Chris Cicconi

Paying it Forward 👉 One Day at a Time

Salesperson 💸 --> Coach ✍️ --> Leader 🙋‍♂️
Sometimes a content creator 🎥 - always a goofball 【ツ】

I love building things, but not physical things.

I have a passion for building teams, networks, processes, procedures and revenue but most importantly people. 

This had led me to helping founders pivot from founder led sales to a sustainable and scalable sales engine.

Hit me up if you want to talk sales, fractional leadership, 👟or ☕️.
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I was once given an opportunity that has allowed me to build my wonderful career.
I want to make sure others have the same chance.
#payitforward

Content Creator

Host of "The War Room: The Kards Pre-Game Show" by 983 Media (a game by 1939 games)
Host for all Kards Official eSports events, including the World Championship Series
Host of "The Frontline" The Official Kards Podcast by 983 Media
Gwent Qualifier Caster and Gwent Partner (a game by CD Projekt RED)

Chris 🦄 Cicconi

I've lost 40 lbs eating ice cream 5 days a week.

A sub 250 calorie pint of ice cream (and 20+ grams of protein)

Because the Ninja Creami is funking magic.

(No, not sponsored, but not opposed to it SharkNinja 👀)

This is my go to recipe for a macro friendly Oreo McFlurry rip off. 
Shout to FitnessProductFinder on Instagram for the base recipe. 

400ml of 0% Fairlife Milk (or any other ultra filtered high protein milk)
45g of Monkfruit sweetner
15g of Vanilla Extract
1g of salt
1g of xantham gum 

3 Oreo Thins - these are your mix ins, save them for later 
(some people scrape the cream out to save like 8 calories or something but that's way too much work)

Freeze it for 18-24 hours.  

When you're ready to eat it, leave it on the counter for 30 minutes. Then run the sides and bottom under hot water for 30 seconds. 

This makes it softer, more like a Blizzard or McFlurry, if you like something harder, don't leave it out that long.

Spin it on light ice cream. Scrape down the sides with a knife when it's done, throw your 3 Oreo thins in and run it on the mix in setting and you're golden.

242 calories. 22g of protein. 5g of fat. 30g of carbs.

If you dig this and want my Rocky Road or Reese's Peanut Butter Ice Cream recipe drop a comment for which one you want to see next!

Building Sales @ KnowledgeNow | Still Fixing GTM. Still Roasting Bad Takes.

Fiverr Pro isn’t cheap, but it’s expensive to get it wrong.

When we launched ARC Roasters, we were running on a non-existent budget.

So we tried saving money on branding and web.

What did we actually buy with the nickels and dimes we found in our couch cushions? 
Revisions.
Broken builds.
Lost momentum.

When your company’s brand is on the line, mistakes don’t just cost money.

They cost credibility.

And for a small business, credibility is your strongest currency. 

Here’s what I’ve learned:
The most expensive hire isn’t the expensive one.
It’s the wrong one.
That’s why Fiverr Pro makes sense for high-stakes business projects.

Vetted professionals.
Proven expertise.
Even managed support when the project demands it.

If the outcome matters, hire like it does.

Brand partnership • Building Sales @ KnowledgeNow | Still Fixing GTM. Still Roasting Bad Takes.

Most AI tools are great at sounding smart.

They'll draft a beautiful email.

To the wrong person.
At the wrong company.
At the wrong time.

Because the AI doesn't actually know what's actually happening in your accounts. 

It's working off whatever you tell it, not unified buyer intelligence, not identity-resolved signals, not complete account context across your CRM, product, and engagement data

You have a choice, spend an hour researching your account, feed that information into AI, saving you no time OR check out Common Room's new Claude integration.

With Common Room connected to Claude, it’s no longer guessing from a prompt.

It’s reasoning over unified, continuously updated buyer intelligence.

Based on which accounts are heating up. Who just engaged. What signals matter.

Not vibes. Not guesses. Not a LinkedIn stalk that took 45 minutes.

For a solo seller like me with no RevOps team and no massive marketing budget behind me?

