Justin Schmidt

I am a marketing leader who wants to build cool things, tell cool stories about those things, and do it with cool people. 

When I think about my favorite moments in my career, they are all centered around building something new with a group of smart people and we’re all thinking through how we’re going to make the thing in front of us work as best as possible for the given use case. Over the years, I built things that I would use myself (or did use myself);  I loved sharing the excitement over that thing with others. Even better was building things that drove demonstrable value for our clients. There is nothing better than marketing a product that gets me excited about the way it can be used and about the problems it solves. This is why I like startups so much! I really enjoy the creative process from the initial marketing strategy to marketing execution and how I get to go back and forth between the 50’ and the 50,000’ view.
 
For me, building also means building teams. I have been so fortunate to have built amazing teams over the years. I am proud to have built a large network of people and it brings me so much joy to see how their careers have grown since our time together. I am the type of leader that cares more about my teams success than my own. I want to help my teams become better and I believe that if my team members grow, the company’s goals will fall into place.
 
I want to bring a product to market that delivers measurable value. I need to do all of this with smart people who challenge me and push me to be better. Marketing is storytelling with an objective. I love bringing ideas to market and telling a story to someone about how the offering we have is going to not only solve their immediate problem but also help them take advantage of new opportunities in the future. I’ve been doing this my whole career, and it is something I must continue doing.

I am always interested in expanding my professional network. If you would like to connect or have any specific questions about what you see above, please contact me at justin (at) justinschmidt.me.

AREAS OF EXPERTISE 
Revenue Growth
Product Marketing
Marketing Strategy 
Demand Generation
Executive Leadership
Revenue Optimization
Content Development
Business Development
Brand Strategy and Identity
Innovative Solutions Creation
Transformation & Turnarounds 
Product Development and Launches
Business Development and Expansion 
Startup Operations and Market Growth
Team Leadership, Empowerment, & Development

VP of Marketing

Compt helps companies build, streamline, and scale employee perk stipends that delight teams and give companies a more productive and engaged workforce.

Everyone has different needs, and we think that when perks take this into account the value to the employee goes beyond just beer or catered lunches and becomes so much more.

Nick Zeckets

Air Traffic Control

This is the most exciting work I've ever had the pleasure of being a part of.

At Air Traffic Control, our team has enabled any marketing software from email to web with personalization features. Not segments. Not logic building. True machine learning that dynamically serves up content, products, and anything else a customer can dream up to *each* person.

We're growing rapidly and I welcome the opportunity to share our vision for mass-personalization with you.

CEO, co-founder

PeerWise

Supported this early stage company's product and marketing efforts.

Advisor, Product Led Growth

FunnelVision - Fractional CROs

At FunnelVision, I got to help incredible business leaders scale their revenues by rethinking product:market fit, how to stay lean and achieve scale awareness, and developing cultures of experimentation from the top of the funnel through customer experience and back again.

Principal

YPulse, Inc.

As EVP of Growth, Nick orchestrated product development, marketing, sales, and customer experience for YPulse's industry-leading insights offerings into Gen Z and Millennial consumers. Responsibilities included productization, pricing, promotion and ad spend, marketing automation, sales process and management, and P&L over the growth function.

By redesigning customer operations and product in 2019, Ypulse achieved an 86% growth rate in syndicated revenue.

In 2020, YPulse reached 38% growth in H1 in the face of COVID and quarantines while reducing budget. Also implemented the company's first sales and tech stack inclusive of top of funnel analytics across Google Analytics, marketing insights and automation through Pardot, and sales optimization via Salesforce and related tools. Designed and recruited a full-suite growth org inclusive of marketing, Customer Experience, Customer Success, and sales.

EVP, Growth

QuadWrangle

Founded QuadWrangle in 2011 with the goal of deeply personalizing engagement between universities and their constituents. Across eight years, we managed to develop the most advanced AI solution that increased email open and click rates by nearly 100%, raised giving and other CTA engagement rates by 10X, built a remarkable team, earned the support of some of the country's most prominent angel and VC investors, and raised millions of dollars for some of the world's leading institutions.

QuadWrangle was acquired by Summit Partners-backed Ruffalo Noel Levitz to expand its impact on the education industry and its varied constituents.

CEO Emeritus, Member of the Board of Directors

QuadWrangle was my first startup and the first truly alumni-centric social/mobile solution that makes alumni engagement more valuable for everyone.  Our platform, across web, mobile, and email, provides curated content, a powerful career advancement network and tools to connect and thrive as an alum like events management, online giving and much more.

Led sales and strategy for TRU, the world leader in youth consumer insights through acquisition by WPP growing revenues >30% YoY for 4 straight years.

Vice President, Strategy and Development

- Three straight years of 30%, 40%, and 50% growth to our 30 year mature base syndicated consumer insights business; each of the last three years being the firm's best ever as measured by new revenue.
- Launched and grew TRU's first new syndicated product, The Global Teen Insights Program, into a $1MM business.
- Exceeded 2011 revenue target by 49%.
- Conceptualized, produced and marketed TRU's successful "Uprising" webcast capturing thousands of attendees.
- Highly regarded speaker to client and industry groups alike.
- Responsible for all productization and pricing strategy.
- Initiate, lead and develop relationships with our corporate parent architecture: TNS Custom Research, Kantar, & WPP.
- Insights development and delivery with thought leadership across financial services, mobile, consumer tech, media, advertising, fashion, footwear, retail, and public policy/opinion research.
- Spearheading corporate strategies around C&U, global, and government services.

