaving either on their own choice or before they're pushed or because they've just had enough of it. And I've realized that actually there is a serious marketing fuck up going on at senior leadership level that nobody's talking about. We can tell all, but really the main reason that everybody talks about in interviews is lack of budget, no seat at the table, no strategy, know, sales and marketing, not aligning, not enough budget, market product fit, right? The list of reasons or yeah, sort of blame can go on on and on and on. But personally, I think that's all shit. I think the problem is senior marketing leaders have not invested. in their network or community. So I speak to people who are isolated, who have no perspective, who have no idea that actually the same situation and the same shit is going on in 10,000 other companies right now and nobody's talking about it. And that's the fuck up. They're not building their network and they're not leveraging and asking for help of their peers. Well, that's resonated. Yeah, apart from I think we've got better at it, but we can get into that a bit later. We can talk about how it is personally for Ruta and I, because if you don't know, Ruta and I are fractional CMOs in our day job and marketing vigilantes by night. So I love that. I love that's the fuck up. Cause I feel like that's, that's answered question two and three already, Fiona. I love it. you've done it all in one hit. I love it. So let's, let's go into that community network bit because I feel like So we see all the time that people on LinkedIn in particular are talking about more and more senior marketers quitting their roles. Like you say, Fiona, people are using a myriad of kind of, I guess, business excuses. Should we say that? As the reason why they're exiting their roles. first of all, why don't you think people are being honest about that? And second of all, what do we do about that kind of community networking aspect? Is that for you? Tell us why you think that might be the reason. Absolutely. so the reason why there is this sort of senior marketing crisis and why you're seeing all of those LinkedIn posts with all of those sort of, you know, usual complaints and issues. And, you know, this is what happened to me in the interviews is because that's what everybody says and that's what everybody does. Right. But the problem is that what they're not really saying is, is what the actual problem is, which is you're under a lot more pressure with fewer resources and less budget and CMOs are being driven to be more like CROs, but that's not what you are. So it's a little bit, think, with regards to the sort of pressure of the times and the fact that so many people are demanding so much from senior marketers now. And they've forgotten that actually, you know, you are also a human being who's also having to learn the fact that the world has changed and AI has arrived and yeah, we're all trying to figure it out, mate, but you're not the silver bullet that they are looking for. And often I think senior marketing leaders are blamed a lot of the time for absolutely everything that's going wrong in the business. Whereas actually, That's not the job. That's not what you've been employed to do. like it a lot of the time though. It's like because we can touch everything if we want to right like there's total remit for it So when things start crumbling you're like, could have done that could have done that could have fixed that could have should have would have So yeah, it can feel that way we do absolutely screw ourselves over by sticking our noses into absolutely everything. I've felt this and I think we're just probably the same where we have been involved in writing and owning the go-to-market strategy and fixing problems in the sales team and trying to get customer success talking to sales because we know it's going to benefit marketing. And that is really exhausting. But you also, if you're like us, you know, and I'm sure a of CMOs are, you want to do your job well and you want things to be better and you want to fix shit. But the constant chasing after that is probably the bit that is the killer, right? Yeah, I think it's that issue of trying to be all things to all men, which marketing is, but on the flip side, I think that does leave you heavily exposed. And again, that's one of the issues and something we'll cover off later, because again, I've got some ideas on how to reduce that exposure drastically. But on the flip side, you know, it does also create then this sort of story that we see and that doesn't help. you when you arrive, which is that sort of short tenure trap of, know, the shortest tenure in the C-suite, for example, is a CMO. I wonder why that is. You come in, you figure out where all the problems are, you talk truth to power, and then who gets shot down when they don't like what they hear? It's the CMO. never been there before that sounds crazy what Fiona that's never happened ever sacked us because we told them how shit everything was. Well you know bit of cleaning required right Emma so yeah. Gold's ready. yeah. But I think the other thing as well is that sort of AI overload. And I think that's not just in marketing. Unfortunately, that's right across the board. But again, because marketeers are always sort of at the forefront of stuff, you're kind of expected to figure it out and then help the rest of the company figure it out. And unfortunately, that's also creating a huge drag on how you can perform and what you can do and how much you can do. But also the sort of expectations are completely unrealistic because again, AI is sold as this sort of silver bullet of, you know, marketing can fix everything. Now