Jason Bradwell

I believe there is a better way to sell in B2B, so I founded a company to pursue that mission. 

B2B Better exists to help service and solution-based businesses launch podcasts that help win more enterprise accounts. 

We're a marketing agency that does great production, not a production agency trying to figure out how to do marketing. Yes, we'll create highly polished audio and video that meets your brand standard. But the real value we bring to the table is helping figure out how a podcast can drive real-world commercial outcomes for your business. 

Want to talk? Email me at jason@b2b-better.com

**

Previously, I headed up marketing for Deltatre (sold to Bain Capital in 2022) and Massive Interactive (exited for $127m in 2018).

You can also join the 1,000+ marketers that listen to my podcast each week which exists to help companies rethink the status quo on how they win new business. 

🍎 [Apple] https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/b2b-better/id1526471908

🟢 [Spotify] https://open.spotify.com/show/6KTApLNan7FrmmCU1tiyZV

I also share insights on how to do better marketing in my weekly newsletter, the B2B Bite.

📰 https://b2bbite.substack.com/

Founder and Fractional CMO

Strategic marketing advisory firm that helps solution providers rethink the status quo on how they win new business.

We offer:

> 30-Day Marketing Audit

You have a marketing function in place but it doesn’t seem to quite work. Over an intense 30-day sprint, we run a comprehensive audit of the entire strategy - from infrastructure to people to go-to-market - and present our findings alongside a 12-month plan on how to reorient your marketing towards revenue. 

> Fractional CMO Services

You know what's broken and how to fix it - you just need an experienced pair of hands to make sure it gets done. After we've run an audit, we work with you to build and scale your marketing strategy over a 12-month project.

> Marketing Sprints

Sometimes you need someone to give their undivided attention to solving a particular challenge. We'll come in to support you in achieving a defined marketing objective - like launching a podcast or performing a strategy audit - over a single quarter.

> 1:1 Marketing Support

Get access to a strategic marketing expert to soundboard ideas, review assets, or evaluate the particular areas where your team feels stuck in a 1-2-1 session described by some clients as "like marketing therapy"

Learn more at www.b2b-better.com

Time to put the pâté and cheese away (talking to myself) - 2026 is well and truly here.

Arriving at the office extra early this morning to get things set up before the team arrives. Sweet jars refilled, furniture straightened, and taking a quick moment of quiet reflection before getting stuck in.

The last 12 months have been great for B2B Better. We moved into our own office space (which is looking so nice), grew to 9 full-time, doubled revenue while staying profitable, and doubled the number of podcasts we produce. There's been a lot of travel - USA, Dubai, Europe - and a lot of late nights making it all work.

But as we've grown, the questions have changed. How do we scale sustainably without losing what makes us good? How do I show up for my family while building this? How do we stay ahead of AI disruption and keep delivering genuine value when the market's moving faster than ever?

I don't have all the answers yet. But sitting here in the quiet before everyone arrives, refilling sweet jars while my kid is still asleep at home, I know my priority for 2026: practice more appreciation for what we are and how far we've come since opening our doors in 2023.

Here's to a good year. Let's make it count.

Founder of B2B Better | Podcast Marketing Agency for B2B Service Providers • Host of the B2B Better Podcast • Co-founder of my daughter

Goal for 2026:

Relaunch the B2B Better Podcast. And do it in an extremely intense way.
Everything I have going on professionally can be tied back to the show I started in my in-laws' living room during peak COVID.

The podcast led me to build an audience. This audience gave me my first consulting client. That client referred me to our first podcast retainer project. 

And here we are!

After taking time to retool our approach, we're coming back in two weeks with a bang.

We're publishing 100 episodes in 100 days, exploring how to build systematic owned media engines that directly drive revenue, not vanity metrics.

We've locked in a strong roster of guests for launch, but we're on the hunt for more. 

So if you're building media teams, launching shows that need to prove ROI, or have strong opinions on what makes B2B content actually work (or know someone that does), drop a comment below and let's get you on the pod.

---

PS. Look out for our first batch of episodes coming out from January 19th featuring Danielle Messler, Dmitry Shamis, Gabe Lullo 😎, Jeffrey Wheatman, Jonathan Stark, Mike Adams, Diane Wiredu 🦁, Christian Klepp, Charlie Riley, Melanie D..

Pipe Dream is here! 

Trailer has just dropped, and we've got the first episode with the FAMOUS Mike Adams going live tomorrow. 

And then 99 more episodes are going out over the next 99 work days. 

God help us.

Check it out wherever you get your podcasts. Apple, Spotify, YouTube - you name it, it's there. 