Director, Strategy and Development

The Nielsen Company

New business development, client management, and product development for a division of Nielsen offering a software solution and suite of aligned services for retail trade management and execution.  Wins include largest contract in division history, ID of new revenue channels, and 100% client renewal rate.

Senior Manager

The Hackett Group

Senior Analyst

Corporate Executive Board

Sales of consulting and function-based memberships to Fortune 1,000 company c-level executives across IT, finance, corporate real estate and legal.  Exceeded goals and expectations quarter over quarter.  Developed new channels leading to new business for the whole practice.  Led team meetings in preparation for quarter closes and motivated peers.

Associate Director, Sales and Marketing

Nick is a product-driven growth leader with experience at the executive leadership level for large publicly traded companies as well as being a serial founder and CEO and currently leads the phenomenal team at Air Traffic Control - an exciting approach to marketing personalization. Prior to ATC, he founded and led QuadWrangle, the leading AI and MarTech solution in Education that was exited to private equity. Key areas of focus are on product:market fit, marketing, sales strategy, corporate data and insights strategy, and team development.

Kill your blog.

I'm serious. Just. Kill. It.

The best thing you can do for your content is develop an entirely new framework for what you're producing.

Content formats and models dictate engagement and pipeline.

Let me give you an example:

We were talking about our own newsletter strategy here at Smoke Signals AI this morning.

"Here's how we deliver industry and subject matter insights."

I yawned at our own newsletter requirements.

Because the only thing anyone is going to read has to be so freaking good that recipients *plan* for reading it.

What does that look like for us?

1) What we've been building - every two weeks, we'll share a full workflow breakdown. What did we build? How did we do it? Why was it built it all? If we have results, share those.

We won't be the first to do this.

But we'll be the first to do it how we do it. Targeting + Trust + Timing.

2) Format(s) - Describe the workflow step-by-step in text. Create a Vidyard video and embed that. Port it to a YouTube channel for on-demand learning. Break it down into a LinkedIn series. Find a podcast guest who's solved for or struggled with the workflow's intent. Run a webinar to live-train people to build that workflow.

The magic of truly useful content is that repurposing doesn't feel derivative. It feels adapted to and for the consumer.

3) Try not to go alone - the rate of innovation right now dictates that everything is possible all at once. From anyone. From teams of 1. But no matter how prolific that team of 1, 5, or 10, a partnership ecosystem of 100 or 500 is UNSTOPPABLE. Design content with them. Pull them into the webinar. Cross share in each others' newsletters and socials.

Going alone isn't just harder. It's stupid.
_____

Net-net, blogs are lame (90% of the time). The format welcomes mediocrity. Their lineage begets sameness.

Slow down. Build something incredible once every two weeks that can come to life every single day.

But for the love, just kill your blog.

Most GTM AI is nonsense. Let's clear things up.

Every B2B buyer has two stories:

The one they tell their CEO. And the one they tell their spouse at dinner.

If you're only selling to the first story, you're missing 80% of the decision.

I spent years helping consumer brands decode human behavior for Hollywood studios like DreamWorks, FX, and HBO, plus brands like Puma and Kraft while at WPP and Nielsen.

Here's what studying consumers at that level taught me about B2B buyers:

They're not personas. They're protagonists.

And no one is better at getting inside the head of others than screenwriters.

So we created a prompt framework at Smoke Signals AI to decode any B2B buyer with them as the protagonist:

***
CONTEXT LAYER: You are analyzing [NAME], [TITLE] at [COMPANY]. Company context: [stage, recent news, industry position] Individual context: [tenure, previous roles, visible mandate]
DISCOVERY PROMPTS:
"Based on their last 90 days of LinkedIn activity, what problems are keeping them up at night that they're NOT explicitly stating?"
"Given their career transitions from [Company A] to [Company B] to [current], what personal success metrics likely matter most to them?"
"Analyzing their public speaking/writing style, what's their preferred narrative structure for processing new information?"
"What's the gap between their current role and where they likely want to be in 24 months?"
"Based on their peer set and who they engage with, what's their actual (not stated) position in the industry social hierarchy?"
SYNTHESIS PROMPT: "Now create two versions of how this person would describe a win:
Version A: What they'd tell their boss
Version B: What they'd tell their spouse/partner Map our solution to Version B, but present it as Version A."
***

The key insight: every buyer believes they're the hero of their own story.

This agentic approach constantly asks: What's the subplot this person is living that has nothing to do with your product but everything to do with why they'll buy it?

Try this on your next prospect. The results will shock you.

What subplot are you missing in your buyer's story?

#B2BMarketing #Sales #BuyerIntelligence

One of my favorite HubSpot apps is dead.

I don't have the heart to tell the founder, who I think is an impossibly wonderful human.

I'm not going to out the use case/vendor, but every time I sit down with Opus 4.5 for a Smoke Signals AI project, I'll leave some "what if?" time.

Namely, "what if I just tried to make this with Opus? And connect it into the knowledge graph we build for customers?"

Hasn't failed me, yet. In fact, even when not really trying to do anything app'y, I get apps pumped out that Blow. My. Mind.

I'm not even trying to vibe code anything half the time. It just...knows that an interactive app is a more powerful approach to what I'm trying to do than my initial approach.

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Justin Schmidt

Nick Zeckets

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The Battle

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Nick Zeckets

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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);}Nick Zeckets's LinkedIn Performance

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