“If we combine those budgets with a team of two, we can do the work of 15 people at Ipsos.” In this episode, Stephanie Losee shows you that you don’t need a big crew to win. Learn how pooled budgets, shared goals, and solid trust let a tiny team smash silos and deliver results.
Stephanie Losee believes content teams must partner with the business rather than simply serve it. She explains how to get buy-in across departments by finding an executive sponsor who removes barriers, building trust with every team, and holding the line on quality.
At Autodesk, her two-person team’s State of Design & Make program set new records, driving an 897% increase in earned media pickups.
Her best advice is practical. Pool budgets from different teams to fund top-tier content. Use small, focused “tiger teams” to launch new projects. Always look for ways to say yes by asking what stakeholders really want. When teams share their budgets, you can help them reach their goals and deliver better results.
About Our Guest: Stephanie Losee
Stephanie Losee has spent the past decade leading content teams at some of the world’s largest companies, including Dell and Visa. As the Director of Industry & Portfolio Marketing Content at Autodesk, she leads a global team that handles executive thought leadership, original research, and content for key accounts. Her work has helped Autodesk’s content team win “Content Team of the Year” and spark important conversations with executives.
Stephanie’s expertise comes from building content engines from the ground up. At Dell, she was one of the first Fortune 500 managing editors and launched Tech Page One, an early brand journalism site that influenced $1 billion in the pipeline. She has built content studios at Politico and Visa, always pushing for transparency and strong editorial standards. Her core belief: Enterprise content works best when it runs like a newsroom — focused on the customer, guided by data, and built through real teamwork.
Insights and Quotes From This Episode
Stephanie’s experience inside large organizations shows what it really takes to make content matter. Here are the most useful insights and moments from our conversation.
“I actually love figuring out how to get things done at enormous matrix organizations. It’s the thing most people hate.” (05:37)
Stephanie enjoys solving the political and operational puzzles that slow down big teams. While many content leaders get frustrated by complex organizations, she finds energy in working through these challenges. This mindset is key for anyone who wants to drive change at scale.
“Within a year, [Tech Page One] was credited with one billion dollars annually of influenced pipeline.” (06:30)
This result shows that editorial, thought-leadership content can have a clear business impact when it replaces product-focused pages. Stephanie’s work on Tech Page One didn’t just grow traffic — it helped influence a billion dollars in pipeline. This proves that smart content can drive real revenue in large companies.
“The answer is almost always no, at least at first. It gets to be one of those ‘not yet’ situations.” (08:53)
Stephanie gives a realistic view of getting buy-in at big companies. Expect to hear “no” at first, and be ready to keep making your case. Change takes time in large organizations. Treat “no” as “not yet,” and keep building trust and support for your ideas.
“If Autodesk wanted to be as well known as it should be … you need an insights-based content program that gives customers something instead of continually asking for something.” (13:21)
This insight led to the State of Design & Make study and shapes Stephanie’s approach to content. She believes in giving value before making asks. For enterprise content, shifting from self-promotion to insights-based, audience-first content is the key to building trust and authority.
“If we combined those budgets with a team of two, we said we can do the work of fifteen people at Ipsos — and we did.” (16:20)
Stephanie’s approach to resources is about getting the most from what you have. By pooling budgets and building a small, skilled team, she delivered results that matched much larger groups. This shows that with the right setup, small teams can outperform bigger ones in the enterprise.
“We must stay enablers. We cannot become gatekeepers. When you become gatekeeper, that’s always when you lose your warm fuzzies between you and your organization, if not get laid off.” (22:33)
Stephanie is clear about how content teams should work with others. They should help, not block. Keeping trust across the company is vital for influence and job security. When content teams become bottlenecks, they risk losing their partners and their role.
“You’ve got to stay in it every day because it’s changing every day. It’s getting better every day.” (32:10)
Stephanie urges content pros not to give up on AI after early setbacks. You have to keep testing and learning because the landscape changes fast. Staying current is the only way to separate hype from what actually works. This attitude is essential for teams that want to lead on innovation.
“The greater danger will be when agentic AI is really a daily part of our lives and we’re trusting agents to make decisions … the worries CISOs articulated would freeze your blood.” (35:04)
Stephanie points out the new risks that come with AI, especially as it starts making decisions on its own. Content leaders need to watch these risks closely and work with security teams. As technology changes, the stakes get higher, and leaders must stay alert to new challenges.
About This Season of the Animalz Podcast: Breaking Down the Walls of Enterprise Content Marketing
This season on the Animalz Podcast, we’re pulling back the corporate curtain to show you how the largest, most complex B2B SaaS teams actually get content out the door. Our mission: demystify these hidden machines and reveal what it really takes to run content at scale.
Hear from content leaders of some of the biggest names in SaaS sharing the systems they’ve built, the battles they’ve fought, and the lessons they’ve learned along the way.
Check out other episodes in the season here
Links and Resources From the Episode
TED AI (01:57): In-person events Stephanie attends for honest talks about AI trends and industry changes.
RSA Conference (35:22): Security-focused event where Stephanie learned about enterprise concerns with AI.
Fortune magazine (03:43): Stephanie’s former employer, where she worked as a technology journalist before moving into brand content.
Dell Tech Page One (06:08): Early brand-content site Stephanie created at Dell, credited with influencing $1 billion in pipeline.
Content Marketing Institute (01:05): Industry group and early leaders in content marketing, noted for shaping the field.
Politico Focus (01:00): Sponsored-content studio Stephanie launched after Dell, building on her work in brand journalism.
Visa (03:23): Stephanie served as Senior Director of Content here before joining Autodesk.
Autodesk – Redshift/Design & Make (11:53): Autodesk’s brand-content channel and its rebrand, both shaped by Stephanie’s leadership.