HERE WE GO!

It is really wonderful to see a feed full of people starting new jobs today. 🤩

No alternative text description for this image

Just published our first episode of Pipe Dream with Mike Adams, and honestly...  what a cracker of a start! 

Mike runs The Super Connectors podcast, and here's what grabbed me right off the bat from our conversation: he records 5-6 guests back-to-back in one session, then takes everyone out for drinks. 

Content, community, and events – all in one go. That's literally the owned media playbook in action.

But it was his take on AI in B2B marketing that really stuck with me.

While everyone's racing to spam a billion people with "personalised" AI messages, Mike's going 180 degrees in the opposite direction. 

His approach: ditch the AI slop, build warm referral programmes with actual humans, and turn super connectors into your go-to-market engine.

Mike built a £5 million pipeline in commercial real estate doing exactly this, without a single cold call or cold email. Just networking events, consistent relationship building, and a network of introducers who actually trusted each other.

Now he's built introstars – a platform that tracks and rewards introductions, making referral programmes scalable without losing the human element.

A few things I took away from the conversation:

>> Your reputation is how people talk about you when you're not in the room
In the age of AI, the only thing that won't be replaced is human relationships

>>Being an introducer might be the job of the future

>> If you're tired of AI spam bots and want to hear how warm intros can actually drive pipeline, check out this episode. Link in comments.

What's your take – are we heading towards an "intro economy" or will AI eventually crack warm outreach too?

Check it out on Apple/Spotify/YouTube! 

---

Spotify: https://lnkd.in/eFsHi62b

Apple: https://lnkd.in/eUpyjqqM

YouTube: https://lnkd.in/ekabTEFU

---

This is Episode 1 of *100* we're putting out over the next hundred days. Should be fine?

Building a business in the UK these days is unpredictable. But there's one constant that always brings me comfort on the tough days:







When it drops below freezing, every *single* call will start with 10 minutes of everyone complaining about it.

My biggest takeaways from Dmitry Shamis at OhSnap! on today's episode of Pipe Dream:

1) AI killed the scale playbook, not quality. The old B2B approach of cranking out blog posts and social content daily is dead. Dmitry's take - AI should remove the busy work so you can actually be creative, not help you produce more mediocre content. Use it to create space for thinking and experimentation, not to automate your way into looking like everyone else.

2) 95% of Dmitry's business comes from LinkedIn, and it's built on being human. When a dozen companies do almost exactly what you do, people choose who they want to work with. His approach:

>> Share frameworks and case studies, but also gardening updates and random things his kids do - the things that make you *human*

>> Posts he agonises over always underperform - the off-the-cuff stuff with raw emotion does better

>> If you're not slightly uncomfortable with what you're posting, you're not growing. Ain't that the truth! 

3) The metrics that actually matter aren't the ones on your dashboard. Dmitry had a post hit 100,000 impressions and got zero leads from it. What drives real business:

>> DMs from people saying "this made me think differently"

>> Meetings showing up on the calendar

>> Quality engagement, not follower count (he's got construction workers in his followers - great people, but they're not building brands)

4) Never outsource your thinking. This is Dmitry's biggest AI warning. People are getting lazy - they ask AI a question, assume it's right, and ship it. The result is all B2B content looks exactly the same. His desk is still covered in notebooks. He writes down tangents and side thoughts that never make it into transcripts, then uses those to shape the AI prompts. Come in with the fully baked idea, use AI to build the words around it.

--

Check it out on Apple/Spotify/YouTube!

🎧 Spotify: https://lnkd.in/eE8VqkjT
🍎 Apple: https://lnkd.in/exePvjbm
📺 YouTube: https://lnkd.in/esZFSdu2

---

This is Episode 3 of *100* from Pipe Dream we're putting out over the next hundred days. Going strong!

My biggest takeaways from Jeffrey Wheatman at Black Kite on today's episode of Pipe Dream:

>> Stop competing on feature lists, start solving actual problems. Jeff's approach after 15 years at Gartner is blunt - nobody cares about your laundry list of product capabilities. Every organisation faces common challenges, but suffers from "terminal uniqueness" - the belief that its situation is somehow different. The reality? Focus on the problem first, product second. Even if your solution isn't the right fit, help them solve it anyway. That's how you build trust when everyone else is just pitching.

>> The real audience challenge isn't budget, it's consistency and engagement. Jeff's answer to the $100k question was telling - commission independent research, do more video, maybe some paid push. But the actual problem? "I don't think it's a money problem. I think it's a consistency challenge." People consume content, love it, but won't share it. Great content gets buried in AI-generated noise because audiences stay passive. The brands winning right now are the ones showing up consistently with a human voice, not the ones spending the most.

