Dr. Jim ( ജിം കണിച്ചിറയിൽ ) Kanichirayil

Helping Busy HR Teams Build Elite Organizations | Highlighting Innovation and DEIB in HRTech | Talent Strategy Nerd | Professional Megaphone | Researcher | Writer | Podcaster |

Early-stage founders don’t fail because they lack ideas.
They fail because nothing connects...content, sales, partnerships, and pipeline are all there. 
None of it is  together.

That’s the gap I work in.

I help founder-led B2B startups in HRTech, TATech, EdTech, and executive coaching go from guessing to measurable traction, without lighting their runway on fire.

Over the last decade, I’ve helped early-stage teams:

✅ Build multi-million-dollar pipelines from zero
✅ Win first customers in markets where nobody knew their name
✅ Define ICP and product-market fit while actively selling
✅ Align sales, marketing, and partnerships into a single GTM motion

My work sits at the intersection of content-led growth and founder-led selling.

That means:

✅ Using content to earn attention and credibility
✅ Using relationships to open doors
✅ Using execution (not frameworks-for-frameworks’ sake) to create pipeline 

I’ve also helped founders build real authority in-market by launching top-10% global podcasts, interviewing hundreds of C-suite leaders, and turning content into partnerships and revenue.

If you’re:

✅ Pre-revenue and trying to find your first real signal
✅ Post-revenue but stuck without a clear GTM motion
✅ A founder tired of disconnected tactics that don’t compound
✅ A founder from an underrepresented community who wants to punch above their weight

You’ll probably get value from what I share here.

I post daily on go-to-market, content-led growth, and founder execution.
Follow along and/or DM me.

Community Member

RevGenius is a community of revenue generating sales and marketing professionals brought together to learn, share, support, and grow with each other.

I didn't want to get disappeared at the border, so I canceled a trip that I had planned to co-facilitate a workshop with a friend of mine. 

Story time: 

My friend Susan Diaz 🎙️ and I were planning on setting up a workshop in Toronto, where we would gather a handful of business owners and work through some of their business problems and build AI solutions for it.
  
We started planning for it in Q4 of last year with an eye toward it going live in Feb of this year. I was on the fence at that time and I mentioned to Susan that I'm not sure if, I'm gonna be able to attend on site because of the situation at the northern border. 

Getting into Canada isn't a problem. Getting back into the US? Especially when you've seen countless brown and Black faces get terrorized and shipped off and disappeared? 

That's a real consideration. 

I thought about it over the holidays and I had made up my mind that I wasn't gonna attend, mainly because of the border concerns. The event is still on but I'm bummed that I won't be able to tag-team with Susan in the experience. 

And for those of you who might be rolling your eyes, these are legitimate concerns that every brown and Black person in this country is dealing with right now.
  
Maybe you've just ignored it because the people that were getting brutalized and disappeared didn't look like you. So I told Susan, it's too much of a risk. I don't wanna get hassled at the border or worse...

And then Minnesota happened. 
And then Oregon a day later. 
  
The rules of the game have changed. Those two incidents are warning shots. They're telling the active resistance made up of the majority population to back down and keep quiet or face the same treatment they dish out to the browns and Blacks. 

But here's the thing, you were kidding yourself if you thought you would escape what was coming by keeping quiet. 

You were always "next up." 
  
So what does all of this mean? It means that the reality that Black and brown people have been dealing with for decades is now expanding and landing right on your doorsteps.
  
That's the lesson. 

There's a broader thing you need to be aware of as this is happening...all of this is designed to restrict your access, restrict your movement, and restrict your opportunity. There were 300K Black women who lost their jobs in 2025. That trend is coming for the rest of us in ways like this and others. 
  
And you know what's interesting? 

No matter what platform you go to, the vast majority of people are behaving as if nothing is out of the ordinary. And especially on LinkedIn, what we see are people going through their day-to-day humble-brags, and tech pro speak, and completely ignoring what's happening in the world around them.
  
Nothing about this is normal. 

What will you do when what happened in Minnesota and Oregon lands on your doorsteps?

Dr. Jim Kanichirayil

Researcher | Writer | Podcaster | I Help People, Leaders, and Organizations Drive Transformations by Helping Them Build Elite Diverse Teams | I Help Make Sure The Talent in Your Talent Strategy Doesn't Get Left Behind |

I write about how early-stage B2B founders actually build traction | Content-led GTM, founder-led sales | HRTech, EdTech, TATech, Executive Coaching | From Zero to Traction

My jaw did not move. 


When we see that the private army under the command of potentially the world's biggest trafficker and abuser, is now using kids as bait to lure their parents and then disappear all parties, it’s not shocking. 
  
It’s predictable. 
  
We should all be at a place in society where we can all come to an agreement that using kids to bait parents for the purposes of trafficking is a new level of evil that we shouldn’t tolerate. 
  
We should be saying that. 
  
