John Roman

CEO @ BattlBox, Co-Host of ASOM

Experienced Executive and Board Member with a demonstrated history of working in both the consumer goods and technology industry. Strong sales and marketing professional, skilled in both D2C and B2B strategy.

John Roman is currently serving as Chief Executive Officer at BattlBox.

Read John's blog at:
https://onlinequeso.com/

Board Member

It's over. ASOM Pod is no more.
81 episodes.
It’s been a run.

When we kicked off ASOM almost two years ago, we had no idea where it would go. 

What started as a weekly conversation between friends turned into something a lot bigger. 

A space for honest takes, debates, and way too many inside jokes.

In the end, this wasn’t a business move. It wasn’t a content play. It was just four guys showing up every week to talk shop and share what we’ve learned.

I was already close with Amer going into this. But through this pod, Jimmy and Bryan went from acquaintances to two of my closest friends. That alone made it all worth it.

This episode is the end. Not dramatic. Just honest. The time it took. The energy it required. The balance it disrupted. It caught up to us. It just felt like the right time to close the chapter.

Thanks to every single one of you who listened, commented, shared, and stuck with us.

We’re still very much part of Commerce Roundtable. 
So this isn’t goodbye, not really. 

We’ll see you in Austin and San Diego.

🎧 Listen on Spotify: https://lnkd.in/gukh3pr4
📺 Watch on YouTube: https://lnkd.in/gsrijpjM

Huge thank you to our sponsor: Omnisend

BattlGames Season 2 starts now.

New roster. Higher stakes. 
One returning contestant with something to prove.

Episode 1 drops the entire cast into survival mode from the jump.
Fire-starting. Camp security. Water purification.

Watch Episode 1 now: https://lnkd.in/gYTqzX2F

New episodes drop Thursdays at 12 PM EST.

🚨 BAD SALES EMAIL ALERT 🚨
Happy Friday Folks! 
Enough pleasantries, let's get into the violence (and ways to correct).

💰 Leading With Money Undermines Your Product
Opening with “happy to send $300” tells me that's the strongest value prop in the entire pitch. If your product is worth my time, why does it need a cash bribe to get in the room? Startups that do this attract the wrong meetings and repel the right ones.

🎯 You Are Targeting the Wrong ICP
When you lead with money, you get meetings with people who are more interested in pocketing $300 than learning about your SaaS. Those people aren’t serious buyers. They’re not your ICP. They’re not thinking about long-term partnership. They’re thinking about short-term gain.

🧩 The Underscore Mystery
Why is this email using underscores like it's 2006? Automation fail? Formatting bug? Some new writing trend I missed? Whatever the reason, it breaks flow and looks sloppy. Clarity matters. Especially in first impressions.

📬 The Real Pitch Is in the PS?
You waited until the PS to tell me what you actually do. That means the entire email is essentially “will you take money to talk to me” and the value of your solution is an afterthought. If personalization drives 15% conversion lift, why is that buried?

🪞 A Personalization Platform With Zero Personalization
The irony. You run a personalization platform and still sent the most generic message possible. No mention of me, my company, or even a guess at why this might be relevant. If personalization is your brand, it should show up in every touch. Especially the first one.

Here’s how to fix it:
- Start with relevance, not a bribe
- Lead with your insight or solution
- Make it personal if you sell personalization
- Fix the weird formatting before you hit send
- Save the PS for reinforcement, not the reveal

🚨 BAD SALES EMAIL ALERT 🚨
Happy Monday friends! 

Let’s get into this dumpster fire and how to prevent future fires.

🧠 LinkedIn opener with zero proof
Saying you found me on LinkedIn is fine, until you fail the easiest credibility test. No post reference. No comment. No signal you actually paid attention. That turns “I did my homework” into “I grabbed your name from a list.”

🎯 “Massive untapped potential” is expectation sabotage
This is the fastest way to get tuned out. Big claims demand big specifics. If you truly saw a glaring issue, call it out clearly and concretely. Staying vague while swinging for the fences reads like hype, not help.

🕵️ “I did research” is a trust killer now
Nobody believes the free review routine in 2026. It is a lead gen mechanism, everyone knows it, so pretending it is a generous favor breaks trust immediately. The offer can still work, but the framing has to be honest and relevant.

🏅 “Licensed and certified” is a weird flex
Certifications exist across Google, Meta, and Amazon ecosystems. “Licensed” is usually meaningless in marketing unless there is a regulator and a license number tied to a specific activity. Dropping it with no detail sounds like borrowed authority, not real authority.

🔍 The story does not add up across platforms
The email claims you saw major opportunity on my website, then leans on Google, Meta, and Amazon partner status. What exactly on my site connects to those platforms. Conversion tracking. Feed quality. Landing page speed. Ad policy risk. Retargeting gaps. If you cannot name the issue, you did not find it.

🪪 The sender and the sign off do not match
This is happening more and more, and it always feels off. One person emails you, someone else signs it, then the whole thing reads like a handoff that never happened. Trust is fragile in cold outreach, so identity confusion is an unforced error.

📌 The close doubles down on the same weak hook
Repeating “free review from a specialist” does not increase value. It increases skepticism. The more you insist it is free and important, the more it sounds like a funnel step, not a diagnostic.

Here is how to fix it.
- Lead with one specific observation tied to revenue or performance, not a generic “potential” claim.
- Prove the LinkedIn connection with a real reference, then make a tight, relevant ask.
- Drop the “research” theater, explain what you actually looked at and what you would deliver.
- Replace vague authority signals with concrete credentials and outcomes, plus what those credentials mean.
- Align the platform expertise with a site-based issue you can clearly name, then propose the smallest next step.
- Keep the identity consistent from sender to signature, so the message feels human and accountable.

