Hey 👋 I'm Isaac!

I’m a growth strategist and the founder of Pistachio, a GTM and brand-led growth partner for startups and scaleups. We help teams launch, scale and stand out by turning positioning into pipeline.

Most companies have strong products but fractured go-to-market efforts: sales, marketing and product aren’t aligned. The story isn’t clear. Growth depends too much on short-term tactics. That’s where we step in.

At Pistachio, we combine:
Brand strategy → defining your positioning, narrative, and messaging so you win trust and convert more buyers.
GTM blueprints → ICP definition, value prop, channels, packaging, sequencing.
Content systems → newsletters, CRM, LinkedIn and amplification to operationalise GTM and compound growth.
Growth ops → automation and reporting systems to scale without chaos.

Before founding Pistachio, I led growth at The Daily Aus (scaled to 180,000 subs in 10 months) and Mamamia (grew subscriptions to 30,000+ members and $170k+ MRR). Since then, I’ve worked with teams at BuzzFeed, Clay and many more to build GTM systems that turn brand trust into business results.

I also write Brand Chemistry, a newsletter about building trust and driving compounding growth.

🚀 Ready to align your story, GTM and growth engine? Let’s chat! check out my Featured section to get started.

Isaac Peiris

I see way too many “I made 6-figures in a week” posts

But not as much “I’ve struggled doing xyz”

In the past few months I’ve:
→ Had to let go my first contractor
→ Lost 2 clients in the span of a week
→ Felt like I’m sprinting just to stay in the same spot
→ Dealt with the chicken-and-egg of revenue vs hiring
→ Struggled to scale systems from freelancer to agency

But I think that’s the reality of running a business.

Being forced to do things you’ve never done.
Being thrown in the deep end with no idea.
Being faced with make or break decisions.

Most of us don’t know what we’re doing.

We’re just figuring it out as we go.

Founder @ Pistachio | Organic growth for B2B brands

Most companies build policies around control.

Ritz-Carlton built theirs around trust… and a $2,000 rule.

Every employee can spend up to $2,000 per guest to solve a problem or create a moment.

No manager approval needed.

That's how you get stories like staff flying across the country to return a forgotten laptop. Or employees diving into the ocean to retrieve a guest's camera.

But these moments do something bigger than solving problems.

They create the Halo Effect.

When customers experience something exceptional in one area, they assume everything else is exceptional too.

The food tastes better. The beds feel more comfortable.
The entire brand feels premium.

This same psychology shows up in unexpected places.

Starbucks didn't win on coffee quality.
In blind taste tests, they often lose.

They won on atmosphere:
the music, the smell, writing your name on the cup.

The experience made the coffee feel better.

Most brands obsess over campaigns and messaging.
The smart ones obsess over moments.

Because customers don't judge your brand logically.

One exceptional touchpoint can elevate perception of everything else.

What's the one detail in your customer experience that could create a halo for everything else?

It doesn't need to be big.

Sometimes it's the speed of your reply, the warmth in your follow-up, or how you handle the smallest request.

P.S. Wrote more about this in Brand Chemistry if you want the full breakdown: https://lnkd.in/dWRNvvKJ

---

I share #brand and #growth insights daily, follow for more.

Founder @ Pistachio | Content-led growth for B2B brands

In 1983, Ritz-Carlton gave every employee the power to spend $2000 without approval and it changed luxury hospitality forever

Just getting started in business?

Here are 6 lessons I wish I'd known before I started:


1. Clarity comes from action, not planning

I spent months overthinking my strategy before launching anything but the real insights came after I hit publish and saw what resonated. You can't think your way to clarity.

2. Your personal brand is an asset

Building my presence on LinkedIn opened doors, created opportunities and became a competitive advantage for Pistachio and Brand Chemistry. Invest in it early.

3. No one is watching (at first)

I was terrified of posting early on. Truth is, nobody cared 🤷‍♂️ That anonymity is a gift, so use it to experiment, fail and find your voice before the audience grows.

4. Offers matter more than content

I spent months perfecting content when I should've been building clear offers. Content brings attention but offers turn that attention into revenue.

