Harvest Chocolate

Harvest Chocolate, is a bean-to-bar chocolate company that handcrafts seasonal chocolate bars and Snacking Chocolate for everyday moments. We use simple, organic ingredients, source fresh cacao seasonally, using local fruits from the season to add unique flavors to our chocolate.  

We make chocolate that anyone could enjoy, regardless of allergies or dietary restrictions and support farmers locally and abroad by using only the season's best harvest—from cacao beans to local fruits.

Co-Founder and Head Dishwasher

Pros & Content Community

Community Manager

Knotch

Leading the social strategy as part of the growth team at Knotch, an early-growth customer journey intelligence software. Including strategic planning for the go-to-market, account-based marketing, paid media, email marketing, and sales development.

Growth Marketing - Social and Community

Verint

As a Customer Experience Manager with Verint, it is my responsibility to help our clients research, develop, and execute a customer experience program that will result in customer satisfaction and loyalty, insights that can be shared organization-wide, and omni channel experience strategy and measurement.

Verint as a whole has more than two decades of experience helping more than 10,000 organizations worldwide create lasting value. A global leader in customer engagement, Verint helps businesses evolve and modernize the entire customer engagement operation while protecting legacy investments.

We are built on five core values that shape the way we do business with our customers, partners, and each other: 

⇢ INTEGRITY to do what’s right
⇢ INNOVATION to create leading solutions for real-world challenges
⇢ TRANSPARENCY that fuels mutual trust and productive, collaborative working relationships
⇢ HUMILITY to view our successes as milestones in our journey and our mistakes as opportunities for improvement
⇢ PASSION for making our customers and partners successful.

Associate Account Executive

ForeSee

As a Business Development Representative, I developed and executed an account-based marketing strategy to increase sales efficiency and accelerate new business acquisition for an integrated CX intelligence platform, which helped companies prioritize CX decisions and profit from customer feedback.

⇢ Produced an accurate and high-quality sales pipeline by researching prospective customer accounts using insight tools, creating customized outreach strategies, prospecting calls through multiple channels, and conducting exploratory calls with inbound leads, leading to $3M in pipeline growth to-date.

⇢ Partnered with the marketing team to understand the campaigns and activities with the highest response rate for validation of marketing optimization efforts.

Business Development

First Federal Bank of the Midwest

Financial Sales Manager

As a Relationship Banker, I worked with individual and small business clients to complete an assessment of financial needs and consultatively sell a full range of products such as deposit accounts, loans, and credit cards to support the overall banking center sales objectives.

⇢ Secured at least $45k of new loans each month (vs. target of $25k/month), 10 customer referrals to partners (commercial loans, insurance, merchant services and wealth management), and cross-sold  50 new products per month to existing customers.

Relationship Banker

As an Account Representative, I served as a trusted advisor to small business and personal banking clients by understanding their needs and promoting the appropriate products and services. I also identified cross-selling opportunities, surpassing a personal sales goal of referring 20 new customers per month.

Account Representative

Self-Employed

As a restaurant operations consultant, I provided an operational evaluation of an emerging restaurant and streamlined the restaurant’s ordering process, reduced food cost by negotiating with suppliers, and worked with their team to create premier events to attract top-spending clients.

Freelance Restaurant Consultant

SCM Hospitality

As a Corporate Sous Chef, I provided culinary leadership, support and expertise at celebrity chef Scott Conant’s six restaurants and corporate partnerships across North America by creating dishes featured in publications under the SCM Hospitality brand. I also mentored staff at each of the restaurants on sales techniques, menu design, and marketing strategies.

Corporate Sous Chef

Torc

As a Sous Chef with Torc, I oversaw the kitchen staff while developing and maintaining relationships with vendors to acquire high-quality products. I also served as the opening management team and contributed to the restaurant’s first-year sales goal of $2MM through enforcing quality control measures, maintaining relationships with top-spending clients, and implementing daily menu changes.

Sous Chef

Quince Restaurant

As a Sous Chef with Quince Restaurant, I managed 20 kitchen staff employees in daily production, ordering, cost control and quality assurance at a 2 Michelin Star restaurant featuring California contemporary cuisine.

MattGPT™: AI + Content = Growth

Matt Cross 🍫 🤖

The Word Forge

- Engaged with sales leads to communicate our value propositions and determine if partnership was a good fit for both parties.
- Generated content and copy for clients based on the given scope of work, and in line with brand voice
- Managed sub-contractor work, editing deliverables, and accepting feedback from the client.