>> Panel shows > interview podcasts when you've got real chemistry. Black Kite ditched the standard "guest every week" format of their podcast for a panel with three internal voices - a strategist, a practitioner, and a research guy. The result? Six episodes recorded in two days with zero retakes. The reason it works: disagreement without conflict, different perspectives, and genuine energy. If everyone agrees, they bin the topic. When brands default to the interview format, they're often just following a tired playbook rather than building something that actually differentiates.

>> Marketing's awareness gap is costing deals. Most B2B marketing still chases the 5% who are product-aware and ready to buy. But 95% of your potential customers are either unaware of the problem or don't understand its impact. Vendors need to take responsibility for moving people through those stages - from unaware to problem-aware to solution-aware. The companies willing to educate before they sell are the ones building a real pipeline.

---

Check it out on Apple/Spotify/YouTube!

Spotify: https://lnkd.in/eFsHi62b
Apple: https://lnkd.in/eUpyjqqM
YouTube: https://lnkd.in/ekabTEFU

---

This is Episode 2 of *100* we're putting out over the next hundred days. We're still here!

Fractional CCO + Advisor | Building Brand Affinity at the Intersection of CX, Social Media, & Community | Award-Winning Leader | Featured in Adweek, Forbes, The Next Web, PR Daily, Entrepreneur, and Digiday

I’ve worked across social, customer advocacy, community, and marketing, and I’ve seen the same customers from every angle. 

I’ve also seen how internal silos quietly prevent companies from creating the kind of customer experience they talk about. Each team does its job well, but when those efforts aren’t designed to work together, customers experience fragmentation instead of care.

Early in my career, I helped build programs that performed exactly as intended within their lanes. Engagement was high. Metrics looked strong. And yet customers still went quiet. Loyalty stalled. Trust eroded.

What I learned is that customer-brand relationships don’t fail because teams aren’t trying hard enough. They fail because the relationship is managed in pieces instead of as a whole.

Today, I help organizations transform customer-brand relationships by rebuilding trust, emotional connection, and humanity through intentional CX systems that cut across silos rather than reinforce them.

My work is grounded in two core frameworks: 
1. My Customer Hierarchy of Needs, inspired by Maslow but designed for modern customers. Most companies stop at functionality and efficiency. Very few design for the higher levels where emotional safety, trust, and advocacy are earned, which is why customers disengage long before churn shows up in the data.

2. My Relational Trust Infrastructure framework. It helps teams move beyond after-the-fact metrics and instead build systems that sense trust erosion early. This includes operationalizing relational signals like customer silence, disengagement, and emotional distance across social, community, marketing, and support so CX becomes a shared responsibility.

I’m a Fractional Chief Customer Officer, CX strategist, and the author of Transforming Customer–Brand Relationships (Kogan Page, 2025). 

I’ve worked with startups, small businesses, and Fortune 500 companies through neuemotion, HubSpot, the Small Business Development Center (SBDC), and ICUC. 

My work has been featured in Adweek, Campaign US, Forbes, CMSWire, and HubSpot Academy, and I’ve spoken at events including INBOUND, CNX, and Digital Summit.

If you’re working to repair or strengthen customer-brand relationships, you can learn more about my work or reach out directly here on LinkedIn. If you want to go deeper on the thinking behind this approach, my book Transforming Customer–Brand Relationships is linked below.
 https://www.amazon.com/Transforming-Customer-Brand-Relationships-Emotional-Connection/dp/1398621323/ref=sr_1_1

Christina Garnett, EMBA

My biggest prediction for 2026? 

We're about to watch what happens when brands realize they've optimized every ounce of humanity out of the work.

You automated everything. Templated every response. A/B tested your way to perfection. And somehow your customers have never felt more disconnected from your brand.

Here's what you missed while you were busy celebrating your efficiency metrics: People don't fall in love with response times. They fall in love with feeling seen.

The messiness is the point. The earnestness is what sticks. That moment when someone chooses to be real instead of right? That's when trust actually happens. You at your most human, is you at your most relatable. 

Meanwhile, your brand is over here with its perfectly scripted chatbots wondering why your NPS is tanking while your efficiency scores soar.

You think you're optimizing for scale, but you're actually optimizing for forgettable. Because watching someone genuinely care, even when they're fumbling, is magnetic. Perfection is just noise.

But sure, keep polishing those templates. Keep training your team to sound exactly the same. Keep wondering why nobody remembers your brand five minutes after the interaction ends.

