Josh went to dinner with a CMO friend. A couple of drinks in, she showed him her entire 27-step influencer marketing strategy. Josh's takeaway? One step: tell Jess. She can just handle the other 26…

So, she built Vector's first influencer pilot with seven creators, $12,000, and zero vanity metrics. The result? $1.1 million in pipeline, 82% ICP demos, and posts so good you couldn't tell they were sponsored.

Hear how Jess started small, gave creators actual freedom, and proved influencer marketing works without a massive budget.

Get to the good stuff:

[00:20] The CEO move. The hack. The 27-step process for influencers. Josh has 1 step, Jess gets 26. Yayyyy.

[03:10] Jess talks context. They didn't have the same budget or team size. There may have been some rounding up involved. Carry the one, people.

[04:00] Start small, start with a pilot. Customers, leaders and an average following? 13,000. Trust beats vanity metrics every time.

[06:37] Follow your influencers for a while. Understand their content, their tone, and their storytelling style before you reach out.

[07:44] Let influencers have full access to your tool. Onboard them properly. They need to know your product, believe in it, and actually use it.

[09:20] They may say no to your rate. That's fine. Build long-term partnerships, not one-off transactional posts.

[10:20] Deep camera focus—affirmations from our mouths to your ears. ASMR vibes.

[13:38] What does the brief look like? Tight, short, flexible. Focus on messaging points they can borrow or riff on. (Just, you know, avoid posting on Fridays.)

[15:37] How Jess aligned posts with product launches, survey results, and Ad Reveal. All within the same week because organizational bliss.

[19:04] Let influencers do what they do best. They know their audience. Let them loose. They want it to work for you.

[19:44] If you don't know it's an influencer post until you see the hashtag, it's a great influencer post. Matching ads and banners? That's just an ad.

[21:25] Jess consciously skipped the tracking rabbit hole for the pilot. Sometimes "how did you hear about us?" is all you need.

[22:53] The marketer's duty—thank you, dear marketers, for filling out attribution forms with wild detail. I got you, boo.

[26:01] The results? $12,000 turned into $1.1 million in pipeline. 45 leads in 3 months directly from LinkedIn. 82% ICP. Josh almost fell out of his seat (again).

[27:30] Marketing doesn't fix product-market fit. If your product sucks, all that pipeline will disappear just as fast as it came in.

[28:45] What's next? Jess is changing up the mix, but she can’t scale this alone.

[33:30] Jess's key takeaways: Start small. Give them the story, then step back and let them “Cook.”

This Meeting Could’ve Been a Podcast is a Vector production.

Filmed and produced by Sweet Fish.

Editing by Handy Man Edit.

Music by Peter McIsaac Music.

Jess had it all figured out. A five-star restaurant. 17 prospects and customers. Four months of planning. $15k on the line. The perfect setup to fill next quarter's pipeline…right?

Just one tiny problem: there’d been a mix-up. The dinner wasn't tomorrow night. It was tonight. In three hours. Cue panic. Cue scrambling. Cue Jess and Josh praying people would actually show up.

Hear how a last-minute disaster turned into one of the best events Vector's ever done and why letting customers do the talking is more powerful than any pitch.

Get to the good stuff:

[00:51] Why sponsor events as an early-stage company? Leave the booths for the big guys—how showing up small meant Vector was seen by the right people.

[02:50] The events around the events are really where it's happening. Plus, Natalie Taylor’s dinner playbook: invite your customers. She’s a genius.

[11:22] Sarah pulls off some FBI-style magic and reverse-engineers an anonymized attendee list into data we need. Sneaky sneaky.

[13:37] Jess's invite strategy. Josh is skeptical. Jess is right. He should know this by now.

[16:32] Dan Murphy delivers the news: contract mix-up. The boat cruise is Thursday. Your dinner is tonight. In three hours. Jess has a minor menty-B moment.

[17:48] Exit Five springs into action. New restaurant secured. Transportation sorted. Jess and Josh sprint back to the hotel to prep.

[22:27] Will anyone actually show up? Just two people on the bus. Are we having a $15k dinner with four people? That’s a lot of wine…

[23:45] Dear marketer, here’s your affirmations break.

