Nate Stoltenow

Humble Co.

We grow B2B companies
Pipeline - Process - Coaching ➡️ DM me for a consultation

CRO & Founder

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Helping B2B Companies Grow Revenue

➜ Two decades of B2B sales expertise
➜ $2B+ in pipeline generated
➜ 11+ million cold emails sent
➜ Closed won deals with billion dollar brands like (Garmin, The North Face, New Balance, UA, OfferUp, + more)
➜ 5,275+ booked meetings
➜ 4,150+ deals created
➜ 215+ meetings with LinkedIn content

I don't have a MBA or a degree in marketing; the single most sought after qualification in most job descriptions. 

I'm a self-taught marketer. I spent the first six years of my career writing code and managing projects in the education & finance sectors before transitioning to digital marketing. I watched a ton of  YouTube videos to learn the nuances, followed sub-reddits for SEO hacks, joined Slack communities, got my hands dirty building 4 websites, and listened to hours of marketing strategy Podcasts to stay abreast on tools.  

And experiment with tactics based on what I see and hear. The curiosity to learn, double down on what works, and the willingness to unlearn what doesn't keeps me going.

Here are a few things you can rely on me for:

B2C Marketplace-led Product SEO (12M+ MAU)
- help companies meet revenue goals and increase margins through organic channels
- an analytical marketer who dons an investigative hat everyday for growth ideas, RCAs and read between the pixels of what Google is up to
- grow your organic channel through product and content marketing 
- leverage agentic AI to automate workflows and scale data points 
- being hands on with Python + tech to take the heavy lifting off engineering + analytics team

Emote like a customer:
- to use messaging/storytelling that best resonates with them
- to make the customer journey efficient
- to increase conversion and retention

Leverage technology for automation:
- Whatsapp automation dramatically increases engagement/conversion rates as do automated e-mails
 
Leadership 
- Building and managing a marketing team. 
- I owe all my success and learning to working with great teams across organizations 
- Experience in sourcing and managing agencies  
   
If you've read this far, it's about time to reveal why I didn't pursue Masters.

Fun fact #1: I studied in 10 different schools across states, boards and countries for Grades 1 to 12. Grade 8, 9, 10, 11 and 12 were all in different schools. 

I'd had enough. So by the time I got to my final year of engineering, I decided to not go back to traditional schooling.

Paradox of change. 

Strangely, learning did not stop. I enrolled for the CFA program and more recently, a program on digital marketing from MICA. 

Fun fact #2: Why marketing as a career choice? My first choice was UPSC. Marketing happened by accident. I loved it so much that I was hungry to learn more. Feeds the analytical brain + need for creativity.

Lakshmi Nagarajan

I kept my lunch bag on my desk. 

It tipped over. 
The glass boxes shattered. 
Lunch was all over the floor. 

I stood there - disproportionately embarrassed by something so small. 
But the clumsiness didn’t start there. 
It began at 7:15 a.m. 

Whitefield to Koramangala. And back. For two years. 
I clocked a conservative 150 minutes on the road. Every day. 
I had made peace with it. It was a choice I made when I took the job.
And somehow, when stress is self-chosen, we tolerate it longer.
Most days, I was the first one at the office.

That morning in April when this happened, I couldn’t find a cab. 
Multiple cancellations. A late start. Longer traffic. 

I reached office at 9:45 a.m. - already behind. 
Nothing dramatic happened that day. 
Just small frictions. One after another. 

Irony is, stress doesn’t explode. It accumulates. 

Over time it showed up as: 
  – a bad gut 
  – frequent colds 
  – constant shoulder pain 

I used to think “stress” was an exaggerated word doctors liked to use. 
Until I lived it. 
I wasn’t alone.
I saw it around me too: migraines, fevers, gut issues, anxiety, sleep disorder.

We underestimate how much our environment taxes our nervous system. 

Infrastructure affects mood.
Mood affects health. 
In the long run.

Now that I think of it, the shattered glass wasn’t the problem. 
Two years of normalizing that friction was.

p.s. Nitisha Bansal's views on her reservation about eating out triggered this post.

Building chocochip.ai & talktoemme.com | Product-Led SEO for Marketplaces | Ex-Practo

Vivek Nath has a story he tells often. Almost every time the topic of jobs and careers comes up.

When he was in his third year of college, his father said: "If you get an MBA admit, I'll fund it."

If you think it was encouragement, it wasn't. It was his way of saying - beta, get your act together (may I add, rightfully so). In other words, get a job. Your financial runway ends with final year.

That conversation shaped how he thought about jobs, money, and security for years after. And honestly? That wasn't unique to him. An entire generation operated that way. You didn't quit without another offer. You didn't walk away without a plan. That was just not an option.

Even with 12 months of savings, you thought twice, and then twice more.
Fast forward to today.

I have friends who manage young teams and agonize over letting someone go for poor performance or lack of work ethic. What will they do without a job?
And then the person shrugs. Goes back home. Seems... completely fine.

