#Episode 61: Stop Taking Orders, Start Calling Shots

This episode explores why marketers must move beyond execution to become trusted strategic advisors. Learn how to spot when you’re stuck in “order-taker” mode, and how to use tools and AI to elevate—not replace—your role. Whether you’re starting out or leveling up, you’ll get practical insights to lead with strategy, not just tactics.

Blog Post

Too often, marketers get stuck in “order-taker” mode—moving headlines, resizing images, or executing tactics without shaping the bigger picture. In this episode of Two Marketing Moms, Kelly Callahan-Poe sits down with Sara Nay, CEO of Duct Tape Marketing and author of Unchained, to explore how marketers can move beyond execution and step into the role of trusted strategic advisor

From Order Taker to Strategic Advisor

The biggest difference between order-takers and advisors? Control and vision.

Order-takers wait for client direction.
Strategic advisors define the marketing plan, align it with business goals, and oversee execution.

By setting the vision early and educating clients, marketers gain influence and help avoid wasted time and misaligned tactics

The Anti-Agency Model & Marketing Strategy Pyramid

Sara introduces two frameworks from her book:

The Anti-Agency Model – Shifting from dependency on agencies toward a collaborative, transparent partnership. Clients need ownership of data, accounts, and strategy—not blind outsourcing.
The Marketing Strategy Pyramid – A roadmap that starts with business strategy, builds into marketing strategy (brand, growth, customer retention), and only then decides who executes. Too often, businesses start with “who” instead of “what and why”

Embracing AI as a Career Accelerator

AI isn’t here to replace marketers—it’s here to elevate their role. Sara recommends auditing your tasks into three buckets:

Increasing in importance (human connection, strategy, speaking, training).
Stable in importance.
Decreasing in importance (like some content production).

Delegate or automate the latter so you can focus on high-value, human-centered work

Career Advice for Marketers

Sara shares her own lesson: you don’t need to be an expert at everything. Marketing is too broad—and AI only adds complexity. Instead, lean into your strengths and surround yourself with skilled executors. Start as a generalist, then specialize where you bring the most value

Bottom Line: If you want to grow your career (and your impact), stop taking orders. Step into the advisor role, align strategy to business goals, and use AI to future-proof your expertise.

Transcript

Kelly Callahan-Poe

If you’re tired of being seen as just an order taker, this episode is for you. Welcome to the To Marketing Mom’s podcast. I’m Kelly Callahan-Poe and today’s episode is called Stop Taking Orders, Start Calling Shots. Our guest, Sarah Ney, is here to share how marketers can shift from executing tactics to leading with strategy. Sarah is the CEO of Duct Tape Marketing and author of Unchained, Breaking Free of Broken Marketing Models. Welcome, Sarah.

Sara Nay

Thank you so much for having me on the show, Kelly.

Kelly

Thanks for chatting with me. One of the biggest challenges we have in advertising is being perceived as order takers by our clients. Move this headline here, make this image bigger. What are the signs that you’re stuck in order taker mode?

Sara

Yeah, I mean, you highlighted a couple. mean, it’s essentially when you are working with clients and they are telling you what to do versus what I talk a lot about in Unchained and in the work that we do, when you come in and you present yourself as the strategic advisor in the very beginning of a relationship, because it is somewhat hard to go from order taker to then being perceived as strategic advisor.

It’s oftentimes easier to start the stage that way or the relationship that way. And so, the strategic advisor comes in and marketing and advertising and creates the overall plan and vision for the direction moving forward. And is essentially educating the client on what to do and then overseeing the execution. When you’re in order taker mode, you’re essentially working with the clients and you’re waiting to be told what to do or they’re giving you the direction.

And so, I think the true value that we can bring clients in the small business space is coming in and creating the strategic direction, creating the vision, overseeing all of the marketing, because a lot of times in the small business space, especially small business owners are having to figure out and learn marketing and advertising. And so, they really need experts to come in and help direct them from the beginning.

