Devin Bramhall

Co-host: Don't Say Content. Marketing Advisor. Agency Growth Strategist. Former CEO of Animalz.

Your CEO doesn't hate marketing. They hate that you can't prove that it works.

I know because I've been the marketer pitching brilliant strategies that get shelved and the CEO wondering why marketing feels like an expensive black box.

After 15+ years building content strategies as a marketer and tripling Animalz to nearly $12M ARR as CEO, I realized the real problem:

We're optimizing for activities instead of outcomes. Checking boxes instead of driving growth.

The dirty secret? Most "content marketing strategies" are just glorified to-do lists.

My book "B2B Content Marketing Strategy" shows why "do more marketing" is killing growth and what to do instead.

Now I help companies stop doing marketing and start growing businesses as a fractional Chief Growth Officer.

If you're tired of: 
→ Defending your work instead of leading with it 
→ Following frameworks that feel like busy work 
→ Watching brilliant ideas die in committee

You're in the right place.

I help marketers ask better questions. Not “what content do we need?” but “what does the business need to grow?'"

Get weekly no-BS takes on growth: devinbramhall.com/newsletter

Chief Executive Officer

I used to think being a good marketing leader meant I had to be the smartest person in the room.

Spoiler: I wasn't. And trying to be made me worse at my job.

Here's what no one tells you about the shift from doing to leading, it's not about working harder or knowing more. It's about letting go of being right.

When I first moved into leadership, I apologized constantly. "Sorry, I don't have that data yet." "Sorry, let me circle back on that." I thought humility meant admitting what I didn't know.

Turns out, that just made everyone nervous.

The shift happened when I stopped apologizing and started owning my stance—even when I couldn't prove it yet. "Here's what I'm seeing. Here's the direction. Let's course-correct if we're wrong."

(Confidence isn't about being right. It's about having a POV and moving forward.)

But here's the part that actually broke me: letting go of execution.

I was still writing the copy. Still building the decks. Still the one "who could just do it faster." Classic Cinderella syndrome, if you're scrubbing the floors, you're not running the house.

And leadership? That's selling the strategy internally. Pitching to the CEO. Shaping the narrative before anyone else does. Your team can execute. You need to build the conditions for them to win.

The hardest lesson: You're not an IC anymore. Stop asking permission.

Don't say "I'd like to try this approach." Say "Here's what we're doing and why it's going to work."

Your CEO doesn't ask permission to make calls on incomplete data. Neither should you.

Marketing leadership isn't about having answers. It's about having conviction when no one else does.

Chief Growth Officer [Fractional]. Author: “B2B Content Marketing Strategy” out now on Amazon

Your CEO is asking you to "do more content" because they don't know what else to tell you.

They don't understand demand generation. Or brand positioning. And they definitely don't understand why the leads aren't converting.

So they default to: "We need more content."

And you? You're drowning in a backlog of blog posts no one will read, social posts that get 12 likes, and webinars with 3 attendees.

This is a leadership problem.

When leadership can't articulate strategy, they ask for activity. When they can't measure what matters, they count outputs. When they can't defend marketing to the board, they ask you to "do more" and hope something sticks.

I've watched this destroy marketing teams. The CEO who demanded 50 blog posts a quarter but couldn't tell me what outcome we were driving. The VP who obsessed over social followers while pipeline sat at zero. The board that wanted "more brand awareness" with zero patience for how long that actually takes.

When executives don't know how to evaluate marketing, they measure what's easy to count.

Stop asking for permission to do less. Defend focus instead.

The next time someone asks for "more content," I ask them:

More content to achieve what outcome? What are we trying to change about the business?

If they can't answer that, you have a strategy problem. No amount of content will fix it.

Ask me to be on your podcast, and I'll say yes.

Here’s why I’m saying that out loud.

I’ve been thinking a lot about the conversations I actually want to have this year and the rooms I want to be in. And when I look at most marketing podcasts, there’s a gap.

