ROCSHIP

Lead Designer / Owner

PerfectWater

Director of Marketing

Marketing Specialist

Ezekiel Rochat Marketing

Website Designer

I'm a designer, developer, Christ-follower, husband, and entrepreneur.

I love helping consultants, creators, and coaches trade in frustration and confusion for a website that brings clarity, confidence, and strategic growth.

When you and I make more money because we work together, that’s pretty sweet.

When I’m not growing my own business, I enjoy well-brewed coffee, reading business books and fantasy novels, playing board games with friends, and losing myself in an unexplored world on my Xbox. Nerd alert.

My wife Kylee and I live in Knoxville, Tennessee, near the Great Smoky Mountains.

I believe that small businesses are the backbone of America—thanks, Dave Ramsey—and I want to contribute to the success of yours by helping you launch a website that you are eager to share.

Building a profitable business that makes a positive impact on others isn’t easy. If it were, everyone would do it.

Too many business owners cringe when look at their own websites because what they see there doesn’t represent who they really are, whom they help, and the value they create. No, what they see is bland. Blech.

But it doesn’t have to be that way.

The best websites make a strong, positive first impression. They win trust through thoughtful design, solid copywriting, and artful strategy. They persuade the right people that they have nothing to lose by taking the first step.

Those websites are the ones I build. 

Over the years, I have fine-tuned my process and simplified my packages and prices. 

I share easy-to-understand prices up front.
Website “sprints” keep us focused on what matters most. 
By launching a strategic website sooner, you see ROI sooner.
I even offer a 100% refund with our initial package. If you followed the process and strategy and don’t believe I kept my promise, I will return your money.

That said, I only work with about 20 people each year, so I’m very invested in making your project a success. It’s in my best interest to do so: I want to use your case study to win my new client!

My clients tell me I make them feel like they’re my only client, and a lot of them ask for monthly subscriptions after we go through several sprints. You’ll have that option too.

Whether you work with me or find a better fit elsewhere, I truly wish you all the success in the world and hope you make a wildly positive impact on your family, team, and clients.

-

When you're ready, there's 2 ways I can help you:

1. Download The Homepage Blueprint on my website.

2. Work with me to get a new website!


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Ezekiel Rochat

Ezekiel Rochat

David C. Baker

Punctuation

Practice Lead, Advisory Services

Utilis

Owned a 16-person marketing/communications firm in Indiana. I was Principal/Owner, and did all the commercial photography, copywriting, and corporate flying. :)

Owner

Eisenbrauns, Inc.

Managing bookselling division and all marketing activities for one of the largest academic and research publishers in the world.

Manager, Bookselling/Marketing Division

Owned a marketing communications firm for 6 years, then founded a consulting firm focused on M&A and helping entrepreneurial experts make better business decisions through writing, speaking, and advising.

Have written seven well-received books, typically speak at ca. 30-35 conferences per year, and have done in-depth consulting with 1,000+ independent firms.

Work has been discussed in the Wall Street Journal, NY Times, USA Today, Fast Company. Inc. Magazine, Forbes, MarketingProfs, BusinessWeek, and CBS.

Have spoken at multiple TEDx events, and on the advisory board for the graduate "Design for Social Innovation" program at SVA in NYC.

Hobbies: teaching motorcycle racing with the Superbike School (California); photography all over the world (44 countries to date); flying airplanes and helicopters; and custom woodworking.

Please join the 37,000+ folks who have signed up for my weekly insight emails at http://www.punctuation.com

Principal

How I’d suggest you go into a sales call.

First, push out whatever is happening in your personal life. It’s exhausting to focus on someone else, but it’s the right approach. You can come back to your own shit as soon as it’s done.

Second, your goal is to be curious and ask the right questions.

Third, you don’t NEED ANYTHING. Nothing. Whether you close this deal or not is immaterial. “Beat down your childlike glee,” as Blair titled one of our 2 Bobs episodes.

Fourth, commit yourself to helping this person. Tell them what they should do on their own or who they should work with. Maybe that’s you and maybe it’s not.

But I think the most important element of that is no. 3. Quit trying to accomplish something. Don’t worry too much about next steps. That’s not what you agree on after you have coffee with a friend. Just connect with someone in a way that’s way more refreshing than “decking them to death” with a presentation of your awesomeness.

