Hybrency

A platform focused on closing the strategy execution gap in the sales/marketing/growth/demand/revenue ops...[whatever you want to call it] function.  

Removing roadblocks and de-risking sales and marketing-related expenditure.

To create a dependable way for firms to achieve their goals.

The platform joins the phases of strategic planning, tactical execution and measurement into a circular system.

Leveraging scientific laws of sales & marketing, and then using feedback loops to optimize growth over time. Pointing teams in the right direction while avoiding common pitfalls automatically.

Allowing for the creation of a continuous, self-optimizing growth loop at scale.

Built upon hybrid service delivery infrastructure. Brands can quickly create their own high-performance teams. Full-time staff can be blended with world-class external expertise without experiencing the usual trade-offs

The platform is sector agnostic and works well in both product and service contexts, but focused primarily on the services sector for the time being.

Founder

Various

Advisory to various privately-owned company executives via a formalized, independent advisory board structure

Board Advisor

Champagne Strategy Podcast

Not suitable for junior professionals or bureaucrats.

Host of the Champagne Strategy show where we deconstruct world-class strategy, growth, marketing and the latest tech, with a sprinkling of Champagne.

We uncover modest achievers and perhaps the less famous but more interesting people of the business world. People who often keep a low profile and are hard to coax into an interview. 

They aren't the vapid self-promoter types you see on the speaking circuits, or constantly in the press. They are too busy doing great work.

Learn from their practical, wisdom and escape the world of business misinformation

Listen to an episode if you dare, but be warned, there's no going back.

Host

Australian Podcast Awards

Judging a selection of entries as part of the Australian Podcast Awards

Judge

Proptech Association Australia

Judge for entries in the Proptech Australia awards 2023

Awards Judge

Champagne Society

A passion for tasting Champagne and posting on Instagram became something bigger

Sommelier

James Hammon & Co.

Tactical Execution Agency (growth marketing) available to select clients only.

Suitable for PE firms in the services & SaaS sectors

- growth focused
- media agnostic
- creative production
- operational systems and tech-stacks
- media buying
- campaign management & optimization
- marketing asset management
- much more which could be answered in a short phone call

Director

BuildZoom

PRODUCT - 10 million page contractor sourcing marketplace in the US

TOOLKIT - Demand gen via SEO, SEM, display, social, content optimization, attribution modeling, tracking & tagging, inventory level remarketing, audience management, customer profiling & segmentation. 

RESULTS -  With no vendor support, achieved record GMV and sales in just 3 months during what is typically the quietest period of the year. SEM conversion rate doubled. Unit Economics dashboard

Growth Manager

SearchX

BDM for web development and application projects, SEO, PPC

Digital Strategist

SEO and PPC campaign/account management
BDM and sales
Client facing role

Campaign Manager

Great commercial strategy allows everyone to hit their targets and reduces stress. But it's not a planning doc and more than just product, sales or marketing. Follow for platitude-free brain energy.

If you're a senior leader responsible for high-value outcomes like customer acquisition, market share, revenue, profit, equity etc, read on

Commercial strategy involves 3 steps that are far harder than they appear
1 - Crafting product offerings
2 - Marketing and selling them successfully 
3 - Selling more at higher margins

It's extremely cross-functional yet:

Marketers will say the secret is brand, creative design & advertising 

Product/engineering will argue it's products that sell themselves

Finance will want to cut M&S, raise prices and ask about ROI

Sales will want more/better leads

Digital will want a new website or martech and more people posting on social

And they're all right - sometimes

Which is the problem. Because. choices will be full of tradeoffs, pitfalls and complexity.

Many are tempted to buy the latest tech, hire the hottest agency or buy into the pitch from a buzzword-fluent consultant.

But what you often need is just a tailored strategy that includes execution. 

My brand of independent advisory helps leaders slice through all the noise and misinformation - and sets up teams for success. 

We'll help craft your company's secret recipe and perfect this dish over time until it's something people buy, tell others about and come back for more. 

But forget 90's-era consulting full of clunky projects, models, decks & spreadsheets. 

This is modern, lean and mean strategy designed for implementation and focused on outcomes.

