For some of my advisory clients, clarity on direction isn't enough, they need someone to step in and lead the marketing side of what comes next. That's where this work comes in. I serve as fractional CMO for brands, advising on brand positioning, growth architecture, GTM strategy, channel prioritization, and team/agency oversight. That looks different depending on stage. For pre-seed or seed startups it's establishing positioning, GTM, and the first growth roadmap before they hire a full-time marketing leader. For bootstrapped founders who've hit a ceiling and unsure what to focus on or who to trust, it's diagnosing blind spots and prioritizing limited resources. For scaling brands doing $5M–$50M+, it's untangling fragmented execution - the channel dependencies, messaging drift, teams and agencies pulling in different directions - and unifying everything under one strategy. I start with an audit, then deliver the strategy for internal teams and agencies to execute. Having built, scaled, and exited a 7-figure agency myself, I speak founder, marketer, and agency - so I can translate between all three and get everyone rowing in the same direction. One superpower I've developed is cross-industry pattern recognition. I pull strategies from B2B, ecommerce, and obscure industries most startups never look at, then adapt them into their world. That approach has generated over $47M in additional revenue across ecommerce brands including tentree and Grovemade.
Josh Boone
Advisor to restless founders | Clarity under pressure | Growth without burnout
I have found my go-to mentor! Josh is just beyond....at a whole 'nother level from anyone I've ever chatted with in all the years I've been an entrepreneur and have sought help off and on! I was looking for a coach/mentor/guide to help sustain some recent momentum in my coaching business and (hopefully) get some clarity on why I still haven't scaled in 6 years doing it full-time. Josh listened (he's a very active listener), and he asked GOOD, relevant, pertinent questions that made me feel like he truly wanted to understand my business, my goals, and my struggles rather than from some boilerplate copy/paste questionnaire. At the end of the call, he gave me a simple (important to ADHD peeps) assignment, which was straightforward and not overwhelming. If you're an entrepreneur and you also struggle with neurodivergent issues, mental health issues, or both, JOSH IS YOUR MAN! Don't think about it. Just book the call. I promise...you'll fall deeply in like with his calm demeanor, his active listening skills, and his intuitive way of seeing YOU as a business owner and helping you see you, too!
AMAZING! Before my call with Josh, I was feeling pretty lost and honestly close to burnout. I had a lot of ideas and projects in motion, but I couldn’t clearly see which direction I should prioritize or how everything fit together. I was hoping the conversation would help me get a bit of clarity, but it ended up doing way more than that. What surprised me most was how quickly Josh was able to understand the bigger picture of what I was going through and connect dots I hadn’t seen myself. The way he reframed some of my challenges was honestly mind-blowing and helped me step back from the constant pressure I was putting on myself. After the session, the biggest shift for me was gaining a clear sense of direction and realizing that I didn’t have to keep pushing myself into burnout to move forward. I left the conversation feeling much lighter and with a much stronger sense of where I want to go next. I’d recommend Josh to anyone who’s deeply passionate about what they do, loves working on it, but starts to feel overwhelmed by too many directions at once. If you’re stuck between different paths, feeling mentally overloaded, or getting close to burnout because you care so much about what you’re building, he’s the kind of person who can step in and help you see things clearly again. He has a way of bringing perspective, clarity, and strategic direction really quickly, and the shift in how you see your situation can be pretty mind-blowing. ✨
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I hesitated at first because I wasn’t sure a mentoring session would go deep enough since I didn’t want something surface-level. After working with Josh, I walked away with real clarity because he didn’t just jump into tactics. He asked deeper questions about what I’m actually trying to accomplish, what my real goals are, and how to close the gap between where I am and where I want to be, including calling out that if this is my long-term plan, there’s no reason not to start now. The feature I liked most was how he pushes you with the right questions while still giving compelling, practical examples. Beyond that, his messaging guidance was strong he helped me get sharper on my ICP and what would truly resonate he’s super clear and eloquent in the way he explains things, and the whole session feels easy and high-level because he can meet you where you are. I’d 100% recommend Josh because he clearly knows what he’s talking about and the session gives you confidence and direction fast. Overall, it was genuinely one of the best coaching sessions I’ve had.
