Todd Clouser 🧙‍♂️💜

I learned content growing a YouTube channel from 0 - 10M+ monthly views.
I learned social by building an audience of over 1M followers across channels.
I learned community growing two Facebook groups to 12k+ monthly active users.
I learned influencer marketing building a team of 15+ creators that drove millions in DTC revenue.


Now I help B2B companies incorporate those strategies and tactics to build their own marketing machine.

DM me to chat.

Party Wizard

https://qrco.de/be1MOp

Todd Clouser

Things I want to see more (and less) of on LinkedIn this year:

MORE:
- detailed playbooks on small experiments that you've run with real numbers/results (wins and losses)

- entertainment connected to messaging and povs (not just product)

- community -- at one point LI felt like a big community, now it feels like ground zero for the dead internet theory

- collabs -- speaking of community, we used to collab for the fun of it and to see how audiences reacted. Nowadays pretty much any collab comes with a dollar sign.

*personal one* - a return of cheat codes (Obaid?)


LESS:

- 'hooks' -- we've glorified clickbait as 'good hooks'. I'm so tired of reading/watching content where every sentence is a tease to the next sentence. Yes, I understand that you want me to get to the end, but once upon a time we did that with good content instead of holding value hostage with every freakin sentence.

- AI generated content -- probably gunna get hate for this one, but i don't agree with the 'typing my thoughts into ChatGT and then refining the output is not the same as ai-generated content' argument. feel free to disagree, but (in my opinion) ChatGPT is a crutch and makes you far less creative the more you use it and LI far less enjoyable.

- AI comments -- 18 months ago (when AI was more obvious) we all pointed and laughed at the ai comments. Now that AI is good (and harder to spot) everyone has adopted ai comments.  **see community bullet above**

What do you want to see more/less of here this year?

Shout to Jen Allen-Knuth for prompting the idea for this post.

Tech hub people be ravin on rooftops and shit in their "day in the life".

I haven't shaved in a month and just kinda move throughout my house a lot.

Anyone else?

Decks Sales actually use | Helping CMOs + Marketing VPs look like heroes | 18 yrs aligning product, marketing + sales in tech and startups | Former HP + Military Intelligence

Your sales assets suck. Sales rejects them because customers don’t speak like that.Product says the messaging isn’t technical enough.Marketing swears they followed the brief.And somehow, you’re the one explaining to the CEO why no one’s telling the same story.That’s usually when I get the call.I’ve spent 18 years walking into that same chaos — from HP to startups — and spotting what’s *actually* broken.It’s never the deck. It’s the disconnect.The military taught me to see patterns under pressure.HP taught me what happens when alignment collapses at scale.Startups taught me how to fix it — fast.Here’s why my approach is different: I don’t need seven workshops to find the truth.Three honest conversations tell me everything I need to know about where your story fell apart and how to rebuild it.I’m a product marketer who genuinely likes sales.I translate between engineers, marketers, and sellers who don’t speak the same language — and turn that into assets people actually use.But I don’t stop there.I built a system that finds what’s broken, fixes it fast, and makes the fix stick.Because a new deck means nothing if the story behind it doesn’t hold when things get messy.The outcome:Marketing finally earns sales’ trust — and leadership stops asking what marketing actually does.Because your sales assets shouldn’t suck. They should sell.If you’re done explaining why your deck doesn’t work, let’s fix what’s actually broken.

Talya Heller G. 💡

Everyone's obsessed with cutting jargon from their messaging.
But that's not why sales ignores your decks.

Clear messaging without a real take still sounds like everyone else.
Give them that and they still end up building their own slides.

Your reps don't need cleaner words. 
They need something f'n interesting to say.


Instead of witch-hunting buzzwords, find the tension you're positioning around.


Your pitch deck isn't a copywriting or design exercise. 
It's a diagnostics exercise.

Imperfect messaging with conviction > 'jargon free' messaging with no edge

Give reps something interesting to say and they'll line up. 
Give them spotless slides no one remembers, they'll have their own 3 slides by Thursday.



ok rant over

I've skipped my yoga studio's January challenge for three years straight. In fact, I despise the January gym crowd. 

But I'm doing it this year. 

Not because I'm suddenly into NY's resolutions (I’m an intentions kinda gal but that's for another post).

Also not because new year, new me (I wish, but at least I'm already there 4 times a week minimum).

It’s because this year's prize is a keychain that lets you bring a buddy for free all of February and March.

Here's the deal:

Last year I finally got H(usband) to start practicing yoga to recover from all the running and lifting he’s into.