It works because I've combined the best parts of my expertise in:
- the classical marketing world (advertising agency experience)
- digital media & software systems (ran my own agency for 8 years)
- the Silicon Valley growth process (Growth Manager for startup in San Francisco)
- Business strategy (5yrs of applied consulting & advisory)

Connect via personalized DM, but if you want to pitch, just be specific and brief

I'm hired as a: Consultant, Advisor, Advisory Board Member/Chaair, Interim/fractional Chief Marketing Officer (CMO), Chief Growth Officer (CGO), Chief Revenue Officer (CRO) etc.

Budget
Consulting/Advisory/Workshops/Speaking ~ POA ($5k+)

Sans budget 
(see link in bio)
Newsletter $0
Champagne Strategy podcast $0
Hybrency YouTube clips $0
Follow on social $0

Solving business problems together - priceless

John James

A snippet from a recent virtual event explores the 4 growth/GTM eras: from traditional media reliance to the digital boom, privacy disruption and the new AI era (2022+). 

Matthew Daniell and I recently explored the topic of 'Marketing Effectiveness' in part 2 of a 3-part series which you can now catch up on via YT. 

I feel so much has changed in just the past 2 years let alone the last 10 since digital media peaked. And I still see job descriptions on my feed here every day which read like they were written in a bygone era (typically lagging a decade behind reality). Positions that are doomed to fail from the beginning.

Noticing the same? Interested to hear your stories below. 

And if you to know the secret to growth in the new post-AI era? Have a listen and get in touch.

Commercial Strategy for Services & Tech - Champagne Aficionado

Tis the season to be jolly, but also feeds flooded with 2026 predictions. Here's something to remind you to take them all with a heavy grain of salt. 

We can all laugh at this one, but it's pretty hard to predict the future. On the flipside, there's some predictions which have turned out exact.

I'm reminded of Scott Galloway's NYU speech where he forsees the downfall of traditional ad agency networks. Go and watch it now - it's called 'The death of the advertising industrial complex' 

He was ridiculed by many people in the industry at the time because he said something that threatened dogma, jobs and many people's belief systems. But he wasn't wrong. Just early - 9 years early. Because you'll notice advertising holding co's are rapidly crumbling as we speak. 

Got another eerily accurate prediction example you can think of?
Or one that's as hilarious as this Gartner example? 

I'm keen to hear it below.

This is an on-point list for anyone interested in the commercial returns side of digital marketing. But Rachel Kennedy is also correct in the comments

One of the few people Zuckerberg says was critical to building Meta…
Just wrote the book on digital marketing.

It's called Click Here by Alex Schultz.
15 insights that stood out to me:

1. Don't use a microscope for measurement
"If you need a data scientist and a microscope to determine if your marketing had an impact, well then, it didn’t."

2. Performance Marketing doesn't exist 
"There is no such thing as ‘performance marketing’. All marketing performs."

3. Scrutinise your MMM
"You should use models, but I believe you should only use them when you have run the experiment first, and then you must periodically back-test to make sure the result is still valid"

4. Agency partners are critical 
"I would be nowhere without my agency partners."

5. Pick an agency on results not awards
"My number one sign to look for in a creative agency is that they focus on their results over their awards."

6. Put incrementality above all else
"Remember, incrementality is everything, so you must always ask how that applies at any given stage of conversion."

7. Experiments are essential
"You cannot do incrementality without experimentation."

8. Marginal ROI drives huge yields
"There is huge yield to simple budget allocation decisions based on marginal ROI, not just looking at the averages."

9. Measurement has limits
"No measurement is perfect, and many crucial outcomes can’t be measured at all."

10. Be explicit with AI
"Anything you can do to teach the systems you are buying from what you are looking for will get you better results".

11. Ask your finance team for help
"This is helpful because the finance team is experienced and smart, and they often come up with good ideas that make us better."

12. Get the CFO to believe 
"A top-level goal of mine for the past twenty years across Meta and eBay has been that the CFO believes the measurement I perform."

13. We sell or else
"Steve Harrison’s 'Can’t Sell Won’t Sell' is a compelling read if you want to be challenged about the industry by someone willing to swim against the tide."

14. This is the right question to always ask
"Did anything happen because I ran my ad?"

15. How marketing works doesn't change
"Tools evolve, but principles are timeless."

The book is a comprehensive look inside the mind of someone who shaped modern digital marketing.