[24:54] Jess and Josh channel their inner theater kids to break the ice and acknowledge the awkward: yes, we need customers.

[26:26] The dinner becomes deeply personal. No Vector talk. Just real conversations about family, life, oh and that crazy documentary about the stalker mom.

[27:07] Jess gets rejected attempting dinner strategy phase 2. Mission accomplished—they're having too much fun.

[27:46] The follow-up is effortless. LinkedIn DMs turn into demo requests. Almost 100% conversion from one dinner. Jess and Josh want the "boat mix-up package" next year.

[30:12] How to match your team to your audience. Bring the people who spur the right conversations (sorry sales, not you).

[31:56] Jess has the event bug. Already signed for Pavilion, going back to Drive. It's giving budget sweats for Josh again.

[33:11] How we sold less but ironically sold more. How authenticity is shifting brand action.

[33:32] Josh still dreams of his, er, Vector's name in lights.

This Meeting Could’ve Been a Podcast is a Vector production.

Filmed and produced by Sweet Fish.

Editing by Handy Man Edit.

Music by Peter McIsaac Music.

Josh calls an emergency meeting and Jess packs a bag (...just an overnight one). The team lands in Boston to face a hard truth: Vector was spread too thin, chasing too many use cases, and diluting outcomes.

What followed was a full-company repositioning to focus on what our customers were actually winning with, and put a hard stop to everything they weren’t. No pressure.

This is the story of the pivot — the messy middle, the easy buttons (literally), and the moment it all clicked.

Get to the good stuff:
[00:00] After a premonition that Vector wasn’t a true product-market fit, Josh calls an emergency meeting in Boston. Jess pretends to be chill while mildly panicking inside.
[02:55] The not-so-subtle warning signs. Jess had spotted chaos in Customer Solutions, Josh felt it in Product and Engineering. Both know it’s time to refocus.
[06:10] The Boston meeting kicks off. Between easy buttons and N’Sync (we’re professionals, after all), Josh learns a leadership lesson.
[10:54] The company-wide niche down begins. Enter Alex — part PMM, part chaos coordinator, full legend.
[12:25] Vector invites a power user (shoutout to Isaac Ware) to the workshop.
[15:56] Jess and Alex cut use cases, spin insight into content, and rewire pricing around value. Everything starts pointing to the new story.
[24:54] Web development agency, Fletch, takes the team through a brutal clarity bootcamp. Jess and Josh fight for their lives in Figma (who hasn’t?). Mid-Vegas meltdown, Josh bows out of the process.
[33:37] Two caffeine-fueled weeks later, Jess finds the line that defines Vector. Josh swallows his pride and agrees — it’s perfect.
[36:55] Now, every team is sprinting toward launch. Josh finally admits this wasn’t a tweak — it was a full pivot.
[38:06] Jess and Josh drop some love for all of you overworked marketers.
[39:07] Jess lays out three clear metrics to prove whether the new direction works.
[42:58] Key takeaways from the trenches.

This Meeting Could’ve Been a Podcast is a Vector production.

Filmed and produced by Sweet Fish.

Editing by Handy Man Edit.

Music by Peter McIsaac Music.

Season 2 is here—and we're kicking it off with the conversation every marketer loves: asking for budget.

Jess has big goals, a solid strategy, and one tiny problem: she needs money. Real money. Not the "ask permission for every shiny sponsorship" kind—an actual, formal quarterly budget.

So, she builds her first-ever marketing budget, wraps it in a killer deck, and presents it to Josh and Nick. The number's big. Really big. But then something happens—they get excited.

Hear how Jess convinced two founders to hand over hundreds of thousands of dollars, why the story matters way more than the spreadsheet, and what happens when your CEO gets so nervous he starts sounding like Goofy.

Get to the good stuff:

[00:00] Season 2 kicks off! Jess needs a budget. Josh braces for impact.

[02:46] Jess had only ever built content budgets before. It’s a fraction of the plan, but it’s where you start—if you don't have anything to talk about, there's nothing to amplify.