And yet we have vast numbers of the population that are cheerleading along saying this is exactly what we voted for. To those people, I say this: 𝙮𝙤𝙪 𝙥𝙧𝙤𝙫𝙚 𝙧𝙚𝙥𝙚𝙖𝙩𝙚𝙙𝙡𝙮 𝙩𝙝𝙖𝙩 𝙮𝙤𝙪 𝙖𝙧𝙚 𝙘𝙤𝙣𝙨𝙞𝙨𝙩𝙚𝙣𝙩𝙡𝙮 𝙩𝙝𝙚 𝙢𝙤𝙨𝙩 𝙙𝙚𝙩𝙚𝙨𝙩𝙖𝙗𝙡𝙚 𝙝𝙪𝙢𝙖𝙣𝙨 𝙞𝙣 𝙩𝙝𝙚 𝙝𝙞𝙨𝙩𝙤𝙧𝙮 𝙤𝙛 𝙀𝙖𝙧𝙩𝙝.
  
You would be the same type of people who would be turning in runaway slaves to the slave catchers. You would be the same type of people who would've ratted out, Anne Frank, to the Nazis. 
  
There is no difference.
  
When we look at this regime's private army, that is storming cities and breaking down doors, abducting children and trotting out grand elderly people in their underwear in the middle of the winter, every single one of those actions has its roots in American history. 
  
This is a uniquely American practice. They're using the same playbook that the slave catchers used against Black people. Those practices were exported internationally and now those chickens have come home to roost. 
  
Everything about this bothers me but the part that I have the hardest time dealing with is seeing the faces of those kids. I see the faces of my sons. And it could easily be my sons that are being disappeared on the street. 
  
While a portion of you might be saying, well, you have nothing to worry about if you're a citizen. We know that that's clearly not the case. It's now well documented that citizens and legal residents are being caught up in these gestapo slash slave catcher tactics.
  
And if you aren't moved to at least consider how wrong it is, you should be questioning your own humanity. And I'm sure that the people who think that there's nothing wrong with this and everything about this is normal, are probably thinking that because they don't feel like this could ever get visited on them.
  
One thing that you have to remember about fascist regimes is that there's always a new enemy, and it doesn't take very long for that new enemy to become you.
  
So, while right now you might be barking along like trained seals, there's gonna come a moment in time where all of that cheerleading isn't going to save you.
  
You're gonna be part of the group that gets disappeared too.
  
Nothing about this is okay. 
Nothing about this is acceptable. 
Nothing about this is normal. 

And if you're sitting there and you disagree with any of that, you're part of the problem.

I’ve been doing this almost my entire life. 
Starting from zero is nothing new for me. 

I came over to the US from India as a 7 year old. 
That was quite the adjustment.
Ask me about my first reaction to snow...that’s a story for another day. 

As a generation 0 immigrant, to start from nearly nothing isn’t really novel. It’s the story that many of us immigrants navigated to get a foothold. You sometimes wonder if it’s worth it but more often than not, you’re just focused on moving forward. 

I often wonder if my immigrant origin story has anything to do with why I gravitate to startup organizations and opportunities. There’s something about being a pioneer and wide-open green fields that just fits how I’m wired. 

Starting from zero as a B2B startup is no easier than the journey as an immigrant. And Starting from nothing after you've jumped across an entire ocean is a whole different ball game as a B2B founder. 
  
I don't think people realize or recognize how difficult that task is to pull up if you're moving from one international geography and trying to get traction in the US where you don't have any existing relationships, any existing customers, you don't have any footprint whatsoever, and you don't have name recognition.
  
It’s a tall order. 
  
When you're looking to try to get traction, you have to approach that problem in a pretty unique way. You can't spam your TAM to success. You can't use the same playbooks that all the well-known players use.
  
You have to go into the market differently.
  
And that's exactly what we did when we were at EngageRocket. EngageRocket shifted from Singapore and wanted to get a foothold in the us. And CT, the founder had spent months trying to get traction using some of the traditional tech, tech motions, and it just didn't work.
  
That's when I came along and I suggested that we integrate sales, marketing, and partnerships into a unified motion into the marketplace, leveraging content as the engine to get us in front of the people that we needed to get in front of. By doing that, we were able to have hundreds of conversations with our ICP.
  
We built really strong relationships across the board with everyone that we met. We pressure tested every aspect of our GTM, product, messaging, and positioning. 
  
We actually learned a ton, and that's how we built traction on the fly. 
  
That playbook I used at EngageRocket is the same one I used in staffing, TATech, EdTech, and executive coaching. 
  
It sets you up to have customers for life. 
  
If you’re having trouble getting in front of the people you need to get in front of, maybe we should have a conversation…

19 years of service at a company. 
Never missed the day of work. 
Rose from the ranks from server to general manager. 

If you thought that this was going to be one of those "plucky underdog wins the day through hard work" stories, you'd be wrong. 

This is the story about Jeff Cook, who was the GM of a Ruby Tuesday. 
He went above and beyond when corporate told him he needs to open the store on Christmas. 

