Your Marketing Isn’t Working Because Your Brain Has Too Many Tabs Open
You can’t juggle it all and expect to have space to think about anything. Maybe a fractional CMO is the answer?
Your day starts with a crisis in sales. Then an HR issue lands on your desk like a lead balloon. You spend an hour wrestling with a spreadsheet for finance, and just before 3 p.m., you remember you were supposed to approve that marketing email. You glance at it for 30 seconds, say “looks fine,” and hit send.
Another random act of marketing. Something checked off the list, but not really done. You tell yourself “done is better than perfect” —or any of the other aphorisms that are supposed to give you solace about glancing and approving the content.
You tell yourself these things, but you really know that the email is just okay. The person you hired to manage your social media, newsletter, and website is lovely, but they don’t always get the subtle points of your business. They write what they think is right, but, is it? The email you approved is done, but what is it doing to drive more business?
You have no idea—and neither does anyone else.
Cognitive overload is a real issue for leadership
If marketing is yet-another-thing on your list to manage—on top of HR, sales, operations, and finance—can you say any of those tasks are being done well? You might be keeping the lights on, but that burnout warning light in your brain is starting go from amber to red.
This isn’t a leadership issue, it’s a structural/operational issue. We expect people—especially leaders—to juggle more than they can realistically handle and wonder why the results from marketing are just meh. When marketing is just one of the dozen hats you wear, you can’t possibly give it the focus it needs to be effective. It’s not about finding more time; it’s about finding more mental space. You have too much going on running your business and juggling flaming chainsaws, that it’s not possible to give any one thing the attention it deserves. Which means things are going to fall off your plate and onto the floor.
And five second rule doesn’t apply to marketing, I’m afraid.
There’s no substitute for focus
Good marketing, the kind that actually works, requires more than just execution. It requires time for ideas to simmer. It needs the mental space for a random thought on a walk to connect with a customer problem you heard about last week. Inspiration doesn’t arrive on a schedule between a sales call and an operations meeting. It shows up when your brain has the bandwidth to make connections.
It comes from letting your brain focus on one thing—marketing—and having that mental space to just goddamn think for a moment. But your bandwidth is shot, sometimes you barely remember what you had for lunch, much less how your marketing campaigns are doing (wait I have marketing campaigns running?).
The mental load of juggling everything else—sales, HR, finance, operations—is like having 37 browser tabs open at once. Your brain’s CPU is completely maxed out just trying to keep track of everything. There’s no processing power left for the deep, creative thinking that marketing demands. You can’t get inspired about a new campaign when a corner of your mind is still stressing about payroll.
This is where I come in.
AI-enabled fractional CMO
My job is to close all those other tabs for you. As a fractional CMO, my world revolves around one thing: marketing. You might be thinking, “But Tris, if you have multiple clients, aren’t you just as distracted?”
Nope.
It’s a completely different kind of focus. Even with a full slate of clients, my mental energy is always in the same domain—marketing. I’m always thinking about marketing strategy, content, and new perspectives. You’d be surprised how often wrestling with a problem for one client sparks a brilliant idea for another. My brain is always in the marketing “simmer” mode (thank you ADHD).
I’ll give you the dedicated focus your marketing is missing. The strategic thinking that gets suffocated by the day-to-day chaos of running a business. Let me be the one with the single, dedicated “Marketing” tab open, so you can focus on all the rest of your business.
I think it’s worth a chat, don’t you?
Book 30 minutes in my calendar and let’s talk about how to give your marketing the focus it deserves.
