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What if the hard part of your marketing isn’t selling your product, but convincing people to hand it over? For Andy Plank, Director of Marketing at Refreshed Tech, about 90% of his marketing effort goes toward buying devices, not selling them.

In this episode of He Said, She Said: Razor Branding™, Jaci and Michael sit down with Andy, who runs marketing from “the marketing bunker” in a cornfield in Ashley, Indiana (and is our first guest from Indiana in ten years). Refreshed Tech buys back devices from schools and enterprises, certifies the data destruction, refurbishes them, and sells them on live auctions on TikTok Live and Whatnot. They get into how you earn trust when sensitive data is on the line, and most people have never heard of you. Andy explains why his team shows the building, the process, and the people instead of making the same claims everyone else makes. He also shares why he treats marketing as trial and error and has no patience for AI slop.

In this conversation, you’ll hear:

• Why Refreshed Tech’s marketing is built around buying devices, not selling them
• How a small-town company builds trust by showing the building, the process, and the people
• Why Andy treats marketing as trial and error and looks outside his industry instead of copying competitors
• Why real people on camera and content with real value beat AI-generated filler
• How scammy sellers are hurting the reputation of the whole refurbished market

Listen wherever you get your podcasts or at razorbranding.org

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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

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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

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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.

In this conversation, you’ll hear:

• 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.

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Most banks say they’re community-focused. Altabank had to prove it by tearing down the names people trusted most.

In this episode of He Said, She Said: Razor Branding™, Jaci and Michael sit down with Stan Sorensen, Chief Marketing Officer at Altabank, a Utah-based community bank with over a century of history and a footprint that spans the entire state. Stan came to banking from tech and healthcare, joined the bank to lead a rebrand, and — eight years later — hasn’t left.

He gets into what it actually took to consolidate five operating names into one, why the hardest part wasn’t the rebrand itself but managing the emotional fallout in the communities that felt the loss, and how his lean team of five runs national-caliber marketing by knowing exactly where their lane starts and stops. Stan also breaks down how a fresh set of outside eyes unlocked a campaign idea they’d been sitting on for three years — and why that’s the real argument for never letting your agency get too comfortable.

If you’re a B2B marketer navigating a rebrand, fighting for budget with a board that wants data, or trying to prove that community involvement is a brand strategy, not a PR stunt, this one’s for you.

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Kicking Off Year 10

In IT services, everyone says the same thing. We’ll handle your tech. We’ll keep you safe. We’ll be there when you need us. So how do you build a brand that actually means something when your product is invisible and your buyer never wants to think about you?

We’re kicking off Year 10 of He Said, She Said: Razor Branding™ with exactly that question. Ten years in, we’re still asking the same core thing this podcast has always been built on – what makes a brand actually work – and Loree Faucett gives us one of the sharpest answers we’ve heard in a while.

In this episode, Jaci and Michael sit down with Loree, VP of Marketing at ITS (Intelligent Technical Solutions), a national managed IT and cybersecurity services provider. Loree came up through Apple and HubSpot, has marketed everything from interior design to oil and gas software to winches, and now leads a 13-person global team navigating one of the most crowded, undifferentiated industries in B2B.

They get into what it looks like to walk into a company as a regime change – replacing a founder-led marketing function without breaking what’s already working. Loree talks about building regional presence for a national brand, why trust and referrals are beating digital campaigns right now, and how LLM-driven search is changing the way qualified buyers show up – and why you can’t always see them coming.

If you’re a B2B marketer trying to differentiate a service nobody wants to think about, make the case for human-led creative in an AI-first world, or lead through organizational change without losing your team – this one’s for you. And if you’ve been with us since year one, thank you for ten years of conversations – here’s to the next one.

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Most B2B marketers think branding is a logo and a tagline. Erik Koenig thinks it’s a line on the floor left by a robot. And that instinct is exactly what separates a trusted brand from another systems integrator in a sea of sameness.

In this episode of He Said, She Said: Razor Branding™, Jaci and Michael sit down with Erik Koenig, Vice President of Business Development at Hy-Tek Intralogistics — a warehouse automation and systems integration firm helping companies connect products to customers faster through robotics, conveyors, software, and engineering-driven design. Erik came up in B2C agencies working with Colgate-Palmolive, Butterball, and Walmart before making the jump to the client side, and he has spent the last decade proving that the fundamentals of brand strategy translate everywhere.

They get into how Erik builds a lean internal team that operates like an agency, how a 50×50 multi-story trade show booth lives or dies by its content schedule, why AI is both the biggest threat and the best intelligence tool in his toolkit, and how he’s fighting to keep the human voice at the center of everything before answer engines rewrite the rules.

If you’re a B2B marketer trying to build a real brand inside a complex, engineering-driven company without losing what makes you different — this one’s for you.

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Most mortgage companies compete on rate. Chelsea Vonder Haar competes on relationship.

In this episode of He Said, She Said: Razor Branding™, Jaci and Michael talk with Chelsea Vonder Haar, the first-ever Chief Marketing Officer at USA Mortgage, about building a national marketing engine for 200+ loan officers — without stadium naming rights or a massive ad budget.

Chelsea breaks down how her team uses direct mail, video, and local partnerships to make individual loan officers more valuable to their referral partners, not to promote the corporate brand. She covers EDDM, QR tracking, first-time homebuyer seminars, and why she treats her internal loan officers like clients — plus her path from marketing coordinator to CMO in an industry that too often treats marketing as a cost to cut.

If you’re a B2B marketer building a referral engine in a commodity-driven industry, this one’s for you.

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In B2B marketing, the biggest challenge isn’t always budget or bandwidth – it’s standing out in a market where every competitor looks, sounds, and says the same thing. 

In this episode, Jaci and Michael sit down with Joya Scarlata, Director of Marketing at InterraIT, a B2B IT services firm serving clients across industries from automotive to retail to manufacturing. With over a decade of marketing experience, Joya knows firsthand how difficult it is to differentiate a service-based business in a crowded, fast-moving industry.

The conversation covers what it really takes to build a recognizable B2B brand when your product is invisible – a service that’s hard to explain and even harder to make exciting. From navigating the “sea of sameness” in the IT space, to aligning marketing and sales, to knowing when your messaging has stopped working, Joya shares honest, practical insight from the trenches.

If you’re a B2B marketer struggling to cut through the noise, make the case for branding internally, or get your messaging to actually resonate – this one’s for you.

Listen wherever you get your podcasts or at razorbranding.org