Mike Linton has been CMO of eBay, Best Buy, and Farmers Insurance. He's run billion-dollar marketing budgets and minted more CMOs than an academy company. In this episode, we dig into why CMO hires go wrong, and why the root cause is usually that boards don't understand their customer well enough to articulate customer strategy, and then hire to it.
When you can't define customer strategy, you can't define outcomes. When you can't define outcomes, you default to hiring a channel specialist: "I need a Facebook person" or "I need an email marketer who can run agencies." That's how mis-hires happen.
We cover:
Mike is the host of CMO Confidential, one of the best podcasts for marketing leaders and the executives who work with them.
Chapters:
00:00 Intro
00:50 The Decentralized Media Landscape
03:00 Anyone Can Create, But Who Can Aggregate an Audience?
06:01 The Cocktail Analogy: What You Can't Measure Still Matters
07:17 The Cosmopolitan Problem: CAC Obsession Kills the Drink
08:35 A/B Testing Billboards at Uber/99 Brazil09:35 Just Because I Don't Like It Doesn't Mean It Works
10:44 Being CMO Is Like Managing a Baseball Team
11:44 Scale Mindset: 100 Loans vs. 20,000 Loans
15:14 Best Buy's Big Bet on Geek Squad
17:56 Why Boards Mis-Hire: They Default to Channel Specialists
19:12 50% of CMO Roles Are Misaligned (UVA Research)
19:54 Decision Rights: The Levers You Must Control
21:16 Why You Shouldn't Show Creative to Your Board
21:56 How Boards Set CMOs Up to Fail
23:38 The Board Member Who Derails the Search
24:12 Does Every CEO Need to Be a Creator?
25:47 Building CMO Confidential to 100K Subscribers
28:39 Parting Advice: Know Customer Strategy Before You Hire
30:30 Outro
Links:
Keywords/Tags:
CMO, Chief Marketing Officer, CMO hiring, mis-hired, customer strategy, marketing leadership, executive hiring, channel specialist, decision rights, marketing ROI, CAC, customer acquisition cost, marketing measurement, brand building, scale, Best Buy, eBay, Farmers Insurance, Geek Squad, Uber, 99, rideshare, B2B marketing, marketing strategy, board governance, CEO, CMO Confidential, Mike Linton, Jason Radisson, CEO Tradecraft
Ken Holmen leads a $2B health system with 12,000 employees across rural Minnesota. After 30 years as an anesthesiologist, he's now managing 70% government revenue growing at 2-3% while costs climb 5-7% annually. That 4-5% gap compounds every year.
This conversation covers the shift from clinician to CEO, why technology hasn't bent the cost curve despite massive investment, what AI is actually doing in imaging and diagnostics, and how Minnesota's collaborative health culture produces different outcomes. We also get into rural workforce strategies, group purchasing leverage, and the structural math every health system CEO is navigating.
If you're leading through structural headwinds, managing stakeholders with opposing interests, or building long-term infrastructure in short-term policy cycles—this one's for you.
Key Takeaways:
• Why clinician CEOs have an edge (and why it doesn't guarantee success)
• The high-tech vs. high-touch paradox: Epic delivered features, not savings
• AI in production: DAX Copilot smart rooms, imaging inference, diagnostic algorithms
• The "Cadillac problem": patients demanding care that isn't best practice
• US vs. nationalized systems: different cost buckets, different outcomes
• Minnesota's secret: collaboration + public health investment
Chapters:
00:00 Intro & rural roots
01:05 Small-town hurdles & "bumper bowling" mentors
03:23 Path to CentraCare: becoming CEO
05:00 Do clinician-CEOs have an edge?
07:42 Leading the "parts & the whole" of an integrated system
09:34 Scale vs. personal care; today's healthcare headwinds
10:50 Rural labor & demographics: the double whammy
12:41 Building the pipeline: colleges, training, staying local
13:35 Beyond the hospital: community health & rural economy
14:58 North Star: "Making rural life healthier"15:59 Minnesota outcomes, collaboration & "Minnesota nice"
17:48 Fighting complacency: change management & urgency
18:33 Has tech delivered? EHRs, vaccines, robotics
19:15 High-tech vs. high-touch—and why costs haven't fallen
20:37 AI examples: imaging, labs & EHR inference
21:25 Smart rooms & DAX co-pilots in clinic
22:08 Consumer demand vs. best practice (the "Cadillac" problem)
25:16 Comparing systems: U.S. vs. nationalized care
26:37 Panda Health & CAPTIS: buying tech and "stuff" better
27:30 5-10 year outlook: workforce first
29:52 How the CEO role changed: ambiguity & discernment
31:05 Career advice for future clinicians & administrators
32:23 Wrap-up & takeaways
Guest:
Dr. Kenneth Holmen: President & CEO, CentraCare
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ken-holmen-26149a10/
About CEO Tradecraft:
Real operator stories. No coaching, no hype, no media-trained narratives. Jason Radisson (founder-CEO of Movo, operator behind five unicorns across three continents) talks with CEOs and senior leaders about decisions under pressure, scaling teams, and navigating power, performance, and politics. The plays that actually matter—the ones that rarely get talked about or passed down.