[04:40] Josh approaches Jess about building a budget before she has to beg for one. Makes the whole "money, please" conversation way easier.

[06:24] The reverse prenup: why having a formal budget gives marketers power to make decisions without having to justify every dollar.

[09:07] Jess is low-key panicking. First time building a budget. Zero historical data. No "what worked last quarter" safety net. Just ambition, strategy, and a spreadsheet.

[11:45] Jess's presentation strategy. The balance of making Josh and Nick feel excited and just a little nervous. That's how you know you're asking for what you actually need.

[15:10] Jess comes armed with receipts from industry friends. She's done her homework. Obviously.

[16:49] The big reveal. The big number. Josh falls out of his seat. Nick couldn’t Venmo it. Cue minor CEO heart attack.

[21:45] Jess's advisor moment. He tells her to forget the pretty spreadsheet, the secret weapon is the story. A budget pitch is no different to any other pitch.

[22:30] The Nick test will be hard to pass. Jess presents to Josh first to get his buy-in, trust, and a little feedback first.

[26:24] Jess get her allotted soppy praise moment from Josh, but it’s well deserved. She executed and built trust.

[29:32] Josh takes the budget to their board and advisors. Because even CEOs need backup.

[32:42] Jess’ budget gets cut. But wait, she’s actually grateful?

[35:03] Positive affirmations break. You're a marketing wizard.

[36:24] Jess's key budget-building takeaways: let strategy guide your budget, sell the story, acknowledge other budget pressures and shoot for the moon.

[37:37] Jess's life goal: someday ask for more money than the AWS bill. She’s dreaming big people.

[39:00] The one thing Jess forgot: travel. Don't worry—Josh and Nick are just docking it from her paycheck. Motel 6, here she comes.

This Meeting Could’ve Been a Podcast is a Vector production.

Filmed and produced by Sweet Fish.

Editing by Handy Man Edit.

Music by Peter McIsaac Music.

Season 2 of This Meeting Could've Been a Podcast drops November 5th.

8 new episodes.
Same great taste.

Peep the trailer to get a sneak peek of what's on Jess and Josh's agenda this time around.

Josh happily announces he’s redesigning the website. Jess smiles and nods while she internally screams in marketer.

But Jess spots an opportunity. Maybe we don’t need a whole new website. But the messaging and a few key visuals? They might just need a little work.

Hear how Jess steered Josh away from climbing a mountain of redesign and dev work and toward small messaging and visual tweaks that do a whole lot of heavy lifting.

Get to the good stuff:

[00:00] Josh shows off a brand new website design just before a new product launch – surprise, Jess!

[01:07] Vector’s website origin story (before the ghosts took over)

[06:02] Jess compliments Josh’s original messaging. Then shares why she changed it.

[07:51] Sit back marketers, and let us say nice things about you.

[8:27] Shameless plug: The product launch that kicked off Josh’s idea to revamp the website.

[10:58] Jess explains why she changed the headline from “grow your MQLs” to “turn intent into pipeline.”

[14:08] Why we used graphics to show off the product (and the ghost mascot, of course).

[16:53] Josh explains the reasoning behind his urge to redesign the website, and how the team hit a healthy middle ground.

This Meeting Could’ve Been a Podcast is a Vector production.

Filmed at the Sweet Fish Creator House in Orlando, FL.

Editing by Handy Man Edit.

Music by Peter McIsaac Music.

Jess didn’t tiptoe into her new role—she marched in, spotted the gaps, and asked for headcount by day 2. Josh? Still processing.

In this episode, Jess and Josh unpack the thinking behind their first big hire at Vector, why product marketing came before growth, what made one candidate rise above 65 others, and how building the right team early on turned heads across the industry.

TL;DR: If you’ve ever had to scale fast—or want to know how Vector assembled the B2B marketing Avengers—this one’s for you.

Get to the good stuff:

[00:00] Jess reminds Josh that she asked to make her first hire… 48 hours in. Josh has not recovered.

[01:08] How Vector’s ideal customer shaped Jess’s hiring criteria: credibility, practitioner experience, and a dash of envy.

[03:22] “Are you building the Avengers?” Josh reveals the industry buzz about Vector’s marketing team.