State of Design & Make Report (14:21): Global insights program and campaign run by a small team, used as a case study in content impact.
Follow Stephanie Losee on LinkedIn.
Full Episode Transcript
Stephanie Losee [00:00:00]:
I think that the greater danger will be when agentic AI is really a daily part of our lives and we’re trusting agents to make decisions. I was at this day recently, this CISO day related to the RSA conference in San Francisco, and I listened in on their sessions all day long. It was a privilege and the worries that they articulated would freeze your blood.
Ty Magnin [00:00:23]:
Welcome to the Animals podcast. I’m Ty Magnin, the CEO at Animals.
Tim Metz [00:00:27]:
And I’m Tim Metz, the director of marketing and innovation.
Ty Magnin [00:00:30]:
This season on the Animals Podcast podcast, we’re pulling back the corporate curtain to show you how the largest, most complex B2B SaaS teams actually get content out of the door. Hear from content leaders at some of the biggest names in SaaS, sharing the systems they built, the battles they fought, and the lessons they’ve learned along the way. Today we’re speaking with Stephanie Losey, the former director of industry and portfolio marketing at Autodesk. Before Autodesk, Stephanie launched dell’s tech page one and spearheaded POLITICO’s focus. She’s earned top industry awards from various institutions like the Content Marketing Institute. In this conversation, we’re going to unpack Stephanie’s transition from journalism into content marketing. Bit of a personal story, how she navigates enterprise dynamics, and her point of view on how AI disruption will impact the role of content marketers pretty quickly now. I hope you enjoy this conversation with Stephanie.
Ty Magnin [00:01:24]:
Stephanie, thank you so much for joining us today. We like to start with the same question for all of our guests. Our audience knows this, but what kind of content are you consuming these days?
Stephanie Losee [00:01:34]:
All right, so I know that this will not distinguish me from anyone that I am consuming rabidly AI content, but I can tell you something else, which is that I’m not just reading it. I’m going to a fair number of in person events. I don’t always get out, you know, to go to in person events, but I am making an effort to do that now. I just went to TED AI. It’s not a TEDx event. It’s the AI events leading up to TED AI, the big conference in October. There were two panels of people who was the only unvarnished conversation I have heard yet. They said all the things, including articulating everyone’s worst fears about AI and people running the joint.
Stephanie Losee [00:02:20]:
And there was a certain amount of shouting and cheering. And so that’s what I’m finding. It’s. It’s less the content on the web that I’m consuming than conversations in person.
Ty Magnin [00:02:30]:
Interactive ones about AI specifically.
Stephanie Losee [00:02:33]:
Yeah, about AI, I feel like we almost can’t miss a day. That’s how urgent it is.
Ty Magnin [00:02:38]:
It’s changing so quickly. Right. And I also think, like, we need to be having conversations right now because we’re all trying to figure it out. Right. And we all hold like a few pieces of the puzzle and we’re trying to, you know, see the road ahead. And Stephanie, for our audience that doesn’t know you yet, would you give a brief intro for them?
Stephanie Losee [00:02:54]:
Yeah. So I am one of the early adopters of content marketing. We didn’t call it content marketing then. We called it brand journalism. Somebody told me I was like the fourth managing editor of a brand. I was the managing editor of Dell. I helped Meredith Levy and at the New York Times launch, paid posts, I went off after that to launch. I became obsessed with sponsored content.
Stephanie Losee [00:03:17]:
So I launched Politico’s Content studio, ended up as the head of content at Visa, and most recently did a five year stint launching new content initiatives at Autodesk.
Ty Magnin [00:03:30]:
Incredible. And can you take us back, like, roughly what year is it, Adele, that you were the one of the first managing editors ever?
Stephanie Losee [00:03:37]:
So this is 2012. I was a tech journalist at Fortune magazine. I dreamed of being a writer. I fully expected that I was going to have my entire career as a journalist, eventually an editor of some publication or other, maybe Fortune. And then, you know, the disintermediation of media happened and it was a few of us who quickly understood what that meant for brands. But I started to consult in an effort to figure this out. And so Dell soon became my biggest client. More than half my business was Dell, which is never a good idea if you’re trying to keep your business flexible.
Stephanie Losee [00:04:16]:
And. But at a certain point, like a switch flipped and I stopped being excited by everything I could do consulting for Dell and became frustrated about everything I couldn’t do because I wasn’t in house. And so I went to Kelly McGinnis, who was the head of comms. Now she is the chief communications officer of Levi’s. I asked her to lunch and she saw me coming from a mile away. She knew what I was going to ask and she created a position for me and I there I was the managing editor of that gigantic company. Yes.
Ty Magnin [00:04:45]:
Wild. What was the pitch exactly like, what was the vision for what that would look like?
Stephanie Losee [00:04:52]:
Yeah, I kind of almost said it, which is, I think that that’s the direction that we’re going in. You need a storyteller for this brand. You need someone who is going to turn Dell into a Publisher. That’s how we were phrasing it at the time. You were going to be a brand.
Ty Magnin [00:05:06]:
Publisher and then what kind of people would you hire? Like, who did you hire at Dell then? Because you couldn’t just find a content marketer. No one had that on their resume.
Tim Metz [00:05:15]:
And also, how big was Dell at this point? Just for context. So I want to know like how big, how big of a company was Dell at this point?
Stephanie Losee [00:05:21]:
I think there are about 160,000. So they were smaller than they are now.
Tim Metz [00:05:25]:
Okay.
