Your last CMO lasted 18 months. The one before that made it 2 years. The search firm swears this time will be different.
It won’t be — and it’s not because you keep hiring the wrong person.
Hi, I’m Jeff Payne. You’re listening to The Jeff Payne Show, Episode #37: The Coming CMO Exodus.
One growth equity partner who advises more than thirty early-stage companies a year says he sees the same cycle on repeat: hire with optimism, watch the slow realization they can’t execute, quiet exit — bonus points if you make them an advisor on the way out. Then the cycle starts again. Search firm, $50,000 fee, six figures in comp, same result 18 months later.
Everyone assumes it’s a hiring problem. It isn’t. It’s a structural one.
Here’s the root of it. In engineering, a senior individual contributor can spend an entire career writing code — building systems, solving hard problems — without ever managing a single person. The technical track runs parallel to the management track, not underneath it.
Marketing never built that path. You do four or five years of actual execution — ads, funnels, SEO, conversion work — and then you get promoted into managing people who do what you used to do. By year seven, you haven’t touched the actual work in years. You’re fluent in the language of marketing, but you haven’t run a campaign yourself since before most current AI tools existed.
That used to be fine, because marketing changed slowly enough that a manager could stay current by osmosis. It isn’t slow anymore. The workflows reshaping marketing right now are changing monthly, not yearly. And you can’t architect a system you don’t know how to operate. So the CMO spends the first two quarters “assessing the team” and “developing strategy” — while the actual transformation either happens without them, or doesn’t happen at all.
There’s a second layer under this, and it’s uglier: marketing is the only C-suite function without an objective scoreboard. In engineering, tests are either passed or failed. Sales has deals that close or don’t. Marketing has the CEO’s taste. So the incentive isn’t to take the bold swing that might actually move the number — it’s to stay safe, hire the agency everyone else hires, and never produce a result spectacular enough to get you fired for the wrong reason.
This is exactly why we’ve never staffed a traditional CMO layer for Daniel Goodwin at Provident 1031. Our team runs as his senior execution bench — direct, hands-on, no management layer between the strategy and the work. That’s how a standing biweekly byline in Kiplinger gets written, how a Masterclass series produces a documented five-to-one return, and how we’re now building ten short-form videos a month across Instagram, YouTube, and LinkedIn without adding a single manager to the org chart.
It isn’t a smaller version of a marketing department. It’s a different shape entirely — senior people who still do the work, reporting straight to the person who owns the outcome.
So here’s the prediction worth sitting with: inside the next two years, a meaningful share of early-stage and mid-market companies will stop hiring a CMO at all. They will build a small bench of senior operators instead — people who can still do the work, augmented by AI tools that used to require a 10-person team. When your growth window is tight, execution beats strategy talk every time. Before you write your next marketing job req, ask yourself one question: Are you hiring someone to manage people, or someone who can still do the work? Those are not the same hire, and only one of them moves the number this quarter. The companies that figure this out first won’t be running leaner marketing departments. They’ll be running a different kind of department — one built around people who never stopped executing.
Why the next great marketing hire might not be a CMO at all — and what that means for how you build your team.
Your last CMO lasted fourteen months. The one before that made it eighteen. The search firm swears this time will be different.
It won’t be — and it’s not because you keep hiring the wrong person.
One growth equity partner who advises more than thirty early-stage companies a year describes the same cycle on repeat: a new CMO arrives with optimism, a slow realization sets in that they can’t execute, and a quiet exit follows — sometimes softened with an advisor title on the way out. Then the cycle starts over. A search firm fee, a six-figure package, the same result eighteen months later.
Everyone assumes it’s a hiring problem. It isn’t. It’s structural.
Everyone assumes it’s a hiring problem. It isn’t. It’s structural.
THE TRACK MARKETING NEVER BUILT
In engineering, a senior individual contributor can spend an entire career writing code — building systems, solving hard problems — without ever managing a single person. The technical track runs parallel to the management track, not underneath it.
Marketing never built that path. Four or five years of real execution — ads, funnels, SEO, conversion work — leads to a promotion into managing the people who now do that work. By year seven, most marketing leaders haven’t touched actual execution in years. They’re fluent in the language of marketing, but they haven’t run a campaign themselves since before most current AI tools existed.
That gap used to be survivable because marketing changed slowly enough that a manager could stay current by osmosis. It isn’t slow anymore — the workflows reshaping marketing today are changing monthly, not yearly. A leader can’t architect a system they don’t know how to operate. So the new CMO spends the first two quarters “assessing the team” and “developing strategy,” while the actual transformation either happens without them, or doesn’t happen at all.
You can’t architect a system you don’t know how to operate.”
THE SCOREBOARD PROBLEM
There’s a second layer under this, and it’s uglier: marketing is the only function in the C-suite without an objective scoreboard. Engineering has tests that pass or fail. Sales has deals that close or don’t. Marketing has the CEO’s taste.
When the person who controls the budget and the job also controls what counts as “good,” the incentive isn’t to take the bold swing that might actually move the number. It’s to stay safe — hire the agency everyone else hires, run the campaign nobody will object to, and never produce a result spectacular enough to get fired for the wrong reason.
Marketing has the CEO’s taste.
WHAT THIS LOOKS LIKE IN PRACTICE
This is exactly why our team has never built a traditional CMO layer for client Daniel Goodwin at Provident 1031. Instead, we run as his senior execution bench — direct, hands-on, with no management layer sitting between strategy and the work itself.
That structure is how a standing biweekly byline in Kiplinger gets written on schedule, how a Masterclass video series produces a documented five-to-one return, and how a new short-form video initiative is now producing ten videos a month across Instagram, YouTube, and LinkedIn — without adding a single manager to the org chart.
It isn’t a smaller version of a marketing department. It’s a different shape entirely: senior people who still do the work, reporting straight to the person who owns the outcome.
It isn’t a smaller marketing department. It’s a different shape entirely.
THE PREDICTION WORTH SITTING WITH
Inside the next two years, a meaningful share of early-stage and mid-market companies will likely stop hiring a CMO at all. In their place: a small bench of senior operators who can still do the work, augmented by AI tools that used to require a 10-person team to replicate. When the growth window is tight, execution beats strategy talk every time.
Before writing your next marketing job req, it’s worth asking one question: Are you hiring someone to manage people, or someone who can still do the work? Those are not the same hire, and only one of them moves the number this quarter.
The companies that figure this out first won’t be running leaner marketing departments. They’ll be running a different kind of marketing department entirely — one built around people who never stopped executing.
This episode’s opening framing — including the observed 14–18 month CMO tenure pattern among early-stage, venture-backed companies and the “L8 track” analogy to engineering career paths — draws on commentary by ~G~, Co-Founder and General Partner at HyperGrowth Partners, published on HyperGrowth Partners’ Substack.
Note: This reflects one advisor’s observed pattern among early-stage companies, not a formal published study; broader industry data (Spencer Stuart’s annual CMO Tenure Study) shows average CMO tenure at Fortune 500 companies closer to four years.
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