The Customer Journey Maestro

If you can't beat them, join them. I have resigned from my own career as a freelance writer because AI is replacing people like me, and there's no point in waiting around for the inevitable. Now I'm focused on learning how business people can leverage AI. I don't yet have a service to offer around this, but I'm happy to discuss the practical applications of AI anytime.

B2B Strategy Advisor and Consultant

I specialize in building and executing content marketing strategies for companies seeking sustained revenue growth. My process is to create a customized messaging framework (aka, “brand story”), develop a content strategy and calendar, and execute the content strategy by building a content team and/or writing brand content.

Fractional Content Director

I love to write and create content of all kinds. My broad and deep experience across sales, marketing, and customer success gives me a unique perspective and the ability to write compelling content for just about any industry. My approach is to get the inside truth from the people behind each story, and I don’t believe in taking shortcuts. I write and publish for your customers, to engage them, educate them, and compel them to take action. The SEO stuff comes along for the ride. Let’s talk about your freelance writing/content needs.

Freelance Writer

I help B2B companies build and execute modern marketing strategies focused on customers.

B2B Marketing Advisor

Hire me on a full-time or part-time basis to up-level your go-to-market strategy. And it won’t cost you an arm and a leg.

Go-to-Market Strategy Advisor

Your customers have their own Journey that may not match your Funnel or Flywheel. If you want to understand their journey and be there when they need you, that takes work. Designing a customer experience that builds trust, now that's another level entirely. I'm here to help - on your journey.

Customer Journey Guide

On-demand expertise in marketing strategy, demand generation, content marketing, social media marketing, product and customer marketing, sales and marketing alignment, and customer success.

Fractional CMO/VP Marketing

CMO for Hire

Are you in transition? Starting from scratch or making a pivot to a new revenue growth strategy? My Virtual CMO services provide proven expertise to help you jumpstart sales, marketing, and customer experience prior to hiring executives and staffing departments. It's a low-cost, low-risk way to get the strategic advice you need.

Virtual CMO

Riptide Business Press

Ed Marsh and I have written a book, titled Common Sense Revenue Growth, that helps CEOs understand the digital and consumer disruption facing them today and develop plans to grow in spite of those challenges. Buy the book at www.commonsenserevenuegrowth.com.

Author, Podcaster and Consultant

Kuno Creative

Co-owned one of the first and most successful inbound marketing agencies, Kuno Creative. Grew the agency from a handful of talented marketers and designers to a 50+ person agency with clients ranging from national healthcare and technology companies to international consortiums and manufacturing giants. Specialized in marketing technology and sales enablement - helping companies fix leaky funnels and sales pipelines via strategy, marketing automation and optimized CRM utilization. Please visit Kuno's website, www.kunocreative.com for more information, or follow me on LinkedIn.

EVP and Co-Owner

Awakening Technology Company

Developed corporate websites from scratch using HTML/CSS, then created a proprietary CMS for creating client sites backed by a SQL database using ASP.net and later, Ruby on Rails.

Web Developer

Zydeco Energy

Independent oil and gas exploration company in Houston, TX. No longer in business.

Executive Vice President and CTO

INEXS

Exploration Geophysicist

Raytheon - GeoQuest

Product Marketing Specialist

Shell

Research professional working in electron microscopy for Shell Research and in geophysical interpretation research for Shell Exploration and Production.

Research Geoscientist

B2B Marketing Strategy Advisor With Company, Agency, and Freelance Chops

I retired in 2017 from a 40-year career, mostly in sales and marketing, for a variety of energy, manufacturing, and software companies. My penultimate position was co-owner of Kuno Creative, a digital marketing agency and one of HubSpot's first agency partners. My contributions continue as I seek to help other agency owners, professionals, and free-wheelers navigate their way through gnarly challenges in business and life.

John McTigue

Peter Caputa

CEO at Databox

I help the leaders of professional services firms leverage data to get the respect, power and money they deserve -- in that order. (Sorry Lil' Kim, you had it backwards.) 

