What do Jack Daniel’s, Robert Service, and David Ogilvy have to do with founder branding? A conversation with Finn Thormeier about staying in character, staying on message, and building a senior audience without writing for the algorithm.
Salespeople run on emotion. Bruising renewal conversations can erode the conviction they need to win new business. A delicate reason to separate land from expand and renew—and why confronting the brutal facts doesn’t require everyone to take the same daily beating.
Could your salespeople pass an industry cocktail party test? Could your marketing copy? Inspired by the dogs in Terminator, I built an AI skill to flag writing that sounds like it came from an industry outsider.
Deny enough false rumors and you’ll eventually turn “no comment” into confirmation. Why companies need a consistent policy for responding to rumors—and why the time to adopt it is before you need it.
Most segment-strategy discussions involve seas of numbers scattered across slides, spreadsheets, and dashboards. Here’s a simple chart that puts the relevant data in one place so you can spend less time reconciling numbers and more time deciding where to invest, what to fix, and when to get out.
Everyone on the executive team is busy making plan and improving efficiency. But who is making sure you’re actually winning the market? Why CEOs need to track market share — even when the data is imperfect.
Categories emerge from markets, not blueprints. Why category design can distract startups from building a company—and why the best way to create a category is to go sell some software.
(Edited 8/5 with expectations for more changes coming.) I often tell founders to "test by doing," so in this post I'll be practicing what I preach. After nearly 20 years of publishing Kellblog for free, I'm introducing subscriptions. I'll start by
Good board minutes document decisions and process. AI notetakers capture deliberations, creating a second record that can undermine candor and increase legal exposure. Why no AI notetaker belongs in the boardroom—not yours, not the company’s, not anyone’s.
Smoothing metrics can hide the very problems operators and boards need to see. A worked example shows how a rolling churn rate delays a critical conversation by six months—and why the volatility is the point.
Introducing the Kellblog Companion, a new way to explore decades of posts by topic. Plus, why AI has changed my thinking about derivative works: the goal isn’t to recover lost traffic. It’s to keep reaching people.
A parody song and Levi’s ill-fated entry into suits illustrate a common mistake: listening to customers, then interpreting their words to fit the strategy you already wanted to pursue. Before deciding what they really meant, consider that they meant exactly what they said.