Michelle J Raymond

Business LinkedIn Trainer - B2B Marketers/Business Owners my LinkedIn G.R.O.W.T.H Masterclass & B2B Community Builder are your secret to growth. Company Page Expert. 2XLinkedIn Author.

Are you running your company’s LinkedIn strategy in-house and wondering how to improve your results? You know your audience is here, but the advice available can be confusing or unsuitable for your business.

👉 Why Most LinkedIn Advice Doesn’t Work for B2B
Most LinkedIn advice is too generic or focused on shortcuts that deliver little more than vanity metrics. Hacks and automation will not build trust or meaningful relationships and will not grow your business. 

👉 Build a Strategy That Fits YOUR Business
Whether you’re starting out looking for more engagement or ready to turn followers into business growth, I’ll design a strategy tailored to your goals, resources, and team. 

👉 What You’ll Get When We Work Together:
• Company Page Expertise: Turn your LinkedIn page into a community where your audience engages and your brand thrives.
• Profile Rewrites That Work: Showcase your team’s expertise and attract the right opportunities.
• Social Selling Training (G.R.O.W.T.H. Framework): Equip your team to build relationships, nurture trust, and sell without sounding salesy.

👉 Who I Work With
I partner with businesses globally that are driven to lead their industry. These businesses are open to new ideas, willing to invest time, and not looking for quick fixes. If that sounds like you, we’ll work well together.

👉 The Power of Two: Build Your Brand AND Your People
Your LinkedIn strategy should grow your business and empower your team. I focus on the Power of Two: building a strong company brand while helping your employees grow their personal brands. When these work together, you get exponential results.

👉 Here’s What Makes My Approach Stand Out:
• Tailored Solutions: Every business has different goals, resources, and challenges. I design strategies that fit your unique needs because one size never fits all.
• Ethical Expertise: I don’t rely on hacks, automation tools, or engagement pods. My approach is rooted in trust, relationship-building, and long-term success.
• Proven Results: With over two decades in B2B sales and social selling, I bring practical, actionable insights that drive real growth.

👉 Work With a Recognised LinkedIn Expert
• International LinkedIn speaker.
• 2 x Best Selling Author - Business Gold (Company Pages) and The LinkedIn Branding Book.
• Host of the Social Media for B2B Growth Podcast and cohost of The LinkedIn Branding Show.

Global LinkedIn Pages Expert - LinkedIn Strategist and Trainer - B2B Social Selling Consultant

Have you noticed you're no longer seeing posts from people you actually want to hear from? You're not imagining it, and this post is for you.  

B2B Marketers - LinkedIn changed how your Feed works, and here's what you need to know.

Backstory - LinkedIn Engineering team released a long technical blog about what and why. Because I'm a LinkedIn nerd, I've read it all, so you don't have to. You can thank me later. 

If you have been using LinkedIn for a long time, as I have, you probably viewed it as a professional networking platform. ie the "social" in social media was important to you. 

You connected with someone - you saw their posts. Simple. 

Going forward, things are different. 

The new AI doesn't just look at who you follow anymore.

⚠️ It reads what a post is actually about, then finds the right person to show it to. Whether they follow/connected with you or not.

The new feed learns in real time. 

Make good choices = good outcomes.
Lurk and take no action = LinkedIn controls your destiny. 

Think of it as a choose-your-own-adventure book. (I loved those books).

Things to understand - 
1) Clarity and alignment are crucial - Pages, Profiles and Posts all need to be coherent. What topics do you want to be known for? The more specific, the better! 
2) Every action you take eg content, profile update, connection, comment etc creates context for LinkedIn to change your feed within a few minutes. It's up to you to stay on track. 
3) Topics - topics drive everything. Pick 1-3 topics and stick with them. 

The reality is, LinkedIn's new system rewards expertise that is easy to understand and consistently demonstrated.

You don't need to post more.

You need to show up with more clarity.

The algorithm didn't get harder. It got smarter.

And now, so have you. 😀

So this week, no more scattered activity. Get back to your Game Plan and focus. If you don't have one? We need to talk.

Company Page Led Growth ​> Scale with employee advocacy on LinkedIn. Work with me - Company Page Management, Page Admin Training. Employee LinkedIn Training. #Timfluencer

You heard AI cites LinkedIn, so you thought more posting more was the answer...I hate to break it to you, but what might be popular on LinkedIn doesn't make it true. 

I wrote this article to dispel some myths because they have been driving me crazy. 

NB - All my secret SEO how-tos for LinkedIn are reserved for my paying clients. I've had enough of the "inspired by" crew stealing my stuff 😀

Feel free to Book an Intro call b2bgrowthco.com

A recent study by Semrush analysed more than 230,000 AI prompts and looked at which websites are most frequently cited in AI answers. One result immed

Open article: Why LinkedIn Is Being Cited by AI (And What Marketers Are Getting Wrong) by Michelle J Raymond • 4 min read

Why LinkedIn Is Being Cited by AI (And What Marketers Are Getting Wrong)

The way LinkedIn determines which posts you see in your feed has changed significantly, and I think it's important that marketers understand. 

It's a pretty full-on technical document, which I've done my best to simplify. 

