Humans of Growth: Stories & Strategies Behind Business Growth & Business Development

Personal Branding & Founder-Led Marketing in an AI Trust Recession

Most founders are wrong about personal branding. They think it’s about ego, selfies, and posting your life story online. But according to Rachel Gogos, CEO of The Brand ID, your personal brand is not about being louder. It’s about making your business feel more human, more trustworthy, and more real. In this episode of Humans of Growth, Aly Hathcock sits down with Rachel Gogos to talk about the role of personal branding in modern business growth, why every company brand starts with the founder, and how leaders can build trust without turning themselves into full-time influencers. Rachel breaks down why founder branding matters even when the founder is not the public face of the company, how AI marketing is making authenticity more valuable, and why businesses need to move away from faceless, generic content. They also discuss the difference between being personal and being too personal, how to make your ideal customer feel seen, and why your website should feel less like a brochure and more like a real-life experience with your business. This conversation also digs into brand strategy, content marketing, website copy, customer pain points, and the importance of creating a consistent customer experience across every touchpoint — from your social media content to your sales calls to your website. If you’re a founder, CEO, marketer, or business owner who wants people to trust your company before they ever get on a call, this episode is for you. In this episode, we cover: ✔ Why personal branding is not about ego ✔ How founder values shape company branding ✔ Why faceless marketing is losing power ✔ How AI is changing authenticity in marketing ✔ What CEOs misunderstand about branding ✔ How to balance professionalism with personality ✔ Why your website should focus on the customer, not just the company ✔ How to make your ideal audience feel seen ✔ Why branding is more than fonts, colors, and logos ✔ The underrated power of in-person connection If you've been thinking about building a personal brand and not just a company, this episode is for you. ______________________ RESOURCES: Get help finding the right marketing partner. [https://perissonnetwork.com/] Learn more about The Brand ID here. [https://thebrandid.com/]

The ROAS Trap: Why Better Numbers Don’t Always Mean Better Growth

Your best-looking marketing campaign might be the one quietly killing your growth. Most businesses look at ROAS, cost per lead, and in-platform ad reports and assume they know what’s working. But those dashboards are often rewarding the easiest conversions, repeat buyers, retargeting, brand search, while the campaigns actually creating new demand get ignored or killed too soon. And that’s how companies end up recycling the same customers instead of growing. In this episode of Humans of Growth, I sit down with Scott Desgrosseilliers, founder of WickedReports.com, to break down why most businesses are using the wrong scoreboard for marketing attribution, and how to figure out which campaigns are actually driving revenue growth, new customer acquisition, and long-term customer lifetime value. Scott walks through part of his Five Forces Framework for measuring marketing performance, why in-platform ROAS can mislead business owners and agencies, how to think about top-of-funnel marketing, and why the cheapest customer is not always the most profitable customer. In this episode, we cover: ✔ Why most businesses are measuring marketing attribution with the wrong scoreboard ✔ The problem with in-platform ROAS, and why Meta, Google, and Amazon often take too much credit ✔ Why new customer acquisition needs to be measured differently than repeat purchases or retargeting ✔ How cheap customers can quietly hurt customer lifetime value and long-term profit ✔ Why the first product someone buys can determine whether they become a high-value customer ✔ The difference between first-click attribution, last-click attribution, and multi-channel attribution ✔ Why top-of-funnel marketing gets under-credited, and why killing it too early can stall growth ✔ The “scale, chill, kill” framework for deciding when to increase, maintain, or cut ad spend ✔ How AI can help analyze marketing data, and where it still needs human guardrails ✔ Why brand search may be one of the most overrated marketing channels right now If you’re a founder, CEO, CMO, agency owner, or marketing leader trying to figure out why your ads look good on paper but revenue still feels stuck, this conversation will reset how you think about marketing measurement. ______________________ RESOURCES: Get help finding the right marketing partner. [https://perissonnetwork.com/] Learn more about WickedReports here. [https://www.wickedreports.com/]

