Kelsey: [00:00:00] Welcome Lisa to the next CMO podcast. We're super excited to have you on the show today would love to learn a little bit more about you and what you do for work.

Lisa: Yeah. Great. Kelsey, thanks so much for having me. I was excited to be here today. So let me just tell you a little bit about my background. I've worked at companies big and small all different marketing roles. I have a little bit of a different CMO background than maybe most CMOs, because I also had a wonderful opportunity to run a business.

So I had that opportunity. I built an e-commerce business. I ran strategy for a decade. I've run a few vertical businesses and I've been able to be on boards, nonprofit and for-profit, and that's all given me just a great perspective on trust and trust management areas, which kind of led me to this role with one trust.

I was so excited about it because I was looking for a company that really aligned with my. And I can tell you just a little bit about one trust. So the company is very much [00:01:00] purpose-driven, you know, everybody talks about, I want to work for a purpose driven brand and we definitely are that because the company focuses on privacy and data governance, GRC and security assurance, ethics, and culture and ESG and sustainability.

Okay. Quite frankly, that's what everybody in the world is talking about today. So those areas just made such an impact for me. And what we're doing there is really helping everybody manage trust and become a trusted brand. So it just resonated with.

Peter: But it's amazing. The, the path that you've taken, Lisa and it's, it's funny. Such parallel worlds we've been in, which is really interesting. So we discovered at the, at the prep in the first couple of seconds of discussion before this call that Lisa and I actually did time at Boston college together.

We both were sort of nerds. So sorry to paint you with the same brush that I paint myself with. Lisa, but you were a computer science. Double. I was a physics and computer [00:02:00] science double. I also ran ran a company divisions and was the COO in, but you you've accomplished a lot of really interesting things.

I mean, a couple of things I wanted to point out in your background that are just really incredible. One is that. You you spent as an example 18 years at Autodesk and and did some amazing things, including being the CMO of Autodesk for, for many years, a board member at Dropbox. So that's pretty impressive and I know serving on other other boards et cetera, but really amazing background.

And and it's interesting to think that after all that's, after all that stuff you decided to go to this little company, one trust, but I wanted to talk about one trust a little bit more because it's a crazy story. If you think about it founded in 2016 

Lisa: yeah, the company is five years old.

Peter: Yeah, five years old. Raised almost a billion [00:03:00] dollars of financing.

I at north of $5 billion valuation in the, in the latest and 10 acquisitions in that period. So tell us a little bit about sort of, of how this company assembled to go after this massive opportunity. 

Lisa: Yeah. So that's when everybody asks me that question, or you had the CMO of Autodesk you know, a company that was like 60 billion plus in market cap. What, what made you go to a smaller company? And one again was the space that we were in. We are creating a whole new category of software. One trust is creating this category and we're the leader in the category.

And we really think of it as trust management. And it's those four areas that I talked to you about privacy and data governance, GRC and security assurance, ethics, and culture and ESG and sustainability. And so that's, what's given our company a huge Tam, which is why you get these great valuations.

Because we're serving all of those arrows where all of those areas, and we're actually threading [00:04:00] the needle between all of them and nobody else is doing that. But one trust. And I think that's, what's unique about the company and what's attracting top talent to this company. And that's also, what's giving us this valuation now with acquisitions, we've been very strategic about sometimes it's a technology tuck in.

Sometimes it's buying something that is a leader in one of those specific areas. We did that in ESG. With carbon accounting. And we did that in ethics and compliance by really getting a great ethics platform that helps people build a speak up culture. And now what we're doing is integrating the best of all of those companies, which is not just the technology, but the talent into the company.

Now imagine doing that, you're just in five years. So we're going after. Amazing speed and really change is the answer at our company. I tell everybody our changed muscle is so strong because we just learn how to adapt and be flexible and agile. As we're growing, discovering this space, leading the [00:05:00] charge in this. 

Peter: It's, it's amazing. And a couple of things that are really fascinating to me. One is, first of all, you have a, an amazing name and one trust is just is a great name for what you all do. And I wanted to talk a little bit about the brand from, from your perspective, which is obviously a lot more than the name and, and I think being in your business that one trust is around and being a marketer is, is really it's important in complicated because of course you have to make sure that you're weaving the concept of trust into your marketing.

