Ramli John

Author of Product-Led Onboarding (+30K copies sold) | First Round Fast Track Mentor | Content Director at Appcues.

⭐️ Follow me for helpful tips to onboard, delight, and keep your customers coming back to your product.
📔 Author of Amazon #1 bestselling book "Product-Led Onboarding." 👉 𝙎𝙀𝘼𝙉 𝙀𝙇𝙇𝙄𝙎, Founder of GrowthHackers.com: "Product-Led Onboarding is 𝐦𝐮𝐬𝐭-𝐫𝐞𝐚𝐝 𝐟𝐨𝐫 𝐞𝐯𝐞𝐫𝐲𝐨𝐧𝐞 embarking on the critical activity of improving their user onboarding." 


⚡️ I use my multi-disciplinary skills in marketing, design, and software development to help product-led SaaS companies analyze their whole customer's journey and funnel to identify growth opportunities to 2-3X their MRR. 

Often, that means designing and implementing experiments to increase activation rate (trial-to-paid or free-to-paid conversions), decrease churn rate, or increase average revenue per user (ARPU)

If you asked my friends and colleagues how they would describe me, they'd say I'm resourceful, proactive, and entrepreneurial

►► CONTACT INFO
▷ Send a connection request
▷ Write me a note at ramli [at] ramlijohn.com

Founder

A weekly show and newsletter for marketers looking to level up their marketing and career. I interview world-class marketers to uncover the secrets, strategies, and frameworks behind their wins. In each episode, guests reveal three things:  (1) a marketing power-up,  (2) a real-world example of that in action, and (3) a power-up that’s helped them take their career to the next level.

Ramli "RJ" John

I just hired my first full-time employee. Not an assistant. A Chief of Staff. And it's my wife, Joanna Ruth! Here's why:

For 1.5 years, I resisted hiring. I wanted to stay solo as long as possible—full control, no coordination costs, just me and clients.

Then I wrote down the job description for what Delight Path actually needs this year.

Someone who can:
→ Create content and community systems
→ Bring the vision to life (not just execute tasks)
→ Scale the impact for product leaders I had in mind

I realized: this isn't an assistant role. It's 2nd in command.

And Joanna is perfect for it:

1. She's built more than I have!

Joanna's self-published over 47 Montessori education books (I need to catch up)! She's a proven system-builder, not just an idea person.

2. She follows instructions when I wing it (let's talk about building IKEA furniture!) 

Joanna forced me to create SOPs for everything. She's started documenting processes I've been running on instinct. Business became transferable, not just in my head.

3. She connects deeper to people than I do

People call me emotionless sometimes (fair). She cares about people on a level I don't naturally access. It's why she studied early childhood education focused on autism and behavioral science. 

Community needs that energy, not just my frameworks

Transitioning Delight Path from 100% consulting revenue to 50% media + community requires coordination I can't do alone.

Before hiring, I asked:
→ Am I hiring for tasks or for leverage?
→ Can this person make decisions without me?
→ Will this free me to do what only I can do?

If it's not yes to all three, it's an assistant role (nothing wrong with that, but not what I needed).

What's Next:

Joanna starts immediately with partnerships and community for Product Leaders Lab. As we scale, she moves into the Integrator (EOS) role, and I move into the Visionary role.

The onboarding forced me to document everything—SOPs for content, client work, and community management. Business became a system, not just me.
I'm excited to build something meaningful together again (we organized a large youth church conference before we got married).

Please join me in welcoming Joanna to Delight Path.

What's been your experience bringing someone into your solo business?

PS. If you're thinking about staying solo versus hiring, Buy Back Your Time by Dan Martell has been super helpful. Changed how I think about the business.

Building a community for product leaders (VP and Director-level). Founder @ Delight Path. 2x best-selling author. New book “Eureka” now available. Author of “Product-Led Onboarding” (+40K copies sold).

