Grow Your Career 1% Daily - I’ll Show You How | Follow for Tips on Learning, Professional Development, and Productivity | Professor | MBA + JD

Is this the part where I talk about brand voice, distribution, and storytelling across the funnel? Or say we “help companies scale content that converts”?

𝗪𝗲 𝗱𝗼 𝗮𝗹𝗹 𝘁𝗵𝗮𝘁.

But what we really do is write content your team doesn’t have to worry about, so you can stay focused on strategy, not sentence structure.

𝗛𝗲𝘆, 𝗜’𝗺 𝗦𝘁𝗲𝗽𝗵𝗲𝗻. 👋

And my path here hasn’t exactly followed a playbook:
Banking → Law School → Teaching → L&D → Content

(Yeah… it’s been a ride.)

Today, I run a B2B content agency with my wife. We keep it lean and personal — just the two of us, plus our kids and a couple barky mini schnauzers. 

At Damn Smart Marketing, we give marketers writing they can trust and results they can stand behind.

✓ Content that sounds like you (not a template, not bland AI)
✓ Full support from idea to publication
✓ A partner who gets content
✓ Zero fluff, zero hand-holding
✓ More time to focus on what matters

In other words: you get to 🚀 while we handle the ✍️.

𝗟𝗼𝗼𝗸𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝗳𝗼𝗿 𝗮 𝘄𝗿𝗶𝘁𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝗽𝗮𝗿𝘁𝗻𝗲𝗿? 𝗧𝘄𝗼 𝘄𝗮𝘆𝘀 𝘄𝗲 𝘄𝗼𝗿𝗸:

1️⃣ 𝗗𝗼𝗻𝗲-𝗳𝗼𝗿-𝘆𝗼𝘂 𝘄𝗿𝗶𝘁𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝗳𝗼𝗿 𝗰𝗼𝗻𝘁𝗲𝗻𝘁 𝘁𝗲𝗮𝗺𝘀.
Blogs, LinkedIn posts, newsletters, case studies. If it’s got words, we’ll write it. You get to run the show without sweating every sentence.

2️⃣ 𝗟𝗶𝗻𝗸𝗲𝗱𝗜𝗻 𝘀𝘂𝗽𝗽𝗼𝗿𝘁 𝗳𝗼𝗿 𝗳𝗼𝘂𝗻𝗱𝗲𝗿𝘀.
We’ve built an AI-assisted workflow that makes posting easy, effective, and actually worth reading.

If you're curious, DM me. 

No cold, hard pitch, I promise. Just a real convo about where you’re headed and whether some damn smart content can help.

Stephen 😀

Stephen Mostrom

See you later, LinkedIn…

Donna and I are headed to Florence! 

It’s been a crazy busy year — energizing, exhausting, meaningful, relentless — and we made it through together.

Now it’s time to unplug.

We’re swapping client deadlines for slow mornings in Santo Spirito.

Zoom calls for Chianti pours.

Content calendars for Tuscan sunsets.

And yes, I fully plan to come back with a few extra pounds…
kilos, if you will.

See you soon!
Arrivederci!

Writer for B2B Tech & Finance ✍️ | Running a content agency with my wife (and yes, still married) | Human words, AI workflows | JD & MBA

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LinkedIn organic reach is ☠️... right?

I synced up with my favorite career coach, Julia Korn, to share 5 pro tips from the 1000+ LinkedIn posts I wrote for execs this year. 

And the 10M+ impressions and 20K+ followers they drove. 
... Organically. 

1. Write like you talk
2. Get real
3. Subtract
4. Where's the proof?
5. Post, adapt, repeat

The article is LIVE (!)

If you're looking to grow on LinkedIn, don't miss this.
→ https://lnkd.in/eZj-25AS

Donna (extrovert): Let's be room hosts at MarketingProfs B2B Forum!
Me (introvert): ahahaha cool cool cool 😅 😱 ☠️

But where else can you hang with hundreds of B2B diehards?

Where else can you get a front-row seat to the sharpest voices in marketing and walk away with a dozen lines you wish you’d written?