And so how do you think, how do you think about sort of the extra. That extra level that you need to reach with with, with the particular business that you're in. Does it put extra constraints on the way that you think about your mom's. 

Lisa: Yeah. Peter. That's a really great question because one of the things that I always tell people is because of what one trust does, the business that we're in and what [00:06:00] we stand for, we actually have to be the exemplar in our space, right? So we have to be the best ourselves at privacy and data governance.

We need to be the best ourselves at speak-up culture, right. We need to be the best ourselves with ESG and sustainability. And so that does put, added pressure on us as marketers within one trust. So I have to be very. Careful about what I'm doing. Am I respecting people's preferences and their data? How am I collecting the data?

Am I being transparent with the data? So what's really fun about this role and what I didn't have in my last company. The CMO is one of the audiences that we sell to. We sell to chief privacy officers, chief trust officers, chief legal officers, risk officers, right? You name the C-suite executive and we sell to them.

But as marketers, now, we have to say, how do you approach marketing in a different way so that you're really respecting people's preferences. You're respecting what they want you to do with their data. Because every transaction, every interaction you [00:07:00] have is an impact on the brain. Right. And so we are definitely held not only by our customers to that standard, but by the industry to that.

Kelsey: So one thing I think is really interesting in today's world is trust is at an all time low people don't trust in general, everyone is skeptical, skeptical about everything. How does that affect the level of trust and why should marketers care so much about.

Lisa: Yeah, I agree with you, Kelsey. It's it is pretty low. And the reason being is I think that companies used to be just judged on, do you have good products and is a good quality. But that has changed dramatically over the past decade. Now it's not just price and quality. It's how do you engage with me?

What's the customer experience. And on top of that, it's how transparent are you and how trusted are you? And I quite frankly think that marketers have to lead the charge here because we're the ones out there creating the experience. So do you have a really easy experience [00:08:00] for a customer? If, for example, I get really frustrated if I go to a website and they make it really hard for me to figure out.

How do I tell you what my preferences are? What data I want you to collect and how I want you to use it if I have to hunt around, or if you try to trap me by saying you accept all, and there's no other way for me to express my preferences, for example, that's frustrating and that breaks trust. So marketers need to make sure the experience is very easy, very transparent.

Don't hide things on me. Let it be very easy for me to tell you. The experience that I want from you. And then you can tailor my experience because I told you what I'm looking for and that builds trust. Now, the beauty I always tell marketers about trust is trust is very, very hard to earn. And it can be a, not just a competitive differentiator, but a competitive separator, because it is very hard to copy trust.

It's not like, you know, you spend all these years building trust and getting to be a trusted brand. And then all of a sudden somebody can swoop in and just say, yeah, I'm going to be one. You have to earn [00:09:00] that. So it is not easily copied and it can be a big separator for companies. If you invest in it and marketers have to be on the frontline of that with our experience, what data are you collecting?

Why are you collecting it? What value are you giving me an exchange for that data? So that all want to give it to you. We have to think about all of those things.

Kelsey: Absolutely. And I, I actually it's, this is really interesting for me personally, because I came from a background working for a company called reputation Institute. We actually measured the reputation of companies. It wasn't, you know, reputation, repair. It was more so the proactive approach to make sure we were doing whatever they could to, you know, gain that trust and gain that good reputation within people.

So I'm just curious, how do you measure that trust?

Lisa: Right. So there's a lot of different ways that we can measure trust. Sometimes, you know, you'd get this baseline, but you can look in each one of those areas. So with, for instance, privacy and data, Quite frankly, you can [00:10:00] audit, you can do benchmarking, right? So we have benchmark and reports. We can do analysis and insights to say, how are you doing?

Are, are you taking into account these preferences? Are you tracking to that? Are you meeting the different benchmarks, same with your ethics and speak up culture? You know, it was interesting. I was talking to a chief ethics and compliance officer and she said to me, my spidey sense goes up when all of a sudden the number of.

Complaints or reports that I'm getting goes way down. That's actually not a good sign. Right? She says, I think that's problematic when I start to see that going down, because then we don't have a real speak-up culture. And so that can be a signal you can treat. What's happening with those statistics, ESG and sustainability, as you all know, there's no one set standard, but there's all these different frameworks out there.

And companies aren't know. We have to disclose so many companies. I mean, Autodesk, I was there when we published our first impact report, it was very. People are putting these disclosures out there and they're telling [00:11:00] people here's our impact. Here's what we're doing with diversity inclusion. Here's what our people profile looks like.

