Brand Strategist | I position challenger B2B brands for lasting growth with audits and strategic workshops | Strategy @ SHFT Agency

I've been in the game for over a decade, exploring the marketing industry supply vertical, working with clients of all sizes to design brand strategies and work that deliver business growth and cultural impact.

A strategic storyteller obsessed with turning data into insights, I craft narratives that give brands a
voice worth hearing.

But to get good, I needed to embark on a journey to do things worth living.

I explored rich cultures from all five continents, learned five languages, and tried as many foods as I could. I sweat buckets in jungles, swam in oceans, watched the opera and stared at the Mona Lisa.

I now help Levoit—a billion-dollar company and #1 seller of air purifiers in the US—build their brand.

I also run my own shop, BAM BAM, where me and other brand and creative hustlers help startups and in-house leaders ditch template thinking to build and activate positioning that drives impact.

—

My capabilities include:

🟠 INSIGHTS: Market audit, category mapping, competitive analysis, customer interviews, action and desktop research.

🟠 STRATEGY: Positioning, category creation, value proposition, go-to-market, customer journey maps, briefs.

🟠 CREATIVE: Naming (brand/product/service), verbal identity, touchpoint design, creative briefs, integrated and tactical campaigns, social content, ongoing support for roll out.

Need any of this? Send me a DM. 📩

BAM BAM—Bring Your Own Brain

👊

Steph Egger

VP Marketing, Refine Labs | B2B SaaS Leader | Guiding the Transition from Lead Generation to Demand Generation, One Company at a Time (10x) | Trusted Advisor & Consultant

Cleaning offices in High School to serving tables in college to pay for tuition taught me a lot - how to read people, figure out what they need, and bring some order to the chaos. That curiosity naturally pulled me toward marketing, where it all clicked.

After college, I taught myself paid search (Google Adwords for the OG folks) on YouTube and landed my first marketing job with Walgreens. From there, I moved into sales at Microsoft, then strategy at AWS. Now, I help B2B SaaS companies scale by focusing on what actually drives impact.

Here’s how I apply that focus in marketing:
- Building demand strategies that resonate with real customers and drive measurable results.
- Optimizing onboarding and conversion funnels to make them seamless and effective.
- Analyzing full-funnel revenue data to uncover what’s working (and what’s not).
- Creating clear, scalable roadmaps that help teams grow efficiently without adding complexity.

Outside of work? You’ll probably find me sipping bourbon, soaking up some sunshine, and spending time with my favorite people. Simple moments, but they’re what fuel the bigger picture.

Evan Hughes

No one teaches you how much of being a VP of Marketing is emotional labor. Not strategy. Not creativity. Not the playbooks.

It’s walking into a meeting where sales is pissed and holding your ground without making it worse. It’s checking in with a team member who says they’re fine but clearly isn’t. It’s knowing when to speak up and when to let something slide even though it’s eating at you.

It’s sitting with the pressure and not passing it down.

The stuff that actually makes you effective? Most of it never shows up on a dashboard. It’s invisible. But it keeps the team running, keeps the trust intact, and keeps people from burning out.

You learn quick that doing good work isn’t enough. You have to carry people through the hard days too.

Nobody claps for that part. But that’s the job.

Keep going.

SVP Marketing at Refine Labs - B2B Marketing Agency | Creator of Hired, a no-BS community for marketers [See Featured]

Why does it feel impossible to land a VP of Marketing role right now? There are thousands of postings. It looks like companies are hiring. But most roles are frozen, already filled or never real to begin with. Every job description wants a unicorn.

Strategy. Execution. Brand. Demand. Web. Email. Paid. Organic. Product. Ops. Events.

You have to write the copy, manage the team, present to the board, fix the CRM, build the funnel, and prove ROI across it all.
And they want it for 20% less than they paid in 2023.

People are getting ghosted after 5 rounds.
Some roles are posted just to satisfy HR policies while the internal candidate waits. Others are "paused" for budget reasons halfway through.

It’s not just exhausting. It’s demoralizing.
I get 2 to 5 resumes a week in my DMs. Asking for tips. They're strong. Like, really strong. 

Years of experience. Clear outcomes. Clean formatting. All the things we were "taught to do"...

But the system doesn’t care. It doesn’t reward being qualified. It doesn’t reward playing by the rules. Families are burning through savings. People are questioning if they’re even good at what they do anymore.

And no one’s talking about the toll that takes.

Here’s what I’ll say.
If you’re applying right now just to stay afloat, you’re doing what you need to do. Survival is valid. Forget the “perfect company list".  Forget the long game advice.

It’s okay to take something that helps you breathe.

But if you have even a sliver of space - use it to ask for help.
Not a job. Just support. A gut check. A real conversation.

Someone who can remind you that you’re not crazy. That you’re not alone. That you’re still really damn good at what you do.

This isn’t about bad marketers. It’s about a broken system.

You’re not the problem.
You’re the one still showing up.
That counts for something.

Built a Slack community to bring more job seekers/current marketers/folks who just need to get together. To vent. To chat. To learn. If you're interested in joining lmk or add your name to waitlist.

