Devin Bramhall

Co-host: Don't Say Content. Marketing Advisor. Agency Growth Strategist. Former CEO of Animalz.

Your CEO doesn't hate marketing. They hate that you can't prove that it works.

I know because I've been the marketer pitching brilliant strategies that get shelved and the CEO wondering why marketing feels like an expensive black box.

After 15+ years building content strategies as a marketer and tripling Animalz to nearly $12M ARR as CEO, I realized the real problem:

We're optimizing for activities instead of outcomes. Checking boxes instead of driving growth.

The dirty secret? Most "content marketing strategies" are just glorified to-do lists.

My book "B2B Content Marketing Strategy" shows why "do more marketing" is killing growth and what to do instead.

Now I help companies stop doing marketing and start growing businesses as a fractional Chief Growth Officer.

If you're tired of: 
→ Defending your work instead of leading with it 
→ Following frameworks that feel like busy work 
→ Watching brilliant ideas die in committee

You're in the right place.

I help marketers ask better questions. Not “what content do we need?” but “what does the business need to grow?'"

Get weekly no-BS takes on growth: devinbramhall.com/newsletter

Chief Executive Officer

I used to think being a good marketing leader meant I had to be the smartest person in the room.

Spoiler: I wasn't. And trying to be made me worse at my job.

Here's what no one tells you about the shift from doing to leading, it's not about working harder or knowing more. It's about letting go of being right.

When I first moved into leadership, I apologized constantly. "Sorry, I don't have that data yet." "Sorry, let me circle back on that." I thought humility meant admitting what I didn't know.

Turns out, that just made everyone nervous.

The shift happened when I stopped apologizing and started owning my stance—even when I couldn't prove it yet. "Here's what I'm seeing. Here's the direction. Let's course-correct if we're wrong."

(Confidence isn't about being right. It's about having a POV and moving forward.)

But here's the part that actually broke me: letting go of execution.

I was still writing the copy. Still building the decks. Still the one "who could just do it faster." Classic Cinderella syndrome, if you're scrubbing the floors, you're not running the house.

And leadership? That's selling the strategy internally. Pitching to the CEO. Shaping the narrative before anyone else does. Your team can execute. You need to build the conditions for them to win.

The hardest lesson: You're not an IC anymore. Stop asking permission.

Don't say "I'd like to try this approach." Say "Here's what we're doing and why it's going to work."

Your CEO doesn't ask permission to make calls on incomplete data. Neither should you.

Marketing leadership isn't about having answers. It's about having conviction when no one else does.

Chief Growth Officer [Fractional]. Author: “B2B Content Marketing Strategy” out now on Amazon

Your CEO is asking you to "do more content" because they don't know what else to tell you.

They don't understand demand generation. Or brand positioning. And they definitely don't understand why the leads aren't converting.

So they default to: "We need more content."

And you? You're drowning in a backlog of blog posts no one will read, social posts that get 12 likes, and webinars with 3 attendees.

This is a leadership problem.

When leadership can't articulate strategy, they ask for activity. When they can't measure what matters, they count outputs. When they can't defend marketing to the board, they ask you to "do more" and hope something sticks.

I've watched this destroy marketing teams. The CEO who demanded 50 blog posts a quarter but couldn't tell me what outcome we were driving. The VP who obsessed over social followers while pipeline sat at zero. The board that wanted "more brand awareness" with zero patience for how long that actually takes.

When executives don't know how to evaluate marketing, they measure what's easy to count.

Stop asking for permission to do less. Defend focus instead.

The next time someone asks for "more content," I ask them:

More content to achieve what outcome? What are we trying to change about the business?

If they can't answer that, you have a strategy problem. No amount of content will fix it.

Ask me to be on your podcast, and I'll say yes.

Here’s why I’m saying that out loud.

I’ve been thinking a lot about the conversations I actually want to have this year and the rooms I want to be in. And when I look at most marketing podcasts, there’s a gap.

A lot of them talk about the work without ever having had to own it. Same advice, different guest. And most of it has never had to survive a CEO, a board, or a real budget.

I’ve been a marketer, then a CEO, and now I work as a fractional CGO. I helped grow a content business from $1.8M to $12M. I’ve had to explain why things failed, not just why they should work. I’ve had to decide what to stop doing when the math didn’t work.

