Garrett Jestice

Community Founder | Startup GTM Advisor | Former CMO | BBQ Judge | Dad x4

Some months are busy. Some months are quiet. You don't know if you should hire, spend on marketing, or wait.

Referrals show up, then stop. Marketing doesn't bring steady customers. Every sales call requires explaining what you do all over again.

So you try more: new campaigns, new channels, new messaging. But every move feels risky because you never figured out why the good customers chose you in the first place.

You have won deals, but you don't know the pattern behind those wins. Which customers fit best. What problem made them buy. Why they picked you. 

Without that, every decision is a guess. And the feast-and-famine revenue rollercoaster keeps spinning.

---

I spent almost a decade inside fast-growing B2B software companies as the founding marketer at Lucidpress (acquired 2021), then CMO at Eddy where my team doubled marketing-generated MRR year-over-year.

What I learned: the fastest path to growth isn't adding more. It's identifying the 20% of customers and activities driving 80% of results and doubling down on them. The companies that grow most consistently aren't doing more things. They are doing fewer things better.

Three years ago, I left to build my own practice and tested nearly every solo model — fractional, productized consulting, agency, advisory. What I kept finding: smart operators stuck on the feast-and-famine rollercoaster, adding tactics instead of studying the wins they already had.

The fix is almost always the same: find your single best-fit customer, study exactly why they bought, and build your ICP, offer, positioning, and demand engine around replicating them.

---

This is where I help.

I work with founders of B2B software and service businesses doing $500K-$5M who have initial traction but can't predict what comes next. We identify your best-fit customer, study the buying pattern, and use it to sharpen your ICP, offer, positioning, and demand channels so you stop riding the rollercoaster and start replicating the revenue you want.

12-week Revenue Advisory: Weekly working sessions + async Slack support.

Learn more: PreludeMarketing.com

---

I also run 10x Solo, a community for independent consultants, fractionals, and micro-agency owners working to build steadier, simpler businesses. Learn more: 10xSolo.com

---

Outside of work: I live in Utah with my wife and four kids. I coach youth basketball and soccer, judge BBQ competitions, and I am usually planning my next trip to Hawaii.

GTM Advisor / Fractional CMO

Startup Marketers is a free, Slack community for startup marketing leaders, freelancers, and fractionals. If that sounds like you, join us to connect with others and share ideas, feedback, and resources to help us all get better.

Join us here: https://bit.ly/StartupMarketers

With over 17 years of experience in B2B and B2C marketing, I am an award-winning and published marketing executive who drives record results for high-growth startups and established brands. As the VP of Marketing at TAB Bank, I lead a team of marketing professionals who are passionate about transforming the banking industry with innovative and customer-centric solutions.

I have a strong background in data analytics, MarTech, digital marketing, demand generation, branding, content marketing, marketing strategy, influencer marketing, account based marketing, and event based marketing. I have implemented best-in-class marketing processes that have led to numerous award-winning campaigns and increased revenue, ROI, and market share for TAB Bank. I have also spoken at over 50 conferences and events, sharing my insights and expertise on marketing trends and best practices.

John Huntinghouse

I typically find these Hollywood “acceptance” speeches a bit performative and rarely connect with them. My bias is probably showing in spades here, and it doesn't help that I’m a massive fan of Harrison Ford’s work, but there was something about his words that felt genuinely authentic to my own struggles.

There are so many quotes in his speech that just hit home but the idea of him struggling for 15 years before he “found his people” just resonated. 

We all go through our various wilderness period. Mine was going to school to become a doctor and doing all of those things to realize that I was just lost and never really found joy in the work I was trying to do. Then struggling for years to find my own place both in terms of a career and a way to provide for my family.
 
It’s easy once you have found some form of success to retroactively look back and clearly see your path to that success. It’s an entirely different thing when you are in the middle of your “messy era” and look back and all you see is 15 years of failing.

Everyone needs that person that believes in them even when there isn’t any reason to.