The brands winning in 2026 won't be the smoothest operators. They'll be the ones who remember that business is just humans helping humans. Who understand that our imperfections aren't bugs to fix. They're features that make us memorable.

Your customers don't need another perfect interaction. They need to know there's an actual person on the other side who gives a damn.

The human isn't slowing down the work. The human IS the work.

Christina Garnett

Transforming customer-brand relationships by rebuilding trust and emotional connection through intentional CX systems | CCO + CX Consultant + Author | Featured: Adweek, Campaign US, Forbes, PR Daily, CMSWire

them: Keep it professional... keep it professional...

me: MY BOOK WON AN INDEPENDENT PRESS AWARD FOR MARKETING AND PUBLIC RELATIONS!!!!!

Author, Transforming Customer-Brand Relationships | Trust Is the Strategy | CCO & CX Advisor | Featured: Adweek, Campaign US, Forbes, PR Daily, CMSWire

A lot of people say they want community when what they really want is an engagement pod.

Welcome back everyone. 

May your inbox and circle back requests be light.

The brands that win scale trust, not content.

Nothing says you care about the customer like a no-reply email address.

undefined undefined

Introduction to Consumer Neuroscience & Neuromarketing

CX 101

Voice of the Customer (VoC)

User Insights for Product Decisions

Marketing Leadership

Generative AI Fundamentals

Introduction to Generative AI

Introduction to Large Language Models

Introduction to Responsible AI

Retention + Engagement

The Best of Nudgestock

Growth Series

Foundations of Project Management

Applied Behavioral Science

Behavioral Economics

Behavioral Science for Brands

Social Media

Product Masterclass: How to Build Digital Products

AI Accountability Essential Training

Elements of AI

Executive Data Science Specialization

Business Strategy

Business Strategy Specialization

Digital Marketing Specialization

We’re an advertising agency that takes big brand marketing to definable social audiences with science-backed creative ideas. 

We use neuroscience principles in content execution with proven efficacy and performance (double digit lifts over norms, anyone?) so that we can focus on the big ideas and not sweat the end result. 

Founded in 2023 by former Head of Production at Twitter/X, Ted Harrison, we provide solutions that meet you where you’re at in your social content & strategy journey. Projects big and small are always welcome. We’re simply: here to help.

I focus on what our customers care about and make sure they feel it in everything we say and do.

At neuemotion, I lead how we communicate and connect, from brand and media to the full customer experience. My role is about clarity, consistency, and building trust that lasts.

A few highlights:
📰Coverage in Business Insider, Quartz, Forbes, CMSWire, Campaign US, Ad Age, PR Daily
📢Build our voice, visibility, and recognition strategy from the ground up
💡Committed to putting customer insight at the heart of every story we tell

Run PR + award campaigns, including:
🏆 Webby for B2B Social for Salesforce’s "Ask More of AI" 
🏆 Platinum Hermes Award for Toast's Keith Lee "It's the Little Things" giveaway
🏆 Collision Award for Art Direction for LinkedIn NewFronts
🏆 Shorty Impact Awards (judge and audience honor) for B2B for Toast's Keith Lee "It's the Little Things" giveaway

Chief Customer and Communications Officer (fractional)

Operational Excellence: Developed and implemented a comprehensive operational structure for customer onboarding, enhancing the customer experience and reducing onboarding time.

Customer Satisfaction Leadership: Established and optimized Customer Satisfaction (CSAT) and Quarterly Business Review (QBR) processes.

Thought Leadership & PR Strategy: Spearheaded PR initiatives, securing coverage for neuemotion and team members in prestigious publications such as Forbes, Digiday, and Content Marketing Institute, as well as securing podcast appearances and speaking engagements to enhance brand visibility.

Audience Intelligence Development: Designed and executed a detailed framework for building customer profiles and performing audience intelligence, enabling data-driven decisions and targeted marketing strategies.

Chief Customer Officer (fractional)

Covering news in the world of CX, brands, fandom, and social media.

Contributing Writer

Creation:
- Co-create the social media version of the Community Canvas
- Co-design the Social Media Community Foundations and Community-Led Content Strategy Academy courses

Customer and Community Experience:
- Incorporate customers as experts and thought leaders into HeyOrca's content
- Develop strategies for improved social media and community interaction
- Find PR opportunities for the team and community

Chief Community Officer (fractional)

- Advised on the creation of the HeyOrca Stans program
- Advised on community building and advocacy

Advisor

Author | Transforming Customer-Brand Relationships

Offering CCO services and strategic consulting for agencies and startups.

