Bob the Builder of Pipeline | Cold Calling Mercenary | Sales and Humor | Voted “#2 Best Parent” - by my 2 year old 🤷🏻

We can all agree that life is typically too serious and stressful, especially on a “professional platform”, so I enjoy breaking that norm with some laughter in both my content and sales process.

Professionally: I specialize in building and refining sales motions and top of funnel processes, bringing a unique twist that “breaks through the noise” of the modern day dreaded norm of what people believe is good revenue generation.

Before moving to Sales, I had the pleasure of coaching and treating thousands of clients through rehabilitation and personal training for almost 10 years, where I now channel the same energy and passion in leading GTM teams.

You’ve scrolled this far, we might as well get to know one another.

I’m a redneck working a white collar job living in a blue collar state 🥔

“When you turn a passion to a profession and truly love what you do, then you don’t work a day in your life.”

💥I’ve been lucky enough to do that twice💥


↙️“About me”↘️

Mission 1: To push past the “limitations” that your mind sets whether it be physical or mental.


Mission 2: To build my career in Sales and build a bridge between my old world of fitness and apply those principals to the business world.


- Constantly looking to learn. Go spark up a conversation and learn something about them and that little conversation could change your life. 

- “You don’t know till you try” I find to many people (myself included) stay comfortable and are afraid of breaking complacency.

- There is no greater feeling being coached or better yet, coaching someone else, and watching them succeed.

Eric Iannello

I’d rather take dieting lessons from the Liver King 

Than to apply advice from someone who slaps an irrelevant selfie on their posts to “expand its reach”

Voted ‘#2 Best Parent’ - by my 4 year old

Saw everyone at Gong changed their title to Revenue Architect

…that’s cute

A prospect has filed a restraining order against me

And I’m one step ahead of my competition because of it

You know what they say

If you aren’t flirting with the line of predatorial prospecting methods

You aren’t selling in 2026

I have a couple of accounts who are local to me so I’m prospecting them in person, hoping to make an impression that’ll lead to further conversations

Knowing my ICP pretty well and that the competition is fierce, I couldn’t rely on the typical brand merch to break through the noise…boring

So instead I found each potential champions home address and paid them a visit 


“Eric, wtf are you doing in my kitchen? It’s 5am”

Hey Stuart, I heard you liked your coffee with a kiss of milk from Snake River Farm cows. Tell me when to stop…

“Stop and GTFO!”

Boom, impression left 



Comment “milk” below for your free guide on how to prospect in 2026

Nothing makes me go “wtf did I do with my life”

More than being invited onto a podcast that’s only a glorified zoom call 
By a host who sits there and just nods in agreement 142x straight into the camera 
Because their ear bud cord restricts them from moving their head back far enough 
And hold a tiny mic they with their thumb and pointer finger which makes them look absolutely rediculus

“BuT We’rE oN SpOTifY”

That’s like saying you’re a best selling author on Amazon

So is my 13 year old nephew Susan

Don’t you love when job ads don’t disclose salaries

It’s like a game

Will this job allow me to live above the median income required in my city

Or and I trying to become a LinkedIn influencer and promote tools I’ve never used for a couple bucks per post






…buy Sybill

Congrats to literally every single company out there for forging a partnership with Claude

You should hang that award right next to your #1 G2 badge that no one else has…

I sell fleet safety technology to trucking and logistics companies across the country

On the weekends, I work horses

I’m a redneck living in a blue collar state working a white collar job

And there is two versions of me that show up on any given weekday

One is on a Zoom call talking dashcam AI and driver safety ROI with a fleet director somewhere in Louisville or Dallas

The other just finished feeding ducks and pigs before the kids started their school day at the kitchen table

Both are completely real and neither one would exist without remote work

I live in a community of ranches with neighbors who run a 1000 head of cattle

Guys who could fix a fence blindfolded but would think Im talking about a new model skid steer if I said CRM