I have been building systems that help professional services firms get to the next level for nearly 20 years now. As the founder and 9-year leader of the HubSpot Solutions partner program, I helped thousands of marketing agencies increase recurring revenue and margins by teaching them how to sell and deliver a measurable and compounding ROI -- helping many go from their dining room table to multi-million dollar exits. 

As CEO of Databox, my team & I have established a system (software, training, support) that actively helps 1200+ professional services firms use data to acquire, retain and expand their client engagements.

I believe in giving value first. 

So, if you're a leader at a professional services firm, you can start by 

1️⃣ Leveraging us to get the RESPECT you deserve by taking 5 minutes to contribute a quote for some of our upcoming research articles (https://databox.com/become-a-contributor) or inquire with my team about our other free co-marketing programs, 
2️⃣ Leveraging us to get the POWER you deserve by taking our free course on how to leverage benchmark data in your marketing, sales and client services processes, or
3️⃣ Leveraging us to get the MONEY you deserve by taking our free course on how to leverage data to predictably improve your (and your clients') performance. 

Both free courses are here --> https://academy.databox.com/

Of course, if you're ready to explore how we can help you the most, start a trial of our analytics software. More than 1200 professional services firms use us to efficiently monitor, manage, report, benchmark and forecast performance for their clients -->  https://databox.com/analytics-software/agencies

I also write and network a lot on Linkedin. While my inbox is usually overflowing, don't be afraid to ask me for help.

At Databox, I am currently 100% focused on helping marketing agencies automate their reporting. But, thousands of companies have figured out how to use our software on their own. They use it to set numeric marketing and sales goals, auto-track progress by pulling performance data from 100s of other software systems and visualizing it on any device.  The mobile app is slick and we even have a free version that allows you to track performance from up to 3 different apps. www.databox.com

Stay tuned...

About 18 months ago, I fully took on weekly grocery shopping & cooking dinner every night. I made it my mission to reduce food waste, our weekly spend & get rave reviews from my wife and son. 

Here's a few tips for dudes who aren't pulling their weight around the house yet. 

1️⃣  It's the least I/you can do. 

If you're male, don't brag about cooking or shopping like it's something special. I especially have no grounds for claiming that I'm some kinda hero. My wife did the majority of housework for the better part of our 21 years of marriage & still carries most of the load. Even when she went back to work full-time, I was a bit late to doing my part. I justified it because my job has never been a 9 to 5. But, that's a bad excuse. 

2️⃣ Reducing cost

a. Each week, we start with a list. (Going to the store without one is a good way to buy too much.) 

b. I decide what I'll cook each night on Sunday. Knowing the 5-6 meals I'm making (we usually get pizza on Friday), is key to not overbuying. 

c. I don't do a lot of comparison shopping, but don't buy ribeye every week either. (I did for awhile.) But, now I'll buy beef cubes and make stew once a month, or different cuts that are more affordable and then make chimichurri to flavor it up. 

d. Very little pre-packaged foods. I skip most of the middle aisles. Fruit, vegetables, meat, other proteins (beans, tofu), dairy. This is healthier, of course, but also cheaper.  

3️⃣ Reducing waste 

a. Leftovers are for lunch. I work from home and have no car to go out-- 3 drivers, 2 cars. It forces me to eat leftovers for lunch. I try to make a little bit extra when I'm making things so my lunches don't suck. Not too much extra, tho. Definitely made that mistake before, which ends up causing waste. 

b. Freeze fruit and vegetables before they go bad. Every week, I take fruit that's past its prime and I freeze it. That goes into smoothes I eat for breakfast. 

c. Make my own stock. I make my own stock from chicken/turkey bones and past-prime vegetables. Organic stock is surprisingly not that cheap. Homemade is so much better too. But, I love it because it feels like I'm using everything. 

d. My son doesn't love soups for some reason, but making soup is a good way to use veggies up from the previous week that we didn't cook. It's also a great way to use extra chicken, sausage, etc. 

e. Compost scraps. I started composting in high school. Most people think it's disgusting, but it takes stuff we're not going to eat and turns it into fertilizer for the garden. Plus, it keeps it out of landfills which reduces methane gas production, a driver of climate change.

f. I look at what's in the fridge/pantry before deciding what to cook the following week. 

