Funnel Reboot

When you've founded a startup, you need to do marketing long, long before a marketer comes around.      You'll meet two remarkable founders who have built their companies' sales and marketing engine, even though that isn't their area of expertise.     Rebecca Wormleighton is the co-founder and Chief Operating Officer of Zendelity, where she leads operations, including sales and marketing. Zendelity is a platform that lets hotels monitor, enforce, and react to compliance and governance issues, using smartphones, near-field communication, and IoT to keep track of staff and of things like alarms, thermostats, and elevators. Before Zendelity, Rebecca spent years in enterprise product marketing, leading Mitel's enterprise marketing strategy and IBM's worldwide marketing strategy for analytics on the mainframe. She's based in Ottawa. Divine Eyo is a software engineering student at Carleton University and the founder of Spequlo, a student-built fashion-tech startup developing an "agentic fitting room." Spequlo uses AI to let online shoppers virtually try on clothing, so they can judge fit, styling, and sizing before they buy. The idea grew out of Divine's own frustration as both a developer and a frequent online shopper, and he's combining computer vision, generative AI, and personalization to solve it. He's a software developer with experience in Java, embedded programming, and full-stack work, based in Ottawa. Timestamp/Chapters 00:00 Intro 01:40 Two Founders' Dream Dashboards 05:28 Search Console to Analytics 06:00 LinkedIn as Lead Engine 07:06 Reading LinkedIn Metrics 08:40 Personal vs Company Posting 10:45 Spequlo Content That Converts 13:56 Tracking Posts With UTMs 14:35 Sponsor Break and Offer 15:35 LinkedIn Insight Tag Pixel 16:26 Where Leads Get Stored 18:16 Follow Ups and CRM Hygiene 20:55 Batching Outreach With AI 23:08 Pipeline Stages and Forecasting 25:22 Cold Outreach Tools and Tags 25:57 CAC LTV and Paid Growth 27:47 Key Takeaways and Wrap Up Links to everything mentioned in the show are on the Funnel Reboot site's page for this episode.

I want to share three experiences I've had and I want you to see if there's anything off about them: A while ago I sat with a RevOps leader, while they scrolled through a CRM where every single lead was tagged as an MQL. "Marketing sets them all to that," they said matter-of-factly. Sales knew, marketing knew, and everyone went along because the company was venture-backed and under executive demands to produce. Marketing simply bent the metric so the dashboard would look healthy.  A Director of Marketing I knew understood that he could put a large budget bump in his annual plan. His boss, the VP of Sales, had encouraged him to think big. So he did, and it was approved. Long after budget season had ended, the purchases were denied and the money went to sales expenses. He understood what had happened and didn't push back, because his job depended on the VP of Sales. The budget had looked real until the moment it turned out not to be. A marketing leader once walked me through her martech budget. The marketing automation system, with its data-append module and a long list of add-ons, cost far more than I thought was reasonable. I asked if it was worth it. "It's everything to us," she said. I asked if they could drop the data-append module and use an intern, which would cost much less. "Finance would never approve us asking for more headcount." The software subscription flew with no problem, and even though hiring a person was cheaper, they didn't want to rock the boat with finance. The same pattern runs through all of these situations: marketers contorting themselves under pressure from some outside force. Our guest argues that force is structural. Marketing is saddled with baggage that keeps it from meeting what today's organizations expect, and the only way to keep up is to restructure.  My guest is the Chief Marketing Officer and Head of the AI Center of Excellence at 2X, where she helps enterprises use strategic outsourcing, AI and marketing performance management. Before that, she spent two decades with agencies, then went brand-side in C-level roles at several large brands. There she worked alongside major consulting firms, which changed how she thought about the way marketing should be organized. She has written three books for growth leaders: Brand Gravity; The Revenue RAMP, which has been spun off into the Revenue Accelerator course; and The Limitless CMO, published in 2026.  Join me as we head to Detroit Michigan to talk with Lisa Cole. Links to everything mentioned in the show are on the Funnel Reboot site's page for this episode.  