This is the closest thing I've found to having a full team in my corner.

Claude becomes the interface. 
Common Room powers the intelligence behind it.

69,613 people saw my Oreo cake recipe.

That's about 69,000 more than my professional posts.

Nice.

I've been quietly going through a pretty big health journey over the last year,  losing weight, running, training for Hyrox and making lots and lots of ice cream along the way.

I started posting about it on weekends on a whim.

But 3 posts. 100k impressions. 50+ new followers. Lots of DMs.

Apparently Oreo and running hit different than cold outreach tips. 

So I have a question for the people who just followed me:
What do you actually want to see?

More health/fitness content? Recipes, training updates, the whole journey?
Or was this just a fun detour and you just want me to go back to mocking Grant Cardone and Andy Elliott? 

Please drop a comment! I'm genuinely curious.
(seriously, asking you to drop a comment isn't actually me trying to hack my engagement...this time 🙃)

I finally got a treadmill this winter.

I was convinced I’d hate it.

Turns out, it wasn’t so bad.

While I don’t miss how soggy my feet currently are, I am happy that it’s 6 degrees and I can get back outside.

And it was also an excellent reminder that I do, in fact, hate the treadmill.

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How to make a million dollars.

The easy way.

Ask Dad. 

But seriously, she goes on to explain how she plans on making a million dollars before she turns 20, but when the plan starts with:

"I work for my Dad's company" you start to lose a bit of credibility. 

It's just another reminder that generic advice on social media is almost always 🐴  💩 

Because unless you have a rich pops who can give you a job, this probably isn't relevant to you.

Or maybe I'm just jealous 🤷

I’ve seen some wacky 💩 in sponsored content contracts lately.

Not sure if it’s because the LinkedIn influencer space is still maturing…

Or because some companies are testing how much they can get away with.

I try to live by: “Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity.”

But these two from the past week made me pause.

1️⃣ “We own the content you produce for us.”

Hard no.
If the content lives on my account, it’s mine.
You’re paying for distribution and audience access.
Want usage rights?
Great. Let’s price a license.
But ownership of something published on my platform? Not happening.

2️⃣ “We’ll pay you after all 3 posts go live.”

Why is the creator financing the campaign?

I’ve seen too many brands:
Delay payment
Renegotiate after performance
Or decide a post “didn’t go viral enough”
Meanwhile the creator has already delivered the asset and the reach.

Ideally: paid upfront.
At minimum: paid per post.
Anything else shifts all the risk to one side.

If you’re a creator navigating a contract, I’m happy to take a look.

And if you’re a brand… structure deals like a partnership, not a gamble.

Any experience creators see other wild clauses in creator contracts?

Is LinkedIn using AI too much to enforce their policy?

Or are they thinking about my mental health?

Because the a-🕳️ I was referring to in the comment that they took down?

Me. Full self deprecating. 

Apparently they decided I'm not allowed to harass myself! 

...not sure why they think they can kink shame me like that.

What's with all the pizza party hate?! 🍕 

Pizza is great.

Sure, as a reward from corporate it kind of blows, but why would we take the pizza away?

This should be an AND situation, not an OR situation.

Give me pizza AND a bonus.

#bringbackthepizzaparty

PS: Pizza from one of the best spots in Montreal and no, not just because I'm related to the owners 😅  Forno Pizza Frankie's

I used to brag about size.

Pipeline size that is, get your mind out of the gutter.

Felt like a large pipeline was a guarantee that I'd hit my number.

Until I realized, pipeline is made up.

All the "happy ears" in the world won't help you hit quota when you're avoiding what really needs to be done.

Qualification. 

That means asking the tough questions.
That means disqualifying prospects. 
That means your boss might ask you "what's wrong with your pipeline>!"

So we avoid it.
And we pad the list, instead of dealing with our poopy pipeline.