The pic below is from last night's dinner.  I cooked the shrimp separately since my wife is a vegetarian, but this was just two roasting pans. So, it was an easy one to clean up too. 

Any tips for me?

#OffTopicFriday

We're making Search/Answer Engine Optimization (SEO/AEO) a top priority again in 2026 at Databox. And I'm wondering if we're doing the right stuff?

In public, I spent the last year+ whining about our dropping search traffic. In private, we've been talking to people, experimenting and building out our new approach and systems. 

I think a big switch is in the approach to the content: instead of asking, “How do we optimize our content for keywords?”, we're asking, “How quickly can AI understand and trust our answers?”

Once we made that shift, the approach suddenly became clearer.

I recently attended a Databox-hosted webinar where Rick Kranz (from the AI Marketing Lab) explained how AI decides what to surface.

He said, “AI doesn’t want to read your story. It wants the answer.”

If the answer isn’t immediately clear, the model moves on.

That's a lot different than we used to write our content. 
• Long intros
• Stories (like this post, haha.) 
• Educational content to attract the right audience

But in a world where AI is deciding what information to surface to others, this stuff matters a lot less. AI is providing the education that we used to provide. So, we need to influence AI so it will influence our prospects. To do that, as Rick explained, it’s scanning for structure, relevance, and proof.

So, we're changing our approach to content up in a few ways: 
• way more product content (a lot less focused on educating our customers on topics that are only tangentially related to our product or one of our integrations)
• more competitive comparison content
• making it real clear who we're for (and not for)
• lots of FAQs
  
Plus: following the rest of the advice in Rick's webinar: https://bit.ly/4pJoInP

Is this the right approach?

Not enough people are talking about how impressive Wistia is as a business: well north of $60M ARR, profitable, founders in full-control and growing. 

I caught up with Wistia co-founder, Chris Savage, yesterday to interview him for our podcast, Move the Needle. 

He shared: 

• The key, yet counter-intuitive strategic decisions they've made to get them where they are now. Hint: Narrowing their target market was one of them. 
• How product bets rarely work out right away and how important it is to get customer feedback all of the time to base early decisions on, often before usage data rolls in
• How they turn strategy into an annual plan. 
• How they use Objectives and Key Results (OKRs) to ensure they're executing
• The unique frequency in which they revisit their strategy and plan (3 times per year!) including who and how they adjust when things aren't working and how they scale up what's working 
• How he empowers his team to innovate in ways he never would have thought of himself

I probably could have pulled more wisdom from him. But, not in an hour. 

Subscribe to the Move the Needle podcast or newsletter so you don't miss it. It will be published soon.  Sub here --> https://lnkd.in/ej9dMvnt (15k subscribers can't be wrong!) 

Or comment below if you want us to ping you when it's live.

If you're a fan of strategy, planning and execution books, check out my book collection below. 

Last year, I read or re-read all of these books looking for an answer to a simple question: how should a company connect their strategy, planning and execution processes?  I never found what I was looking for. 

Individually, every one of these books is worth reading. But, none of them bridge the gaps. 

Books on the left are a bunch of best-sellers on building a differentiated strategy, that set up a company for high-growth and scale. Playing to Win, Good Strategy/Bad Strategy and Blue Ocean are must-reads. 

In the middle are some amazing books on building a focused plan: Measure What Matters, e-Myth (esp for smaller businesses), Traction (esp for medium-sized firms), Scaling Up (esp for bigger or 'getting-bigger' companies). 

And on the right, are some awesome books on how  to execute agile-y using data: Revenue Acceleration Framework, Competing on Analytics, Shape Up. 