Australia just passed the 50% ratio where over half of energy comes from renewable sources. 50.1% to be exact. But the cost column is the most interesting. 

Note: some renewables require more expensive storage and release infrastructure which means direct comparisons are messy to make irl but still interesting all the same. 

Nice graph and article from Michael West

3 things the AI-era has enabled (and valuable) which weren't possible just a few years ago. What would you add?

1 - Synthetic company spokesperson

Not only are most employees unwilling to get on camera but spokespeople suffered from key person risk. Creating a financial, functional and political issue. Plus, they aged over time. 

Creating a synthetic spokesperson who never ages, doesn't take a salary, doesn't try to leverage fame for gains elsewhere, and can embody your brand without ever introducing reputational risk, in any form...

that just makes so much sense. 

2 - In-house agencies. 

There is no functional reason to outsource anything to external agencies these days. Politically, there still is. And financially, legally, there can be. But technically, no team needs to get a third party to produce any collateral, buy media and ship anything. 

Of course this is relatively new and many firms  are yet to embrace this new paradigm, but in-housing actually enables you to move much faster and more accurately. Which will increasingly be THE only source of marketing CA. 

Third party vendors just expose you to the downsides of the Principal Agent problem. 

3 - Middle management administration. 

Just helped run a Microsoft AI webinar and the things that you can do to completely automate away all the daily admin is just insane. 

There really is no functional need to EAs, PAs, team managers and middle managers anymore. Daily email inbox management, task management, team collaboration/comms, and reporting can all be heavily automated.

Meaning in the future there will only be directors setting strategy (what needs to be done and how) and executors (people doing the work). Everyone in the middle will increasingly be caught in the squeeze space. 

Which really changes former political dynamics whereby execution-level employees were traditionally viewed and treated as lower in the power hierarchy. 

Expect to pay a lot more for skilled executors in the future.  

And a lot less for hands-off managers who never get there hands dirty. 

What did I miss?

🧟 KJ Sethna

Convera

1- Delivered Credit product - Early Payment Release platform to help our clients with trade credit in AU&SG increasing Fee revenue and FX market wallet share.
2- Delivered Payments product - Virtual Accounts Platform increasing FX market share and Margin revenue across APAC supporting 7 currencies.
3- Building the future payment platform and a cross-border wallet for Convera Connect due in Oct 2024.

Staff Product Manager APAC

Strategyfi

I tell you what you need to hear not what you want to hear with actionable and executable recommendations.

Brave enough - read on?

Does your strategy keep failing and your teams run around like headless chickens with a spaghetti strategy that is not connected to the tactical!

This is where I come in. 

I drive your growth with go-to-market strategies and tactics THAT WORKS.
From product positioning, pricing, segment, and channel distribution through discovery, user research and experimentation.

Struggling with your exec decisions and alignment? 

Take the leap, reach out to find out how I can lead executive-level buy-in discussions. ie build v buy vs buy then build.

True story: I helped Baby Bunting get out of the trouble it put itself in and many other businesses.
The priceless commercial and technical consulting that I provide help drive re-platforming and technology architecture decisions.

They help drive organizational redesigns to build out the cross-functional teams that you need. 

Everything I provide is actionable and relatable to your P&L, in line with the investor's payback period & ROI expectations or money back!

The TLDR skill section🚀

Cross Industry : B2B | B2C | D2C 
Areas : E-commerce  | Business Modeling | Strategy Creation | Road Mapping
Opportunity Discovery | Problem Discovery | Solution Discovery
Design Thinking | Product Delivery | Program Delivery | Portfolio Management

Specialized services
🥇E-commerce and Websites -  Omni Channel Service Design, Customer Experience Design, and User Experience Design

🥈 Digital Product & Project Management - Product Strategy, Vision, Roadmaps, Storyboards, Go to Market Strategy, Prioritization Frameworks, Decision-Making Frameworks

💻 Agnostic Platform and Vendor Review and Recommendation - ERP, e-Commerce, CRM, Loyalty platforms, PIM, PCM, DAM, marketplaces and more

Dare to find out what you need to hear not what you want to hear? Then reach out.