Where else can you see Ann Handley dance alongside a marching band?

So yeah… 
This guy’s a room host. 

If you need me, I’ll be by the door acting like I didn’t rehearse my “welcome everyone!” a dozen or more times. 

And apparently I’m doing it again tomorrow. 🤷

Rebecca Jenkins

Sales Director UK & I

RJEN

SECURE, SCALE, RETAIN HIGH-VALUE CLIENT ACCOUNTS

If securing, scaling, or retaining high-value client accounts feels challenging, I understand, I faced these hurdles too.

Many businesses struggle to build strong, lasting relationships with key clients while driving consistent revenue growth. Let’s turn those challenges into growth opportunities together.

ABOUT
As the founder of RJEN and author of Winning Big In Sales, I specialise in helping businesses grow. With over 25 years of experience spanning both entrepreneurial success and executive leadership, I bring a unique perspective to every client.

I've scaled a logistics business to £55 million and held the position of Sales Director of an FTSE 250 company. These experiences taught me the value of a client-centric approach, one that builds deep, strategic partnerships.

CLIENTS
Through my V.I.T.A.L. methodology, I guide mid-sized and enterprise companies helping them achieve sustainable growth and true partnership status with high-value accounts.

My tailored programmes and consulting have driven results across sectors, from technology giants like Cisco to logistics leaders like Rhenus. Here’s what some clients say:

"The techniques and methods I gained helped me deliver significant new business beyond target."
 Cody, PLB Account Manager

“This programme is transformational on many levels. I can replicate the success with all clients to create a massive sales funnel.”
Nisar, Cisco

Alongside sales and account transformation, I offer consulting in strategy development, sales leadership, customer experience, and performance improvement. From Asda to Rhenus Logistics, my approach has delivered measurable results.

A past Veuve Clicquot Businesswoman of the Year finalist and keynote speaker, my mission is simple: to help businesses thrive by building client relationships that last.

→ If you’re ready to elevate your client accounts, let’s connect and explore how the V.I.T.A.L. methodology can drive your success.

Founder | Director

WCF Ltd

Strategic planning and review
Corporate Governance
Financial Performance 
C.S.R.

Non Executive Director

Logistics UK

NED & Vice President

Wincanton

Lane Group

Managing Director

Working with leaders to deliver revenue growth through strategy, execution and scaleable processes. I previously scaled to £55m in annual sales, I now help leaders secure and scale revenue. Author | NED

ARCHITECT YOUR REVENUE GROWTH

Secure, Scale & Sustain High Value Client Wins.

I partner with founders and CXOs to align strategy, trust, and execution into a revenue engine for sustainable multi-million-pound growth.

When growth plateaus, or sales teams struggle to win and expand strategic accounts, the issue is rarely effort. It’s usually a leadership and strategy gap:

• Weak positioning of trust
• Lack of alignment between sales, marketing, and delivery
• No scalable method to secure and expand high-value clients
• Overreliance on senior leaders in every deal

I partner with leadership teams to close those gaps with precision.

WHY TRUST & ALIGNMENT DRIVE GROWTH

Enterprise buyers don’t want another vendor. They want a partner who de-risks execution, aligns with their strategy, and delivers results they can trust.

Trust isn’t soft — it’s the multiplier that creates alignment across your commercial function and turns unpredictable deals into reliable growth.

Most companies fail to land and grow large accounts because they:
→ Sound like suppliers, not strategic partners
→ Struggle to speak the language of the C-Suite
→ Can’t align internal teams around account growth
→ Don’t measure the moments that build long-term trust

I change that by embedding trust, aligning leadership and teams, and executing your revenue architecture.

PROVEN RESULTS

• £250M in new contractual revenue secured
• 130% profitability increase for a logistics firm
• Enterprise wins with Cisco, ASDA, and The Body Shop
• 8.67x growth for a scale-up in under 12 months
• Doubled client lifetime value with aligned account growth strategies

WHO I WORK WITH

I partner with ambitious founders and CXOs ready to:
✔ Break through a revenue plateau
✔ Align leadership and teams around one growth strategy
✔ Build a revenue engine that scales without chaos
✔ Earn trusted-partner status with key clients
✔ Expand and retain high-value accounts with strategic precision

READY TO RAISE THE BAR?
Message me for a confidential conversation,
or download the 2025 CEO Revenue Architecture Briefing in my Featured section.