5. You don't need to look big to win

I used to think I needed a huge team and polished brand to compete but that's not true. Scrappy, focused execution beats corporate polish every time, so start small and stay lean.

6. Momentum beats perfection

Waiting for perfect kills progress, so I learned to ship fast, gather feedback and iterate. Imperfect action creates momentum, and momentum creates results.

Growth comes from building while you're still figuring it out.

What's one thing you wish you knew when you started?

---

Hey 👋 I’m Isaac Peiris
I run an agency helping brands scale through content.
My goal is to share tips and insights to help you grow.
Hit my name + follow + 🔔

Dove just proved that showing your 1-star reviews might be smarter than hiding them.

They asked Reddit users to review their hair mask with complete honesty.
Then plastered the results across New York billboards.

Including gems like "Kinda smells like expired hotel shampoo."

This is the trust paradox playing out in real time.

When consumers assume every brand cherry-picks feedback, radical transparency becomes your biggest differentiator.

I think what makes this work is pretty simple:

→ Negative reviews prove you're not filtering
→ They make the positive reviews actually believable
→ They set realistic expectations the product can exceed

But there's a catch.

This only works because it’s a direct channel.

Try running "smells hella bad" through paid social and watch your account rep have a breakdown.

But direct media gives you the freedom to be brutally honest.

When you control the relationship with your audience, you can have real conversations. When you rent attention, you play by someone else's rules.

Authenticity doesn't mean being perfect.

You just need to be real enough that people believe you when you say something works.

---

I share #brand and #growth insights daily, follow for more.

Dove Turns Brutally Honest Reddit Reviews Into an Unfiltered Campaign

Your marketing sucks.

And you're probably trying harder than you should have to…

You're spending on tactics, testing channels and still not growing.

The hard truth is that the foundation was never built.

I've seen this across startups, agencies and SaaS teams.

Smart people, real budgets, genuine effort.
but the strategy underneath is shaky, so they keep trying to fix things with tactics.

They test channels. Post inconsistently.
Tweak messaging. Launch campaigns.

And then wonder why nothing converts.

Tactics on a broken strategy just make the problem bigger.

What really works is simpler than most teams want to admit:

→ Who exactly is your ICP
(not just job titles)

→ What’s your value proposition
(why you instead of anyone else)

→ What messaging resonates
(words customers actually respond to)

→ What’s your GTM motion
(sales-led, product-led, partner-led)

Once those are clear, tactics start working.
Before that, you're just experimenting.

So before your next campaign, get honest about three things:

Who exactly is this for?
What pain are we solving?
And why us?

If those answers aren’t obvious yet, the problem probably isn’t your marketing.

It’s the foundation underneath it.

Strategy is a decision you make, not a document you write.

The moment you stop trying to be everything to everyone, marketing gets easier.

The joys of living in Australia with a mostly US audience 🙃

The first banner ad got a 78% click rate.
Now it's under 1%.

Generic AI content is heading the same way.

Every channel follows the same pattern.

Early adopters win because it's new, then everyone piles in, quality drops and audiences tune out.

Banner ads in 1994. Email marketing in the 2000s.
Now AI content is in its gold rush phase.

Here's how every channel dies:

1. Novelty (something new catches attention)
2. Oversaturation (everyone piles in)
3. Quality decline (speed beats substance)
4. Pattern recognition (audiences tune out)

I think AI content is in phase two right now.

Some brands are still seeing wins because their audience hasn't been flooded yet, but oversaturation is already happening.

Most brands are optimising for volume when they should be optimising for value.

They're publishing just to publish.

The ones that win long-term won't be churning out AI posts at scale.

They'll use AI as a tool while keeping human judgement, brand voice and audience understanding at the centre.

What matters is the quality of thinking behind your content.

If you're building a content engine right now, ask yourself:
are you creating something your audience actually wants, or just filling space because you can?

---

I share #brand and #growth insights daily, follow for more.

First banner ad

Kodak invented digital photography in 1975.

Then spent the next 37 years pretending they hadn't.

This wasn't a story about lacking vision.
It was about organisational paralysis.

The engineers built the first digital camera.
Leadership understood the future was digital.