No bonus pay. 
No double time. 
Make it happen. 

He did his best and then was fired for it. 

There's a reason why I always say that everyone is a free agent and they should act accordingly. This is yet another example of what's wrong with corporate America, and what's been happening since the 1980s. 

Jack Welch innovated this model where people are disposable cogs, and this is the latest example of how a person is being treated as a disposable cog. 

See, we can be mad at Ruby Tuesday if we want, but did they really do anything wrong in terms of how they behaved? Was there anything against the law or unethical about what they did?

When you think about it, Ruby Tuesday behaved in a way that was no different than any other company in the us. We've often heard that you can drop dead at your job in corporate America and they'll have your position open within 48 hours and have you replaced within a week. 

Ruby Tuesday and corporate America isn't the problem. The problem is that we have actually accepted that it's okay for these companies to operate like this.

Why is it that someone can work for an organization for that long and be terminated without a thought? And the only thing that they might be owed is their last two weeks paycheck. 

That's the problem that needs addressing. And yet we hear c-suite execs talking all the time about how no one wants to work today. 

I wonder why that is the case...

Only ivory tower c-suite execs could look at 70% of the population living paycheck to paycheck, and wonder why no-one wants to go the extra mile. If you engineer a system to keep everyone in survival mode, you're going to get survival mode level results. 

What happened in Ruby Tuesday happens in companies all across the country, and the lesson for employees for all of us is that we need to have a free agent's mentality.

Corporate America has two rules: maximize shareholder value and make sure your executive suite makes a mint. We're not included in that discussion, and that tells you everything that you need to know.

The lesson for anyone who's an employee is this: your loyalty to your company is overrated because it's not a two-way street, and until they give you a stake in the outcomes and an ownership share, you shouldn't be expected to act with an owner's mentality. 

The reality is that you're a disposable cog in their giant extraction machine.

"What kind of world am I going to be in a few years from now?"
That question stopped me cold. 


That was from my oldest son. And that question is likely on the minds of every kid in the country right now. So how would you answer that question? 

So what exactly is happening around us today? No matter how much you might be willing to kick things under the rug, all of our kids are watching and seeing what's happening today, and they're calling it out for what it is. What they're seeing is the daily brutalization of people in THIS country by their government, and when your kids ask you that question, how are you going to answer?

I didn't have much of an answer other than we're gonna keep fighting because that's the only way that we can avoid the logical outcomes of these tactics. What we are seeing are the modern day slave catchers acting with impunity under orders from the state. 

And no amount of keeping quiet is going to keep this from coming to our doorsteps. When I, a citizen, have to drive around with my head on a swivel because patrols are in the area, we have to recognize that this is a new era. 

What sort of country are we living in when leaders are telling citizens that they must comply if they don't want to die? 

No matter how much you try to wrap yourself in the language of law and order, let's understand what we're seeing. We're seeing masked, armed, unidentified, goons, terrorizing the population. We've seen people getting dragged out of cars.

We've seen people who are just going about their day get harassed, stopped, tear-gassed and flash banged into the hospital. We're seeing masked, armed goons going door to door, asking to see people's papers. 

And those are the lucky ones. The rest get disappeared. 

Our kids are seeing this and viewing a future that they don't want to be a part of. 

These are the moments where all of us who are striving to be good parents need to be willing and have the courage to call out what we are actually seeing: this is the systematic extermination and ethnic cleansing of brown and Black people at the hands of our government.
 
So when you understand that, you need to ask yourself, does it serve everybody's interests to keep quiet? 

Let's make sure we understand the rules of engagement. When you're dealing with abusive authority, silence does not get that abusive authority to stop. Abusive authority only recognizes one response, and that response requires all of us to stand up for each other and for our neighbors and step into the fray. 

That's what's necessary.

That's the only way that we can prevent our kids from living in a future where they are terrorized and disposed of as if they were nothing. 

You may not like the sound of it, but I'm not saying it for your comfort. 

For anything to change, we need to get comfortable with being uncomfortable and we need to do it quickly. 

That requires all of us to stop being silent about what we are seeing.

That's an interesting move. 


Nicole Jeans shared this DM she got from an AI founder and rightfully put him on blast. 
I dropped a few comments in and reposted. 

Imagine my surprise when someone from that company sent me a connection request. 
I'm not sure what about my post or comment would have indicated that I wanted to connect. 

Read the room, peeps. 
Stop being weird.

Dr. Jim (ജിം കണിച്ചിറയിൽ) Kanichirayil

One of the biggest challenges that B2B SaaS teams face is being able to cut through the noise their customers are dealing with. 

No amount of emailing, calling, or pitch slaps in the DMs is going to overcome that challenge. 

Today's buyer is in self-service mode and if sales and marketing teams want to meet them where they are, they will need to operate with a collaboration mindset. 

Sales and marketing teams need to seek to understand before trying to be understood. 

And it needs to be done in a way that's authentic. 

That's what I help teams accomplish. 