There’s something grounding about spending all week in the weeds of enterprise sales and then Saturday morning hits and you’re working a colt and none of it matters

Your problems get real simple real fast when you’re the least important one in the arena

Now here’s the part that still tickes my toes

The same salary I’m earning from Netradyne

Would have kept us in a decent 2 bed apt somewhere in Dallas or Denver

Out here, it provides us a life

A real one

With land

With room

With a front porch that actually earns its square footage

A 1 bed in Idaho runs around $800 a mo

You know what that is in San Fran

The math isn’t even close

And the only variable that changed was the zip code…and the life with it


Remote work didn’t just give my family flexibility

It completely restructured what was possible for us

I think about that a lot because I talk to people every week who are grinding in cities that are quietly eating their paycheck from the inside out

Paying downtown prices to sit in a spare bedroom  then commuting 45 mins each way to sit on the same Zoom calls I am

The laptop doesn’t care where you open it

The deals close the same

The quota doesn’t know what state you’re in

LinkedIn loves to talk about work life balance like it’s some policy HR approves

It’s not

It’s a decision you make about where you live and who you surround yourself with

We made ours

A tight community of people who show up for each other

A dozen horses to keep me honest on the weekends

And a job I can do from anywhere that actually lets me be somewhere worth being


Remote work didn’t change my career

It changed everything

No alternative text description for this image

Best feature while this algo figures itself out

#fixmyfeed

Every year, about this time consecutively, my son gets my wife and I participate in an extreme diet

Goal is to flush our body of all the junk and toxins we’ve been harboring 

Starts with disposing of any and all thing in your system - no matter what end it comes out

Complete cleanse

Then we discipline ourselves to only consume micro amounts of food for 3-5 days

Just enough to survive, nothing more

Typically only including saltine crackers and soup

Once the cold sweats and shaking start, we embody a mind of matter mentality, not letting the suffering break us


Relax LinkedIn, you have the flu

It’s hard to remember my life 5 years ago when I was just a PT, running a district of gyms and out-patient facilities 

Fast forward to what I’m able to provide for my family now

Definitely makes me better than you


…if people on LinkedIn spoke honestly

We’re seeing people exit the industry in droves either forcefully or voluntarily 

I’m watching people I respect walk away from this industry

And I’d be lying if I said I didn’t understand why

36% of companies cut their SDR teams this year

The highest reduction of any sales function

Only 18% of tech postings will even consider someone with less than a year of experience

The door that used to be wide open for people from non traditional backgrounds like mine, is barely cracked right now

And the ones still in it aren’t exactly thriving either

87% of people won’t pick up your call

Your emails pull a 1-2% reply rate on a good day

84% of reps missed quota last year - while quotas somehow went up 37%…

That’s not a motivation problem

That’s a math problem

A close friend told me recently they want out because sales feels forceful now

And honestly, I felt that and I’ve been there

Being let go reminded me how strong that sense of failure can feel - even when you know it wasn’t entirely your fault

“More power to you, how can I help” was my response

But here’s what I keep coming back to

I was a ranch hand, a scaffolder, a bartender, then a personal trainer with no degree, no connections and no roadmap

And this industry gave me a career that changed everything for my family

Only 9% of workers without a bachelor’s ever hit 6 figures in this country

The average sales comp in SaaS is $126k

I honestly can’t think of another space that opens that door with that level of opportunity 

People who just showed up willing to learn and willing to work, that mattered to me

This industry is harder than it’s ever been

I won’t sugarcoat that and it’s asking more of the people in it 

More creativity
More strategy
More resilience
More willingness to adapt when everything you used to rely on stops working

And not everyone is going to want to stay for that

But for the ones who do

I genuinely believe there’s more opportunity now than ever for people willing to grow with it