What's most important to understand is that the Feed aims to determine which topics you are most likely to spend time on and engage with. 

Notice I said what TOPICS and not what people?

If you don't feed the beast the right info, you get a feed that is a waste of time and not enjoyable. 

Every action, almost in real time, adjusts what is shown in your personalised feed. 

Good actions > take you closer to where you want to be.
No actions > LinkedIn guesses (good luck with that).

This change explains why you don't see posts from people you like as much anymore - it's all about the topics. 

Do you like the change?

PS I save all the secret how-to stuff for my paying clients so that the "inspired by crew" don't steal it 😀

Big news. LinkedIn’s engineering team just released information on their new Feed system. Consider this your Dorothy moment, where we get to pull back

Open article: LinkedIn’s New Feed Explained: What B2B Marketers Need to Understand by Michelle J Raymond • 4 min read

LinkedIn’s New Feed Explained: What B2B Marketers Need to Understand

Tim Tam Tip - one thing I love as much as Tim Tams, is digging into Company Pages to figure out what’s holding back their success.

You’d be surprised what a fresh set of eyes, that isn’t too close to the action, can discover. 

Your Page should make it obvious -

What you do.

Who you do it for.

What makes you different.

When you eat, sleep and live the brand you make a lot of assumptions about how clear things are to strangers.

If your Page isn’t hitting your KPIs, rather than blame LinkedIn and the algorithm why not take back control send me a DM and we can set up a time to chat?

We can talk about how my Page Audit & Strategy can transform your Page results and free you up to focus on what matters in your business 😃

Happy Friday!

No alternative text description for this image

I can’t do a LinkedIn Audit & Strategy for your B2B in 30 seconds, for free, like an LLM. Nor do I ever want to.

To give you a B2B tailored LinkedIn strategy that will be effective for your business will take me time.

It will also take -

My 20+ years of B2B selling experience in my career.

My 10 years of social selling experience on LinkedIn.

My six years of Company Page focus and employee LinkedIn training.

It takes me time to ask the right questions to get to the right answers.

I takes me time researching what’s working and what’s not on LinkedIn.

I love the time it takes to experiment and do things others aren’t doing so your brand will stand out. 

It will take my experience combined with yours to come up with the solution you can implement sustainably over the long term.

When my clients work with me they go forward with confidence.

Not crossing their fingers and hoping ChatGPT is pointing them in the right direction when their gut tells them otherwise. 

Good things come to those who wait 😃

PS If you want to take time to ensure your business isn’t wasting time and money on an ineffective strategy you know where to find me.

🎉Tim Tam Tip - Company Pages AREN'T a waste of time! 
For years, I've been saying this, and now I have the data to back it up, thanks to the team at Dreamdata.

Turns out their research confirms something I’ve known in my gut for a long time 👉Your LinkedIn Company Page is a buying signal.

Here’s what they found:
• 9.4% of MQL journeys include a Company Page impression
• 15% of SQL stage journeys include a Company Page impression
• 17.9% of closed deals include a Company Page view

That’s nearly 1 in 5 deals where someone checked out the Company Page.

But wait, it gets even better than that (yes, really).

The average time from the first Company Page impression to a won deal is just 90 days.

As I've always shared in Page Admin training with clients, B2B buyers are looking beyond relationships with any one human. Especially on big deals that take time.  

This suggests buyers are visiting your Company Page during the evaluation phase.

They’re checking:
• Credibility
• Expertise
• Whether your company feels like the right partner

Combine this with Semrush research into AI citations, showing that Company Pages are more likely to be cited by Perplexity, and it's been a pretty great week for me on the Company Page front. 

Time to celebrate with a Tim Tam or two. 🎉

2026 - The Year B2B discovered new ways Company Pages contribute beyond the home feed. 

PS This photo was taken in 2024, when Liliane Abboud and I visited the Dreamdata office in Copenhagen, met the team and traded Tim Tams for Danish butter cookies. 😀

If you want access to the full report, head to their company page or website to find the details.

Firstly - this one is a long one. But it's also as long as it needs to be, so you are up to date with the latest research and how to interpret it. 

Secondly - things change quickly. New research will come. Often, research conflicts with each other, so take it all with a grain of salt.

Thirdly - the answer is always to get back to marketing fundamentals. 

Fourthly (is that a word?) - if you want to optimise your B2B's LinkedIn presence for AI citation, I can help. 

Fifthly - I love that the research backs what I've always said - your Company Pages is important for things beyond just impressions. Go the Power of Two.

And then.....and then.... and no and then... (this one's for Susie Steed and anyone else who loves a good dated movie reference. 🤣)

In my previous article, I explored how marketers can increase their chances of being cited in AI answers using LinkedIn. "Why LinkedIn Is Being Cited 

Open article: LinkedIn and AI Citations: What the Latest Research Really Means for B2B Marketers by Michelle J Raymond • 5 min read

LinkedIn and AI Citations: What the Latest Research Really Means for B2B Marketers

Is it time to put some love back into your LinkedIn Company Page? Let's look at the pros and cons of internal management vs outsourcing. 