Founder

Advisory Board Member

Covering marketing, social media, customer experience (CX), and branding.

Customer and Community Experience:
- Led the strategic planning and execution of the Customer Advisory Board (CAB), engaging top-tier customers to drive product innovation, and gather actionable feedback.
- Designed and launched the Teal Connect customer community, fostering peer-to-peer interactions, enhancing customer engagement, and creating a feedback loop that informed product development and marketing strategies.
- Assisted in creation of a customer beta testing directory.

Strategy:
- Developed and refined detailed customer personas based on comprehensive market research and customer insights, ensuring targeted marketing efforts, personalized communication, and enhanced customer experience.
- Mapped out the customer journey across multiple touchpoints, identifying key moments of engagement and pain points, and implementing strategies to optimize customer satisfaction and retention.
- Implemented metrics and KPIs to track the success of the CAB and community initiatives.
- Crafted tailored communication strategies for different customer segments, leveraging personas to deliver relevant content and drive higher engagement across the customer lifecycle.
- Built PR SOP and social listening plan
- Crafted team responsibility breakdown for CS, Community, and Social

Chief Experience Officer (fractional)

- Built out foundational CX structure (audit current practices, set up NPS, customer health checks, and customer advisory board)
- Led success and support teams
- Prepared transition documentation and helped on-ramp full-time CCO once they were hired

Chief Customer Officer (fractional + interim)

Developed community-led growth strategies and lead HubSpot's HubFans advocacy program, creating and launching the Speaker Bureau and co-creating Sales Hub Community Perspectives.

Launched and led Magik Makers NFT project to delight and educate community members about NFTs, web3, and the metaverse.

Created social media strategy and management best practices for HubSpot Academy.

Led advocacy efforts at INBOUND: Correspondents, HubFans/Community Champions and Magik Maker meetups, and the Daily Recap Show with George B. Thomas.

Principal Marketing Manager, Offline Community and Advocacy

Created, launched, and led: 
- HubFans Council and gamified advocacy program
- Revenue Council
- Advocacy Blog
- INBOUND Correspondents Program
- INBOUND After-Hours Show with George B. Thomas
- HubSpot Academy social media strategy playbook

Impact: 
- Grew HubFans gamified program from 0 to 37k members and 4k+ active advocates and HubFans Council from 0 to 197 top-level advocates across partners and customers.
- INBOUND Correspondents created 1,200+ pieces of UGC for 2021 event, 1,600+ pieces of UGC for 2022 event.

Strategy: 
Develop strategy and lead efforts for HubSpot's customer advocacy program (gamified, events, external community, and GTM)

Recognition: 
- 2022 Winner of CustomerX Impact Awards, Innovation Driver Category
- Named Top 100 CMA (Customer Marketing and Advocacy) Strategist by Base in 2022 and 2023
- Finalist for CAP Awards, Advocacy Mindset Category
- HubFans nominated for two CMX Community 2022 Awards: Best New Community and Best User Group

Senior Marketing Manager, Offline Community & Advocacy

- Consult with startups on GTM, community, and advocacy
- Created social media strategies for nonprofits, educational institutions, and small businesses
- Audited current social media presence
- Consulted with current social teams to determine gap opportunities and future campaigns
- Social media management (Twitter, LinkedIn, Instagram, Facebook)
- Paid management (Twitter, LinkedIn, Instagram, Facebook, Google)
- Clients: Smith Mountain Lake Chamber of Commerce, Virginia Tech Roanoke Center, Ferrum College, Venveo, The Golden Shoestring, Downtown Boone, Franklin County Economic Development, Industrial Biodynamics, Pixlee, Cone Realty Group, Relief from Pain, RKNCPA, Faber CPA, K12 Leadership

Founder | Marketing Strategist and Consultant 

- Data Analysis: Reviewed AI lens results of tested customer images
- Strategy and Reporting: Built strategy decks with visual intelligence analysis and guidelines to improve future image selection for campaigns and digital shelf

Senior Insights Strategist

- Created strategy playbooks and implementation plans for Fortune 500 companies
- Led and trained moderation team to perform social media responsibilities: brand voice, escalations, client relations, social listening
- Performed social listening and sentiment monitoring across client social accounts
- Monitored news/PR mentions for sentiment and content opportunities
- Performed regular social audits and competitive analysis to determine optimization opportunities
- Advised and worked with in-house brand team on copy, assets, and publishing needs
- Created and managed influencer campaigns for select clients

