I run brand and marketing at mode40. Before that, I helped grow RocketRez from under $1M to over $10M in recurring revenue, and the brand I built went into $43M of funding. Results has more, including how I now run a seven‑person team's work on my own with AI agents.

The list below is the principles I work by, in the order I use them, from the first customer conversation to measuring what happened. Each one opens right here.

For where I've worked and what came of it, see Experience. Thoughts is where I write about the work.

Nobody buys a product because they want the product. They buy it because something in their day is broken, slow, risky, or expensive, and they want it to stop.

So I start with the problem, described in the customer's own words, and I keep the product out of the first few sentences of almost everything. The late shipment, the failed audit, the spreadsheet that breaks at month end: that moment is usually the opening line.

The reader needs to feel understood before they'll care what we sell.

The best marketing ideas I've ever had came out of someone else's mouth. A customer describing their week. A sales rep repeating an objection. A founder explaining why they started the company in the first place.

Early on, I talk to customers and the team one person at a time, because people say different things alone than they do in a room where the loudest voice wins.

Customer language is almost always better than anything a marketer would come up with, and it makes the final copy sound like it came from someone who gets it.

What people say they do and what they actually do are often two different things.

Surveys and interviews tell you what buyers think they want. Their behaviour tells you the truth: which pages they read, where they drop off, what they ask on the sales call, what they buy and what they leave behind.

I listen to what customers say, and then I check it against what they do.

People don't go looking for a software platform on a whim. Something happens first: a key person gives notice, a customer asks a question nobody can answer, a new hire can't find anything.

Those moments are when people start looking for help. I map them out, so the marketing shows up where those moments happen.

It's much easier to own a handful of specific moments than to be top of mind for everything.

Ask a company who its competitors are and you'll get a list of companies that look like it. The real competition is usually a spreadsheet, a consultant, the system they already have, or doing nothing at all.

A lot of deals aren't lost to a rival. They just stop, because changing feels riskier than staying put.

So when I plan marketing, I ask what the buyer would do if they did nothing, and I make the case against that first.

A company that tries to be right for everyone ends up being the obvious choice for no one. I'd rather be the obvious choice for a smaller group than a vague option for everyone.

Writing down who isn't a fit feels like leaving money on the table. In practice it does the opposite: it sharpens the message, and it tells the sales team exactly where not to spend their time.

Most marketing problems are really positioning problems. If a company can't say who it's for, what it's up against, and why it wins, more advertising just spreads the confusion faster.

The answers are almost always already inside the company, scattered across the founder, the sales team, the support inbox, and the customers. My job is to pull them out, test them against what buyers actually do, and get it all down on one page everyone agrees on before anything gets designed.

It feels slower at the start. It's much faster by the end, because the website, the deck, and the sales call stop being arguments.

Most growth comes from people who don't buy from you yet.

It's tempting to focus all the effort on existing customers, because they're easier to reach and easier to measure. But a business that only talks to its current customers can hold steady and not much more. Growing means reaching new buyers, again and again.

Look after your customers, and spend most of your marketing on the people who aren't customers yet.

Price tells customers what to expect before they've read a single feature. When they understand exactly why a company is different, they stop comparing it line by line with cheaper options.

When they don't, every conversation turns into a discount. Strong positioning protects price, and the price customers are willing to pay is one of the clearest signs the brand is actually working.

The more a small team tries to do, the less it actually gets done.

A long list of small, easy tasks feels productive. Usually it isn't. I sort the work into what drives pipeline, what supports it, and what can wait, and I protect time for the first bucket.

The best advice is the advice you'd follow if it were your money on the line.

So I ask of every recommendation: would I spend my own budget this way? Would I put this on my own company's calendar? If the answer is no, I don't recommend it.

Most wasted marketing comes from starting before anyone agreed on what it was for. A short brief fixes that: who it's for, the one thing we want them to remember, what we want them to do next, and how we'll know it worked.

When the feedback comes in later, the brief settles it. "Does this help them understand the one thing?" ends a lot of arguments about colours and fonts.

Before committing to a plan, I flip the question around and write down what would make it fail.