AI is here and you're like, oh my God, actually it's 10,000 times worse. Thanks for don't need more people because you can just use more AI guys. it's like, no, that's not, you know, you still, I mean, I will say this, I know a lot of people are very worried about this, but ultimately you put shit in, you get shit out. And you need good marketers to tell you what the shit looks like. So if you don't have the people, you can't tell the difference between something decent and something crap. You just can't. yeah. I think also coming back to the kind of community point and isolation, especially if you're in a smaller business, as the most senior marketer, you're the most senior marketing, like by a large gap to other people typically. And I assume lots of us love LinkedIn or hate to love LinkedIn, whichever way it is. we consume lots of LinkedIn comments, no, consume lots of LinkedIn content. And we're potentially looking at other marketers, but To me, it feels like there's only two camps on LinkedIn for marketing content. One is telling you how amazing somebody is and how they did something amazing and how you should do the same thing that's amazing. Or two, it's the really bad stuff. it's the, you know, I was asked to create a go-to-market strategy for my interview and then they ghosted me and then I saw that they implemented, you know, my work, et cetera. So do you think we're struggling as well? Because traditionally, I feel like LinkedIn was better. back in the day when it came to kind of consuming more balanced content and not feeling like you're so isolated. Do think we're also struggling because kind of the source of maybe that is gone away now and it's too extremes and you're not really relating to either one of those for the most part in your day to day. I think that's a really good point. I feel like LinkedIn has sort of degraded a bit, especially since the dawn of AI. You can literally at a glance see what's been produced through AI, through dashes and emojis and God knows what else. And I think everybody likes to think they're a marketeer now, which just makes it even harder to be found and seen and understood when you actually do have the credibility of being part of the profession and versus. you know, someone from the outside just wanting to put in a perspective or a, you know, soundbite or even just looking for clicks and likes or engagement for whatever reason, you know, it's just mental out there. So I don't think that LinkedIn is necessarily a really good sort of sounding board for marketers as such. think it's very useful with regards to being able to connect with the professional world on a global scale. And I think if you're careful with how you use LinkedIn and you use it as a tool for your business or for yourself, versus you need to take from LinkedIn what's going to work for you, but you've got to be careful with how much you allow LinkedIn to get into your head and into your mindset, because there's an awful lot of very strange perspectives and expectations and comments which aren't actually in real life true. So yeah, I think that whole get up at five and this is what I do and this is how amazing I am is just becoming more and more the sort of shit that you see on LinkedIn. And as you say, it's just harder to see those amazing real value life experience stuff that we're actually all there for. I marketers can also be quite... reserved in their woe. That's the thing to say on a Wednesday morning. So we met at a marketing event essentially and you totally got us, you understood what we were about. Great. But then towards the end of the event, me and Emma kind of walk around and we're like, hey, we're doing this thing. Like, blah, blah, would you like to like give us a little sound bite? And people, you can actually see, and these are marketers. you can see them like recoil in themselves to be like, like, what do you mean you want me to talk about not good things? Like, what do you mean we have, like, you want me to fess up to something or just talk about something that's difficult, you know? There's this like, I think still professionalism or perceived professionalism about not talking about things that are not good I think we do fall into that camp of people who don't ever, well, because we're so often in the firing line, openly admitting that something's gone wrong or that you messed something up or whatever, or that you're even pissed off because someone else has done something crap. Like we're always seen as the people who have to be like positive through everything. And I think that is to our detriment. And then The flip side of that is, know, like Ruta and I have been on the receiving end of this sometimes, which is that, you know, you're coming across as very angry or aggressive, or you're using really emotive language, or I wrote a post the other day, which was talking about being immature because somebody said that in my LinkedIn DMs that I was really immature for posting silly things when I'm supposed to, supposedly a CMO. And I was like, well, no, this is just the job love and it's sarcasm. Sorry, you're not in on the joke, but people are not. No, no, but I think that's it. We've kind of, we have sort of done this to ourselves. And I also think we've isolated ourselves. Back to your point, Fiona, which was about networks and communities, because we don't want to admit to other marketers, things are going, and our peers, we're very frightened of saying to another marketer, because we're so worried about being like, oh my God, this job is really hard and I'm not enjoying it and it's And then we fall, you must do. marketers feel like they can open up to you you're not another marketer and you're safe, right? 