Free Guide · 14 minutes
What Your CMO Is Trying To Do
for CEOs, founders & boards
To see what great CMOs think.
See the most important takeaways of almost every marketing area — drawing from insights by 17 CMOs and a professional copywriter.
Marketing is either simple or deliberately opaque — it's often both.
This guide strips marketing to its essential principles. No tools, no trendy tactics. Just brutal honesty about getting strangers to notice your company and become customers.
Written for leaders without marketing backgrounds who want rapid, real understanding of what their marketing team is actually trying to do.
Written for:
CEOs
Founders
CROs
Investors
Board members
Frequently asked questions
- What is "What Your CMO Is Trying To Do" about?
- It's a free 14-minute guide for CEOs, founders, CROs, and board members who want a clear, honest picture of what great CMOs actually think about marketing. The guide synthesizes insights from 17 CMOs to explain marketing's most important principles without jargon or tool recommendations.
- Why should a CEO or founder read a marketing guide?
- Most marketing breakdowns happen at the interface between leadership and the marketing function — not because the CMO is incompetent, but because the CEO does not share the same mental model of what marketing can and cannot do. This guide aligns those mental models in 14 minutes.
- Is this about tools or tactics?
- No. The guide deliberately avoids tool recommendations and tactical how-tos. It is about the underlying logic of marketing — why buyers behave the way they do, what messaging actually needs to accomplish, and what gets in the way of that in most B2B companies.
- Who contributed the insights in the guide?
- The guide draws on insights from 17 CMOs across B2B SaaS, professional services, and enterprise software, synthesized by Dean Waye — a B2B copywriter and GTM messaging strategist with a background in enterprise sales at Nokia and Openet.