Working with clients and their Pages over the last 6 years, I've seen both ways be successful. Like everything, there isn't a one-size-fits-all. 

I'm writing this now because there is a lot going on in marketing. 

Headcounts and budgets are being slashed. 
Platforms are delivering less and less organic reach. 
Marketers are being asked to become experts across more and more. 

If you're struggling and your LinkedIn Page growth is on your KPI's but way down your list of fun things to do....this one's for you 😀

If you’re part of a B2B marketing team or business leader responsible for your brand’s LinkedIn Company Page, this question has probably crossed your 

Open article: Outsourcing LinkedIn Company Page Management vs Managing Internally: What’s Right for Your B2B Team? by Michelle J Raymond • 4 min read

Outsourcing LinkedIn Company Page Management vs Managing Internally: What’s Right for Your B2B Team?

⚠️You can't just dump content on your social team at the last minute and expect it to perform. This is one of the great insights from Melissa Dawson, Senior Corporate Social Media at WD, about what it takes for high-performing corporate social.

Melissa has helped transform WD's corporate social presence, growing their audience by 30% and driving 83M+ impressions.

This has been through a combination of organic and paid, company page and employee advocacy.  

Thanks, Melissa Dawson, for sharing your practical hands-on experience with the podcast listeners.
 
If you want more out of LinkedIn for your business, this episode is for you! 

Let's all just agree, no last-minute dumping, you want something posted on the social team going forward 🤣

High-performing corporate social on LinkedIn is not about going viral. It is not about one big post, and it is definitely not about being handed a fin

Open article: Why Most Corporate B2B LinkedIn Strategies Underperform by Michelle J Raymond • 5 min read

Why Most Corporate B2B LinkedIn Strategies Underperform

Enragement gets engagement. But on its own? That’s just performative noise we don’t need.

The LinkedIn posts that really land combine two things:
Enragement + empathy.

✋ Enragement stops the scroll.
 💘 Empathy makes the message feel true for the people you want to reach.

That’s the difference between a post people react to, and a post people recognise themselves in.

I love working with Patricia Romboletti to share her important messages on LinkedIn for those in career transition.

It takes courage to share a strong point of view.
It takes heart to take a stand for others.

700+ likes
  65 comments
  41 reposts
 (and counting).

Because when people feel like someone is speaking up for them…
They don’t just react.
They rally.

So if you want engagement, sure enragement helps.

But if you want real impact, make sure people know exactly who you’re standing up for.

That's the kind of LinkedIn I wish for more of. How about you?

PS Time for a Tim Tam to celebrate this message resonating far and wide.

Michelle J Raymond with a giant Tim Tam box. 

Slack channel. Drop your post. Everyone go like and comment.
Is that employee advocacy? Or just an engagement pod with payroll?

I saw this called out recently as “bad marketing”.

The idea being that your audience should decide if the content is good, not your coworkers. And I get that to a degree. 

If the only people engaging are your team, what does that actually say?

But I think it's more nuanced than this.

Organic reach is getting more difficult. I believe LinkedIn is a team sport and
teams should support each other.

So the issue for me isn’t the coordination.

It's intent.

There’s a difference between amplifying good ideas and ticking a box because you feel like you have to.

One builds credibility, and the other just looks busy.

So a simple test: If your employee advocacy program disappeared tomorrow… would anyone outside your company notice?

This has been fun for me to ponder. Penny for your thoughts.

I saw a LinkedIn post recently that stopped me mid-scroll. It called out a company for asking employees to drop their posts into Slack, so the team co

Open article: Is Employee Advocacy Just an Engagement Pod With a Company Logo? by Michelle J Raymond • 5 min read

Is Employee Advocacy Just an Engagement Pod With a Company Logo?

Fun things you find amongst your 41,000+ photos on your phone. This was used in a LinkedIn post July 2021.

Back then my business had a completely different name.

I hadn’t done the rebrand (or should I say brand) and set up branding guidelines. 

Before I had professional photos (that one I took in the garden and removed the background)

Before I had another 5 years of learning and experience.

But the message is till the same - B2B buyers are online - your teams need to be too.

‼️More important - have fun and just post.

You never know where you’ll be in 5 years if you just get started. 😃

PS It’s more fun to watch if you play with sound. Dare you not to smile.

Is B2B marketing serving customers…or dashboards? 🤔

You know I've been on a mission on the podcast to get us back to marketing fundamentals and focus on customers. 

After reading Moni Oloyede's Substack and enjoying her content I knew she was exactly the right person to help us get back to "good marketing".

Together we challenge the metrics-first mindset that dominates marketing that is causing the drift away from customers. 

From MQL obsession to marketing attribution and misunderstood buyer behaviour, this conversation questions what we’ve prioritised and what it’s costing us.

If you’re responsible for LinkedIn strategy, demand generation, brand or pipeline this episode will make you think differently.

Are you a marketer that's been caught in the tug of war between dashboards and what you know you works?