Stephanie Losee [00:05:26]:
Yes. And of course I started out as an individual contributor because that’s what was available. You know, being at Dell is how I found out. How would I know this? I was a journalist, you know, I found out that I actually love figuring out how to get things done at enormous matrix organizations. It’s the thing that most people hate. Yeah, I think it’s a great puzzle to solve. It really gets me up in the morning trying to figure out how to connect with people. You know, I mean, at a place like Dell, it was like I was the mayor of a town and I was contacting other mayors of other towns and trying to make a deal about how we would bring our resources together and, you know, make mutually beneficial how things happened.
Stephanie Losee [00:06:06]:
And that’s how we launched Tech Page One. So Tech Page One was an early brand content site. We had the idea to take over the Solution center homepage where customers were already coming to get information, but instead of giving them, you know, let’s just go right to the pitch. Product information. We gave them thought leadership. And the conversions were. It was really impressive. You know, within a year, I think it was credited with $1 billion annually of influenced pipeline.
Stephanie Losee [00:06:35]:
So it was a very early example of what can be accomplished if you do thought leaders. We also earned a lot of, we got a lot of earned media out of it. Like we would, we would break a story and then, you know, somebody else would, another publication would pick it up. And so since I was sitting in comms, that was certainly appreciated because that’s.
Ty Magnin [00:06:56]:
A comms KPI totally help them get some placements and mentions. We’ve got to take it back to this point about you actually enjoying. Yeah, right. Breaking down the walls, the enterprise. Right. Figuring out how to collaborate and get people to swim together or work with you. Why do you think people generally don’t love that problem set and you know, what about you really enjoys it.
Stephanie Losee [00:07:21]:
So I do have a theory about this, which is that I was not raised work wise anyway in corporate. I think my ignorance helped me. It didn’t occur to me that this should be hard or, you know, I think that when you understand an organization a little too well, you are hyper aware of the sensitivities. And it’s not that I was insensitive. I just wasn’t worried that these queries I was making or these conversations I was asking for or the collaboration that I needed was something that I shouldn’t expect. And so I think that at first I didn’t realize I was doing it or that it should be hard. I’ll tell you another thing. When, when I first spoke to Kelly McGinnis about this role, she said that she had 11 open wrecks and that I could have any of them.
Stephanie Losee [00:08:10]:
She would turn any of those originally scoped jobs into this job. But they were all too low. And so she said, you know, they are a bit too low. You could grow them or you could wait and I will, you know, get the role created that I want for you. But you know, it doesn’t always happen and you know, it’ll take a few months and everything. And I’m thrilled that I was such an idiot, I was so ignorant at the time because if you told me that today, I would, I wouldn’t take that. That’s not a good bet to place. No, no.
Stephanie Losee [00:08:43]:
Yeah. And of course the reason that people hate, you know, influencing across a matrix organization is that it’s exhausting, it’s thankless. And the answer is almost always no. At least at first. It gets to be one of those. Not yet.
Tim Metz [00:08:59]:
There’s probably some of the investigative journalism journalist in you there as well. Like just having a puzzle, not giving up. You know, when other people, when other people would stop calling, like keep, keep trying to get, get an answer, get a piece of information. Yeah, I think I could see.
Stephanie Losee [00:09:13]:
Or unreasonable and stubborn. You know, there’s a nice way to.
Ty Magnin [00:09:17]:
Say it and there’s probably no words. If you’re like most B2B content marketers, you want to lead the conversation in your industry. At Animals, we help B2B software companies do exactly that by creating standout, survey driven, state of the industry type reports that help you grow your brand authority, backlinks and pipeline. In just 12 weeks, we run a process that helps uncover narratives from a unique data set packaged into a beautifully designed flagship content asset that your whole team is going to be proud of. Book a consult now at Animals Co Whitepapers and find out how to set the new benchmark for your industry. I kind of want to skip all the way to Autodesk. So you’ve built a large content team in Autodesk from scratch.
Stephanie Losee [00:10:01]:
So no, I did not build. I mean, I built a decent sized team within the content team. But that’s the reason that I was attracted to Autodesk. I actually took two steps back from Visa to take that role at Autodesk. The thing is that in my earlier era, holding these roles, since I was launching the function itself like a Visa, you know, there’s an appetite for it, or there was and then there isn’t, you get a different executive. I don’t think I understood the import and necessity for an executive sponsor. Once in a while I would lose an executive sponsor, they would move on or somebody would get fired. Or you kind of Peter principle yourself out after a little while.
Stephanie Losee [00:10:42]:
You know, like there’s only so many things that I can make up from whole cloth about how this should be done and follow my peers like Tomas from afar and take lessons from what I heard or in our conversations but had not experienced. And so when I saw that role at Autodesk, I knew a little bit about Dusty Demercurio. I had seen him on a stage, he had seen me on a stage. So we were what you call a weak tie. You know how they say that you get roles through weak ties? And I thought, now here’s my chance to see what a large content organization looks like, how it operates. So even back then, I mean, most recently before the giant layoff, that was a team of 65 people just on a content team. When I joined, I think it was 50. And so there was a whole team devoted to planning and operations.
Stephanie Losee [00:11:37]:
There was a whole team devoted to content strategy. There was a whole team devoted to SEO specifically for content pages. And that’s how I ended up launching new initiatives because they did have a brand content channel called Redshift. Now it’s called Design and Make with Autodesk because it’s all in the same theme. But I came in to provide new and more innovative content functions, which is what I always do, right? I always launch the thing that either hasn’t happened in the discipline yet or that is new to that organization. In this case, for Autodesk, it was new to me. I had never done any account based marketing myself. I was very curious about it because I think at the end of the day, most B2B, especially B2B SaaS, marketing problems are buying committee problems, aren’t they? Right.