I've helped organizations build markets and segments from the ground up. 

I've done this in IT staffing and recruiting, HRTech, TATech, and in the K12 tech space. 

If you're not getting traction in your target markets and need help, we should have a conversation.

Thinkers360

Top 10 Thought Leader Diversity and Inclusion 

Top 10 Thought Leader Sales 

Top 25 Thought Leader in Human Resources 

Dissertation: The Influence of Leadership Style and Leadership Training on Salesperson Voluntary Turnover in the Staffing and Recruiting Industry

Olivet Nazarene University

Keller Graduate School of Management of DeVry University

Eastern Illinois University

Cascading Leadership

Podcast booking and production agency helping B2B SaaS HRTech, TATech, EdTech, and K12Tech organizations remove friction from their sales and marketing process. 

Developed and produced close to 1K audio and video podcast/live episodes. 

Created/Hosted/Produced - The Cascading Leadership Show, Talent Strategy 60 Show, Building Elite Sales Teams, and the Engaging Leadership Show. 

Hosted and produced two top 10% global B2B podcasts (Cascading Leadership Show and Engaging Leadership Show).

Founder

EngageRocket

EngageRocket is an employee engagement and performance management platform that helps businesses build engaged teams, empowered managers, and elite organizations. 

Trusted by the top companies in 14 countries and spanning 20 diverse industries—including Sephora, Toyota, Nikon, CGS-CIMB, and Epson—EngageRocket provides continuous listening and real-time analytics to support impactful management action. 

Helped establish the US footprint for EngageRocket. 
Leveraged content-led sales approach to gain traction in the marketplace. 
Defined and executed outbound sales motion. 
Owned the end-to-end sales and marketing process. 
Owned the partnership function and built referral partner network. 
Hosted and produced over 300 episodes of the Engaging Leadership Show. 
Interviewed over 200 senior and executive leaders in HR, TA, L&D, IT, Sales, and K12.

VP of Growth, Product Evangelist 

Thinkers360 takes a holistic view of thought leaders and experts, beyond their social media activity, and looks across all their personas – such as academic, advisor, analyst, author, consultant, entrepreneur, executive, influencer and speaker – and all the types of thought leadership content they produce.

Top 10 Thought Leader in DEI and Sales, Top 25 Thought Leader in Human Resources 

Mattingly Solutions

I am a GTM advisor for Mattingly. 

About Mattingly Solutions: 

We partner with our clients to build a data-driven strategies that result in more diverse, equitable, and inclusive organizations.

Our DEI solutions include measurement consulting, 1-on-1 advisory coaching with DEI leaders responsible for building and executing DEI strategy, DEI capacity building (e.g., DEI task force and ERG/BRG support), and behavior change interventions that give employees and leaders the tools to make others feel valued, respected, seen, and heard.

Mattingly Solutions takes a user experience approach to co-creating and implementing DEI strategies with our clients. Our DEIx™ Framework combines human/employee experience methodology with your company’s data, organizational science, peer-reviewed research, DEI best practices, your organization’s values and goals, and PhD-level subject matter expertise to help you measure, build, implement, and assess impact of your DEI strategy and interventions.

Using our framework, we partner with our clients to build upon foundational DEI strategy work that results in a data-driven, prioritized, agile, actionable, and sustainable DEI culture change movement.

GTM Advisor and Board Member 

Yardstick

18 months.

That's the typical shelf-life for a sales leader in B2B Tech.

The reason?

There are several actually.

Win rates at 10-15% or lower.

Quota attainment at 30% on average.

Sales rep turnover tremendously high.

All of those costs add up and that's BEFORE you factor in the economic landscape.

Can sales leaders continue to have this failure rate and expect to survive?

No.

So what's the fix?

There are several but for accelerating growth organizations, you should be looking at your sales interviewing and onboarding processes.

And that's where Yardstick can help.

I've partnered with the Yardstick team as their Product Ambassador because sales hiring and onboarding is broken.

What better way to start the process of solving the problem than teaming up with a CEO who's got a track-record for successful startup launches and exits?

I'm looking forward to helping sales organizations stop their revolving door of reps.

Let's talk.

Product Ambassador 

RevGenius

Community Member 

Salescast

Salescast is the operating system for the B2B podcasting community of sales, marketing, and revenue professionals. We have an inclusive online community, courses, tutorials, events, guest matching, and even world class managed production services. Our mission is to connect 100 million sellers to the power of story.

TrainYo 🏳️‍🌈

TrainYo 🏳️‍🌈 is creating fair opportunities for all in the technology sector 😎

We’re on a mission to help companies scale their sales orgs quicker, with more predictable revenue by providing them with pre-ramped, ready to go SDR’s who have gone through our Free TrainYo SDR program. 👩🏽‍💻 🧑🏼‍💻

We’re passionate about fair representation & creating fair opportunities for everyone!🏳️‍🌈 🎉 🥳

Instructor

Strively.org

Strively’s mission is to create more diverse and inclusive workplaces in the tech sector. Through partnership with technology companies, we aspire to change how people are perceived and impacted by society’s most complex problems: mass incarceration; human trafficking; young adults at risk of incarceration; and housing shortages. We succeed together by supporting and serving a population of talented, motivated, and capable individuals who are ready for their opportunity to disrupt the cycles of inequities.