A lot of them talk about the work without ever having had to own it. Same advice, different guest. And most of it has never had to survive a CEO, a board, or a real budget.

I’ve been a marketer, then a CEO, and now I work as a fractional CGO. I helped grow a content business from $1.8M to $12M. I’ve had to explain why things failed, not just why they should work. I’ve had to decide what to stop doing when the math didn’t work.

And that changes how you talk about growth.

I know why leadership doesn’t trust marketing. I know why good strategies get shut down. And I know what actually changes those conversations. It’s not more activity, and it’s not better decks.

I’m not interested in checklist episodes or framework tours. I care about how growth actually works inside companies. Where it breaks. Where marketing loses credibility. What it’s like when you’re responsible for the outcome.

So yeah. That’s the ask.

If you run a podcast for B2B marketers or founders who want a real conversation and not another playbook recap, I’d love to join.

DM me if it makes sense.

For B2B marketers feeling overwhelmed...

Don't do more.  
Do less.  
That's strategy.

I was on IN CLEAR FOCUS with Adrian Tennant talking about my book, and this keeps coming up. Marketers asking what to do with shrinking budgets, impossible timelines, and pressure from all sides.

My answer pisses people off: Stop.

Don't add one more thing. Don't optimize one more channel. Don't layer on one more tactic because some newsletter said you should.

Think for yourself.

Look at what's actually in front of you. The resources you already have, the people inside your company, the relationships you've already built.

Work with that.

When I was CEO, I turned "outcomes over activities" into our operating mantra. When clients said "I want thought leadership," I'd ask: "Why? What outcome are you trying to achieve?"

Sounds obvious. But most marketers skip this because they're too busy executing someone else's playbook.

Here's what I know after growing a company from $1.8M to $12M:

The smartest strategy is the fewest actions that deliver the greatest results.

Not the longest content calendar.  
Or the most channels.  
And not the busiest team.

The question isn't "What should I be doing?"

It's "What outcome am I trying to drive? And what's the simplest path there?"

Keyword-based content plans? Those worked when you had growth-at-all-costs funding and could throw money at ranking.

That model died in 2023.

But most marketing teams are still operating like it's 2019. Writing more articles. Posting more content. Cranking the wheel harder.

And wondering why nothing's moving.

Because activity doesn't equal impact.

Your CEO doesn't care how many blog posts you published. They care whether those posts influenced pipeline, shortened sales cycles, or reduced CAC.

So if you're drowning right now, here's your permission slip:

Do less. Think more. Start with what works.

Don't go to playbooks. Don't look at what anyone else has done.

Look at what's physically in front of you and build a strategy to do less and accomplish more.

That's the shift I cover in 𝘉𝟚𝘉 𝘊𝘰𝘯𝘵𝘦𝘯𝘵 𝘔𝘢𝘳𝘬𝘦𝘵𝘪𝘯𝘨 𝘚𝘵𝘳𝘢𝘵𝘦𝘨𝘺 (you can find it on Amazon). Moving from predictable, exhausting activity loops to strategies that actually create leverage.

If you're tired of running in circles, maybe it's time to stop running.

Full episode is linked below if you're curious.

(Thanks to the Bigeye team for having me on.)

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Here's everything I'm using to build my business.

People keep asking how I'm managing the consulting, the newsletter, the courses, the membership I'm launching.

The answer: eight tools and a clear hypothesis about what you need.

What I'm testing:

Courses on Maven using the frameworks I use with clients (how to get C-suite buy-in, how to build a growth strategy, that kind of thing). A newsletter. And advisory sprints for people who need focused help right now. A membership for marketing leaders who want strategic coaching without agency pricing. 

I'm not guessing. I'm testing with real people and iterating based on what I learn.

