Blue Bear Head

✔️ Brand Strategy & Market Differentiation – Developed and executed growth strategies for direct-to-consumer brands, helping them establish strong market positions, increase customer engagement, and create lasting brand equity.
✔️ Technology & Market Expertise – Stay ahead of emerging trends, develop high-performance teams, and support clients in navigating competitive landscapes while securing record-breaking revenues.
✔️ AI-Driven Solutions & Automation – Designed and implemented AI-powered analytics, automated workflows, and data-driven marketing strategies to streamline operations, optimize acquisition and retention, and drive sustainable business growth.

Managing Director

Techstars

✔️Mentoring at the Sydney Accelerator for Techstars, where I guide and support entrepreneurs in scaling innovative tech solutions. 
✔️Focused on driving measurable growth and delivering impactful outcomes, I collaborate with founders to refine strategies, optimize execution, and accelerate product development. Leveraging my experience in the tech industry, I help teams navigate challenges and achieve operational excellence in a fast-paced, results-oriented environment.

Mentor

Sumerian Records

✔️Developed and launched an OTT platform with 200+ licensed films and short-form music videos, branded as Albumovies for Hit Parader's On Demand Video Streaming Services.  These cinematic epics premiere ahead of album releases on digital platforms, offering exclusive first looks to fans and generating revenue through transactional video on demand.
✔️Hit Parader's On Demand Video Streaming Services will be available on Multiple Platforms: Web, iOS, Android, Samsung Smart TVs, Roku, LG Smart TVs, and Amazon Fire TV as a free streaming service.

SVP | Video Streaming & Digital Partnerships

Amazon

✔️ Led Amazon’s Working Backwards innovation sessions for top APAC brands including Qantas and Optus—helping senior leaders translate customer insights into launch-ready ideas using Amazon’s signature framework.
✔️ Selected as the primary negotiator for high-stakes agreements with key stakeholders—aligning teams around a unified messaging strategy and optimizing the deployment of large-scale budgets.

Innovation Advisory Programs APAC

✔️Received the best possible performance reviews after spearheading the worldwide Launchpad Innovation Grants program that provided clients with new creative advertising/media initiatives.
✔️Selected to establish Private Label brands in Australia with a new exclusive local product line, all while offering internal consulting to other business development staff with similar efforts. as well as importing additional selections from overseas to drive operational scale with Amazon Basics.

Head of Marketing Business Development APJ

✔️Established a high-performing team that orchestrated strategic efforts, partnerships, and initiatives. Reworked onboarding to increase staff retention.
✔️Expanded the company's market presence, product and service presence, and overall revenues, ranking among the top of all leaders within the region.

Head of Sales and Business Development

✔️Grew revenue by 200%+ by hiring and overseeing a high-performing advertising sales team. Collaborated with HR to support the development of other teams companywide.
✔️Strengthened executive relationships through weekly reviews and voice-of-the-customer sessions, becoming the principal contact for the most complex advertising requirements.

Head of Search Advertising, Europe

✔️Secured key industry alliances and negotiated some of the largest deals in Europe as the primary stakeholder liaison, including partnerships with Axel Springer.
✔️Diverted $42M+ of advertising revenue from Google and Facebook (over objective) after initiating cost-saving marketing measures that incorporated modern marketing methodology.

Principal Business Development, Mobile Advertising Technology

Senior Account Executive, Video Games & Consumer Electronics

Fable Food Co

Investor

AMASS

Investor & Advisor

Surreal

Surreal aims to become the entertainment industry's go-to infrastructure.

Seed Investor

Zillow Group

West Coast Sales

LendingTree

Director of Sales

Global Technology Leader | Seasoned Startup & Board Advisor | Formerly at Amazon, Zillow, Lending Tree

💥 Most people chase tactics. I build leverage.

If you’re a founder, operator, or high-performer scaling in today’s AI-fueled market, you need more than playbooks. You need frameworks that hold under pressure.

