James Carbary

Lover of Jesus, Lisa, JJ, and video podcasting. Trying to end the foster care crisis in America.

WHAT WE DO: We produce video podcasts for B2B brands.

WHO WE HELP: Content-focused marketing leaders at B2B companies.

WHY IT WORKS: Buyers trust people more than logos. Video podcasts put the personalities of your people at the center of your content.

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.

That’s a WRAP 🎥🎬

Just had an incredible 2 day video sprint with the Black Kite team filming season 2 of their show, Third Party! 

Madison Browder led the way like a champ.

Valeria Chirinos is BRILLIANT on set.

Katherine (Kat) Desy is an amazing thought partner to make sure the show connects to Black Kite’s business goals. 

And the chemistry of this on-air talent (Jeffrey Wheatman, Bob Maley, & Ferhat Dikbiyik, Ph.D., CTIA) is second to NONE.

Doing this work gets more and more fun with every rep.

Here’s to a gajillion more video sprints 👊❤️

#ByeByeCommodityContent #PersonalityLed

We Do Video | Founder of Sweet Fish (3x Inc. 5000)

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Being on set with Phillip Greer & Danielle Mills Walden is something every human should experience at some point in their life.

Love being a part of what they’re doing with Leadership in the Dealership!

#ByeByeCommodityContent #PersonalityLed

It feels more like therapy than business and that’s why millions can’t stop watching.

Garrett Jestice

GTM strategy for growing startups | Founder & CEO | Advisor | Former CMO | BBQ Judge

Most founders hit a wall around $1M in annual revenue. Growth slows, sales feel random, and marketing turns into a guessing game.

I help B2B startups and agencies build a repeatable go-to-market system that attracts the right customers, shortens sales cycles, and replaces random acts of revenue with consistent results.

My process focuses on four GTM foundations:

1. Audience: Who you’re built to serve
2. Offers: What you package and sell
3. Messaging: How you tell your story
4. Channels: Where you consistently reach buyers

When these four pieces are clear and connected, growth compounds instead of stalling.

That’s the focus of my GTM Advisory work at Prelude Marketing. It’s an ongoing partnership to clarify your strategy, refine your positioning, and align sales and marketing around one system that works.

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I also run 10x Solo, a private community for full-time consultants, fractionals, advisors, and micro-agency owners who want to scale income without growing a big team. Inside, we participate in peer pods, growth challenges, and systems that make independent businesses simpler and stronger.

If you’re building your own solo business and want clarity, accountability, and a network of peers doing the same, 10x Solo is where that happens.

My background:
• Built Lucidpress from launch to acquisition, where I led the marketing team (2015–2021)
• Tripled revenue at Eddy as CMO, launched an award-winning community, and was named Utah Business Marketer of the Year. (2021–2023)
• Now helping founders and solos build consistent, scalable growth on their own terms

Connect:
👉 Learn about GTM Advisory → PreludeMarketing.com
👉 Apply to join 10x Solo → 10xSolo.com

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.

Join us here: https://bit.ly/StartupMarketers

If restaurants were like B2B SaaS, we would be in big trouble…

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You walk into a restaurant and ask to look at the menu.

The host replies, “I'm sorry. We can’t show you the menu yet. We need to confirm your dining intent score.”

A Menu Qualification Rep appears with a clipboard.

They ask for your annual dining budget, your cuisine ICP, your urgency level, and whether you’re the real decision-maker or if it’s actually your wife.
(Of course it’s her.)

After a 15-minute interrogation, they say, “Great news. You’re now an SQD. (Sales Qualified Diner.) A waiter will call you in 3 to 5 business days.”

Four days later, someone calls.
You tell them you’re hungry.

The waiter asks if they can “walk you through a short, 45-minute curated menu experience” and show you only the dishes they think you’ll care about.

Would you eat here?
Me neither.

But this is exactly what buying software feels like when companies hide their product behind calls, forms, and slow follow-up.

Interactive demos exist so buyers can see the food before they ever enter the funnel.

But most teams avoid them because they assume they’re too painful to build.

That’s why Guideflow caught my attention when Gab Bujold told me about it.

It's ranked the number one easiest demo automation platform on G2, and after trying it myself, I can see why. 

You can turn your product into a guided, clickable demo in minutes. (Seriously, so fast and easy.)

Quit selling your software like it’s 2010.
If buyers can’t understand what you do in 30 seconds, they won’t stick around.

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Now the fun part:

What would you name this fictional restaurant?
Trust Us Tavern? Soc2 Sushi? Funnel & Fork?