The 8 tools:

-Zoom – client calls, meetings
-Granola – meeting notes (I know Zoom does this, but the UI is better)
-Squarespace - for my core website 
-beehiiv – newsletter, courses, membership platform
-Stripe – cuz payments
-Ordinal – where I collaborate and schedule my LinkedIn content
-PhantomBuster – LinkedIn growth
-Alertmouse – tracks when people mention my name or key phrases

That's it. No complex funnels. Just what I need to get products in front of people and learn what resonates.

Most people spend months planning in private, then launch to crickets because they built what they 𝘵𝘩𝘰𝘶𝘨𝘩𝘵 people wanted.

I'd rather build fast, test real demand, and adjust based on what works.
That's what building in public gets you: immediate feedback instead of assumptions.

I'll share what I learn as I go.

Anything you're curious about?

Here I am reading Glassdoor reviews about me out loud.

Yes, really.

From 2020-2022, when I was CEO of a content marketing agency, my former employees had *opinions* about me.

So I pulled out the meanest ones and decided to read them on camera.

At the time? I was devastated. Rookie CEO. Didn't know this was normal.

Now? I can giggle about them.

Some of these were harsh but fair. Others... well, you can decide for yourself.

If you've ever been the villain in someone else's work story, you'll get it.

Stay tuned for part 2.

Jason Bradwell

I believe there is a better way to sell in B2B, so I founded a company to pursue that mission. 

B2B Better exists to help service and solution-based businesses launch podcasts that help win more enterprise accounts. 

We're a marketing agency that does great production, not a production agency trying to figure out how to do marketing. Yes, we'll create highly polished audio and video that meets your brand standard. But the real value we bring to the table is helping figure out how a podcast can drive real-world commercial outcomes for your business. 

Want to talk? Email me at jason@b2b-better.com

**

Previously, I headed up marketing for Deltatre (sold to Bain Capital in 2022) and Massive Interactive (exited for $127m in 2018).

You can also join the 1,000+ marketers that listen to my podcast each week which exists to help companies rethink the status quo on how they win new business. 

🍎 [Apple] https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/b2b-better/id1526471908

🟢 [Spotify] https://open.spotify.com/show/6KTApLNan7FrmmCU1tiyZV

I also share insights on how to do better marketing in my weekly newsletter, the B2B Bite.

📰 https://b2bbite.substack.com/

Founder and Fractional CMO

Strategic marketing advisory firm that helps solution providers rethink the status quo on how they win new business.

We offer:

> 30-Day Marketing Audit

You have a marketing function in place but it doesn’t seem to quite work. Over an intense 30-day sprint, we run a comprehensive audit of the entire strategy - from infrastructure to people to go-to-market - and present our findings alongside a 12-month plan on how to reorient your marketing towards revenue. 

> Fractional CMO Services

You know what's broken and how to fix it - you just need an experienced pair of hands to make sure it gets done. After we've run an audit, we work with you to build and scale your marketing strategy over a 12-month project.

> Marketing Sprints

Sometimes you need someone to give their undivided attention to solving a particular challenge. We'll come in to support you in achieving a defined marketing objective - like launching a podcast or performing a strategy audit - over a single quarter.

> 1:1 Marketing Support

Get access to a strategic marketing expert to soundboard ideas, review assets, or evaluate the particular areas where your team feels stuck in a 1-2-1 session described by some clients as "like marketing therapy"

Learn more at www.b2b-better.com

Time to put the pâté and cheese away (talking to myself) - 2026 is well and truly here.

Arriving at the office extra early this morning to get things set up before the team arrives. Sweet jars refilled, furniture straightened, and taking a quick moment of quiet reflection before getting stuck in.

The last 12 months have been great for B2B Better. We moved into our own office space (which is looking so nice), grew to 9 full-time, doubled revenue while staying profitable, and doubled the number of podcasts we produce. There's been a lot of travel - USA, Dubai, Europe - and a lot of late nights making it all work.

But as we've grown, the questions have changed. How do we scale sustainably without losing what makes us good? How do I show up for my family while building this? How do we stay ahead of AI disruption and keep delivering genuine value when the market's moving faster than ever?