Marketing was never meant to be a reporting function and yet, for many B2B teams, that is exactly what it has become. If you're measured on followers,

Open article: Has B2B Marketing Lost Its Way? Rethinking MQLs, Attribution and Customer Focus by Michelle J Raymond • 4 min read

Has B2B Marketing Lost Its Way? Rethinking MQLs, Attribution and Customer Focus

If you remember 90s work motivational posters, you’ve probably survived more than a few “this changes everything” moments in marketing.

Websites were the future.
Then SEO.
Then social.
Then inbound.
Then growth hacks.
Now AI.

LinkedIn is no different.

Every year, there’s a new feature, a new format, a new “secret” to visibility.

But here's the thing -

✅Visibility doesn’t replace positioning.
✅Features don’t replace clarity.
✅Activity doesn’t replace strategy.

LinkedIn hasn’t changed the marketing fundamentals.

It still rewards brands that understand:
 • Who they’re for
 • What problem do they solve
 • Why they’re different
 • How they build brand recognition over time

The real advantage on LinkedIn isn’t chasing every update.

It’s knowing which ones support your strategy and ignoring the rest.

Confused which is which? That's what I'm here for. 

I work with marketers to give them confidence in their LinkedIn strategies. 

Question: Which of these images would you put up in your office as a reminder to always stick to marketing fundamentals? 😂

90s Social Media Workplace Inspo

It's a huge ditto from me Moni Oloyede! Know Thy Customer should be the number one commandment of every marketing strategy, which then informs your business's LinkedIn strategy. 

Everything else is a distraction or means you aren't building on a solid foundation. 

I loved recording this podcast episode because it was all about getting back to the fundamentals of good marketing.

I really enjoy Moni's content because she makes me think. Unafraid to go against the popular opinion. (Check her featured section for the YT video on marketing attribution being a scam for some more fun 😀)

Check out the full episode on Social Media for B2B Growth Podcast.

Where is the line between employee advocacy and engagement pod? 
Something I try and answer is this week's podcast, after a post today caught my attention (I'd share it, but I got blocked - yes really)

Blue Corner - A company shares its smart marketing strategy of dropping the link in a Slack channel and encouraging the team to swarm the post. The goal is to increase reach. 

Red Corner - Someone calling this out as practically an engagement pod, and that they should let the real audience determine the quality of the content. This is just artificial inflation. 

I can see both sides to this argument. 

On the one hand, I absolutely encourage teams to work together. Scaling your brand with employee advocacy is literally in my headline. 

On the other hand, I take the point that this actually stops the person from learning what does/doesn't resonate with their audience. 

Penny for your thoughts to help me work through this one...

When a company drops a post link in Slack and asks the whole team to go like it, that's...

The author can see how you vote. Learn more

Krista Mollion

Last Business Coach You'll Ever Need I 100% Activator + Rebel 💥 Blow Up Your Solopreneur Business By Joining Profitable Solopreneur/MBA/Accelerator 🚀 Free Masterclass: Path To 10k+ Months 🎯 Content AI Workshop 5/10🧠

What worked at $1M strains at $5M.
What carried you to $8M may stop working at $15M.

Different symptoms.
Same root cause.

Revenue feels harder
Pipeline inconsistent
CAC creeping up
Forecast moving every month

You’ve reached a GTM bottleneck.

Pipeline is active.
Sales is working.
Marketing is producing.

Yet the number shifts.

Your revenue system hasn’t evolved with the company.

That’s where I operate.

I operate at the layer before marketing and sales execution to redesign the system leaders execute within.

I prepare growth-stage companies for structural maturity and turn forecast fragility into defensible revenue.

Predictability is not about slowing down.
It’s about removing growth drag.
When structure matures, growth compounds instead of depending on intensity.

 I work primarily with founder-led B2B SaaS companies between $8–30M ARR, and selectively with earlier-stage companies preparing for scale to stabilize forecasts in 90 days by aligning positioning, demand, conversion, and operating rigor to the company’s next stage.

The tension looks different at each level:

Early Stage ($500k–$8M)
• Activity without concentration
• Offers without pricing power
• Pipeline without predictability

Mid-Stage ($8–$30M)
• CAC expansion
• Longer cycles
• Forecast volatility
• Capital efficiency pressure

Revenue feels harder because the system hasn’t matured.

I install Predictable Revenue Systems aligned to your next stage — not your last one.

So forecasts hold.
So capital compounds.
So growth becomes controllable.

How I Work

Predictable Revenue Foundations™
For $500k–$8M B2B SaaS.
Install the first disciplined GTM engine.

Predictable Revenue Reset™
For $8–30M B2B SaaS.
Private 90-day structural intervention for forecast stability.

Selective Fractional CMO & Advisory available post-engagement.

If you’re a founder who wants structural control — not more activity — we should talk.

20+ years rebuilding revenue systems across US & EMEA.
Founder-led. Operator-minded. Board-ready.


Fractional CMO + Chief Creative Disruptor for SaaS Brands

Attention is currency and it is our mission to get you more of it. 

We design creative, AI-driven, digital and influencer marketing campaigns For micro brands with macro goals

Another International Women’s Day is quietly here.

Some people celebrate it.
Some people roll their eyes at it.
And many probably didn’t even realize it is today.

For some, it’s an important day of recognition.

For others, it feels like a fringe holiday — something associated with radical feminism or corporate virtue signaling.