Up to the end of the twentieth century, the only ads that appeared on a screen were the ones arranged by a handful of TV networks. They were the only ones who could sell commercials, and only the biggest companies could afford what they charged for 30 seconds of airtime. Then, about 25 years ago, some digital marketing innovations started to make a new ad model possible. In 2000, Google launched a self-serve ad platform, and it was later joined by display ad exchanges like Right Media and DoubleClick. For a while, they displayed image ads, but faster broadband internet eventually meant they could serve video, and by the end of the decade an ad-serving standard was set. Thanks to internet protocol, new screens provided information back to bidders. Now, instead of buying by the time slot, advertisers pre-set what they'd bid to show an ad to viewers, based on what is being watched and possibly the viewer's demographics. The marriage of all these has enabled ads to be shown to consumers streaming on their smart TV, Apple TV, Roku or Fire Stick at home. It also opened up a whole new inventory — almost anywhere there's a screen: at the grocery store, in the elevator at the office, at the gas pump. Maybe you don't buy these ads. But it's almost certain that your customers face these screens daily. The question is whether you should put your ads on them. My guest is a graduate of Bishop's University who has spent twenty years inside that marketplace, including time at Samsung. He runs the consultancy Marcus & Muse and founded the Ottawa Ad Club. Let's bring in Aaron Foley. Links to everything mentioned in the show are on the Funnel Reboot site's page for this episode.  

Some of us are lucky enough to work in a place with analysts who can help us make sense of our data. But there are added challenges in making this  collaboration work.  Analysts may struggle with the questions marketers ask, finding them too vague for analyzing.  Marketers may get data back that they find irrrelevant; they may assume the analyst misunderstood their request. I'll grant that we can speak the same language, but that isn't enough. An Analyst cannot look at all the data, they cannot do analysis that will answer all your questions. The outcome you get will match the old movie Cool Hand Luke, which put it this way, WHAT WE'VE GOT HERE IS A FAILURE TO COMMUNICATE. The solution is for both sides to learn just enough of how the other's world to have meaningful dialogues all the way from problem scoping to decision-making. My guest today has been on the analyst's side of that table. He knows what practices determine whether this partnership works or fails. Graduating with a B.Sc. in Statistics, he has served as a Business Intelligence (BI) professional at various Government agencies and school boards. He is at home using tools like GA4,  IBM Cognos to Microsoft PowerBI and writing in languages like SQL, DAX and Python. He's also previously been a professional jazz musician, which led 17 years ago to him founding JazzGuitarLessons.net, a site selling online guitar courses to budding musicians.  running the ecommerce and email aspects of that site using his knowledge of analytics  proves how well he knows what information we need on the marketing side of the business.   Let's go to Gatineau Quebec to learn what analysts need from marketers to do their best work, with Marc-Andre Seguin. Chapter Timestamps   00:00 Intro 03:07 Meet Marc-Andre 05:58 Bias And Ground Rules 07:10 Data Quality And Signal 08:51 Cost Of Analytics Stack 11:35 What Makes Analysts Great 13:35 SME Habits That Help 17:29 Communication And Personalities 19:32 Chatbot Announcement 19:59 Stats And Tools For Marketers 23:53 Using LLMs With Guardrails 26:20 Wrap Up And Where To Find    Links to everything mentioned in the show are on the Funnel Reboot site's page for this episode.  

When I ask how someone forms their perception of a brand, what comes to mind? It might be they hear about it by word of mouth, or on an email thread or private message. In a nutshell, what's said about our company when we're not in the room, when we're not in control of the message.  Now try the same experiment with our personal brand. Is our immediate thought how to look as good as possible? Is it how to curate the results that pop up when they search our name? Truth is, our personal brand has already been formed, we just weren't in on those conversations.  Being active on our social media accounts can help, but we can also send the wrong brand message, shooting ourselves in the foot. When I first got onto Facebook and X, I feared that posting too much content would make me look distracted. When I did post, I felt a certain portion of them should be about my company or at least something generic. If I did have an opinion, it had to be watered down.My thinking was I should talk how my employer wanted me to talk. Turns out that is the complete opposite of how I should have been branding myself. It wasn't until I hung out my own shingle, that I realized being a generic-sounding consultant made me a commodity. That meant my rates were set by the market - I had to be a price-taker. But employees who act generically are also treated as commodities who must take whatever salary is offered. So regardless of where you sit, you're better off with a good personal brand.  Am I saying employees should kiss ass on social, posting about how much they love their work?  No. They can post thoughtful criticisms about the industry, they can post solutions to problems they and their peers face. Content like this boosts a person's brand without offending employers. They  know you won't always be working for them; they'll bask in your halo while they can get it.  But before you put out content you have to get introspective on what your brand stands for.  It's hard for us to stare at a sheet of paper and figure this out, we get better results using a framework. And this is where our guest can help. Since getting her MBA from Moscow International Higher Business School, she has managed some of Europe's largest brands, from Stollwerck, to Nestlé and Shell. She is also a visual artist, marketing consultant and coach. Her 2026 book deals with this very issue.  Let's go now to the French seaside resort town of Cannes to speak with the author of "The Personal Branding Book", Daria Dmitrieva.  Chapter Timestamps 00:00 Intro 02:27 Meet Daria Dmitrieva 03:12 Brand As A Compass 05:55 Premium Brand Parallels 08:56 Authenticity Over Packaging 13:33 Fear And The Shadow Gift 19:04 Become A Magnet 22:26 CEO Dreamer Critic Roles 26:33 Body Cues And Intuition 28:39 Celebrate Progress 32:02 Daria Origin Story 35:35 Where To Find The Book Links to everything mentioned in the show are on the Funnel Reboot site's page for this episode.