Most podcasts are interview-style. That won't cut it in 2026! It's why I'm doing a high-production narrative format for my new show: Product Leaders Lab (coming in Feb).

I turned my living room into a recording studio this Monday. Shot the intro and teaser with my creative producers, Carlo and Justine. 

Here's how it works:

Two veteran product leaders. Same impossible scenario. Completely different approaches.

One episode breaks down their decisions, what worked, what didn't, and the lessons that actually matter.

Episode 1 premieres February 24th: "The AI Adoption Pressure"

Netali (VP of Product) and Greg Leach (Senior Director of New Business) faced the same problem: their teams were drowning in prompt engineering.

Netali's solution? She created a new role, "Prompt Ops," to centralize AI expertise and protect PM capacity.

Greg's approach? He became the chair of the company's AI committee to remove red tape and encourage the adoption of internal AI tools. Over 100 people attended the first demo (out of 230 employees).

Two leaders. Two strategies. Both worked.

I've already recorded:

→ Christine Itwaru (VP of Product at Userflow): "The Launch Recovery" - How protecting her team after a launch disaster became her defining leadership moment.
→ Michelle Green (Director of Product at Coley): "The Strategy Misalignment" - When customer success and product saw the same problem completely differently.
→ Nesrine Changuel, PhD (Author of "Product Delight," former PM at Google, Spotify, Skype): "The Competitive Moment" - How she became Google Meet's first PM for Delight during the pandemic and chose benchmark against, "If we were all in a physical room, how would the experience be better?"

I'm scheduled to record with other amazing product leaders:
Betsy Shaak, Joseph King, Chris Downey, Jason Knight, Gabrielle Bufrem, Lauren Schuman, Deepti Pradeep, Angela Sze, Lilach Yaniv, Warren Dombowsky, Nick Cust, Purnima Bihari, and Aakash Gupta.

I'm looking for more VPs, Directors, or Heads of Product who want to share their defining leadership moments.

DM me or tag someone below.

PS. Bookmark this for when you're stuck on an impossible decision and need to see how other leaders navigated it. First episode drops February 24th.

2025: The year I learned focus has a price tag. Turned 40. Ran my first half marathon. Doubled my income while working fewer hours.

But here's what nobody tells you about Year 1 of consulting:

The wins are incredible. The valleys are brutal.

Some months hit $50K. Others dipped to $2K. I got ghosted after proposals. Had deals go sideways. Watched summer dry up completely.

Before I left my job, April Dunford told me: "Don't try to do too many things at once. Focus on one thing and get REALLY good at it."

So I said no to:
→ Newsletter sponsorships (even when I needed the money)
→ Course launches
→ Content creation I actually loved

The result? My biggest deal ever—with a Fortune 100 company.

But it came at a cost: I didn't create anything I'm truly proud of last year. No podcasts. No creative projects. Just focused execution.

That changes in 2026.

I'm launching Product Leaders Lab—a community + media brand for VPs, Directors, and Heads of Product. Already have 22 founding members and $60K in sponsorships locked.

Also launching a documentary-style podcast: One impossible scenario. Three veteran product leaders. Three completely different approaches. 20-25 minutes, not 60+ minute rambling.

First episode launched in Feb 2026: "The AI Ambush" - Your CEO announces an AI pivot without telling you. Product team panics. Board meeting in 48 hours. What do you do?

And I'm also running the Chicago Marathon in October to raise $2,500 for a close friend fighting stage 4 cancer.

2025 was depth. 2026 is reach.

What's one thing you're most proud of from 2025?

PS. Full year-in-review in the newsletter.

2025 has been the most transformative year of my life. Not just professionally, but personally, emotionally, and physically. Just like my review of 20

Open article: 2025 in review: the year everything changed by Ramli John • 9 min read

2025 in review: the year everything changed

In this live workshop, Becki Floyd will share how to turn user feedback into working AI prototypes within a day.  

Engineers can now use AI to ship in hours, not weeks. If UX can't keep pace, product decisions happen without user input.

