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Chief Operating Officer

VP of Business Operations

Director of Strategy & Operations

Evergreen | Scale-up Business Operations

The operating framework for growth stage companies

Operator & Founder

Lucid

Head of Government (from zero to one)

Developed, tested, and implemented growth strategies through new products, markets, and business partnerships in the tech, S&L, and federal sectors; spun out government vertical.

Business Development

Amazon

Category growth on amazon.ca for Electronics, Music, Camera, and Home Entertainment categories.

Sr. Marketplace Operations Manager

RLDP

United States Department of Defense

Army/Special Analytic Missions Division (SAM-D)

Army/Defense Counter Terrorism Center (DCTC)

COO @ Blip | Amazon Alum | Business Ops architect for Series A startups

A member of teams that:
✅ Reversed a $560k/mo deficit to achieve profitability at a Series A startup
✅ 3x'd revenue ($XXM) at a B2B company without increasing headcount
✅ Drove a SaaS startup's ARR from $20M👉$100M
✅ Scaled int'l SaaS and retail operations at Amazon
✅ Executed on global operations at the Pentagon

Through these experiences I learned about how to achieve predictable, profitable growth.

Now, I teach business operations frameworks for the same to 1-2 Series A/B companies per month.

Discover our options to work together at the link in my profile header.

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Every startup experiences similar operational challenges with scaling after the first 3-5 years of💲

Even for the best founders, going from startup mode to the Growth Stage is messy.

It requires a whole new operational cadence.

One that solves for:

⬇️ Inadequate focus on processes and accountability
⬇️ Lack of visibility into progress on key initiatives
⬇️ Board members probing down in the weeds
⬇️ Misalignment among the leadership team
⬇️ Lack of concert across departments
⬇️ Priorities not held in common
➡️ WEAK EXECUTION
⬆️ Frequent priority list changes
⬆️ Low confidence in hitting targets
⬆️ Unwise stewardship of funds raised
⬆️ Allowing ad hoc fires to control your day
⬆️ Instability thru macroeconomic headwinds
⬆️ Not getting expected return from your key hires

Companies fail to make the transition to Growth Stage because startup grit is simply not enough to cross over and drive scale.

You need to add process, and the right people.

This is especially true in an economic downturn.

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⬆️ If this hits close to home, let's chat.

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Please note that like you, I also have a full-time job leading execution and efficiency through a recession.

That is part of the value prop though because it means that these systems are current: tried, tested, and continually optimized as the market evolves...

...instead of just a "playbook" for miscellaneous things that have worked for someone in the past. 

While it is a huge part of the value prop, it also, however, limits my capacity for consulting so I do say no more than yes, and only work with right fits.

Learn more about the three specific ways I can help you at the link in my profile header.

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Cleared (TS/SCI)

10% sales increase, 1,496% engagement surge, 127× publicity vs media spend. Heinz asked people to draw ketchup and turned those sketches into street posters. They had a theory:

——

If people could draw your product from memory, you had claim to the category.

So they posted one simple ask: "Draw ketchup."

The hundreds submissions started rolling in.

Almost every single one looked like a Heinz bottle.

The iconic glass shape. The label. Even the specific shade of red.

This wasn't market research. It was proof.

People already believed Heinz owned ketchup. They just needed to be asked to show it.

Now here's where most brands would stop.

They'd take the data, build a deck, present it to the board, and launch a traditional campaign about being "the original" or "America's favorite."

Heinz did something completely different.

They picked real submissions and turned them into actual street posters.

Rough drawings. Imperfect lines. Zero polish.

They plastered them on billboards and streets exactly as fans drew them.

No celebrity endorsements. No massive media buy, just authentic fan art proving what focus groups never could.

And people went crazy for it.

They shared the posters because they recognized the bottles they drew. Or their friends drew. Or because it felt real in a world of overproduced advertising.

10% sales lift with zero price promotions.

1,496% spike in social engagement.

127× more publicity than their media spend.

They converted mental availability into public proof that moved product off shelves.

——

Most of us aren't Heinz. And that's fine - but it's also the point.

Heinz could run "Draw Ketchup" because they already owned the mental shelf space. They weren't chasing attention; they were measuring recognition. That's what most brands get backward.

Blip calls it a “Qualified Impression” - the 7th exposure to your brand, when the consumer is ready to make a purchase decision. 

Heinz exposed that recognition was already installed. That's why it moved sales (instead of just likes).

The lesson isn't "copy Heinz." It's "reach gets awareness; frequency gets remembered.” And you do need both in tandem.

Most marketers light budgets on fire convincing strangers who still can't recall them on the nth exposure.