A TOI piece I read this morning (link in comments) on Gen Z parents calling recruiters, negotiating salaries - it summarised what I've been watching for a while.

And I'll be honest, I can personally vouch for the number of times parents have intervened in the whole process. It's more than you'd think.
I'd call it the safety net rather than entitlement. When home is a real fallback - financially, emotionally, logistically - the risk-reward tradeoff changes entirely.
The more interesting question isn't why aren't they taking ownership; it's what does ownership look like when the floor never disappears?

p.s. this is a not a Gen X / Millennials is better than Gen Z post. Just an observation of what's happening around. I have also worked with some of the most driven Gen Z folks.

I planned my entire Central Europe trip last summer on ChatGPT.
Not Google. Not TripAdvisor. Not a travel blog.
The summer before, I'd let an OTA do the planning. They curated the hotels, the transfers. The hotel in Milan was nowhere near where we wanted to be. Same in Amalfi. The trips weren't bad, but the hotels felt like poor value: off location, off vibe.
So last summer I changed the approach. I asked ChatGPT for the best places to stay in Prague, what to do in Budapest, how many days. After a little back and forth, I got what used to take me three blog posts and a TripAdvisor rabbit hole. The hotels felt genuinely worth the money: better located, better matched to what we actually wanted.

But here's the part that should worry marketers.
Once ChatGPT told me where to stay, I didn't Google it. I opened Booking-dot-com, searched for the hotel, compared prices, and booked. No TripAdvisor review spiral.
And here's the thing: TripAdvisor's real value was always the ratings. But ChatGPT ingested all of that, and hands you a recommendation after synthesizing reviews, while remembering your context. 

OTAs, doctor discovery platforms, product aggregators: they were all built to solve the same problem: you didn't know what you wanted, so you came to them to find out. Their business model was owning that moment of discovery.
Ask ChatGPT for the best hotels in Prague. It won't say "check Booking-dot-com" It just tells you where to stay. Ask for the best laptop under a budget. It won't send you to Amazon to filter. It just answers.

And unlike a marketplace, it has no inventory interest. No sponsored listings YET. The top of the funnel has moved from Google to conversational AI. The bottom (the actual booking) still runs through OTAs, either from brand recall or SEO. What's getting hollowed out is the middle: comparison sites, review aggregators, curated blog content.

I know the pushback: LLM traffic is still tiny compared to Google. True. Today.
But the brands sitting in that middle layer have a window right now, and most aren't asking the hard question: what happens when an LLM can complete the booking too?

The urgency isn't about today's traffic numbers. It's about whether you're building for the funnel that exists or the one that's coming.
Discovery is no longer your game to win.
Kevin Indig given your deep work on marketplaces, are you seeing this impact already?

emme (link in comments) was inspired by all those “Let’s go for a walk” moments. (IYKYK)

We all have our way of venting while trying to cross the chasm between actuals and targets. Expectations vs reality, intent vs impact, narrative vs numbers.

Some go for a walk;
Some talk to colleagues turned confidants;
Some rant to family;
Some take solace in sutta.

But everyone needs an outlet.

I’m not alone in this everyday life we live. Neither are you. And when small things build up over time, they often lead to burnout.

That’s the premise on which emme was built: a safe, private space to process thoughts, release pressure, and reset. To say the things you want to without looking over your shoulder.

The product is still rustic. But we want to build this in public with your feedback, because you are its most relatable users.

Would love your thoughts.
p.s. I know so many who clocked their daily 10K steps pacing around Sabko

11 years.

That's how long the average person waits between the first signs of a mental health struggle and actually seeking help. I sat with that number for a while. Because it's not 11 years of being unaware. It's 11 years of knowing something is off and not doing anything about it.

I've been speaking to a lot of Gen Z folks of late, and I'll admit, I walked in with many assumptions; I came out slightly humbled.

They don't wait. They treat mental wellbeing the way we treat a routine health check, which is preventive, not reactive. No performance, no hushed tones.

Meanwhile those of us who've been around longer have quietly mastered a different skill of performing as if it couldn't get any better. Great career. Happy kids. Beautiful home. 

Here's what I've come to realise though. The problem isn't that people don't seek help. It's that there's nothing in between. You either push through alone or you eventually break. The sleepless nights starring at ceiling, the unexpected loss of a close family member you never really processed, then the pressure of work that builds slowly enough that you don't notice it, until you do. And by then it's been months. Sometimes, years.

That middle stretch is what we built emme for.

Not a crisis tool. Just a conversation for the moments when something feels off and you want to be heard. Sometimes, all you want is to be heard. Sometimes you just need clarity. That's it.

Next time you have a rough week, treat it as a signal worth paying attention to. Don't wait 11 years.

I’ve been consistent with my reading habit this year (at least 50 pages every night). This is what I’m reading now: Click Here: The Art and Science of Digital Marketing and Advertising
 by Alex Schultz, CMO, Meta Platforms

Highly recommend this book to anyone building a business; for marketers, think of it as a sharp refresher of fundamentals.