And to be fair, some of them bridge the gaps to some degree. Traction and Scaling up touch on the importance of strategy, even though they don't really walk you through how to build a great one.  They also provide meeting cadence and structure and touch on the importance of using data. Patrick Lencione talks about the how it's near impossible to execute well without strategic clarity and alignment.  The Science of Scaling talks about how focus is critical for execution, even though most of the book is about selecting a strategic focus and setting an audacious goal. 

The problem?

I found that none of them provided an actionable, step-by-step process for connecting all 3 things: strategy-setting, planning and execution into one system. I also found that almost all of them were really light on teaching companies how to use data to make more informed decisions when developing (or refining) a strategy, a plan and when executing.

Don't get me wrong: I love all of these books. They are amazing. The authors are amazing. I quoted many of them in my course. 

But, the reason I put my Predictable Scale course together is because no one else (that I found) really made these necessary connections.  And today, more than ever, as processes aren't just getting digitized, but automated via AI... performance measurement, analysis and quick decision-making will be a massive competitive advantage for organizations that can do it. And that can't be done unless there are clear connections between the strategy, the plan and execution processes. 

If you're trying to answer the same question I was and love these books too, here's the free course: https://lnkd.in/eScK5VX9

You can watch the videos and/or download the ebook and workbook.

Pretty slick how Vendr lets you access their SaaS pricing data now via a chat interface. 

They're calling the bot "Ruth" which reminds me more of my deceased Great Aunt vs the coolest, new way to research SaaS pricing. 

See pic below of me testing it out on one of Databox's bigger SaaS bills, Intercom ...

It seems quite smart. And I know vendr has access to lots of real invoice data, so it's gonna be more accurate than review sites and other places where people self-report their software costs. 

You can try it free here: https://agent.vendr.com/ (You just have to sign up with your work account.)

I made $1,180 from Peep Laja's Wynter from about 20 minutes of work. Here's how I did it. 

See the image below for proof. 

If you're not familiar with Wynter, here's what they do: B2B marketers use Wynter to gather feedback from people who fit their ideal client profile. They load up a survey or logo variations or home page mockups and then ask for written feedback. Then, they invite people from their panel to give feedback, in exchange for $35. 

I wrote a post a few months ago and 59 people signed up to to the Wynter panel from that post and then got invited to give feedback. 

They each made ~$35. 

I made $20 for referring them. 

59 x $20 = $1,180. 

If you want to make a quick $35 bucks, sign up here to give feedback. https://lnkd.in/eSv3_Pve

Given that 59 people did it just from my one post, I can't imagine the amount of cash Wynter is sending out to their panel.  

It usually just takes just a few minutes to give the feedback. Plus, and here's the cool part: I usually learn something. Since marketers are usually asking for feedback on messaging and branding, it's interesting for me to think about and apply the learnings to our own work at Databox. 

If you want to join their panel (ie people who give feedback) and get paid $35 a pop, go here --> https://lnkd.in/eSv3_Pve

If you want to get paid for referring people to their panel (this is how I made the $1,180), here's the link for that. Their referral program is powered by my buddy, Josh Ho 🤷🏽 's, business, Referral Rock --> https://lnkd.in/eGJfGk7N

Anyone else a member of the Wynter panel? What's your experience?

#OffTopicFriday

"I don't use the word strategy because it gets so over-used." 

In the last few months, I've heard this on a number of occasions when I'm talking to agencies and consultants about why they should sell strategy first to their clients. (And not let their clients off the hook from developing a differentiated strategy, since most clients want to skip this and will say "we have a strategy" when in reality they don't.) 

I've also had lots of conversations with agencies/consultants where they agree with me, but asked me, "What do you mean by strategy?" 

This is the main problem with strategy. Every one thinks it's something different. 

It's not. And if you're going to sell strategy, you gotta stop winging it or customizing the approach for every client. 

I have a 30 second rant that makes it real clear what I mean by strategy.

It's a step-by-step process that must be done annually that...