Everyone needs to have that hope that helps them push through their hard years as they are finding their purpose and calling in life.

Which leads to my favorite quote of his during this speech:

“Success in this business brings a certain freedom that comes with responsibility to support each other, to lift others up when we can. To keep the door open for the next kid. The next lost boy who’s looking for a place to belong.”

Not only do those of us who have found success have a responsibility to hold the door, but it’s our responsibility to build a bigger room for those who are still trying to find their way.

There’s the old adage that true leaders create more leaders. If your success hasn’t resulted in more chairs at the table (and more tables), you’re just occupying space at the cost of those who are not in the room. 

I didn’t find my people because I was lucky...I found my people because people like John Dye ★ Jared Cannon, Shawn P. Butler, MBA, Barett Christensen all saw a misfit boy and CHOOSE to give me the opportunity to show what I could do despite not having the perfect resume or track record. They gave me a trajectory. They saw the value in the "lost boy" before the world did.
 
If you notice that your table is full, don't just sit there. Find a hammer and go build a bigger room because somewhere out there is a person in their 15th year of "failing," just waiting for someone to see past their resume and offer them a place to belong.

John Huntinghouse 

VP of Marketing TAB Bank | Keynote Speaker | Professor of Marketing

2460 days!

Today I celebrate my 2460th day working at TAB Bank.  

You're probably thinking um....well...ok....Kind of random but congrats I guess? 

Let me explain....

I used to believe that massive change agents came into an organization/startup and just made all of these sweeping changing and boom, everything ran smoothly. 

I believed that an individual could John Wayne their way in, and be the solo hero to save the company. The obvious problem is that this is just not true. 

There's something to building new things. New processes/products/lines of businesses/campaigns that is exciting and invigorating. 

There's also a lot of frustrations, setbacks, egos, delays, macro environmental issues that way a heavy toll on anyone building something. 

There's just something about sitting in the middle of the mess that helps you understand and learn things you could never have learned any other way. This applies to parenting, learning a new language, a new sport/hobby, or helping to grow a business. 

You just can't shortcut your way around it. It takes time and I think it's easy to come into a job, spend 1-2 years into it...blow everything up and move on to the next gig. I see so many high level professionals just leave the minute it gets tough or when they start to run into institutional roadblocks and repeat the same patterns at the next stop. 

It really is a marathon and learning not to give up during the valleys and finding a way to push through until you get to the other side is a quality trait that I think is badly needed in our workforce. There is something to be said for individuals who grow their "building" muscles by learning to sit in the pain of everything that is required at a company. 

Learn to do the heavy lifting and part of that is training yourself to deal with the heavy strain that is required of anyone doing anything meaningful whether that be building a family, a new project or helping the business do things it has never done before. 

So here's to the 2460 days of all of the success we have had here at TAB Bank but more importantly, here's the 2460 days of stressful meetings, delayed timelines, setbacks, unintended consequences and all of the messiness that comes along with building and doing great work and being a small part of building an amazing brand.

And yes 2460 is a bit random (a few months short of 7 years) but it does show that I have been here long enough to do my fair share of heavy lifting.

"Tell me one of your weaknesses?"

It's just such a lazy question in an interview and I really don't think it really provides any useful context for the interviewer of the fit of the candidate for the job. 

That being said, I heard the best response to this question last week. 

Last week my son had his first interview for a job at Lagoon. During the interview they asked him to name one of his weaknesses to which he in all sincerity replied "needles...definitely don't do well with needles." 

I literally lol'd at the answer and thought hmmm...I'm going to use that from now on if I ever get asked that questions. 

The interesting thing is how not funny he thought it was that I found it such a hilarious answer. He was like...I don't understand what's so funny. 😄

Show up...

When you see someone off their game show up and step up. 

This doesn't only apply to your coworkers but it could very well be your boss or a leader in another department. 

When you see signs of another human slipping, struggling or not showing up themselves as they typically do, we need to find ways to show up for one another. 