🔹 12+ years inside Amazon
— Launched global brands on Prime Day
— Built Amazon Advertising ops across EMEA, APAC & NA
— Trained execs using the “Working Backwards” system Jeff Bezos built the company on

🎬 Then came streaming deals, rights, and launches at Sumerian Records
📈 Now I advise founders, execs, and teams ready to grow smarter (not louder)

🧠 Author of It’s All Trash Til It’s Cash — Amazon’s blueprint for builders who don’t want to fake it.

Let’s build bold. Let’s build better.

📩 DM me if you’re scaling a company, a career, or a new chapter.

The line between real and imagined just got thinner. I opened up Gemini Nano Banana, dropped in a photo from Leiper’s Fork, Tennessee added a few prompts, and suddenly I was standing shoulder to shoulder with Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos. No film crew. No long editing sessions. Just a few clicks and the machine delivered a scene that would have felt impossible not long ago.

I still use Canva every week for client work, but this feels different. This is not about design polish. This is about shifting the way we work and the way we show up in digital spaces. Reality is no longer fixed. It is editable. And the progress is moving at a pace that is hard to wrap your head around.

For me, the real question is not whether we can do this. It is what happens next. When anyone can bend reality with a few clicks, the value comes from knowing how to point these tools in the right direction.

If you are looking for help with your AI workflows and optimisation, reach out. This space is moving fast, and the people who learn to ride it now will own the future.

Chadd SJ Ciccarelli

Former Amazon Exec | AI & GTM Strategy | Branding Engineer | Market Expansion Advisor | Author of “It’s All Trash ’Til It’s Cash”

Hiring is the most important decision a leader makes. Ethan Evans about referrals 
power of referrals in today’s job market. Eighty percent of senior jobs come through networks which means the best talent often arrives because someone you trust opened the door.

Once the right people are in the process my four rules guide how I interview.

1. Ditch the laptop and bring presence because connection reveals more than notes ever will
2. Use the STAR method correctly because it should uncover growth not just repeat stories
3. Think Big because hiring is about potential not only today’s needs
4. Every hire is a bet on your culture so choose wisely

Referrals give you access to talent. Preparation and presence ensure you make the right decision once they walk in.  If you have not already, check out all other the insights Ethan Evans on all things leadership, hiring and executive insights.

Former Amazon VP, LinkedIn Top Voice, now Teaching Leaders to become True Executives

At Amazon, my teams hired 1000+ people, and I taught a hiring class to 15,000+ Amazonians. Hiring is both the hardest and most consequential decision in business. Here is my advice on how to do it better. 

First, the “Why.” 

Hiring great talent lets you succeed without all of the work being on you. It lets you grow bigger and go farther than you could yourself. Hiring well can be the rocket that propels your career while hiring poorly is an anchor that drags you down. 

To hire well, keep these things in mind: 

a) Do not depend solely on applicants. Maintain a pipeline of strong talent even if they are not actively looking for new roles.

b) Do not fully outsource this work to recruiters. You must partner with recruiters to support them and get the best from them.

c) Get referrals (internal and external). 80% of senior jobs are filled through networking. Let your recruiters do external searches and process applicants while you and your team work on getting referrals from inside the company and your personal networks. 

Once you have implemented these strategies, you will have a pool of candidates. Now you must assess them to figure out who is best. 

Keep in mind: 

1) Interviewing has problems, but it is the best option we have unless we have direct experience working with the candidate. That means we have to get good at the interview process for it to translate to the best possible hires. 

2) Good interviewing begins with good preparation at the team and individual levels. Grabbing a few people last-minute and asking them to talk to a candidate is setting yourself up for failure (but is what most organizations do). Interviewers need to be selected and trained.

3) A good debrief is key to a good decision. In the debrief, each piece of feedback should be specific, supported by the best data the interviewer can assemble, and then surfaced in an organized fashion so that no single voice drives the decision.

