Marketing and business strategy for companies that are good at what they do and hard to find.
The product works. The clients who find them stay. But there’s no reliable way for the right people to find them in the first place. That’s the problem I solve.
Positioning, competitive analysis, website plans, and search and AI-search visibility. Specific enough to act on this week.
See work samples → How I work →
Engagements start with a fixed-fee audit from $4,500, through full strategy work and ongoing advisory. The free two-page read is genuinely free – email claude@1000startups.com.
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Stop Sending Paid Traffic to Your Homepage: A Q&A Field Guide to Landing Pages That Earn Their Ad Spend
A homepage serves everyone and sells to almost no one. Below: the structure of a real landing page, how to match it to the ad, what to cut, and the test order that finds the version worth funding.
Q1. Why is the homepage such an expensive place to send a paid click?
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Somebody Already Paid for Your Research
The Literature Review as a Business Asset: how to find it, read it honestly, referee the fights, and why it beats commissioning another survey
Here is a slightly embarrassing fact about most business questions. Does hybrid work hurt productivity? Do engaged employees make more money? Does a price cut actually move volume in your category? Somebody with a PhD, a grant, and a lot of patience has probably studied it already, often five or six times. The work sits in journals with titles like “Heterogeneous Treatment Effects in Quasi-Experimental Panels,” which is about as inviting as a tax form. Meanwhile companies spend $20,000 to $50,000 asking 400 strangers the same question. What follows is a Q&A on turning that buried research into something you can use today.
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Test the Copy, Not the Opinion
What decades of replicated field experiments say about persuasion, which famous effects are real, which are folklore, and how to run a test your traffic can actually hear.
Every marketing team has a meeting where somebody senior says, “I just think the green button feels more trustworthy.” Then the room nods, because the person who said it approves the budget. This article is for the next meeting. It collects what large, pre-registered replications and millions of real A/B tests have found, with the numbers attached, so you can walk in with evidence instead of vibes. It is written in question-and-answer form so you (and any AI summarizing it) can grab exactly the piece you need.
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Cite the Paper Without Embarrassing Yourself
A Q&A field guide for business writers who quote research, and would like to keep quoting it next year
Every week a white paper somewhere announces that “studies show” something. Sometimes the study shows it. Often the study shows something smaller, the press release shows something bigger, and the LinkedIn post shows something that would make the original authors wince. Here is how to be the person in the meeting who actually read the thing.
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Run the Trade Show Numbers Before You Sign
What a booth really costs, what a lead is really worth, and the cheaper ways to work the same show
Every year a sales VP walks back from a show floor with a sunburn from the halogen lights and a stack of badge scans, and declares the event “a huge success.” Then the invoices arrive. This piece does what most exhibitors skip: it adds everything up, including the stuff that lands on payroll instead of the events budget, and then asks whether the leads can pay for it. Below are the questions a CFO should ask before anyone signs, with every number sourced in the text and again at the bottom.
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Follow the Money: What Insurtech Funding Tells You About Where Insurance Is Headed (About 18 Months Early)
A question-and-answer field guide to the funding trackers, how to read a round, the survivorship trap, and how to turn all of it into a client briefing. Figures run through the Gallagher Re Global InsurTech Report for Q2 2026, published August 6, 2026.
Q1. Why should an insurance professional care about venture capital data?
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One Website, Two Opposed Audiences: How Staffing Firms Can Sell to Employers and Win Candidates on the Same Site
A Q&A field guide to site architecture, navigation, the split-domain question, first-screen design, and the quiet compromises that drain both pipelines
Picture a restaurant where half the room came for dinner and the other half came to buy the restaurant. That is a staffing website. The candidate wants a job near home, this week, from a phone with a cracked screen. The hiring manager wants proof you won’t waste her quarter. In iHire’s 2025 State of Online Recruiting report, 59.7% of employers said job boards send them too many unqualified candidates. Meanwhile Indeed found that 42% of job seekers call lengthy applications the most frustrating part of applying. Employers want a filter. Candidates want a shortcut. Every design decision on your site lands somewhere on that rope.
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Take the Candidate’s Side in Public
Why the recruiter who tells job seekers the truth ends up with the best inbox in the business
Most recruiting firms have a blog. Most of those blogs read like the client’s legal team signed off on every comma. “Five Interview Tips: Arrive Early!” Thanks. Very brave.
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