Funniest name wins 1,000 points. Go. 👇


#sponsored

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

I was on a call with a prospect a few days ago.

He’d been talking with multiple fractional CMOs, advisors, and marketing agencies to decide who to hire to help grow his startup.

By the end of the call, I told him he shouldn’t hire me or any of the others right now.

Why not? Because he hadn’t decided which ICP to focus on yet and wasn’t ready to do so.

Until he does, any marketing work aimed at multiple segments would just waste money.

Instead, I encouraged him to keep selling outbound and look for ICP patterns where he has the strongest product/market fit.

He paused for a second and said,

“Everyone else I’ve talked to has just pitched me on why their way can work. I really appreciate you telling me things I don’t want to hear, but need to hear.”

That moment reminded me how rare it is for people in our space to tell the truth.

They get so eager to close a deal that they ignore the writing on the wall and fudge the truth a bit.

One client last year wasted $100k on a marketing agency and had nothing to show for it before realizing they weren’t ready for an agency.

Getting a foot in the door quickly as a consultant or agency can be a smart move. But only if you’re confident you can actually help.

Otherwise, you’re just selling hope that fades fast.

Telling the truth might cost you a deal today.
But it usually earns you trust (and more deals) tomorrow.

GTM Advisor to B2B startups | Community Founder | Former CMO | BBQ Judge | Dad x4

I’m grateful this Thanksgiving for something I never want to take for granted.

I get to work from home while my kids are still young.

There’s a basket on the shelf in my office filled with notes they’ve pushed under the door while I was on calls.

There’s a sticky note on my monitor that says “I ❤️ U dad!” from my daughter.

There’s usually a drawing on the whiteboard on my wall from whoever wandered in last.

None of it shows up in a dashboard, but it’s the part of self-employment I value most.

It beats every office perk I’ve ever had. Even the good ones. (Talking to you, Free Pizza Fridays. 😉 🍕 )

I know a lot of people don’t get this setup. 

I’m grateful I do, especially right now, in this stretch of life where my kids still think it’s fun to interrupt me.

What’s something about your work you’re thankful for this year?

Every solo or fractional I know runs into the same two growth problems.

First: How do I get enough leads to replace my old salary? That’s the survival stage.

Then the next one shows up: How do I grow without trading time for money?

I wanted to see how common that really is.
So I ran a short survey for solos, fractionals, and consultants recently.

Here’s what stood out.
→ 68% said generating consistent leads was their biggest challenge.
→ 58% said growing revenue without trading time for money.
→ 32% said delivering work more efficiently.
→ 26% said deciding the long-term direction.
→ 16% said designing or pricing scalable offers.
→ 10% said closing sales.

When I broke it down by revenue stage, the pattern was clear:
→ Under $100K = fighting for leads.
→ $100K–$250K+ = fighting for leverage.

It’s a simple path.
First you fight for clients.
Then you fight for leverage.

Most people jump to hiring and building an agency.

That works for some, but not for everyone.

I decided I don’t want my job to be recruiting and project management.

So I’m exploring leverage that doesn’t depend on headcount.

If you’re a solo, how have you solved the lead problem? Where are you finding leverage next?

---

P.S. We're nearly up to 50 members in the 10x Solo community. If you're a solo consultant, fractional, or boutique agency owner looking for leads or leverage, we'd love to have you join us. Learn more and apply at 10xsolo.com.

The usual advice for solos and agencies is to “just niche down.” 

Pick a vertical. Pick an industry. Pick a lane.

But with a bit of experience, you realize that approach rarely works.

Industry niches are crowded, arbitrary, and built around you rather than what buyers actually hire you to solve.

That was the focus of our Growth Workshop last week in 10x Solo with Joe Daniels 📦. 

He showed why use-case positioning creates far more leverage for solos than picking a vertical ever will.

Clients look for help when a specific job becomes painful or urgent. They want someone who can fix that job quickly, cleanly, and with fewer risks than doing it themselves.

Joe walked us through his Use Case Canvas to map this out:
→ what triggers buyers to seek help
→ the job they believe they’re hiring for
→ the real alternative you compete against
→ the gaps in that alternative
→ how your approach addresses those gaps
→ the features and benefits that fall out of your method

His point was clear. 

When solos position around a use case, their offer gets sharper. 
Their message gets clearer. 
Their sales process becomes simpler. 
And their work becomes easier to deliver.

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Interested in joining future Growth Workshops like this one? We do one a month in the 10x Solo community. Join us. 

Agencies and solos: Need help with defining your own use case and messaging? Talk to Joe Daniels 📦

I recently spoke with a founder who was frustrated:

“When we get people on a call the lightbulbs go off. But before that, we just get blank stares.”