But here's what stopped them:

Their sales team was trained to sell film.
Their factories were built to manufacture it.
Their retail partnerships depended on processing.

That was more than revenue.
70% of profits came from film processing.
It was jobs, bonuses, relationships, expertise.

Every department had a reason to slow down digital.
Because their entire world was built around film.
Not because they were short-sighted.

So digital became a side project.
A "future initiative" with no real power.

By 2000, the gap was too wide.
By 2012, they filed for bankruptcy.

Your biggest competitive threat isn't the market.
It's your own organisational design.

Three things that companies do to overcome this:

1. Incentives aligned with adaptation, not preservation
Make compensation tied to new metrics, not legacy revenue.

2. Small teams with real autonomy
Give them budget, authority, and protection from internal politics.

3. Regular org design reviews
Question your structure before the market does it for you.

Innovation without organisational agility is just expensive R&D.

The question isn't whether you can see the future.
It's whether your company is structured to act on it.

---

I share #brand and #growth insights daily, follow for more.

2,100 pubs have closed in Ireland over the last 20 years.

One village decided that theirs wouldn't be next.

When the pub in Kilteely went up for sale, 26 locals pooled €300k to buy it.

None of them had run a bar before.

They just didn't want to lose the place where everyone met.

So they renovated it themselves and reopened it as Street Bar.

The story started spreading and then Heineken showed up:

→ Offered training and support
→ Turned the story into a documentary
→ Premiered it at the Dublin International Film Festival
→ Built a resource hub for other communities trying to do the same

That last one is the signal.

Seen individually, each move looks like a campaign.

Seen together, it's a brand protecting the reason people drink beer in the first place.

And that pattern shows up everywhere once you start looking for it.

A gym becomes someone's routine.
A café becomes someone's office.
A pub becomes the place a whole community holds onto.

The brands that last understand what they're really selling:
belonging, ritual and a reason to show up.

They invest in protecting that.

Makes you wonder how many brands are sitting on a version of this story and just haven't acted on it yet.

What's a brand you've seen genuinely protect the community around their product?

---

I share #brand and #growth insights daily, follow for more.

Liquid Death just launched a $495 Bluetooth urn with Spotify.

Yep… an urn.

It generates your “eternal playlist” based on your listening habits.

Weird? Absolutely.

But that’s exactly why it works.

The moment you hear about it, something happens:

You read about it.
You send it to a friend.
You start thinking about what song would be on your eternal playlist.

And just like that, the campaign is doing its job.

Because the moment is the point. Not the product.

Brands spend their marketing budgets trying to convince people to care.

But Liquid Death does the opposite.

They create ideas that are so strange, bold or entertaining that people want to talk about them.

It’s been their playbook for years!

Coffin-shaped merch. Death-themed humour. Metal aesthetics for canned water.
Absurd collabs, and now... a Spotify urn.

Each campaign pushes the brand deeper into culture.

Will it sell out? Probably.

Will some people hate it? Absolutely.

That’s part of the strategy.

Brands that try to please everyone end up invisible, and the ones that create moments become impossible to ignore.

When a brand has that kind of permission, even the strangest ideas feel on-brand.

That permission is built through years of consistency and a brand identity clear enough that people always know what to expect.

That’s the real lesson:

Sell the moment, not the product.

And now I’m curious 👀

If you had to pick one song for your eternal playlist… what would it be?

---

I share #brand and #growth insights daily, follow for more.

I've been thinking about this a lot lately.

There are two ways to grow: building or betting.

Building means you're putting in the energy. 
↳ You're creating something from scratch, testing it, iterating on it. You're trading time and effort for something that might pay off down the line.

Betting means you're backing what already works.
↳ You're using capital (money, trust, resources) to get leverage without doing all the heavy lifting yourself.

Most people default to one or the other.

But the real skill is knowing how to balance them.

Early stage → you have to build
You need to prove people actually want what you're making.

Got some momentum → start betting
Double down on what's working instead of only focusing on shiny new things.

At scale, you're just allocating resources to the highest return opportunities.

The hard part is knowing when to stop building.

When to stop launching new features.
When to stop saying yes to everything.
When to stop trying to own every channel in-house.