Stephanie Losee [00:12:27]:
If you don’t influence the whole buying committee and you’re trying to get seven figure eight Figure deals, you can probably forget it. Yeah, yeah. So I launched that function. Then I launched an executive content function because Autodesk at the time did not really have content specifically for executives. Some of the content they made worked well for executives, but they didn’t have their own channel. They didn’t have a nice circle of goodness where you’re sending some introductory content before an event and then you attend the event and then you create content from the event, then you send it as an after, you know, after the event email. And then you keep cultivating an increasingly harmonious and close relationship with executives who are members of the buying committee and then who think of you as a trusted partner instead of this vendor, of course. And then in my interview, that initial interview with Dusty, I had this idea that if Autodesk wanted to be as well known as it should be, I knew it.
Stephanie Losee [00:13:25]:
But when I took that job, I was surprised to have people say, autodesk. What’s Autodesk? Because if you’re at Dell, you’d completely know what Autodesk is. You know, I thought I went to another big logo. I was the only one who didn’t realize I hadn’t done that. And so I said, you know, I think you guys need an insights based content program so that you’re really providing that value to customers, like giving them something instead of continually asking them for something. And Dusty at the time said, funny you should mention it, because he felt that there was already an appetite for something like that. And so that was the most recent one that I launched. And now it’s three years in.
Stephanie Losee [00:14:01]:
@ that point, Autodesk had never done a truly integrated marketing campaign, let alone. They never had in 43 years, let alone one that was based on content, a content program. And it busted. It blasted through every record we ever had.
Ty Magnin [00:14:18]:
Nice. And that was the state of design and make.
Stephanie Losee [00:14:20]:
State of design and make. Yes.
Ty Magnin [00:14:22]:
Nice, Nice. Wow, look at that content having a big influence on the way the marketing is done. You don’t hear about that every day.
Stephanie Losee [00:14:28]:
Well, you know, they didn’t. They were, as you’re saying, how do you break through the walls of an enterprise? It was a very siloed organization, as are typical enterprises. So there wasn’t a single marketing budget to even draw from to do an integrated marketing campaign. So what they would do is, you know, they would do, you know, a brand campaign and a couple of teams would participate. But, you know, sales and customer success wouldn’t have a role. And in the regions, maybe they wouldn’t even be participating Maybe they’re deused based, you know. And so when we design state of design and make it was meant to touch every single marketing department at the whole company in all three GEOs. And if you design it that way from the inside out.
Stephanie Losee [00:15:15]:
But, but, but you can’t do that unless you have one budget. And there was not one budget. And so there, here’s how you break down the walls, right? You, you find something that can achieve each silos, KPIs that are unrelated to yours maybe, but you elicit that information and then you show them that if they can, you know, join hands with you and give you some of their budget, then you can achieve their goals. It’s a lot of trust to ask for. Which is why it was not so much me, it was dusty having these conversations because he had been there for 10 or 12 years at that point and he had all these relationships across the org that I didn’t know these people. And so he was the one influencing. And they each, all these organizations had some amount of budget to commission a study from Deloitte or commission a study from Forrester or Ipsos or BCG to get their name attached to something that they knew customers were already reading. And we said if we combine those budgets.
Stephanie Losee [00:16:17]:
We were just talking about the business case for content, right? If we combine those budgets with a team of two, we said we can do the work of 15 people at Ipsos.
Ty Magnin [00:16:27]:
That’s crazy.
Stephanie Losee [00:16:28]:
And we did. So all of that that you see is a team of two, which is kind of amazing.
Ty Magnin [00:16:34]:
We should share a link to the report in our notes. But yeah, there’s a lot we know that goes into building that kind of thing, right? Designing the survey, getting it launched, doing the analysis, et cetera, et cetera. I just think it’s so interesting that you were hired in to launch the nuke content initiatives. And I do find that like, you know, there’s a lot of gravity to just doing the same thing, you know, maybe increasing volume, but the same kind of content again and again. And it’s hard to find time to do the like, you know, the sub brand or the new category of. Do you think that that kind of org design is necessary to like in some cases to actually innovate in the content programs that, that a company is producing?
Stephanie Losee [00:17:14]:
No, no, you don’t need to have something. And my title wasn’t New Content Issues. I’m just saying that that’s what I did. We gave me a new, ever increasingly weirder title. Like, I mean my titles just got more you know, sprawling. And at one point, I was global head of Thought Leadership Report Content and AB and abm. I mean, it just got, you know, we, we, we thought of calling it, you know, the Innovation Content Team, but then it. Then it would insult people.
Stephanie Losee [00:17:43]:
Isn’t my content team innovative? You know, so, so we just never called it that. Yeah, no, no, of course not. You know, what you mostly need is a partnership. You always need a partnership. You know, like I said when I was alone at Dell or at Visa, in a certain sense, you know, you only go so far. I’ve found it to be much more pleasing and fun to have one person who understands it with you. In the initial case of Autodesk, it was Dusty. And so having a partner like Dusty, who knew what I could do, not just for him, but for Autodesk and who gave me that affirmation and who.
Stephanie Losee [00:18:21]:
And who fought some battles for me, I’m sure, you know, that I didn’t even see and that he probably will never tell me about, just as Kelly McGinnis did, that makes it possible. But no, if you’re that sort of a person, like, wherever I go, I’m going to launch new things. I can’t help myself, you know, but. But so as long as you have that kind of a person, you know, if they’re. If they’re passionate and excited and they have any decent understanding of how to showcase the business case, then. Then they’re going to do that for.
Ty Magnin [00:18:50]:
I see that. But still, the, the importance of that. Executive sponsor. Yeah, it really is critical to doing that level of interesting content. Is that fair to say, from your experience?