Proper attention on frequency will get you remembered, and chosen.

RJ Schultz

COO @ Blip: boost brand recognition and recall with smart OOH

Burger King's Moldy Whopper scored 36% below category norms on "desire."

26% of viewers said it reduced their purchase intent. On a dashboard, it looked like a disaster.

McDonald's marketing is pure stillness. Same arches, same jingle, same promise in Times Square. When you're the category default, you don't surprise people. You reassure them.

Burger King doesn't have that luxury. Try to out-safe the safest brand in fast food, and you lose before you start.

So Burger King stopped trying.

They filmed a Whopper decomposing for 30+ days and put it on billboards. They built an AR app that sets McDonald's ads on fire (point your phone at a competitor's billboard, watch it burn, get a free Whopper). It drove app downloads and sales.

The Moldy Whopper generated 8.4 billion impressions, a 400% jump in "no artificial preservatives" awareness, tens of millions in earned media, and a 14% sales lift where it ran. Every norm it violated became a headline. Every headline became distribution their media budget couldn't buy.

The rotting burger needs you to remember "their food is real enough to rot” the next time you’re deciding between them and the Golden Arches.

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Most marketers confuse two things:

Attention: Did someone look at this once?

Recognition: When they're hungry later, do they remember it was us?

The first is easy to measure. The second is where profit lives.

They'd see a giant pink rectangle on the freeway. No logo. No Margot Robbie. Sometimes nothing but a tiny release date in the corner. Almost everyone who saw it knew it was Barbie.

So what in this is replicable for normal brands?

—

Hint, it's not: "Clever! We should do minimalist color-block billboards."

Because that’s copying the visible tactic while missing the invisible precondition that actually made it work:

Brand recall that came from strong, distinctive assets. Where color became a kind of coded system that helped people notice and remember. 

Distinctive assets work through repetition, not creativity alone.

Barbie's genius wasn't the pink billboard.

It was having years of "Barbie pink" drilled into people's brains before the campaign even started -- on toys, packaging, TV, and spin-offs. By 2023, that color code was already sitting in memory.

A color doing the job of copy, imagery, and logo all at once is what it looks like when a brand asset matures to the point of near-instant recall.

When Warner Bros lit up those boards, they activated recognition that already existed.

Pick one simple asset. Overcommit to it for an uncomfortably long time. Let your OOH drive repetition and recall. Let the same buyers see it enough times that it stops being "new" and starts being "you."

Most brands will never do this. Not because it's expensive, but because their creative team will tap out long before their customers' brains even notice.

Only years of consistency made this spectacle possible.

Postmates put billboards on your commute that read like your group chat. People photographed them, shared them, and the campaign got 297 million social impressions in addition to the millions of real-world billboard impressions.

That loop is what you want.

BREAKDOWN:

The "We Get It" campaign launched in different cities in the US.

Postmates pulled real order data by locale: 139% spike in açaí bowls in Santa Monica, alcohol orders jumping during political debates, Halal Guys at midnight in the Lower East Side.

They wrote seven-word lines and here's why it worked:

1. They saturated corridors instead of scattering reach

Postmates didn't buy 100 boards across LA. They bought the same commute routes where their audience traveled twice a day. That repetition delivered 9% lift in brand awareness and 10% lift in app use. 

The principle: seven exposures to the same person beats one exposure to seven people.

2. Billboard lines became social captions

56% of people said they saw the campaign online even though the media buy was only OOH. The boards didn't only advertise, they also gave people something to post.

"Santa Monica craves açaí bowls after spin. Postmate it." That's not a marketing claim. It's an inside joke about your neighborhood, and is what made people photograph the boards. 

3. Recognition compressed the buying journey

When the billboard already proves you understand someone's habits, they don't need convincing. The rollout worked so well Postmates had to hire drivers immediately to meet demand. That's what happens when your messaging feels like shortcuts from awareness to "they get me."

4. Few words, one action

No QR codes. No taglines fighting for space. Just the insight plus "Postmate it." You could read it at 45 mph and remember it six hours later when you needed food. The format forced every word to work.

KEY LESSON:

The takeaway is the power in showing you know your audience better than they think you do.

For Postmates, that was "Halal Guys at midnight." For a B2B tool, it might be "3pm Monday is when good decks die in review."

For a plumber, "every new homeowner Googles their water heater at 11pm."

The gap between what you say and what your competitor says is specificity.

Netflix opened a portal to the Upside Down at the Empire State Building. People hunted it down, stood in front of it, and filmed themselves.

That single stunt generated more content than a month of paid ads.

BACKGROUND:

Most brands try to be everywhere instead of being from somewhere.