Bio
Is this you? - You are a passionate and highly driven yet restless workaholic - A perfectionist with unreasonably high standards for yourself and your work, making success a moving target - Achievement-focused, multitasking, always looking for the next thing to work on - You feel like you're failing or losing time if you're not always working on something - You are self-sacrificing, often ignoring your needs in service of your business or others - You're anxious, stressed, feel stuck, and desire change, but you aren't sure what that means - You don't feel fulfilled. Something is wrong or missing. Is it your business, your life, or both? - You wonder if, objectively, this needs to be this stressful and if you could be making better decisions - You want someone who you respect, who understands what you're going through, has done it, and shows you your blindspots If so, I can help. Most founders who come to me think they have a growth or focus problem. Some do. What most actually have is an alignment problem. Wrong direction, wrong model, wrong definition of success. They've been optimizing hard for a life they don't actually want, and nobody in their orbit has been willing to say that out loud. That's the work I do. I grew up in a family business and have spent over 20 years in the operator seat myself. Built and exited a 7-figure agency, worked with hundreds of brands, and conducted over 1,000 mentor sessions from executives at Microsoft and Apple to early-stage DTC founders. I'm fast at this because I've seen the same misalignments enough times to recognize them before you finish explaining. I also know this from the inside. I burned the hell out hard, sold everything, bought an RV, and spent two years on the road traveling the US figuring out who I was without the identity of a workaholic to fill the void. I live with ADHD and bipolar disorder and have dealt with chronic illness while running businesses. When I say I understand burnout and what it's like to scale while your nervous system is on fire, I mean it. I've been there. I'm especially drawn to driven, neurodivergent founders who are succeeding on paper but struggling in private. A lot of founders open up to me in these sessions because it doesn't feel safe to say this stuff publicly. That's where the real work happens. My goal working with you isn't just growth. It's momentum that compounds without burning you alive.
Expertise
Bootstrapping
Most bootstrapped founders have taken things further than they had any right to on grit alone. The ceiling they hit isn't usually a capital problem – it's a leverage problem. We look at where you're spread too thin, what's actually important to focus on, and what you're holding onto out of habit or fear. Then we design a growth path that doesn't require outside money or working yourself into the ground to execute.
Career guidance
We step back and ask the harder questions most people avoid. Are you actually in the right role and business, or just running on momentum? Is what feels “off” coming from the work itself, the business model, mission, or how you’re treating your body, mind, and relationships? What are you optimizing in your life? What does success look like? We'll dive into all this to uncover what your best next steps are to get you on a path that balances fulfillment and wellbeing with growth and impact.
Go to market strategy
Positioning comes before everything. Before channels, before content, before outreach. We get specific about exactly who you're for – not a demographic, but a real person with a specific problem that keeps them up at night and a why you are the absolute best solution. Once that is clear, GTM stops being a guessing game. Messaging writes itself. The right channels become obvious. Most founders don't dive deep enough into this and have generic websites with vague messaging. We fix that.
Growth marketing
Once the foundation is right, growth is mostly about identifying the few moves that actually compound and ignoring the rest. I pull patterns from adjacent industries and businesses that have already solved versions of your problem, then adapt them to your world. A big part of what I do is help founders stop chasing tactics and start building systems where each move reinforces the last. The goal is not more activity. It's building growth engines with momentum that compounds.
Imposter syndrome
The founders who struggle most with this are usually the ones who are actually good at what they do. We dig into where it's coming from, how it's driving your decisions, and what it's costing you in terms of pricing, positioning, the clients you take, and the ones you don't. This isn't some BS confidence coaching. It's diagnostic work. We figure out what the voice is actually protecting you from, and whether that protection is still serving you or just getting in the way and needs to be let go.
Mindset coaching
The same neurotic drive that makes you a high performer is the same one that makes it hard to stop, delegate, or feel like anything is ever enough. Once you can see the patterns and where it comes from, what it's trying to do, what it costs you – we can work on how you navigate it.
Venting frustration
Sometimes you just need someone who has actually been where you're at to think out loud with. I've burned out hard, rebuilt from scratch, and kept running businesses through ADHD, bipolar disorder, and chronic illness. I'm not going to hand you a framework or tell you just to meditate. I'm going to listen, ask the questions nobody else is asking, and help you figure out what is actually going on underneath the thing you're frustrated about. That's usually where the real problem lives.