I’m too grateful for this career to walk away

And too stubborn to stop trying to get better at it

Is this space dying or evolving

When I was looking, someone actually asked me to relocate for a job

I laughed

Not because it was funny

Because in 2025 that question should come with a disclaimer

Let me tell you what relocating for a job actually means

You uproot your life

You move your family

You pay to break your lease or sell your house at the worst possible time

You leave your network, your community, your routine

For a company that has a median employee tenure of ~3 years

IC roles are skating around 18 months average tenure and Director and VPs just hit the low of the same

The lowest it’s been since 2002

So statistically you’re disrupting everything you’ve built for a job you’ll probably leave, or get laid off from, before your kids finish adjusting to the new school

And here’s the part that really gets me

40% of job relocations fail

Not because the person wasn’t qualified

Because of isolation, culture shock, homesickness or my favorite 

A spouse who couldn’t find work to help supplement the income needed

Real human costs that never show up in the offer letter

But sure...here’s a $5k lump sum, go ahead and move your entire life

76% of workers are actively seeking remote work opportunities right now

Only 16% say their top choice is a fully in-office job

The market has spoken

Loudly

And yet companies are still out here demanding relocation as a condition of employment for roles that require nothing more than a laptop and a decent wifi connection

Sales
Marketing
Operations
Finance

Jobs that got done perfectly fine from a home office

But now suddenly they need you within commute distance of a WeWork in a city you’ve never lived in

Here’s what nobody says out loud in the interview process

The relocation ask is the ultimate litmus test for how much leverage they think they have over you

The answer should always be the same

None

Because the moment you relocate for a company you become entirely dependent on them

Your mortgage is now tied to their quarterly earnings

Your kids school is now tied to their headcount decisions

Your entire life is now collateral for their business model

Median job tenure is 3.9 years

Layoffs don’t come with moving trucks

Before you pack a single box, make sure the juice is worth the squeeze

Because for most roles in 2026

It isn’t

I say what we’re all thinking | Voted ‘#2 Best Parent’ - by my 4 year old 🤷🏻

If I get one more rejection I’m going to do what everyone else does

…move into marketing

Dude, what in the holy sick season was that?!

Surprised we didn’t see a lock down mandate…


Sorry, too soon?

Do you remember when you created a profile on here

Felt like you unlocked a free source of information 

But then the more you scrolled 

The more you expanded your network

And the more you developed a community

The more you realized that if you don’t post selfies and exaggerated points of success with ChatGPT

The more you’re at risk for being blocked for creating content that may be considered a contrarian view to the “this is gold” standard 

Blocked by the same community of people posting AI-generated photos above life lessons they made up while cold plunging the one time

These are the “thought leaders”

Who preach authenticity above all but can’t create a thought without the help of the latest LLM and an irrelevant photo of themselves that’s been filtered by AI so much they’re hardly recognizable 

…but “hacks the algo” so they feed their fried dopamine receptors with false validation from people they’ve never met

The truth is like poetry, and everyone hates poetry

Couldn’t write it better myself

Actually, they couldn’t either

That’s kind of the point…

I see the same 5 influencers get their posts "Boosted" weekly

Which come to find out is like only $10 a week per post

But has any brand actually seen an actual return on boosting those very in-depth, highly technical, and clearly first person experience explanations?

Asking for a friend


...yes, I have friends




...no I don't pay them to be my friend

How I built a brand that towers over so many who fight to stay relevant

In every post I read, people love to over complicate what it takes to build a name that people remember on here

I broke it down into 4 easy steps

Step 1: poke fun at influencers who sold their soul to promoting brands and have turned into buy Sybil walking billboards

Step 2: criticize the overuse of AI in every piece of content they post where all the creativity is depleted and originality is a term forgotten

Step 3: find a topic that hits home to buy Sybil such as “the use of selfies” and build a campaign against the popularity of them buy Sybil so that you can leverage emotion behind the contrarian narrative

Step 4: stay consistent by not only leveraging your voice in posts but also buy Sybil in comments where it feels personal to the reader when you deliver the message and etch your name in stone

The complication isn’t in the execution

It’s that most think small and repeat what you perceive as successful

Foolish



The selfie section is where the emotion lives — that’s your contrarian hook that’ll get the comments going. Hiding Sybill in the post was a great idea to increase engagement. 