Evan Patterson 💅🏻

Hire Me & Win In The Attention Economy💥 I Help Founders & Startups Grow Audiences 🔥 Ghostwriting • Personal Branding • Social Selling • Community Marketing • Content Strategy • B2B Influencers • Affiliate Programs

👋🏻 You should really click the "...see more" button over there. 👉🏻

😉

I’m Evan Patterson.

Fractional CMO. Personal CMO.
LGBTQ+. AuDHD. Two cats who have main-character energy and paperwork opinions.
Metro Detroit-raised, Chicago-thriving, seeking a EU-husband for dual citizenship (kind of not joking...)

A small but vocal group of humans — plus my mother — call me the Joan Rivers of Marketing. I didn’t ask for that title, but I also didn’t give it back.

My work focuses on helping founders, CEOs, and operators stop sounding like they were assembled by committee. When people understand you quickly, everything gets easier: sales, hiring, partnerships, even that awkward moment when someone pretends they’ve heard of your company before.

My entire approach runs on feral specificity.
Egregiously unique. Audaciously effective.
Ideas with teeth. Narratives with posture. Writing that doesn’t need a spotlight to command attention.

I work in two lanes.

Evan Patterson Consulting
The Fractional CMO lane.

This is where companies finally get a marketing function that isn’t held together by vibes, hope, and a Google Doc last updated during the pandemic. I rebuild the structure, the sequencing, and the decisions that keep revenue steady instead of seasonal.

The second lane
The executive identity work.

Voice extraction. Narrative architecture. Brand presence that doesn’t wobble when the market does. There’s more coming in this lane; something I’m building quietly; and it’s shaping the way I help leaders show up with clarity and actual gravitational pull.

I build systems with staying power.
I build brands people remember without squinting.
I build marketing that earns attention because it deserves attention.

People who work well with me tend to appreciate speed, accuracy, and a sense of humor about the chaos they built before I arrived. People who want a polite museum tour of marketing usually exit early.

My goal is consistent: make you unmistakable.

Fractional Content & Community Marketing Leader

Ditch the gift cards, scrap the underutilized benefits package, and focus on the individuals in your organization instead.

Companies looking to improve performance and retention should care about helping people get further faster towards what matters most in their life. We make this easy with tools to create personalized incentives, meaningful recognition & self-defined benefits that help their people unlock "sacred funds" towards their personal life goals.

Employee Motivation Simplified.

Evan Patterson

Can we talk about how we're systematically destroying the SDR role? $45K base salary. In San Francisco. In 2025.

That's not a job. That's economic violence with a LinkedIn title.

And then we wonder why SDR turnover is 35% annually. Why quality is declining. Why nobody wants to do outbound anymore.

We treat SDRs like disposable batteries instead of future revenue leaders.

I've been that SDR. 80 calls a day. Rejected 79 times. Making less than a Target manager while being told I'm "lucky to have a foot in the door."

The door to what? Poverty?

The math is broken:

Average SDR generates $1M+ in pipeline
Gets paid $65K if they're lucky
Has 18-month average tenure
Leaves with zero equity

Meanwhile, that Series B founder's raising another round based on the pipeline SDRS built.

Here's my radical proposal:

Minimum $70K base (yes, everywhere)
Actual career pathing beyond "maybe AE someday"
Equity. Real equity. Not 0.001% that vests over 47 years.
Training budget that isn't just "shadow Dave for a week"

"But Evan, we can't afford—"

Stop. If you can't afford to pay the people generating your revenue a living wage, you don't have a business. You have a exploitation scheme with a pitch deck.

The companies getting this right are stealing all the talent. And they should.

Time to choose: Evolution or extinction.

What's the minimum you think SDRs should make? Let's get spicy in the comments 🌶️

Marketing for Fractional Execs & Founder-led Companies 🔥 Fractional CMO for Founder-led Startups 🚀 Personal CMO for the Self-Employed ❤️ Freelance Marketer For Hire! 🤩 “He’s the Joan Rivers of Marketing” - my ex boss

I hit 30,000 followers on LinkedIn today. 

I have been posting on LinkedIn since I was 24 years old. I’m 31 now. 