The list usually comes quickly. Nobody owns it. The audience is wrong. Sales won't use it. The timeline is fantasy.

Then I check the plan against that written list before anything gets committed, and either fix the weak spots or drop the idea.

Before a big campaign, event, or launch gets built, I look for the smallest version we can try first. One page before a whole site. One region before the whole country. One event before a tour.

Most decisions can be undone, so I'd rather find out small and early than big and late.

Good messaging passes one test: can a customer repeat it accurately to their boss? In B2B, the person reading your website almost never decides alone.

They have to explain it to finance, to IT, and to whoever signs. So I build messaging in layers: one sentence that says what it is and who it's for, one short paragraph on why it matters, then the proof.

If a reader has to stop and ask "what does that mean?", the line failed, so rewrite it as the thing it means.

And when copy keeps coming out vague, it's usually a sign the strategy underneath isn't finished yet.

Words like "innovative" don't mean anything anymore, and readers skip right past them.

A real number, a named industry, or a customer's own words are believable because they can be checked.

"Orders ship the same day" beats "fast shipping" every time.

Buyers care about what they get before they care about how it works.

So I write in that order. Start with the value: the outcome the customer gets. Then the benefit: what that changes in their day. Then the feature that makes it possible.

Most companies write it backward, starting with what they built. Turning it around is one of the fastest ways to make a page clearer.

Buyers are smart. They can tell when they're being sold to, and they can spot an empty superlative from across the room.

When a product is genuinely similar to its competitors, the lazy move is to invent a trivial difference or claim to be "number one." I'd rather tell the truth well: what it does, who it's for, and why that's worth something.

Treating buyers like adults is good manners, and it's good marketing.

Anything a company says about itself is a claim. Anything a customer says about it is proof.

People look to others like them when they decide. Case studies, testimonials, recognizable customers, real numbers, and references do more persuading than any headline I could write.

So I collect proof constantly, and I put it right next to the claim it backs up.

Buyers want to know what happens if this goes wrong.

Good marketing lowers the risk of saying yes: honest answers to the hard questions, including what could go wrong, and references they can call.

People forget claims. They remember stories, and they repeat them to the people who sign off on budgets.

A good story has a before, a problem, and an after, with the customer at the centre and the company there to help. One true customer story does more than ten polished claims, and once you have it, it should show up everywhere: the website, the deck, the booth, and the launch video.

A plant manager and a CFO want different things from the same product. The story stays the same. What changes is which part comes first and whose words it's told in.

The best marketing sounds like it was written for one reader: their industry, their job, the problem on their desk this quarter. At mode40, one platform is sold as Singularity for Manufacturing, Singularity for Aerospace & Defence, and so on. Same platform, same core story, told in each industry's own words.

Design is how an idea looks when it's finished. Without an idea underneath, it's decoration, and decoration is noise.

I start with who it's for and what they need to believe, so every design choice has a job. That also changes the arguments. "Which one do we like?" becomes "which one does the job better?", which is a much easier question to answer.

Take away the photos, the illustrations, and the colour. If it still holds together, the hierarchy and the words are doing their job.

If it falls apart, the pictures were covering for something.

This site is my attempt to pass that test.

Before people can prefer a brand, they have to recognize it.

That comes from distinctive assets: a colour, a shape, a phrase, a way of showing the product. Things people can spot in a second, even when they're barely paying attention.

Being different matters. Being recognizable matters more, and it only works if you pick those assets on purpose and then keep using them for years.

Brand lives in the button labels, the form fields, the error messages, and the confirmation email, as much as in the headline.

These small pieces of copy get the least attention and do a surprising amount of the work. A confusing button loses a lead just as surely as a weak headline does.

I write all of it with the same care, because the customer reads all of it.

A small team can't design every piece from scratch. It needs a design system first: a grid, a type scale, a short colour palette, and a handful of components that fit together.

With a good system, the hundredth piece is as good as the first, even on a busy week, and anyone can make something that looks like it belongs. I keep the system as small as it can be, because every extra rule is one more thing someone has to remember.