Here's how we're doing and tracking to that. People are tracking their carbon footprint. They're making commitments to be net carbon, zero. So those are all the different ways people are tracking in those trust management areas. I talked to you about, which helps you understand how am I doing with trust over. 

Peter: One of the things that I was wondering, Lisa is is there a difference between companies who think about trust as a compliance check mark versus companies who think about trust as a strategic differentiator? 

Lisa: you're, you're saying exactly what I'm always thinking. And when we talk to customers, when you treat it just as a compliance exercise, it's really what I would call just foundational and baseline. And it also has kind of a negative connotation, right? I'm just managing risk. I'm just doing this to be compliant.

So, you know, checking the box it's important, but it can't be. [00:12:00] Versus the companies that I find that make this a part of their culture code and say, this is a part of our DNA. It's a part of our culture code. It's how we behave. Those companies attract the best partners into their ecosystem. They attract and more important retain the top talent in their companies.

And before. They get customers that are willing to buy from them. So it impacts your top line. When you treat it more as strategic to your company. In fact, I just saw an Edelman report where they put out a stat that said 70% of consumers say trust is more important to them now than ever before. And it actually impacts whether they want to buy from your company or not.

That's a direct impact on your top line. So I think there's a big difference between treating it just as a compliance checkbox versus it's strategic. And it's part of our culture code and how we do it. 

Peter: So when should companies start to engage in a more comprehensive approach to trust. So you brought up a couple of examples around, you know, their [00:13:00] kind of public company reporting that has to be done and things like that. I assume it's before you're a big, giant public company. So when, when, when do you start thinking more comprehensively about the idea of trust and in all of this. Elements of what's inside trust. 

Lisa: Yeah. And by the way, I mean, it's a journey. We all know it's a journey. And I think of it as the trust. So you have to start somewhere. And I typically find that startup companies, some of them, right, you have to get some certifications, you know, ISO standard, some of that before you can even start to do business with other companies, because companies will say, look, I can't do business with somebody that doesn't have this baseline.

So I think the journey start. As soon as a company is born and get started, but it is a journey. So you start off, you get some of the foundations in place because that's all, you really have time for the resources for, and then you build up. And I think companies have to plan for it as an, as if it's a journey and you say, look, here's our maturity level.

This is where we are. This is where we're going. We have a [00:14:00] five-year plan to get there, and we know what partners we want to work with to get there. And that is really the way you need to look at it because it can feel overwhelming. If you say, I've got to have dive to do all these things, and I don't have the resources maybe, or the funding to do all of it, you just kind of plan it out and you'll find that customers in part.

I'm more than happy to work with you because by the way, they were on the exact same journey in are still on that exact same journey. And so you're really on the journey to trust together. And people really care about your ecosystem, right? Everybody's talking about vendor and by the way, depending on who you are, you call it a vendor.

Sometimes you call it a supplier or you call it your ecosystem. So people look at it differently depending on what role or business that you.

Peter: Yeah. And, and the, I imagine. That a lot of people start to think about this marketers, especially when they're dealing with things for the first time, like GDPR and customer data, privacy, marketing related data, [00:15:00] privacy things, obviously, as you start to need to be able to do business with other companies, et cetera.

I w I was thinking though, that. The really interesting thing about your business is and God, I wish I thought about this. Your, your founders were brilliant to come up with this thing is that it's this ever changing landscape? The, the, the, the rules change all the time and they're different in different parts of the world.

I almost think of this, like, Like a, a big accounting firm. So if you think about it, you know, accounting is something that most companies don't really have some depth in internally because you need a bunch of experts to go figure out all the different specifics. Cause the rules just change all all the time.

It, and there's so much so much happening in this area of trust. I imagine. In the next five to 10 years, it feels like every company is going to have to [00:16:00] have this kind of a program in place in a very comprehensive way versus just ticking these things off one at a time, in an uncoordinated way. I see in a lot of CML communities that I'm in a lot of people saying, Hey, I need someone to help me with my GDPR.

Update. I need to go find a consultant, things like that. And, and the idea of having a platform is, is really compelling. So not to sell too hard for you. But w so one of the things I wanted to ask about a little bit, though, Lisa was about your marketing. So you have a really interesting. Business obviously in a fantastic opportunity.