In that time, I met amazing people whom have become some of my closest friends, been mentored by amazingly talented professionals, grew as a person, became happier, more confident, explored various career paths, and made the move to self employment.

Here’s to another 30! Let’s see what happens next. 😎

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If you refer a founder, hiring manager, or executive who signs, I’ll pay you $3,000 USD.

For context, here are some top achievements for specific clients:

- 20–40 qualified inbound conversations per month generated from LinkedIn alone after installing founder-led GTM systems
- Over $750,000 in pipeline created within 90–120 days from organic content and positioning shifts
- $1,200,000+ in attributed pipeline tied directly to narrative architecture and messaging alignment
- Increased closed-won ratio by 50% due to improved lead quality and tighter positioning
- Implemented a content system that took a startup from generating $1,000 per day on average over a quarter to $250,000 in one month
- 10,000–20,000 follower growth in under 12 months for executive accounts
- 3x–5x increase in profile views within 60–90 days after repositioning
- $25,000–$60,000 retainers closed directly from inbound conversations
- Sales cycles shortened by weeks because buyers arrived already aligned on value

I operate as a fractional senior marketing leader and specialist.

That means stepping in and owning the strategy layer while also executing where needed:

• Ghostwriting and executive thought leadership
• Content marketing systems
• GTM strategy
• Social media marketing
• Executive personal branding
• Newsletter management
• Email marketing
• Search Visibility Optimization (SVO)
• Sales and marketing alignment
• Influencer marketing
• Community marketing
• Channel partnership strategy and implementation

I also have 50+ testimonials you can review directly on my profile. Right now I’m in conversations with:

- Seed-stage through Series C startups in SaaS, AI, edtech, martech, govtech, legal tech, salestech, etc.
- Venture studios
- Software and web developer agencies, marketing service providers, and professional services organizations
- Bootstrapped startups in growth mode

If someone comes to mind who needs senior marketing ownership in any of those categories and sharper strategic direction, introduce me.

I'm open to freelance, fractional, part-time roles, or whatever buzzword we're going with these days.

If it turns into a real partnership and lasts 90+ days, you get $3,000.

Simple. #opentowork

Looking for Head of Marketing, Chief Marketing Officer, CMO, VP of Marketing and Marketing Advisor roles

“Want to make $1,000? Stop scrolling and read. I’ve got space for new clients and I want to pay YOU.”

I can start 2 clients this month.  
I can start 4 more in March.

If you’ve got friends who’d like to make $1,000, tag them here too.  
Maybe they know someone. Maybe they want in. Maybe this gets interesting.

Here’s who I actually work with, and why people hire me.

Fractional CMO  
For founders and revenue leaders who feel like they’re doing a lot, but not moving much.

You come to me when:
- Your GTM feels like a pile of good intentions.
- Marketing is loud, pipeline is quiet.
- Everyone is working hard, nobody is sure on what.
- You want judgment, not another checklist.

I help you:
- Get a position that has a spine.
- Turn chaos into a simple operating system.
- Sequence demand so effort turns into revenue.
- Build content that compounds instead of exhausting you.

Personal CMO  
For executives, solopreneurs, and fractional leaders who know their presence is money, but hate playing content factory.

You come to me when:
- You know you should be visible, but you freeze.
- Your brand feels generic, polite, or diluted.
- You’re stuck in tactics when you should be thinking.
- You want demand to find you.

I help you:
- Clarify your narrative until it’s sharp.
- Create a repeatable content engine.
- Strengthen your executive presence.
- Make your public voice feel unmistakably yours.

---

If you refer someone who becomes a paying client between now and June 30, 2026, I’ll pay you $1,000.

Tag them in the comments.  
I’ll take it from there.

Learn more about me @ www.evanpatterson.io

Two years ago, I was posting about community marketing roles. 

Today, I operate as a fractional marketing leader for SaaS and AI companies that need senior direction without full-time overhead.

The work has evolved.

It’s less about growing LinkedIn followers 700%.

