S2E27: You Can't Automate a Room

S2E27: You Can't Automate a Room

You built a whole brand on automating everything. Pipeline analysis, campaign builds, cold outreach that books 20 meetings off a dusty spreadsheet. And then you sit down to dinner with eight people and watch a deal close that no attribution model will ever capture. This episode is about that gap. Stacie sits down with Kelley Troia, founder of Clandestine Events + Experiences, who has spent 14 years engineering the rooms where C-suite relationships and deals actually get built - for the NBA, Formula 1, IndyCar, and the quiet executive dinners nobody posts about. If you have been optimizing every funnel and still feel like the real business is happening somewhere you are not, this is the episode that tells you where that room is - and how it gets built on purpose. --- Events Are Architecture, Not Logistics - Kelley came up through corporate retail - eight-plus years at Walmart and Whole Foods - so she thinks about an event the way a CFO does: what is the outcome, and how do we justify the spend - Why the goal is making both the marketing client AND the CFO happy, so they reinvest in the next one - How a struggling business idea born at a Jazz Fest surprise party turned into 14 years of high-stakes production What Actually Gets Engineered Before Anyone Sits Down - The guest dossier: a guest-by-guest breakdown of pressure points, interests, and how each person connects back to the client's business - Why one person can never carry a table - Kelley puts at least three of the client's people in the room to float, check in, and keep everyone engaged - Sound as the most underrated lever in the room: the loud restaurant that kills the one conversation you came to have - The "red thread" - every element subtly tied back to the business, the client, the guest, and the reason they are there IRL Slop and the Return to the Room - Kelley's term for the flood of badly produced in-person events - and why they do real damage when time is the most valuable thing a guest gives you - The post-COVID, AI-era pendulum swing back to community, and why people are starving for rooms built for serious business minds, not hair-and-makeup filler - The "puppy petting area" pet peeve: things bolted onto an event with no tangible connection to why anyone is there - "I produce events people won't shut up about" - and the trick of changing something every 20 to 30 minutes so nobody leaves early Rooms People Never Forget - The two-weeks-notice Formula 1 Austin build: a graffiti artist creating custom pieces during dinner, private transport to Billy Joel with side-stage access, then front row at the Chainsmokers - The Mardi Gras experience for Bay Area guests: private airport pickup, a Bourbon Street balcony, full costuming, a brass band and Mardi Gras Indians through the French Quarter, IV drips, and their own float in a day parade - Scaled-down moves that still land: a tableside martini cart, the chef telling the story of the meal, an artist who shows up midway through --- Key Takeaways - The venue is about 20% of the value. The real work is who sits next to whom, how the night is paced, and what the host knows walking in. That is the part most people skip. - Design the room around one outcome the client can name. If you cannot say what "success when you walk out the door" looks like, you are throwing spaghetti at the wall with a catering budget. - Time is the most valuable thing a guest gives you. IRL slop does not just waste an evening - it makes people say no to the next invitation. - In-person is not nostalgia, it is leverage. As more business gets automated, the room you build by hand is the thing software cannot replicate. --- Resources + Links Mentioned - Clandestine Events + Experiences: https://clandestine-events.com - Kelley Troia: kelley@clandestine-events.com - Unreasonable Hospitality by Will Guidara (the 11 Madison Park sledding story Stacie references) --- About The Guest Kelley Troia is the founder of Clandestine Events + Experiences, a strategic hospitality firm she has run for 14 years from New Orleans and Austin. After eight-plus years in marketing operations at Walmart and Whole Foods, she builds curated, high-stakes rooms - from intimate executive dinners to NBA All-Star, Formula 1, and IndyCar activations - where the through-line is always the same: every room is a business tool with a purpose. Her contribution to this episode is the operating manual for treating an event as architecture, not logistics. --- About The Host Stacie Sussman is the Founder and CRO of RevUp Advisory, a revenue operations consultancy that helps CMOs at $30M-$50M B2B companies fix broken marketing and sales systems from the foundation up. With 17 years in sales management and a front-row seat to what actually breaks inside scaling companies, Stacie brings both the strategic vision and the hands-on execution that most consultants can't offer. She's also the creator of StacieSussmanTeachesAI.com - an AI education platform built specifically for experienced business leaders who are ready to stop watching the AI wave and start building with it. --- Connect With Stacie - LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/staciesussman - Website: StacieSussmanTeachesAI.com - RevUp Advisory: https://www.revupadvisory.com --- If You Loved This Episode Subscribe to C-Suite Strategies so you never miss an episode. And if this one hit home, share it with the founder or CMO who keeps pouring budget into events and still can't tell you what they got back - this episode is the blueprint they have been missing. Your next big business breakthrough could be an episode away. Connect With Stacie - LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/staciesussman - Substack: https://staciesussman.substack.com/ - RevUp Advisory: https://www.revupadvisory.com