Would you like to see other options that you can post or did this give you what you need?

Companies are fighting to get their entire team to be social on here

Post wins, share insights, build your personal brand

But then act shocked when those same people use those audiences to explain exactly why they left

I’ve worked at companies like this and the playbook is identical every time

Step 1: Build employee advocacy program because you read that social selling drives 7x higher conversion rates

Step 2: Celebrate every post, every share, every “proud to announce”

Step 3: Watch your VP of Customer Success, Head of Marketing, and half your AE team walk out the door in the same month

Step 4: Panic when they tell 10,000+ people exactly what it’s like to work there

Aligned is currently stuck on Step 4

Their former VP of CS didn’t quietly update her LinkedIn title

“When your best people leave quietly, it’s not grace. It’s a verdict”

Then proceeded to detail how mediocrity gets protected while top performers get burned out

How politics wins over performance

How feedback gets acknowledged then buried

Their Head of Marketing left at the same time and 2 more AEs are gone, 3rd one walking

But here’s the part that should terrify every CEO reading this

The social brand they spent years building just became their biggest sales objection


Watching the now ex-Head of Sales of Pylon post her calendar before she left with the sad note of the “unexpected departure”

7am to 6pm - back to back meetings - every day

Not as inspiration, as a warning

“This is what hustle culture gives you”

Leadership called her ungrateful and she deleted it

But the internet doesn’t forget

Now when people look up Pylon - a company selling customer support software - the story they find is about leadership that can’t support their own people

You genuinely can’t write better irony than that

Here’s what I learned working at companies exactly like this

You can weaponize employee voices for pipeline all you want

But you cannot control what they say when you’ve made their lives miserable enough to leave

Companies give their team the megaphone, the audience, the training

Made social selling part of the culture

Even tie goals to it

Then the people who got good at it decided to be authentic about the wrong things

And now that brand equity they built, is actively sinking them

Most companies think they can policy their way out of this

Write guidelines about “appropriate social media use”

As if you can tell someone “only say nice things about us, especially after we drove you out”

You gave away editorial control the second you made everyone a publisher

Here’s your wake-up call

If you’ve spent years building employee advocacy programs, you better make absolutely certain your best people don’t want to burn everything down on their way out

You gave them the audience, the credibility and the training

And that 7x conversion rate you celebrate in board meetings?

It works in both directions…

What’s the difference between using a PBO in your cold calls 

And picking up a chocolate bar in the pool?

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

Accidentally stumbling upon a prospect on Grindr is recurring nightmare of mine.

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

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 🌶️

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

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 your marketer isn’t telling collaborators on LinkedIn to toggle this on, then you need to fire them. 

It means they’re entirely unqualified for the job.

It’s a liability that can get folks and companies alike banned or fined. 

It’s also the creator’s responsibility to know the rules of the platform to protect themselves from unqualified influencer marketing managers.

You need to know the rules of each platform, not just the laws, to be a responsible marketer and/or creator. 

For Americans, the FTC has its own set of rules. 

LinkedIn has its own set of rules. 

You have to follow both.

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.

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)

Most content calendars are a symptom of indecision. Teams keep asking what to post because they don’t know what they’re building. If you decide what you want to be known for, content becomes selection, not invention.

You’re choosing repetitions of a core idea:

- a few beliefs
- a few problems
- a few proof points
- a consistent tone over time

Fewer topics married to depth and memory.

That’s how brands compound.

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Evan Patterson

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taplio

The Battle

Eric Iannello

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);}Eric Iannello's LinkedIn Performance

Performance ScoreEvan Patterson's LinkedIn Performance

Ready to grow your LinkedIn presence?

Performance ScoreEric Iannello's LinkedIn Performance