Why Your CRM Follow-Up System Matters More Than More Leads

Most business owners think they have a lead problem. They don’t. They have a follow-up problem. Because you can spend thousands on ads, SEO, website traffic, Google Business Profile optimization, and lead generation, but if no one responds quickly, if the sales process is messy, or if leads disappear into a broken CRM, that marketing spend is wasted. In this episode of Humans of Growth, I sit down with James LaJoie, co-founder of PSP Compass, to break down why “more leads” is not always the answer, and why the businesses that grow fastest are often the ones with the best systems, not the biggest marketing budgets. We get into speed-to-lead, customer lifetime value, local business marketing, AI automation, CRM follow-up systems, and why consistency is one of the biggest differences between companies that scale and companies that stall. In this episode, we cover: ✔ Why most businesses don’t actually need more leads, they need a better follow-up process ✔ How speed-to-lead can make or break growth, especially in home services and local businesses ✔ Why your sales pipeline may be the real reason your marketing “isn’t working” ✔ The customer lifetime value numbers every business owner should know ✔ Why calls, form fills, and response times matter more than traffic alone ✔ How a slow follow-up process can waste your entire ad spend ✔ What a strong lead follow-up system should look like after someone submits a form or calls ✔ How AI automation can improve customer relationships without replacing human connection ✔ The CRM automations every small business should consider building first ✔ Why consistency is one of the biggest growth advantages a business can have ✔ The underrated power of Google Business Profile for local business marketing If you’re a business owner, home service company, or local business marketer who keeps asking for more leads but still feels like revenue is stuck, this conversation will help you find the real leak in your growth engine. ______________________ RESOURCES: Get help finding the right marketing partner. [https://perissonnetwork.com/] Learn more about PSP Compass here. [https://www.pspcompass.com/]

How to Build a PR Strategy That Actually Drives Business Growth

Most companies confuse visibility with credibility. Getting featured feels like the win — but the headline is just the start. Real PR is what happens after the article runs. The investor who finally takes the call. The $30K speaking spot that costs nothing to earn. The partnership that lands because you've been showing up in the right rooms for years. In this episode of Humans of Growth, I sit down with Rachel Ford-Hutman, CEO of Ford-Hutman Media, a PR agency helping life science companies get media coverage, tell their stories, and build credibility with investors and audiences. We get into what PR actually does behind the scenes, why earned media still matters as newsrooms shrink, and the real ROI behind a single press feature. In this episode, we cover: ✔ Why visibility doesn't equal credibility — and what a PR strategy is actually building ✔ PR vs marketing: the real difference and why most founders confuse them ✔ How earned media is shifting as newsrooms shrink and AI reshapes journalism ✔ Realistic PR timelines and the real ROI of public relations ✔ Why "no response is the no" — and how that changes the way you pitch journalists ✔ How small media wins feed bigger ones (the path from local outlet to Forbes) ✔ Where thought leadership, op-eds, and conferences fit into a strong PR strategy If you're a founder or marketing leader trying to figure out how PR fits into your growth strategy, this episode has your name written all over it.   ______________________ RESOURCES: Get help finding the right marketing partner. [https://perissonnetwork.com/] Learn more about Ford-Hutman Media here. [https://fordhutmanmedia.com/]

Why Your Expertise Is Killing Your Brand Messaging

Your expertise is killing your messaging. The more you know about your product, the harder it gets to explain it in a way customers actually understand. And this is why most companies lose buyers in the first five seconds someone lands on their website. In this episode of Humans of Growth, I sit down with Roy Abdo, CEO of Digital Revamp, to break down how to fix your brand messaging, why your CEO needs to be the top of your marketing funnel in 2026, and how the executives growing fastest right now are using LinkedIn thought leadership and executive personal branding to drive trust, attention, and inbound demand — with as little as one piece of content a week. In this episode, we cover: ✔ The "curse of knowledge" and why your B2B brand messaging is too clever for your buyers ✔ The 5-second coffee shop test for brand clarity and website messaging ✔ How to focus your value proposition on the problem instead of the tactic or feature ✔ Why brand positioning starts to fail when companies try to be known for 17 things ✔ The Nike rule: when you've earned the right to expand your brand and product line ✔ Why executive personal branding is the new top of the marketing funnel ✔ How to build an executive thought leadership strategy on one piece of LinkedIn content a week ✔ The "common enemy" framework: why every B2B brand needs a clear villain in its messaging ✔ How to find your CEO's point of view on the future of your industry ✔ Why internal employees see executive content first — and why that matters for culture and retention If you're a founder, CEO, or marketing leader who knows your brand messaging could be sharper — or you've been told to "build your personal brand" without anyone explaining what to actually post on LinkedIn — this conversation is the playbook. ______________________ RESOURCES: Get help finding the right marketing partner. [https://perissonnetwork.com/] Learn more about Digital Revamp here. [https://digitalrevamp.com/]