About
If someone asks me what I do…
I usually say I’ve been in marketing my entire career.
About 26 years now.
And over time,
I started to notice the same thing happening
over and over again.
People are trying a lot of different things to reach their audience.
And most of it doesn’t work the way they expect it to.
So the problem usually isn’t effort.
It’s that they’re not actually clear on
who they need to reach in the first place.
That’s what I help them figure out.
Then we make sure they know:
how to say it
why it works
and how to keep it working
Then the conversation usually goes a little deeper
Because once you start talking about it…
people start to notice it.
They’re not really sure what’s off.
They just know
something isn’t working
the way it should.
And this is the hard part.
They’re not wrong.
They are doing a lot of the right things.
It just doesn’t come together
in a way that holds.
So it turns into this cycle of:
And after a while,
it just starts to feel heavier than it should.
I’ve been around this long enough
to recognize it pretty quickly.
Different industries.
Different companies.
Different stages.
But this part doesn’t really change.
But something underneath isn’t clear.
And because of that,
everything on top keeps moving.
It took me a while to really understand what I was seeing.
Early on,
I thought it was messaging.
Or content.
Or channels.
That’s what it looks like from the outside.
But over time,
you start to notice something else.
The issue usually isn’t what people are doing.
It’s what hasn’t actually been decided yet.
And that’s hard to see.
Because even when someone understands their audience…
they don’t always know what to do with that.
So they fall back on what feels natural.
Or whatever feels urgent that week.
And none of that fixes the problem.
A lot of how I see this comes from outside of marketing.
Before all of this,
I was an athlete.
And one thing that gets drilled into you pretty quickly is:
You can work really hard
and still be completely off.
Effort doesn’t mean
you’re moving in the right direction.
Then in my early 30s, I had a stroke.
I had to relearn how to do basic things again.
Later, I went through emergency surgery
that could have gone very differently.
And there were points
where I had to rebuild my life from scratch.
At one point,
I got back into it and started doing triathlons
for a few years.
Not because it made sense on paper.
Just because I wanted to see
what I could still do.
That changes how you look at things
You stop assuming more effort is the answer.
You start asking better questions.
- What actually matters here?
- What’s off?
- What hasn’t really been decided yet?
That’s how I approach marketing now.
Because even though everything else changes…
people don’t change that much.
What gets their attention
What makes them say yes
That part stays pretty consistent.
The only difference now
is how quickly they expect to understand something.
So when I work with someone
I’m not coming in to do more marketing.
I’m trying to figure out what’s actually going on.
- What’s clear
- What’s not
- What keeps changing
- What’s never really been locked in
Because once that part is clear…
everything else usually gets a lot simpler.
I’ve seen what happens when that clicks
Things stop feeling scattered.
Messaging stops changing.
People understand what you’re saying faster.
Decisions get easier.
And yes, performance improves too.
I’ve had clients double their ROI in some cases.
I’ve also been recognized for the work,
including a Markie Award ahead of companies like Amazon.
But I don’t spend much time thinking about that.
I care that things actually work.
And this is where this is going.
I’m building Sowa
so more people can think this way
without needing me directly.
It’s about figuring out what you actually mean…
saying it clearly…
and seeing what happens when you do.
If this feels familiar
You’re probably closer than you think.
Something just hasn’t clicked yet.
Start with RESET