But after two decades working in SaaS, I think the conversation around women in the workplace is still missing something important.

The problem isn’t women — it’s the environment they’re expected to navigate.

And if you’ve spent years working inside corporate environments, you probably know exactly what I mean.

Over the years I saw patterns many women in tech will recognize.

I remember sitting in conference rooms where I was the only woman at the table.

Sometimes the conversation was productive.

But other times there was a different dynamic — a kind of unspoken pack behavior where ideas were challenged in ways that simply didn’t happen when another man presented them.

And then there were the quieter things.

Comments about appearance that male colleagues never received.

Important deals and relationships forming in informal environments where women weren’t present.

High-visibility opportunities quietly shifting away from women during pregnancy or early motherhood because leaders assumed they wouldn’t be available.

None of this was usually overt hostility.

In fact, if you asked the men involved, many would genuinely say they support women in leadership.

That’s what makes it so difficult to address.

The bias is often subtle, cultural, and largely unconscious.

So when I hear “women should just be more bold,” I think we’re missing half the conversation.

Encouraging women to raise their hand is good advice.

But we also have to look honestly at how opportunity and influence actually flow inside organizations.

Because if the table itself is shaped by a culture that excludes people, telling them to “take a seat” doesn’t solve the problem.

Sometimes the real solution is changing the room.

And sometimes the most rational response is exactly what many women have done:

Build their own tables.

Interestingly, in my consulting work today, most of the founders I end up working with are still men.

I would genuinely love to see more women building and scaling ambitious companies — because the ecosystem becomes stronger when more perspectives are at the table.

Curious to hear from others:
Do we still underestimate how much workplace culture — not individual confidence — shapes who actually succeeds?

You’ve scaled. So why does revenue still feel fragile? I fix the revenue engine when growth stalls (8-30M ARR) | 20+ yrs scaling SaaS revenue systems | Growth, GTM, Marketing Leader | Creator of the 90-Day Revenue Reset™

You will fire your CMO.

If you haven’t already.

Not because they lack talent.

Because you demanded activity before architecture.

The numbers should make you uneasy:

CMOs have the highest turnover in the C-suite.

In SaaS, average tenure is 18–24 months.
In non-SaaS, it rarely exceeds four years.

That isn’t random.

If month one with your marketing leadership feels like campaigns and execution, risk is already compounding.

If by week two of hiring a new CMO, you say:

“We need campaigns live this month.”

You have just wasted capital.

Because month one is diagnosing revenue architecture.

It defines:

• who owns revenue decisions
• how marketing and sales align
• which targets survive financial scrutiny
• what remains unfunded

And at least two more months in most cases to fix it and re-build it right.

This is where trade-offs get enforced.

Most companies skip it.

Common breakdowns surface fast:

• decision-right confusion
• sequencing gaps
• incentive drift

Layer execution onto that and spend rises.

Alignment doesn’t.

Thirty-day execution is easy to generate.

Twelve-month compounding requires proper foundational revenue architecture design.

So here’s the uncomfortable question:

When you hired your CMO,

did you first design the system for them to operate in —

or did you set them up to burn out so you can rotate to the next one and pretend they failed?

Recycling leadership is not a growth strategy and it doesn't look good on you.

If you've burned through multiple CMOs, it's not them.

It’s the CEO's failure to design a role where marketing leaders can thrive.

Revenue Architect for Scaling B2B SaaS | Designing the systems behind predictable revenue: ICP • Positioning • Pricing • Pipeline Creator of the 90-Day Revenue Reset™ Founder, Unignorable Brands

“Community” is being sold as strategy.

Private groups.
Inner circles.
Founder clubs.

Belonging packaged as growth infrastructure.

Here’s the problem.

Most of it is retention design.

High-touch onboarding.
Constant engagement.
Emotional language.

Until the invoice stops.

Then the signal drops.

Mid-market operators don’t need belonging mechanics.

They need:

• durable relationships
• performance accountability
• long-term trust beyond contract cycles

If the relationship only exists while money flows,
it’s distribution — not partnership.

I don’t sell community.

I build working relationships that survive the contract.

That’s harder to scale.

It’s also harder to fake.

Question for operators:

Do your partnerships survive renewal cycles —
or depend on them?

The fastest promotion in marketing history:

Intern → Director → “Good luck.”

No team.
No budget.
No authority.
Just a bigger title and higher expectations.

Titles are cheap.
Revenue risk is not.

This is how companies accidentally create fragility at $8–15M ARR.

They promote execution talent
without redesigning decision rights, capital allocation, or enterprise motion.

Then when growth stalls…

They blame “marketing.”

Nothing here is malicious.

It’s structural.

Founders:

If you want senior outcomes, you must design senior roles:

• Clear revenue layer ownership
• Budget authority
• CRO integration
• Forecast accountability
• Training (if promoted)

Otherwise you’re not building leadership.

You’re increasing risk.

Most enterprise SaaS ceilings aren’t demand problems.

They’re leadership design problems.

Founder @Unignorable Brands | Predictable Revenue CMO for Founder-Led B2B SaaS ($8–30M ARR) | From Forecast Volatility → Stability in 90 Days | Accelerate and Compound Growth

Replacing a GTM leader feels decisive.