🚨 BAD SALES EMAIL ALERT 🚨
It’s been a couple months... I’m back.
Did you miss me?

Let’s rip into it.

🧃 "WE BUILT AN AI TOOL" IS NOT IMPRESSIVE
Another AI tool hits the inbox.
The barrier to entry is so low, every snake oil salesman with a prompt and a landing page is now a founder.
Wrap GPT in a new skin, slap a button on it, and suddenly it’s a startup.
This is the problem.
The more this noise piles up, the harder it becomes to hear from the people actually building something real.

🧍 YOU GAVE YOUR NAME… THEN SIGNED AS SOMEONE ELSE
The email opens with one name.
Photo matches. Email matches.
But the signature belongs to the founder.
What are we doing? Pick a lane.

📏 FORMATTING TELLS ON YOU
One giant paragraph. No spacing. No structure.
Nobody writing a real email skips the enter button.
This is what failed automation looks like in the wild.

🪪 YOU FORGOT TO INSERT YOUR PROOF
No names. No results. Just blank placeholders.
If you cannot even plug in the fake credibility, what are we doing here?
This would be funny if it weren’t trying to sell something.

🧼 I CHECKED THE WEBSITE. IT GOT WORSE
Out of curiosity, I clicked through.
The site looks like a child made it. Or maybe AI with a bad prompt.
There is no world where this drives trust or confidence.
But here we are.

THE BIGGER PROBLEM:
We have too many people online preaching empowerment and pushing others to start businesses.
A lot of them should not be in business themselves.
This is how we end up here.
Selling hype instead of solving problems.
When the noise gets this loud, the signal suffers.

THE FIX:
If you are not the founder, do not sign their name.
If you are using automation, get it right.
If your website looks like a group project from middle school, rebuild it.
If you have not built anything worth showing, stop pushing others to do the same.

Experienced Executive and Board Member with a demonstrated history of working in both the consumer goods and technology industry. Strong sales and marketing professional, skilled in both D2C and B2B strategy.

John Roman is currently serving as Chief Executive Officer at BattlBox and Carnivore Club.

Read John's blog at:
https://onlinequeso.com/

🚨 BAD SALES EMAIL ALERT 🚨
Happy Friday folks. The email in the screenshot is bad. The bigger problem is what this kind of email signals about the space right now.

🔎 Zero research, instant disqualifier
Five seconds of research would have shown we are a brand. Brands can be pitched, but the pitch changes when you understand who you are talking to. Spray and pray outreach is not hustle, it is laziness with a send button.
🎯 Wrong target, wrong premise
This email reads like it was written for someone else, then copy and pasted into my inbox. The sender is not selling a solution, they are broadcasting a template. When you open with a fundamental misunderstanding of what the business is, nothing after that matters.

<WE INTERRUPT YOUR BAD SALES EMAIL FOR A RANT BY JOHN>

I am heated, so we are going there...

This post is supposed to be about a bad sales email, but I am not normalizing the scenario it tries to frame. The “every Friday” chaos storyline is not charming, it is anxiety in paragraph form.

😬 The Friday scenario is the actual red flag
One off fires happen. Normalizing last minute panic as a weekly ritual is the problem. That is not a good client, that is a business that runs on dysfunction and wants someone else to absorb it.

🤡 The root issue is a clown economy
The barrier to entry is too low and there are too many clowns in the space. Someone could read this post, slide into my DMs, and we could launch an “agency” by the afternoon. Too much competition rewards desperate operators, then desperate operators take bad clients they should never take. Brands that operate like this are clown behavior too, and they should not be running a business either.

📌 Fix it
Less clowns in 2026, on both the brand side and the agency side PLEASE.

🚨 BAD SALES EMAIL ALERT 🚨
Happy Monday folks. 
Enough pleasantries, let’s get into the violence and the fixes.

📩 THE OUTREACH CHANNEL IS CLEVER
No direct email from the rep ever hit my inbox. The only touch was a Loom notification. This avoids traditional spam damage, which makes it feel cleaner and more intentional.

👀 THE THUMBNAIL DOES THE HEAVY LIFT
At first glance, this got me. I opened the Loom email and saw a thumbnail that looked like a real custom video, with my homepage in the frame. Zero context, just enough specificity to trigger curiosity and trust.

🎭 THE PERSONALIZATION IS FAKE
I clicked. The video was not custom. It never referenced BattlBox, never called out anything on the site, and spoke in broad generalities. The only “custom” element was a screenshot of my homepage, which could have been grabbed in seconds.

🧨 THE BAIT AND SWITCH KILLS THE DEAL
This tactic can absolutely drive clicks. The click is the peak. Irritation shows up fast, and the chance of a real follow up dies even faster. The switch becomes obvious long before a buyer even considers giving you the business.

🧱 TRUST GETS ERASED
Positioning this as custom when it is not destroys trust immediately. Trust is the whole game in cold outreach. Starting with a misrepresentation makes every next message feel suspect.

Here’s how to fix it:
- Send an actual email with context and intent
- Use Loom only when the video is truly custom
- Reference the company, the site, and a real observation
- Keep it short, specific, and honest
- Earn trust first, ask second

Apple won the culture war. Samsung took everything else.
While Apple captured the hearts, Samsung captured the hardware.

Samsung is the number one smartphone maker in the world (Apple is currently #2).

Samsung also supplies the OLED display in the iPhone, the memory that powers it, and soon the camera system behind its next big upgrade.

Every time someone buys an iPhone, Samsung gets paid.

Apple built the hype. Samsung built the machine.
One owns the story. The other owns the components keeping it alive.

Samsung builds the phone more people carry and also fuels the one they believe makes them different. 

The real flex isn’t brand loyalty. 
It’s making your competitor’s product essential to your bottom line.

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