I don't have all the answers yet. But sitting here in the quiet before everyone arrives, refilling sweet jars while my kid is still asleep at home, I know my priority for 2026: practice more appreciation for what we are and how far we've come since opening our doors in 2023.

Here's to a good year. Let's make it count.

Founder of B2B Better | Podcast Marketing Agency for B2B Service Providers • Host of the B2B Better Podcast • Co-founder of my daughter

Goal for 2026:

Relaunch the B2B Better Podcast. And do it in an extremely intense way.
Everything I have going on professionally can be tied back to the show I started in my in-laws' living room during peak COVID.

The podcast led me to build an audience. This audience gave me my first consulting client. That client referred me to our first podcast retainer project. 

And here we are!

After taking time to retool our approach, we're coming back in two weeks with a bang.

We're publishing 100 episodes in 100 days, exploring how to build systematic owned media engines that directly drive revenue, not vanity metrics.

We've locked in a strong roster of guests for launch, but we're on the hunt for more. 

So if you're building media teams, launching shows that need to prove ROI, or have strong opinions on what makes B2B content actually work (or know someone that does), drop a comment below and let's get you on the pod.

---

PS. Look out for our first batch of episodes coming out from January 19th featuring Danielle Messler, Dmitry Shamis, Gabe Lullo 😎, Jeffrey Wheatman, Jonathan Stark, Mike Adams, Diane Wiredu 🦁, Christian Klepp, Charlie Riley, Melanie D..

Pipe Dream is here! 

Trailer has just dropped, and we've got the first episode with the FAMOUS Mike Adams going live tomorrow. 

And then 99 more episodes are going out over the next 99 work days. 

God help us.

Check it out wherever you get your podcasts. Apple, Spotify, YouTube - you name it, it's there. 

HERE WE GO!

It is really wonderful to see a feed full of people starting new jobs today. 🤩

Just published our first episode of Pipe Dream with Mike Adams, and honestly...  what a cracker of a start! 

Mike runs The Super Connectors podcast, and here's what grabbed me right off the bat from our conversation: he records 5-6 guests back-to-back in one session, then takes everyone out for drinks. 

Content, community, and events – all in one go. That's literally the owned media playbook in action.

But it was his take on AI in B2B marketing that really stuck with me.

While everyone's racing to spam a billion people with "personalised" AI messages, Mike's going 180 degrees in the opposite direction. 

His approach: ditch the AI slop, build warm referral programmes with actual humans, and turn super connectors into your go-to-market engine.

Mike built a £5 million pipeline in commercial real estate doing exactly this, without a single cold call or cold email. Just networking events, consistent relationship building, and a network of introducers who actually trusted each other.

Now he's built introstars – a platform that tracks and rewards introductions, making referral programmes scalable without losing the human element.

A few things I took away from the conversation:

>> Your reputation is how people talk about you when you're not in the room
In the age of AI, the only thing that won't be replaced is human relationships

>>Being an introducer might be the job of the future

>> If you're tired of AI spam bots and want to hear how warm intros can actually drive pipeline, check out this episode. Link in comments.

What's your take – are we heading towards an "intro economy" or will AI eventually crack warm outreach too?

Check it out on Apple/Spotify/YouTube! 

---

Spotify: https://lnkd.in/eFsHi62b

Apple: https://lnkd.in/eUpyjqqM

YouTube: https://lnkd.in/ekabTEFU

---

This is Episode 1 of *100* we're putting out over the next hundred days. Should be fine?

Building a business in the UK these days is unpredictable. But there's one constant that always brings me comfort on the tough days:







When it drops below freezing, every *single* call will start with 10 minutes of everyone complaining about it.

