What do you do when you’re hired as a company’s very first CMO, and the entire business has been fed by Google Ads and inbound calls? For Lindsey Thiele, the answer was to become a pay-per-click expert almost overnight, then start building the one thing the company never needed before: an outbound strategy.

In this episode of He Said, She Said: Razor Branding™, Jaci and Michael sit down with Lindsey, the first-ever Chief Marketing Officer at ZTERS, a nationwide site services management company based in Houston. Lindsey has spent nearly 17 years in B2B marketing, most of it in oil and gas, with a detour through Waste Management along the way. She walked into ZTERS with a disjointed tech stack, years of untapped data, and a budget that had nowhere to go but down.

In this conversation, you’ll hear:

• Why relying only on inbound has diminishing returns, and why outbound gives you a control valve
• Why “if the only lever you have is outbidding your competitor, you’re in a bind”
• What it takes to train AI to be strategy-first instead of just fast
• Why multifunctional marketers and teams are still the secret to doing more with less

Listen wherever you get your podcasts or at razorbranding.org

What does it take to convince a room full of salespeople who love their paper brochures that marketing can actually drive revenue? For Jon Star, Director of Marketing at Methods Machine Tools, it took hard-won proof points, a five-year plan, and a willingness to speak the sales team’s language: dollars and cents.

In this episode of He Said, She Said: Razor Branding™, Jaci and Michael sit down with Jon Star of Methods Machine Tools, a family-owned importer of premium CNC machinery from Japan, celebrating nearly 70 years in business. Jon walks us through what it took to build a digital marketing engine almost from scratch, how Methods approaches trade shows as a year-long strategic investment rather than a single event, and why earned media and authentic relationships still outperform paid placements in a tight-knit, trust-driven industry.

They also dig into the unique brand architecture challenge of representing global manufacturing partners like Fanuc and Nakamura-Tome under the Methods name, how Jon turns marketing spend into revenue-impact conversations the C-suite actually cares about, and why leaving room for experimentation matters even inside a disciplined, metrics-driven marketing function.

In this conversation, you’ll hear:

• How Jon built a digital marketing engine at Methods almost from the ground up over a five-year plan
• What it actually takes to prep, run, and follow up on a massive trade show like IMTS – a 12-month project that touches half the company
• Why earned media and authentic industry relationships outperform paid placements in manufacturing
• How Methods balances being a “branded house” while representing premium international partners like Fanuc and Nakamura-Tome
• How Jon turned marketing metrics into revenue-impact language that finally got sales team buy-in
• Why leaving 20% of the marketing calendar open for experimentation matters, even in a metrics-driven culture

Listen wherever you get your podcasts or at razorbranding.org

In February, her role was eliminated. By March, she’d filed her LLC. By the end of May, she’d landed her first client. That’s the timeline Michelle Krier walks us through in this episode – and it’s a masterclass in what it actually looks like to bet on yourself when the decision gets made for you.

In this episode of He Said, She Said: Razor Branding™, Jaci and Michael sit down with Michelle Krier, founder and fractional CMO of Foxbridge Consulting. With a career spanning nonprofit, agency, and in-house marketing roles – including IT companies, architecture and engineering firms, and nearly 20 years in workforce solutions – Michelle had every reason to stay in her lane when she went out on her own. Instead, she built a client base almost entirely outside the industry she knew best, because that’s where the market was actually heading.

They get into what it takes to go from job seeker to business owner overnight, how to build a business development habit instead of a panic cycle, why sitting in agency, in-house, and fractional seats all builds empathy you can’t get any other way, and how AI is reshaping marketing without replacing the strategic judgment that still has to come from a person.

• How Michelle went from a February layoff to her first client by May – and what made her ready to take the leap
• Why she chose her niche based on where the market was heading, not just where her experience was
• The difference between staying “in your lane” as a true fractional CMO and scope creep
• Why sitting in agency, in-house, and fractional roles builds empathy that makes you better at all three
• How AI is changing the day-to-day of marketing – and why the strategist in the room still matters more than ever
• The business development discipline it takes to keep a pipeline full without panicking

Listen wherever you get your podcasts or at razorbranding.org.