We’ve never had more tools to help us make decisions. And yet, decision-making doesn’t feel any better.

We're joined by László Aszalós, a website optimisation specialist with two decades of experience, to discuss how frameworks, templates, and AI are shaping the way decisions get made inside marketing teams, and what happens when tools start doing more of the thinking than the people using them.

We explore:

• Why teams are still driven towards vanity metrics
• How frameworks can easily become constraints
• Why even senior leaders get pulled into 'confident but wrong' AI outputs
• The growing risk of decision-making without real understanding underneath the tools
• Why education and context matter more than ever in a tool-heavy world

Are your tools improving your thinking, or replacing it?

Subscribe for the Extended Cut – Where we go further into how AI systems mislead depending on context, why localisation breaks most assumptions, and what businesses keep getting wrong when scaling approaches across markets.

We talk a good game about making things easy to use. But most organisations are still designing for an average customer who doesn’t really exist.

Sharon Flaherty, CEO of Folk, shares the moment that caused her to view the world differently, where she sees customer journeys breaking down in the real world and where can start to change the conversation.

We discuss:

why “easy to use” is harder than it sounds in practice

how assumptions about customers quietly distort experience design

why organisations underestimate the complexity of real decision-making, and how testing comes too late to matter

why lived experience surfaces what data alone misses

and why culture, not process, decides whether inclusion actually happens

Subscribe for the Extended Cut – where we go further on what it actually takes to shift organisational thinking, why most 'customer understanding' work never changes decisions, how leaders unintentionally deprioritise experience friction, and what it really takes to move from insight to action inside complex organisations.

Is your marketing approach a roadmap or a straightjacket?

We’ve all been there. You spend weeks (and way too much mental energy) on a shiny strategy deck, following the textbooks approaches to the letter, only to find the business has moved on or the budget simply doesn't exist.

In this episode, I’m joined by Lottie Unwin. She’s a self-confessed marketing geek who did the P&G rounds and took all the notes. But then she had to sell popcorn at a startup and the formulas fell apart.

We talk about:

The formula failure: Why 'Reach and Frequency' is a luxury many of us can't afford, and what to do instead.

Climbing the mountain: Why focusing on 'Pitch One' is more important than the summit when you’re just trying to stay alive.

Following the money: Why being 'best mates with the CFO' and knowing your runway is the only way to earn a seat at the table.

The levers to understand: My own reflection on why two 'identical' businesses on paper require completely different playbooks.

Subscribe to get the Extended Cut - where we go deeper on managing leadership friction, how to interrogate a P&L, how you can network effectively from Day 1, and why your next campaign might actually need to be a hiring drive.

You can have the best plan in the world, but if the environment is a mess, you’re just decorating a sinking ship.

When things don’t go to plan, it’s not always because the work was bad. From unclear decisions to conflicting priorities, the stuff that sits above the work often determines whether your strategy ever actually lands or just ends up as a footnote in a slide deck.

Heather Hurd has seen this from every angle - starting as a copywriter, moving into brand strategy, and now as a consultant helping organisations assess their "marketing readiness." She spends her time asking the deeper questions that most teams skip, diagnosing the structural roadblocks that keep marketing functions from ever reaching their full potential.

Drawing on what she’s learned inside fast-moving startups and corporate giants, we discuss:

The 6 factors of marketing readiness: A diagnostic toolkit for looking under the hood of any organisation.

The template trap: Why "bespoke" strategy so often defaults to recycled busy-work when pressure hits.

The sidelined marketer: What happens to the mission when marketing loses its seat at the top table.

The silent kkill: How to use active listening to build high-level influence, regardless of your job title.

The aspiration gap: Why a "moonshot" mission might be the very thing eroding your team's trust.

Subscribe to get the Extended Cut, where we go deeper on managing leadership friction, the real psychology of executive buy-in, and the career signals that tell you whether an organisational culture is truly ready, or simply not worth your time.

If we stopped posting tomorrow, would anyone care?

Social isn’t the new kid on the block anymore. But too many teams are still stuck in the churn - posting constantly without being clear what job social is actually doing for the business.

Beth Thomas has seen this from every angle. Platform-side at TikTok. Brand-side at Deliveroo. Now as Co-Founder of Slice, working with teams trying to bring clarity and intent back into social.

Drawing on what she’s learned inside fast-moving brands and from sitting at the platform level, she breaks down:

• Why content pillars aren’t a strategy
• How Ryanair used social to shift brand perception
• What “grown up” social actually looks li
• Why most reporting is measuring the wrong things
• And what it really means to earn respect at the top table

Subscribe to get the Extended Cut, where we go deeper on social search behaviour, brand measurement, internal politics and what it actually takes to shift perception inside an organisation.

Confidence doesn’t come from reading the right materials or waiting until you feel ready.It comes from showing up, asking better questions, and staying in the room when it’s uncomfortable.

PPC practitioner and community builder Charley Brennand shares how she broke into marketing without a traditional route, ran head-first into gatekeeping, got fired early on, and kept going anyway.

We talk about:

- why “soft skills” aren’t soft at all

- what actually builds confidence over time

- learning by proximity rather than permission

- why being turned away can become fuel rather than a stop sign

Too many marketers still think GTM means picking channels and launching campaigns. But that’s just the end of the process.

Luis Clark, EMEA go-to-market lead at Monday.com breaks down what GTM actually means inside a complex, multi-product, global business. We talk about how sales, product and marketing should pull together, why storytelling alone won’t land your proposition, and how to stop mistaking marketing execution for commercial strategy.

You’ll hear:

- how Luis reinvented himself from radio DJ to SaaS GTM lead

- what really causes GTM confusion (and how to fix it)

- why standing still is the riskiest option of all

- and how to build confidence in a job you feel underqualified for

Some smart, straight-talking advice for anyone trying to connect marketing to business impact - or make their own leap into a more strategic role.

What does it actually mean to become more strategic as a marketer? And how do you hold your nerve when the numbers dip and everyone wants a quick fix?

We discuss why so many capable marketers get stuck in the operator role, how commercial context changes how your work is judged, and what to do when performance wobbles without throwing the strategy in the bin.

We cover:

• why activity is often mistaken for strategy

• how marketers build strategic credibility over time

• what KPI dips are really telling you

• how to slow the room down when pressure ramps up

• the difference between fixing tactics and fixing the real problem

Subscribe to get the Extended Cut, where we go deeper on how Bethan built her strategic viewpoint, how marketers develop commercial judgement over time, and how to navigate KPI wobbles without losing credibility or binning the strategy.