More about this:

• $1.3M+ pipeline in 12 months for a 6-person AI sales platform
• $500K+ in 90 days from a structured 20-operator ecosystem
• 35% lift in partner-sourced revenue after rebuilding a stagnant channel program
• 3x increase in qualified meetings after clarifying ICP + positioning
• 120% lift in retention and 65% lift in conversion after narrative overhaul
• $900K+ enterprise pipeline across US + UK markets

Same underlying strengths: content, partnerships, influence, social selling.

Different lens: revenue and infrastructure.

I’m opening space for 1–2 new engagements.

Founder-led SaaS or AI.
Past early traction.
Marketing feels busy but not compounding.
Sales team strong.
Positioning unclear.

Part-time. Embedded. Remote.

If that’s you, or someone in your network, let’s talk.

And if you’ve been following my work since the “community marketing” era, appreciate you.

Stop using LinkedIn DMs like a drive-thru window. If your first message contains a calendar link, you’re not efficient. You’re skipping consent.

There’s this strange belief that senior people want to be “optimized.” That is not what these folks want.

They want context, relevance, and a reason this conversation exists beyond your quota.

A cold calendar link says:
“I have decided this is valuable. You’ll catch up.”

A good message says:
“I’ve thought about where you sit. This might matter.”

One builds friction while the other builds signal.

If you’re still the best salesperson in your company, marketing hasn’t caught up yet.

That’s normal.

Founder-led startups often rely on:

Charisma > positioning
Energy > infrastructure
Momentum > structure

It works… until it doesn’t.

Recent outcomes from stepping in at that stage:

$1.3M pipeline in 12 months
$500K in 90 days from structured partner ecosystem
35% increase in referral revenue
3x meetings post-ICP clarification

You don’t need more marketing activity.

You need alignment.

I’m opening capacity for 1–2 founder-led SaaS/AI startups that want marketing to operate like infrastructure instead of a side project.

DMs open.

Most founders fail with CMOs because they hired too early or for the wrong reason. Here's how to get it right:

A Chief Marketing Officer is not a growth accessory or demand generation specialist with a fancier title.. It’s a redistribution of authority; and that’s where things get uncomfortable for some founders.

Founders who built the early motion are used to being the signal. The closer you are to the customer, the product, the revenue, the more natural it feels to control the narrative. However, growth eventually stops being about effort and becomes more about identity.

Questions like these become increasingly important:
- What do we actually stand for?
- What do we want to be known for?
- What are we willing to say no to?

They’re infrastructure questions often confused with campaign questions.

A real CMO doesn’t just “do marketing.” They build identity infrastructure, define the brand spine, decide what the company amplifies, and what it stops tolerating.

That means re-sequencing priorities, reallocating capital, reframing positioning, and sunsetting work that once felt productive.

It also means pushing back on the founder; not because they’re difficult, but rather because they’re close.

When marketing is treated solely as a service layer, like something that supports sales, supports product, supports founder ego, it can never shape the company; it can only decorate it. 

If every message still requires approval, you don’t have a CMO. You have a senior executor with a bigger title. If alignment is expected without change, you’re not asking for leadership; you’re asking for reinforcement. And more noticeably, if growth is still defined as “more activity,” you’re not ready for strategy. Strategy is filled with subtracton and tradeoffs. Good strategy involves saying no to good ideas so great ones can compound.

This is why most CMO hires disappoint; the founder hasn’t transitioned from operator to CEO. Operators optimize output and CEOs architect systems. Hiring a CMO is less about revenue acceleration and more about emotional maturity. It requires the willingness to let someone else hold the narrative weight of the business.

You don’t need another productivity hack, a posting schedule template, or another AI marketing tool. Here's what to do to double your income this year instead:

Get you someone who owns the narrative while you own the work.

Fractional executives, founder-led operators, senior-level freelancers: you’re paid for judgment.

You’re paid to make decisions, solve hard problems, and sit in rooms where outcomes matter. Every hour you spend trying to “keep up” with marketing is an hour you’re not operating at your highest value.

