We Design & Build Your Hardware

We design & manufacture
Industrial, medical, & consumer electronics
Small enough to fit in an oven

HQ in San Diego, CA. Manufacturing at our wholly-owned factories in Tijuana, Mexico and Dongguan, China.

Connor Bush

36 hours in San Francisco! 

Had a blast cruising around with Kassie Betts & Derek Jackson, MBA 

Great to get some on-site time with:
Dave S Desrochers Intercreate 
Jonathan Thai Hatch Duo LLC 

Super neat to see Optivolt IRL!

Bonus points for this city having some awesome gluten-free baked goods and epic sunrises for my morning run! 

Way too many cool hardware things happening in the bay area. Will be returning ASAP.

Connor Bush 🔋🖥📟

We Manufacture Your Hardware at Scale (USA, Mexico, & China) | Ecosystem, Pipeline & Partner Strategy

My microwave broke today. While shopping for a replacement, I realized it’s a perfect metaphor for the mistake many hardware teams make when vetting manufacturing partners.

Think about it:

The Baseline: It’s a given that a microwave must heat food. If it doesn't, it’s not a microwave. Similarly, a CM must be able to build your device. If they can’t meet the technical floor, they aren't in the conversation.

The Retail Experience: I looked at Walmart, Best Buy, Lowe's, Home Depot, and Amazon. The prices are all within 10-20%. Since the product and price are similar, I’m actually choosing based on the "parking lot" experience...

Is it easy to get to? What is the return policy? Is the customer service helpful when things go wrong? What else is in the neighborhood? Do I like to shop there? What other things are on my list? Do I have a rewards account? 

Here is where most founders get it wrong.

With a microwave, you buy it, take it home, and hopefully never talk to the retailer again. It’s a transaction.

A CM relationship is a marriage.

If you are just "spray and pray" quoting based on the lowest number, you are ignoring the parts of the equation that actually determine if your program succeeds:

The "Parking Lot": How is their logistics agility? Is it a nightmare to get materials in and out?

Customer Service: When a line stops, or a component goes EOL, do they answer the phone, or are you just a ticket number?

RMA & Warranty: How do they handle it when things go wrong? Because in hardware, they will.

Cultural Alignment: Do they actually care about your product, or are you just "filling a gap" in their capacity?

If you're picking a partner solely on the "heating food" part and the sticker price, you’re missing 80% of the value.

In a transaction, the parking lot is a convenience. In a CM partnership, the "parking lot" is your lifeline.

Don't just buy a microwave. Find a partner you actually want to be in the kitchen with for the next five years.

Last weekend I decided to build a storage rack system for the garage.

Drew up the plans.
Bought the lumber.
Cheaper than buying one.
Fun Saturday morning project for the kids and me.

It was step one in a master plan:
* Clear the yard > clear the garage > reorganize the house.

Everything staged. Ready to build.

Five minutes in… I realize my circular saw doesn’t have enough depth for the lumber. 

Facepalm.

Now it’s been a week.
I’m researching new saws.
Spending more than planned.
And the entire project is off schedule because of one 'tooling' oversight.

Too many parallels to hardware manufacturing.
You can have 99% of the components in place…
Missing one “insignificant” capacitor?
Whole build stops.

Tooling costs money.
Tooling takes time.
Test as you go.
Slow is smooth. Smooth is fast.
I should have known better.

It’s CNY. Much of the supply chain is paused.

Which makes this your quarterly reminder:

If you want to ship in 2026, you should already be in motion.

Because it’s not just quoting and tooling.

It’s:

EVT / DVT / PVT.
Certifications.
Longest lead components.
Line setup.
Test fixtures. 
Packaging. 
Shipping. 
Tariffs. 

And then the things you didn’t know you forgot.

This isn’t urgency.

It’s math.

Physics and lead times remain undefeated.

Shoutout to the homie Mike Klein for the launch of Lens Lizard!

If you drive a vehicle, this product is for you!