Volunteer Instructor 

Circa

What type of organization are you building? 

How are you building a bold, audacious, and innovative organization that harnesses all of the brilliance that's locked within? 

Are you building  the type of organization that candidates dream about working for and competitors envy? 

Where do you find yourself on the journey to becoming an elite leader in an elite organization? 

These are the critical questions we help our clients answer. 

The answers to all of these questions are rooted in your talent strategy. 

Unfortunately, many organizations take a piecemeal approach to their talent strategy which results in most of their talent getting left behind. 

Don't risk losing the engine that drives your business by ignoring what's most important. 

As a leader, you need to convince them to stay every. single. day. 

We deliver an end-to-end talent solution that helps you attract more talent, attract more diverse talent, retain that talent, and develop them for the long term. 

Our competition wants to keep you on the talent attraction hamster wheel. 

We partner with you and help stabilize your talent ecosystem so you can focus on realizing your organizational potential. 

The new talent landscape requires transformative talent solutions. 

We are the industry leaders in delivering scalable, innovative talent solutions that expands your reach, enhances your profile, and keeps you compliant. 

We are the straight line that connects your mission, vision, values, and purpose to your shoot the moon results. 

Partner with us and let us help you realize your organizational potential.

Growth - Commercial Partnerships Team 

Helping Founder-led B2B Teams Go, Grow, And Accelerate With Content-Led Sales | Fractional Growth Leader | Researcher | Writer | Leader | Podcaster | HRTech | TATech | K12 | EdTech

Fractional GTM Leader | Helping Founder-Led Startups in HRTech, TATech, EdTech, & Executive Coaching Go from Zero → Traction | Content-Led Growth | Aligning Sales, Marketing, & Partnerships

B2B startup founders can learn a lot from Ryan Coogler. 
Don't believe me? 

For those who don't know, Ryan Coogler is one of the best and most underrated directors of our day. He's had hit after hit without nearly the level of critical recognition you would think he's earned. His most recent movie, Sinners, is a great example of getting snubbed by the awards crowd while making a mint at the box office AND being a fan favorite. 

Believe it or not, Ryan Coogler’s playbook translates cleanly to early-stage B2B: focus, choose your people, earn true fans, stay consistent, protect independence, and build for believers. 

Here’s how to run that as an operating system:  

1. Don't try to be all things to all people. Define a narrow lane and stay in it. Successful work carries a recognizable feel, pace, and message. That comes from choosing a lane, not chasing every opportunity. 
   
2. Work with people who "get" you. You build momentum when your core team shares your mission, vision, and values. You move faster because you're not translating things on a daily basis. 
   
3. Find the audience that "gets" you. Depth beats breadth. A consistent audience becomes a network of evangelists that pushes your message further than spray-and-pray tactics ever will. 
   
4. Use consistency as your promise to your audience and fans. Consistency across vision, values, voice, and themes is how you keep serving believers while sharpening your point of view. It’s a recipe for durable momentum. 
   
5. Bypass the gatekeepers and guard your independence. You won’t win popularity contests for this, but you will win loyalty. Say no to deals that bend your roadmap or dilute your message. Build direct trust with customers instead of asking for permission. 
   
6. Build for yourself AND build for the ones who have believed in you from the beginning. Anchor decisions to the customers who already carry you. When you stay true to the people who brought you here, you deliver what actually matters and growth becomes more predictable and reliable. 

Coogler has been wildly successful because he's been consistent across these 6 principles. 

If the goal is to get traction, early stage founders would be well-served by applying these principles to how they go to market. 

What would you add and/or fight me on?

There are only a few things that I love more than billionaires getting exposed and poking holes in the AI bubble. 

Today, I got treated to a two for one special where both things happened in the same story.
 
Everyone knows who Zuckerberg is don't they? You know, the dead-behind-the eyes android running Meta? 

Here’s the tea (as the kids say)...

A Turing Prize winner inside Zuck’s shop says the current LLM path is a dead end. Yann LcCun recommends switching to something he calls the world model. Zuck nods, smiles, then hires a twenty-something to run the show and has the veteran report into him. 

The scientist leaves and starts a new company aimed at the thing he was pushing for in the first place.

Early valuations have LeCun's company slotting in at 3 billion. 
 
Two big lessons to learn from Zuck's muck up: 
 
First, leadership. High-performance teams don’t put tenured experts under kids with a vibe and a title. You don’t have to agree with every theory to respect the person who’s earned the right to test it. That respect is how you keep the real thinkers in the building.
 