And that changes how you talk about growth.

I know why leadership doesn’t trust marketing. I know why good strategies get shut down. And I know what actually changes those conversations. It’s not more activity, and it’s not better decks.

I’m not interested in checklist episodes or framework tours. I care about how growth actually works inside companies. Where it breaks. Where marketing loses credibility. What it’s like when you’re responsible for the outcome.

So yeah. That’s the ask.

If you run a podcast for B2B marketers or founders who want a real conversation and not another playbook recap, I’d love to join.

DM me if it makes sense.

For B2B marketers feeling overwhelmed...

Don't do more.  
Do less.  
That's strategy.

I was on IN CLEAR FOCUS with Adrian Tennant talking about my book, and this keeps coming up. Marketers asking what to do with shrinking budgets, impossible timelines, and pressure from all sides.

My answer pisses people off: Stop.

Don't add one more thing. Don't optimize one more channel. Don't layer on one more tactic because some newsletter said you should.

Think for yourself.

Look at what's actually in front of you. The resources you already have, the people inside your company, the relationships you've already built.

Work with that.

When I was CEO, I turned "outcomes over activities" into our operating mantra. When clients said "I want thought leadership," I'd ask: "Why? What outcome are you trying to achieve?"

Sounds obvious. But most marketers skip this because they're too busy executing someone else's playbook.

Here's what I know after growing a company from $1.8M to $12M:

The smartest strategy is the fewest actions that deliver the greatest results.

Not the longest content calendar.  
Or the most channels.  
And not the busiest team.

The question isn't "What should I be doing?"

It's "What outcome am I trying to drive? And what's the simplest path there?"

Keyword-based content plans? Those worked when you had growth-at-all-costs funding and could throw money at ranking.

That model died in 2023.

But most marketing teams are still operating like it's 2019. Writing more articles. Posting more content. Cranking the wheel harder.

And wondering why nothing's moving.

Because activity doesn't equal impact.

Your CEO doesn't care how many blog posts you published. They care whether those posts influenced pipeline, shortened sales cycles, or reduced CAC.

So if you're drowning right now, here's your permission slip:

Do less. Think more. Start with what works.

Don't go to playbooks. Don't look at what anyone else has done.

Look at what's physically in front of you and build a strategy to do less and accomplish more.

That's the shift I cover in 𝘉𝟚𝘉 𝘊𝘰𝘯𝘵𝘦𝘯𝘵 𝘔𝘢𝘳𝘬𝘦𝘵𝘪𝘯𝘨 𝘚𝘵𝘳𝘢𝘵𝘦𝘨𝘺 (you can find it on Amazon). Moving from predictable, exhausting activity loops to strategies that actually create leverage.

If you're tired of running in circles, maybe it's time to stop running.

Full episode is linked below if you're curious.

(Thanks to the Bigeye team for having me on.)

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Here's everything I'm using to build my business.

People keep asking how I'm managing the consulting, the newsletter, the courses, the membership I'm launching.

The answer: eight tools and a clear hypothesis about what you need.

What I'm testing:

Courses on Maven using the frameworks I use with clients (how to get C-suite buy-in, how to build a growth strategy, that kind of thing). A newsletter. And advisory sprints for people who need focused help right now. A membership for marketing leaders who want strategic coaching without agency pricing. 

I'm not guessing. I'm testing with real people and iterating based on what I learn.

The 8 tools:

-Zoom – client calls, meetings
-Granola – meeting notes (I know Zoom does this, but the UI is better)
-Squarespace - for my core website 
-beehiiv – newsletter, courses, membership platform
-Stripe – cuz payments
-Ordinal – where I collaborate and schedule my LinkedIn content
-PhantomBuster – LinkedIn growth
-Alertmouse – tracks when people mention my name or key phrases

That's it. No complex funnels. Just what I need to get products in front of people and learn what resonates.

Most people spend months planning in private, then launch to crickets because they built what they 𝘵𝘩𝘰𝘶𝘨𝘩𝘵 people wanted.

I'd rather build fast, test real demand, and adjust based on what works.
That's what building in public gets you: immediate feedback instead of assumptions.

I'll share what I learn as I go.