Or oftentimes they fall into situations where they’re like, we should be focusing on paid ads or we should be creating organic content because competitors are, but they don’t really know the best approach on each of those channels. And so, I think with the challenge of being an order taker, if you’re in a role as an agency, is it can be draining over time.

You lose control and direction of the engagement. Oftentimes the person making the decisions doesn’t have that true background marketing experience, but they’re making the decisions because they feel like they have to. And so, it’s difficult being in the order taker role. And in the age of AI, it’s our opportunity to be able to elevate to the leader and not necessarily just the order taker.

Kelly

So, becoming a strategic advisor upfront is in the beginning of the relationship. Can you talk a little bit about what that means and then also conversely talk about what happens when you get into that order taker mode? What do you do?

Sara

Yeah, absolutely. So, to your first question in terms of starting there, what we’ve been teaching in the marketing space for quite some time is coming in and creating an overall marketing strategy. We call it a strategy first package where over the initial 30 to 45 days for a client, we’re conducting research. We’re mapping out their ideal client profiles and their messaging and their customer journey. And then we’re making recommendations based on that information as to

These are the growth priorities. Here’s the channels you should focus on with this type of content, with this type of cadence. So, we’re coming in to advise and educate and create the plan in the beginning. So immediately, if you approach it that way, you’re going to be seen as a strategic advisor where other agencies might be coming into businesses where they’re essentially saying, what do you need? Do you need execution on paid ads? Okay, we can do that. And so, it’s an immediately establishing the relationship of we’re going to actually come in and create a plan and educate you and your team. So, we’re all on the same page moving forward versus the mindset of what you need. Like that’s the big shift in terms of the order taker. You know, a lot of times then when, when we moved from that initial strategy, first package to long-term retainers with our clients, we’re then staying on as what we call fractional CMO for our clients. And so, we’re staying on as the strategic advisor still where our role in that seat is creating the marketing strategy based on the business strategy, it’s owning the metrics, it’s owning the budget, it’s overseeing all of execution, not necessarily doing the work because then you can bring in the doers to do the work. And so, I think that’s where a lot of businesses struggle when it comes to marketing. They’re expecting people to be strategists but also be able to execute in all lanes of marketing and advertising and really.

I believe there’s different mindsets and there’s different ways of thinking. And so, there are strategists and there’s people that are really, really great in Excel and in executing and marketing. And so, it’s too much to ask one person to do it all. And so, I’m not saying that no marketers should ever be order takers. Like there’s absolutely a role for once the plan’s created, someone has to get the work done. But I think it’s really important to think about if you’re thinking about your marketing department, you need some sort of leadership or strategist, you need executors and then you need AI ultimately below them to help those executors up level. And so, you just, the argument is you need a mix of people and not just one person doing all of it.

Kelly

Well, that makes sense when you’re on the client side and you have the knowledge, but when you’re on the agency side, there’s that ramp up time where you have to learn about the client’s business and you have to go through that listening phase. And I think that sometimes the challenge in the advertising world is how do you move from that listening phase for I hear what your challenges are, I understand your challenges and here’s how I’m going to solve those challenges. You know what I mean?

Sara

Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, yeah. And so, for us, like, again, because that’s how we structure our strategy first engagements as well is you do have to listen to the client. You have to understand what they’re struggling with, what their challenges are, where are they trying to go as a business, what their current revenue is, what their growth goals are, what their mission, their vision. You need to understand all of that stuff. And so, our process is first listening, as you said, so asking all of those questions, gathering all of that information to then you move to the planning phase. So, it’s once you understand where the client is thinking you need to conduct your own research to confirm and to provide more information. so oftentimes when we work with clients, you know, we’ll ask who’s your ideal client. And a lot of times they have high level information. But if you’re thinking about advertising specifically, you need to know them on a deep level, on a pain point level, on a what keeps them up at night level on a, where do they find their information level to, you know, what causes them to finally move forward. Like you need to understand them on a deep level. So, you take what the client provides you, you confirm and build on it with your own research, and then you turn all of that into a plan moving forward. And then you move into execution to actually execute the plan.