Because every yes costs energy and every no frees up capital to deploy somewhere better.

The key to growth is directing your effort strategically.

And most people keep focus only on building long after they should've started betting.

The Two Ways to Grow: building or betting.

The internet named "Lil Finder Guy" before Apple even fully acknowledged he existed.

Within hours of the MacBook Neo TikTok going live, fans had already:

→ Named it "Lil Finder Guy"
→ Started requesting merch
→ Flooded feeds with fan art

All from a single blink-and-you-miss-it moment.

A small character at a desk. Matcha on the table. A laptop open.

Apple didn't name it, plan the fan art, or ask for any of it.

The audience discovered something, claimed it, and built a story around it themselves.

That's what the best brand moments actually look like.

They don't get launched with a campaign. They get found.

Something small and unforced catches in people's minds. They start drawing it, naming it, sharing it. The audience stops being an audience and becomes the distribution.

The brand plants a seed. The audience decides if it grows.

---

I share #brand and #growth insights daily, follow for more.

Most people think “pattern interrupt” means doing something weird just to grab attention.

But that’s not really the point.

The goal is simply to break the pattern people have learned to ignore.

Because most content follows the same formula.
Same hooks, same formats, same polished ads.

Eventually our brains learn the pattern…
And start ignoring it.

That’s scroll autopilot and it’s brutal for brands 🫠

Some brands have broken through it brilliantly:

→ Coinbase did it with a bouncing QR code during the Super Bowl.
→ Burger King did it by turning McDonald's locations into billboards for the Whopper Detour.

Both brilliant. Both got people talking.

But here's what I find more interesting:
Both were pattern-interrupt campaigns. Not pattern interrupt brands.

The real question is what happens when the interrupt is baked into the identity itself.

When distinctiveness is built into the brand, the payoff compounds:

→ Lower CPMs
→ Stronger recall
→ Word of mouth that compounds over time

Distinctiveness is a compounding growth lever.

The brands that do this well aren't trying to be outrageous.

They just notice the patterns everyone else follows... and choose not to.

It’s a simple idea but it changes how you think about growth and brand.

I went deep on this with Bill Kerr in my Brand Chemistry newsletter.

👉 Read the full article here: https://lnkd.in/d-6qhcGp

---

I share #brand and #growth insights daily, follow for more.

Senior Growth Marketer @ Up | Ex Lonely Planet

Growth expert with 15 years of brand, marketing and digital product experience across Melbourne & London 🌏

Sebastian Neylan

My best attempt at a ‘salient point’ hand gesture 🙋🏻‍♂️

Thanks heaps for having me SmartCompany!

Rad to share the stage with three lovely peeps far more clever and charismatic than me — Frances Goh / Justin Dry /  Jessica Hatzis ❤️

#riskitforthebiscuit

How do you build a truly great brand?

Well, you had to be in the room to find out. 

But our panel consisting of Sebastian Neylan of Up, Jessica Hatzis of Willow & Blake, and Justin Dry of Vinomofo say an important point is to have fun. 

Referring to Up’s free coffee incentive, Sebastian said, “We’ve given million of dollars away in free coffee. F- me if I know the ROI on that”. 

Jessica, who also co-founded frank body, shared why it was important to build a brand that that eliminated corporate language, hyperbole and no intimacy, and replaced it with an intentional community. 

And speaking of community, Justin said he’s proud Vinomofo users have come up with a name for themselves on their own. Can you guess what it is?

Hint: it’s not as “cutesy” (Sebastian’s words, not ours) as Up’s Upsiders. 

The session was moderated by Frances Goh of One Roof.

taplio

The Battle

Isaac Peiris

Sebastian Neylan

Followers

Posts

Engagements

Likes

Performance ScoreIsaac Peiris's LinkedIn Performance

Performance ScoreSebastian Neylan's LinkedIn Performance

Ready to grow your LinkedIn presence?

taplio

The Battle

Isaac Peiris

Sebastian Neylan

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);}Isaac Peiris's LinkedIn Performance

Performance ScoreSebastian Neylan's LinkedIn Performance

Ready to grow your LinkedIn presence?

Performance ScoreIsaac Peiris's LinkedIn Performance