Working with ambitious business owners and executives to transform sales and business growth.

Key Projects include:
Strategic planning, leadership 
Business growth strategy and implementation
Commercial development

 
Delivery of Sales & Key account transformation programme across various sectors to achieve key account growth, partnership status, success mindset. See testimonials below from Cisco and PLB

"The techniques, skills, and methods that I gained enabled me to deliver significant new business with a totally new project that wasn’t in the budget.” Cody – PLB Account Manager

“This programme is transformational on so many levels, I can replicate the success with all customers to create a massive sales funnel” – Nisar, Cisco

Business consulting - strategy development for Rhenus Logistics
Development of a cross-country key account management and sales strategy.

CML
Business performance consultancy - 
Sales - Winning of profitable accounts.
Customer Experience - Helping achieve silver then gold investors in customers.
Marketing - Positioning of business expertise, increasing lead generation.
Financial Performance - improved financial performance & divisional turnaround.
Leadership – leading sales, marketing team & mentoring of management team.

Asda – To You
Customer Experience Consultancy Project.	
Workshops to develop client pledges to support new market proposition. 

Latham Direct - Business Consulting project 
Development and implementation of the business and marketing strategy. Testimonial below.

'We have won new business and developed a healthy pipeline of prospects, and significantly enhanced our brand image. I would like to say how much I value your support, skills and knowledge throughout". – M. Hughes,  M.D.

Past Veuve Clicquot Businesswoman of the Year finalist
MBA guest Lecturer | keynote speaker

Most leaders think they're aligned with their clients, until they test it.
Would your client give the same answer your team would?

Ask your team how the client defines success next year.
Then ask your client.
The gap between those answers is where your revenue is at risk.

Misalignment doesn’t announce itself.
It builds quietly, in assumptions, routines, and missed conversations.

If you want to protect and grow your highest value accounts, start here:

→ Test alignment
→ Expose the gap
→ Strengthen the relationship

How confident are you that your definition of success matches your client’s?

If you want the Transform Key Accounts Diagnostic, the tool I use with CEOs and Revenue Leaders to surface hidden risks and accelerate growth, just ask.

Partnering with CEOs to build revenue that scales - win, expand & retain strategic accounts | Built business to £55m | Former FTSE 250 Sales Director | Author “Winning Big in Sales” | People → System = Scale

I sat in on a leadership meeting last week.
45 minutes reviewing sales numbers.
0 minutes on client relationships.
0 minutes on what we’ve learned.

Afterwards the manager turned to me and said:
'I don’t know why our team doesn’t build trust with clients.'

But the answer was already in the room.

The team wasn’t failing.
They were mirroring.

When leaders only ask for numbers, teams optimise for numbers.
When leaders don’t slow down to reflect, teams stop thinking.
When leaders prioritise speed over depth, teams do the same.

And clients feel it too, long before the business does.

They stay polite.
They avoid strategic conversations.
They move towards competitors who feel “closer.”

A slow erosion, invisible quarter by quarter, undeniable over a year.

Client partnerships aren't a process.
It's a climate.

If the leadership climate rewards insight, curiosity, and depth, the team naturally builds partnership.

If the climate rewards velocity and updates, the team learns to trade relationships for activity.

Clients can tell which climate they’re in.

A better question for leaders:
'What behaviour have we normalised?'

Because the culture you tolerate becomes the client experience you deliver
and that impacts client churn, growth and your reputation.

--------------------
Are your team building partnerships or performing activity?
Find out, get a copy of my client account diagnostic.
Comment or message me 'partnership’.

We walked into a QBR certain we’d nailed it.
Service levels were exceptional.
KPIs were green.
The team felt confident.

But the Supply Chain Director wasn’t his usual self.

There was tension in the room, the kind that made me think, 
once he sees our performance, this will lift.

