Growth Insights for CEOs

5 AI Trends Every CEO Must Act on in 2025
Earlier this year, I shared takeaways from Mary Meeker’s Internet Trends Report, which showed how AI is reshaping business at a macro level. Building on that, Google Cloud’s 2025 AI Trends highlights five forces that will directly impact companies in the year ahead.
AI is no longer experimental. It is restructuring markets, reshaping customer expectations, and redrawing competitive boundaries. Here are five AI trends CEOs are preparing for now:
Recent Posts

3 KPIs to get your Content Marketing Under Control
Sun, Mar 12, 2017 — Is your Marketing Team able to provide you a good view of how your Content Marketing efforts are performing? Are they able to explain to you what the ROI is of the blog articles they are writing? Can they show you the impact of the interviews with you and other members of the Executive team to develop Thought Leadership content? Unfortunately, these questions are not often answered in the affirmative. Looking at your Marketing Dashboards, “Random Acts of Marketing” are often visible as "Random Acts of Content". Although the abundance of data available to your marketing team is unprecedented, it’s also a sad fact that most content marketing is still of the “spray and pray” variety.

5 Steps to Making the Right CRM Decision for Your Business
Wed, Oct 24, 2012 — Today's Guest Blog is by Barret Blank, President and CEO of BB2e

9 Disciplines to Activate Collins’ 20-Mile March
Wed, Jul 25, 2012 — Discipline is Good, Right? In Jim Collins’ “Great By Choice” this pyramid model provides a framework for his trilogy-logical discussion. I’ve read this book wearing two lenses – one, as a principal in our firm, and two as a marketing executive. As a business leader, I aspire to a higher level of discipline in my leadership as well within my personal work ethic. As a marketer, I recognize – primarily from the past 10 years of expanding digitally-dominated marketing and dynamic market ecosystems – that discipline is indeed the capstone of success. Goes Against My Instincts The 20 Mile March is “Jim Collins code” for consistent, methodical and metered execution. He correctly calls it out as a choice or decision, even a strategy, for securing sustained growth. The argument goes against several mantras ingrained within me – “strike while the iron’s hot” “leverage your opportunities” “capture the moment”. No, instead, his research observed that companies win (and south pole explorers survive) when they meter their progress. How might this apply to our business at Chief Outsiders? Perhaps we should add one new major market a year to our firm, regardless of the market conditions. If it’s a tough year, we add one new market. If the economy is rocking and highly favorable, we still add only one new market. Collins’ research tells us the benefits of steady pace outweigh the opportunistic instinct to lunge ahead in good times or hunker down in tough times.
Stay up-to-date with the latest from Chief Outsiders

3 Steps to Improving Customer Retention
Wed, Mar 28, 2012 — As someone who once helped the pest control giant Terminix exterminate a nasty customer retention problem, I've seen what a difference a few strategic adjustments can make. So if you're facing the same issue, let me assure you that there are steps you can take to stamp it out.