Talk to us a little bit about at the high level, what's your overall marketing strategy? I, I know you've got a bunch of different audiences that you reach, reach out to. So how do you. think about marketing overall at one trust? 

Lisa: So Peter, before I answer that one, I just want to comment on some of the opening remarks you were just making on this question. So you really hit on something key, which is there's three big [00:17:00] secular trends. I think every company is currently dealing with in this era of trust. And one of the ones that you talked about was regularly.

So the regulation landscape changes just all the time and it is impossible to keep up. So I shouldn't say impossible to keep up because one of the things that we try to solve is we have a tool like data guidance, which is basically this knowledge repository that keeps everybody up to date on what are all the new regulations, what's the impact to your business, but that's a big secular trend and that change is not going to stop.

Then there's technological change, new technology constantly being introduced. And then of course, there's consumer expectations. What they expect from companies and how to behave. So those are the three big secular trends that every company's management team is dealing with and CMOs. So to tie that into how, where we do our market. One of the things that I'm doing is I'm looking at it all different levels. Like most CMOs are doing. One is what is our category. And we are creating this new category of trust management and being the leader in that [00:18:00] category. So what do you have to do? We invest in lean into thought leadership and also the offerings, like something like our product data.

Where we are basically keeping you up to date with a network of over 400 professionals around the world that keep this real time update of all of the regulations and the impact so that you can automate as much as possible within your company to ensure you've got that compliance. Then in addition, We are talking to every C level in the C-suite as well as the board.

So talk about marketing complexity. When, you know, you talked to some people about their personas. I talked to some companies and they say, yeah, we sell to the it decision-makers well, I'm selling to every C-suite. So think about that. And you have to approach it from an omni-channel. So chief professor, chief privacy, officer, chief people, officer chief ethics and compliance officer chief sustainability, officer CMOs.

Chief trust officer and the list goes on as well as the board, because everybody cares about all of these issues. So what we do is we try to personally. Our [00:19:00] message for each one of those, because everybody is coming at it from their own perspective. But here's the interesting thing of Peter. The outcome that everybody's trying to get is the same.

For instance, everybody's going to have one trust center. You're not going to have 15 of those. You're not going to have 20 different pages for people to have to search on your website to understand, you know, how are you a trusted company? You have one ESG. You don't have 15 of those in all different places.

It's one ESG report. You have one set of trusted infrastructure. So all of these C levels, even though the way they're coming at this and how their responsibilities are different at the end of the day, everybody's looking for the same outcomes. And so that's one of the unique ways that we can market is tailoring our message to each.

But knowing that everybody wants to have the same outcome and has to collaborate, it can't be fragmented and siloed anymore. And we're helping to connect the dots and thread that. 

Peter: So how much of your marketing is based on fear? Right. Fear of not being compliant [00:20:00] versus differentiation in, in the brand expects. 

Lisa: You know, I would say in the early days it was probably more about compliance because GDPR was brand new. Right. And everybody was worried about. Fines. And what do I have to do? So it's natural that you would start off more from a compliance, but I will say our marketing now is much more on the glass is half full and strategic.

And we're basically, here's one of the things that I will tell you. And I think it's the fundamental belief of our company. What is good for society is also good for business. That is what our founder basically founded the company on is that belief system. And so that's really what our marketing is. How can we help you do great in your business, but also have a huge impact on people and planet.

And that's what we're trying to help companies achieve. So it's not about fear. It's not about fines. It's not about compliance. What ours is about is get all of that foundation in place because it's critical and it's important, but raise your [00:21:00] game and start to make this something about. How do you benefit people in planet because that's good for business.

And that means people will want to work for you. Customers want to do business with you and people will want to partner with you and be in your ecosystem. So I find that that more positive view is much more exciting for people. It's more motivating for people and it's making businesses success. 

Peter: Well, I love that answer. And and I'm excited to hear that because I, I think there is one, a huge opportunity here for companies in general to do better and to go beyond the lip service of the bullets of their values on the website and actually. Go into realization of those things and make it really happen, which is, which is a pretty exciting thing.

The there's so many things I want to ask you. This is crazy. So what, one of the things that I wanted to go into next though, is you mentioned the board as a as, as a key audience. Yeah, [00:22:00] I I'm excited about this concept because you know, in, in, in my company and planet, we, we sell a platform for basically connecting your strategic marketing to your execution.