As a leader, your team *is* your performance. Hiring is your highest leverage and highest consequence action. 

I am writing about hiring today because our guest newsletter author has written a great guide to how he hires (plus he shares his own bold, unfiltered, and entertaining interview stories).

Chadd SJ Ciccarelli is a global sales and marketing executive who spent 12+ years at Amazon, where he held multiple senior roles. He was an Amazon Bar Raiser and has interviewed 1,000+ candidates globally. 

Chadd’s four rules for hiring are: 

1) Ditch the laptop and bring presence
2) The STAR Method, if it’s done right, it is a process of change
3) The Amazon Leadership Principle that always stuck with me was Think Big 
4) Every hire is a bet on your culture, so choose wisely 

To learn how he developed these rules, read the newsletter here: https://lnkd.in/gvtW8fWb

Readers- How do you hire? What do others need to know?

Grateful to be featured in Ethan Evans Level Up newsletter, “Don’t Ruin Your Culture: Hire the Right Person.”

In it, I shared four lessons I learned as an Amazon Bar Raiser after interviewing more than 1,000 candidates worldwide:

Close the laptop and be fully present
Use STAR as a real story, not a script
Think Big by owning failures as well as wins
Every hire is a bet on your culture

Ethan frames this with his philosophy on building pipelines and leaning on referrals, reminding us that most great hires start through networks.

The wrong hire can slow down a company for years. The right hire can change its trajectory.

Read the full piece below:

Open article: Don't Ruin Your Culture: Hire the Right Person by open.substack.com

Don't Ruin Your Culture: Hire the Right Person

Network without being blind and crunge.

Too many people confuse networking with spamming. I get hit all the time with these generic AI prompted investment memos. They land in my inbox with no context, no connection, and no value. When I reply with a simple “don’t care, not interested,” I usually get the so-called “real email” asking me why. The truth is I have never seen or heard of anyone sending a cold memo about a product and magically landing an investment or a meeting. It does not happen.

If you want to build real connections, start by adding value. Do your homework. Reach out because we actually share a thread. Maybe it is because I worked at Sumerian Records, or because I recently published a book, or because I spent over a decade at Amazon. Maybe it is because I had the privilege of working with Rich Barton and Lloyd Fink who went on to build several successful companies. At least give me a reason to care.

Networking done right is not about extracting. It is about serving. If you can bring value or insight, I will always give you my time. If you cannot, then there is no relationship to build.

I also recommend Dale Carnegie’s How to Win Friends and Influence People. And for this post, I wanted a cool photo, so I used Nano Banana via Gemini to replace the Dio book I was reading with Carnegie’s classic. I already own both, but this was a simple way to illustrate the power of Gemini side by side.

“You can make more friends in two months by becoming interested in other people than you can in two years by trying to get other people interested in you.” — Dale Carnegie

If you are looking for ways to optimize your AI workload and turn these tools into something that actually creates value, reach out. The ones who learn to use them well will be the ones who win.

No alternative text description for this image

Cracker Barrel just got the internet to do its marketing for free. 

I never thought about Cracker Barrel. 

Maybe on a road trip with friends. A punch line. That is it.

Then the logo tweak hit my feed.
Shock. Threads. Hot takes. I rolled my eyes like everyone else.
And then they flipped it back.

Meanwhile the tape moved.
CBRL closed at 57.71 USD on Aug 26 up 6.35 percent.
After hours it printed around 61.80 up 7.09 percent.

Tell me that does not feel like a scene from Billions. Bobby Axelrod grinning while the outrage machine spins the wheel. Maybe it was an accident. Maybe it was choreography. Either way the result was the same. Attention. Everywhere.

Brand takeaways

• Outrage is fuel. Use sparingly.

• If you touch the logo you touch identity. Have a clean reset button ready.

• Control the frame. Announce the move. Let the crowd argue. Return to center with calm language.

• The fastest statement wins. Silence invites everyone else to write your story.

