Ex-Dell | Be Better Than 99% of Candidates ⚡️

I connect top sales talent to opportunities in B2B technology sales. 

The best talent is not looking for jobs, and that's why we help. 

I work with VP's of Sales and Enterprise AE's with experience in SaaS, cloud computing, and cybersecurity and match them with companies aligned with their experience.

Our mission to help build high-performing sales teams with the best people, performance, and culture.

Whether you're a company in need of sales talent or an experienced seller looking for a new role, Elite Tech Sales is here to help.

Your sales experience shouldn't suck!

Jay Johnston

Grow Your Career 1% Daily - I’ll Show You How | Follow for Tips on Learning, Professional Development, and Productivity | Professor | MBA + JD

Is this the part where I talk about brand voice, distribution, and storytelling across the funnel? Or say we “help companies scale content that converts”?

𝗪𝗲 𝗱𝗼 𝗮𝗹𝗹 𝘁𝗵𝗮𝘁.

But what we really do is write content your team doesn’t have to worry about, so you can stay focused on strategy, not sentence structure.

𝗛𝗲𝘆, 𝗜’𝗺 𝗦𝘁𝗲𝗽𝗵𝗲𝗻. 👋

And my path here hasn’t exactly followed a playbook:
Banking → Law School → Teaching → L&D → Content

(Yeah… it’s been a ride.)

Today, I run a B2B content agency with my wife. We keep it lean and personal — just the two of us, plus our kids and a couple barky mini schnauzers. 

At Damn Smart Marketing, we give marketers writing they can trust and results they can stand behind.

✓ Content that sounds like you (not a template, not bland AI)
✓ Full support from idea to publication
✓ A partner who gets content
✓ Zero fluff, zero hand-holding
✓ More time to focus on what matters

In other words: you get to 🚀 while we handle the ✍️.

𝗟𝗼𝗼𝗸𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝗳𝗼𝗿 𝗮 𝘄𝗿𝗶𝘁𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝗽𝗮𝗿𝘁𝗻𝗲𝗿? 𝗧𝘄𝗼 𝘄𝗮𝘆𝘀 𝘄𝗲 𝘄𝗼𝗿𝗸:

1️⃣ 𝗗𝗼𝗻𝗲-𝗳𝗼𝗿-𝘆𝗼𝘂 𝘄𝗿𝗶𝘁𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝗳𝗼𝗿 𝗰𝗼𝗻𝘁𝗲𝗻𝘁 𝘁𝗲𝗮𝗺𝘀.
Blogs, LinkedIn posts, newsletters, case studies. If it’s got words, we’ll write it. You get to run the show without sweating every sentence.

2️⃣ 𝗟𝗶𝗻𝗸𝗲𝗱𝗜𝗻 𝘀𝘂𝗽𝗽𝗼𝗿𝘁 𝗳𝗼𝗿 𝗳𝗼𝘂𝗻𝗱𝗲𝗿𝘀.
We’ve built an AI-assisted workflow that makes posting easy, effective, and actually worth reading.

If you're curious, DM me. 

No cold, hard pitch, I promise. Just a real convo about where you’re headed and whether some damn smart content can help.

Stephen 😀

Stephen Mostrom

LinkedIn right now:

🤖🤖🤖🤖🤖🤖🤖🤖🤖🤖🤖🤖🤖🤖🤖🤖🤖🤖🤖🤖🤖🤖🤖🤖🤖🤖🤖🤖🤖🤖🤖🤖🤖🤖🤖🤖🤖🤖🤖🤖🤖🤖🤖🤖🤖🤖🤖🤖🤖🤖🤖🤖🤖🤖🤖🤖🤖🤖🤖🤖🤖🤖🤖🤖🤖🤖🤖🤖🤖🤖🤖🤖🤖🤖🤖🤖🤖🤖🤖🤖🤖🤖🤖🤖🤖🤖🤖🤖🤖🤖🤖🤖🤖🤖🤖🤖🤖🤖🤖🤖🤖🤖🤖🤖🤖🤖🤖🤖🤖🤖🤖🤖🤖🤖🤖🤖🤖🤖❤️🤖🤖🤖🤖🤖🤖🤖🤖🤖🤖🤖🤖🤖🤖🤖🤖🤖🤖🤖🤖🤖🤖🤖🤖🤖🤖🤖🤖🤖🤖🤖🤖🤖🤖🤖🤖🤖🤖🤖🤖🤖🤖🤖🤖🤖🤖🤖🤖🤖🤖🤖🤖🤖🤖🤖🤖🤖🤖🤖🤖🤖🤖🤖🤖🤖🤖🤖🤖🤖🤖🤖🤖🤖🤖🤖🤖🤖🤖🤖🤖🤖🤖🤖🤖🤖🤖🤖🤖🤖🤖🤖🤖🤖🤖🤖🤖🤖🤖🤖🤖🤖🤖🤖🤖🤖🤖🤖🤖🤖🤖🤖🤖🤖🤖🤖🤖🤖🤖🤖🤖🤖🤖🤖🤖🤖🤖🤖🤖🤖🤖