Experience
I work with founders (especially neurodivergent and those with ADHD) who are succeeding on paper and quietly burning out – not because they're doing the wrong things, but because they're optimizing for the wrong outcomes. The diagnostic work goes fast. Within the first 90 minutes, most founders have a clearer picture of what's actually broken than they've had in years. From there the work is strategic reconstruction: repositioning the business model, the audience, the offer architecture, or the founder's definition of success – whichever is creating the most drag.
Consultingmanagement consultingPersonal brandingJoin Dayton started from r/Dayton, Dayton's largest online community (70k+ members with 1-2 million monthly visits) as we kept seeing the same issue surface time and time again: people feeling isolated, struggling to make friends or know where to meet people, and convinced the city had nothing for them. The people existed. The infrastructure to connect them didn't. So we built it. We decided to begin holding local meetups, and that has grown into a community organization tackling loneliness and brain drain head-on. Think of it as a hyper-local social network with zero ads or algorithms - just real neighbors finding each other. Over the past year, we've built a meetup community of 1,400+ members, with events drawing 50–100 people. We especially focus on helping introverts and the socially anxious get out by designing events for people who struggle to socialize but don't want to be alone. The community started running itself almost immediately. Members now self-organize weekly trivia nights, karaoke groups, co-working sessions at coffee shops, art nights, book clubs, dog playgroups - and new stuff keeps spinning up every week. We serve the people Dayton keeps losing: newcomers with zero connections (lots of WPAFB folks), people who moved back and found their old friends gone, those going through life transitions (divorce, retirement), remote workers starving for human contact, and anyone alternative-minded who assumed their people didn't exist here. Their people are here. They're just scattered. Today we operate with a team of 13 volunteers and a core leadership group, and we're actively building partnerships with local organizations, businesses, and civic leaders to scale what's already working. We're not just helping people make friends. We're helping build the connective thread that gives people a reason to stay.
CommunitiesSocialEventsEvent ManagementEvent PromotionNon profitSocial ImpactAfter exiting my agency, I took an intentional two-year break to recalibrate and explore. Purchased and renovated a vintage Toyota mini-cruiser RV with solar panels, and traveled across the US asking myself the question that would become central to my philosophy: "What would I do if I had 12 months left to live?" This journey transformed how I approach both business and life – shifting from optimization for achievement to optimization for meaning and impact. The insights gained during this period fundamentally shaped my approach to working with founders, helping them build businesses that create both growth and wellbeing rather than sacrificing one for the other.
Built an award-winning 7-figure agency from the ground up, growing from 4 to 12 team members with 100%+ YoY revenue growth for three consecutive years. Wore multiple hats (COO, CTO, CMO) as we rapidly scaled, leading both internal operations and client strategic direction. Successfully transitioned our services from tactical work for local businesses to comprehensive marketing strategies for international corporations, government organizations, and universities. The experience of building, scaling, and exiting this business became the laboratory where I developed frameworks for sustainable growth – and eventually learned the hard lesson that business success without personal wellbeing isn't success at all.
digital marketingWeb designgraphic designMarketingVideo AdvertisingFounded a marketing agency with my partner Stephen Emsley. We focused on predominately on SEO and web design/development for small businesses, manufacturing companies (B2B), law firms, and early ecommerce brands in Dayton and Toronto where we were both based. This diverse experience across industries became my laboratory for spotting patterns and transferable strategies. This laid the foundation for what would eventually become Catapult Creative, where Pure Web Results merged with another team of marketers and creatives in Dayton.
Freelance
Web Designer, SEO & Affiliate MarketerWhat began as a hobby led to designing the first website for my father's tree service. After I built his site I asked myself, "how can I get more people to his website?" and began absorbing everything I could on search optimization. This was back in the wild wild west of SEO where you could just throw some keywords up and be ranking a small business pretty easily. Soon the calls started coming in and I was blown away by the impact it was having. Other small business owners in the area began asking if I would help do the same for them, and that began my freelancing career. • Designed websites and established long-term highly profitable search presence for local B2C businesses. • Developed a network of 50+ websites of my own, driving organic traffic and revenue from affiliate partnerships.