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

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 (two MarTech exits) and currently running Smoke Signals AI - the first AI-first HubSpot agency that wraps content, signals, AI and workflows into programs that generate real pipeline.

CEO, co-founder

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.

I showed a few friends a HubSpot app I'm building and response has been universally positive (probably because everyone's blowing smoke?).

Here's what it does.

You connect it to your HubSpot account. It pulls every deal you've ever closed, won or lost. Every activity. Every attribute. Then it goes out and researches each account and comes back with a scoring model across dimensions like velocity, expansion potential, and fit.

But the real value is the prescriptive layer. Because if we know where an account has gaps, we can trigger HubSpot workflows to fill them automatically. 

No one has to remember. No one has to check a spreadsheet. It just runs.

I built the full interactive UI mockup in twenty minutes using Claude. React components, HubSpot sidebar previews, onboarding flows, the whole thing. The PRD came out of a conversation where I gave it my reference docs and tribal knowledge about what makes a great ICP analysis.

When you show someone their own closed-won data organized in a way they've never seen before, with next steps already queued up, the reaction is always the same.

Not better dashboards. Better systems that act on the data without waiting for a human to notice.

If you want more details on our plans for this, comment "ICP" below and I'll share a walkthrough.

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

I accidentally discovered a sales motion that converts better than any cold outreach I've ever run.

I ask someone who fits my ideal customer profile (but isn't a customer/live prospect) to introduce me to another person who fits my ideal customer profile. I explain who I'm trying to reach and why.

And then something interesting happens.

About half the time, they stop and say "wait, can you tell me again what you're doing now?"

They hear the use case. They realize they have the exact problem I'm describing. And they book a call themselves.

It's a psychological backdoor. You're not pitching them. You're asking for help. But in explaining why someone else needs what you do, you're giving them the clearest possible description of your value, without any of the pressure that comes with a direct pitch.

The introduction request is the pitch. You just never frame it that way.
If your ICP knows other ICPs (and they always do), this is the warmest cold outreach you'll ever run.

15 sales calls for this week. A lunch with 70 revenue leaders on Thursday. Two apps to push (one deployed, one baking).

Things are seriously heating up at Smoke Signals AI. 😳

When I first pitched the idea of an executive lunch where every speaker has to show real AI metrics, I wasn't sure anyone would come.

We confirmed 50 of 70 seats in the first two weeks.

Turns out revenue leaders are starving for honest conversation about what's working. Not another webinar. Not another vendor demo disguised as a panel. A real meal with real peers talking about real results.

February 26. Davio's Back Bay. Boston.

Still looking for two more speakers who have deployed AI in their GTM motion and are willing to share the numbers. Comment "speaker" if that's you.

Seats are going fast. Comment "Boston" for the registration link.

Most B2B companies skip the step that makes everything else work.

They jump straight to outbound. Cold emails, LinkedIn sequences, ad campaigns. And then they wonder why response rates are terrible and pipeline feels random.

Here's what we build first at Smoke Signals before a single message goes out.
A product marketing foundation. Use case libraries, messaging hierarchies, positioning docs, jobs-to-be-done narratives. The stuff that gives AI and automation the context they need to actually be useful. Without it, you're just blasting generic copy faster.

Once that foundation exists, we start listening for signal. Not intent data you buy from a vendor that your competitors also bought. Alpha signals. Proprietary data we pull through Clay, APIs, data scrapes, fire crawls. Things that tell us a company is in a buying window right now, not that someone at the company googled a keyword six weeks ago.

From there, we score ICP fit and check for warm paths in first. Existing connections. Partner intros through SoundGTM. Only when there's no warm path do we go cold. And when we do, the outreach is built on the PMM context and tied directly to the pain signal we detected.

That's why our response rates are remarkably high compared to what most teams see. Every message is connected to a real signal, written against real positioning, and sent at the right moment.

This is the GTM operating system we install for every client. Not a campaign. Not a playbook. A system that compounds.

If you want to see the full breakdown of how this works, comment "GTM" below.

I'm building an event series called Receipts and I want to share why.

The B2B events space has a trust problem. Sponsors pay for stage time. Speakers deliver thinly veiled product demos. Attendees leave with a bag of swag and zero actionable insight.

Receipts flips the model. We curate the audience (CROs, CMOs, VPs only). We pick speakers based on what they've actually done, not who paid. And we ask every speaker to show real numbers, real timelines, real outcomes.

The first Boston edition is February 26 at Davio's Back Bay. 70 seats, about 20 remaining.

If this is the kind of event you wish existed, comment "Boston" and I'll send the link.

I've had a Clustr tab open in my browser for two weeks straight. And it's the reason our executive lunch next Thursday is almost full.

Every time someone registers for Receipts, our invite-only lunch for VPs of marketing, CMOs, and CROs, I drop their LinkedIn into Clustr. It maps their professional network and scores each connection by relationship strength.

Anyone above 75% confidence who's in Boston and matches VP-plus seniority gets flagged. I send the registrant a note: "These 3 people look like they'd love to join you. Invite them as your guest."

Those guests register. I drop them into Clustr. Find their connections. Repeat.
Almost all of our top-tier attendees came through this chain of warm referrals, not through event marketing. The quality of the room went up with every wave.

We're at 54 confirmed for 70 seats. Next Thursday, February 26, in Boston. No vendor pitches. No panels. Just senior revenue leaders having real conversations over a nice meal.

If you're a VP-plus in marketing, sales leadership, or revenue operations and you're in the Boston area, we have a few seats left. Comment "Boston" or DM me and I'll send the details.

taplio

The Battle

Justin Schmidt

Nick Zeckets

Followers

Posts

Engagements

Likes

Performance ScoreNick Zeckets's LinkedIn Performance

Ready to grow your LinkedIn presence?

taplio

The Battle

Justin Schmidt

Nick Zeckets

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);}Nick Zeckets's LinkedIn Performance

Ready to grow your LinkedIn presence?

Performance ScoreNick Zeckets's LinkedIn Performance