And part of that is actually communicating value in ROI and things like that. And it's a board level issue and we're, in some cases, you know, helping people produce materials for their, their board. And so how do you think about the role of the board? In decisions like this, because obviously they're not operating leaders.

They can certainly they provide governance and advice and hire and fire CEOs. But what is the role of a board in a decision like this and how do you engage them in an appropriate way to make this an important topic of discussion for.

Lisa: Yeah, Peter, it's a great question because, and I will tell you, I feel like I have a really interesting perspective on this because I sit on both sides of the table. So I have, when I was at my previous [00:23:00] company, I was presenting to the board a lot and we were a public company. Now I sit on a public board.

I also was chairman of the board of the Autodesk foundation, which is a nonprofit arm. So here's what I would say. It's absolutely board members do not get in the operational swim lane. It is about governance that said your board cares about what is your culture and your culture code, because that is actually a risk for a company in boards.

Care about risk. How are you managing your risk? How are you managing your business? And so if I don't have a healthy culture code, I can't attract and retain the best people and that's going to impact how I do as well. The board cares about risks. Like for instance, I have a very unique situation. I'm a CFO and I sit on the audit committee and a lot of people say, how's the CML on audit?

I thought it was just financial. Well, of course we have people who are experts in financial, on the audit committee, but you also want to see a demo because risk impacts your brand. Everybody cares about your brand reputation. If your brand reputation gets [00:24:00] hurt, that absolutely. Your revenue and who wants to do business with you and who wants to work for you and who wants to be in your ecosystem?

So that's why boards say, what are you doing about managing risk? Typically you have an enterprise risk management team that's reporting out to you. You have the CSO. So the chief information security officer, who's letting you know, here's all the things that we're doing. Here's the, the security frameworks that we adhere to in a board cares about all of that, because they're helping with stakeholder management and making sure.

That we're taking care of our responsibilities to all of our investors and stakeholders in the company. And so that's why it's a very unique lens on all of these areas I talked about. 

Peter: So, so tell me how you target a board in marketing. It's not like you go by the Facebook audience of board members, 

Lisa: no. 

Peter: what's the best way to do 

Lisa: Yeah, it's it's messaging, right? So a number of people where you can get people who are opting in, or they expressed that they are on a board. And then what we can [00:25:00] do is tailor our message to people are on a board, by the way, I get that targeted all the time as a board member, people saying. Here's the latest on ESG and compliance and what boards should care about. Here's the latest on risk management and what boards should care about. So it's really the angle about why boards should be up to speed. A lot of times you'll do a tabletop exercise with your board, right? To say here's how the board or the chairman of the board gets involved.

If there's some kind of big. Incident, right. What do you do if there's an incident and how do you manage to that? And we have to make sure everybody knows what to do, who to call. And so you have to practice that. So those are just things that you do where you're really educating a board. And you're saying, what are you interested in?

And you're providing helpful. 

Peter: And do you think at some point. Most companies are going to have something like a chief trust officer need to unmute Lisa. 

Lisa: thank you. Yes. So we we have a chief trust officer ourself, and I have some of our customers have key [00:26:00] trust officers, and this is a critical role in the future. In fact, the week of May 23rd, we have our big trust week event and we have a panel that we're going to be doing with companies that have a chief trust officer.

I absolutely think that is the role of the future. And companies that are more early adopters and are more mature in their journey of trust have appointed a chief trust officer. And I've talked to chief trust officers that are looking at all of those trust management areas. I talked to you about privacy, GRC, ESG, some have a few components of that, but it's really starting to come together and accompany.

So I think that's an exciting role. And one that more and more companies are leaning into and creating. 

Peter: So I imagine today it's either. Thrust upon some executive, it's either a CSO or sometimes it's a chief HR officer or something like that. And, but in other cases it must be kind of fragmented. And so how to companies think [00:27:00] about that? I, I can tell you from, from experience dealing with. Things in the past, and I'm sure you, you did in, in, in your past too there's this political struggle almost that happens when people feel like, Hey, I've got a role in this thing.