Boards like decisive.

It signals control.
It signals accountability.
It signals movement.

But most resets don’t fix growth.

They reset the clock.

Not because the leader was incompetent.

Because the revenue architecture never changed.

If:

• The ICP economics are inflated
• Decision rights are unclear
• Capital allocation logic shifts quarter to quarter
• Sales capacity doesn’t match segment reality

Rotating leaders won’t compound growth.

It compounds volatility.

Every replacement quietly erodes:

• Forecast credibility
• Institutional memory
• Marginal CAC efficiency
• 2–3 quarters of execution momentum

Churn creates the appearance of discipline.

Structural clarity creates operating leverage.

Leadership replacement is visible.

Revenue architecture work isn’t.

That’s why one gets applause.

And the other gets deferred.

If you keep replacing leaders that don't drive results, it's likely your revenue volatility is a structural design problem, not a talent problem.

The hidden 18–24 month cost most companies never calculate There’s a familiar moment in many companies when growth stalls. Pipeline slows. Forecasts w

Open article: Why Replacing Leaders Rarely Fixes GTM by Krista Mollion • 4 min read

It’s easier to add 50K followers than to fix inconsistent pipeline.

That’s why so many B2B founders double down on visibility.

Here’s the uncomfortable part:

You can grow fast.
You can go viral.
You can build a big audience.

And still have:
• Unpredictable pipeline
• Discount pressure
• Slipping deals

Because it’s easy to build an audience.

It’s hard to build the right audience.

In this article, I break down:
– The real ways to grow quickly
– Why most founders grow the wrong room
– What buyer gravity actually looks like
– And how visibility quietly misallocates capital

Growth is easy.

Alignment is rare.

If you care about revenue more than applause, this one’s for you.

The hidden cost of building attention that doesn’t convert It’s easier to add 50K followers than to fix inconsistent pipeline. That’s why so many B2B 

Open article: How to Grow From 0 to 50K Followers in Under a Year (On Any Platform) by Krista Mollion • 4 min read

How to Grow From 0 to 50K Followers in Under a Year (On Any Platform)

"We tried marketing.”

At $8–15M ARR, that statement is often accurate.

You probably did:

• Hire an agency
• Launch paid ads
• Redesign the website
• Invest in content
• Add SDRs

And growth still didn’t stabilize.

The issue usually isn’t effort.

It’s sequence.

Marketing applied before:

• ICP compression
• Clear ownership
• Capital pacing logic
• Incentive alignment
• Governance over trade-offs

Execution inside structural ambiguity compounds noise.

Not revenue.

Marketing doesn’t fail because it was tried.

It fails because it was layered on top of an undefined system.

That’s not a talent issue.

It’s architecture.

What Really Failed When Marketing Didn’t Work You’ve probably said this at least once. “We tried marketing.” “It didn’t really work.” “We spent a lot 

Open article: Why “We Tried Marketing” Is Usually True — and Still Misleading by Krista Mollion • 4 min read

Why “We Tried Marketing” Is Usually True — and Still Misleading

This line has been quietly following me around lately:

“What I’m not changing, I’m choosing.”

For a long time, I thought “not changing” meant being:
patient
thoughtful
responsible
realistic

I blamed timing.
Circumstances.
Life.

I told myself I was waiting for “the right moment.”

Now I see it differently.

Most of the time, not changing is about fear.
About passivity.
About avoiding discomfort.

We stay broke because learning to make money is hard.
We neglect our health because excuses are easier than discipline.
We stay in bad jobs and bad relationships far longer than we should.

Because change is scary.

Humans are wired to avoid risk.
To stay small.
To not place bets.

So we wait.

We tell ourselves we’ll deal with it “later.”
When things are calmer.
When we’re more confident.
When we feel ready.

But later rarely comes.

There were so many things I thought I’d still have time to say to my dad.
Then he died.

So many places I wanted to see.
Then work and kids arrived.
And “maybe later” became never.

What comes instead is repetition.

The same patterns.
The same frustrations.
The same quiet knowing that something is wrong.

A loop.

And slowly, that becomes your life.

Not through one big decision.
Not through one dramatic failure.

Through thousands of small delays.

A quiet choice.
Made daily.

And once you see that…

You can’t unsee it.

Where in your life are you choosing by staying the same?

And when will you decide you’re done waiting?

At $10M+, attribution debates aren’t marketing arguments.

They’re governance leaks.

When leadership fights over “what drove the deal,”
they’re not debating dashboards.

They’re exposing confusion about how growth actually works.

Credit fights don’t start in Salesforce.

They start when:

• Capital allocation logic is fuzzy
• Influence isn’t defined
• Decision rights are politically negotiated

The model explains the click.

It doesn’t explain conviction.

Revenue confidence forms long before the tracked touchpoint.
Before the demo.
Before the opportunity.

If attribution arguments resurface every quarter,
it’s not a reporting issue.

It’s a trust issue.

Incomplete data is survivable.

Incomplete alignment corrodes quietly.

And when capital decisions rely on partial models,
risk doesn’t explode.