Freelance Content Marketer

ReadyWorks

- Generated written material for an IT audience, discussing technical subjects to technical professionals
- Quickly built foundational understanding of the brand, the brand's offerings, and the relevant pain points of the audience (all of which depended on fluency with concepts like ITSM, HDIM, tech debt, endpoint management, etc.)
- Collaborated with the CMO to refine current marketing efforts, develop new strategies, and identify high value opportunities for increasing brand visibility
- Interviewed internal SMEs to gain increased understanding of complex topics, customer experiences, and major industry trends, all of which informed both the strategy and execution of marketing tasks

Senior Content Manager

Essential Hub

- Generated web content and web copy for the brand, increasing online visibility, and brand authority.
- Managed outsourced content creation: created writing briefs, coordinated freelancing, provided feedback, and edited content.
- Collaborated with designers to commission graphics and images that enhanced written content.

Content Marketing Manager

Big Leap

- Performed content research to determine content topics and formats that would boost SEO and engage readers.
- Scheduled and ordered content from the fulfillment team.
- Reviewed and edited delivered content for technical accuracy and brand voice match.
- Collaborated with clients directly to improve content accuracy and adjust strategies.
- Collaborated with SEO, Paid, and Social teams to build comprehensive strategies.
- Consulted on SEO client accounts to help improve content quality and effectiveness.
- Created and delivered training material to educate SEO teams on content best practices.

Content Strategist

RESMARK Systems

- Wrote blogs, emails, landing pages, and web copy to improve SEO and web traffic to two separate B2B SaaS brands
- Conducted keyword research and planned content initiatives to improve SERPS rankings
- Reported on keyword performance to management to demonstrate the effectiveness of content efforts
- Interviewed team members from sales and marketing to create content that met the audience’s needs

Content Manager & SEO Specialist

Set Fire Creative

- Acted as the sole content producer for the agency, meeting client needs and providing content they were pleased with
- Drafted content calendars, topic cluster strategies, and other content initiatives to boost efficiency
- Wrote blogs and website copy for the agency, improving SEO and boosting visibility online

Content Marketer

Liberty Safe

- Acted as the primary content producer for all marketing and advertising initiatives, helping the company expand marketing efforts.
- Wrote content and copy as an alternative to radio ads, saving the company tens of thousands.
- Drafted video scripts for the video production team, allowing them to produce 2-3 videos per week.
- Participated in the establishment of a brand-neutral educational channel on Youtube, helping to better inform viewers of their options in the market.

Content Writer

- Interacted with clients directly to better understand their content needs and how to meet them.
- Drafted content calendars, awareness level rubrics, content strategy questionnaires, and updated the content fulfillment process to refine our content marketing efforts and improve efficiency.
- Wrote content for large budget clients with very strict content requirements, meeting and exceeding client expectations.

Content Writer and Strategist

- Wrote and edited a variety of content for over 50 clients in various industries.
- Contributed over half a million words across various content initiatives, helping clients improve website SEO.
- Produced content under tight deadlines and strict style guidelines to meet clients’ needs.
- Wrote SEO-focused blogs ranking in top five of SERPS for both short-tail and long-tail keywords.
- Demonstrated the ability to adapt to a wide range of brand voices, from direct and professional, to playful and light-hearted, to humorous and snarky.

SmartyStreets

- Wrote and edited articles and blog posts using SEO tactics to improve Google SERPS rankings and encourage site traffic
- Wrote authoritative content using a clever, humorous voice to engage readers
- Responsible for the creation and revision of multiple long-form articles a week (approx. 8,000 words a week)
- Collaborated on writing projects, work-shopping blogs with editor to refine tone, voice, and humor

Staff Writer

Founder @ The Word Forge | Turning techno-babble into eloquence (and dad jokes)

I've been writing fiction since I was 12, and when the time came to try and turn all that practice into some kind of a career, it turned out the skills were incredibly easy to transpose. Outlining stories taught me the importance of strategy, planning, and seeing things from a bird's-eye view. Writing for my own pleasure taught me how to be self-motivated, how to stay on task when no one was around to crack the whip, and how to find joy in what I do. Editing and revision taught me the importance of feedback, and how to accept criticism without reacting negatively. Perhaps most importantly, though, trying to tell compelling stories taught me the value of giving people a reason to come back for more. Now, I do all of those things, but rather than tell flights of fancy, I help brands tell their stories with honesty and transparency. 

taplio

The Battle

Matt Cross 🍫 🤖

Stephen Porritt

Followers

Posts

Engagements

Likes

Ready to grow your LinkedIn presence?