100%. So this was so true because every time I meet, you know, a senior leader or someone in marketing, maybe they're the first marketer into a company and they're like, it's me. It's totally me. I don't know. I can't, can't make it work. It's completely wrong. And I'm looking at it. I'm like, what did you do? How did you do it? No, that all makes perfect sense. It's not you. It's not you. It's the people who you're working with, know, it's the company, it's product market fit. There's always like nothing. I'm not saying that every marketeer is amazing, right? But I just think there is a certain personality trait culture within marketing where you're there for everybody else to succeed, right? You need the sales team to look amazing. You need them to hit their numbers. You need the CEO to have a great. you know, personal brand or the company to have an amazing brand. It's never about you, but that comes with the sort of drag of not being very good about selling yourself and standing up for yourself and questioning stuff when actually that is when you should be saying, what did you say? Why did you say that? What do you mean? you know, and I think there's always this sort of you, talking, you're communicating, you're the glue of the whole company. But the trouble is glue sort of becomes invisible and people just, you know, it just sort of works and they don't really know why and they can't really relate to where or how and that's the magic in marketing because one person can make a huge difference to an overall company's success. But the real problem is you're not very good about talking about being the glue because you're so invisible half the time with all the background work and all the foundations and everything that you're building and the strategic plans that you're coming up with. But you also sort of forget all the things that you do as well. You sort of come in and, you know, within the first sort of 90 days, marketeers have had such an impact. But if you ask them, OK, what did you do in the last 90 days? They're like, what day is it? What? What do you mean? I don't know. And again. done, you know. is a problem. This is a problem. And that is where you do need that network and that kind of community of people around you. And you do need peers who are, this is the other thing, like I say, I like I said it previously, I'm not going to say again, but I don't blame especially female marketers for doing this because I get it. If you've worked in corporate in particular, you've kind of had it like, yeah, beaten into you that you shouldn't go to other CMOs in other businesses and say, my God, this job's so hard. But actually, you know, that is, if you are feeling like that, or feeling like you don't need to do that. I mean, Ruta and I have had that, right? We went to an event not that long ago where there was another CMO who was clearly female CMO who was clearly put out by mine and Ruta's presence because it was like, you know, and it's like, no, this is not it. We need to band together. We don't need to be, we're not, we're not competing. We're not here to compete. We're here to, support one another and kind of lift each other up. That's the job of being as any senior leader, it doesn't matter what department you're in, but that is where you need that network and that community. yeah, you kind of have to, I guess the first step is probably like breaking down the wall and dropping the facade. You don't have to do that internally, which I know is not easy. Yeah, I think that at the risk of sort of being that annoying person, I think actually part of the problem is what we've been talking about. So that sort of the patriarchy, the lack of senior leadership support. I think unfortunately, a lot of that comes from a lack of understanding because shit just gets done in marketing. They come to you and they're like, we need to go pitch this company tomorrow. And then boom, there's a deck. They're like, that's possible. Okay, brilliant. They don't see the whole midnight marketer in their bed desperately trying to still see blinking, trying to get these things done. So I think there's too much, suck it up. going on and actually I think there has to be a really you know messy conversation about hang on a minute actually you know if you want this doing that's gonna mess this bit up and actually that looks amazing I'm so glad this has been successful but you really need to understand how much work has gone into that so just you know let me talk you through it let's just you know revisit this because it was a horrendous experience from marketing perspective I'm so glad it delivered great results but fuck me Let's not do that again. Yeah. sleep, you know? life. i'm not afraid to say this out loud because i feel like also we're in a safe space and fuck anyone who thinks this is bad. but i am absolutely prepared to let people in some of the businesses that i've worked for fail. because i am not going to give you my weekend and my evenings and i have learned that the hard way and i'm saying that as someone who in my younger years you know i worked in events i did that a lot. i really suffered. both my personal life and my work life suffered. and i just got to a point where i was like nope. never doing that again. and i would probably say you know like before going as a.. you becoming a consultant i had two in-house jobs and i did not.. ruta can probably testify. i would not have done that for anybody. i might have done it for ruta if she'd have been like please help me. but no. or evenings. nope. not prepared to do it. need you to work on weekends and evenings, I have under-resourced my team for what the fuck I have