If I wanted a VP of Marketing job right now, I’d approach the process differently than most.

I wouldn’t spend time proving I’ve done it before. I’d focus on showing I can do it for them now.

That’s the shift most senior marketers miss. They talk in the past tense. “I built,” “I led,” “I scaled” None of that matters if you can’t connect it to how you’ll move their business forward today.

When I think about interviews at that level, these are my non-negotiables.

⸻

1. Partnership over politics
I ask how the CEO wants to be challenged.
If they don’t, I’m out.
I’m not signing up to take orders. I’m looking to build a partnership where tension creates better ideas, not fear.

⸻

2. Data and judgment, not just dashboards
I ask how they define “data-driven”
If the answer is charts, not context, it’s a red flag.
The best marketing leaders know numbers only matter if they inform judgment. That’s the skill that compounds.

⸻

3. Brand isn’t fluff
I ask how brand shows up in board conversations.
If it doesn’t, marketing’s already boxed in.
You can’t lead demand strategy if brand is treated like design work.

⸻

4. Patience for compounding
I ask about their appetite for long-term marketing bets.
Most companies say they want growth, but what they really want is relief.
Relief from pressure. Relief from board expectations.
Compounding only works when you stop chasing quick wins and start building enduring ones.

⸻

5. Shared accountability
I ask how marketing, sales, and finance align on goals.
If I hear, “We have weekly syncs,” I push further.
Alignment isn’t meetings. It’s shared math.
If the math isn’t shared, the incentives aren’t either.

⸻

When you’ve been in this game long enough, you start to see interviews less like a test and more like a mirror.

You’re not trying to impress. You’re trying to understand what you’d be walking into.

Can you lead? Can you challenge? Can you build something that compounds?

Those are the questions that matter.

Everything else is just a jargon on a resume.

Nobody wants to say it out loud, so I will.
Marketing is being treated as disposable right now.

ROI pressure goes up → marketing headcount goes down. It’s becoming a formula.

And it’s not even the layoffs that bother me most.

It’s the talent that’s quietly exiting the workforce entirely. Not jumping to competitors. Not freelancing. Just… done.

I looked at 12 roles posted for recently laid-off marketers in the last 24 hours alone. The majority? On-site mandates. In cities where the cost of living never corrected.

You can’t uproot a family on a job offer with a 90-day probation period at a Series A startup.

The companies that figure this out in the next 6 months will have an enormous hiring advantage. 

The ones that don’t will be writing LinkedIn posts about “talent shortages.”

What are you seeing out there?

I’ve been asking marketers one question lately: “What’s your biggest fear right now?” Just a blank box... I’ve read 1,000+ answers.

AI came up a lot.
Layoffs.
Feeling behind.
Feeling replaceable.
Feeling like marketing gets blamed for everything.

What hit me was how practical the fears were.

People trying to stay relevant.
Trying to make sure their experience still matters.
Trying not to get flattened into “just execution.”

I wrote about what I’m seeing in this week’s Hired.

If you’re in marketing and things have felt a little… off the last year or two, this might resonate or help you protect your job. 

Happy Saturday. 


https://lnkd.in/gDbsXV2k

The reality of B2B.

Dang... Over 2,000 have read so far and the feedback has been a good reminder (for me and others) that we’re all figuring this out together.

https://lnkd.in/gxZ4n7Q8

I am absolutely loving seeing this continue to trend. Go check it out. 

Also it's flattering when you see others start to roll similar experiences out. It's all about keeping marketing entertaining. 

Zero pressure. But distractions are welcomed on Fridays 
https://lnkd.in/g8w8MJH2

Coffee Campaign for B2B Marketers

This was my favorite job. Generate buzz. That was the starting point.

Not “drive MQLs.”
Not “increase impressions.”
Just… generate buzz.

We wanted to be intentional about it though. Not random. Not just a cute campaign.

So we built it the way we build for clients. Through the full Brand. Demand. Expand. motion and lens.

BRAND
On the brand side, it started with an idea. Coffee. Energy. Something that feels human. Something people actually relate to. We pushed it a little broader than our usual tight ICP box. Still inside our market, but stretching. Testing how far the message could go without losing relevance.


DEMAND
On the demand side, we didn’t go straight for the jugular asking for strategy calls. We ran a quiz. Lower barrier. More engagement. Let people play. Let them lean in without pressure. It was more about interaction than conversion rate at first. Which, candidly, felt uncomfortable. But that was kind of the point.

We experimented. Different CTAs. Different hooks. Treated it like a sandbox.

EXPAND
On the expand side, we didn’t ignore our current customers. We brought them in. Showed them the creative by expanding our target market. Including visuals in some customer decks. Getting them to be part of it. This wasn’t just top of funnel noise.

We wrote the blog to support it. Not fluff. Something that could rank but also educate. Something that connected the dots for search and for humans.

And then we closed the loop in the most literal way possible.

We packaged our own Refine Labs coffee beans.

“The refinery”

Sent them to the team. Made it real. Something you can hold. Smell. Brew.

That part matters more than people think.

A lot of agencies talk about being creative. Or being strategic. Fewer actually build something end to end and see it through.