"Black Swan" author Nassim Nicholas Taleb says "understanding how to act under conditions of incomplete information is the highest and most urgent human pursuit"    He might have been referring to B2B marketing. Think of it. Internal teams have internal data that give insight into customer accounts and lifetime value. Their agencies are close to different data: media auction signals, campaign trends. But both of them are data-poor, disadvantaged by limited access to each others' systems.  As long as we tolerate the status quo, both sides will keep making false assumptions and poor decisions that harm their relationship.  The same problem's existed in occupations and athletic pursuits, where having one person do it all brings the risk of making a wrong move. The solution is a two-person-team, where each compensates for the others' blindspot. One of the earliest examples comes from a young French acrobat in the mid 1800s who experimented with an aerial act he and a teammate performed over a pool. He was Jules Leotard, and yes, his name's become synonymous with the gymnast outfit he wore.  His most dangerous maneuver started up high on his trapeze, with a teammate who'd dangle by their legs as they swung from their trapeze. When they were at the apex of their swings, he'd vault off into the air, to be grabbed by his teammates' arms. Talk about trust!    There are many modern equivalents where people work in pairs: we have baseball pitchers and catchers exchange signals, synchronized swimming pairs vault each other out of the water. Airplanes are flown by captains and co-pilots, police and military cover for each other in tactical operations, or train Locomotives which are jointly operated by an Engineer and a Conductor.   Our guest strives for 360 degree views of data shared between his agency and clients. He has done B2B marketing  for startups and brands like Nokia and Alcatel-Lucent. In 2023 he founded Zinc Marketing, working for B2B technology companies.  Beyond this, he has been featured in ABC, BusinessWeek, as well as tech and healthcare publications. He is also co-host of the B2B Marketing Pint podcast, and his love of camera gear helped us still record when some of my equipment broke.  Head with me to a local pub to hear about trapeze performances done by agencies and clients, from Brendan Ziolo   Chapter Timestamps 00:00 Intro 02:08 Meet Brendan Ziolo 03:22 Agency vs In House Data 06:00 Beyond MQLs to Revenue 11:25 Funnel Alignment Fixes 12:42 Radical Transparency 16:48 Qualifying Clients Fast 19:22 Directional Targets and Scaling 24:30 AI Needs Humans 29:56 Quality Over Quantity 30:52 Email Autopsy and Wrap   Links to everything mentioned in the show are on the Funnel Reboot site's page for this episode.  