"The expert's expert"—NYT. Author of 7 books, inc "Selling Your Professional Service Firm" + "The Business of Expertise" + "Secret Tradecraft". I help entrepreneurs build strong, sellable firms. Co-host: 2Bobs.com

Such a bizarre moment this week. For some reason I was searching for San Miguel Acatán on eBay, and came across a QSL card. That's a physical 3x5" card that ham radio operators would send each other to confirm a two-way conversation with someone across the world.

My parents were medical missionaries, and I grew up in that little village and didn't come to live in the US until my later years. No running water or sewer or electricity, but we did have a generator, which we would run 2 hours a day. We wired the house with 12v lights which we ran off batteries, and the generator charged them every day. The fridge was kerosene. I still don't understand how a heat source cooled a fridge. :)

The closest civilization of any kind was in Huehuetenano (way-way-tay-non-go), 60 miles and 5.5 hours away in a 4WD vehicle. The only way to communicate was by mail (two weeks) or telegraph, at $.03/word, but that line was frequently down and we'd be stranded for months at a time. Not really stranded, but unable to access any fuel or medical care or anything that we didn't grow ourselves.

Anyway, back to eBay. I see this QSL card...and it was from my Dad, who sent it to a US-based ham radio operator in Maine. We had 10-, 20-, 40-, and 80-meter dipole antennas strung on the roof (my Dad was afraid of heights and so he made me and my middle brother string them up--it was terrifying). So I bought it, and it just came today.

That ham radio was how I connected with my folks after I went to the US when I was 16. It was called a "phone patch" and it allowed two-way conversations, one at a time. Dad would call a US-based ham radio operator, who would "patch" me in to talk to them. When the massive earthquake hit in Guatemala in 1976, I didn't know if they were dead or alive for weeks, and I remember the local CBS station in Asheville, NC interviewing me about it (that's where I went to a boarding high school for a time).

Dad's call sign was TG5VW. TG is Guatemala and 5 is the region, and then you had two letters that were assigned to you. Mom had her license, too, and she was TG5BT.

It brought back a flood of memories. My early life was so different from most people's that I sometimes think it wasn't real, and then I see something in my own father's writing, from when I was 12, and it all comes flooding back. That's where I fell in love with languages, flying, motorcycles, and photography (Dad would let me fire up the Leica enlarger to process film in the darkroom.)

Life is so rich, as Scott Galloway always says.

Finally, we sit down to write. Frida is the co-author of the weekly email, and now she is done surveying her kingdom, making sure her dedicated chair still works, and then talks to me (literally) and leads me to the couch. She rests her head on her pillow, a cold, hard chunk of machined aluminum, otherwise known as a laptop. This week we are writing about which segments of our field have a great future...and which are a bit suspect.

After nearly a year of experimenting, this issue of the newsletter will follow a new format. No longer will it include the entire article, unchanged. It's confused some people to get my original email, and then to get another email from LinkedIn with the same newsletter. I will never put our future in the hands of LinkedIn, a platform we don't control, and so now the best way to get our weekly insight articles is to sign up for them at punctuation[dot]com, and this LinkedIn newsletter will just be a summary with links.

View newsletter: Building a Marketing Firm

(Editor’s note: from here forward, this LinkedIn newsletter will not duplicate the weekly Sunday email that you can subscribe to at Punctuation.com. T

Open article: Why Clients Come, Stay, & Leave by David C. Baker • 2 min read

I’m skeptical of optimistic people, because a little part of my always suspects that they are ignoring reality a bit. I’m drawn to hopeful people, instead, because I picture them being honest about their circumstances…but still finding hope. That could very well be a silly distinction, but it works for me.

Anyway, when I’m in a funk or feeling sorry for myself or feeling misunderstood, about the only thing that yanks me by the throat straight out of that self immolation is gratefulness. And usually it’s for the most ordinary things. A spouse, a son, a daughter in law, food that day, not sleeping on the sidewalk, just walking from my office to the deck and take a look around or pet a dog.

We’re at an RV park in the eastern mountains of TN, today, just the two of us, and there’s a UK couple in a trailer next to us. We’re ordered a pre-cooked Thanksgiving dinner, and my goodness there was a lot, so we split it with them. That was an awesome experience. What made it awesome was that they gratefully accepted, too.

The weird thing is that I forget to be grateful, too, and have to remind myself to reorient my thinking.