S2E26: The Thing Nobody Tells You About AI (And Why I Kept It To Myself)

For two years, Stacie Sussman has been quietly using AI to solve in 20 minutes what was taking her clients weeks. And every time they asked "how did you do that so fast?" she said "I'll teach you." And then she never did. This episode is her coming clean. Stacie breaks down what she calls "AI for good" - not the hype, not the fear, not the generic content at scale. She's talking about AI as a force multiplier for experienced business leaders who already have the judgment, the pattern recognition, and the domain expertise. The ones who just need to learn how to give AI the right direction. If you've been watching the AI wave from the sidelines, this is the episode that will make you stop waiting. --- The Honest Confession - How last week's conversation with Drew Brucker about campaign strategy and measurement connected to something Stacie has been sitting on for two years - Why Stacie kept her AI edge to herself, what shifted, and why she's done hoarding it - The moment she realized teaching this was more valuable than keeping it secret AI for Good: What's Actually Possible - A cold outreach campaign that booked 20+ meetings from a spreadsheet that had been collecting dust for years - A podcast outreach system that identifies shows, drafts personalized pitches, and manages the whole pipeline - running in the background while you focus on what matters - A content system that takes long-form IP and produces on-brand marketing assets across every channel - Real examples of what happens when you build AI systems on a solid foundation The Thing Nobody Tells You - The tools are NOT the hard part - knowing what to build and how to think about your business problems in a way AI can actually solve is the skill - Why this approach is completely learnable for experienced business leaders - How 20 years of business experience gives you everything you need to succeed with AI - The difference between generic input and strategic direction Why Claude Code, Why Now - How Stacie is connecting Claude to the tools you already use (Gmail, Google Calendar, Notion, Gamma) without ripping out your tech stack - The announcement: StacieSussmanTeachesAI.com is live - First workshop details: Thursday, May 28th --- Key Takeaways - The magic is NOT in the AI tool. It's in what you TEACH the tool about your business. Generic input produces generic output. Foundation first, execution second - that's the order that actually works. - If you have 20 years of business experience, you already have the hardest part. You have the judgment. You have the pattern recognition. AI just needs your direction. Once you learn how to give it that direction, it's like having an extra brain that never sleeps and never gets overwhelmed. - The companies that waited on CRM, marketing automation, and account-based marketing spent years playing catch-up. The leaders who learn to build with AI now will have a measurable advantage over the ones who wait. - "Done with you" beats "done for you" every time. Teaching people to build their own AI systems is what creates real, lasting change - not dependency. --- Resources + Links Mentioned - Drew Brucker Guest Episode: [S2E25] - the conversation about campaign strategy and measurement that sparked this episode - StacieSussmanTeachesAI.com - Stacie's AI education hub. Workshop details, registration, and recording options all live here. - Claude Code for Real Business Workshop - Thursday, May 28th, 2026. Live, hands-on, small group. $497 for the beta cohort. - Claude AI - claude.ai (Stacie recommends the $100/month plan for the workshop) --- About The Host Stacie Sussman is the Founder and CRO of RevUp Advisory, a revenue operations consultancy that helps CMOs at $30M-$50M B2B companies fix broken marketing and sales systems from the foundation up. With 17 years in sales management and a front-row seat to what actually breaks inside scaling companies, Stacie brings both the strategic vision and the hands-on execution that most consultants can't offer. She's also the creator of StacieSussmanTeachesAI.com - an AI education platform built specifically for experienced business leaders who are ready to stop watching the AI wave and start building with it. --- Connect With Stacie - LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/staciesussman - Website: StacieSussmanTeachesAI.com - RevUp Advisory: https://www.revupadvisory.com --- If You Loved This Episode Subscribe to C-Suite Strategies so you never miss an episode. And if this one hit home, share it with the CMO or founder in your life who's been asking "where do I even start with AI?" - this episode was built for them. Your next big business breakthrough could be an episode away. Connect With Stacie - LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/staciesussman - Substack: https://staciesussman.substack.com/ - RevUp Advisory: https://www.revupadvisory.com