I'm a marketer who can code. When an idea needs a demo, a calculator, or a landing page, I don't have to wait for a developer's calendar to open up.

I build a working version and put it in front of real people. If it works, it gets polished. If it doesn't, it cost hours instead of months.

And if a good tool already exists, I just use that.

Something real gets better feedback than a description of something that doesn't exist yet.

I show drafts before they feel finished, with one clear question and a date.

Launches, trade shows, and board meetings don't move.

When time gets tight, I cut scope instead of quality or the date: ship the three pages that matter instead of ten, the core message now and the extras next month.

The extras can follow. The date can't.

Marketing that sales doesn't use is wasted, and sales that ignores marketing ends up re‑explaining the company on every call.

Before anything launches publicly, the people who talk to customers every day should have it and be able to explain it.

The feedback flows back too: sales tells marketing what buyers are asking and objecting to. The objection a rep heard on Tuesday should be the headline on Friday.

A message only works if people hear it more than once. The website, the deck, the booth, and the social posts should all tell the same core story in the same words, even when the format and the order differ.

Someone who sees two of them shouldn't be able to tell they were made by different people.

LinkedIn, a trade show booth, an email, and a sales deck are different rooms. The same message needs a different shape in each one.

Copy pasted from one channel into another usually falls flat, and then people decide the channel "doesn't work." Often the channel was fine. The format was wrong.

A lot of good marketing fails at the very end: the reader is interested and can't tell what to do next.

Every piece gets one clear next step that fits where the reader actually is.

The bigger the decision, the smaller that first step should be.

Brand is the work that makes sure that when a buyer's moment finally comes, this company is the name they remember.

That means being easy to find and easy to remember all year, not only while a campaign is running.

At RocketRez, unaided brand recall rose 75% in six months doing exactly that.

The team gets tired of a campaign long before the market does.

We see every ad every day. Buyers see it once in a while. Replacing something that works because it feels old to us is one of the most common mistakes in marketing.

Campaigns need enough time to show what they can do.

A strong idea has to run long enough, in enough places, for people to notice it before it can be judged fairly. Calling it early is how good ideas get cut.

AI can write a thousand words in seconds, and most of them are forgettable.

AI is good at volume. People are good at judgment: what's true, what's specific, and what's good enough to put a company's name on.

I built a system of AI agents, organized like a small marketing team, that work from the company's real positioning, voice, and proof. Every piece gets checked against a quality bar, and nothing is published, sent, or paid for without my yes.

I use AI to dig and sort: summarizing calls, finding patterns in reviews, pulling together research that used to take weeks, and the repetitive work around it.

The idea, the insight, and the voice stay with a person. AI can tell me what customers are saying. It can't tell me what's worth saying back.

The first time, do it by hand and pay attention.

The second time, it becomes a system: written down first, then a template, a checklist, or an automation. That's how one person keeps up with a department's worth of work, and keeps the quality steady on a busy week.

If marketing can't show how it helps a company make money, it's arts and crafts: a post here, a booth there, a nice brochure nobody asked for.

I tie the work to pipeline, revenue, retention, or price, and I keep the CRM clean enough that the numbers mean something.

Clicks and impressions are easy to count. Whether marketing changed what buyers actually did is harder, and it's the only number that really matters.

Some work fills this quarter's pipeline. Some makes sure next year's buyers already know the name. I measure both, on their own timelines.

A number going up after a campaign doesn't mean the campaign made it go up.

Seasonality, sales activity, a competitor's mistake, or plain coincidence can all move a metric. Before giving marketing the credit, I ask what else changed, and whether the result would have happened anyway.

Won deals tell you what's working. Lost deals tell you what to fix.

Most losses carry a positioning lesson: the buyer didn't see the difference, didn't trust the claim, or decided not to decide at all.

I take those lessons back to the start of this list.

If I think something won't work, I say so early and explain why. If the call goes the other way, I commit fully and make it work.

I try to be just as straight with myself. If something I recommended isn't working, I want to know, and I'll say so.

And "we don't know yet" is a perfectly good answer, because it tells you what to find out next.