Strategist

- Consulted with small businesses and entrepreneurs on their marketing needs and strategy
- Curated all content across platforms: Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Instagram, and Constant Contact.
- Designed, built, and managed new website at www.roanokesmallbusiness.org
- Created promotional materials for SBDC in print and digital form.
- Provided short- and long-term market forecasts and reports by directing market research collection, analysis, and interpretation of market data.
- Created and maintained marketing calendar for all SBDC efforts
- Created and implemented FAQ and business spotlight series for Facebook live 
- Managed and created workshop curriculum 
- Acting Chair for the Virginia SBDC Branding Committee
- Contributed to team effort by accomplishing related results as needed

Marketing Director

CCO + CX Consultant + Author of Transforming Customer-Brand Relationships | @ the intersection of CX + Social Media + Community | Featured: Adweek, Campaign US, The Next Web, Forbes, PR Daily, CMSWire

Peter Wheeler

If you've ever run a community in person or online, you've earned a minor in sociology.

I’ve spent my career sitting inside a lot of different teams. 

Social. Customer marketing. Advocacy. Community. Support. Brand. And often, the connective tissue between them.

What that’s given me is a very specific vantage point. I’ve seen the data each team holds. The signals they notice. The moments of trust or frustration they’re closest to. And I’ve watched how often those insights stay siloed, even though they’re all about the same customer.

Community teams see the long arc of relationships. They know who shows up even when there’s nothing in it for them, who quietly disappears, and what people talk about when they think no one is listening. 

Advocacy and customer marketing teams understand motivation, credibility, and why some customers raise their hands while others never will. 

Social teams see real-time sentiment, context, and culture. 

Support teams sit with customers at their most vulnerable moments, when the relationship is either repaired or broken.

None of this work exists in isolation. The overlap is not accidental. It’s there because customer relationships don’t fit neatly into org charts.

Community pros should be working closely with customer marketing and advocacy. Social and support should be in constant conversation. Not because it’s efficient, but because they are often seeing different chapters of the same story.

When those teams don’t talk, customers feel it. They repeat themselves. They feel unseen. They sense the disconnect even if they can’t name it.

Customer experience isn’t owned by one function. It’s created by the sum of these interactions, across time, channels, and moments of need.

The sooner organizations stop treating these teams as separate motions and start treating them as parts of a shared relationship, the sooner collaboration stops feeling optional. And when that internal alignment clicks, CX stops being a slide in a deck and starts being something customers actually feel.

That’s how you get customer experience as good as it can get.

As we start 2026, I keep coming back to this idea of competing with yourself.

Not in a hustle way. Not in a “do more, be more, prove something” way. But in a quieter, more honest way.

Somewhere along the line, a lot of us were taught to treat our careers like a zero-sum game. If someone else is winning, it must mean we’re behind. If we slow down, we’re falling off. If we’re not visible, we’re not relevant.

This has led to us being burned out, stressed, and unable to unplug. 

In 2026, I hope you invest in yourself. Not just in skills or credentials, but in the things that actually make your work and your life sustainable. Learning because you’re curious, not because it will look good online. Protecting your energy. Choosing work that feels aligned instead of impressive.

When you stop competing with everyone else, something really freeing happens. You make clearer decisions. You build deeper relationships. You stop chasing things that were never meant for you in the first place.

Growth doesn’t have to be loud. Progress doesn’t have to be comparative. And success doesn’t have to come at someone else’s expense.

So if you’re setting intentions for 2026, maybe the goal isn’t to win more. Maybe it’s to become more of yourself than you were last year.

A lot of new faces around here, so hi 👋 I’m Christina.

At my core, I’m deeply multi-passionate. I was an English major who fell in love with story and language, then spent five years as a math teacher learning how people actually learn, struggle, and build confidence. If you’re wondering how those two things coexist, the answer is: humans are both emotional and analytical, and you can’t serve one without understanding the other.

That background is what shaped my humanist approach to customer experience. I don’t believe CX is a function, a funnel, or a metric. It’s a relationship system. It’s how people feel understood, supported, and respected over time, especially when things are imperfect. Story teaches you empathy. Teaching teaches you patience. Both teach you that trust is earned, not demanded.

Before stepping into CX leadership, I worked as a social strategist at ICUC, partnering with Fortune 500 brands and learning what it looks like when brands show up publicly at scale. Earlier than that, I worked directly with small business owners as the marketing director for my local Small Business Development Center, helping people build something from nothing and reminding me that real customers don’t care about frameworks, they care about whether something actually helps.

I’m probably most well known for my work at HubSpot, where I launched and led HubFans, one of SaaS’s most recognized customer advocacy programs, and created the INBOUND Correspondents Program to elevate customer voices on one of the biggest stages in marketing. That chapter reinforced a belief I already had: customers are your most credible storytellers if you design the system to let them be.