There is no relationship in the world that is 50/50. 

In my marriage there are times where I'm carrying 90% of the weight. There are other times where my wife does the same. There's times and seasons for everyone because everyone is human and we all run into human experiences (both bad and good).  

You might have a teammate who is struggling with a child going through depression. You might have a boss who seems to have it altogether but then they start to slip or you notice that they are becoming more and more agitated.  

Everyone you work with is human and we all have human emotions and are dealing with human _______. Sometimes that human _____ is amazing...sometimes it's just the worst. 

But when you have capacity to help, regardless of where your personal responsibilities may be..find ways to show up.

If you are the one that needs that help, find someone that you can trust to help carry that weight. It's a lot easier said than done but it's something that all of us need help at some point.

Planning ≠ Strategy
Planning ≠ Strategy
Planning ≠ Strategy

As bank marketers (and marketers in general) we throw around the idea of “strategic planning” a lot.

But most of what we’re actually doing is just planning.

Planning is a checklist of things we want to improve:

• We want to do a rebrand
• We need to optimize the website
• We should build out our MarTech stack
• We should experiment with AI

Those things might be useful.
But they are not strategy.

Planning makes us all feel better because it allows us to organize resources we control but strategy is a theory about outcomes you can't.

If you are being strategic, you are answering question like:
Why are we playing on this field instead of another one?
Why should customers choose us over anyone else?
What are we going to do better, or differently, than competitors?

A real strategy forces choices.

It requires trade-offs.
It means deciding what not to do.

And most importantly, strategy creates coherence.

Your brand, website, MarTech, messaging, sales motion, and product experience shouldn’t be separate improvement projects.

They should reinforce each other as part of a system designed to win a specific game.

Planning is comforting because it makes us feel as if we are being productive and strategy is uncomfortable because it literally does the opposite. It forces you to bet on how you will win.

At the end of the day, the job of a marketer is to grow the company full stop. That's it. Marketing is simply about how do we help the business/brand grow. 

So find the game worth playing and then build the system that lets you win.

Also if you want a quick rule of thumb...if your strategy is mostly a list of projects… it’s probably just planning.

Grateful for the opportunity to support the American Heart Association’s Utah Go Red for Women event this week.

It was inspiring to see so many passionate leaders, advocates, and community members come together to raise awareness around something that impacts millions of families: women’s heart health.

Heart disease remains the #1 cause of death for women in the United States, responsible for about 1 in every 5 female deaths each year. More than 60 million women in the U.S. are currently living with some form of cardiovascular disease so it's just such a big deal that affects so many women in the U.S. 

Big shout out to the AHA for the incredible work they do to advance research, education, and prevention. 

Proud that TAB Bank could help support such an important cause and be part of a community committed to making a real difference and it was great to have such a great team represent the bank at the event.

CIO – Digital Transformation, Technology Strategy, Technology Management, IT Risk Management ➠ Strategic Planning & Execution ➠ Organizational Change Management ➠ Employee Engagement & Culture Creation

Spent my Friday surrounded by incredible women at the American Heart Association's Utah Go Red for Women event. It was truly eye opening to see young women on stage sharing their stories, really driving home the message how much this work matters. It was an honor to represent TAB Bank as a sponsor and show up to support such passionate advocacy. 

#utahgored #openyourheart #community

📷 : Paula Marsh Ashley Padilla Char Beck Emily Diaz Kelly Leonard Julia Hernandez

taplio

The Battle

Garrett Jestice

John Huntinghouse

Followers

Posts

Engagements

Likes

Performance ScoreJohn Huntinghouse's LinkedIn Performance

Ready to grow your LinkedIn presence?

taplio

The Battle

Garrett Jestice

John Huntinghouse

Followers

Posts

Engagements

Likes

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);}John Huntinghouse's LinkedIn Performance

Ready to grow your LinkedIn presence?

Performance ScoreJohn Huntinghouse's LinkedIn Performance