Second, conviction. If your entire AI bet lives on a model class your own brightest mind says won’t get you to the promised land, you don’t have a strategy. You have concepts of a strategy and a plan. Hiring a yes-man exposes the scam you're trying to run. 
 
I’ve worked with managers like this. They prize comfort over challenge. They want agreement more than truth. And when the smartest person in the room won’t play along, they “reorg” the problem away. 
 
So when you’re watching the AI hype train and all the ridiculous valuations, ask yourself what's happening to the people inside the walls who are questioning the core thesis? 

Who’s rewarded for toeing the acceptable narrative? And who leaves to build what they weren’t allowed to build inside? 

This is yet another indicator that the foundations of all the AI-hype is built on sand. 
And Zuck continues to suck. 

-- 

I'm Dr. Jim, think of me as a brown Tyrion Lannister.

Repeat after me: 

Better than checking for snakes in the toilet.
Better than shaking out shoes for scorpions.
Better than spiders the size of plates.

Better than checking for snakes in the toilet.
Better than shaking out shoes for scorpions.
Better than spiders the size of plates.

Better than checking for snakes in the toilet.
Better than shaking out shoes for scorpions.
Better than spiders the size of plates.

Better than checking for snakes in the toilet.
Better than shaking out shoes for scorpions.
Better than spiders the size of plates.

Better than checking for snakes in the toilet.
Better than shaking out shoes for scorpions.
Better than spiders the size of plates.

Better than checking for snakes in the toilet?
Better than shaking out shoes for scorpions?
Better than spiders the size of plates?

The same playbook the big guys run won’t cut it. 
You’ve got to play a different game. 

You’ve heard me talk about how 0-1 stage founders need to approach the market differently in order to get traction. 
  
Unless you’ve gotten a boatload of money, you can’t spam your TAM and expect to win. 
  
You’ve got to bake in authenticity, and you have to give every person you meet an experience. 
That’s how you get traction. 
  
Don’t take my word for it, here’s what CheeTung (CT) Leong. 
  
If you want to get traction in the market, drop me a comment or dm.

Hey founders! 
Are "micro-demos" part of your playbook? If not, they should be.
 

There is no better way to give your prospects and potential buyers a taste of what you offer than this simple approach. 

First off, what is it? 
Think of this as a teaser of your offering. A two minutes or less video that's heavy on the problems your potential customers are facing AND an embedded proof of concept of how you solve that problem. 

Here's how you build it: 

1. First, I talk to prospects and customers. This is where you start the process of uncovering the real problems they face vs the problems you think they face. 
   
2. Next, I'm doing a deep dive on those problems with those prospects and the issues those problems cause. I'm also digging into what an ideal solution would look like. 
   
3. Third, I'm going to validate my product theory and/or proof of concept of the solution I've built. Use the POC if your product isn't live. Use the live product if it's already in the wild. 
   
4. Next, I'm going to gather impact statements. If this worked as designed, how would it help solve the issue? What would it mean for what you're currently working on? These are your micro testimonials. 
   
5. The fifth step is the build a two-minute video from what you've gathered in the first four steps. This video is heavy on customer validated problem statements with a little bit on the solution side. The CTA is to have a conversation. 
   
6. Last step is to craft your outbound message that is centered on piquing curiosity. You want to get feedback and you want to get deeper dive conversations. Both of those are signals of success. Silence means going back to the drawing board. 

The great thing about this "micro-demo" is that you can use it through your entire funnel. It can be integrated into your prospecting, warm-up plays, re-targeting, new product launches, etc. 

It also makes a great sales enablement tool. 

If you want to see an example of one I created AND you want the outbound messaging I use, just drop me a DM or a comment and I'll send it over.

How are you going to rise above the AI slop-driven sea of sameness? 


I saw something interesting the other day. It was a post about this Instagram creator that is running a completely AI profile. It's got "cotton-candy" content while pretending to be a monk. Nobody seems to care that this is completely AI. 

The profile has generated over 2.5 million followers, and if it's to be believed, they're monetizing heavily off of that account. According to the OP, the account is using Nano banana, GPT, HeyGen, and 11 labs.

The person that created the post notes that this is going to be what's coming in the future. 

We know that what gets traction in the B2C or D2C space will often get traction in B2B. 

That creates an interesting question for B2B founders. How are you going to be moving forward in the marketplace? Are you going to be moving forward using this AI generated outreach and generic wisdom approach, or are you gonna do something different?

My argument has always been that as you see more and more AI and automation accelerate into the marketplace, customers are actually going to recoil from that and look for authenticity.

I would argue that for B2B founders to be successful in the future, they need to run against the grain and not follow the herd. Don't get involved in the AI arms race and see if you can out spam everybody else with fake AI profiles.

Fake AI profiles. Fake AI outreach. Fake AI content. Fake AI comments. 
All of it will lead to a dead end when it comes to connecting with your customers in B2B. 

The founders who are gonna be successful going forward are gonna be the ones that take a uniquely authentic approach, one-to-one, face-to-face. Real conversations with an emphasis on understanding your customer and where they're at, and authentically reducing friction in the process.