The book is structured into three sections: basics, infrastructure, and channels.
According to Schultz, four foundational principles matter for any product or service:
 • What are you trying to get people to do? (conversion)
 • Where will you find them? (channel)
 • Who are you trying to reach? (targeting)
 • What will you show them to convince them? (creative)
If you haven't already, then spend some time to articulate the four above so that everyone is aligned. If one person chases revenue while the other chases MAU by giving it away for free, no one wins. 
 
The channels section goes deep into partner-led, product-led, social, and search. Afterall, not every channel fits every product.

My takeaways so far (halfway through):
* Reduce friction.
* Keep measurement simple. Measure only what can be measured well.
* "Which channel should I use?" is one question on everyone's mind just launching a business with limited resources. He suggests:
   • assess the market and copy what other people with businesses like yours are doing.
   • if unclear, explore affiliates
   • channel–market fit is real

Borrowing one line from "Same as ever" book that says - not the best ideas, or the right idea, or the most rational idea wins. Just whoever tells a story that catches people's attention and gets them to nod their heads is the one who tends to be rewarded. (And we all know, how difficult 'catching people's attention with limited sources actually is)

p.s. I tend to drift more towards non-fiction even for bedtime reading

I’ve seen strong marketing budgets fail for one simple reason:
The problem wasn’t sharp enough.

No amount of ads, performance marketing, or clever channels could compensate for that.
If you don’t deeply understand:
 • what makes your customer hesitate
 • what irritates them daily
 • what stresses them
 • why your product genuinely solves that
…everything you put out becomes well-written noise.

I’m going to cite one of my favourite examples from real estate.
Out of curiosity, I asked GPT to list pain points for converting apartment buyers (with a high budget) into villa owners.
It said: Lifestyle. Convenience. Land ownership, etc.
All correct, but very generic.

Instead, here’s where you can make a real difference when you understand the psyche well enough to reflect it across newsletters, ads, landing pages, even SEO.
Seepage is a headache.
 Even premium apartments struggle with waterproofing. If that’s a differentiating point for your product, talk about it.
Or take three generations under one roof.
 Different levels aren’t just about luxury. They keep noise contained and life more harmonious. Think elderly parents who wake up early or children sleeping late as if they are in different time zones. 

(These are actually what made hesitant buyers take action.)
That’s just one example of going beyond what a typical LLM would tell you.

While AI is excellent at synthesizing known themes, it struggles with real pain points unless you feed it depth.

In my experience, when messaging reflects real, specific irritation, it performs  irrespective of channel.
Insight comes from proximity:
• talking to customers (or being one long enough)
 • investing in research
 • validating product–market fit
 • speaking to the people who built the product — assuming they’ve done the above

My takeaway:
Understand the customer first.
Channels amplify clarity. Without insight, they amplify indifference.
Then use AI to sharpen the articulation.

In that order.

emme is a consumer product. 
Built for you and me because as humans, we ride a rollercoaster of emotions.
Not every day.
But when that moment comes… who’s on your speed dial?

We’re also a very lean team. So one internal measure we care about:
Are we power users of our own product?
I truly believe product love shows up everywhere:
 in every piece of communication,
 in every decision,
 in the goals you choose to chase.

Right now, our goal is simple:
-- Do you feel relieved after speaking to emme?
-- Do you gain clarity about your situation?
That’s it. That’s our north star.

Because when you’re overwhelmed, worried, sad, or anxious, you want one of the two things: to be heard or a way forward.

Sometimes, that momentary relief is enough. 

p.s. if you are feeling Monday blues, and haven't tried emme yet, link is in the comments.

A post I wrote recently about Gen Z, safety nets, and why going back home without a job doesn't faze young professionals the way it would have bothered us got me thinking about a very different kind of conversation I keep having.

Not about performance or work ethic. About people who are genuinely struggling and just have no one to talk to.

She called recently. Had resigned without another offer and just two months of runway. Said she'd just had enough after enduring it for months - the constant poor performance shaming, a boss who took credit for everything she did. She'd talked it over with her spouse before putting in her papers. But that was really it. There was no one else.

He is quietly working on applications for business schools abroad while hanging on at a job that's slowly breaking him. He doesn't want to do anything rash, and he needs to save for tuition. But there's no other outlet. Parents don't quite get this kind of work culture. And he doesn't know who else to turn to.

I hear versions of this more than I'd like to.

What strikes me is this - the access to options today are plenty. But, the clarity on which option to actually pick, not so much. And a safe space to even think it through? Almost doesn't exist. 

It can't be your parent who just wants to protect you. Can't be your manager who sometimes have their own agenda. Can't be a friend who's also figuring things out as they go.

That space - or the lack of it - is honestly what led us to build talktoemme<dot>com.

It's not formal coaching with a ready-made framework. It's more like talking to someone who's seen enough to give you a straight answer, and who actually will.

If any of this sounds familiar, for yourself or someone you know, I'd love for you to take a look. Link in comments.

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