Entrepreneur, Start-ups lover, Growth Thinker

Obsessed with hard / valuable / fun problems

Robert Goncear

Nick Zeckets

Nick is a product-driven growth leader with experience at the executive leadership level for large publicly traded companies as well as being a serial founder and CEO (two MarTech exits) and currently running Smoke Signals AI - the first AI-first HubSpot agency that wraps content, signals, AI and workflows into programs that generate real pipeline.

CEO, co-founder

This is the most exciting work I've ever had the pleasure of being a part of.

At Air Traffic Control, our team has enabled any marketing software from email to web with personalization features. Not segments. Not logic building. True machine learning that dynamically serves up content, products, and anything else a customer can dream up to *each* person.

We're growing rapidly and I welcome the opportunity to share our vision for mass-personalization with you.

So, I had a heart attack.

First, if you were all set for our AI in GTM lunch tomorrow.... we're moving it to later in February because, well, your host (me) isn't available. :-)

Second, yes, I'm fine. I'll be fine. But yeah, it was scary.

Third, from my team to our co-sponsors on the event, the response was NOT, "oh, damn. Now what do we do with the event?" It was, "hey, are you ok? How can I help? We've got this for you. Go get better."

I think this is because of who I try very, very hard to surround myself with. And I'm very thankful for it. Yes, I'm signing off now. But I wanted to make sure folks knew about the lunch. Really excited about it and hope everyone else is, too.

Most GTM AI is nonsense. Let's clear things up.

I don’t share much about my personal life. I’m proud of it. My family. My friends. But life is immense - running Smoke Signals AI . Getting ready to reveal a new agent layer for HubSpot (shhh). Kids across middle school, high school and college. So I started lifting heavy. And it’s saved me in a lot of ways. Tonight was a PR. But the second rep was a brutal fight and I’m proudest of that more than hitting 573.1 lbs. I like how being able to make that happen translates to work. A lot. If you were ever curious about the sport, drop me a line.

Next week on 1/22 in Boston Kelly Cheng, CMO of Goldcast, is going to share how her team is 10xing their content strategy with AI, repurposing their videos to extend  reach across the buyer journey.

I'm really looking forward to this.

Do you run webinars, a podcast, internal video?

I'm willing to bet you're NOT getting nearly the mileage out of it that you can. And the walls that I hit are:

1) Video is incredible source material, but video output is less forgiving than text.

2) Where does video output get deployed and how? Emails, landing pages, DMs, social? And to drive what impacts and where in the journey?

If you're a senior revenue leader join us. We're buying lunch. You know where to find the details.

I appreciate this data. I also think it’s a crisis.

Founders making $75K/year has *never* been sustainable. And it’s ruining startups.

Sure, if you’re a single 25 YO living with roommates, it works.

But there’s a preponderance of data showing that older founders outperform. They have networks, deeper problem knowledge, management experience, etc.

So when investors/boards push founders to pay themselves at this level because of “benchmarks,” they’re discounting who they’re backing.

Here’s what happens for those people:

- all vacations get cancelled
- holidays and their kids’ birthdays become meager
- everything has to be about an exit so long-term planning becomes impossible
- there’s no room for error leading to poor team management due to immense stress
- founders suffer depression, relationships fail

I had someone early last year tell me that as CEO in their company I’d be paid 25% less than what it costs each month to feed my family and keep our mortgage paid. I told them to pound sand.

As a founder, my strong suggestion is to build a business that drives real earnings for yourself. Don’t build to exit. Build for profit. And avoid outside capital any way you can.

A $2MM ARR business on $500K in burn is an INCREDIBLE LIFE.

As a founder to investors: do NOT act like this. If you want to fund young and hungry early 20’s founders, cool. They’ll be ok on lower salaries (but check in on their financial health). If you want to back experienced managers with rich networks, make sure they get paid enough to focus on the business you invested in. But seriously stop using benchmarks like these as a weapon.

The quality of folks signing up for our AI in GTM lunch on January 22nd in Boston is *elite.*

Join Smoke Signals AI, Firmograph and Knock AI to hear senior revenue leaders talk about how they're actually using AI. No tool pitches. No booths. No bullsh*t. Just receipts.

Comment here or ping me for the reg link.

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The Battle

Robert Goncear

Nick Zeckets

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taplio

The Battle

Robert Goncear

Nick Zeckets

Followers

Posts

Engagements

Likes

Performance Score.css-goub6s{font-size:var(--chakra-fontSizes-md);font-weight:500;color:var(--chakra-colors-gray-600);display:block;margin-top:var(--chakra-space-1);}Nick Zeckets's LinkedIn Performance

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Performance ScoreNick Zeckets's LinkedIn Performance