What do you think? 

Do you think what's happening on Instagram is an indicator of what's coming to B2B, or do you think there's gonna be more power in face-to-face meetings, either virtually or in person? 

Let me know in the comments.

You need to be obsessed about just one thing to build a frictionless buying experience. 


The question that founders need to be obsessed with answering is, how do I create and experience for my customers that will allow me to create an ongoing business conversation? 

The short answer is that you need to make sure that you've aligned your selling process to actually focus on listening and understanding more than selling and pitching.
That's easier said than done. 

I would recommend every founder to read the book Clients for Life. The key focus of that book is that customer obsession and specifically customer problem obsession allows you to shift from a transactional selling process to a collaborative selling process. 

Part of the reason why there is so much friction in the selling process is because buyers are tired. They're tired of the same old song and dance from founders who are pushing, pulling, and dragging buyers through an artificial process that is one-sided and not at all concerned with the buyers POV. 

That's  the central issue that you need to flip. At every stage in the buying process, from that first meeting all the way through renewals, you need to be obsessed about the customer problem and how that's impacting the customer world. 

When you focus in on that, you're creating the opportunity to create an ongoing business conversation, and you're creating the conditions that allow you to build a customer for life.

By creating that experience, it allows you the opportunity to go back to that customer over and over again and have them pressure test the things that you're thinking about and. It demonstrates that you're focused on meeting them where they are and helping them solve their problems.

That's got to start with you having your listening ears on and being obsessed about that customer problem and creating an experience that allows that customer to share with you what their world looks like. 

If you don't take the time and effort to do that, you're never going to build the conditions necessary for you to create that ongoing open, collaborative experience. Your buyers are gonna have their guards up because they know that you're just like everybody else who's looking to sell them something.

TL/DR: 

Be obsessive about the customer problem and you'll find traction a lot faster. 

Listen to what your prospects and customers are telling you. 

Stop treating everyone like a nail.

Someone has to know who this guy is and where he is from. 

At a minimum he needs some accountability.

marketer | small business owner | “shockingly unprofessional for linkedin” | nb | nd | activist

“you raise your voice, i erase your voice” is probably the most honest these domestic terrorists have been all week—a confession of intent plainly spoken, without a mask even

Employees always pay the price for dumb decisions by the C-suite. 

Executives get to fail upwards by virtue of their bonuses and golden parachutes. 

The latest example of this has to do with Amazon wiping out 16K employees while Andy Jassy and his mediocre cadre of tech morons forked over 40 million dollars to the regime so they can do a puff-piece documentary about a second-hand, hand-me-down, Russian mail order bride. 

No one asked for this “documentary.”
No one wanted to see this “documentary.” 
No one was interested in this “documentary.” 
And the ticket sales so far, prove that point. 

Let's be clear about what that 40 million “documentary” series is about. It's an open-air bribe to get preferential treatment so that Amazon and other companies like them can curry favor with the regime and skirt the regulatory scrutiny that's necessary to keep those companies in line.

What have we seen since this bribery deal was consummated? 

Well, what we've seen is Amazon, like many of the other tech companies that have greased the skids and put money in the pockets of this regime, has doubled and tripled down into the idea that they are going to be the first to achieve general intelligence. 

You've seen them invest heavily into ai. You've seen their balance sheets look great. You've seen their stock prices go up, but what else have you seen? 
What you've seen is that there's no real growth that's actually going on. 

The AI ecosystem shifting money from one pocket to another and creating the appearance that something big is about to happen and that these companies are healthier than what they are.

You've seen meltdowns by executives when they get called out on the fact that their numbers don't make sense. You have Sam Altman making the case that they are deserving of a trillion dollars in funding, when they've only made a handful of billion dollars in revenues. 

The math just ain't mathing.

All of these techbros understand the game. They're at a stage where they're too big to fail, and if they do fail, it's gonna be the taxpayer that bails them out. This is going to be a disaster that they are cooking up that's gonna be worse than the housing crisis. 

When it comes crashing down, who pays? 
The employees always pay. 
The billionaire class gets rich. 

Companies that can topple an economy and can just wreck lives at a whim should not exist without massive regulatory scrutiny. 

Let’s not forget, all of those bribes come with strings attached. It’s a guarantee that when things crash, these tech billionaire parasites will be bailed out first. 

They socialize the risk and capitalize the rewards. 
We foot the bill. 
It’s the American way. 

The lesson here is simple: we need to be loud and aggressive in demanding that these companies cease their payoffs, cease their rent seeking, and most importantly, cease to function as the monopolies they are. 

Bust. 
Em. 
Up.

Ever wonder what fragility looks like?

When accountability and responsibility are being framed as attacks, that's fragility on display. 

We've all heard the phrase that great leadership isn't about being in charge. It's about taking care of those in your charge. It's about ownership, it's about sacrifice, it's about courage. It's about a willingness to lead from the front and set an example that's gonna rally your troops and have them running through walls for you.