• Earned attention beats paid ads when the story has a villain and a twist.

• If it was a stumble they turned it into a sprint. If it was a plan it was a clinic.

I cannot remember the last time I cared about this brand. This week I could not avoid it. That is the lesson. In a crowded feed the only real currency is attention. Spend it like a pro. Then check the scoreboard.

Either way this would have been a great script for Billions.

This is a different version of the Coldplay kiss cam. A CEO gets caught stealing a hat from a kid. Think about that. A grown man, running a company, standing in front of everyone, and deciding in that moment he wanted the hat more than the kid did. The internet saw it, the internet rallied, and the internet exposed him, Piotr Szczerek which then exposed his company Drogbruk.  His choices are now tied together forever. And this is when I truly love the internet because they identified who the man and its headline news. 

His company now carries the stain of his behavior. Employees who had nothing to do with it now have to answer questions about their boss. His wife and family are forced to live with the embarrassment of something they never signed up for. One stupid decision became a brand crisis.

That is what people forget. Branding is not a logo or a tagline or a clever campaign. Branding is behavior. It is what people say about you when you leave the room. It is how your employees feel when they tell people where they work. It is how the world judges the choices you make when you think nobody is looking. You cannot out-market being a bad human. You cannot buy your way out of shame.

And for what. A sweaty hat. I have never understood adults who do this at games. The foul ball at a baseball game, the puck at a hockey match, the hat or trinket meant for a child. You are an adult. Let the kid have their moment. When I was eight years old, I caught a puck at a hockey game. I can still feel it in my hands, the roar of the crowd, the shock that it landed with me. It was electric. It was a moment that mattered. That is what this CEO stole. Not a hat. A memory which was rectified by the tennis player in the end.

I work with CEOs every day. I help them shape their voice, scale their content, and build their brands. Branding begins before you ever hit record on a podcast or post on LinkedIn. It begins with what you do when nobody is watching. It begins with how you treat people who cannot give you anything back. If you would not tell your mother about it, do not do it. If you would not want to see it captured on video, do not even think about it.

Social media is not just a marketing channel. It is a mirror. It will reflect back who you are. Sometimes that reflection builds trust and loyalty. Sometimes it burns everything down. The internet does not forget, and it does not care about excuses.

It's a new world for CEOs and they need to think about their brand 24/7.

Open video: Hat-snatching CEO Piotr Szczerek Breaks Silence After US Open Backlash on youtube.com

Hat-snatching CEO Piotr Szczerek Breaks Silence After US Open Backlash

As I'm anxiously awaiting the Steeler season, Tom Brady was asked about why he did not draft Shadeur Sanders and gave a real, insightful answer. His answer went straight to the kind of celebrations he does not like to see from a quarterback and how he watched these celebrations from the perspective of a leader.

He said he tells his linemen, “we are all running to the end zone and we are celebrating as a team, because I think that is way more intimidating than a quarterback doing his six shooter guns and pointing up in the crowd and doing all that other b——- that is very self promotional. Winning in football is about always a team attitude first.”

What struck me is how much this applies outside of football. In tech and startups I have seen both sides of this. The managers who take the credit and make it about themselves, and the ones who pull everyone into the trenches with them. I will never forget a manager who once told me, “do not email my VP, everything must come through me” even when we were celebrating a team goal. That mentality is the six shooter gun dance.

The best leaders I worked with at Amazon had a very different approach. They put the team first. It was about winning together. There was no “me me” nonsense and made you feel that they had your back and would come and celebrate the wins. That is why Brady’s perspective resonates. It is a reminder that whether you are on a football field or building a startup, the celebration is more powerful when it belongs to the team.

I am building a prompt engineering cheat sheet for Google nana banana that will be in my next newsletter. It will be and I have gone pretty deep on it so I will share the best of what I have learned outside of just making Tom Brady magically appear with me in Pittsburgh.

Taplio

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