Did AI replace human writing? Meh.

But it definitely made it easier to stand out if you're willing to say something real.

Writer for B2B Tech & Finance ✍️ | Running a content agency with my wife (and yes, still married) | Human words, AI workflows | JD & MBA

"I instantly unfollow most authors who use AI to post." 

I'm seeing this more and more. People aren't ignoring AI-first content in their LinkedIn feed or inbox. They’re opting out.

Tolerance for generic AI tone is dropping.
Pattern recognition is getting sharper.

What this means: 

1 - Readers care, and they're acting on it. 
2 - The "spray-and-pray" volume play is now the risky move. 
3 - Once you lose someone, they’re not circling back.

In B2B, especially, that's expensive. 

When your total addressable audience is a few hundred, every unfollow is a brick in the wall between your message and the decision-makers you need to reach. 

AI-first content isn't "efficiency." It's alienation.
And it's flattening your audience.

I’d rather spend more time crafting the next post than ship it fast and become someone worth unfollowing.

My words, with AI in support. 
Not the other way around.

—
shoutout Brenda Baran

If even 10% of LinkedIn was written by a human…




I might want to scroll my feed.

Anyway. Back to the 5 people who still deal in original thoughts.

They’ve earned my attention.

A truly tragic part of this mad AI scramble… Some people would have developed into exceptional writers. 1-of-1 voice. Razor-sharp, original thoughts. 

And instead, they’ve outsourced everything to AI and now they sound just like everyone else. 

It’s creative loss at scale. 
Quietly weakening us with every prompt (if we're not careful). 

Do I use AI every day? Yes.

Am I going to let it siphon away my skills, my voice, my edge? Not a chance.

The alternative...

If you want to become an exceptional thinker and writer, and not just copy/paste the work of exceptional thinkers and writers, here’s what I recommend: 

✓ Use AI to amplify, not originate.
Start with your idea. Bring in AI to sharpen, speed up, or structure. But never lose that core insight.

✓ Keep one hand in the craft.
Write something from scratch every week. Even (and especially) if no one sees it.

✓ Don’t say something smart, say something real.
AI knows every trick in the book. But it doesn't know your story, your worldview. 

✓ Train your thinking, not just your LLM.
Your brain is still the best writing engine. Don’t let it idle. Read, discuss, ideate. 

✓ Protect your voice like it's your brand.
 Because it is. And once it’s gone, you'll fall into the dreaded sea of sameness. 

Are you in?

"Can I be real a second? For just a millisecond? Let down my guard and tell the people how I feel a second?" 🎶

Yes, you can. And you should. 

Why?

Because stories are the new credibility on LinkedIn. 
Because struggles are the new authenticity on LinkedIn. 
Because lessons learned are the new value on LinkedIn. 

AI has turned everyone with a laptop into a “thought leader.” Except… all the thoughts sound the same. 

What’s not the same?

You. Your experiences. Your unique perspective. 

That’s AI-proof content. And when you craft it right, it’s the fastest path to standing out in a feed drowning in "you should be doing XYZ" posts.

Example: 

One of our ghostwriting clients went viral the other day. 

6,380 likes. 369 comments. 161 reposts.

The post? 
Her journey getting rejected from her dream job… 
And the tweaks she made that finally opened the door.