☛ Coaching and Mentoring young Athletes/ Martial Artists
☛ Training Workshops for all ages
☛ State and National Level Competition Referee
☛ Mindfulness Coach - Zen Buddhism
☛ Personal Development and Physical Training/ Functional Training

Trivia
☛ Started Karate at the age of 5.
☛ Started teaching Karate as an assistant instructor at the age of 15.
☛ Started own classes for adult Karate at the age of 20.
☛ Built a Karate Blog/Vlog with over 25,000 Followers at the age of 17.
☛ Part of Omani National Team Age from 17-20
☛ Part of the Australian National Team and participated in the World Karate Championships in 2013.

Martial Arts Instructor

digitalproductjobs

𝐕𝐢𝐬𝐢𝐨𝐧 | 𝐌𝐢𝐬𝐬𝐢𝐨𝐧: 
The one stop shop for all your business, product & tech guides. My mission is to increase product management maturity across the globe. I do so by helping people grow in product management careers by coaching, mentoring & writing.

Need help?
Let's connect!

Author - business, product & tech done right.

Unit4

Reporting to the global head of products, I was hired for product and go-to-market strategy for localizations into APAC markets for ERP  and HCM products.

This role unfortunately was part of the mass tech layoffs of 10% of the organization.
If given the chance, I would work for Unit4 again!

Principal Product Manager

EonX

Engaged to provide digital portfolio strategy.

Coached product teams while working with 3 founders (CEO, CTO, and CIO) on taking their product mix to a portfolio level while driving revenue using strategies designed around a mix of subscription-based, PaaS, and SaaS products at their product level.

Head of Product

mycar

Engaged to provide digital maturity assessment and help the business prepare for e-commerce strategy for Black Friday 2021 and product roadmap across 2022.

Tripled Black Friday sales and improved e-commerce platform stability while providing strategic insights into feature roadmaps and partnerships to engage in.

Digital Transformation Consultant 

Stuck On You

Engaged by the General Manager/ CEO to provide digital product strategy, digital solutions delivery methodology, and provide product discovery services.

Recovered their failed replatforming project and steered it on the right track.

Also gave the business insights into unlocking growth and additional revenue on their e-commerce product platform.

e-Commerce advisor

ID9 Impact

A startup - where I was engaged to provide product & go to market strategy to help build out a SaaS subscription-based product in the learning and development analytics space using ML & AI at the core of the product.

Organization ceased operations.

acidgreen

A dual facted senior management role reporting into CEO/Founder role across product management and project management for 39 clients! 

𝗞͟𝗲͟𝘆͟ ͟𝗔͟𝗰͟𝗵͟𝗶͟𝗲͟𝘃͟𝗲͟𝗺͟𝗲͟𝗻͟𝘁͟𝘀
Started and grew product management practice from scratch for multiple complex enterprise SaaS & PaaS products.

𝗞͟𝗲͟𝘆͟ ͟𝗣͟𝗿͟𝗼͟𝗱͟𝘂͟𝗰͟𝘁͟𝘀
Adobe Commerce B2B and B2C
Mirakl Marketplace
Shopify Plus

Focused on headless commerce product discoveries and modern stack architecture implementations.

𝐃𝐢𝐫𝐞𝐜𝐭 𝐑𝐞𝐩𝐨𝐫𝐭𝐬 - 9 

Managed the cross functional client facing team of 9 which included product managers, program managers, project managers & business analysts.

𝗖𝗼𝗺𝗺𝗲𝗿𝗰𝗶𝗮𝗹 𝗔𝗰𝗵𝗶𝗲𝘃𝗲𝗺𝗲𝗻𝘁𝘀 

🥇 Redesigned presales to delivery process resulting in increase in sales conversions and improvement of customer NPS score. Most Notably - Click Frenzy Marketplace

🥈 Implemented lean software development practices processes & which resulted in improvement of profitability by 25% in 3 months post promotion by improving the utilization of the entire organization.

𝐃𝐢𝐠𝐢𝐭𝐚𝐥 𝐏𝐫𝐨𝐝𝐮𝐜𝐭 𝐒𝐭𝐫𝐚𝐭𝐞𝐠𝐲

🏆 Guided clients strategy to innovate, embrace digital product led transformation adoption, adapt to agile principles, lean startup methodology, lean design and lean software development mindsets to enable their businesses grow.

🏹 Delivered multiple product strategies with a key focus on Headless eCommerce, Magento B2B & B2C and Mirakl Marketplace. 