S2E25: No Creative, No Data: Why Your Marketing Metrics Are Lying to You

In this episode, Stacie Sussman — Founder and CRO of RevUp Advisory — sits down with Drew Brucker, AI Creative Consultant and founder of Brain Child, to dig into the layer most CMOs are skipping in their AI strategy: creative. Every CMO is being asked the same question — what's your AI strategy? — and most of them answer with a stack. Attribution platforms. Orchestration tools. Agents. Dashboards. What no one's saying out loud: your data is only as smart as the assets flowing through it. And most teams don't have the assets — or the system to produce them at the speed AI now demands. Drew has been deep in the AI creative trenches since 2022, after spending 11+ years leading marketing at SaaS startups. In this conversation, he breaks down why creative was one of the first functions AI massively disrupted, walks through what an on-demand AI photo shoot actually looks like, and shows how to start building this into your org without a six-figure budget or a 10-person creative team. Why Creative Got Disrupted First * Why AI hitting creative this hard surprised even the people building in it * The democratization of creative production — and why specialized skills are getting flatter, faster * Why photorealism and "AI people" are the most polarizing piece, but creative is so much more than that (icons, illustrations, animations, product shots, environment shots) Building Your Brand's Visual DNA * What "visual DNA" actually means — colors, aesthetic, personality, locations, objects, the things that make you, you * How to build a visual library that marketing, sales, CS, and product can all pull from * Why this works just as well for a Series A startup with no budget as it does for the biggest brands in the market The On-Demand AI Photo Shoot (Walked Through Live) * How Drew combined three sourced images — a model, an outfit, and a backdrop — into 20 distinct camera angles in minutes * Why generating around the model in 360° prevents AI hallucinations when you turn stills into video * Why this isn't replacing photo shoots — it's filling the gaps (the angle you forgot, the colorway you didn't shoot, the model you don't want to fly back in) System-Style Thinking Is the Real Unlock * Why training your team on prompt engineering is yesterday's playbook — building the infrastructure is the new one * How brand guidelines + a campaign brief + an LLM = 10 optimized prompts your team can copy-paste straight into any image model * The Magic Spoon example — synthesizing a brand's entire visual identity from a handful of images and generating social assets in one click Why Creative Is the Missing Layer in Your Marketing Metrics * Why your data is only as good as the creative flowing through it * How AI creative changes the math on A/B testing — more variants, more learning, less spend * The 80–90% sweet spot — what AI handles, where humans still curate, and why that combo wins Where to Start When You're Drowning in AI * Why X (not LinkedIn) is the upstream channel for creative AI builders, and how to filter the noise * Drew's filter: feed the post into an LLM and ask, "how relevant is this to me, scale 1–10, be objective" * Why MD (markdown) files are the single highest-leverage thing you can build for any LLM workflow — and how Stacie uses one for RevUp built off the MKT1 framework You can also connect with our guest, Drew Brucker.  * Website: drewcbrucker.com * LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/drewbrucker * X: @dcbruck Podcast: Fast Hours on YouTube — youtube.com/@FastHoursAI Connect With Stacie - LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/staciesussman - Substack: https://staciesussman.substack.com/ - RevUp Advisory: https://www.revupadvisory.com