It was simple. It was one-of-a-kind.
And it resonated. 

Because she was real a second.

No, I don’t let AI write my sentences. But that doesn’t mean it’s over on the bench. Here are 5 non-obvious ways I use AI every week to write better content: 

1. Trend sniffing

Reddit is a signal generator. TechCrunch too.
And sites like WSJ keep me calibrated.

So, I built a bot that watches for keywords tied to my content pillars. It surfaces the interesting stuff. 

Saves me hours going down internet rabbit holes. 

2. Built-in guardrails

The other day, Katelyn Bourgoin 🧠 shared her Authority Science framework: problem, POV, promise, and proof. 

I liked it so much, I fed the framework into a bot. 

Now AI checks my drafts before they ship. If I start wandering into side quests or explaining things nobody asked for, it flags it.

3. Transcript cleanup

Call transcripts are chaos.
Filler. Tangents. Half-finished thoughts.

But I use them every week to ghostwrite for CEOs, build out white papers, and craft blog posts that pop. 

So I let AI trim the noise.

Important distinction: AI doesn’t decide what’s important and what’s not. That’s my job, dammit. It just hands me a clean script I can move through fast.

Bonus: This works shockingly well for podcast interviews too. 

4. Pressure-testing with my ICP

Before my content goes live, I want to know: 

Does this hit like a ton of bricks…
or a goose-down pillow?

To answer in real-time, I load AI up with details about my ideal reader and roleplay the reaction.

Paired with a good SME review on the backend, this keeps the writing pain-point sharp and promise-forward.

5. Actively avoiding the middle

AI knows what everyone else is saying. 

Perfect.
Because I want to avoid that.

So one of my favorite prompts is simple:
“What are the most common angles on [topic]?”

From there, I do the opposite. Take a stance. Call out tired advice.

It’s a magnet pulling me away from safe, familiar, forgettable content. Away from the sea of sameness. 


——
Got an AI play that helps you write?
I’d love to hear it. ↓

In the middle of every prospect call, Donna stops and says the same thing. "Full disclosure: We DON’T stay in our lane."

Yes, we’re writers. Hired to write. 

But after 9 years and millions of words, we've learned to spot what others miss.

A content process that could run smoother. 
An angle that could hit harder.

We surface them every time. 

We can do this because we don't operate like a typical agency. For starters, it's just Donna and me. We put eyes on everything.

We've worked across dozens of clients, hundreds of campaigns. We've seen the good, the bad, and the ugly.

Most importantly, we trust our instincts. And we build relationships where our clients do too.

Getting outside our lane has helped us: 

Turn a finance founder's LinkedIn from in-the-weeds tactics to leadership storytelling. 20k followers in 9 months.

Pitch a Succession tie-in to a bank's blog team. It became one of their top-performing series.

Convince a SaaS CEO client to blow up their newsletter format. One story, one message, no grab bag. Thousands of subscribers followed.

Most agencies live in their lane. 
It's safer that way. For them.

We’re not like that.

After writing 2M+ words for B2B brands, here’s my (very opinionated) ranking of what makes content stick and buyers act:

1/10 - Grammar and spelling
Yes, clean it up. 
No, it won’t save a weak idea.

2/10 - Formatting
White space helps. 
But it doesn’t fix boring.

3/10 - Vocabulary and clever phrasing
Fun to write. 
Rarely the reason someone buys.

4/10 - Word count
Long doesn’t equal depth. 
Short doesn’t equal punch.

5/10 - Headline or hook
A strong opener earns the click. 
The body earns the trust.

6/10 - Point of view
Safe takes get safe results.
A clear stance earns attention.

7/10 - Proof
Metrics. Examples. Testimonials.
Now we’re getting somewhere.

8/10 - Pain
Name the problem. 
The one they vent about after the meeting.

9/10 - Stakes
What happens if nothing changes?
Missed targets. Blown budgets. Career risk.

10/10 - Empathy
Do they feel understood?
Do they think, “This person gets it?”



Most teams obsess over 1-5.
Deals get decided at 6-10.

That’s why Donna and I spend as much time inside the buyer’s world as we do inside the Google Doc.

