About me

Small teams, big targets

Almost every job I've had has been on a small team trying to compete with much bigger ones. At RocketRez, I led brand and creative, with four people reporting to me, while the company grew from under $1M to over $10M in recurring revenue. Before that, I ran a $2M marketing budget at a family lumber company. At mode40, I'm the only marketer. I run mode40's marketing on an AI system I built. It researches, drafts and checks the work, and nothing ships until I approve it. It's how one person covers a department's output, and how mode40 now uses the same system for strategy and brand work with other organizations.

What I do

I cover the whole job, and I still design and build a lot of it myself.

• Positioning and messagingWorking out who we're for, what we're up against, and why we win. Then turning that into plain words sales can repeat in every conversation, and that hold up on the website, in a deck, or on stage.
• Brand and designBrand systems, guidelines, and the design work itself, from sales decks to trade show booths. I set the rules so everything looks and sounds like one company, then I do a lot of the design myself.
• WebsitesPlanning, writing, designing, and building them, often with my own hands in the code. Then measuring what they actually do, so the next version is based on what buyers actually did.
• Sales decks and one‑pagersThe material sales takes into the room. One master story, cut down and tailored for each industry and each buyer, so reps aren't rebuilding slides the night before.
• Trade shows and eventsThe booth, the event page, the graphics, and the plan before and after each show. Most of the value comes from the meetings booked before the doors open and the follow‑up after.
• PRPress releases, media lists, and pitching the stories worth telling. I send fewer, better stories: the ones a reporter actually wants to write about.
• The CRM and reportingThe system underneath it all. I set it up so every lead, campaign, and event can be tied back to pipeline, which is how marketing earns its budget.

Working with me

If you're working with mode40, there's a good chance you're working with me. Here's what to expect.

I lead with the pointEmails and updates start with the answer or the decision, then the context. If I need something from you, it's one clear ask, usually with a date attached.

I show work earlyYou'll see drafts sooner than you might expect. It's faster to react to something real than to describe something imaginary.

I ask a lot of questions firstBefore I write or design anything, I want to know who it's for, what they're worried about, and what you want them to do next. Gut answers are fine. "We don't know" is a useful answer too.

I'll push back, onceIf I think something won't work, I'll say so plainly and explain why. Then it's your call.

I keep your voiceWhen I'm writing for your organization, I learn how you talk and protect it. Your brand should sound like you, not like a marketer and not like a machine.

Who I learned from

I'm self‑taught, so the people I've worked under and alongside have mattered more than any classroom.

• John RyanJohn came into RocketRez as our fractional CMO and mentored me on brand. In his time there, our average deal size grew by about 50%. Before that, he was VP of Marketing at Tivoli, an IBM company, and at Siemens.
• April DunfordApril ran a full positioning workshop with us at RocketRez, then advised the company for almost a year. Before that, she ran marketing at a string of tech startups and at IBM, Siebel, and Nortel. Like me, she's a self‑taught marketer.
• Pooja HoffmanPooja joined RocketRez as VP of Marketing, and I worked under her. Before that, she was Global VP of Marketing at UltiMaker, one of the best‑known names in 3D printing, and VP of Marketing at MakerBot.
• Julia PanJulia was our Director of Marketing at RocketRez. Before that, she ran global demand generation at UltiMaker for six years and worked in marketing at Inc. Magazine. She's now at Rakuten Advertising.

I owe all of them a lot.

Where I'm from

I'm from Steinbach, Manitoba, and my career started close to home, at the local radio station, and later a family lumber yard.

A lot of the companies I've worked with make or sell physical things, from lumber and drywall to the plants and hangars our software runs today. They're usually better at what they do than at explaining it, and that's the gap I'm good at closing.