The best marketing doesn’t feel like marketing.
Why marketing
Building things that didn’t exist yet.
I’ve spent my career building things that didn’t exist yet, then figuring out how to get people to care. Turns out that’s most of the job.
Made from nothing. I got into marketing because I like creating. I am driven by the process and the act of making something from nothing.
Then pipeline showed up. Somewhere in the last 15 years, a second personality showed up. Turns out it’s one that cares about pipeline, ARR, and whether a campaign actually worked. The creative kid never left. He just got a day job in revenue.
The timeshare problem. Most marketing feels like being cornered at a party by someone selling a timeshare.
Good marketing hides. The good stuff doesn’t feel like marketing at all. It’s just useful, at the right moment, for the right person, often before they’ve fully realized they needed it. Everything else is decoration.
How I lead
Player coach, literally.
I’m a player coach, and I mean that literally.
Close to the work.
Staying close to the actual work means I know what’s working, what’s quietly on fire, and what we’re paying for that nobody uses.
Hire well, then get out of the way.
I hire people I trust and then leave them alone, mostly. I’ll teach, unblock, and occasionally rescue, but I don’t hover. Hovering usually means you hired the wrong person, or don’t trust the right one.
Pick the right tool.
The most useful skill right now, AI or no AI, is knowing what’s worth building and picking the right tool for the job. I’ve leaned on that to get a lot done with small teams, which is either efficient or a symptom of never having a big enough budget. Possibly both.
Harmony over silos.
I also happen to like harmony, which sounds soft until you’ve worked somewhere without it. Marketing operating in its own silo, disconnected from sales, product, and customer success, is a special kind of chaos. I’d rather we all just talk to each other.
A few highlights
The numbers, if you’re skimming.
2,100+
Users on Implicit’s PLG platform, a GTM motion I built from scratch.
from $34.7M
$47.4M
CEI’s Technology Solutions business, grown under my marketing leadership.
$5.5M
Incremental ARR from a ConstructConnect PPC and conversion project.
10x
Growth in CEI marketing pipeline, launched right as ChatGPT and GenAI exploded.
Implicit. Led the full rebrand from Agolo to Implicit, building a new go-to-market motion, website, nurturing, and onboarding, the whole shebang. Grew qualified traffic 350 percent and helped land the company’s first B2B deals and PLG upgrades.
CEI. Built the AI go-to-market strategy right as ChatGPT et al took the world by storm, which felt a bit like refitting a plane mid flight. Generated millions in pipeline.
ConstructConnect. Started as an individual contributor and worked my way up to Director leading acquisition and retention across all business units. Teamed up with Product to grow qualified leads 6.5x through smarter cross-sell and upsell targeting.
Before all that. I spent my early years deep in SEO and lead gen, growing leads 70 percent and organic traffic 40 percent, back when “SEO” still sounded like a made-up word to most people.
Full resume here, for anyone who wants the long version.
Download ResumeOutside of work
I write, build the occasional app or side project, cook more ambitiously than my family requests, and play and coach sports. I have four kids, which is its own leadership role and comes with considerably worse pay. I prefer mountains to beaches, for reasons I’ve never fully understood myself, given that I’ve lived in the Midwest for most of my life. In the evenings of fall and spring, you’re likely to find me around a firepit with a glass of whiskey and some friends.
Education
BA, University of Notre Dame, where four years of Saturdays in the fall installed a permanent, mostly irrational fanhood for Notre Dame football. It is rarely rewarded, but for better or worse it also doesn’t waver.
MBA, Xavier University, where I learned that marketing only works when it happens in tandem with the rest of the organization.
What’s next
Still figuring things out, in real time.
I do my best work at companies still figuring things out in real time. Places building something new, comfortable with a little chaos, where marketing sits at the table with product, sales, and customer success instead of waiting for instructions from it. Bonus points for a mission worth getting out of bed for and a team that actually likes each other.
For the deep readers who want the drawn-out resume version of all this.
Download ResumeI’m always happy to meet interesting people for coffee, in person or virtually.
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