A whole lot of hustle and a healthy dose of grit.
Thanks for checking out my site and talking sales and marketing with me…

If you haven’t figured out by now, sales and marketing is a topic I’m really passionate about… and really opinionated about as well.

I’ve been fortunate to lead sales and marketing teams for 9 different companies. Public, private, venture funded, bootstrapped, and IPOed, my experience has covered all the bases. My career has been a thrilling ride that I couldn’t have ever dreamed of. Like any journey, it’s included great triumphs, bitter losses, and a lot of lessons.

So, here’s my story.

Finding the vision…

I knew pretty early in life what I wanted to do. Seems I was always engaged in sales and marketing of some sort. I list as my early entrepreneurial efforts a lawn service, a summer painting houses, an auto detail company… and let’s not forget those door-to-door magazine sales.

But it was my sophomore year of college I really saw the vision. A favorite uncle gave me a copy of “The Letter to Joe College” and it all clicked. (Check it out in the sidebar. It’s worth the 3 min read!)

In that two page essay I saw the vision for what I wanted. No, I wasn’t going to sit in a boring desk job all day. Rather, I was going to do something exciting. I was going to be on the front lines of business. I was going to travel, meet people, and climb the ladder by being a rainmaker. After all, as the letter points out, new sales is the key to growth for every business… and that’s what I was going to do.

A Letter to Joe College

I started my career in telecommunications sales at BTI. It was an entrepreneurial minded company run by a young CEO with a vibrant culture. At a time when most companies were stodgy and formal, we were fast paced and fun. It was like being part of the rat pack. Work hard and play harder. Dressed in our 90’s era custom suits (with huge shoulder pads), we were going to take over the world, or at least the newly de-regulated industry of telecommunications.

Climbing the ladder…

Climbing the ladder of success

I loved everything about BTI. I enjoyed the culture, the team, and most of all helping my clients. I enjoyed it so much it didn’t feel like work. Selling telecommunications fueled my desire for accomplishment and I applied myself to learn the business.

The company grew from $20M in sales to over $100M. For my part, I went from entry level rep… to top rep… to sales manager… to sales director, where I helped launch a new channel division. Along the way, I collected top sales awards, built amazing teams and went on glorious president’s club trips (this was the 90s).

Oh, and that business unit I built had garnered a tremendous amount of attention for the velocity it created.  This was exactly what I signed up for. I was in the field solving problems, helping businesses and making money. It was hard to believe they paid me for this. I was climbing the ladder… it was the stuff I dreamed about in business school.

Because of my success with the newly formed channel division I was contacted by a start-up with an opportunity to build and run their national channel program. It was a call from the big leagues. And it was an opportunity I couldn’t pass up. The decision to leave the company that nurtured me and gave me my start wasn’t easy, but it was probably one of the best decisions of my life (Now, my wife will remind me of my best decision, so I’ll just say this one is in the top 5).

Answering the call…

I say this because the tour at Telco reads like a story book.  Start-up goes IPO, raises $77M, grows to $400M in revenue and completes a public exit for $1.2B… in under 5 years. Talk about growth on a rocket ship!

For my part, well, I crushed it with the channel program. In 4 years I built a $60M business unit. I had 32 channel managers, a support team, and more than 500 active partners across the US. I traveled like a prince as I built my kingdom.

The thing I learned through this process was to build anything durable, anything meaningful, you have to build your people. It was the team, their commitment to excellence, the hard work and the personal relationships that drove the business.

To get there I had to invest in my team. Plenty of training, plenty of face time, and plenty of TLC. Some of my best friends in life came out of this business. It was that in-the-trenches, take-the-hill comradery that never fades.

But Telco’s glory days faded with the acquisition. As we became part of the big Bell machine. My job was no longer about building and growing. It was more like a political post… meetings and meetings and more meetings. Telling people what we did, instead of actually doing it.

I eventually moved on and enjoyed two more posts in the telecom arena, but the sector started to change by the early 2000s. The Telecom Act of 1996 opened up local service and the internet era had ushered in a whole new set of tools including IP phones, but there was a problem. Nothing really worked very well. It was a tough time.

And then the dot-com bubble burst… and then all technology burst… and so went the telecom sector.  Over 10 years, I had climbed my way to the top. At 35 I had achieved the stuff I dreamed about… being on the executive staff of a public company. But everything crashed. It was a tough time indeed.

A second act…

I decided it was time for a second act.

I left the industry I loved to start an online software company with a friend.  (Back then we didn’t call it SaaS, we called it ASP). And it was the scariest thing I ever did.

With 3 little girls and a wife at home, I was suddenly working without the safety net of the corporate salary and big company benefits. I didn’t pull a paycheck for months.

But we had a great idea and the market responded. We started with an application for do-not-call (telemarketing was big business in 2002) and went on to diversify the product line into all forms of marketing opt-outs.