Stephanie Losee [00:19:01]:
Well, that has been. My experience is that there has to be either institutional will or a powerful person’s will. It’s so funny, because when Kelly McGinnis created that role for me at Dell, I thought I was just killing it. I was so sure. You know, I watched. Check page one, and all these leaders came to this summit that I hosted in Round Rock, and they came from all over the world to spend a day with me, you know, talking about what this could be, and same thing where you had to ask them to, you know, join hands on launching this thing. And then she. I think she went directly to Levi’s.
Stephanie Losee [00:19:41]:
So then she’s hired by Levi’s, and it was like somebody snatched a warm blanket off of me. And then I understood that I was in the cold, and I had not been in the cold because Kelly and people like her, she’s so humble. She would never, ever. Like, she’s One of those people who makes others think that you did it, you know, but we would have this monthly one to one. And she. And she only ever asked me one question. How can I get out of your way? That was her question. And I’d say, well, you know, I can’t seem to get a meeting with so.
Stephanie Losee [00:20:15]:
And so. And I really have to talk to them, you know, and. And I didn’t even put it all together. You know, the next thing that would happen is I get that meeting or. And the next thing that would happen is I would get that agreement. And so that’s what made me leave Dell. I didn’t get booted out of Dell or anything. I just realized that, you know, at the time, I was the only remote person on that team.
Stephanie Losee [00:20:32]:
The only one, you know, I was in San Francisco. That was not a thing in 2015 at the time that I left. And I thought, oh, wow, I don’t have Kelly anymore. And, you know, we’re off to the races and I. I want a career path and I’m going to have to be local. And so that’s when I started to look for an opportunity that was in the Bay Area. So of course I ended up, you know, commuting to D.C. for almost a year to watch Politicos.
Stephanie Losee [00:20:59]:
But that was, you know, that was while I was looking for this place to land. Peter Chiricouri, who was the executive VP of sales, you know, asked me to do this for Politico. So. So I came there for a while and then I ended up at Visa.
Ty Magnin [00:21:13]:
Do you think you have, Stephanie, like, a common thread between these content initiatives, these content brands that you’ve shipped over the years? I mean, you’ve got Visas, cashless cities, right? If I understand it correctly, you’ve got the Page One initiative, the data report. Like, is there anything that connects these. Or like maybe a different question is, where do these creative sparks come from for you?
Stephanie Losee [00:21:36]:
I think it all goes back to having started as a journalist. There’s another wave happening right now of leaders of CNET joining brands and things like that. When we were talking to Comms about launching State of Design and make it Autodesk, there was the key guy that I was speaking to at the time, pressed me hard on not having earned media KPIs for the report, he said, stephanie, I don’t think you understand. Like, these brand studies are a dime a dozen. You should not go around having this as one of our leading indicators of success because it won’t work. And I said, I want to Be held to that standard. Let me be held to that standard. What is required is quality almost to the point where you become.
Stephanie Losee [00:22:26]:
Which is really bad. It’s really bad. A gatekeeper at an organization. So I’m always saying to my teams, we have to stay enablers. We must stay enablers. We cannot become gatekeepers. When you become gatekeeper, that’s always when you lose your, you know, the warm fuzzies between you and your organization. If not, get laid off.
Stephanie Losee [00:22:42]:
You know, it’s. But there is a point where you do have to die on hills because if there’s any, you know, customers can smell it. It’s like, you know, bees and dogs could smell fear, and so can customers. And so if you game a brand study, that’s why brand studies are a dime a dozen. If you game the results in the slightest, if they can tell that you’re hiding something for your ends, they will avoid it, and then you won’t get any press. But we succeeded in not doing that. And so year one, I think we got like 11 hits in the first six weeks. Year three, we got 97, which is like 897% growth or something like that.
Stephanie Losee [00:23:21]:
And I’m really proud of that. And that is because we did it right. We did it the way a research firm would have done it if we had outsourced it to them.
Ty Magnin [00:23:31]:
I want to hit on this point you made about around gatekeepers versus enablers.
Stephanie Losee [00:23:36]:
The bane of my existence. Yes.
Ty Magnin [00:23:38]:
Yeah. And what that looks like as a content organization, you know, how do you see the difference? What are things that a content leader can do to shift out of, like being a gatekeeper into helping other people? I assume you’re talking about helping other teams produce content that’s in the voice that can help move the needle without blowing it.
Stephanie Losee [00:23:57]:
Well, it’s also that when you’re doing these things in a large enterprise, as we’ve observed, you’re probably doing it through tiger teams. And so you’re on these tiger team meetings on the regular, and somebody wants something from this shared project and it may compromise the quality. You end up saying no. Now you’re a gatekeeper. It’s more like that cliche about how you have to find your way to yes. It’s really hard to do. And it starts out easy because the whole thing is yeses. And then there comes a day.
Stephanie Losee [00:24:32]:
There just comes a day when everybody puts their shoulders down, and now they get it. They know how to deploy it, and now they want to use it for something that, you know, will degrade the quality or you get a negative data set. And now what are you going to do? Are you going to publish a study that says that investment by leaders is down this year? When all you want in life as an organization is to have greater investment in a time of great uncertainty? Ouch. You end up having to make some pretty tough decisions, and not everybody likes those decisions. Now you’re a gatekeeper. It’s a daily conversation. How do we stay enablers? But, you know, the way to do it is to figure out, you know, they may be asking for X. And so you’re hearing X and saying X is not possible.
Stephanie Losee [00:25:19]:
What you really have to think about is what is the real goal? You know, is somebody breathing down their neck? Are they afraid they’re going to lose their job? Are they in danger of missing a goal? You know, maybe you can give them what they need without giving them a thing they requested. And since a lot of people on my teams have been reactive types, you know, they are very, very smart. And sometimes they’re high strung, you know, and easy to react. And so a lot of my conversations kind of sound like therapy sessions because I’m always like, you know, listen, breathe in and out. Do not react in the moment. Allow yourself to say, let me give it some thought, or let me talk to the rest of the team, or do not react in that moment. And by the way, I have to relearn this myself roughly every month. So I’ll never be an expert, I’ll always be a learner.