Anything you're curious about?

Here I am reading Glassdoor reviews about me out loud.

Yes, really.

From 2020-2022, when I was CEO of a content marketing agency, my former employees had *opinions* about me.

So I pulled out the meanest ones and decided to read them on camera.

At the time? I was devastated. Rookie CEO. Didn't know this was normal.

Now? I can giggle about them.

Some of these were harsh but fair. Others... well, you can decide for yourself.

If you've ever been the villain in someone else's work story, you'll get it.

Stay tuned for part 2.

Madhav Bhandari

I’m a B2B marketer with 12+ years of experience helping startups grow from scrappy beginnings ($2M+ ARR) to category leadership ($20M+ ARR and beyond). I’ve built lean, high-performing marketing engines across both PLG / sales-led companies.Some wins I’m proud of:• As Hubstaff’s first marketer, I helped grow revenue from $200K to $5M ARR in 4 years (now $30M+ ARR).• At Close, I helped break through our revenue plateau and reach 8 figure ARR (now $30M+ ARR)• At Storylane, I scaled marketing to grow our revenue from $2M to $10M+ ARR within 2 years.• At Bonsai (acquired by Zoom), I scaled marketing and tripled our ARR in under 2 years.How I typically drive results:• Building content engines that generate millions in organic traffic• Running demand gen across SEO, ads, dark social, events and influencers• Creating GTM playbooks for new products and categories• Aligning brand, product marketing, and revenue into one motion• Leading bold, creative campaigns that actually get noticed• Using pattern interrupts to stand out in crowded marketsMy strength and philosophy is doing marketing that stands out. I focus on work that drives action and ties directly to pipeline.I’ve helped many scale-ups grow beyond $10M ARR, either as a full-time leader or a hands-on advisor. I love taking on this challenge.I'm open to taking on more advisory roles, especially with martech / salestech companies. If you’re looking for an advisor who's actively in the work and brings practical experience, message me. Thanks for reading till the end!

Head of Marketing

Internally, the Chief Content Officer at Storylane.

My goal is to drive demand for Storylane using content-led initiatives such as video, social, organic search, brand and partnerships. 

Navigating the $1M to $10M ARR journey over the next couple of quarters.

I think mascots are wildly overrated in B2B.

Companies spend a surprising amount of time, money, and creative energy building mascots, and most of the time, almost nobody actually remembers them.

This has been on my mind lately after a few conversations about brand and positioning. We even talked internally about whether Storylane should have a mascot.

But here’s the thing I keep coming back to.

Ask yourself a simple question: do you remember Salesforce’s mascot?

If you’re like most people, your reaction is probably something like, “Wait… does Salesforce even have one?”

That’s not a knock on Salesforce. It’s just how memory works.

Most people don’t remember mascots. If you do, you’re either paying very close attention or you really love mascots. Try this same exercise with the companies or tools you admire and you’ll see the same pattern play out again and again.

Now flip the question.

Who is the person you associate with those companies?

That answer usually comes immediately.

Salesforce brings Mark Benioff to mind.
HubSpot makes you think of Dharmesh Shah.
Ahrefs is Tim Soulo.
Lovable is Anton.
Zapier is Wade Foster.
Kit is Nathan Barry.
Close is Steli Efti.

I know what these people look like because I keep seeing them show up in my feed, emails, conversations etc. Over time, that repetition matters. A handful of operators consistently show up, share their thinking, and slowly become the mental shortcut for the brand itself.

Every company has people like this. Leaders or executives who post regularly and become the identity you associate with the business. The mascot fades into the background, even when one technically exists.

At the end of the day, people remember people.

A visible executive who shows up consistently tends to stick far more than a mascot ever will, and you can lean into that approach really hard if you want to.

I’m not saying mascots are always wrong or that this is some universal rule. But it lines up closely with what I’ve seen across both smaller companies and much larger ones.

Feels like we’re living in a people-first moment right now. Maybe mascots come later.

Pattern Interrupt Marketing book coming soon | Head of Marketing @ Storylane

I just submitted the full draft of my book.

It’s based on the marketing framework we built internally at Storylane to consistently come up with campaigns that don’t look like everyone else’s. The same framework that helped us grow brand awareness 7x, from about 1,500 people searching for us each month to north of 10,000 now. The same framework that helped us 12x traffic and go from roughly $2M to $10M+ in ARR in two years, without raising any funding.