Kelly

So, you explain some of these concepts in your book called Unchained. You have two concepts that I thought sounded interesting, but I don’t know what they are. One is called the Anti-Agency Model, and one is called the Marketing Strategy Pyramid. Can you define those terms and tell us a little bit about them?

Sara

Of course. So, with the anti-agency model, that one always gets people like, what is she talking about? Cause I run a marketing agency I have, you know, for several years now and we are a marketing agency. And so, with that term, I’m not saying agencies are bad by any means. What I’m saying is there’s a lot that’s broken within the agency model specifically. And I’m talking about that from my personal experience, but also with working and speaking with hundreds, if not thousands of small business owners over the last 16 years.

And so, what’s broken in it is when small businesses become over reliant on agencies. And I see this all the time where they outsource their marketing, they lose control. They have no idea what’s actually working and not working, but they just keep paying every month because they feel like they need to that’s not a great scenario for the small business because they’re trapped in a lot of cases. And so, there’s a better way of working, I believe, and it’s based on a partnership and education and working alongside each other and collaborating versus taking over all of the control. And so, I was speaking to, just to give an example of this, was speaking to a couple of business owners. were partners and they own a home remodeling company. They’ve been in business for 20 years. They were paying a marketing agency.

I think it was like $6,000. can’t remember the exact amount, but you know, a monthly fee, I think it was around six and they had no idea out of that $6,000, what was actually going towards paid ads versus what was actually going towards their management fee. They had no idea. And they also didn’t add, they didn’t own the ads accounts. And so basically, they were trapped either. They kept paying this per this agency to keep running their ads, hoping that they’re actually getting results from it, or they started over.

And so, I encourage them to start over because it’s not a good situation for them to be in. They need to have ownership. They need to understand what’s working and what’s not working. And they need to work with someone that’s willing to include them in the conversation. So that’s the whole, that’s one of the concepts of the anti-agency model. There’s a lot more to it. The marketing strategy pyramid gets into the better way, I think, of working alongside businesses.

And so, it’s our approach to marketing. So, the bottom layer of the pyramid is business strategy. Where a lot of marketer’s miss is they come in and they create a marketing strategy, but they don’t really understand what the business is trying to accomplish. They haven’t taken the time to ask all of those questions. So, they just start executing, but it’s not tied to the overall business goals. And I think that’s a massive miss.

And so, you need to start there. And then once you understand the business strategy, then you can start thinking about the marketing strategy, which is the middle of the pyramid. And so, for that, we have three layers within marketing. have brand strategy, growth strategy, and then customer strategy. And so brand strategy is things like ideal clients and messaging and how you want to be seen by the world.

Then the growth strategy is essentially how are going to grow, what channels are you going to focus on, and then customer strategy is an area that a lot of people miss, unfortunately. That’s how are you going to retain customers and how are you going to turn them into referral sources, because that’s an incredible growth channel. And so, you have to be thinking about all of those different areas. And then the very top of the pyramid is team strategy. So, once you understand what the business is trying to accomplish, what the marketing is going to accomplish, then you can answer the who’s going to get the work done.

Is it going to be internal team members? Is it going to be agencies? Is it going to be contractors? But a lot of people start with the who, and then they try to figure out what we’re going to do. I think that’s backwards. You need to figure out what you’re going to do first. And then you can say, who’s the best solution again, is it agency contractor, full-time, part-time, who can help us with all of this? And I was actually just speaking to someone this morning and he is, he was a small business owner, completely frustrated with marketing.

He said over the years, he’s just paid all of these people to like run email marketing campaigns, outbound campaigns, but then to find out like his audience really doesn’t pay that much attention to email marketing. And so, he wasted all of this money because the people executing for him never answered the questions of who are retargeting and what message resonates with them and where do they hang out online and how do they make the decisions? And so, there’s a lot that’s missed in the marketing space, unfortunately, by not focusing on strategy before diving into tactical execution.