Becki redesigned her entire UX process to work at AI speed:

✅ Async video research + AI analysis = user insights in hours (not weeks)
✅ Morning feedback → afternoon prototypes using Replit and ChatGPT
✅ High-fidelity prototypes that developers can ship immediately
✅ Process that keeps UX leading when speed matters most

This isn't about adding more tools to your stack. It's about rebuilding how UX works when AI-powered devs are shipping code faster than traditional research cycles allow.

This is her framework:

1. Gather insights in hours (async video + AI synthesis)
2. Build working prototypes the same day (tools that compress design-to-dev)
3. Lead product direction at AI speed (process over perfection)

We kick off the workshop tomorrow (Wednesday, January 21) at 9 AM ET

Bring your PMs, designers, and developers. This is for teams trying to stay user-led when everything moves faster.

Register: https://luma.com/9bwpea6x

What's your biggest challenge in keeping UX involved when dev cycles get compressed?

Elias Rubel

I used to think I didn’t have any specific skill, and sometimes I still feel like a total impostor. 

$10M+ in profit is a crazy number but the path has been all but smooth. 

Imagine losing $200k/mo (coming straight out of your bank account) for 6 months while you try to give your team stable pay in the face of a collapsing market. 

Imagine stumbling around in the dark, pretending to know what you’re doing while others rely on your direction. 

Building small businesses isn’t easy, which is why I’m building mine in the open. 

For all of you to see. 

The ups, the downs, the hardships and the wins. 

I hope you’ll join me for the journey.

I hope sharing this publicly sparks further inspiration and sheds light on what can be for many (myself included) one of the most wild rides of your life.  

Let’s build together. 

---------------------

Investor / LP:
- A16Z
- Accel Ventures
- Tribe Capital
- GTMFund
- Offline Ventures

Angel Investor:
- Endgame
- Northbeam
- Grain
- Folk

Marketing Advisor:
- Jasper.ai
- Dropbox
- Loom
- Productboard
- Grain
- TestBox
- G2

Note: I’m no longer actively advising or investing in startups.

Companies like Dropbox, Hopin, G2, Calm for Business, Loom, Productboard and many others rely on Matter Made to smash their yearly growth targets through best in class Go-To-Market programs.

Our work ranges from championing high velocity digital campaigns, to driving Account Based Marketing programs, to diving deep into persona driven messaging & positioning, to launching Product Led Growth Initiatives, to full funnel conversion rate optimization.

Our clients range from post-IPO enterprises, to fast growing scale-ups backed by Sequoia Capital, True Ventures, NEA, Redpoint, and just about every other big name in the valley.

www.mattermade.co

Eli Rubel

12 years ago, while paying myself $50,000 from my software startup, I looked down on agency owners with a slight sense of disgust.

I thought they were at the bottom of the totem pole, acting as service providers for the people building “real” products.

A year after that, I sold the business for $3,000,000, of which I netted $1,200,000 (an absolute failure by Silicon Valley standards - but it made me ‘my first million’).

4 years later (and 4 years wiser), I did something I never thought I would: started my first agency (@MatterMade).

It produced $7,000,000 of net profit in the next 36 months.

Software startup:

• 4 years
• 50K salary
• $1.2M pre-tax on exit (though QSBS qualified, which was dope)

Agency:

• 3 years
• $7M pre-tax net profit
• Still own the business (which is growing nicely)

Agencies DO provide value, and they CAN be great businesses. Don’t let anyone tell you otherwise.

$10M+ in agency profit since 2020. Follow to build a more profitable agency.

I spent $750,000 turning my hobby into my job.

Trust me, it’s not what it’s cracked up to be.

Fresh off a $3M SaaS exit in 2014, in which I pocketed $1.2M, I needed somewhere to put my money. So, I bought KTM Twins - a motorcycle parts business (I had and have a deep love for motorcycles).

The day after we closed, I was in the warehouse at 6am, packing orders.