It didn’t.

Halfway through the meeting he said the words no supplier wants to hear:
'You’re doing a good job, but...
you’re not helping us get to where we’re going next.'

In that moment, the reality hit me.  
We were well aligned to their present,
but nowhere near aligned to their future.

That’s the silent risk in most “good” accounts.

They look strong.
They feel stable.
Until unexpectedly, they’re gone.

Not because of service failure.
But because the client’s world evolved and the supplier didn’t.

We reset the relationship around their 3–5 year goals, 
brought new insight, and jointly collaborated on a strategic project.

That account grew profitably by £10m, and they stayed with us over 15 years.
Others grew and stayed for many years, for the same reason.

Not because we delivered perfectly.
Because we stopped being transactional, and became indispensable.

What about your strategic client accounts?
Where does each client relationship sit?

Transactional → Developmental → Consultative → Collaborative → Transformational.

Most revenue risk lives in the gap between where you think you sit and where the client places you.

If you want the diagnostic that maps this precisely, showing where growth is, or where it's silently slipping, just ask.

The Hidden Metric CEOs Forget.

Not all revenue risk shows up in the numbers.

Most of it shows up in the conversations your team isn’t having.

If your clients aren’t sharing their future with you, they’re already sharing it with someone else.

→ When was the last time you asked a client about their 3 - 5 year vision?

=====
If you'd like the diagnostic I use with CEO's to increase revenue and reduce growth risk on strategic accounts, just ask.

If you're from the UK, you know Comic Relief and Red Nose Day, Pudsey Bear and Children in Need.

But do you know Louis Kennedy - raising over £250M for good causes?

Perhaps not.
And that was the challenge.

They're exceptional at what they do.
Creating massive impact, 
delivering outstanding work, 
decades of expertise.

But being brilliant behind the scenes doesn't automatically translate into recognition and influence with the C-suite at target accounts.

Grant Morgan (CEO) invited me to help solve this.

We built a strategic white paper that repositioned them as thought leaders, shaping the future of charity partnerships.

The result?

→ Strategic narrative now used in every pitch and event
→ New conversations with major brands and retailers
→ Renewed authority and influence with the C-suite 

Grant's words:
"The white paper allowed us to stamp our authority in this space... 
it has already generated new opportunities, an unbridled success."

This is the shift many exceptional businesses need: 
From being great at delivery to being recognised as strategic partners.

If your business does world-class work but isn't getting C-suite recognition, let's talk.

----------------
Looking for a charity partnership with purpose?
Connect with Grant Morgan at Louis Kennedy.

A founder wasn’t exaggerating when he admitted,

we burned £2,000 debating a £1,000 experiment.

The idea was simple.
A small pilot.
Low risk.
It could have opened a new client segment.
But instead of testing it, they discussed it.
And discussed it. And discussed it.

By the time everyone had weighed in:
• Momentum had gone
• Energy was drained
• The opportunity had quietly moved on
 The business needed certainty before courage.

I’ve seen this pattern in boardrooms with larger sums than this.

Leaders wait until the plan is perfect.
Teams wait until consensus is complete.
And the market? It doesn’t wait at all.

One of my favourite examples:
When the founders of Netflix had the idea of posting DVD movies by mail,
they didn’t build a strategy deck.
They posted one DVD to themselves.
If it arrived in one piece, they’d continue.
It did.
That was the experiment that started everything.

Overthinking is the most expensive form of procrastination in business.
It hides behind analysis, but it’s powered by fear.
Fear of risk, visibility, judgement, imperfection.

In scale up companies, the leaders who break revenue plateaus 
do one thing differently:

They test fast, with clients, not in isolation.

Right now, I’m trialling a new strategy development tool with a CEO I work with.
Not as my solution, as our shared experiment to see whether it sharpens
decision making and accelerates revenue planning in real time.

That’s where innovation lives:
inside the business, not on the sidelines.
Because growth rarely comes from getting it right every time.
It comes from learning faster than the market shifts.

If your team has been discussing more than deciding,
it might be time to trade some certainty for momentum.