1. Starts with identifying and defining (or refining) who a company's ideal client profile (ICP) is, then
2. Identifies the strengths and weaknesses of the companies that compete for that ICP's business, then...
3. Identifies 'opportunities for' and 'threats to' the business because of external trends, factors, then...
4. Defines/refines a vision, mission and ambition that guides a business long term towards creating the future they envision for themselves, customers and partners, then...
5. Defines annual objectives to execute in the short-term (1 year) that helps them do as many of these as possible given their resources: a) better serve their ICP b) more handily beat their competitors c) leverage their strengths and/or overcomes their weaknesses relative to those competitors and relevant to their ICP, d) capitalizes on opportunities, avoids/overcomes threats and e) moves the company in the direction of achieving their vision, mission and ambition.
6. Defines key metrics/goals to measure success of those objectives

I have said this so many times now that I can literally say this without taking a breath or stuttering a word.

If you need a shorter way of saying it or remembering it, use...

1. Who they're for
2. Who they're against
3. What they're operating environment is
4. Why they exist, when and how much impact they want to have
5. What to do now
6. How to measure success of it

That's strategy.

And if it's not obvious from my rant, you can't skip ANY of it. One step is a pre-requisite for the next. If you skip any of it so that you "can get started executing", I can guarantee you that you'll be executing a sub-par strategy.

Why is advertising everyone's go-to growth lever? 

We asked marketers a simple question: “If you suddenly had an extra $25K/month to invest in marketing, where would it go?”

52.6% said paid marketing.

Not because it’s the most efficient channel. But because it’s the easiest one to defend when someone asks, “What did we get for this spend?

And that is the trap of digital advertising.

It becomes the default. Not necessarily because it is the best option, but because it’s most measurable.

To make things worse, ads don’t necessarily maintain effectiveness and profitability as budgets grow. 

Search ads are often the last click before someone buys, capturing demand created elsewhere.  So when a company runs out of branded and competitive ad clicks, clicks get expensive.  

So when expanding ad budgets, companies end up…

• Paying more for lower-intent leads
• Measuring success by CPL, not lifetime value
• Growing acquisition while ignoring efficiency
  
The teams getting this right are doing something different.

They’re managing the profitability of their ads, not just another traffic source. A system that increases efficiency as budget increases: 

• Eliminates wasted spend hiding inside “good” campaigns
• Maximizes high-intent leads through better campaigns and targeting, not necessarily more budget
• Measures success through a full ROI calculation by tracking CPL, CAC, and ROI in one place
  
Devin Littlefield, CEO at MarketVantage will share his exact approach in our upcoming webinar on making paid ads profitable again: https://lnkd.in/eVBFUpSW

If you’re responsible for pipeline and are planning to increase your ad budget, you might want to attend.

What's the right way for SaaS companies to add AI to their product and who is doing it well?   

On our most recent Move the Needle podcast episode, Rodrigo Fernandez from ProductLed shared a story about how a SaaS company's activation rate dropped by 20% when they added AI to their product. Hear him tell the story -> https://lnkd.in/ez5zsU7G

Every SaaS company is racing to call themselves “AI-first” or "AI-native," present company not excluded. 

It’s expected. It’s 2026. A Databox investor recently told me, "Software companies aren't raising funds right now unless they have an AI story where customers are getting value out of it." 

It's not about slapping a name or making an announcement.  The AI needs to provide value to the customer that they couldn't get without AI. 

The mistake Rodrigo sees over and over:

• AI added as a feature, not as a value accelerator
• Cheap models & shallow prompts
• “AI onboarding” that asks questions… and does nothing meaningful with the answers

This shouldn’t come as a news flash, but users aren’t impressed by AI existing.

What impresses them is AI removing work or doing something they couldn't do before.

Here’s a better pattern:

• Start with the outcome the customer wants
• Use AI behind the scenes to configure, personalize, and guide
• Reduce time-to-value instead of adding another layer to learn

Rodrigo made a great point, "Your users already use great AI tools every day. Their expectations are high, and getting higher.”