Netflix does it differently.

When Stranger Things 4 returned, they opened “rifts” at real landmarks. Empire State Building. Bondi Beach. Specific coordinates where the portals felt plausible.

Fans went hunting, found them, and documented everything.

For Wednesday, they sent a live-action Thing scuttling around New York sidewalks. It startled pedestrians. The kind of moment you had to be there for, but still worked perfectly on video.

With Squid Game, they placed the Young-hee doll at parks and malls. Strangers gathered to play red light green light in front of it, filming each other the whole time.

Three campaigns. Same pattern.

The location made the creative plausible. The creative gave people something to do. The phones did the rest.

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The Netflix Method breaks down to 3 constraints:

1. Native placement

The creative only makes sense there. A portal by a landmark. A doll in a park. If you could move it anywhere, it's just another ad.

2. Simple reactivity

The ad responds to something local. Motion, weather, time of day. People just film it.

3. A role for the passer-by

There's something to do. Find it, stand in it, play with it. You're not watching the ad. You're in it.

——

LESSON:

Netflix didn't win OOH by outspending everyone.

They won by enforcing those three constraints.

You don't need portals at the Empire State Building to run this playbook.

You need a few good spots and several weeks.

Pick a location where your creative makes sense. Write one line that name-checks the street or references something only locals would know.

Add one reactive element. Weather. Time of day. The home team's score.

Give people something to film. A marked spot to stand in. A question they answer. A moment they're part of.

Small brands with small budgets can turn commuters into their content team if they stop trying to be everywhere and commit to being from somewhere.

Context does half the work. The audience does the rest.

In 2015, Britain looked broken for ten days, as letters A, O, and B vanished from signs all over the city. But 30,000 people registered to donate blood in the first week, and that was 8x normal.

NHS Blood and Transplant was facing a crisis. New donor signups had collapsed over the decade prior. They needed a campaign that would make an invisible problem impossible to ignore.

Most campaigns add more messaging, but NHS subtracted. They deleted bloodtype letters A, O, and B from storefronts, street signs, brand logos. For ten days, the alphabet looked incomplete everywhere.

Why it worked:

1. They broke the visual pattern

NHS didn't run ads explaining blood shortages. They made the environment look wrong. D_wning Street. W_terst_nes. _DE_N. Your brain expects those letters. When they're missing, something feels broken. People weren't being advertised to; they were internalizing a message.

2. They recruited hundreds of others to amplify the same message

Brands and public landmarks all dropped the same three letters. NHS didn't buy every surface in Britain. They made the idea simple enough that others wanted to participate. 

3. They sustained it long enough for repetition to convert

Ten consecutive days. Not a one day stunt. The first time you see D_wning Street, you're curious. The third time, you're recognizing a pattern. The seventh time, you feel urgency. Behavior change requires repetition in the same places. Novelty creates awareness. Repetition creates action.

4. They measured the right outcome from the start

The metric that mattered was completed registrations. They hit 30,620 in ten days with 59% under 35. Not awareness. Not clicks. Registrations from the demographic that solves their actual problem.

☝ that is direct action from OOH.

NHS didn't need to convince people blood donation mattered. They needed believers.

The following year, 21 countries copied the campaign.

They ran the same broken alphabet for ten days across physical signage and brand partnerships because consistency was the point. 

When you need thousands to take the same action, personalization scatters. Repetition concentrates.

That's still true today.

"User-generated content feels cheap."

If Apple had believed that in 2015, they would have hired professional photographers and called it a day. Instead, they inverted the whole thing.

User photos didn't endorse Apple. Apple endorsed users, and that status flip changed how 10,000 billboards read in public.

The conventional playbook says user content is fine for social media. Maybe a testimonial page. But a global billboard campaign? That demands professionals.

And Apple ignored all of it.

They handed phones to 162 people - amateurs and pros - curated their work, and turned it into more than 10,000 installations, without explaining why these photos mattered.

Just the work, elevated to the biggest canvas possible.

Tor Myhren, who leads Apple's marketing communications, has said why they love outdoor: it cuts through a fast, fractured digital culture. And at that scale, with that density, the campaign stopped feeling like advertising. It felt like celebration.

The genius wasn't the photography, but rather the inversion.

Most user content is a brand borrowing your credibility. ‘Shot on iPhone’ was Apple lending you theirs.

When your photo showed up on a billboard in your city, it wasn't you endorsing the phone. It was Apple saying your work deserved the biggest wall they could buy.

The campaign felt like a celebration - almost civic art.

So the next time someone says user content can't carry a premium brand campaign, remember that 10,000 billboards proved otherwise.

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