For the next 3 years, I fought tooth-and-nail to grow top line revenue to get the business to a point where it paid me in accordance with my time investment.

That day never came. I don't even want to know what my true income was on a per-hour basis.

It was fundamentally a bad business for what I wanted it to achieve. I tried to outwork that fact for 3 years.

Worst of all, my passion and love for motorcycles dwindled.

I had been a sausage lover, only to purchase a sausage factory and become a vegetarian.

I eventually sold the business at what was basically breakeven and moved on.

Just a reminder that when you make your hobby work, it becomes, well, work!

•Drop out of art school after one year
•Wait tables in LA ($8.50/hr + tips)
•Read The Four Hour Work Week
•Move into mom's basement to start a SaaS
•Build Odessa Creatives (made $0)
•Lose $25k on photo sharing app
•Start Glider - VC-backed SaaS
•Sell Glider for $3M (pocket $1.2M)
•Buy KTM Twins business for $750k
•Pack boxes from 6a - midnight every day
•Make maybe $100k/year from it
•Try starting a keto dog food company - sell 1 unit
•Sell KTM Twins after 4 years, break even
•Start Matter Made (agency) in 2019
•Grow from 0 to $4.2M EBITDA in 3 years
•Ride the tech boom wave (get lucky with timing)
•Watch tech bubble pop in 2022
•Start rebuilding Matter Made brick by brick
•Launch NoBoringDesign creative agency
•Grow NBD to 27-30 people
•Hire managing directors to run both agencies
•Start Profit Labs to help other agency owners get financial clarity and tax efficiency
•Generate over $10M in lifetime profit across all agencies

Stay. In. The. Game.

Here’s 25 year old me, being choked by a ratchet strap while delivering boxes for KTM Twins.

21-27: “I need to take my company public.”
28: “I need to design a lifestyle”.

I grew up in the business world blinded by the Silicon Valley thinking, where to me, the only acceptable outcomes for a business were to go public or have a massive acquisition.

So when building my first startup, I paid myself $50,000 per year while telling myself the big exit would come.

The exit did come eventually, but it wasn't big. I walked away with a little over $1M before taxes.

Around then, I realized what it would really take to go public or have a massive acquisition. I felt like I just worked my butt off for four years and basically got paid $300,000 per year for it (a far cry from the $50M+ we all dream of).

Just a couple of years later, I started @MatterMade. It generated $7M of net profit in the first 3 years.

I went from paying myself $50,000/year and basically gambling on an exit to generating $7M of net profit in 3 years while still owning the asset that did it.

More than that, though, I realized what made me truly happy: Spending time with my family, being active, and not being in constant panic mode over work.

As Matter Made grew, this reality became more and more attainable.

I realized shortly after this that building a business that gives you the life you want instead of hoping your business one day does is a completely noble and admirable goal.

I'm extremely glad I had this revelation, and I hope you do too. If you want to go big, go big. But remember, it's not the only option to live the life you want.

There are over 90,000 agencies in the states.

0 will exist in the same form by 2030.

I generally try to say positive - but it’s the truth. The model of charging out people’s time at higher than you pay them stops working when $29/month AI subscriptions can do work you charged $150/hour for.

I say this as the owner of 3 agencies (@MatterMade, @NoBoringDesign, and @Profit Labs), and am trying to prepare ourselves now, rather than later.

My guess:

1.50% can’t adapt quick enough, or at all, and ultimately get wiped.
2.50% completely overhaul their offering + how they deliver it.

I’m not even saying this is the worst thing in the world. Some may come out better and more profitable as a result of this.

But to sit around and think serious change isn’t coming to this space is naive, and ultimately harmful to your business.

I'll be speaking alongside some of my favorite agency thought leaders like Kyle Hunt, Mandi Ellefson, Josh Nelson, and Marcel Petitpas at the Scale Your Agency Summit January 20-22. 

If you feel like you still have stuff to learn (I know I do!) across topics like agency Ops, Finance, or Growth, check it out. 