So a great example is is who owns the customer experience. And you know, there are lots of things like that. So do you see that tension happening in large organizations around who should own trust you get the Al Haig thing I'm in charge? Or 

Lisa: Yeah. It's interesting. I am finding that a lot of companies are still approaching it from a siloed and fragmented way based on each executive, but here's the key. And I actually experienced this myself in my role in my previous company, it's all about collaboration. We have to collaborate and there's no way to do it in a siloed and fragmented way anymore.

So I am finding the one way to get that collaboration is this has to be a topic at the C-suite. [00:28:00] It cannot be delegated down into the organization. The CEO has to care about it, and the CEO needs to make it a critical strategic topic that has his or her staff is constantly talking about. And everybody gets to see holistically the whole picture.

So I get to hear all of my peers at the table talking about their slice of the pie, if you will. And then we're looking at it holistically. We're seeing the gaps we're seeing overlaps are under. So it has to be treated at a C-suite level or else what's going to happen is what you just said. Just like customer experience.

If each person is dealing with it in their own way, one of the things I've always told my team, let's not ship our org structure to our. customers should not have to figure out how to navigate because of how we're organized. And a lot of times companies make that mistake with their website and with the experience.

So I feel like I'm dealing with maybe five different companies sometimes. Right? I have one experience when it comes to managing my subscriptions. I have another experience [00:29:00] in your product. I have another experience on your customer facing website. And that's something that the C-suite needs to care about, connect the dots and make sure that it's an integrated experience.

And again, it only happens with open, transparent discussion and collaboration. 

Peter: All right. So now I'm getting anxious. Cause I have like 20 more questions I want to ask and I don't have much time. So I'm just going to try and pick a couple because this is super exciting to me. So one question I have is, is about the fact that you've gone through. 10 acquisitions so far that you've announced, maybe they're more, who knows.

That's always an interesting thing. In my past, I was the CMO of a company called nuance of voice company. We did a hundred acquisitions during my tenure and I always found one of the most complicated things was doing that brand integration. When you go to through an acquisition and. The stakes are even higher at a company like one trust [00:30:00] because of the structure of that.

So how do you think about that brand and integration step as you go through that that integration of acquisitions inside one trust. 

Lisa: Yeah, Peter. Right? It's you appreciate this as being a CMO. I think it's one of the struggles that every CMO has, and here's why anytime you acquire a company and it doesn't matter the size of the company, everybody's. I have a huge brand equity and we have to maintain that brand equity. And, you know, I have found most often, sadly, it's really not the case.

We wish it was the case, but it's not. And one of the things that we look at with the integration is the people and the talent is number one. How do you retain the people? How do you make them a culture add how do you have the best integration in our case of product technology? And making sure. And then number three is how do you make it a seamless experience for the customer?

The customer should not have to try to figure out how to navigate because somebody acquired your [00:31:00] company. And what I like to do is I like to work with the acquired company and put together quite frankly, a plan that's very pragmatic and makes. We get kind of a baseline and sometimes maybe somebody has a recognizable brand in a certain country.

Right. But not globally. And we'll just do a nice migration plan that says here's how we're going to migrate the brand people and all of that over. So it's planful. Here's the other thing that I think companies have to make a decision. Are you a branded house or a house of brands and one trust is. A branded house, not a house of brands.

And so that actually helps us with our decision-making because if you're a branded house, we know that we're leaning into our parent brand and we're not going to have 52 different brands out there. We're going to really lean into, and most SAS companies lean into their parent brand. However, if you're a company, that's a house of brands, that's a different approach.

You might want to start keeping those brands separate and create divisions or subdivisions from. But I do think you have to have a philosophy [00:32:00] upfront about, are you a house of brands or a branded house? And then you have to be very pragmatic about what is the true brand equity of whatever you just bought.

And what's the best way to transition that into your company. And again, I do it together. We plan it together, not in a silo so that everybody has their fingerprints on it. And you do it in a way that feels good for the acquired company. And quite frankly, for the. 

Peter: Yeah, they're there. It's interesting because clearly you guys have some good experience here, which is great. And and I think there are, there are always a couple of things that made a huge difference in in, in making this successful. One is, as you've articulated, you have a very clear well-defined strategy when it comes to your brand and it can be at the very high level, you know, warehouse brands in.

And then second, it has to be communicated through the acquisition process. It has to be, you have to set expectations early on that this is what we do in the key thing is helping them understand that part of your role. Yes. You've [00:33:00] developed brand equity. We bought this. So our goal is to transfer as much of that brand equity into one.