planned. And that is my fault. That is my CEO's fault. And that's what needs to change. Yeah, I couldn't agree more. Yeah. doing it. I think more people, work is work. Doesn't matter how much you love your job, we love our jobs. I like to think our clients love us, but I am not prepared to, I'm not gonna sacrifice my life for work. I'm sure Fianna, you can attest to this, but sure fire way to hate your job real quick is to only ever do your job all the time. 100 % and again, you know, I think the trouble is however that because the market has been so hard for marketeers We see it all the time. So I think the challenges again, talking back to that sort of under-resourced pressure to deliver, it's unfortunately something that I'm seeing a real trend of where marketeers are just starting to think, right, you know, I'm lucky to have a seat. I'm lucky to be here. I need to make this work. And the challenge, and again, this is something that we're sort of leading up to. It's burnout. know, a lot of senior level leaders are now starting to sort of come out and they're like, I can't deal with this. I don't want to deal with this. am completely, I've never had this before. I've been doing this for 20 years, but I am leaving. I'm going off sick. I'm done in. you know, I can't do this anymore. And that's burnout. And that's unfortunately due to an under-resourced unrealistic expectations, huge pressure to deliver, especially if you've landed in an exciting scale up. Fast moving. Red flag, red flag. shit done. But we have a really great culture. Table tennis? Ugh, ugh, ugh, don't. So if you are, so there's two scenarios, right? You're currently in a job that's gonna lead to you to burn out if you don't change something and maybe seeking a new job is not an option. What do we do then? And then after that, let's talk about if you are looking for a new job, how do you analyze to the best of your abilities to make sure that you're not going to be led to burnout? Got you, yeah. the sort of red flags, I suppose, if you are or have been at a company for a while and you're starting to feel like, is it me? That's red flag number one, right? As soon as you start questioning what you're doing and why you're doing it, it's probably a really good sign that there's something not quite right. So that's number one. Number two is no seat at the table, whether it's you or your boss or the leadership team. But if marketing's not got a seat at the table, I would run if I were you. You know, I think the trouble is marketing, as I said, is the glue. And that doesn't necessarily mean that you need to lead every meeting, but it probably means that you should be in every meeting, right? In some form or other. especially when it talks about the direction of the company and the resources and the revenue and the sale. I'm shocked at how many times that's not occurring. And I question why that is because it makes zero sense if you look at what marketing actually is and what it's there to do. But unfortunately, that's quite a common phenomenon, which I don't recommend. So that would be another red flag. The next thing is No clear KPIs or KPIs that change on a very regular basis. That's incredibly hard to manage. Absolutely. you know, that didn't work. So next quarter, we want something completely different. Jesus, it takes six months to get any kind of results, maybe years. So, you know, let's just be really clear on what the actual plan is and what you need from me. I've known somebody who used to do that, more like on an every two week basis. So yeah, that was a shock to the system. Yeah. Yeah. No, it's okay. It's okay. I'm more triggered for the team that was there than me. Yeah. And then we've got the sort of CMO churn So again, you know, three CMOs in a year, that sort of stuff. Run for the hills. Say no. And then the sales and marketing wars. So if it's, you know, marketing have been delivering or sales aren't doing this. Red flag. If someone says to you, your job is lead gen and nothing else is your job, that is a clear sign that you either need to get that person... Yeah. No, don't do that. Say no. Say no, thank you. It's like that whole adage of you know, you're sort of dating isn't it, when you're going through interviews and you sort of really like the look of someone and you think actually, I can change him. I can make this work for me. No you can't, run! it's gonna hurt a lot. If they give you the ick, there's a reason. Like, you do have to trust your gut as well. And I get it. I guess this goes into the next point, which is the question we had, which was around how do you then find a decent role if you're interviewing? Because at the moment, know, marketers are, we are, people are desperate for work. It's really hard out there. People aren't spending the budgets. They aren't hiring senior or as senior. So you've got people who were CMOs going for heads of marketing roles and then being told you've got too much experience, mental. You should bite those people's hands off, you know, to be your CMO. So how do you sort that out versus the kind of desperation of needing a job and having bills to pay? Yeah, so I mean, it's hard, right, because everybody's coming at this from a very different angle. So some people are sort of more financially sound and secure and they're sort of surfing the market, having a great time at the moment, just looking for projects or companies that they might just enjoy working on and they can take a bit of a risk on, you know, I'll come in as a senior marketer and I'll build this up to, you know, where it should be in a couple of years time. And that's like the ideal scenario, others unfortunately are having a very different experience