Kelly

I kind of want to throw that back a little bit because I’ve found in my experience that a lot of clients, surprisingly large percentage, don’t really know what their goals are. They can’t verbalize them. Is it shifting market share? Is it increasing awareness? Or is it behavior change if it’s a nonprofit, for example? And so that’s always a challenge. And it also varies based on the level you are in within the organization and there isn’t always, you know, senior leadership all the way up to the CEO or the board support for that particular goal. And so, you may be executing something that’s on a, on a director level that doesn’t have support throughout the organization. And I find that to be one of the biggest challenges because then you’re throwing darts at a goal that is unclear.

Sara

Yeah. And in those scenarios for us always it’s been, can we actually move the needle for this client? Can we actually support them? Is this goal real and something we can work towards? And if not, then maybe it doesn’t even make sense for us to work together. And so, I think part of running an agency is making the decision of, is it clear what we’re trying to accomplish? Can we actually help these people? And so, it doesn’t make sense to pursue the relationship moving forward is how I approach something like that.

Kelly

Let’s shift over to AI. We’re all worried about AI and getting replaced by AI. And I think the real question is, how do you use it to get ahead without getting replaced, without replacing yourself?

Sara

Yeah, it’s interesting because you say we’re all worried about AI. I see there’s two sides in the marketing space because I talk to a lot of marketers. We certify marketers like that’s a big part of our business and there’s either people that are worried about it or there’s people that really excited about it. And then there’s some people in between that are just kind of like, I don’t really know where to lean, but it’s interesting having conversations. And I am trying to preach that as marketers; we should be excited about it. We should be embracing it. There is a lot of unknown and uncertainty, I think if you, mark, it’s here and it’s going to continue to evolve and grow quickly. And so, the agencies that are afraid of it aren’t taking action. And I see are being, they’re falling behind already. I was speaking to another business owner, and he was saying he was talking to an agency that he was working with, and he started bringing up AI and he’s really excited about it. And he knows it’s here and the agency shut him down and was basically like, we’re not doing anything with AI, and he left their relationship. He ended the engagement. So. All of that to being said, like I think we need to embrace it as marketers. I have a framework in my book that I talked about, which is all about future-proofing our careers. And so, what I talk through is making a list of everything that you’re doing on a regular basis, like literally everything that you’re doing, and then categorize them in three different groups. Things that are gaining in importance because of AI, things that are staying stable, and then things that are essentially decreasing in value or importance because of AI.

And so that’s the starting point. And then after you’ve identified which category your tasks fall into, coming up with a plan of how you can spend most of your time on the things that are increasing in importance and how can you delegate to AI the things that are decreasing in importance or even staying stable.

And so, I think it’s a really good exercise, but also thinking about what do you actually like and what do you enjoy while you’re going through that exercises as well? Cause that should always be part of the equation. And then once you go through all of that, writing a future bio for yourself is something that you want to strive towards or work towards because that helps you continue to stay focused and grow. And so, I think that’s a really good starting point exercise to go through, but we did that whole exercise with our whole entire team. And so, it starts there, but then on a

You know, regular basis, a quarterly basis when you’re doing quarterly reviews, you should then be mapping out a plan to continue to evolve and focus on these things moving forward. And so, when I was going through that exercise for myself, I identified that speaking and developing relationships and networking and podcasting and training. do a lot of training to our groups, like those things, like people enjoy that personal connection. I think that’s increasing in importance because AI is becoming such a thing. But some of the things that are decreasing in importance for me to do start to finish is creating content because I can use AI now to do that. I’m not saying I’m just 100 % using AI to create crap content. Like there’s a whole process of human in the front end and human in the back end, but I can do it a lot more effectively. So, I’m leaning in AI to help with content production because to me that’s decreasing in value a little bit from a skill standpoint. And so, I’m able to free up some of my time that I was using on content production. So now I can be on more podcasts, and I can join more networking events, and I can connect with more humans.