You can grab a free ticket here:
https://lnkd.in/ejc2aPKq

As a first-time founder, I looked up to founders with businesses doing $250k/year in revenue.

Then I reached $250k/year in revenue, and looked up to founders doing $1M/year.

Then I reached $1M/year, and looked up to founders doing $5M/year.

Then I got to $5M/year, and looked up to founders doing $20M/year.

I felt imposter syndrome:

• On Day 1
• At $250k/year
• At $1M/year
• At $5M/year
• Today

That feeling may NEVER go away. I became the person I looked up to 5x over and never once felt like I belonged.

The only thing that got me through imposter syndrome - and that still gets me through it today - is putting myself out there and showing up every day.

It’s uncomfortable, makes me feel weird, and I absolutely hate it at times.

And that’s how I know I’m growing.

The formula for the perfect (and AI-proof) agency in 2026:

1.Large TAM: need tons of potential customers.

2.Niched multi-buyer ICP: same service works across similar business types.

3.Productized delivery: standardized backend even if it looks custom.

4.Low AI impact: can't be easily automated away.

5.Recession resistant: people need it no matter what.

6.High switching costs: painful for customers to leave.

7.Sticky offering: customers can't function without it.

8.Clueless buyer eager for support: they want results, not to learn the process.

And let's be honest, so many agencies today don't even satisfy half of these criteria. Though I don't mean to sound too doom and gloom, it certainly is concerning for the future.

What would you add to this list?

What you tell yourself: 80% chance I close this deal!

What actually happens:

1. You go from crickets pipeline to handful of deals in your pipe
2. Some aren't perfect fits, but you're hopeful anyway
3. Two look like great fits, you forget everyone else is pitching too
4. You calculate: "80% on the good one, 50% on the okay one"
5. In your head: "We've got two in the bag, essentially"
6. Reality: competitors win both, you close zero
7. Back to scrambling for next month's revenue

I've been there a thousand times as an agency owner.

And it’s this type of overly optimistic forecasting kills agencies.

Trust me, I have made staffing decisions based on hope and not data. 

As soon as revenue doesn't hit the way you hoped it would, margins get crushed, and you're in a tough spot.

…and you rinse and repeat every quarter.

I've made this mistake more times than I care to admit.

Now we use actual data and scenarios to forecast. We plan for 30%, 50%, and 80% close rates. Never get caught overstaffed again.

If you're doing north of $1M/rev, are tired of the revenue rollercoaster and want to build forecasts that actually work, DM me "FORECAST".

I’ll show you how to never get caught hoping again.

Appreciate your kind words, Tessa Rolfe - and it has been a pleasure to get to work along side you thus far. Tessa has some serious agency specific COO chops, folks!

Fixing agency operations so you can scale or exit. Fractional COO for agencies on the move.

Someone I deeply admire in the agency world is Eli Rubel.

He’s built and exited a few agencies, and I was lucky enough to work with him at his most recent venture, Profit Labs. Watching and learning from him taught me a lot, but two lessons in particular have stuck with me:

1. Use utilization rates to trigger operational processes.

Eli had firm decision-making parameters around utilization. If team capacity dropped below 75% for three consecutive months, he’d trigger a performance analysis and cut bottom performers to reset the business. It’s not harsh. It’s disciplined. It’s taking the metal load out of the equation when you’re likely already so mentally taxed.

...but you better be airtight on your time tracking process, how you view utilization metrics, and how you go about the performance analysis .

2. Agencies are people businesses above all else.

At the end of the day, agencies are built on humans.

I could write an entire post (or course 👀) on utilization. But that second point is the one that keeps echoing. An agency is its people. Motivating, managing, and making hard, mission-critical people decisions is the core skill every leadership team needs.

And on behalf of every leadership team I’ve ever been on, please, my dear agency owners, do not forget that people management also extends to the relationships that you have with your leaders.

Ta ta for now!
T

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