Welcome to Evidently—the bi-weekly newsletter where I share my biggest hits (and get honest about my misses) as a first-time VP of Marketing. If this was forwarded to you and you like what you saw, you can subscribe here.

Quick ask before we dive in: We're bringing back The Evidence Gap Report—our original research from last year that became our most popular (1,000+ downloads) piece of content ever. This year we're going deeper, tracking trends, and unpacking how AI is changing how B2B buying decisions are made. If you want in on shaping our research, do me a solid and take our 15-minute survey here.

Two years into running marketing at UserEvidence, I've learned there's a side of leadership no one prepares you for.

You sign up for the creative stuff: strategy, big pitches, driving pipeline. Maybe even hosting a splashy in-person event in Jackson Hole. (Okay, that last one might just be me.)

But what you actually spend most of your time on is carrying people through the hard stuff. Sometimes it's about work. Sometimes it's about life. Usually, it's both at once.

You become the person your team turns to when they're overwhelmed, stuck, or questioning whether they're good enough. Your job is to hold steady, listen, and help—even when you don’t feel steady yourself.

Early on, I treated every problem like a fire. Everything felt urgent, fragile, personal. If we hit the number, I was soaring. If we missed, I spiraled.

Therapy helped.

I sat through 100+ sessions over three-and-a-half years unpacking childhood trauma, toxic professional situations, and tough personal experiences I’d carried unresolved for too long.

Therapy gave me tools, sure: reframing negative self-talk, practicing emotional regulation, and getting comfortable with uncertainty. But mostly, it gave me space:

• To separate effort from outcome

• To respond instead of react

• To remember most challenges aren't life or death

Re: that last point, I often remind myself of something Evan often says:

"We're slinging marketing software—we're not saving lives. Enjoy the work, but don't forget to live outside of it."

I still face big asks on tight timelines, tough conversations, missed targets, and even letting good people go. But I’ve gotten better at carrying the load. Now, I meet those moments with more calm, more honesty, and more humility.

I say “I don’t know” more often. I ask for help. When I'm personally struggling, I let people in—just enough so they know what’s going on—and create space for them to do the same.

That vulnerability has made us a stronger, more connected team.

This past year especially marked a shift for me: from solo "marketing leader" juggling freelancers to genuine team-builder. I hired people smarter than me. I coached, pushed, and had hard conversations, including one I desperately wanted to avoid but knew I couldn't.

I carried the emotional weight of more people, and surprisingly, I liked it. It made me better, even though it felt heavier.

When you care deeply, leadership becomes deeply personal.

I've learned a lot watching other leaders, too.

My mentor Kyle Lacy tops that list. Our weekly conversations over the past 18 months have shown me what clarity and calm look like after walking through fire.

It also reminded me how powerful quiet leadership and high EQ can be. Growing up playing competitive hockey taught me to lead by example—not by noise. That lesson still defines how I show up today.

Ultimately, most of leadership has nothing to do with marketing itself. It’s everything else around it: personal stress, uncertainty, miscommunication, self-doubt, and life beyond Slack.

You either let it consume you, or you learn how to carry it—not perfectly, but with a little more self-awareness each day.

That's what I'm working on. If you’re in the same seat, I hope you are too.

Stuff I’m digging this week

• This personalized gifting campaign from Actively AI—Meagen Eisenberg got a Barbie-inspired AI gift (yes, really) that tied directly to her background and POV—and it landed. Timely, truly unique, and built around a legit hook. That’s the combo that actually makes gifting work. And since she’s speaking at Highline… yeah. We’ve got to raise the bar.

• Klue’s Compete Agent campaign—This showed up in my feed and totally broke the pattern. I didn’t really know what it was at first—and that’s what made it work. It made me pause. Made me curious. And then it just kept showing up. I couldn’t open LinkedIn without seeing it. Honestly, that’s kind of the name of the game right now: earn attention before you explain anything. They did it. And it worked on me.

• This Armchair Expert episode with a retired FBI behavioral specialist—Listened to this on my drive up to Green Lake, WI over the 4th. It’s one of the best Armchair episodes I’ve heard in a while. Navarro is a retired FBI agent who specialized in behavior and interrogation. The way he breaks down emotional control, reading people, and the subtle cues leaders give off without realizing it… unreal.

Evidently, now streaming

Evidently is back with Irena Kin, Product Marketing & Business Strategy Lead at Grammarly. I sat down with her for a 20-min convo (outside our SF dinner event in May) on her pivot from law school to leading GTM strategy—and how her team is flipping the script on what a “great customer story” actually means.

We covered big questions like:

• Why storytelling is the secret sauce behind great product and customer marketing

• What makes a customer story actually useful (spoiler: it’s not just slapping it into a template)

• How Grammarly uses UserEvidence as a storytelling engine—not just another tool in the stack

Stream the 20-minute episode on YouTube.

Hold up—what does UserEvidence do again?

Product marketers, marketing leaders, and customer marketers need more than generic testimonials to prove value.

UserEvidence helps create real customer evidence that Sales, Marketing, and Customer Success teams can use to increase buyer confidence.

We make it easy to collect and share case studies, testimonials, competitive intelligence, product stats, and ROI data—proof that helps move deals forward.

Need a stat to prove ROI? A competitive insight to handle objections? A case study that closes the gap between interest and decision?

UserEvidence helps you capture and share the proof buyers need.