[05:19] Jess shares why she prioritized senior, practitioner-led hires over junior generalists—especially in a startup environment.

[06:40] Content + PMM = rocket fuel – why demand gen had to wait
[08:18] Affirmation time, baby

[10:18] The 1+1=3 moment: Jess makes her case (live, in person) for building out the team.

[13:50] The "I'm hiring" LinkedIn post? 55K views, 53 reposts, 65+ applications—and how Jess filtered the noise to find standout talent.

[17:10] The winning combo that makes marketers stand out: peer recommendations, great writing, clear thinking, and... following directions.

[21:04] Top 1% hiring mentality: why the best people say no to comfort and yes to building.

[23:18] Enter: Alex. Why her experience at Metadata, founder-ready mindset, and “recipe-like” walkthroughs sealed the deal.

[27:00] Sales enablement, product launches, content libraries, positioning tweaks—Alex is already doing all the things.

[28:52] What’s next? Jess reveals her plans for staying lean—and what role she’ll hire for next (but not yet, don’t DM her).

This Meeting Could’ve Been a Podcast is a Vector production.

Filmed at the Sweet Fish Creator House in Orlando, FL.

Editing by Handy Man Edit.

Music by Peter McIsaac Music.

Josh wants stardom. Jess wants structure. Co-founder Nick mostly wants to avoid another content calendar.

When Jess joined Vector, she quickly sniffed out a classic case of wasted brilliance: the founders had great takes—they just weren’t sharing them consistently.

Vector’s LinkedIn presence was ghosting its own potential… until Jess built a system that turned sporadic founder inspiration into a pipeline-generating content machine.

Hear how Jess transformed Josh and Nick’s raw thoughts into LinkedIn gold. And used AI to multiply their genius without losing their unique voices to bot-speak.

Spoiler: Josh might be an influencer now. Sort of.

Get to the good stuff:

[00:00] Jess gently suggests more LinkedIn posting. Josh’s response? “Ain’t nobody got time for that.”

[00:20] Josh admits that Jess pushed founder content from day one—and it’s now one of Vector’s biggest pipeline drivers.

[00:45] Jess explains why founder POV matters. It builds trust, credibility, and actual conversions.

[01:30] The old way? A one-way ticket to Ghost Town. The new way? A repeatable, scalable system that’s genuine and authentic.

[03:15] Jess reveals step one in her chaos-to-content playbook: using AI (Claude) to extract the gold from Josh and Nick’s brain dumps.

[04:00] Step two? Feed that raw brilliance into Claude to shape the structure and tone-of-voice.

[06:10] Next comes the weekly content-mining ritual: 30 minutes of unscripted rambling that turns out to be a goldmine of high-performing content.

[08:22] Ditch Zoom, move to StreamYard or Riverside (or similar!) Jess and Josh consider why video quality matters more than you think.

[09:19] Claude plays content editor (with a little help from Descript), restructuring messy thoughts into tight, engaging stories.

[12:39] “Wait… did I write this?” When AI-generated posts sound exactly like you, it’s weird but also kinda magical.

[13:30] Turns out it only takes 4 hours a week to create 4–5 solid posts for two founders. No burnout, no excuses.

[15:37] Jess cracked the content code: build a voice that sounds human, and humans will actually listen. Josh is into it—and honestly? You will be too.

[15:50] Josh reflects on the impact of Vector’s outbreak content—from product demos quadrupling to elevated partnerships where top brands want to be associated with Vector.

[17:20] Time for some measurement and optimization. Jess wants to review the top performers, study the hooks, and find the topics that resonate... then make the system work even harder.

[19:22] Josh thanks Jess for making him an influencer… kinda.

[19:37] Jess and Josh drop some love for marketers who are trying their best, even when they feel invisible.

[25:14] Josh shares how he’s learned to ditch performative content, and how audiences can smell fake from a mile away.

This Meeting Could’ve Been a Podcast is a Vector production.

Filmed at the Sweet Fish Creator House in Orlando, FL.

Editing by Handy Man Edit.

Music by Peter McIsaac Music.