I didn’t start with the goal of writing a book. The framework came first.

The observation was simple: almost every software category is now brutally crowded. Martech and sales tech have been this way for a while, but now it’s everywhere. New products launch into markets where dozens of companies are running the same playbooks. Same positioning. Same channels. Same promises.

Scroll LinkedIn, walk a conference floor, browse competitor websites - everything blends together.

I remember walking a sales enablement conference and realizing that once I got home, I couldn’t remember which booth belonged to which company. Same colors. Same claims. Same outcomes. It wasn’t confusing. It was boring.

At the same time, the growth playbook has changed.

Push tactics are far less forgiving. Ad costs keep rising. SDR connect rates are down. Cold outreach is harder than it’s ever been. SEO is brutally competitive. These channels still work, but sameness now gets punished quickly.

What’s changed even more is how buyers buy.

A large part of the journey now happens through self-discovery. I see it in my own behavior and in the people I work with. Think about the last few tools you bought. You probably didn’t start with a “best X software” search. You heard about them through people you trust, content, communities, events, or conversations you’ll never see in attribution.

That’s why pull tactics are thriving. It’s why brand matters more. It’s why LLMs matter. Buyers are forming opinions and shortlists long before they ever talk to sales.

In this environment, growth is about out-differentiating your competitors.

That’s the exact problem this framework was built to solve.

Internally, we call it PIPE - the Pattern Interrupt Portfolio Engine. The idea is to identify category patterns and deliberately break them, repeatedly. Not one viral campaign. Not one channel. A portfolio of pattern interrupts running in parallel so you’re constantly giving the market new reasons to notice and remember you.

Now I’m conflicted about the name of the book and I need your help.

I could call it Pattern Interrupt Marketing. Clean, obvious.

Or I could go with PIPE, which is what we’ve been calling the framework all along.

I’m leaning toward Pattern Interrupt Marketing, but I’m curious what lands for you. Which one do you like more (or hate lol), or do you have a another suggestion?

I’m still processing how 2025 turned out for Storylane.
When we started the year, I don’t think any of us genuinely believed we’d pull off what we just did.

Few things that happened in 2025 that deserve some recognition:

1/ We crossed $10M ARR - and how we did it matters.
We did it in record time, without any add-on funding, as a lean, remote, angel-strapped team. Profitable. Disciplined. The next milestone is $20M ARR, but this one mattered because of how we got here.

2/ Storylane scaled in both capability and use cases.
We had like 500 releases this year (no kidding). We went live with Lily, made it possible to build demos instantly using AI, added demo A/B testing, demo alerts, Hubs, interest screens, presenter mode, desktop apps for Mac/Windows, deeper sales tech integrations, and a growing set of AI-powered workflows.

3/ Customer love showed up everywhere.
We crossed 1,000+ 5-star reviews on G2, and Storylane is now the highest-rated demo automation software. Across search, G2, and even LLM responses, we consistently show up as the demo automation leader.

4/ We made a lot of noise - and it compounded.
Employee advocacy drove ~28M impressions. Influencers added another ~8M. That’s ~36M impressions in total, or roughly 3M per month. A big chunk came from our team being genuinely proud to talk about what they’re building.

5/ Demo usage went ballistic.
Customers created 150,000 demos, roughly 2x YoY, largely driven by AI features. Around 1,700 Hubs were created. Total demo views crossed 50M+, nearly 5x YoY, with over 1.1M hours spent engaging with demos.

6/ We expanded both logos and depth.
We crossed 5,000+ paying customers and added names like HubSpot, Alibaba, and Deloitte, alongside customers like Microsoft, Amazon, Pearson, and Nasdaq. Expansion revenue also became one of the fastest-growing parts of the business as existing customers added more teams and use cases.

7/ Marketing leaned hard into pattern interrupts.
Demo Dundies  S2 went fully live on set and we sent the winner to Italy. We ran conference activations ranging from Julius Caesar at INBOUND to Santa taking over our website. We launched Democcino (our coffee blend), rolled out Denim Jackets across the conference circuit, kicked off Finer Demos Club (webinars + IRL), and quietly rolled out a full visual rebrand built for a multi-product future.