Most of you have tried something like a ghostwriter who needed too much direction, a junior marketer who required babysitting, or an agency that executed tasks but never really understood the business.

These attempts didn’t fail because marketing doesn’t work. They failed because no one owned it at your level.

A Personal CMO is someone that truly handles that nuance for you. Giving a non-marketer a tool like a ghostwriter or another piece of marketing technology and expecting it to yield good results is like handing me a hammer and expecting me to magicaly become a world class carpenter. That's just not happening.

A Personal CMO isn’t there to pump out content. They architect positioning, tighten the story, connect the channels, protect your voice, and make sure your presence compounds instead of resets every 90 days.

This allows fractional executives and leaders of founder-led startups stay in their zone of genius while folks like me build the system that turns that genius into signal.

That’s the difference. The goal is to make sure the market understands what you already are.

If you’re a fractional exec, founder, or senior operator who’s tired of marketing feeling like a side job… this is the layer you’ve probably been missing.

Now excuse me while I get back to doing mine.

Cold email has developed a stand-up comedy problem. Somewhere along the way, “pattern interrupt” turned into “open mic night.” That's coming from me, someone who loves to crack a joke.

I was just talking to my friend Leanne Dow-Weimer, MBA about this on one of her posts earlier this week.

Every inbox now has:

– The fake breakup line
– The sarcastic subject line
– The self-aware “this is a cold email lol” bit

We're even seeing people tastelessly using the "Epstein" files a marketing gimmick. 

You can feel the writer hoping for applause, but the goal isn’t a chuckle.

The goal is and always has been to get a conversation. But these folks are writing a lot of cold email right now that reads like someone trying to win a retweet, not a meeting.

This is what I would call miscalibrated relevance.

If the joke is doing more work than the insight, it’s theater. The best cold emails I’ve seen don’t have zingers, they have specificity. They demonstrate an understanding of a real constraint the recipient is dealing with. Something operational, political, emotional, or timing-related.

No punchline required. Comedy works because of tension and sales works because of alignment.

When you mix the two without taste, you get neither laughter nor replies. If you want attention, show me you understand the pressure I’m under. That’s funnier than any subject line trick.

Your brand should feel inevitable.

Not trendy.
Not clever.
Not loud.

Inevitable.

Like it couldn’t have been anything else.
Like it makes sense the moment someone encounters it.

That feeling doesn’t come from aesthetics.
It comes from alignment, restraint, and knowing exactly who you are building for.

Marketing for Fractional Execs & Founder-led Companies | Fractional CMO for Founder-led Startups | Personal CMO for the Self-Employed | “He’s the Joan Rivers of Marketing” - my ex boss

Looking for a fractional or contract-to-hire job? I found some job postings for you. Repost if you think someone you're connected with wants to see these.

P.S. I share job postings daily, so follow for more. 

Fractional Technical Recruiter
$80-150 per hour, 10-30 hours per week
https://buff.ly/TzJYB5H 

Fractional Facilitator, Software Engineering
$66-100 per hour, 6-9 hours per week
https://buff.ly/r6kK0Db 

Fractional Talent Acquisition Sourcer
$60-80 per hour, 35-40 hours per week
https://buff.ly/im8o4Da 

Fractional VP, People & Culture
$170-275 per hour, 24 hours per week
https://buff.ly/fLZbZzQ

For the work-from-home cat parents in my network, get you one of these floating desk-mounted cat beds.

Keyboard stepping via the cat has been reduced to near zero. 

(Thank you Hardy, one of my two cats, for being the model in today's content)

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The Battle

Chris 🦄 Cicconi

Evan Patterson

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taplio

The Battle

Chris 🦄 Cicconi

Evan Patterson

Followers

Posts

Engagements

Likes

Performance Score.css-goub6s{font-size:var(--chakra-fontSizes-md);font-weight:500;color:var(--chakra-colors-gray-600);display:block;margin-top:var(--chakra-space-1);}Chris 🦄 Cicconi's LinkedIn Performance

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