It accumulates.

Attribution isn’t a marketing layer.

It’s a board-level question:

What counts as influence —
and who has authority to define it?

Full breakdown here →

What Attribution Can’t Explain About How Deals Actually Get Done You’ve probably been asked this in a meeting: “What actually drove this deal?” You pu

Open article: Why Attribution Keeps Failing (Spoiler: It’s Not a Tools Problem) by Krista Mollion • 4 min read

Why Attribution Keeps Failing (Spoiler: It’s Not a Tools Problem)

Most founders experience marketing as lead generation.

That makes sense — leads are the most visible output.

But when pipeline looks active and decisions still stall, leads aren’t the real problem.

Marketing’s real job is decision acceleration.

If a qualified buyer can’t confidently say yes or no within one sales cycle, something is broken — and it’s rarely Sales.

Here’s where marketing actually earns its keep:

At the founder level
Marketing reduces decision friction.
Clear positioning. Clear tradeoffs. Fewer “we need to think about it” loops.

At the revenue / board level
Marketing makes the risk math explicit.
Risk vs. status quo. Risk vs. delay.
Boards don’t approve stories — they approve defensible decisions.

At the execution level
If uncertainty around price, value, or switching costs isn’t resolved quickly, friction wins.

Awareness doesn’t close deals.
Clarity does.

And the hardest competitor you’re always up against?

The status quo.

If this feels familiar, marketing probably isn’t broken.
It’s just not designed around how buying decisions actually get made.

Marketing only feels expensive when it’s doing the wrong job.

When:

– it can’t clearly explain its impact
– it produces motion without reducing risk
– it optimizes channels before defining direction

That isn’t a talent issue.

It’s a leadership design failure.

When governance is explicit, marketing behaves like capital allocation.

When governance is loose, marketing feels like overhead.

The budget didn’t create the discomfort.

Ambiguity did.

Compounding depends on which system you built.

How cost becomes the symptom of role confusion Marketing starts to feel expensive when every dollar requires explanation — and effort elsewhere doesn’

Open article: Why Marketing Feels Expensive When It’s Doing the Wrong Job by Krista Mollion • 4 min read

Why Marketing Feels Expensive When It’s Doing the Wrong Job

Bad news for many.

Your ideal client is not seeing your LinkedIn posts.

They probably don’t know you exist.

The “post consistently and the algorithm will reward you” advice?

It works.

For employees.

LinkedIn was built for:
• job seekers
• recruiters
• corporate teams
• enterprise sellers

The algorithm clusters by function.

Marketers see marketers.
HR sees HR.
Founders see founders.

So when you post about marketing?

LinkedIn shows it to other marketers.

Great for peer visibility.

Terrible for revenue if your buyers sit outside your function.

You’re building authority in the wrong room.

And celebrating engagement from people who will never buy.

Revenue isn’t driven by volume.

It’s driven by precision.

So be honest:

Are your buyers seeing you —

or just your competitors?

Comment “ALGO” if you want the fix.

Growth at $10M feels very different than growth at $2M.

Earlier stages run on instinct:

• speed
• conviction
• hustle
• rapid iteration

Mid-stage runs on structure:

• defined decision rights
• explicit sequencing
• capital discipline
• constrained focus

Instinct carries you through early expansion.

Structure determines whether growth continues.

 In the early stages of growth, scrappy works.
 
Mid-stage, scrappy becomes dangerous.

The companies that break through define:

• who decides
• what gets funded
• what stops
• what qualifies

Mid-stage rewards sharper decisions, not more activity.

Structure compounds.

Instinct exhausts.

Which system is driving your company right now?

HubSpot isn’t making a mistake.

It’s doing exactly what every successful SaaS company eventually does.

It’s moving upmarket.

Almost every SaaS platform starts the same way.

They welcome small businesses.

Freelancers.
Consultants.
Small teams.

Low-cost tiers make the platform accessible and help it spread quickly.

But as the platform matures, the strategy changes.

Pricing rises.
Partner programs evolve.
Enterprise customers become the focus.

HubSpot is simply the latest example.

The company is sunsetting its low-cost partner tier and replacing it with a paid program starting around $400/month.

For freelancers and small consultancies that built their practices around the platform, that’s a big shift.

But the bigger story here isn’t HubSpot.

It’s the SaaS lifecycle.

Platforms often start with small companies — and gradually move upmarket as they grow.

I wrote a short breakdown of what’s happening and what it means for smaller companies trying to build their revenue systems. 👇

Curious to hear from founders and operators:

Has HubSpot become overkill for smaller companies?

The moment you realize
you have to explain your own account history again
to every new representative…

the system is already broken.

I learned this the hard way during what has become the most disorganized service experience I’ve ever had with a financial provider.

Like many entrepreneurs, I decided last year to upgrade how I handled my bookkeeping and taxes.

I wanted an all-in-one service — bookkeeping, tax advisory, and filing — supported by a modern platform to keep everything organized.

Like many founders, I was simply trying to simplify something that had become too complex to manage alone.

From the outside, everything looked solid.

The company’s website highlights that it serves 35,000+ small business owners, which gave me confidence I was choosing an established provider.