Eventually, I left to start my own fractional Chief Customer Officer offering and consultancy. Today, I work with brands that want senior-level customer leadership without the full-time overhead, helping them design trust, community, advocacy, and experience as intentional systems rather than side projects.

A big part of my point of view comes from my version of Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs, reimagined for customers. Most brands never move past functional needs, yet they expect loyalty. Belonging, emotional safety, and trust don’t just happen. They’re built.

That thinking became the foundation of my book, Transforming Customer-Brand Relationships, which explores what it looks like when brands treat customers like participants in a relationship, not outputs of a funnel.

When I’m not working, I’m a nerd. Sarcastic, curious, deeply invested in fandom, books, and pop culture, and a fan of the Virginia Tech Hokies. Loyalty, heartbreak, and hope are themes I understand both professionally and personally.

If you’re here because you care about customers as humans, and not just numbers in a dashboard, you’re in the right place.

I’m glad you’re here.

If you run a book club here, whether it’s focused on business, CX, leadership, or just a group of curious people who like to dig into ideas together, I’d love to join you for a conversation about my book, Transforming Customer-Brand Relationships.

Writing it led to some of the most thoughtful and honest conversations I’ve had about trust, connection, and what actually holds customer-brand relationships together. 

I’m always happy to talk through the ideas in the book, what surprised me while writing it, what I wrestled with, and what feels especially relevant right now for teams trying to build meaningful customer bonds.

If that sounds like a fit for your group, feel free to comment or send me a DM.

#LinkedInBookClub #CX #Business

I’m gonna hold your hand when I say this, because a lot of us were taught to think about customer experience this way and it takes effort to see the cracks.

We treat CX like a journey just like marketing and sales still think in funnels. Both assume there is a finish line that matters more than what comes after. Purchase, resolution, renewal. We map it, measure it, congratulate ourselves, and then turn our attention back to the beginning.

But relationships do not pause just because a transaction is complete. When the “journey” ends, the relationship either strengthens, slowly erodes, or fades out without drama. Most CX work is not built to notice that middle state where nothing is broken but nothing feels meaningful either.

Framing CX as a journey pushes teams to optimize for movement instead of commitment. The goal becomes getting people through steps rather than giving them a reason to stay once there is nothing left to accomplish. That is how you end up with customers who are technically retained but emotionally distant, satisfied enough to stop complaining and detached enough to leave when something better appears.

The question most teams avoid is simple and uncomfortable: when the customer does not need anything from you, why would they still choose you?

That answer does not live in flows, tools, or milestones. It lives in whether you remember context, whether you repair things without defensiveness, and whether customers trust your intent when no one is watching.

If your CX strategy cannot explain how you earn that kind of commitment after the journey ends, it is not really about experience. It is about completion.

Dear leaders,

This is what your customer facing teams wish you knew. 

Most CX issues aren’t happening because teams don’t care or aren’t trying hard enough. They happen because the people closest to customers can see exactly what’s broken, but don’t have the authority, alignment, or air cover to fix it.

We’re often told to “own the customer experience,” while being excluded from the decisions that shape it. We hear the frustration in real time. We see the patterns forming. And then we’re asked to make it work anyway.

There’s also a gap between what leadership says matters and what the company actually rewards. Speed still beats care. Efficiency still beats clarity. Internal optics still beat customer trust. People don’t ignore the customer on purpose, they optimize for what keeps them safe and employed.

From the inside, teams operate in functions. From the outside, customers experience one relationship. Support knows one version of the truth. Sales knows another. Marketing is telling a story the customer is trying to reconcile with reality. That disconnect doesn’t feel like strategy to the customer. It feels like chaos.

Customer feedback isn’t noise. It isn’t anecdotal. By the time churn shows up in a report, the relationship has already been damaged for a while.

And silence is not a win. When customers stop complaining, it’s usually because they’ve stopped believing anyone is listening. 

A lot of frontline energy gets burned defending decisions instead of fixing problems. You can feel that tension in the experience, even when teams are doing everything they can to stay professional and kind.

Trust is not something you can delegate to a team. You can’t assign it to CX and move on. If leadership doesn’t model it, fund it, and protect it, the experience will always crack under pressure.

Customer-facing teams don’t need more pep talks. They need alignment. They need cover. And they need permission to fix what customers are actually reacting to, not just what’s easiest internally.

If you want to understand your real customer experience, start by listening to the people closest to it. They already know where it’s breaking.

One of the easiest ways to improve your customer experience work is to think like a journalist before you think like a marketer.