Talk of Content marketing started appearing online around 2007. One of the few people who  started talking about it was former Funnel Reboot guest Joe Pulizzi. It wasn't until 2014 I became aware of marketers who were staking their career on the profession of creating content. I found the idea of giving-away-expertise a bit unsettling.  Maybe it was because for a dozen years prior to that, I'd mainly communicated with audiences through paid ads. Gradually, Content marketing won out - we simply expect content on social media brings marketing results.  Only one problem, our guest says most of us aren't doing content marketing right. One of her main critiques is that we're making too much of it.. I'll use myself as an example. Let's look across the various accounts I've had on twitter/x; that have a combined 40,927 posts. Of those, analytics says only about 200, or 0.5% of them were home runs. If I'd known how our guest turns less into more; my marketing results could have been very different. I would also have been less stressed and would have slept better. Our guest is founder of Globia Content Marketing agency. After earning two Bachelor's degrees, from the University of Puget Sound and Boise State University, and completing her Master's at the University of Colorado Boulder, our guest spent two decades as an in-house B2B marketer. Wanting to improve how content marketing's done, she started posting on LinkedIn and built a sizable following and hung out her shingle in 2023. In 2025, she published her book Content Simplified.  Let's go to boise idaho to speak with Lee Densmer   Chapter/Timestamps 00:00 Intro 01:34 Meet Lee Densmer 02:46 Why Content Fails 04:08 Quantity Trap 05:47 Three by Five Framework 07:27 Set Three Goals 09:23 Burnout Social Example 10:48 Pick Three Buyers 15:14 Choose Three Themes 17:09 Mission Statement Focus 19:29 Stay In Your Lane 21:08 Avoid Endless Debates 22:28 AI Limits And Guardrails 25:54 SME Interview System 28:30 Chatbot Announcement 28:59 CEO Approval Bottleneck 30:59 Channels Promotion Repurpose 33:48 Metrics That Matter 36:29 Proving ROI And Budgets 37:21 Book details & Wrap Up  Links to everything mentioned in the show are on the Funnel Reboot site's page for this episode.

Small businesses run on lean marketing teams and tight budgets, but don't count them out. They're the overwhelming majority of businesses on earth. Small companies have one function that's poised to figure out AI through experimentation, analysis and strategic changes in direction. It's marketing, and it may very well determine the winner of the AI race. After graduating from Laurentian University, our guest worked in corporate and consulting positions across Canada and even in Korea. He then founded a business which he grew to a successful exit, which led to mentoring students at Algonquin College and eventually teaching in their Business Management and Entrepreneurship program. Hungry to understand what AI could do for businesses, he went back to school in 2016 — to Carleton University for a Master's degree. In 2025 he heard about the AI Collective and founded its local Ottawa chapter. He is now CEO of ScarlettNova, an AI company dedicated to building artificial intelligence solutions for businesses, and Founder of Rogue Ventures, an AI venture studio. Let's go to a coffee shop to talk with Chris Doré. Chapters Timestamps: 00:00 Intro  01:47 Why Chris says Marketers will endure 02:50 Why Pay for Pro Models 04:50 From User to Builder 08:02 Automation vs Agents 10:33 Context and Company Brain 13:36 Document Workflows for AI 17:47 Adoption Gap and Learning Curve 19:06 Token Costs and Budgeting 22:01 AI Energy Debate 22:19 Quantum Boost Ahead 23:00 Marketing Rapid Fire 23:18 Websites Get Personal 25:22 Vibe Coding Limits 26:06 Skills Over Knowledge 26:38 Events Still Matter 28:43 Paid Media After SEO 30:17 Winning With Niches 32:06 Trust And Adoption 34:32 Full Spectrum AI Help 36:02 Adoption Is Human 37:45 Venture Studio Spinoffs 39:20 Wrap-up Links to everything mentioned in the show are on the Funnel Reboot site's page for this episode.

Everyone makes content now. But having content doesn't automatically mean anyone will actually consume it. There are brands with long-running programs and audiences that carve out time for their content, while other brands' programs fade because it became a thankless chore. What's different between content that's adored and content that dies in obscurity?   The brands that win make content that audiences don't see as branded content. Where the work they made was so genuinely useful, or surprising, or true — that instead of feeling exploited, the recipients felt like they were being favored. A gift doesn't need your logo on it. Your fingerprints are already there. Our guest knows how to do this. His early career was working in production at AOL and several TV and radio networks. Then in 2014 he launched Pacific Content, an agency he built into the one brands trusted when they wanted to stop making noise and start building audiences. It was acquired by one of the country's largest media companies in 2023. What he learned doing that became the book Earn It, which came out in 2026. Let's go to this talk with Steve Pratt. Chapter Timestamps: 00:00 Why Content Gets Ignored 01:00 Meet Steve Pratt 02:12 Attention Is Finite 04:38 Be The Party Host 06:52 Marketing As A Gift 08:23 From You Not About You 09:55 Bravery And Commitment 12:46 Promote The Gift 15:03 Podcast Case Studies 21:07 Measuring Time And Trust 24:04 Fewer Things Better 25:35 Expertise Over Platform 27:04 Pacific Content And Wrap Up    Links to everything mentioned in the show are on the Funnel Reboot site's page for this episode.