When you understand that and you look at the events that are happening around you, one thing becomes clear: nothing that we see today resembles what we would call great leadership. What we are actually seeing are the actions of fragile toddlers throwing temper tantrums. 

Whether you're talking about the mass goons wandering in the street,
whether you're talking about a fragile leader being heckled by the crowd and becoming so unglued that he gives the heckler a one finger salute.

Or when that same entitled Autocrat makes the claim that white men were severely damaged because of the Civil Rights Act.

All of those statements and actions are visible manifestations of the fragility that is in charge. This is what happens when weak leaders are given unrestrained power. This is what happens when people who aren't qualified and haven't earned their way, aren't held accountable for their actions.

These are all things that weak leaders do when they get exposed. They get defensive, they get angry. They try to gaslight, they play victim. They never accept responsibility and they're never accountable. Does that sound familiar?

We see this every single day.
It's not strength. 
It's not good leadership. 

This is cowardice, weakness, and fragility on display for all of us to see.

If we saw people in our workplaces behaving this way, they wouldn't have a job for very long.

So the question becomes, if this is not acceptable in our families, if this is not acceptable in our workplaces, why are we accepting this from public officials? 

The saying goes, you get what you deserve. And because we've set the bar so low, this is what we're getting.

I have a CHRO in my network who is looking for someone to lead their TA function. 

Ideally, this person needs to have construction experience and be in the Raleigh/Charlotte area. 

Tag people who you think will be a fit. 

Don't spam the comments if you're an agency.

Don't make these two critical mistakes! 


A lot of what I talk about has to do with how early stage founders can punch above their weight. Oftentimes what we see is that early stage founders are running the same playbooks in the same motions as well established brands, and that's a recipe for disaster.
  
That's part of the reason why I always talk about embedding content into your entire selling process and aligning it with the buyer journey. So that sounds simple. And oftentimes when people hear that, they think, okay, well I can create content.
  
Let me just go ahead and start doing that, and, everything will be great.
  
There are two things that you need to watch out for when you decide you're going to pull the trigger on this: 

1. You need to get super specific on your guests and POV. 
2. Don't drop guests into recordings unprepared.
   
  
One of the biggest reasons why founder-led content doesn't get traction with guests and their audiences, is because they lack focus. You need to be specific and you need to develop a POV. When I'm working with founders and helping them build their content strategy, I spend a lot of time in having them isolate who they think their ideal customer is, how that shows up in the content, and who they want as guests and narrowing down what they want their guests to share with the broader community.
  
That exercise helps you get tight into who you're gonna have on the show, what your message is gonna be, and what your point of view is gonna be. 

You can't be all things to all people but you can definitely be everything for a specific community.   
 
The second mistake that people often make when creating guest-driven content, is dropping their guests directly into the fire. SalesTech and MarTech don't have to be as concerned with this. 

If you're selling into any other segment, a prep is almost a must. 

My worst shows were where I winged it with a guest. It's a terrible experience for all parties so don't do that. 
  
Remember why you're doing guest-driven content! 

It's to build an experience, to spotlight your guest, have your guest be the star of the show, and share their wisdom to the audience.
  
If you drop them in cold, you're setting them up to fail.
  
So if you want your long-form, guest driven content strategy to be successful, the first thing that you need to do is deeply understand who your ideal customer is, who your ideal guest is, what your point of view is, and what they care about, so you're building specificity in what you're talking about. 

And the second thing is to make sure you're not dropping guests in cold into the recording. Make sure you have a prep, especially if your guests are typically not client facing. 

If you do both of these things, you'll build a strong point of view and your guest and listening experience will be top tier.

Founders, listen up! 

You gotta stop doing this. 

I know that you're inundated with testing out new motions, new tech, new ways of doing things, that's gonna get you to that unicorn status that you're looking for.
  
And it's fine to evaluate those things, but you need to do these couple of things before you ever bring any new stuff in. First thing that you need to do is look at your entire pipeline. For however long you've been in business, you need to clean that pipeline up and make sure that everything is updated and current. 

If it's not a 6 figure deal, there's no reason for it to be open for 12 months. Especially if you haven't done anything with it in a quarter. 

Ruthlessly close those out. 
Thoughts and prayers aren't going to get you wins. 
  
The next thing that you need to do is make sure that you're organizing all of those legacy contacts into different categories that you can experiment with. 

Why am I having you do that? 

Because those are the first people that you want to target to run any experiments on. It's easier to move the needle with people who already have some sort of relationship with you than to go out cold into the market and start something fresh. 

It's going to take you waaaaayyy longer to convert a stranger. 

You need to retarget and reactivate all those warm contacts before trying to win a new prospect. 

Do those two things first. 

Investing in new tech, processes, etc without cleaning up what you have will lead to a lot more frustration than it's worth. 

Focus on first things first.

Anyone know any grant writers? 

Tag them in the comments if you do.

taplio

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