Before launching any CX program, campaign, or initiative, I run it through the basic questions: Who. What. Why. When. Where. How.

Because this is where CX efforts quietly fail.

✨WHO is this for from the customer’s point of view? Who inside the company owns the relationship when something breaks?

✨ WHAT are we actually trying to change in the customer experience? What should feel different for them?

✨ WHY does this matter to the customer right now? Why should they trust us with their time, attention, or data?

✨ WHEN does this show up in their journey, and when will we know it’s working or creating friction?

 ✨ WHERE does this live in their experience, and where are we tracking the signals that tell us how it’s landing?

 ✨ HOW will this be delivered in a way that feels intentional, consistent, and human, not bolted on?

Most CX issues aren’t caused by bad intentions. They’re caused by incomplete thinking.

When teams skip these questions, customers feel it. The experience feels disjointed. Trust erodes. Silence creeps in.

Journalists ask these questions because clarity is non-negotiable.
Customer experience deserves the same rigor.

It's just me and my Google alerts against the world.

We talk a lot about customer feedback, but some of the most important signals are the ones we don’t hear.

Customer silence is often treated as apathy or satisfaction. In reality, it’s usually uncertainty, risk avoidance, or learned behavior from past experiences where speaking up didn’t change anything.

When customers go quiet, they’re not disengaged. They’re deciding whether you’re safe, worth the effort, or replaceable.

Trust can’t be a value anymore. It has to be a strategy.

Brands have spent years optimizing for speed, scale, and efficiency. Now they’re confused about why customers are quieter, loyalty is thinner, and relationships feel fragile.

This isn’t a mystery. Trust was never designed into the system.

I’m hosting a free Maven call called Trust Is the Strategy because this year, brands that don’t operationalize trust will keep paying for it in churn, indifference, and missed growth.

We’ll talk about:
✨ what trust actually looks like inside customer experience
✨ how it breaks long before metrics show it
✨ and how leaders can design for it intentionally, not accidentally

No platitudes. Just a real CX conversation from someone who’s been accountable for customer relationships at scale.

If you’re responsible for customers in any real way, this matters.

📅 Wed, Jan 28, 2026
🕛 12:00 PM EST (30 minutes)

We have engineered the human out of the customer experience.

That’s why I love seeing one of my CX predictions for 2026 being quoted in the latest by MarketerMagazine.co and why, for the sake of customers everywhere, I hope I'm right. 

We didn’t break CX with bad tools. We broke it by removing the human element.
Automation scaled efficiency, not trust. Templates replaced judgment. 

Customers feel processed instead of understood.

CX in 2026 is about putting humanity back into the system.

For this week’s Pocket CCO, I wrote about what happens before customers leave.

In this issue, I share why trust works as a leading indicator and how to build systems that can actually surface trust signals early. Customer silence is one of those signals, but it’s rarely the only one and almost always misread.

Before you read it, try this small experiment:
✨ Choose one trust-bearing moment in your customer experience. A moment where customers usually have to explain context, wait, or follow up.

Now run this simple comparison for the next five business days:
✨ Track how your current CX system behaves when customers respond
✨ Track how your current CX system behaves when customers go quiet

Specifically, notice:
✨ Does silence trigger curiosity or closure?
✨ Does anyone follow up, or does the workflow end?
✨ Is silence interpreted as satisfaction, abandonment, or something else?

If silence quietly closes the loop, you’ve found a place where trust can erode without being noticed.

Seeing that contrast once will permanently change how you evaluate CX decisions.

Welcome to Pocket CCO. If you’ve ever wished you had a Chief Customer Officer in your pocket, you’re in the right place. Pocket CCO is a weekly newsle

Open article: If Trust Is the Strategy, This Is the System by Christina Garnett • 5 min read

If Trust Is the Strategy, This Is the System

Customers don’t become loyal first. They become comfortable, then familiar, then willing to stay.

I just dropped a new piece in Canary in a Brand Mine - Substack, and it digs into why we need to stop treating loyalty like a switch customers flip. There are real steps that come before it, and most of them are quiet, emotional, and easy to miss if you’re only watching dashboards.

Before loyalty, customers need ease.
Before loyalty, they need habit.
Before loyalty, they need to feel like engaging with your brand doesn’t require extra effort or constant self-advocacy.

When those conditions erode, customers don’t usually leave loudly. They disengage slowly. Replies get shorter. Usage drops. Silence creeps in. By the time churn shows up, the decision has often already been made.

This piece is about what brands still get wrong about human behavior, why silence is an early signal, and what customer-facing teams see long before the data catches up.

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