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, join the 5,161 people who apparently enjoy watching me figure this job out in real time by subscribing here.

I’ve been learning one lesson on repeat: saying no is harder than it should be.

It’s not because I can’t say it. It’s because of the dynamics around it. When you’re running a lean marketing team inside a high-growth company, you’re juggling three constant tensions:

• the founders always want more

• the team only has so much capacity

• and you want everyone to feel supported

That’s the game. And there’s never a point where those things perfectly line up.

I run into this problem almost every quarter. It happened in Q3. It happened again heading into Q4. And I’ve definitely talked about it in earlier editions of Evidently.

But this quarter, instead of giving the usual “we have a lot going on right now” update, I tried something different:

I listed every single thing that was being requested.

Not to complain. Mostly to overwhelm them.

And to show them we’re actually listening and taking inventory of everything that gets thrown at us.

Here’s what that looked like.

Where this usually goes wrong

This isn’t complicated. It’s just the reality of the job.

Founders want what they want, and they want it faster. Sales always has new asks. Product always has new asks. And marketing feels all of it at once.

We’d start each quarter with a plan that felt good. Clear priorities. Reasonable bets. Then the requests would roll in. Good ideas, smart inputs, real needs. But nonstop. And by the end of the quarter, the things we said we’d prioritize were fighting for time with dozens of new items that showed up along the way.

We were setting ourselves up to miss expectations before the quarter even started.

The system that helps me say no without burning bridges

Heading into Q4, I built something new: a Marketing Activity Planning doc that lays out every single thing on our plate. Not just the stuff we committed to in our plan, but all the requests, ideas, add-ons, and “quick favors” that come in from founders and other teams.

It’s literally just a spreadsheet. Nothing fancy. But it has the structure we’ve been missing.

Every deliverable lives in one place and gets tagged with:

• the function it supports (growth, content, events, PMM, etc.)

• what the actual deliverable is

• why we’d do it

• whether it’s tied to pipeline, conversion, both, unclear, or doesn’t matter

• how much impact we think it could realistically have in Q4

• how much effort it will take

• and the commitment level

The commitment levels were the unlock. After we reviewed everything with the founders, we sorted each item into four buckets:

1. Committed: The stuff we’re actually promising to deliver this quarter. If we only get these done, it’s still a strong quarter.

2. Supporting: Work that helps the committed items happen. Important, but not the main story.

3. Working backlog: The “maybe” pile. If something in Committed changes or slips, this is where we’d pull from. Nothing is promised here.

4. Future backlog: All the “not this quarter” requests. Good ideas, just not something we can take on right now.

When I walked the founders through the doc, I told them upfront that part of my goal was to overwhelm them a bit with how much is already on the board. Not as a scare tactic. Just to give them a real view of the volume.

And once they saw the full picture, the conversation shifted. We weren’t reacting to ideas anymore. We were making tradeoffs. That’s where prioritization actually happens.

We took a list of 60+ items and narrowed it down to about 18 things we’re genuinely committing to for Q4.

Training the company to respect no

The part I’m most curious about is how this lands with the rest of the company.

I walked everyone through the doc and our prioritization process at our Q4 kickoff on Monday.

I want people to see the same level of detail the founders saw, because most of marketing’s work happens behind the scenes. People see the final email or the deck or the landing page. They don’t see the dozen decisions it takes to get there. So when someone asks for something new, it usually comes with the assumption that we can just slot it in.

What I’m hoping comes through with all of this is simple:

We want to help. We want to support every team. But “quick requests” have a real cost.

And honestly, I’d love for this to become something the whole company uses, not just me. I want Sales, Product, GTM Ops, and CS to see how their asks stack up against each other and how those requests hit our capacity. Not so they agree with every decision, but so they understand why the calls are being made in the first place.

I’m not trying to be the gatekeeper here. If anything, this process gets me out of that position. It lets us move away from reactive “Can you do this?” conversations and toward “If this is important, what are we swapping out?” conversations.

If we can get there, the way the entire company works with Marketing will change for the better.

What I’m still learning

Saying no still makes me uncomfortable. It probably always will.

I want to help. I want people to feel supported. And I want the business to win.

But I’m learning that helping the business win sometimes means being honest about what we can take on. The more disciplined I am there, the more empowered everyone else becomes.

Here’s what I keep reminding myself:

• every time I protect the plan, I protect the people executing it

• every yes steals time from something that might matter more

• every quarter is another chance to get better at defending the work that actually moves the needle

This doc doesn’t make saying no easier. It just makes the context behind every no visible.

And sometimes visibility is the difference between a well-run quarter and a chaotic one.

Stuff I’m digging this week

• Webinar tomorrow: How to evaluate customer advocacy platforms—I’m grilling Kevin Lau and Evan Huck tomorrow on what actually matters when you evaluate customer advocacy platforms. Register and we’ll send you early access to the new buyer’s guide and RFP template before anyone else gets it.

• Clay’s homepage evolution breakdown—Loved seeing how Clay has evolved their homepage over the years. They’ve been the coolest kid in B2B SaaS for a while, and they keep tightening the story as they grow. Makes me want to mess with our own homepage at UserEvidence… and you might see some changes from us real soon.

• Gong’s new AI builder—Gong rolled out a new feature that might be a new cheat code for product marketing. Internal enablement docs, sales training, competitive battle cards, FAQs, call scripts, talk tracks. Al the stuff that changes constantly and needs to stay tied to real market feedback. Can’t wait to start messing around with this new feature.

Hold up—what does UserEvidence do again?

Most GTM teams spend millions on outbound, ads, and automation, but freeze the moment a buyer asks, “Do you have successful customers like us?”

Scattered quotes. Outdated decks. Burned-out references.

That’s the moment trust breaks and deals die.

UserEvidence fixes that.

We help your team turn happy customers into your strongest proof. So they can find the right story, advocate, or reference—instantly, when it matters most.

• Advocates — Activate your best customers without burning them out.

• Evidence — Verified, believable stories and results buyers actually trust.

• References — Find the right customer reference for the right deal.

UserEvidence makes customer proof usable by your entire GTM team—every day, on demand, when trust decides the deal.