We sit in on customer interviews. We join case study calls.
We comb through LinkedIn comment sections and debates.

Craft + psychology.
That’s the work.

Overrated: sounding smart on LinkedIn.
Underrated: sounding human on LinkedIn.

People have to know and like you before they'll trust you.

Human psychology 101. 
(yes, it applies to B2B)

Spotify gets it.

Most mornings, I queue up an audiobook for my morning dog walks or while scrubbing pancake batter out of a bowl.

But at night, after the kids are down, I'll grab a hardback copy of that same book and fall asleep turning pages in bed.

If the words are great, I want them everywhere. 
If they aren’t, it doesn’t matter how they’re presented. 

That’s why I’m still a true believer in the best of human writing. 

The 1% that soars above the rest. 

It works as audio.
It works on the page.
It works on a screen. 

Doesn’t matter if it’s genre fiction or a LinkedIn post.

Words win. 
And that’s still a smart bet.

“I apologize for such a long letter…” 





Mark Twain once said. “I didn't have time to write a short one."

A reminder for anyone who creates.

Great writing isn’t more, more, more.
It’s meaning.

And meaning takes time.

I love love love movies. But "CGI slop" is ruining them. Every new Marvel, Jurassic, or Fast flick looks like a blender full of pixels and lens flares. And we’re making the same mistake with AI-first content.

Case in point:
Jurassic Park (1993): 60 CGI shots, 100+ practical effects.
Jurassic World (2015): 2,000+ CGI shots.

One still makes me hold my breath. The other makes me reach for my phone.

Why? Because you feel the T-Rex in Jurassic Park.
I get goosebumps every single time.

These days, my LinkedIn feed is overflowing with AI-first content.
Technically fine. But it feels hollow.
So it doesn’t land.

But get this…

One of our ghostwriting clients took the opposite route.
No visuals. No AI polish. Just a human-written, text-only post anchored in a painful moment from her career.

The result?
700k+ impressions.
Inbound leads.
Conversations with decision-makers who felt like they knew her.

Not because it was flashy.
Because it was real.

And that formula is working in Hollywood too.

The Boy and the Heron won Best Animated Feature with hand-drawn frames.
Godzilla Minus One won Best VFX on a $15M budget (up against a Mission Impossible movie with a $291M budget).

While the big studios keep chasing pixels, these outliers zagged and won.

It’s a simple truth:

Doing what everyone else is doing has never worked in content.
That’s not changing anytime soon.

I understand maybe 12% of what’s said in an episode of The Pitt. But I’ll still argue with a stranger on the street if they tell me it isn’t the best show on television. 

It’s not the medicine. 

I’ve never watched ER, Grey’s, or House. 
I don’t really know what “intubate” means.
I couldn’t tell you whether blood pressure numbers are good or bad.

But dammit, if I’m not glued to every episode.

The characters. Their pressure. Their relationships. The choices they make when human lives are on the line. 

The show made me care about something I otherwise wouldn’t have given a single thought.

And now I’ve got a newfound appreciation for medical staff and the brutal reality they face every day. 

That’s the impact of story. 

And it’s not reserved for HBO showrunners.
B2B marketers have access to the same lever.

What’s the human tension behind this work?
What gets hard, messy, or risky for the people involved?
What’s at stake if it goes wrong?

Answer this, and you can turn “that’s not for me” into “I’ve got to see what happens next.” 

Powerful stuff.

Two ways people use AI to brainstorm (one makes your content better): 

1. Idea vending machine
You train an LLM on your target audience, then ask for ideas. You pick your favorite and start writing. 

2. Thinking out loud (w/ AI)
You train an LLM on your target audience, then ask for questions instead of ideas. You answer them and your angle shows up in the process. 

——

When I first started using ChatGPT, I leaned hard into option 1. 

Give me the ideas. Let’s ship.
Now now now.

Then I noticed a pattern:
- The ideas started to feel homogenous, samey
- Everyone was circling the same takes
- Writing from scratch felt… harder

The efficiency trap got me. 

AI became an industrial magnet, pulling my thinking toward the middle. And because I wasn't doing the heavy lifting, the idea side of my brain started to atrophy. 