out there. And as you say, they're applying for absolutely everything, very frustrated, which then comes across when they're speaking to people and when they're interviewing because their frustration is, I could do this job standing on my head, why aren't you giving it to me? And the answer is, always from my perspective, very honest, which is that a lot of companies can see you coming a mile away. They know you're completely overqualified for the job. And as soon as the market is back, they're going to lose you. So whether that's three months, six months, nine months, 12 months, they don't see that as short term value exchange. They see that as a bit of a nightmare because they're going to have to go through the whole recruitment process again. So that's why that particular tangent doesn't work. The opportunities there is fractional contract, know, and sort of consulting, you know, setting up your own business, which all sounds very exciting. It's still extremely hard, but right. that unless you've already got clients, okay? Yes, get your first client before you make that jump. Yeah, absolutely. And again, I've got a story of a lady who super impressed me. I met her probably about eight years ago. What was her name? think it was Caroline. She'd worked at one of the really large four consulting firms, but she always knew that she wanted to go off and do fractional consulting work. Spent her whole career. developing networks, creating future clients, walked off into the absolute dream scenario and just, yeah, completely smashed it. Wrote a book whilst consulting, know, living her best life. Absolutely. So if you know that's the direction you're doing, start now, wherever you are, whatever time in your career you are, start now. But on the flip side, you know, if push comes to shove, you know, there's plenty of opportunity out there to pick up contracts, speak to the right recruitment agents who can start moving you about, you could build your credibility and pick up work that way. But I think, you you've just got to look at what's available on the market and work with that. You've got to be realistic with where the market is and meet it. I've had plenty of people who have come to the market expecting a similar experience to the one they had two, three years ago. and they've been dictating to the market what they're worth and what they want to do and what they will and won't consider through interview processes and they're looking for years now, if not months. So I don't recommend that in the current market. I think you've got to be pragmatic. You've got to see where the opportunities are for you to exchange value. Maybe you can take a contract where you get that first head of marketing job title that you've always wanted. Or maybe you can build your muscle on paid media, which is something that is going to be useful to you in the future. Whatever it is, make sure there's a win-win, but I'd be pragmatic about it. Yeah. I think it's, it's also goes back to that. you know, it is, it is a job. We do love our jobs as marketers. We're a bit too loving in many ways as we've discussed, but you know, if you are in those interview processes and you can ask questions about the stuff that is going to just enable, like the job, might not be perfect. Like you might not have fully flexible working or whatever it is that you think you want or the hundred K salary or whatever it is you really. set your heart on, you might have crap annual holiday allowance, whatever that might be. So whatever the thing is that you think, I can't flex on that. But if the product market fit is there and you've got a seat at the top table and you've got learning and development opportunities, you can do a lot with that. can. like Fiona said, back to your analogy about dating, compromise is okay. think it does. I don't, I don't, I mean, there's very exciting prospects and opportunities and potential, but yeah, I think there's, there's always going to be a bit of grunt work or the downside. And everything has like a pro or con, right? Like me and Emma work in startups because we like, for the most part, we like how they work, but there's so many cons to working in a startup. And it's the same as if you went to corporate, you might love it, but there's going to be cons to working in a corporate. And even those cons might just be the fact that you're not working in a different field. know, like there's opportunity costs with everything. So you just got to decide on what you're happy to spend that on. essentially and what works for you. Yeah, thank you. That's really good practical advice, I think, which a lot of people will appreciate because it's not fun out there. And yeah, me and Emma are just counting on our lucky horses that we can still be consulting and be fine, you know, and get on with life. yeah. we're talking about senior leaders here and senior marketers. How can senior leaders, whether they're in marketing or not, or they're other senior leaders in an organization, how can they support their marketers and their senior marketing leaders better? Yeah, so I think, you know, all those sort of red flags that we talked about is really the green flags that we're looking for. So, you know, seat at the table, very clear KPIs. I always recommend to marketers when they start a new job to take that sort of 90-day CMO blueprint with them and try to figure that out, you know. What does good look like in three, six, nine, 12 months? What's the business expectation compared to where it is now? So that there's a very clear sort of plan for you when you start, but also for the business to understand how long it takes to create those outcomes and when they should or