My biggest takeaways from Dmitry Shamis at OhSnap! on today's episode of Pipe Dream:

1) AI killed the scale playbook, not quality. The old B2B approach of cranking out blog posts and social content daily is dead. Dmitry's take - AI should remove the busy work so you can actually be creative, not help you produce more mediocre content. Use it to create space for thinking and experimentation, not to automate your way into looking like everyone else.

2) 95% of Dmitry's business comes from LinkedIn, and it's built on being human. When a dozen companies do almost exactly what you do, people choose who they want to work with. His approach:

>> Share frameworks and case studies, but also gardening updates and random things his kids do - the things that make you *human*

>> Posts he agonises over always underperform - the off-the-cuff stuff with raw emotion does better

>> If you're not slightly uncomfortable with what you're posting, you're not growing. Ain't that the truth! 

3) The metrics that actually matter aren't the ones on your dashboard. Dmitry had a post hit 100,000 impressions and got zero leads from it. What drives real business:

>> DMs from people saying "this made me think differently"

>> Meetings showing up on the calendar

>> Quality engagement, not follower count (he's got construction workers in his followers - great people, but they're not building brands)

4) Never outsource your thinking. This is Dmitry's biggest AI warning. People are getting lazy - they ask AI a question, assume it's right, and ship it. The result is all B2B content looks exactly the same. His desk is still covered in notebooks. He writes down tangents and side thoughts that never make it into transcripts, then uses those to shape the AI prompts. Come in with the fully baked idea, use AI to build the words around it.

--

Check it out on Apple/Spotify/YouTube!

🎧 Spotify: https://lnkd.in/eE8VqkjT
🍎 Apple: https://lnkd.in/exePvjbm
📺 YouTube: https://lnkd.in/esZFSdu2

---

This is Episode 3 of *100* from Pipe Dream we're putting out over the next hundred days. Going strong!

My biggest takeaways from Jeffrey Wheatman at Black Kite on today's episode of Pipe Dream:

>> Stop competing on feature lists, start solving actual problems. Jeff's approach after 15 years at Gartner is blunt - nobody cares about your laundry list of product capabilities. Every organisation faces common challenges, but suffers from "terminal uniqueness" - the belief that its situation is somehow different. The reality? Focus on the problem first, product second. Even if your solution isn't the right fit, help them solve it anyway. That's how you build trust when everyone else is just pitching.

>> The real audience challenge isn't budget, it's consistency and engagement. Jeff's answer to the $100k question was telling - commission independent research, do more video, maybe some paid push. But the actual problem? "I don't think it's a money problem. I think it's a consistency challenge." People consume content, love it, but won't share it. Great content gets buried in AI-generated noise because audiences stay passive. The brands winning right now are the ones showing up consistently with a human voice, not the ones spending the most.

>> Panel shows > interview podcasts when you've got real chemistry. Black Kite ditched the standard "guest every week" format of their podcast for a panel with three internal voices - a strategist, a practitioner, and a research guy. The result? Six episodes recorded in two days with zero retakes. The reason it works: disagreement without conflict, different perspectives, and genuine energy. If everyone agrees, they bin the topic. When brands default to the interview format, they're often just following a tired playbook rather than building something that actually differentiates.

>> Marketing's awareness gap is costing deals. Most B2B marketing still chases the 5% who are product-aware and ready to buy. But 95% of your potential customers are either unaware of the problem or don't understand its impact. Vendors need to take responsibility for moving people through those stages - from unaware to problem-aware to solution-aware. The companies willing to educate before they sell are the ones building a real pipeline.

---

Check it out on Apple/Spotify/YouTube!

Spotify: https://lnkd.in/eFsHi62b
Apple: https://lnkd.in/eUpyjqqM
YouTube: https://lnkd.in/ekabTEFU

---

This is Episode 2 of *100* we're putting out over the next hundred days. We're still here!

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The Battle

Devin Bramhall

Jason Bradwell

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The Battle

Devin Bramhall

Jason Bradwell

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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);}Devin Bramhall's LinkedIn Performance

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