Tim Metz [00:26:11]:
We got to make the switch to AI, Stephanie, because I want to hear your thoughts about AI. You talked about it at the beginning of the conversation, and I guess starting with, how has your team been using it? How do you keep the quality up? What’s been good use cases for you? What have been? Things that haven’t worked.
Stephanie Losee [00:26:28]:
God, Right off the bat, we were having the most interesting problems. So, for example, a frequent use case for any content creator for AI is, yay, I never have to localize a piece of content again. Isn’t that wonderful? We do not. Autodesk does not localize its own content in house. We have a provider and the provider uses AI. They do one pass with AI and then they have a human editor looking over it. They have a number of phrases and keywords that make sure ensure that in Korean or Japanese or Chinese or whatever, they’re using the right term for this thing in construction. Or, you know, these are.
Stephanie Losee [00:27:10]:
These are very specialized industries. If you don’t talk like an insider, you’re you know, you lose the attention of this customer. Right. And so we go through all of this and routinely we send a report from State of Design mig, for example, to our ABM team in China to share. And they say, I can’t, I can’t share this. Or Japan, I can’t share this. This is terrible. And they react really emotionally because they’re imagining an executive reading this thing that they’ve looked forward to getting because by now people are starting to anticipate, especially executives, are we going to get this again this year? They say in their meetings with our CEO Andrew Adagnas, that’s how desirable these content pieces are.
Ty Magnin [00:27:49]:
That’s great.
Tim Metz [00:27:49]:
Look at you. It’s nice.
Stephanie Losee [00:27:50]:
Yeah, right. And so I don’t know what to tell you because even the simplest thing, I think localization would be like on the list of low hanging fruit, right? Very high on that list. Not there yet. So. And then, you know, that undermines our relationship with Chinese colleagues or Japanese colleagues because then they can’t put their shoulders down and rely on what you’re sending. Sometimes they want to review every word themselves. It can take weeks and delay a launch. It’s a big problem then.
Stephanie Losee [00:28:20]:
So that’s number one problem is that the things that I would think are easiest and easiest to adopt have not yet worked. The other problem that I didn’t expect is, you know, these, our companies are all asking content creators to deploy, to adopt AI quickly and well. But we don’t have the vendors. So the bigger the organization, the longer the process of getting a vendor approved by procurement sourcing. And so there was a point where our CMO was talking about our path towards AI and that we should be running pilots and things like that. I was leading these pilots that she, some of the pilots she was talking about and I just ended up slacking her and I’m like, hey, can you poke procurement? Because we can’t use this vendor. They gave us the project and we accepted it 11 weeks ago and we’re still waiting to get started. And I don’t know if she fully realized that she was going to have to unblock all of us in that regard.
Stephanie Losee [00:29:20]:
So that’s thing number two. And then related to thing number two is, you know, the tool race is that almost every day we’re hearing about another tool and it’s way cooler than the tool you use. It’s way cooler. Like everybody’s got, you know, Autodesk GBT or Visa GPT or like everybody’s got their white labeled in house LLM. I Am hearing about something cool every single day. Yesterday I saw a bunch of stuff from Delphi. Have you, have you seen that? See? Ah, I feel so I’m dealt with self esteem right now that I actually saw something that you guys haven’t heard yet. It’s a startup.
Stephanie Losee [00:29:58]:
I don’t know how, how big that is. Asking you to upload all of your expertise so that they can use you as a virtual coach. In other words, they. Yeah, kind of like black mirror, honestly sounds super black mirror to me.
Ty Magnin [00:30:12]:
But that means like Stephanie could coach her team or other content marketers or.
Stephanie Losee [00:30:17]:
Whomever like to my understanding. So like I just saw this, you know, in the last few hours and I’m trying to understand it. It seems like they’re saying, oh, you know, like Robert Rose would be a better example. So Robert Rose has a content consultancy. He could. But why would he do that? See, that’s the thing that I’m like, I’m really. Yeah. So theoretically he could upload all of his articles and all of his pitch decks and the examples of strategies that he’s given to all of these Fortune 500 or thousand companies and then create a virtual Robert Rose coach who could help you too to use his expertise.
Stephanie Losee [00:30:56]:
And would he make the money? Would they? So now I’m diving into this thing. But like if we’re hearing about new tools every week, if not every day, then you imagine what a challenge it is for an organization to keep up and to empower their people to use the latest and most effective tools.
Tim Metz [00:31:17]:
Yeah, absolutely. I hit it to everybody I talked to. Everybody has a headache or just like a burnout or wants to tap out. But I want to go back to the first point you made because I’m curious what about the translation? Right. And essentially the quality problem. So, yeah, what is your, what is your answer to that? Like, do you then not use it? Or like, how do you, what. How do you go from that? And if you know this problem is there, do you then ban the team from using AI or what have you done to solve that problem?
Stephanie Losee [00:31:44]:
No, it’s like what they say about weather in New Hampshire. Just wait and it’ll change. You know, I think that we just have to hold our breaths and then the tools are improving really, really fast. I know people, you know, who are more senior in their careers who have said to me, oh God, Stephanie, you know, I tried GBT a few months ago. It hallucinated, you know, wild amount and I’ll never do it again. I’m like, dude, you got to Stay in it every day because it’s changing every day. It’s getting better every day. And of course they’re having releases.
