Teams Built for Growth and Grit

Recruiting great marketers is tough work. Sustaining performance, growth, and energy over time demands deliberate choices. Those choices shape the culture, the pace, and the results your team can sustain through whatever comes next.

To see how this plays out across very different orgs, Drew talks with Dan Lowden (Blackbird.AI), Marni Puente (SAIC), and Amy King (Relias) about the teams they’ve built and the systems that keep them performing. They break down who they hire first, how they set structure and expectations, and how coaching, intelligent failure, and AI-supported workflows help people grow and stay motivated.

In this episode: 

• Dan builds a lean, senior, hands-on startup team and fosters a test-and-learn culture where people move fast, try new things, and learn together. 

• Marni reshapes a communications-heavy function into a modern marketing org, adding commercial and demand capabilities and aligning work to OKRs and transparent dashboards. 

• Amy leads a marketing reset at Relias, rebuilding leadership and structure, positioning marketing with sales and client care, and modeling vulnerability and continuous learning through change.

Plus: 

• Why AI committees, battle buddies, and shared learning loops turn hesitation into confident adoption 

• How OKRs, scorecards, and focused dashboards clarify priorities and tie marketing to revenue outcomes 

• Where intelligent failure helps teams stop low-value work, share lessons, and build trust 

• How competency assessments, surveys, and development plans nurture top performers and future leaders

If you’re building, inheriting, or leveling up a marketing team, this episode gives you a ton of moves to help it perform, grow, and stay together.

Renegade Marketers Unite, Episode 495 on YouTube

Resources Mentioned 

• CMO Huddles 

• The Right Kind of Wrong by Amy Edmondson 

• Past episodes mentioned 

• • Dan Lowden 

• • • Analyst Relations 

• • • Cybersecurity 

• • • Marketing as a Business Driver 

• • Marni Puente 

• • • Positioning as a Growth Engine 

Highlights

• [2:11] Dan Lowden: Hire for culture & coach for impact 

• [6:09] Meaningful work and growth keep stars 

• [8:24] Startup marketing baseline: content, demand, events 

• [11:18] Marni Puente: Startup marketing inside a Fortune 500 

• [12:44] Market marketing to win buy-in 

• [18:19] Lead by example: learn with your team 

• [21:44] Amy King: Build the team your strategy needs 

• [24:06] Make intelligent failure a team practice 

• [27:34] Employee surveys, manager feedback, clear fixes 

• [30:41] CMO Huddles: Community that accelerates outcomes 

• [33:27] Battle buddies to AI-first culture 

• [40:58] OKRs, KPIs, and clear timelines 

• [44:21] Grow stars with stretch roles 

• [48:31] Final words of wisdom on growing high-performing teams 

Highlighted Quotes 

"It's building a team that trusts each other, that compliments each other, that challenges each other, that works together to improve on everything we do and have fun together."— Dan Lowden, Blackbird.AI 

"Being a good leader is hiring really great people that have strengths and talents you don't have. It’s delegating authority and empowering them to take ownership of problems."— Marni Puente, SAIC

"We have a section for every meeting where someone brings up an intelligent failure as an example, or a case study, and not just a failure, but then what they changed in terms of their behavior."— Amy King, Relias

Full Transcript: Drew Neisser in conversation with Dan Lowden, Marni Puente, & Amy King