Brand without demand is noise.
Demand without brand is short lived.
Expand without both is forced.

This campaign wasn’t massive. It wasn’t a Super Bowl ad. It was just thoughtful. Connected. Intentional.

And honestly, I believe agencies that are willing to do more, test differently and build full circle experiences are just better. Not louder. Not flashier. Better.

Anyway. That’s the story behind the beans in this photo.

Sometimes the smallest ideas end up saying the most.

…generate buzz.

No alternative text description for this image

Someone in the Hired community recently networked, got their resume workshopped, and landed a role after months of searching. Honestly, that’s the whole reason I do this on the side.

The recent Substack piece kind of took off too -over 2k reads in a few days. A coworker put it better than I could: it’s really just a reflection of where B2B marketing is right now.

The waitlist is growing and I’m working through it as fast as I can. Excited to get more people in.

Appreciate you all 🙏🏼

Wait… so we booked a meeting to discuss an upcoming meeting.

In that upcoming meeting, we talked about the slides needed for the next meeting.

Then we scheduled another meeting to review those slides and get alignment.

After that, we had a quick touch base right before the actual presentation meeting.

Then we had the presentation meeting itself. The one that was the result of seven other meetings. It lasted 30 minutes, and 90 percent of the room was checked out.

And after that, we scheduled a debrief to talk about what the next meeting should focus on.

Tell me again why corporate is considered an efficient use of anyone’s time.

When you hire people you trust, you don’t need to micromanage through meetings. You need to trust that the project is being guided and managed the right way.

I’m not saying discussions aren’t valuable. They are. Real conversations matter.

But when meetings turn into forced check-ins because someone is too busy to read updates and needs to use everyone else’s time to get caught up, that’s not a good use of time.

There are better ways to communicate.

If the default is more meetings instead of clearer ownership and better async updates, the problem isn’t collaboration…..

It’s trust and design.

So Clay launched ads and my brain immediately went to marketing + pipeline. Not generic audience builds. Pipeline influence and engagement.

Most paid programs are still built around job titles and company size filters.
Meanwhile, there are open opps sitting in stage 2 with no movement and paid has zero awareness of them.

That’s a disconnect with sales and the marketing folks I see a lot. Operating in silos. 

A few plays I’d test right away.

1. CRM Recency
7 days no sales activity / 14 days / 30 days.
Three separate audiences pulled from Salesforce into Clay. Layer on ICP filters. Push each to LinkedIn.

Now paid is reacting to stalled opps instead of running broad persona campaigns.

2. Tier 1 Account Surround
Sales already has a Tier 1 list. Build paid directly off that list.
“Tier 1 – Active Pipeline.” Enrich the buying committee. Sync it.

Your budget is now focused on the accounts reps are actually working.

3. Expansion Signals
Customers with low product usage. Or accounts that haven’t adopted a key feature. Build that table. Add the right titles. Sync it.

Now ads are supporting expansion, not just new logo volume.

It's early... but this is where my head goes.

Paid tied directly to CRM signals instead of dropdown filters. Seems legit. 

#claypartner

Just cleared the waitlist for this months batch joining the Hired community. And every time I add folks, the #vent channel lights up first.

Not with complaints.
With real stories.

First story….

A marketer gets to final round.
Strong feedback. “You’re our top candidate.”

Saturday morning, 7:42am.
Rejection email. No call. No context. Just a templated note.

They drop it in #vent 
Not to spiral, just to say, “This f’n sucks.”

Within minutes, five people respond.
One shares how the same thing happened and that company reposted the role two months later.
Another offers to intro them to a hiring manager.
Someone else rewrites their follow up email on the spot.

Momentum restored by Sunday night.

Story 2…..

Another member does a four step process.
Including “homework.” Strategy doc. Slides. Free thinking.

They submit it.
Radio silence.

Three weeks. 3?!

Ghosted.

They post in #vent asking if they should follow up or let it go.
The thread turns into a masterclass on boundaries.

What’s reasonable.
What’s not.
How to protect your time next round.

That same person tightened their process.
Stopped doing unpaid deep dives without clarity.
Landed interviews faster.

We’ve also had a few folks from the community network and land gigs after months of looking. Real offers. Real roles. From intros inside the group.

This market is weird.
It can mess with your head.

Hired isn’t about hype. Or me tbh. 
It’s a room full of smart marketers who are tired of pretending the search is easy. Or want to help. 

If you’re in it right now, you don’t need another opinion. 
You need people who get it. We’re 800 strong. 

Come join waitlist. If you want. See Featured in my profile for more. 

Happy Sunday ya’ll.

- E 

LinkedIn We need more people finding new jobs , can we not be throttled while spam gets amplified. Plz and thx you.

The team pulled out all the good stuff for this.

when you're asking to modernize your b2b growth strategy...THIS is who you're asking.

This is who you're asking to...

If your entire identity is tied to platform fluency, then yes, this feels terrifying.

Open article: I asked 1,000+ marketers what they’re actually afraid of. by open.substack.com

I asked 1,000+ marketers what they’re actually afraid of.

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Steph Egger

Evan Hughes

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The Battle

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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);}Evan Hughes's LinkedIn Performance

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