He's up to twice a week now (!!) but he'll only go to the J (where he's lowering the average age by a lot lol)

He won’t come to my studio. It’s a big dark space that kinda feels like a night club. They offer mostly heated classes. 

I get it, it looks intimidating. But I want to give him a reason he can’t refuse. 

And, I want to bring on some more neighbor friends, mom friends and linkedin friends. 


So I'm all in. I’m the annoying January crowd now. 

(Mixing up heated flow, nasty sculpt classes, restorative and sound baths so I don’t get burnt out or injured, which at my age happens every time I reach too far). 

Count with me to keep me accountable - it's January 7 and I'm 6/30 in (8/30 by the end of today)

And if you're in Austin or visiting in Feb/Mar, I’m your buddy pass. Maybe we’ll get lucky and they’ll bring back the Beyoncé flow by then🤞


(But fair warning I do look like a monster after most classes)

Most consultants gatekeep their best advice.
I gave mine away for free to 6 companies last month.

I ran an advisory giveaway and ended up giving free mini sessions to runner-ups, because sure.

Here's what happened:

-Reviewed 2 sales decks (both solid, neither fantastic - more on this soon)
-Untangled a messy product launch
-Worked through a gnarly competitive situation
-Helped a scale-up figure out their repositioning strategy before a major product launch

They came back with something like this 👇


(Will I run another giveaway? Not sure. But I'm definitely working on more ways to make my brain more accessible to y’all (if you dare 💀)

Who here loves a good explainer video? 

🙋🏻‍♀️

Last time I was working on one, I was in house. 

The freelancer was dope but it was a pretty big lift that took a lot of my time. 

So when I figured I should probably work on one now, I found every reason to drag my feet. 

Until one day the folks from Sway One  slid into my DMs.

Great offer, perfect timing. 

Now, I’m a skeptic. My LinkedIn inbox usually attracts the worst bait-and-switchers. 

(ugh the time I wasted taking calls… I could’ve made 3 explainer videos from scratch. But I digress). 

We met and I liked them immediately. You know how you can tell someone is a pro and also passionate about what they do? And like, also a nice human? That was it. 

Well LFG, I guess we’re making an explainer video. 

And they delivered. Sergey. Ross  apparently reads minds because I gave him my website, the interactive guide I built for my Win Map™ system, my intake form and one example I liked…

And he gave me an almost perfect script and later, a video that nailed my brand on v1. 

Am I happy with the video? Yes.
Was it a pain to get it done? Nope.

Great reminder that being easy to work with matters, a lot. I’m not exaggerating when I say it was a pleasure. He even gave me advice about web hosting and YouTube and a bunch of stuff I know nothing about. 

I'm so happy with how it turned out, it’s already on my homepage. 

Check it out: DowntoaT.co

And check them out (I already recommended them to a head of marketing friend)

No alternative text description for this image

Everyone keeps telling you to "just ship it."

New platform? Ship the deck.
New messaging? Update the site.
Launch in 6 weeks? Better start cranking out assets.

But here's the thing: 
Speed is only valuable when you know what needs to change in the room.

I keep seeing marketing teams hit this same wall. 
Everything needs to be built at once. 

It's not poor planning. 
It's the reality of inflection points.

You get funding. 
The market shifts. 
Leadership changes. 
Suddenly what got you here won't get you there.

So they do what feels productive and start making stuff.
Decks. 
One-pagers. 
Demo scripts. 
Website copy.

Except sales doesn't use them because they don't actually help close deals.

A 30-slide feature dump doesn't give your rep something to say when the prospect goes quiet.

What does?
→ A sharp insight about why their current approach is costing them
→ A pointed question that makes the buying committee realize they're thinking about this wrong

Figuring out what shifts the conversation in your favor feels like slow work.
But it's what makes everything else work.

When you're rebuilding everything at once, the bottleneck isn't your output. 
It's whether what you're making gives sales a reason to use it.

all I needed was gas and toilet paper 🙈

The faster you try to launch, the longer it actually takes.

Sounds backward, right?

But I've seen it happen more times I'd care to admit:

Teams who treat their positioning like the last checkbox to tick end up relaunching 2-3 times.

Teams who invest more than a couple of weeks in strategic positioning launch once and scale fast.

Everyone thinks speed is the advantage.
Speed is the trap.

Here's what most leaders miss:

Positioning doesn't slow you down.
But positioning shortcuts destroy your timeline.

The conventional wisdom says: "We can't delay launch for messaging work. Let's launch and iterate."

