Garrett Jestice

Community Founder | Startup GTM Advisor | Former CMO | BBQ Judge | Dad x4

Most B2B founders don't have a lead problem.They have a repeat problem.You can win customers. You just can't count on the next one looking the same.Some months are busy. Some months are quiet. You don't know if you should hire, spend on marketing, or wait.Referrals show up, then stop. Marketing doesn't bring steady customers. Some customers are great and others go nowhere. Every sales call requires explaining what you do all over again.So you try more activity: new campaigns, new channels, new messaging, new offers.But every move feels risky because you never figured out why the good customers chose you in the first place.The real issue is simple:You have won deals, but you don't know the pattern behind those wins.→ Which customers fit best→ What problem made them buy→ Why they picked you→ What you should say to others like themWithout that, every decision is a guess.This is where I help.I work with B2B founders to study the customers they already won, find the pattern, and use it to shape their offer, sales, and marketing so they can win more customers like them.I've spent the last several years working directly with founder-led B2B companies and agencies that have real traction but an unclear path to grow. My process starts with retrospective customer analysis—studying your best wins to identify the buying triggers, selection criteria, and messaging that actually converted.Then we use that pattern to clarify your ICP, reposition your offer, and make sales and marketing feel less random.When it shows up:→ You know who to focus on→ Sales calls get easier→ Marketing stops feeling random→ Revenue becomes more steadyI mostly work with founder-led B2B companies and agencies doing $500K-$5M annually. You've cracked initial solution-market fit. You just can't predict which deals will close next.The goal is simple: Stop hoping for the right customers. Start repeating them.Learn more: PreludeMarketing.com---I also run 10x Solo, a community for independent consultants, fractionals, and micro-agency owners working to build steadier, simpler businesses. Learn more: 10xSolo.com---Outside of work: I live in Utah with my wife and four kids. I coach youth basketball and soccer, judge BBQ competitions, and I am usually planning the next Hawaii trip.

GTM Advisor / Fractional CMO

Startup Marketers is a free, Slack community for startup marketing leaders, freelancers, and fractionals. If that sounds like you, join us to connect with others and share ideas, feedback, and resources to help us all get better.

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Most startups don't have a marketing problem. 

They have a go-to-market strategy problem.

When founders come to me, they usually think they need more content, more ads, more campaigns.

But the real issue is usually earlier: no clear ICP, positioning that sounds like everyone else, unclear path to growth.

You can’t fix that with more marketing. 
You fix it with strategy first.

→ Who exactly are you selling to?
→ What problem do you solve for them?
→ Why you, and not someone else?

Until those are clear, more marketing just amplifies the confusion.

Get the strategy right. Then the marketing works.

Founders: How clear is your GTM strategy?

I help B2B founders turn early success into repeatable revenue | GTM Advisor @ Prelude | Founder @ 10x Solo Community | BBQ Judge | Dad x4

A solo consultant came to me with a long list of services. 

She could do this, and this, and this, and this. She had a million ideas for what she could offer. 

But she wanted help tightening her core offer in order to stop chasing random revenue.

The first thing I told her: audit. Don't brainstorm.

→ List every project you've done since going solo
→ For each: what problem did you help them solve? What outcome did you achieve?
→ Then ask: what's the through line between all of it? What are you best at that people value and you can focus on? 

That's where your core offer comes from. You don't invent it. You extract it.

Most people skip the audit and jump straight to "what should my offer be?" 

But that's backwards. Your best offer is already in your past work. You just have to find the pattern.

Solos: What's the through line across your best projects?

When you ask a question and the other side goes quiet, that's when you know you asked a good question.

Noa Ronen, MCC recently shared this in a training on asking better questions for the 10x Solo community. 

She was talking about discovery calls and client conversations.

The instinct is to fill the silence. To move on. To keep talking.

Don't.

Silence usually means they're thinking. They're actually considering what you asked. That's the moment you want.

Bad questions get quick answers. Good questions get pause.

Next time you're on a call and the other person goes quiet after your question? 

Let it sit. They're working it out.

Consultants: What's a question that tends to make your clients go quiet? ("When are you going to pay that invoice?" doesn't count. 😜)

Outbound is the only channel working for your startup?

That’s not a flex. It’s a signal.

If outbound is carrying your pipeline while content, SEO, and paid “don’t work,” here’s what’s really happening:

Your value only makes sense in a live conversation.

Your sales team is:

– Reframing the problem in real time
– Adjusting the pitch per persona
– Handling edge cases on the fly
– Translating vague positioning into something concrete

Outbound works because humans can adapt mid-sentence.

Marketing can’t.

Marketing is 1:many. It requires sameness:

– The same offer
– To the same buyer
– In the same way
– With the same results

If every deal needs custom framing, you’re not scaling a SaaS.
You’re scaling your explanation capacity.

That’s fine in the learn phase.

But if you’re a few years in and still 100% outbound-driven, you’re probably still searching for repeatability.

Outbound doesn’t prove product-market fit.
It proves your team can manually compensate for the lack of it.

The real question isn’t “How do we add more channels?”

It’s: “What would have to be true for our value to make sense without a sales call?”

___

I help B2B SaaS founders diagnose why marketing channels don’t work — especially when outbound does — and fix the root issue (usually positioning, ICP clarity, or offer design).

If outbound is working but everything else feels broken, DM me. Let’s figure out what’s actually going on.

Most solos and agencies get stuck at the same place when trying to grow: 

Level 2: Can I generate consistent, predictable demand?

Referrals are lumpy. 
Feast, then famine. 

To move past it, you need marketing, not just referrals.

Here’s the catch: marketing is one-to-many. It works only when you focus on a specific problem. 

But that can just be your entry door. 

It doesn’t mean that’s all you sell. 
Once they’re in, you can expand. 

But you have to position around one clear problem to get them in.

I talked to a custom dev agency at $5M, all through referrals. 

They wanted to get to $10–15M. 
They’ve tried other marketing channels, but nothing has worked.

Why not? 
Because they haven’t focused on a specific problem. 
One-to-many marketing doesn’t work without that.

If you want to scale past referrals, you have to pick a problem to solve and market how and why you can solve it.

Solos and agency owners: What problem are you positioning around?

James Carbary

Lover of Jesus, Lisa, JJ, and B2B video. Trying to end the foster care crisis in America.WHAT WE DO: Quarterly in-person video sprints that give our clients video coverage across their entire buyers’ journey.WHO WE HELP: Busy marketing teams that need a dedicated video team to plan, create, &amp; promote video podcasts, video ads, event video, product explainers, social shorts, customer testimonials, and more.WHY IT WORKS: Video is the language of the internet. Your marketing team should be fluent in it. We can help get them there.READY TO TALK? You can email me at james@sweetfishmedia.com or text me at 405.206.8580

Board Member

We equip local churches to help strengthen and support foster, adoptive, and biological families.

Learned that “clock it” was a thing 3 min before we did this video lol

Your Marketing Team’s Video Team | Founder of Sweet Fish (3x Inc. 5000)

No one was harmed in the making of this video 😂

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