Even when the words were mine, the thinking wasn’t.
And that hurt my content. 

So I switched to option 2. 

I stopped asking AI to think for me and started using it to think with me.

No staring at a blank page.
No outsourcing the hard part.
Just smart prompts and honest answers.

My ideas got sharper, and my brain started firing again. 

Now, I take it one step further. 

I run option 2 first, a Stephen-led brainstorm.
Then, once I’m locked in, I run option 1 and compare.

Did I drift toward the center?
What’s already been said to death?

I know I’m onto something when the contrast is sharp.

This is the best way I know to unearth ideas, outwrite anyone leaning too hard on AI, and avoid the dreaded sea of sameness. 




Content leadership starts with original thinking. 
AI should support it, not replace it.

*Sigh* No, TechCrunch, if you care that I hate pop-ups, don't hold my browser hostage and demand I sign up for your TWICE-DAILY email series to get rid of them. 

Want to call out the fact that pop-ups suck? 
Be honest. Make it witty. “Hey, our CMO made us do this.” 

But don't weaponize empathy. 

Don't pretend we're on the same team when you're the one causing the problem AND you're the only one who benefits. 

Yes, I hate pop-ups. 
But I hate this message more. 

🙅

AI broke content, right? Everyone sounds the same, right?

I'm joining Dorien today to talk about the path less traveled. How the smartest marketers x founders I know are using their empathy instincts and human voice to write things their audience actually wants to read. 

(Oh, and how they're using AI as an amplifier, not a replacement)

See you there!

Look who's talking with me this week? 
Stephen Mostrom, the damn smart marketer!

If you are struggling to stand out when using AI, this one's for you, and you and you and you.  

Live at 7 PM ET on 2/24, and of course, the replay will be available too if you can't make it live.

How to Outwrite AI: Ways to Keep Your Human Voice and Stand Out

Claude called me out on my sh*t yesterday, and I needed it. 

Lately, I've been ending every month by throwing my LinkedIn posts into a painstakingly-built Damn Smart Marketing strategist and asking questions.

Did my posts speak to buyers (or other content people)? 
Did my proof points earn the claims I was making?

Yesterday, I ran my February analysis and… uh oh. 

Exact words: "You're making the argument. You're not proving it. Your best content is sitting in your client work and you're leaving it on the table."

Truth is, my instinct has always been to let the work speak for itself. 

Talk less. Deliver more. Trust that the results will find their way into the right conversations.

In February, this instinct to avoid the “brag” took over without me realizing it. And it hurt my content. 

Because Donna and I have been in the trenches for years. 

We have metrics that prove our strategies work. 
Testimonials that prove our approach delivers.

And I wasn’t talking about it enough. 

So when I made an argument on LinkedIn, it didn’t have the lived-in umph that comes when you’re backed by years of experience. 

My posts risked sounding more like a talking head or an AI-first think piece. Not someone who’s been there, done that. 

No thanks. 

My gameplan moving into March: 

1 - Keep running monthly analysis. With an LLM that’s willing to push back, like Claude, you can spot LinkedIn gaps in seconds. 

2 - Lead with proof. In B2B, it’s the difference between sounding theoretical and sounding earned. 

3 - Learn, adapt, keep going. February's analysis stung. March's content will be better for it.

Now I’m off to dig up data for my next post. ✌️

Threads just handed users a temporary algo override. If LinkedIn gave me the same control, I’d filter out AI-first, generic content in a heartbeat.

And I know a lot of other folks who would do the same.

It's not realistic to hit "unfollow" over and over when your feed is 90% sameness. Who's got time for that?

So we either
1 - Hack through the weeds to find what matters
2 - Or spend less time on the platform

But if filtering became as easy as a natural language prompt...

That's new math. 

Sure, right now, Threads is front-loading examples like "more NBA" or "less politics." 

I’m more interested in what happens when users start prompting
“Less generic.”
“More original thinking.”
“Fewer AI-sounding posts.”

Give people a filter, and they’ll use it.

I have a feeling generic content will be the first to go.

taplio

The Battle

Jay Johnston

Stephen Mostrom

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The Battle

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