No matter how awesome or regretful your life is today, I’ll bet that gratefulness is called for. Your success, however marvelous it is, has a lot of luck mixed into it (don’t get a big head). Your “failure,” however painful, probably has some bad luck mixed in, too.

My fellow humans, my very best wishes to you!

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Well, Jonathan was holding down the fort all day while I was melting round pieces of rubber in the north GA mountains with some riding friends. I hope your Friday was as fun as mine. I did think of some articles I wanted to write, so I don't feel entirely guilty. All loaded back up and headed home early tomorrow.

Another weekly article coming your way Sunday. If you aren't signed up for our weekly insight article, please join us at punctuation[dot]com. There are 13,000 agencies that get it, and it's our lifeline to the industry. We've also had ca. 150 firms sign up for our "passive seller" database—they aren't quite ready to sell their firm, but they like knowing about opportunities when we are representing someone on the buy-side.

And we're doing a somewhat larger (and less expensive) M&A event in February. Read about that at the same site.

Have a great weekend, everyone.

As I noted in this thread, Liam is a very special researcher and narrative storyteller. I know the people whose story he is telling, and the stories are accurate...and full of actionable information. I had the chance to meet Liam at our last London gathering and I am excited to see him succeed in this work.

I help consultants uncover, document, and publish their expertise.

How does an invisible expert become an undisputed authority?

Through 2024 and 2025, I produced deep dive case studies covering consultants like David C. Baker and April Dunford on how they developed insight, packaged IP, gathered community, and built their business model. 

They resonated. 

People like David C. Baker and Blair Enns shared them, business owners selling expertise subscribed, some even told me they printed out hard copies.

One reason I believe they resonated was because of the level of research I put into each case study.

I read their books and articles, watched their keynotes, and listened to their podcasts to find the threads.

After, we'd sit down for a conversation to fill in the gaps.

The truth is, I always wanted to do this as an audio narrative, but I didn't want to do it until I was confident that I had something different to share – does the market really need another interview-style podcast?

This week, I am launching a new podcast: Undisputed Authority.

I think I have something different that's worth your time.

Each episode tells the story of how one expert became THE voice in their field.

It's a narrative drawn from dozens of sources, including my conversation with the authority in question, that reveals the story behind how they built business.

I'm gathering strategies and patterns that you can apply.

Upcoming episodes include Rory Sutherland, Nancy Duarte, and Dorie Clark.

First episode goes live tomorrow on all podcast apps.

I'll post tomorrow when it's live, but if you want a personal notification from me to share the link tomorrow, tell me in the comments or DM me.

Oh how I love this poster. We had a wood cabin in the mountains in eastern TN, and we'd get groceries at the local Piggly Wiggly. Down home people, and sometimes you'd see fresh eggs from the farm next door in the cooler.

Anyway, I check out (no Discover or Amex accepted) and see this on the community bulletin board.

Typos, raw layout skills, honest emotion. AI isn't going to create this real humanity.

In just a few months, 160 firms have told us that they are contemplating selling and registered their interest with us. I analyzed the database to see what was happening and what it might tell us about the market.

This week’s article is going to be a bit different in that I want to give you a snapshot of what’s happening in the M&A space for small- to mid-sized 

Open article: Current State of M&A Market by David C. Baker • 3 min read

Take advantage of this folks. I can (embarrassingly) admit that my cohost is definitely worth meeting. I’ve been to Oz 3x myself and freaking love the folks there. I’m actually jealous.

Founder, Win Without Pitching—sell & price like the expert you are

G'day Sydney! 

I'm doing a small meet and greet with our Win Without Pitching clients, subscribers and friends at a pub in Surry Hills on Thursday, Nov 27th. 

No entrance fee, cash bar, but limited space. 

If you're in Sydney and in one of the categories above, or a 1st connection here, and you'd like to join, DM me for details.

In this article, I talk about the single trait that nearly every successful principal shares (all but 4 out of 1,340, anyway).

(Editor’s note: this is a summary of what’s happening at Punctuation. If you’d like to get the actual newsletter in your inbox, please subscribe at Pu

Open article: The Single Trait 99.7% of Successful Principals Share by David C. Baker • 2 min read

The Single Trait 99.7% of Successful Principals Share

Is the cavalry coming? Or should you just view this as the new normal?

Open article: Adjusting to the New Normal by David C. Baker • 2 min read

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David C. Baker

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The Battle

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David C. Baker

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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);}David C. Baker's LinkedIn Performance

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