Oversaw build as product director across Magento, Mirakl , Shopify Plus, Pimcore & Akeeneo product platform implementations.

Product & Portfolio Director

Achievements
🏆 Facilitated organization redesign and restructure and introduced product management as a practice. Implementation of governance practices in discovery, design & delivery to improve quality and customer value at a programmatic level. 

🎯 As product director provided steering and guidance on recovery & delivery of our largest digital product builds

🏹 Designed a center of excellence for cross functional digital teams to run from inception, discovery to delivery processes and standard operating procedures

🥇 Built a framework to address continuous improvement initiatives catered to business goals and clients feedback, improving processes and tools by setting up an Operations Working Group to drive and advocate for the changes needed

🥈 Facilitated workshops for organization redesign and process reengineering for organisational wide processes across Presales, Operations, Project Management, Product Management & Business Analysis

Head Of Digital

Innovation Evangelist | Systems Thinker | Proud Dad of 2 👩🏽girls & 2 🐶doggos on a perpetual journey of learning. | Follow for spam 😜 on business, product and tech.

Remember that geeky 🤓 millennial who would fix your 💻💽💾 in the 90s? 

🖖 Yes that's me, except now I guide businesses on all things product, business, and technology.

--- Here is the part I talk about myself in the past tense 😂 ----

I grew up as part of a family business which had many ups and downs in Oman.

Life hit hard at 15 and I started to work for the family business while also teaching karate. This led to me becoming one of the youngest karate coaches in the world.

🤷 Yup, I was making GANTT charts for projects before high school!
This life experience taught me how to operate, manage, and scale businesses.

📟 At 17, I built my first product, an accounting system as part of a school project using VB & SQL.
At 19/20 I was part of the Oman National Karate team.

💵 At 22 I moved to Australia & by 23, became an "Accountant".
I also got to represent Australia in the World Karate Championships as part of the national team.

🚀At 28, I got into digital projects as a business analyst and project manager.

🔦By 29, I was a Scrum Master transforming teams!?! or so I thought.

⚔️By 30, I landed my first official Product Manager gig!

This is where the real transformation started to happen.

🏛By 35, I had built various product practices from scratch and delivered numerous platforms and products across startups, transformed many organizations, and unlocked their ability to innovate.

I now work as a fractional advisor and product coach delivering product management as a service.

Here comes the why 𝐡𝐢𝐫𝐞 𝐦𝐞 pitch👇🏽

I am the commercial & techno-functional expert you have been looking for and haven’t been able to find!

I can help you connect the dots from strategic growth to tactical execution.

I do this by unlocking your organization's ability to innovate.

Forget digital transformation and optimization! 

Reach out to me and see how I can help you unlock your Go-to-Market (GTM) Strategy and flawless execution of it.

I will show you how real Product Management and Development is done.

With my cross-functional ability across commercial & technical, I bring an arsenal of strategies & tactics. 

My multi-industry experience in Financial Services, FinTech, Retail, Autotech, pet foods, EdTech, manufacturing, FMCG, liquor, white goods, construction & OEM automotive will shift and allow me to advise you on an industry and business-agnostic approach.

So stop waiting and let's connect and chat!

Product Coach and Mentor

𝐕𝐢𝐬𝐢𝐨𝐧: 
𝚃𝚑𝚎 𝚘𝚗𝚎 𝚜𝚝𝚘𝚙 𝚕𝚘𝚌𝚊𝚝𝚒𝚘𝚗 𝚏𝚘𝚛 𝚊𝚕𝚕 𝚢𝚘𝚞𝚛 𝚙𝚛𝚘𝚍𝚞𝚌𝚝 𝚖𝚊𝚗𝚊𝚐𝚎𝚖𝚎𝚗𝚝 𝚐𝚞𝚒𝚍𝚎𝚜.

𝐌𝐢𝐬𝐬𝐢𝐨𝐧: 
I am on a mission to help people break into product management and increase product talent across APAC & fast-track product careers by providing 1-1 product coaching, mentorship, product management guides & articles.

taplio

The Battle

John James

KJ 🧑‍🔧 Sethna

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taplio

The Battle

John James

KJ 🧑‍🔧 Sethna

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 James's LinkedIn Performance

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