Instead, over the next nine months I was handed off between at least 12 different people.
(I eventually created a list just to keep track.)

Meetings were missed.
Emails went unanswered.
Conversations had to be repeated.

Around that time the company itself was going through a major transition following an acquisition.

That’s when I realized this wasn’t just a communication issue — it was a systems problem.

At some point I realized I had become the project manager of my own tax filing — coordinating teams that were supposed to be coordinating with each other.

The real breaking point came when my taxes were filed three months late.

And then I discovered something worse.

They had been filed in the wrong state.

I primarily live in Europe, which had been clearly discussed multiple times.

When I asked for the return to be amended, a correction was drafted — but no one could clearly explain the next steps or walk through the changes.

Weeks passed.

As of today — March 2026 — my 2024 filing still hasn’t been finalized.

I had also paid for tax advisory services described as helping “maximize tax savings.”
Unfortunately, I never received that part of the service.

As an operator, experiences like this are fascinating because they reveal where systems inside a company are actually breaking down.

In this case, the disconnect appeared to span multiple layers — sales, customer service, bookkeeping, and tax advisory — operating in parallel rather than together.

As a marketer, it’s also a reminder that the brand promise communicated in marketing and sales must ultimately match the experience customers receive.

For clarity, I’ve kept a full record of the calls, emails, and timelines.

I’ve also reached out privately to leadership in hopes this can finally be resolved.

At this point my goal is straightforward:

finish the 2024 filing correctly so I can move forward with 2025.

Has anyone else experienced something like this with a service provider?

For now, I’m hoping this situation can be closed out the right way.

As of today, I’m still waiting.

Wish me luck.

At $10M ARR, pipeline isn’t driven by effort.

It’s driven by capital design.

Marketing at this stage is not creativity.

It’s capital allocation.

If you hire a CMO but:

• Don’t fund demand
• Don’t fund enablement
• Don’t fund analytics
• Don’t fund positioning
• Don’t define revenue ownership

You didn’t build a growth engine.

You installed constraints and called it leadership.

Some CMOs aren’t underperforming.

They’re operating inside undercapitalized systems.

Boards don’t blame engineering for missed velocity when headcount is thin.

But marketing gets graded on pipeline — regardless of what was funded to produce it.

Pipeline isn’t just output.

It’s a funding signal.

When pipeline weakens, the first question shouldn’t be:
“What is marketing doing?”

It should be:
“What did we actually finance?”

Growth follows capital clarity.

Operators — be honest:

Are you evaluating performance?

Or revealing flaws in your capital architecture?

I saw a job posting this week for a VP GTM reporting to the CRO.

The responsibilities?
Positioning. Messaging. Demand generation. Category narrative. Monetization strategy. Conversion and expansion.

That's not a GTM role. That's a CMO.

Here's what's actually happening:

Marketing is being collapsed into sales — repackaged under a "GTM" label so it sounds more revenue-connected.

The job description explicitly distances itself from "Head of Marketing." As if that title is a lesser thing. But then every task listed IS marketing leadership.

The distinction being drawn isn't functional. It's perceptual.

And that perception is doing real damage.


Sales and marketing are not the same function.

→ Sales owns the deal. Marketing owns the market.
→ Sales converts demand. Marketing creates it.
→ Sales closes pipeline. Marketing architects it.
→ Sales wins the customer. Marketing builds the category that makes winning possible.

They have to be tightly aligned. They have to work closely together. But they are distinctly different ownerships with distinctly different skill sets.

When you take every marketing responsibility and hand it to a sales leader, you don't get efficiency. You get a revenue org that can close but can't compound.

No category narrative. No long-term demand architecture. No brand equity. Just activity masquerading as strategy.


If your company needs someone who owns positioning, narrative, demand, and monetization strategy — that's your marketing leader.

Call it CMO. Call it Revenue Architect. Call it Head of Marketing.

But don't bury it under Sales and pretend the function doesn't exist.

Marketing isn't collapsing into sales. But some companies are choosing to pretend it is — and they'll feel the cost of that when growth stalls and nobody can explain why.

What's your read — are we watching marketing get absorbed, or just mislabeled?

When SaaS companies reach about $8M–$20M ARR, a strange pattern appears.

Revenue becomes unpredictable.

The first instinct is to fix what’s closest to the numbers.

More leads.
More outbound.
More sales hires.
More tools.

But those fixes often sit at the bottom of the system.

And that’s where companies waste the most time.

Most revenue problems actually start higher up the stack.

Things like:

• an ICP that was never clearly defined
• positioning that drifted as the company grew
• pricing that no longer reflects where the product sits in the market

When those layers are unclear, everything downstream becomes harder:

Pipeline quality drops.
Sales cycles stretch.
Forecasting becomes unreliable.

Marketing and sales teams end up working harder inside a system that was never fully designed.

That’s what I call Revenue Architecture.

The structure of how a company actually turns demand into predictable revenue.

The framework below is a simple way to visualize it.

Most companies try to fix problems at the bottom.

But the root cause usually sits two or three layers above.

Curious — where do you see companies spending most of their time trying to fix growth?

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