Imagine your top client sitting quietly in the corner of your leadership meeting.

Would they hear you discussing their goals, their risks, their future.
or just another round of activity metrics and performance charts?

In most revenue reviews, I see the same pattern:
Plenty of numbers.
Almost no conversation about client insight.
Zero reflection on where strategic client growth will really come from.

And that silence is costly.

It’s where accounts plateau, relationships weaken, and competitors step in.

Here’s the shift that elevates the conversation:
Instead of only asking:

What’s the forecast this quarter?
Start asking:

→ What have we learned about the client’s world that we didn’t know 90 days ago?
→ Where are we helping them achieve their strategic priorities faster?
→ What would it take for us to become indispensable to them?

These questions do three things:

1️⃣ Change the quality of leadership focus
2️⃣Move teams from account management to client growth
3️⃣ Turn reviews into insight-generation, not just number checking

This is where I spend time with CEOs and leadership teams, designing revenue architecture where:

People → Systems = Scale

So if I sat in on your next leadership meeting, 
and your top client was in the room too, 
would they feel like the hero of the story
or a line item on the revenue report?

That answer tells you a lot about future growth.

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

📌 If growth on your strategic accounts matter, 
ask for the Transform Client Accounts Diagnostic.

 It reveals what’s strengthening, and what’s quietly slipping.

Transform Growth on Client Accounts

A leadership team told me they wanted to be seen as partners, not providers. 

When I asked, what does partnership mean here?  
The room went quiet. 

Then the answers came...
Trust.
Collaboration. 
Commercial growth. 
Friendship.

All valid. None shared. 

We spent time defining what partnership actually looks like in their business.

Not as a marketing message, but as operating behaviors:

→ Proactively flagging risks before clients see them 
→ Bringing foresight, not just responding to requests 
→ Showing up to difficult conversations, not avoiding them 
→ Making the client's strategic goals their success metrics


Then we used the Transform Key Accounts Diagnostic with their largest client.

Both teams assessed the relationship independently. 
The results showed exactly where they were on the partnership maturity curve, and what specific behaviours would move them up. 

Three months later, they re-assessed with the client.

They'd progressed, now being just one rank below partnership status.

Both sides had clarity on what partnership meant and how to achieve it. 
The client felt it because the team lived it. 

True partnership isn't a positioning statement. 

It's leadership alignment that shapes how every person in your business 
shows up. 

Before asking clients to see you as a partner, ask your leadership team: 
→What specific behaviors make a client feel we are one?
↳Get that answer together. Make it real. 

What does partnership mean inside your business? 

------------
If you'd like to assess where your key accounts sit on the partnership maturity curve, access the Transform Key Accounts Diagnostic, DM me or comment "SCALE"

AI won’t fail because of technology. It’ll fail because of fear.

When Callum Jenkins and I started the Lead to Succeed podcast
during lockdown in 2020, our mission was simple. 
To explore what makes exceptional leadership in an uncertain world.

141 episodes later, now in the top 3% of podcasts worldwide, that question matters more than ever.

In our latest episode, Heather Jerrehian, Silicon Valley CEO, investor, and co-author of Sail to Scale, said something every leader needs to hear:

People aren’t resisting AI because it doesn’t work.
They’re resisting it because they don’t feel safe.

That’s the leadership fault line that needs to change.

On the show we talk about strategy, scale, and transformation.
But fear is what quietly decides whether innovation succeeds or stalls.

Leaders who build psychological safety and trust will unlock AI adoption.
Those who don’t will watch AI initiatives gather dust.

AI disruption isn’t a tech story.
It’s a human one.

Lead to Succeed episode 141: AI Disruption - The Skills & Strategies Every CEO Now Needs

Thank you, Heather, for reminding us that in the age of AI, how we lead will determine how far our organisation can go.

----------
What’s built the most psychological safety in your team this year?

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Talks about #b2bsales, #business, #businessgrowth, #growthstrategy, and #businessdevelopment

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Stephen Mostrom

Rebecca Jenkins

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The Battle

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Rebecca Jenkins

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