Reality says something different:

Companies that save this step for the last minute and rush through it spend months post-launch fixing their story.

Companies that invest upfront spend 2 weeks optimizing what already works.

Now which timeline sound faster?

I used to believe in "ship fast, learn fast" too.
And I still do, but not for strategy.

I started noticing a pattern.
Every failed launch followed the same 4-week death spiral:

Week 1: "Launch is in a couple of weeks, let's do a quick positioning refresh
(We're about to discover our foundation is cracked)

Week 2: "Hmm, this messaging doesn't quite capture it" 
(Our differentiation was never clear)

Week 3: "Let's explore other directions" 
(We're realizing positioning is actual strategic work)

Week 4: "Should we pause and do this properly?" 
(We just wasted a month avoiding the real work)

Here's what nobody wants to admit:

You already know your positioning needs work.
You're hoping a quick refresh will be enough.
(Spoiler: It won't)

That's why you're nervous about the launch.
That's why sales keeps asking for "better assets."
That's why your messaging doc has 17 versions.

The discomfort you're feeling is your instinct telling you the foundation isn't solid.

Listen to it.

The most successful launches has a team behind them that doesn't want to burn that market moment. 
And rightfully so - there's a lot of time, attention and $$ that go into big launches.

The launches that flopped all "couldn't wait."
Yet they keep everyone at the company fixing what they rushed for months.

Here's the real choice:
1️⃣ Invest strategic time upfront, launch with conviction, optimize fast
2️⃣ "Launch fast", then spend quarters rebuilding while competitors learn from your mistakes. Ouch.

It's not that speed doesn't matter.
But the market rewards patience in strategy, urgency in execution.

And most teams do the opposite.

They rush strategy (positioning).
They overthink execution (launch tactics).
Then they wonder why nothing works.

If your launch timeline doesn't include real positioning work:
You're not planning a launch.
You're planning a very expensive learning experience.

The question isn't whether you can afford the time.
It's whether you can afford not to take it.

Us marketers think positioning and messaging are separate exercises…

But are they?
Or is it different phases of the same thing?

What we usually do:
→ Positioning workshop with a super secret ‘strategy’ committee
→ Product marketing builds messaging frameworks
→ Whoever is the least busy that week ships the deck
(each gets reviewed, rewritten 3 times, approved)

And then sales ignores it 🫠

Someone asked a couple of weeks ago in a pmm community:
"How do Value Drivers fit with positioning and messaging frameworks?"

Every answer was about which box goes where in the stack.

But no one dared to say that if your sales team is asking how to USE your Value Drivers, you have an alignment problem, not a framework problem.

If the value drivers are so disconnected from your messaging and positioning;
or if the value drivers you came up with don’t line up with what closed the last 3 deals

... It’s not going to pass sales’ bs meter.

So yeah, they won’t use that deck.

Value Drivers should describe what buyers actually care about achieving.
The specific pain that makes them willing to change vendors, rethink budget, or blow up their current process.

Positioning should answer: "Why us vs. them for solving that exact pain?" 

→ Most teams workshop a statement that sounds great in the room. 
(then a buyer asks "why not just use [alternative]?" and the whole thing falls apart)

Messaging is pinpointing that to something that connects the two and survive real objections

→ Most teams build it as a standalone artifact
(so sales builds their own "simplified version" because the official one doesn't match what's working for them)

This is uncomfortable, but:

↳ If your deck needs three rewrites before every sales call, your Value Drivers weren't grounded in reality
↳ If sales built a shadow version of your messaging, they don't trust the narrative marketing handed them
↳ If your CRO keeps asking why sales and marketing aren't aligned, you're treating symptoms, not the disease

All because we tend to building these frameworks in sequence. And probably without testing them against real buyer conversations until it's way too late. 
By the time you get to "messaging outputs," you're polishing a story that might not be worth telling to begin with.

18 years of walking into this exact mess taught me this: 

The teams that win aren't the ones with the best frameworks. 
They're the ones where product, marketing and sales agree on three things: 

1️⃣ What buyers care about (not what we wish they cared about) 
2️⃣ Why we're the right answer for that specific pain 
3️⃣ How to say that in a way that makes them feel seen and survives real objections

Frameworks, hierarchies, documentation are just scaffolding for that alignment.

When you have a shared understanding of your audience, everything else works. 
SHARED. Call it alignment if you want, I call it conviction.

When you don't, even the sharpest deck dies in the field.

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Talya Heller G. 💡

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