8/ The team scaled with intent.
We crossed 50+ people, with most growth in customer support as onboarding accelerated. Next month, the entire team meets in Malaysia to celebrate!

Looking ahead to 2026.
The goals are clear: 
- $20M ARR 
- launch and grow our third product (launching end of Jan) 
- roll out a full V2 UI 
- double down on customer marketing and expansions

As always, we’ll keep building in public and sharing what we learn.

If you want a more fun version of this recap, my team put together a fun year-end review video that’s absolutely worth watching.

Did you know Storylane also has a second product called Hubs?

Hubs is what reps use after a good demo call, instead of sending a long follow-up email with pricing links, demo videos, case studies, and random attachments that get forwarded internally and ignored.

But what we just shipped in Hubs last week is the part I’m most excited about: Interest Screens.

When a prospect opens a Hub, the first thing they see is a simple screen asking what they care about - their role, industry, or the part of the product they want to explore.

From there, they only see demos, PDFs, and assets that are relevant to them.

So instead of you guessing what to send, or manually curating content for every deal, the buyer self-selects and the Hub adapts automatically.

On your side, you can see exactly what they chose and how they engaged, which makes follow-ups and next meetings a lot more focused.

Here's a live example - https://lnkd.in/eVhQn8v4

Interest Screens is live for all Storylane Hubs customers today, and if you’re not using Hubs yet, it’s worth a look 👇

I like asking questions that don’t have clean answers and actually require experience. The kind where you only really have an opinion if you’ve lived through it. I enjoy exchanging notes more than sharing conclusions, and that’s why I like LinkedIn. You get peers from all over the world chiming in with their own context, numbers, and scars.

A lot of my LinkedIn posts have sparked some GREAT discussions. Most of that value lives in the comments, and while those conversations disappear in the feed, I really don’t want people to lose what’s in there.

Here are some of those discussions on topics ChatGPT will never give you a straight answer to - they’re people-led and experience-led.

1. Running ads on branded searches - yes or no?https://lnkd.in/e9DCCS6G

2. What actually works in LLM SEO? Or is it hype?
https://lnkd.in/erwgKypA

3. How to get more out of your ads budget when LinkedIn Ads and Google Ads keep getting more expensive https://lnkd.in/eVVR9Sua

4. Managing work-travel balance, especially as a new parent https://lnkd.in/eYuQSgqU

5. LinkedIn native audience targeting vs custom audiences - what drives better ad ROI? https://lnkd.in/edrR9vnF

6. What B2B marketing budgets actually look like and where are marketing leaders investing https://lnkd.in/eWGUbS6p

Glad to have peers in my network who like to nerd out on this stuff with me and give back so generously.

“Why doesn’t every company just offer a free trial?”

That was naive me until a few weeks ago.

Everyone says B2B companies should just offer a free trial, but many teams  avoid offering a free trial because, for their business, it’s not a great decision.

Here’s what I keep seeing.

1/ For some products, real value only shows up with real data. Offering a free trial means exposing that data. When the data is proprietary IP, that’s not a tradeoff teams are willing to make. Using fake or limited data in a trial makes the product feel weak and hurts trust.

2/ For other products, value only shows up at scale or with heavy customization.
Offering a free trial means spinning up environments immediately. Trials can’t reflect real scale, heavy customization doesn’t work in an instant self-serve setup, and engineering gets pulled into what should be low-touch conversations.

3/ Offering a free trial also lowers the bar too much. It creates signups, not intent, and pulls sales and SE teams into early-stage, low-quality conversations that are expensive to support.

This isn’t to say free trials are bad. They’re just not universally good for every business. Every company has different constraints and economics.

But across these conversations, the pattern is consistent. Teams want buyers to experience the product, but they need control - over the data, the narrative, and how much human time gets pulled in early.

That’s why a lot of these companies are now using Storylane instead of offering free trials. It lets prospects explore realistic workflows, self-qualify, and bring sales in later, without exposing IP or struggling with scale.

One sales leader summed it up perfectly in a recent call: "if buyers can move themselves forward just as far without an AE or SE, why involve humans early at all?" 🤔

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The Battle

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