Over a period of time and hopefully it can be more than a hundred percent if you do it really well because you get a one plus one equals three kind of thing, but being really clear and deliberate about that approach, I think is incredibly important. And it sounds like you, you all are.

Lisa: Yeah, you're absolutely right. We always say we want it to be additive. And our goal is to take all of the great, I mean, that's why you buy a company in the first place because it's an amazing company has amazing talent, amazing solutions, amazing people, great culture. And how do you not lose? And I think that it always should be an ad.

And by the way, customers get excited because they're thinking I not only get all the greatness from that company I was doing business with. I also get all of this added value that the acquiring company is bringing it to the table and it's going to get integrated. And I also think it's very, very important for the people in the management [00:34:00] team to get integrated in a way that they're part of the top management as well.

Right? Because you want to keep raising that bar and make sure that you're integrating all of that value into the company and not losing that, that, 

Peter: Excellent. So my, my, my last question, and this will be our pen on question for, for the episode here. And I will let Kelsey get a word in edgewise. I promise is I'd love to understand how you think about planning in the. Chaotic environment that. you're in hypergrowth, very agile. So H how do you think about the planning process?

Inside one trust? 

Lisa: Yeah, it's a great question. So I love strategic planning. It's in my DNA and I did it for over a decade at my previous company, but so here's what I would say. There's a. I have my favorite quote from this book, the art of war by sun Sue. Right? Which a lot of people read, but it's it's tactics without a strategy is the noise before defeat.

My team gets tired of me saying [00:35:00] that. So again, I'm always like you have to have strategy and have like a two or three-year vision of where you want the company to be. But then in the execution of that, you're constantly reevaluating and saying what's happening in the marketplace. What's happening with competition.

What has changed? And so you can have a plan in place. I even have put in like a one-year operational plan and we revisit it every quarter what's changed and how should we adapt and be agile and change based on what's happening in the marketplace or feedback we're getting from customers. So I really think you have to have a balance.

If you're constantly changing, I've gotten feedback from customers that say, if you keep changing your tagline every week, you know what, we don't pay attention to it anymore. You know, it's not meaningful to us cause you change it too often. Right? So you also have to have that balance of how much change is needed and how much data is it based on.

And so that is a balance that I think you're constantly having to manage is what's my north star. How do I get customers, partners and employees excited about where I'm going [00:36:00] as a company, which has to be a longer-term vision. And then how do I constantly put a plan in place that we're monitoring and being agile on as we execute based on what's happening in the.

Peter: Yeah. I love to think about the sailing metaphor because I, I like to use metaphors. I know nothing about and in, in sailing, of course, I think anyway, I've been on one of those things, boats, every once in a while you pick a destination and that destination sometimes is a long way off into the future.

I'm going to sail to promote. And along the way you, you tack based on how you're getting there, the weather, your youth, but you have a goal, you know, what you're trying to achieve. But you need to read the.

current conditions to make sure that you're continuing to adapt to get there, but you still got to get to Bermuda at the end of the day.

So understanding and balancing those things I think is incredibly important. So unfortunately we're at the end of time, because this has been a fascinating conversation but we do have one more. A question that Kelsey likes to ask. So Kelsey, take it away. 

Kelsey: Yeah, at least. So this has been great. I know our [00:37:00] listeners will find this super beneficial, but what advice would you give to those that are CMOs or aspiring to be one-time.

Lisa: I think every CMO has an amazing opportunity right now that we haven't had in the past. And that is take a real strong leadership position on making sure your company becomes a trusted brand. Really lean into that. 'cause there's a bunch of different roles at the C-suite, but I think the CMO can have a very unique leadership position helping to drive that collaboration and making sure that you have that strategic viewpoint of it.

And that is something that could be very exciting for our profession. And I think that's important because the CMR role constantly changes. And I think we all should be releasing into this because quite frankly, it's the zeitgeists of the day. Everybody is talking about it. It's very important. And this is a chance to really step up and help your company and impact the top line.

And everybody cares.

Kelsey: Well, great. This has been again. Excellent conversation. Thank you [00:38:00] so much for your time today. Lisa, make sure to follow the next emo and plan out on Twitter and LinkedIn. And if you have any ideas for topics or. You can email us@thenextcmoatplanet.com. Have a great day, everyone. Thank you, Lisa.

Lisa: Thank you.