Open article: Lens Lizard: A remote controlled backup camera cleaner by Mike Klein — Kickstarter by kickstarter.com

Lens Lizard: A remote controlled backup camera cleaner by Mike Klein — Kickstarter

One of the most common missteps I see first-time hardware innovators make:

They build their manufacturing timeline assuming everything will go to plan.

Which is interesting ... b/c in almost no other area of life do we assume a flawless first attempt. 

You do not expect to downhill mountain bike the first time you try to ride a bike.

You do not assume you'll set your campsite up perfectly the first time you go out. 

You do not enter a chili cookoff the first time you've ever made chili.

Yet, when it comes to electronic device manufacturing -- somthing full of firsts like:

- tooling
- NPI builds
- test fixture development 
- sourcing & procurement 
- certification testing
- packaging
- logistics

... the timeline is often built on the assumption that everything will go off without a hitch.

I see this most often when a founder commits to a lunch date for kickstart, a retail partner, or an investor expectation. 

** A HUGE COMMITMENT. 

Can a product go from greenlight to production in 6 months? 

Sure. 

But in reality, 8-12 months is far more common once iteration, supply chain friction, and testing are factored in. 

We don't plan for perfection is almost ANY other area of life.

So why do we do it with hardware? 

--------
*gets off soap box

Happy Friday 😅

I'm heading to ISC West! 

See you there?

#ISCwest #iscwest2026

We're excited to help celebrate Z-Wave Alliance's 15 Years in Monitored Security during their networking event at ISC West in Las Vegas! 

Will you be at ISC West? You can join in on the celebration too! Grab a cocktail, enjoy some tacos, and connect with fellow industry leaders and smart home innovators at this fun happy hour.

Details:
Wednesday, March 25 from 5 – 7 PM
Cañonita Restaurant in The Venetian Resort 
Free to attend — register in advance here: https://lnkd.in/gaPZP8BW

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. 😎

graphical user interface, text, application

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

No alternative text description for this image

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.

You can tell when a company doesn’t agree with itself. Here's how:

Sales says one thing, website says another, product has a different definition, and founders tell a story from two years ago.

Buyers feel that mismatch immediately. Internal narrative alignment is a growth lever because it reduces friction everywhere:

1. sales cycles
2. onboarding
3. retention
4. referrals
5. content production
6. hiring

It’s operational coherence that you need, not just "messaging."

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.

Most founders don’t need better writing. They need their edge back.

I just published a new article: “Why You Should Fire Your LinkedIn Ghostwriter.”

It starts with a real moment. A founder I was working with looked at his content and said: “In person, people get it immediately. Online, it’s… fine.”

Fine.

Just… fine.

The problem wasn’t grammar, cadence, or engagement. It was signal.

In sales calls, he was surgical: clear tradeoffs, sharp disagreements, and decisions made out loud.

On LinkedIn? The edges that made him "him" were gone. 

- Conviction had been translated into “perspective.”
- Specificity into general insight.
- Tension into comfort.

Nothing was broken, but nothing was building either.

That dissonance between how strong you are in the room and how diluted you appear online quietly reduces revenue potential. In the article, I break down:

- The structural reason signal gets softened
- The difference between sounding smart and being recognized
- Why “random acts of marketing” create the illusion of traction
 -What actually compounds in 2026 and beyond

AI has made polish cheap.
Identity is now infrastructure.

If you’ve ever felt like your visibility doesn’t match your capability, this will likely resonate.

Read the full piece below.

If it sharpens something for you, a like, repost, or follow meaningfully supports the work I do via Evan Patterson Consulting helping founders and fractional executives turn expertise into structured authority that drives real revenue.

A founder once told me, halfway through a sales call review, “I don’t understand it. In person, people get it immediately. Online, it’s… fine.” Fine. 

Open article: Why You Should Fire Your LinkedIn Ghostwriter by Evan Patterson • 4 min read

Why You Should Fire Your LinkedIn Ghostwriter

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.

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

Connor Bush

Evan Patterson

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The Battle

Connor Bush

Evan Patterson

Followers

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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);}Connor Bush's LinkedIn Performance

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