The Owner's Room: Marketing Has an Owner, but the Decisions Still Come to Me
You hired someone capable to own your therapy practice marketing. So why are you still approving the decisions?
In this Owner’s Room episode of Culture Focused Practice, Dr. Tara Vossenkemper examines why certain marketing decisions continue to return to her—even though she has an excellent marketing strategist who understands the business, takes ownership, and is aligned with the leadership team.
This isn’t a performance problem, and it isn’t happening constantly. It’s a leadership pattern Tara has started noticing: sometimes she has delegated the work without explicitly handing over the permission to decide.
Tara works through six questions:
- What am I noticing about the decisions that keep returning? Are they coming back because ownership is unclear, important context is missing, or Tara simply hasn’t said, “You don’t need my approval anymore”?
- What should be different when marketing has an owner? What authority should a marketing department head have over strategy, timing, priorities, and execution?
- Why do I still feel responsible for making the whole system coherent? When you naturally see how every part of the business connects, stepping away from one function can feel nearly impossible.
- Are we holding different pictures of what marketing is for? Or is everyone already aligned—and the founder is simply still standing in the way?
- What do I want to remain close to? Tara considers how to protect the company’s voice and aesthetics without approving every piece of copy or every visual.
- What is this pattern revealing about me? At what point does withholding authority, continuing to carry the work, and resenting its weight become martyrdom?
Along the way, Tara explores the difference between assigning marketing work and transferring marketing ownership. She also considers when founder involvement is genuinely useful, when occasional audits may be enough, and how growth creates normal information gaps between newer leadership seats.
If you’ve handed someone responsibility for marketing—or any major function—but decisions still keep landing back on your desk, this episode asks the uncomfortable question: have you actually let them own it?
Timestamps
- 00:00 Marketing Ownership Setup
- 01:54 Why Marketing Decisions Keep Returning
- 06:53 What Should Change When Marketing Has an Owner?
- 09:17 Feeling Responsible for the Whole System
- 13:29 Are We Holding Different Pictures of Marketing?
- 15:44 Staying Close to Company Voice and Aesthetics
- 17:46 What the Pattern Reveals About Letting Go
- 21:43 Wrap-Up and Next Steps
Related Episodes
- Episode 90: Your Marketing Problem Might Be a Leadership Problem
- Episode 68: The Work Behind Being Visible
- Episode 69: Consistency Is a System
Think about one function you believe you’ve delegated. Have you explicitly transferred the authority to make decisions—or are you still waiting for the person to somehow know they no longer need your approval?
Subscribe to Culture Focused Practice wherever you listen, and share this episode with an owner who has handed someone a function but is somehow still receiving all the decisions.