Subscribe & Follow:
• YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@ceotradecraft
• Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/ceo-tradecraft/id1813247648
• Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/0FYJ70l99fRrw9S1oWWRzf
#HealthcareLeadership #CEOTradecraft #HealthSystems #RuralHealth #HealthTech
A private-equity inside-look at running multi-billion-dollar casinos, saving $100 M p.a. with data, and turning Vegas hospitality into a revenue lab.
What you’ll learn
Guest bio
Eileen Moore Johnson spent 21 years at Harrah’s–Caesars, rising from VP of Revenue Management to Regional President over four Strip resorts during the one the largest LBOs in U.S. history.
Chapters
00:27 Welcome & Stakes — the Future of PE-Backed Operations
01:42 Hotel-Kid to Cornell: Early Path to Data-Driven Ops
02:32 Rolling Out Yield Management at Hilton → Fairmont
04:17 Bringing Revenue Algorithms to the Vegas Strip
05:08 $31 B LBO Inside View, the Caesars-Harrah's Playbook
07:19 $100 M in One Year: Slots & Segmentation Playbook
09:20 Post-Katrina Turnaround
11:45 ‘Hospitality Pod’: Four Resorts, One P&L, on the Las Vegas Strip
13:38 PE Pressure: $260M Renovation & the Iron Debate
18:20 Cromwell Launch: How a 200-Room Hotel Prints Cash
19:55 Casino Math → SaaS: Why Ops Execs Should Consider a Rotation in Tech
23:46 Gaming × AI — What’s Next & Wrap-Up
If you run high-volume ops or scale companies under PE pressure, hit Follow.
Want to pay it forward on the show? Reach out.
#PrivateEquity, #Hospitality #Operations, #RevenueManagement, #Casino Analytics, #ML, #CaesarsLBO, #AgentNative #TechCEOs #FutureOfWork #HospitalityLeadership
Mary Brainerd led 26,000 employees as CEO of HealthPartners, the largest consumer-governed healthcare system in the U.S. She also served as Board Chair of the Minneapolis Federal Reserve.
In this episode, she and Jason talk through:
– “Alignment, not sameness”: how to drive bottom-up change
– What cancer taught her about fear, empathy, and patient care
– How a co-op hospital model built real accountability
– Why AI is a lifeline to healthcare
– The Itasca Project and lessons from civic leadership
It’s the rarely discussed side of CEO work: culture, empathy, governance, and what it really means to lead at scale.
🎧 Full video version available on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@ceotradecraft
#Leadership #Healthcare #Governance #WomenInLeadership #CEOTradecraft
Rich Williams (former CEO of Groupon) joins Jason Radisson to talk about the realities of hypergrowth, what it takes to become a product-driven CEO, and why curiosity, conflict, and decision speed are non-negotiables in leadership.This episode of CEO Tradecraft breaks down what most leadership conversations gloss over—operational scars, inflection points, and the actual skill set behind the title.🔗 Links📺 Subscribe for new episodes: https://www.youtube.com/@ceotradecraft🔗 Follow us on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/ceotradecraft/🎧 Listen on Spotify: [your link]📱 Connect with Jason: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jason-radisson/Chapters:00:00 - Intro01:44 - Welcome + Why Groupon Was a Hot Mess (in a Good Way)06:46 - Inside the Founding Team: Andrew, Eric, and the Samwers08:32 - IPO, Chaos, and the Three-Legged Stool Problem11:28 Is Hypergrowth Just What Tech Does?14:56 - Operational Rigor, Manual Systems, and Scaling Pain17:56 - Forward-Deployed Teams and the Future of Work23:05 - Reflections on the CEO Skillset Groupon Built25:36 - Seeking Out the Hard Stuff: Intentional CEO Pathing28:28 - Becoming a Product Leader (Even If You Start in Marketing)31:33 - What Great Product Managers Actually Do34:34 - From Technical Co-Founder to CEO: The Next Generation37:36 - CEO DNA: Curiosity, Conflict, and Rapid Decisions43:40 - Outro
CEO Tradecraft goes deep with founders, operators, and executive decision-makers. Real stories. Real tactics. No fluff.
This show isn’t coaching. It’s not hype. It’s not media-trained narratives.
CEO Tradecraft is about what it actually takes to lead a company when the answers aren’t obvious.
Hosted by Jason Radisson—founder-CEO of Movo and operator behind five unicorns across three continents—this show digs into the hidden playbooks, sharp decisions, and hard-earned lessons from founders and senior operators who’ve been in the chair.
If you’ve ever had to scale through chaos, manage power under pressure, or carry the weight when no one else would—this podcast is for you.