can expect outcomes. And then also, that relationship with sales I think unfortunately that sort of blame it on marketing can also unfortunately, and I hate holding up a mirror here, but it really can come from marketing a lot too. The sales team are shit. The sales team aren't following up on the leads. The sales team aren't this. So I think people do forget sometimes that all sales actually want to do is succeed. They want to win deals. They want to look good and they want to talk to people who want to talk to them. They're not complicated. It is a really tough job. And actually, I think if you can come at it from that angle, you can create amazing relationships and partnerships. So again, that is something that I'd be looking for. Can you create that friendship, that relationship, that symbiotic, I'll scratch your back, you scratch mine, let's do this. One of the other things for me that really helped me early in my career was having outside help. So when Emma and I worked together, I was the head of marketing and there was no one more senior in marketing than me. So my CEO went and sourced the correct mentors for me and suggested people that I can go and talk to. And I was totally allowed to take them out for a three hour lunch, you know, as frequently as I needed. So just, you know, if you do know people or you know people that know people then... suggest it, you know, obviously don't be like, you need a mentor because you're shit. Don't make it sound like that, but just be like, hey, there's people available and everyone can benefit from having someone on the outside to have as a sound onboard. So that was a huge help for me personally. I think if it's not a mentor, is something like a career coach. I don't think you're ever at a point in your career where, like, just cause you feel like you're CMO and you've hit the ceiling, that isn't the ceiling. You know, like you can still, we should still be learning and developing and being able to have those conversations. And I personally, that to me, alongside the mentor thing has been one of the most helpful things that I've ever. done is source my own career coaching as well as had, you know, been lucky enough to work in companies where we've had some internally. Um, cause it's really helped unravel the relationship between my personal life work and, know, and that's why I am now strong enough to be like, if a salesperson asked me for a deck at five o'clock on a Tuesday, you're not going to have it at nine o'clock on on a Wednesday morning. Um, and, and, you know, so you do need that because it helps. build back some resilience to some of this stuff that we're talking about. Absolutely, yeah. And I think also, you know, one of the sort of things that's always frustrated me and that I really want to see is marketing at board level. I want CMOs to become CEOs and I want those CMOs to be able to sit on boards and I want to see women in leadership become women at exec level. I don't know why that's not happening. I read books about it. I question, I ask, but it's still not happening. When you're asking for that seat at the table or reminding companies of that KPI conversation, or you're questioning why budgets are being reduced when actually that have been fairly and clearly negotiated with value in mind, but over a three year period, not a three month period, right? All this sort of stuff, or the conversations that you've had with sales about, know, let's work together, then why are you still doing this? You know, the, sticks in your head for a while but over time you do forget. But you build this wave of marketing know-how and action in practice. the challenge is when someone turns around and as I said to you earlier, what have you done in the last three months? You go completely blank, stare at them and run for the hills because you don't know. You did so many things. I mean, which bit do you pick? So you build yourself a career journal which clearly allows you to keep receipts. build data backstories and allows you to pattern spot, which then helps you to talk to your community, your own personal career exec board or your network to say, this shit keeps happening. Help me fix it. I love it. And yeah, if you're not into the whole public, publicly blowing your own trumpet, at least you're kind of doing it privately. Yeah. Well, then you can just throw the book if you get a big enough one and you make it hard enough and solid enough and you fill it enough. It becomes a weapon of choice. Yeah. yeah, yeah. We're not condoning violence. we're nearly at the end. Do what you like. Just hand it to HR and be like, you don't need an exit interview. Here are all the problems. Fiona, it's been a pleasure. We're nearly at the end of our time. So before we wrap up, we love to talk about marketing gossip or just general gossip. It tends to be LinkedIn gossip these days. Is there anything that is happening at the moment that you have seen that you either love or hate that you want to share with us? You know, I love a multitude of things, but there's one thing which I have to say I absolutely hate, which is when people are saying, this works really well, this is amazing, I can send you my deck, my solution, just comment, what the fuck, and I'll send it to you. Every time I see something like that, literally want to stab myself in the eye. It just kills me. So I absolutely hate that. Stop that, please. we're so glad to have you here. Such a good conversation. If you wanna have a look at Fiona's profile, if you have any specific questions, then you can find her on LinkedIn And yeah, thank you so much for being here and we absolutely love this chat. It was a pleasure. I love you both so much.