S2E24: Stop Hiding Behind Jargon: The Art of B2B Brand Storytelling That Wins

In this episode, Stacie Sussman — Founder and CRO of RevUp Advisory — sits down with Lauryn Warnick, CEO of Villain Branding, to dig into one of the most underestimated levers in B2B growth: brand storytelling. Most B2B leaders think storytelling is a nice-to-have. Lauryn’s here to prove it’s a revenue driver. When your story is murky, your sales cycles stretch. When your messaging is inconsistent, deals go quiet. When your team can’t agree on what you do, neither can your buyers. This is the conversation that changes how you think about brand — from a marketing expense to a business asset with a measurable ROI. Want Stacie’s hot take first? This is Part 2 of a two-part series on B2B brand storytelling. In Part 1, Stacie breaks down brand debt — what it is, why it’s costing you deals, and what to do about it before you ever bring in outside help. Listen to Part 1 here → https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/s2e23-youve-got-brand-debt-heres-what-its-actually/id1766582344?i=1000758388118 What We Cover Why B2B Leaders Hide Behind Jargon The real cost of a complicated message — and who’s paying it Why complex portfolios make the storytelling problem worse, not better How a confused brand story shows up in your sales cycle before it ever shows up in your pipeline data Verbal Strategy: The Foundation You’re Skipping What a “verbal strategy consultancy” actually does — and why visuals without words first is backwards How to build a message that travels coherently from the CEO’s keynote to the SDR’s cold email The three pillars every B2B brand story needs: differentiation, credibility, and relevancy The Villain Framework in Practice What “raising the bar” actually means when you’re a mid-enterprise B2B company Why category creation is usually a trap — and what to do instead How to close the gap between what your business does and what the market thinks you do Measuring Brand ROI (Yes, You Can) The three levers that define brand value: choice, premium, and loyalty What Interbrand and Kantar actually track — and why your CFO should care Why brand-led organizations capture up to 70% of their value through the brand itself — and what the band-aid companies are leaving on the table Brand Storytelling in the Age of AI Why your buyers are researching in ChatGPT and Perplexity before they ever fill out a form How to make sure bots and humans alike can find you — and understand you Why jumping into AI execution without a clear verbal foundation just scales your confusion faster When Leaders Get It Right — and When They Don’t What Salesforce, ServiceNow, and Coca-Cola are doing that most companies aren’t Why CEOs going rogue on keynotes is a brand debt problem, not a communications problem The moment when you know the work landed — and the moment you know it didn’t 3 Things to Do Before the Next Episode Ask five people at your company what you do — cross-functional, no briefing. Count how many different answers you get. That gap is your brand debt. Look at your last three sales cycles that went dark — was your story clear enough that the buyer could explain your value internally without you in the room? Search your category in ChatGPT or Perplexity — see if your company shows up the way you think it does. If it doesn’t, your verbal foundation needs work. Connect with Lauryn Warnick Website: villainbranding.com LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/laurynwarnick Email: lauryn@villainbranding.com Connect with Stacie Sussman Subscribe to the RevUp Advisory newsletter on Substack: https://staciesussman.substack.com/subscribe Connect With Stacie - LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/staciesussman - Substack: https://staciesussman.substack.com/ - RevUp Advisory: https://www.revupadvisory.com

S2E23: You've Got Brand Debt. Here's What It's Actually Costing You.

In this solo episode, Stacie Sussman — Founder and CRO of RevUp Advisory — breaks down one of the most expensive problems hiding in plain sight across mid-market B2B companies: brand debt. This isn't just about having weak messaging or a tagline that needs a refresh. Brand debt is what happens when your story doesn't keep up with your business — and your buyers feel the disconnect long before you do. It shows up in longer sales cycles, deals that go dark after the second call, and a pipeline that's colder than it should be. The fix isn't better copy. It's building a system. What We Cover The Brand Debt Diagnosis Why asking five people at your company "what do you do?" will get you six different answers How brand debt compounds over time — just like financial debt The warning signs hiding across your org right now Why This Is a Revenue Problem, Not a Marketing Problem What the Interbrand research actually says about brand value (your CFO will care) Why unclear storytelling is costing you deals you don't even know you're losing How buyers experience the disconnect — even when they can't name it The System Behind the Story Why a great brand story sitting in a Google Doc does nothing for revenue How to build messaging that travels coherently from first touch to signed contract Why every channel has its own funnel logic — and what happens when you measure them all the same way Brand Debt in the Age of AI Your buyers are researching in ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Claude before they ever fill out a form Why a broken brand story doesn't just cost you human attention — it makes you invisible to AI What AI tools actually surface (and what they ignore completely) 3 Things to Do Before the Next Episode Run the five-person experiment — cross-functional, no briefing, just ask Map your content by channel and be honest about what role each one is actually playing AI yourself — search your category and see if your company shows up the way you think it does Up Next Stacie sits down with Lauryn Warnick, CEO of Villain Branding, to go deep on solving the brand story problem at the mid-to-enterprise level. Lauren's working with billion-dollar companies and has a methodology that is equal parts clever and genius. You won't want to miss it. Connect with Stacie Sussman Subscribe to the RevUp Advisory newsletter on Substack: https://staciesussman.substack.com/subscribe Connect With Stacie - LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/staciesussman - Substack: https://staciesussman.substack.com/ - RevUp Advisory: https://www.revupadvisory.com