From Growth Marketer to CMO: How Kelly Cheng Leads Marketing at Goldcast

#297 Leadership | I sat down with Kelly Cheng, CMO at Goldcast, to talk about her path from growth marketer to marketing leader, how she’s built and scaled Goldcast’s marketing org, the shift from PLG to sales-led, and why she believes great CMOs play the long game.Timestamps(00:00) - – Intro (02:00) - – Kelly’s path from Hong Kong to Boston (05:00) - – Joining Goldcast and the PLG pivot (08:00) - – Moving from growth marketer to CMO (11:00) - – The role of mentors in her career (19:00) - – Questions to ask before taking a CMO role (25:00) - – Inside Goldcast’s marketing org structure (31:00) - – How Kelly measures brand and mindshare (38:00) - – Why the BDR team reports to marketing (44:00) - – The link between brand, content, and pipeline (49:00) - – Leading with vulnerability and the “long game” Join 50,0000 people who get Dave's Newsletter here: https://www.exitfive.com/newsletterLearn more about Exit Five's private marketing community: https://www.exitfive.com/***Brought to you by:Optimizely - the AI platform for marketers. Build your own AI agents or pull from a directory of 50+ pre-built ones for marketing use cases. Their new Virtual Teammates can join meetings, complete tasks, support campaigns, and keep your website optimized. Learn more at optimizely.com/exitfive.Webflow - A website platform built for the agentic web, letting modern marketing teams build fully custom sites that perform in AI search with no developer needed. Learn more at webflow.com/for/exitfive.Zoom Webinars & Events – The virtual event platform built to help B2B marketers run webinars that actually drive pipeline, with branded registration pages, live engagement features, and built-in tools to repurpose sessions into clips and content. Learn more at zoom.com/exitfive.Compound Growth Marketing - A full-funnel demand gen agency helping high-growth cybersecurity and enterprise software companies show up earlier in the buying journey, combining AEO, modern paid advertising, and a dedicated go-to-market engineering team. Podcast listeners get two free media planning sessions to find out what channels are driving the best ROI. Learn more at compoundgrowthmarketing.com/exitfive. ***Thanks to my friends at hatch.fm for producing this episode and handling all of the Exit Five podcast production.They give you unlimited podcast editing and strategy for your B2B podcast.Get unlimited podcast editing and on-demand strategy for one low monthly cost. Just upload your episode, and they take care of the rest.Visit hatch.fm to learn more