When we unpacked it, the problem was clear.

Their messaging was stuck at 10,000 ft, summarizing the one big problem they solve across all customer segments.

But customers rarely think at that level.

They think at the project or use case level.
They care about the immediate pain right in front of them.

So when you talk at the high-level “industry problem,” their eyes glaze over.

But when you talk about their specific project and the pains they feel trying to solve it, that’s when the lightbulbs go off.

This is also why trying to solve too many use cases at once waters down your messaging.

It forces you to climb in altitude, making it harder for buyers to connect.

The fix?
 → Anchor messaging in a single, specific use case.
 → Speak in your customer’s language.
 → Keep altitude low enough that it feels real, not abstract.

The right altitude is the difference between blank stares and instant clarity.

Where have you seen messaging altitude trip companies up the most?

Many founders think the hardest part of positioning is describing what they do.

It is not.

The hardest part is usually choosing the right problem to hang your business on in the first place.

On a call this week, I said something I find myself repeating often:

If your buyer does not already believe the problem you solve is connected to the outcome they want, the sale becomes ten times harder.

You cannot manufacture that connection.
You either meet them where they are or you pick a different problem.

And this is where most teams get stuck.

They pick a problem that sounds smart but has no urgency.
Or a problem the market does not search for.
Or a problem buyers do not feel deeply enough to pay for.
Or a problem that is real but impossible to describe without a lecture.

Not all problems are worth solving.
And not all problems are worth trying to market.

Finding the right one takes time.
It takes dozens of conversations with the buyers you want.
It takes testing language in the wild and watching what sticks.
It takes cutting ideas you like, but the market does not care about.

When you finally land on the right problem, everything snaps into place.
Your messaging gets simpler.
Your offer becomes obvious.
Sales cycles shorten.
Demand becomes easier to create.

To help you get there, I am sharing a simple diagnostic I often use.

It helps you isolate the one high-stakes problem your business should solve.

What problem are you hanging your business on right now, and how confident are you that buyers feel it the way you think they do?

Problem Focus Diagnostic for Founders

A week ago, I launched something new.

A weekly newsletter for 10x Solo.

The idea came from a simple pattern I kept seeing.

Every independent consultant I talk to is sharp, capable, and experienced.

But almost all of us are navigating big decisions alone.

What should I sell?
How should I structure my work?
How do I grow without creating a job I don’t want?

I’ve spent the past three-plus years trying every model myself.

Fractional leadership. Advisory. Coaching. Productized consulting. Even early attempts at an agency.

Each version taught me what creates freedom and energy and what quietly erodes them.

That’s why I built the 10x Solo community.

A place for independents to compare notes and build smarter businesses without chasing someone else’s blueprint.

The newsletter is just an extension of that work. Two practical ideas each month to help you sharpen your positioning, strengthen your offers, and build leverage in your business.

Just what’s working for solos who want to grow without giving up the freedom that pulled them into this path in the first place.

If you want a clearer, saner path to solo growth, I'd love for you to join us here:

10xSolo.Substack.com

What topics would you want me to cover in future issues?

Open article: The 10x Solo Newsletter | Garrett Jestice | Substack by 10xsolo.substack.com

The 10x Solo Newsletter | Garrett Jestice | Substack

Most of us don’t need bigger goals. We need clearer wins. Visible momentum.

Inside 10x Solo, we run Weekly Growth Challenges to create that.
One focused action. Under an hour. Done by Friday.

This gives us one small win to stack each week.

This week’s challenge is tied to Thanksgiving.

It’s a natural moment to slow down and notice what’s actually working.

So the challenge is simple:

Every night, write down three wins from your day. Doesn't matter if they are big or small. Personal or work-related.

The idea comes from the book "The Gap and The Gain" and helps shift your attention from what’s missing to what’s improving.

You’ll start spotting things you normally overlook:
→ A client who trusted you
→ Advice that landed at the right moment
→ A small win that confirmed you’re on the right path

Do it each night.
Review the list on Friday.
You’ll see more progress than you think.

If you want to join me in this one, go for it.
No need to be in the community.

And if you want to share your reflection at the end of the week, DM me. I’d love to hear it.

Growth Challenge: Focus on the Gain

Last chance! Have you registered for the All-In Agency Summit yet?

You haven’t?! What are you waiting for?

This Thursday, November 6. It's free, virtual, and packed with 15 presentations you don't want to miss.

Join us!

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James Carbary

Garrett Jestice

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The Battle

James Carbary

Garrett Jestice

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Engagements

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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);}James Carbary's LinkedIn Performance

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