In our product, we've rolled out a few AI-powered capabilities last year that deliver value and have happy users.   

1️⃣ AI performance summaries: They summarize performance in words --> https://lnkd.in/exaGPvYf

2️⃣ AI for building metrics from advanced datasets. Most companies struggle to turn their data into metrics. It requires an understanding of how the data is stored (tables, common identifiers between tables, field names, etc), how and if it can be aggregated, how it should be filtered, etc. AI can assist in this process. 

3️⃣ Analysis by AI. Our MCP server allows LLMs (like Claude, chatgpt) to do analysis that would take a human a lot of time to do: https://databox.com/mcp

We have much more AI-powered capabilities launching imminently that will make it even easier for our customers to generate insights from their data, as well as setup and use the rest of our product more easily to visualize, monitor and report performance. 

But, as we roll these things out, I'm very curious: which SaaS companies are doing this well?

According to Rodrigo Fernandez from ProductLed, 97% of SaaS companies never reach $20M ARR because SaaS companies don't define activation correctly. 

Ali Orlando Wert recently interviewed Fernandez on Databox's Move the Needle podcast to go deeper into what companies usually do and how to fix it. 

His advice, "Activation is an equation. Not an event." 

Too often, Fernandez explains that most companies pick a single “aha moment” that doesn’t necessarily map to the user receiving value.  

Here’s the short version of what Rodrigo suggests instead:  
• Define activation based on jobs-to-be-done, not a user's clicks
• Treat activation as an equation that measures whether that job gets done, not a single event
• Map the full journey to value before pouring fuel on growth 
  
If you want the full breakdown, including how Rodrigo thinks about activation as a “solar system” of events, here’s the full episode: https://lnkd.in/ep9rMRUB

And the longer, more thorough recap: https://lnkd.in/ez5zsU7G

Scaling is an over-used word that’s lost it’s meaning. 

So when we launched our latest course, I hesitated to call it Predictable Scale. 

Most of the time, people use the word "scale" to say “grow faster”.  But that’s only half of what it means to scale. 

This came up in a recent conversation on The RevOps Show with Doug Davidoff and Jess Cardenas from Lift Enablement when they asked me a simple question: “What does scale actually mean?”

My answer: Scale isn’t just growing revenue. It’s growing revenue without increasing costs at the same rate. In other words, you need both revenue and margins to grow at the same time. 

You can listen to the full episode here: https://lnkd.in/excg3sfg

Of course, knowing the definition isn't the hard part. The hard part is answering the question, “How do you scale?” 

For most companies, growing is relatively straightforward. You just do more of what’s already working. You invest more in ads, hire more salespeople, increase your marketing output, etc.  

But, if you want to scale, you have to find ways to multiply outcomes without multiplying effort or cost. 

This requires two things: innovation and discipline. 

Innovation to find new ways that help you grow more efficiently, and discipline to get more efficient at doing the things you’re already doing. 

This is why scale is the last step in the Predictable Scale methodology after strategy, planning, execution, adjusting what’s not working and repeating what is. 

Growing doesn’t always require strategy, thoughtful plans, focused execution or using data to measure and adjust. Doing more of what's already working doesn't require much thinking at all. 

But, scale does.

Scale requires a step-by-step process...

https://lnkd.in/eScK5VX9

I have not been able to make or receive calls in the last hour seemingly because Verizon is down.

My wife's phone stopped working about 10 minutes ago. 

But, Verizon is not reporting anything. 

Their "check status" page is reporting nothing. 

Their help page says "login" to your account to check your network status, but the "forgot password" page doesn't load. 

No announcement from them on their support handle on social media. 

The only way I know my wife and I are not the only ones is because people are manually reporting that their Verizon mobile service is down via DownDetector, a free service by Ookla. 

Looks like it's impacting at least 171k people, going up by a few thousand people every time I refresh the page! 

Props to Ookla. Not props to Verizon.

taplio

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John McTigue

Peter Caputa

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