We eventually transitioned into opt-in and global preference management. Along the way we built a consulting practice. And we dominated our space for a decade. We had bootstrapped a winner.

It was during this period that I really started to understand marketing. Digital tools were coming of age and we were leveraging them to drive deals for our team. Search and email were a big part of our strategy. We owned search for our keywords. And we were early in content marketing (before that was even a word) by producing a regulatory newsletter that went viral in our industry.

It was a glorious 10 year run. We grew every year and I built a phenomenal team (most of whom are still there). After 10 years, I left to launch another start-up. And 2 years after that I went on to run sales and marketing for one of the largest email marketing companies in the world. And 3 years after that, I went on to launch another SaaS start up in the restaurant space.

An amazing run…

Turns out I like the online software space. I also seem to like building teams and revenue. And fortunately, I’ve got a pretty darn good track record.

Through my career I’ve had success in every corporate environment from billion dollar public companies, to hundred million dollar public and private companies, to ground floor start-ups. I’ve been through a successful IPO, a public sale, a prosperous bootstrap, a personal exit, and multiple successful launches.

But with every glory story also comes the gore. I’ve also had to lay people off, fire people, deal with the unreasonable demands of bosses, partners, and capital partners, and struggle through bad quarters. And I wouldn’t trade it for anything. I’ve learned that adversity is what makes you stronger. That which impedes you actually propels you. The obstacle becomes the way (a bit of stoicism for you).

A unique lens…

I’ve come to realize I have a unique lens for sales and marketing. Not only do I intimately understand sales process (sales is the core of my being), but I also possess deep digital marketing experience (the glorious art of targeted outreach) and can execute effectively across all channels.

I was a career sales leader before I took my first marketing post. As and I started owning the marketing function, it was during the explosion of marketing technology. The progression of tools went from search… to email… to marketing automation… to content marketing… to social marketing… to ad serving… to apps… to multi-channel awesomeness.

I was ground floor for using these tools to become the tip of the spear for my sales team. To leverage the marketing function to drive thousands of leads for the sales team. To compress the sales cycle and only work with people who had already made contact with our brand.

I have a unique brand of marketing. I call it acquisition marketing. I’m not a corporate brand builder. I don’t think I’ll ever get that job as a brand manager at P&G… and I don’t want it (not that there’s anything wrong with that).

Rather my context of marketing is B2B, where the definition of marketing is: driving a lead that becomes a sale. It’s what’s most needed in early and mid-stage companies, which is where I hang my hat.

I’m a process freak.  I find and implement the right process – the digital marketing strategy that will drive thousands of high-quality inbound leads a month and the sales playbook that will convert them. It’s been about connecting marketing and sales. The area where most companies fall down.

I take a growth hackers approach to acquisition marketing and connect it to world class sales process. It’s really about building evidence-based, metric-driven growth through proven sales and marketing methodologies (as I’ve espoused throughout this site).

And although I’m a metrics geek and I nerd out on dashboards and technology, one of my greatest strengths is building teams. People talk about culture and its importance. And I believe it’s everything.

Your team has to be the perfect collection of beauty, brains, and brawn. They have to believe in each other, in a common goal, and in themselves. As a leader, it’s your job to deliver that. Build the person and the team and they will build the company.

Leadership is a verb…

I’ve been accused of running a cult… and I’m ok with it.

Because each person on every one of my teams will tell you… we had fun, we kicked a**, I learned something, and I improved myself. From book club, to wakeboard club, to drinking club (kidding… kind of…), I’ve been able to build teams that love to work and play and get stuff done together.

I’ve seen people grow, get to that next level, buy that car, build that family, realize that professional dream… and it’s produced indelible memories and built lifelong friendships… and that in itself is a successful career.

When I’m not obsessing about conversion rates, close rates, and digital strategy I can be found chasing my 3 daughters around the metro area playing Academy soccer, hanging out on my boat surfing, and driving my wife nuts with my charming wit.

Doing what you love…

It’s safe to say I’ve found my niche. Marketing and sales isn’t work for me. It’s a more like a thrill ride.

In 2018, I launched BrightScout to pursue my passion – teaching other companies how to build their sales and marketing machine. Right away I was able to achieve tremendous success rates for my clients.

It’s further validated the strategy and process I use for growth. And I get to do what I love, 100% of the time… make it rain by building marketing, lead generation and sales programs that convert deals.

Since launching BrightScout my career path has been a wild ride of fractional and full-time positions. I’ve coached two companies that had big exits. I took full time gigs with a company that had $100M in growth and another that crossed $100M. And I’ve advised on a dozen more amazing growth stories.

I love being at the intersection of sales, marketing and growth!

I am always interested in connecting with entrepreneurs and smart business people. If you have a question about anything on the site or if you feel my expertise can help in any way, just reach out.

Let’s connect!

Call me… email me… hit me up on the socials

If you have a question about anything on the site or if my expertise can help in any way, just reach out!

Let’s Connect
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