Stephanie Losee [00:32:15]:
What are they on for something like that? And so as the tool gets smarter, these problems will be solved. But until we see that quality coming out consistently, we can’t just push the button. Localize something, even if it’s a vendor providing it, and assume that our colleagues in Japan will feel that it’s, you know, deploy ready.
Ty Magnin [00:32:36]:
Yeah, it’s just so tempting to push the button, right? It feels like, it feels like it because it feels like content, you know, when you push the button.
Stephanie Losee [00:32:44]:
Yeah. And it’s so awful when I can’t tell. Like if you give it to me in French, I could tell if it’s awful. But that’s it. That’s the limit of my education. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So we have to take their word for it. And that’s the other frustrating thing.
Stephanie Losee [00:32:57]:
Like how bad is it? You know, are they being, you know, very perfectionistic? Is it, is it necessary to be that perfectionist? I think it is. I think they’re telling us exactly what we should hear. Because when I like. So the executives for Standard Design make. I’m glad I got this out for some other reason yesterday. They like this as a book, right?
Tim Metz [00:33:18]:
Oh yeah, look at that. Of course. Wow, that’s awesome. We like books. We love books.
Stephanie Losee [00:33:24]:
I hate to kill trees for this thing, but they love having it as a book. And some of the executives will pass the book because they don’t have enough around to their executive team. And there are all these post its or dog eared pages or notes in it or something. But if there were even one lousy sentence in this thing, one typo even, I would have a little, you know, I would have a physical reaction to it. So I get it, I get it. But they’re talking about something that’s more than that. They’re talking about using the wrong phrases or, you know, sometimes disrespecting executives by not using the proper title. You know, the title didn’t translate to what they’re expecting and that’s, that’s a dis.
Stephanie Losee [00:34:03]:
And you can’t be doing that.
Tim Metz [00:34:04]:
Yeah, I think, but this is my tangent then. But like, I think we’re, we’re all kind of like it’s lulling us into sleep. Is that the right word to say it? They have this phenomenon they studied with pilots, right. Because a lot of pilots, like 90% of the flight, they don’t have to do anything. And now and Then. But then when something happens, they’re actually not ready because they’re.90% of the time, they’re not doing anything. And I think it’s a little bit like that, what we have to watch out for. I think it’s like, because if you automate 90% of the process, then the 10% where you have to pay attention is actually harder to pay attention because the rest of the time you don’t have to pay attention anymore.
Tim Metz [00:34:37]:
And I think that’s like, it’s not always bad, Will. I think, I think we’re less training our. You know, it’s like your GPS in the car. It’s like before, I think more people could find their way just with a map or based on their senses. But if you use Google Maps all the time, if somebody just can’t find your way anymore because you never use that capability anymore. And I think that’s. That’s the danger. I mean, that’s what we need to figure out.
Tim Metz [00:34:56]:
Like, how do we. How do we keep our attention and our skill in the moments where it matters?
Stephanie Losee [00:35:01]:
Yeah, I think that the greater danger will be when agentic AI is really a daily part of our lives and we’re trusting agents to make decisions. And, you know, who programmed the agent to make a certain decision. I was at this day recently, this CISO day related to the RSA conference in San Francisco, and I, I listened in on their sessions all day long. It was a privilege. And the worries that they articulated would freeze your blood. You know, CISOs have to worry about some very, very consequential mistakes with security and the things that they were worrying about. And, you know, I’ll tell you a secret, which is that all of us, you know, this AI discussion always goes to, this, to the discussion of, you know, how long do we get to stay employed? I would not have thought this. I would not for a moment have guessed, but CISOs are afraid of keeping their jobs too.
Stephanie Losee [00:35:58]:
I think their jobs just became ten times more important. But like the rest of us, they too, they’re worried. And it’s funny, because I feel like I’ve been through this already and my peers have all been through this already because I lost my original career. I was very excited to be a journalist. I was one of those kids was telling people when they were 8, you know, that I was going to be a writer. And to watch my career go kablooey, like, the whole discipline was utterly heartbreaking. And I used to talk about that on stages quite a bit because, you know, now we Take it on faith. But journalists transitioning to corporate, it did.
Stephanie Losee [00:36:40]:
It did not go well most of the time when it was early because of that heartbreak. You know, nobody succeeds by doing something that they do through gritted teeth. And so I think we have to think about that right now because, you know, this. This technology will help us. We know that it may hurt us. But one thing we can depend upon is the level of change. And one thing we can. We can predict is that that level of change will happen much, much faster than it did with the advent of digital.
Stephanie Losee [00:37:18]:
And so we just have to. That’s why I would stay in it every day, because that’s how fast it’s happening, and we don’t have a choice.
Ty Magnin [00:37:25]:
Well, there’s something reassuring sitting here chatting with you, knowing that you went through a similar, you know, big career shift or market shift, whatever you want to call that, and look at you now. Right. And so I’m hopeful that the audience here for Animals and the folks, you know, the three of us in this room can stay in it every day. Right. And stay relaxed enough to kind of figure this out, whatever comes next. So I think we should wrap here. Stephanie, thanks so much for your time. It was a privilege to get to dig into the archives a little bit, hear about where you think things are going, and I’m sure our audience is going to follow along with you wherever you head next.
Ty Magnin [00:38:07]:
Speaking of which, where can folks stay in touch with you? Where would you point them to? You know, what you’re up to?
Stephanie Losee [00:38:14]:
Just for now, grab me on LinkedIn and I’ll tell you where I’m landing as soon as I’m left.
Ty Magnin [00:38:19]:
Yes, lovely.
Tim Metz [00:38:20]:
Oh, exciting.
Stephanie Losee [00:38:21]:
What I would say to people listening right now is we’ll get through it together. We will. It’ll be okay because we’ll all do it at the same time. It’ll be all right. Thank you so much for having me. It was a pleasure.
