My most important meeting every week

*It didn’t feel right to get last week’s newsletter out the day after the election so we’re back to regularly scheduled programming this week.

Every Wednesday, I meet with Evan and Ray, the two co-founders, to update them on what’s going on in marketingland at UserEvidence.

Evan’s technically my boss, but I joke that these aren’t weekly one-on-one meetings—they’re one-on-two.

It’s arguably the most important 30 minutes of my week—and definitely something I spend more than 30 minutes prepping for.

Why?

These meetings are all about setting the stage for marketing’s autonomy.

When I’m fully prepared, Evan and Ray give our team more space to do what think we need to do.

When I’m not, they start poking around and questioning things that haven’t been fully explained.

It’s a balancing act seasoned VPs know well. But since this is my first rodeo, I’m still figuring things out.

Things = sharing the right amount of detail with two people who aren’t marketers and have 9,000 others thing to worry about.

What’s working: The agenda

30 minutes goes by really fast when you’ve got an agenda, let alone if you’re just winging updates every week.

I currently structure my weekly marketing update around five parts. The first three are typically covered in real-time, and the last two are async.

Everything is documented in Notion so Evan and Ray can review and follow-up with additional comments on their own time.

1. Top three priorities for the week

These are the biggest things our marketing team is working on in any given week.

This part was easier to handle when the “marketing team” was just me. But now that Alex and Jillian have brought us up to three (and soon four, once we find the right growth marketer), it requires much more coordination.

I set up two recurring calendar reminders for our team: one on Monday morning before our weekly company update, and another on Tuesday afternoon. This gives me time to prepare for my weekly marketing update with Evan and Ray.

The goal?

Keep it short, sweet, and focus on the BIG things. Not our entire to-do list.

2. Topics to discuss

This section covers requests from Evan and Ray for things we’re not already working on—or planning to work on.

Let’s lovingly call them “the Slack ideas.”

E.g., Random marketing suggestions, links they’ve shared (often with little context), and big questions they’ve asked over the past week.

Trying to unpack these via Slack usually doesn’t go well. It’s much easier and faster to discuss them live.

The goal? 

Understand why they brought something up, why they think it matters, and decide if it’s worth adding to our to-do list (and what we’ll swap out to make room).

3. Need feedback from Evan and Ray on

If marketing has important requests that need feedback from Evan and Ray before we can move forward, this is where I give them a gentle nudge.

The goal? 

Make it easy for them to see all of our open requests in one place (with links to the specific docs), and just persistent enough with reminders on what we need from them.

4. Important async updates on OKRs

I don’t always present an update on each OKR every single week. But if there’s something worth calling out relative to specific projects we’re focused on, I’ll bring it to light.

Separately, I’ll also Slack Evan and Ray screenshots of positive leading indicators (e.g., a LinkedIn comment, email reply, clip of a Gong recording) a couple of times a week.

It’s another way for me to reinforce what marketing is doing (and why it’s working), beyond what we can track in a dashboard.

5. Other important async updates

I’ll make note of miscellaneous reminders for Evan and Ray here—e.g., my upcoming travel for events, time-off, etc.

If schedules don’t align and we’re not able to meet in any given week, we’ll go async. I’ll include more detail in Notion and link out to short Loom video recaps.

What needs work: Managing up

There are little things about managing up that I’ve figured out through trial and error.

Disclaimer: this is where I give away my personal cheat codes and see how closely my boss reads this newsletter.

If I want to propose something big from marketing, I usually test the waters with Ray first, open myself up to some tough questions and comments, and get him excited about it.

That way, when I officially present the idea, it’s coming from me and Ray to Evan—not from just me to Ray and Evan. #chessnotcheckers

There are also bigger things I’ve learned from a mentor flat out telling me.

During one of my bi-weekly convos with Brad O’Neill, he mentioned I don’t need my bosses to sign off on every “big” marketing decision.

It’s my job to trust my judgment on what’s worth running with and what needs an extra check.

That was huge for me confidence-wise. Up until a few months ago, I’d go to them with most of my marketing ideas because I thought they needed to approve them all.

Now, I’m learning to act on my own for most things and only seek approval for bigger calls.

If I’m gonna need to spend $15k+ on an initiative or what I want to do impacts other functions on our GTM team, then yeah, I’ll bring it to Evan and Ray’s attention.

If not, I’ll just do the thing and update them after the fact on what our team did and how it worked.

TL;DR Managing up is an ongoing skill, one that I’m still refining.

For anyone struggling, I’d say this: trust your judgement, don’t assume that your boss understands marketing, and always be ready to tweak your approach.

Also, pipeline.

The closer you can get to tying marketing initiatives to the kind of pipeline metrics your CEO cares about, the better.

But more on that at a later date.

Stuff I’m digging this week

• Getting approval to hire the next role on our marketing team —I got approval late last week to hire a fourth full-time marketer: a Senior Growth Marketing Manager. This is a HUGE role for our team so we’re back on the hiring hunt to find another A-player.

• The Consumer Trust Problem Is So Bad That The Government Is Getting Involved—Major FTC news on fake reviews and testimonials. What's most impressive is how Jillian Hoefer took this from a Friday night idea to a published blog in our CEO’s name by Tuesday morning. Speed wins.

• Amp It Up by Frank Slootman (Chairman and CEO of Snowflake)—This book came up in our leadership team meeting a few weeks back. I started reading it (further than LeBron usually makes it iykyk) and it’s incredibly well written.

Opinions are cheap. Proof is gold.

The buyer trust gap is growing and we’re not the only ones talking about it. On episode 19 of The Proof Point, we brought on Allyson Havener of TrustRadius to compare stats from each of our original research reports, and shine a light on the brand crisis that’s lengthening your sales cycle.

My biggest takeaways:

• Most buyers start with a shortlist of just 2-3 vendors and often stick with their initial pick. Building brand trust early can make all the difference in winning deals.

• The best way to earn trust? Transparent communication, verified customer stories, and clear ROI data.

• Both of our teams have used research to power content, build credibility, and shape messaging for an entire year. If you’re trying to get internal buy-in for original research, proof points from this episode can help strengthen your case.

Listen on Spotify or Apple, or head over to YouTube.

UserEvidence, who?

UserEvidence creates customer evidence content for go-to-market teams, generating verified competitive intelligence, product stats, and ROI data.

Happy customers help you credibly prove the value of your product.