Kelly

I love the idea of creating your future bio. That’s really smart. I think it’s something that everyone should check out.

Sara

Yeah, absolutely. And we, like I said, I started doing the exercise with myself. We did it with our whole team. We had conversations around it. And one of the girls on my team actually said afterwards, she was like, can I actually use this as my bio now? It’s way better than what I had. And I said, no, because we’re working towards this bio. This is something for us to grow towards. but it’s inspiring because it is even with my team, like we’ve been talking about AI, you know, as soon as most people started talking about it, but we’ve been talking about it for a while now even within our team, there were people that are still like, they going to fire? Are they going to fire me because of AI? Are they just going to ask me to do more faster because of AI? And even though I’ve been saying all along, we’re not firing anyone. We’re not just asking you to do more. What we’re asking you to do is elevate the work that you’re doing. There’s still just this uncertainty. And so, when they went through the exercises themselves and thought about, okay, how can I future proof my own career, whether it’s with duct tape marketing or whether it’s with a different company moving forward.

It changed from uncertainty to those people to a little bit more excitement, which was fun to see.

Kelly

I like that. So, let’s talk a little bit about from a personal perspective in terms of your journey from an intern to a CEO. What do you wish you had known earlier about becoming a strategic leader in marketing?

Sara

Yeah, I think the thing that stands out to me, and I wrote about this in the intro of my book is there was a time when I felt like I needed to be great at everything when it comes to marketing and marketing is complex. There are ads, there’s organic, there’s data, there’s strategy, there’s each channel that you want to focus. There’s just so much that goes into marketing. so earlier on in my career, I felt like I needed to be an expert at all of those things and it’s incredibly overwhelming. And now you throw in AI and it’s just like,

There’s a new tool, there’s a new system, there’s a new process, there’s a new way of doing things every single day right now, it feels like. And so, there was a time where I felt like I needed to be great at all of the different things. And I got really close to burnout on a number of occasions. And so, I had some deep thinking and aha moments where, you know, instead of trying to be a great marketer on all of the channels and all of the things, get really good at where my strengths lie. And a lot of that is in the strategy and not necessarily even in the execution and then surround myself with people that are great at the execution, long-term relationships with clients. And so that helped me shift from like, I have an understanding of most things marketing, but today I’m not adding a blog post to WordPress and optimizing it from an SEO standpoint or anything. I’m more in like the strategy seat and I can help direct my team on how to do those things. And so, I think if someone’s just getting started or if I’m just thinking back on that, it’s…pick your lane, lean into your strengths, go through an exercise like I talked about in terms of future proofing your career and get really good at where you believe you can bring the most value and stick to that versus feeling like you have to learn every new AI platform that comes out or it’s incredibly overwhelming.

Kelly

I agree. like to think of it as you need to start as generalist. You have to and understand the basics. Eventually, after 10, 15, 20, maybe even 30 years, you become a specialist. Then you have different people within your agency for different areas of expertise.

Sara

Yeah, absolutely. I think that’s so true. And it’s going to be interesting with AI to see what happens with generalists because, you know, when I was coming up in marketing, I did learn everything from scratch, like writing content, for example, and all the different things. And so now when people are entering the job market with AI from the beginning, people will learn approaching content with the assistance of AI. And so, I believe that you should still learn how to do most of this stuff on your own so you then can direct AI to assist you. But if you start with AI, you’re missing some of the foundational education that will help you be a better generalist and a specialist eventually.

Kelly

That makes a lot of sense. Well, thank you so much, Sarah, for joining us. Find her information plus more career acceleration advice at twomarketingmoms.com or wherever you listen to your podcasts. And don’t forget to subscribe and share. Thank you.

Sara

Thank you, Kelly.

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