Ty Magnin [00:38:32]:
That was an inspiring conversation.
Tim Metz [00:38:34]:
What a journey. Yeah. Is this that? Yeah, it was really. It’s a bit different from. From the normal kind of Enterprise episodes we’ve had. I felt it was nice to kind of get her personal parts of her personal journey. I think that was awesome.
Ty Magnin [00:38:46]:
Yes, definitely. I’m inspired about all the different, like, content initiatives she got to launch. You know, usually you get like, one or two of those, you know, every couple jobs. I mean, at the scale that she’s done especially. But it’s like that’s the repeat thing, it seems, you know, coming in. And, like, I’m sure she’s running a lot of regular content we didn’t even talk a lot about. But you know, on top of that. Yeah, some really cool projects.
Tim Metz [00:39:12]:
No, exactly. I mean, we talked mostly about the cool project. We didn’t get to talk about the nuts and bolts. Like a little glimpses we saw of it. Right. But that’s the thing. It’s like, yeah, there must be so much else going on with running teams of that size. You know, she just touched on a little bit with the AI, with the localization.
Tim Metz [00:39:26]:
But like, yeah, like there’s so much more of that. To me, maybe that’s my side of what I like. That’s always the dream. Like these kind of, I love these ideas of these kind of branded publication media style content marketing plays. And it’s not a coincidence. Like it’s clear that she’s really good at that. Right. And that’s why then also people, it goes a bit back and forth.
Tim Metz [00:39:45]:
It’s like she launched some of those and then people know her for that and then they ask her for that and then you get to do that. So that’s also cool. But she’s clearly also good at it.
Ty Magnin [00:39:52]:
The thing that struck me the most, chatting with Stephanie is like the level of ease at which navigating the enterprise seems to come to her.
Tim Metz [00:40:01]:
Yeah.
Ty Magnin [00:40:01]:
You know, she mentioned that like success doesn’t come from like, you know, through gritted teeth. I think that was a pretty close quote of a one liner she said. The violent part of that metaphor that we’re using almost seems like it’s not resonant with her. She gets it. Like she knows that people feel that way about collaborating in the political games and like, you know, getting resources for what you want to do, etc. Etc. But for her it just seemed like she approaches that with ease. You know, she just seems to be someone that’s like good at making connections and like working through things and therefore there aren’t big walls that need to be broken down.
Ty Magnin [00:40:37]:
For her. She’s just kind of like, you know, moving fluidly amongst different areas in the enterprise in order to achieve what she needs to achieve.
Tim Metz [00:40:44]:
I think the strange thing is that if, you know, if she, she was a journalist before, then you’re not necessarily a manager. Right. But then on the other hand, I do really think if you’re a good journalist, you need to have some of that, like I don’t care to pick up the phone like a hundred times and call people that I don’t know and if they give me a no, I keep asking Like, I think there. There is a. Maybe a characteristic there that in a strange way kind of makes sense, like, to fight your way through a bureaucracy and just, like, keep going. Right. And don’t get demotivated. If you had, like, 10 nodes or you run into 10 walls.
Tim Metz [00:41:13]:
So may. Yeah. I mean, you wouldn’t expect. And I don’t think every journalist necessarily has that, but she clearly does, which is kind of cool and surprising to see.
Ty Magnin [00:41:20]:
One other thing that could be true here. Here’s a thesis we didn’t try on with her. You know the feeling, Tim, of, like, when you have a content idea that’s just a bullseye, you know, like, you believe it in your bones that this is a good thing that, like, you know, some segment of the world needs and it’s gonna help pull the business forwards, and you’re kind of just like, putting in that extra effort, whether that be to edit it one more time or to promote it even further or to sell someone else in. The idea, like, that comes easy to you, you know. So here’s my thesis.
Tim Metz [00:41:52]:
Yeah.
Ty Magnin [00:41:53]:
If the content idea, if it’s so solid, you know, that she believes it’s going to work, maybe the rest comes with ease. So maybe it’s about, like, having that great idea, that great concept.
Tim Metz [00:42:04]:
Yeah.
Ty Magnin [00:42:05]:
And letting. Letting, like, the energy follow.
Tim Metz [00:42:08]:
Yeah. And I said, but, yeah, that. And I think also, she clearly wants to hold herself to a high standard. Right. She also mentioned the manager, I think, who. Or higher up, who said, like, you know, don’t let yourself be measured on. Was it earned Media, I think. And then she was like, no, I want that, because that forces me to, like.
Tim Metz [00:42:23]:
I think most people would say, like, okay, then I’m not gonna put that target for myself. Right. But then she’s like, no, I want that, because I want to be held to that standards. But then again, she. The way she talks about it, it’s very easy and calm and no frustration or anything like that. Yeah, Yeah.
Ty Magnin [00:42:38]:
I mean, she’s a powerful leader. Right. And I think to succeed in the enterprise, sometimes that’s what’s asked of folk. Right. Like, so much of content leadership is leadership. It’s been a privilege getting to kind of be led by these individual folks and learn from them throughout the season. So far.
Tim Metz [00:42:54]:
Great. Anything else? No.
Ty Magnin [00:42:56]:
I mean, that’s my easy segue into inso. Stay tuned for the next few episodes. We’re continuing to bring on some excellent leaders and awesome brands that are doing interesting stuff. Right. And hopefully you’re picking up some lessons along the way as to how they’re building those teams and, you know, driving some of their successes.
Tim Metz [00:43:13]:
Yeah, absolutely. We have some other really nice leaders coming up, so I’m excited for the next ones.
Ty Magnin [00:43:17]:
Let’s go. Stay tuned.