Eric Boggs 🐏

“Hey Drew, I can’t keep up with all the AI stuff; it’s just overwhelming,” shared a CMO at a $450mil tech company. The other Huddlers were relieved to hear they weren’t alone. A fascinating discussion ensued as these CMOs shared what they know, what they don’t, and how they’re sorting through the myriad of options. Here are some of their questions and an aggregation of the best answers. How are B2B CMOs using GenAI right now? Most CMOs admit they are still in the early days of GenAI adoption. Most don’t have a GenAI strategy. Most are creating content more efficiently. For example, those creating podcasts are doing so 5-10x faster by recording, editing, and publishing with just one person using Descript. How do we get beyond the “go play” and “dabbling” stage? Strategy before tools. This means identifying the problems you want to solve, which, when solved, would have the most significant impact on the business. For example, you may need to translate and route hundreds of digital ads into fifty different languages multiple times per year for multiple ad platforms. That’s a lot of variations and the perfect labor-intensive task at which GenAI excels. Benchmark your time sucks. Ideally, your team will be able to benchmark the current workflows for the most time-consuming projects. Some of these projects can be streamlined easily with one or more existing tools (like the podcast example). Focus on a few of these initially to record some quick wins. Isolate the big wins: Others may require more complex solutions with API integrations – stuff that you used to have to get IT help with but can now solve with the guidance of AI. You’ll want to create a matrix (potential value, time to solution, complexity of solution) to help shape your priorities. Training before licenses. Getting licenses for everyone on your team sounds like a great idea until you realize adoption is not universal. Giving them the tool alone does not improve productivity. Training your team together with some specific usage expectations will move things forward. Then, gather monthly to share problems solved and unsolved. Given the speed at which these tools evolve, expect to do training 2-3x per year. (Ping me for a list of trainers). How important is it that CMOs use these tools themselves? It’s imperative. First, every leader should have a folder on their phone's home page with at least 3 LLMs (I have the paid versions of ChatGPT and Claude and the free version of Perplexity). There’s no reason you shouldn’t use these tools multiple times a day to prepare for meetings, think through your ideas, and investigate something personal. Learn the basics of prompting. Better yet, become a master prompter. Jeff Morgan, CMO of Elements, uses this prompt engineering framework: S = Specifications P = Process     A = Authenticity R = Rules & Regulation K = KPIs See comments for the link to the CMO Huddles Studio episode in which Jeff details SPARK. How are you keeping up?

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If you haven’t tried ChatGPT Deep Search, do it today.  Let this be the one new thing you try today. This feature is quietly massive. It is the kind of insight marketers used to pay agencies for. Now? It’s one smart prompt away. It gives you deep insights into whatever you need - while you’re working on something else. Ask it to: → Analyze your product’s online presence → Research sentiment around a competitor → Dig into how people talk about your category, pain points, and tools Here’s a sample prompt to get you started: “Conduct an in-depth analysis of user-generated discussions on [topic] across platforms like Reddit, Quora, and other relevant forums. Focus on key topics, user sentiments, pain points, frequently asked questions, related interests, and tools mentioned by the audience. Additionally, identify influencers and thought leaders, preferred content formats, and regional variations in discussions. Provide a comprehensive report with findings, supported by relevant data and examples.” Let it run for 10–15 minutes. Come back to a full research report.

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Good founders guess what success looks like. Great leaders make it obvious. Every leader has a unique way of leading a high-performing team. At Studio Grow, we've opted for radical transparency. Each team member can see how they're doing weekly, monthly, and quarterly, and that keeps us accountable to each other. Some people might think it's a little overboard. But being honest works best for us. Now, if you're leading a super team,  you don't need to do things the way that I do. But you do need to think about how to keep people engaged and motivated toward your collective goals. Here's how you can approach it: 1️⃣ Define what "great" looks like ↳ Define clear metrics for success in the role. ↳ Focus on outcomes, not just tasks. 2️⃣ Make performance visible ↳ Everyone raises their standards when they see the scoreboard. ↳ That's what consistently drives high performance. 3️⃣ Set a cadence of commitments ↳ Track weekly, monthly, and quarterly goals. ↳ Adjust strategy if people need support. 4️⃣ Document expectations and decisions ↳ This helps prevent confusion and excuses. ↳ Make sure key information is accessible to every team member. 5️⃣ Separate facts from stories ↳ Don't lead based on assumptions. ↳ If performance dips, get all the facts first. 6️⃣ Assign clear ownership ↳ One task. One owner. ↳ Clear ownership ensures the right people follow through. 7️⃣ Act fast on misses ↳ Unspoken problems won't solve themselves. ↳ Waiting for "the right time" only makes problems grow. Leading this way stops accountability from being daunting on both ends. Your team knows the standard that is expected of them, and you're able to get a clear picture of how you can step in to help if needed. That's what keeps standards high across the board. Which one of these do you think is most important? P.S. For daily posts on leading high-performing teams, follow Lise Kuecker. And if y'all want to read more about what I've learned from building and exiting six businesses, sign up for my weekly newsletter, Growth Factor: bit.ly/Growth_Factor ♻️ Repost to share this with folks who'd appreciate it.

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"Sell the alpha, not the feature": The enterprise sales playbook for $1M to $10M ARR with Jen Abel Jen is GM of Enterprise at State Affairs, co-founder JJELLYFISH, and one of the sharpest minds I've ever met on all things enterprise sales. In this follow-up to our first chat two years ago (covering the founder-led sales zero to $1M phase), we focus on what founders need to know to grow from $1M to $10M ARR. We discuss: 🔸 The dangers of pricing your product $10K-$20K 🔸 Why tier-1 logos counterintuitively make the best early customers 🔸 Why the “mid-market” doesn’t exist 🔸 How to find and work with design partners 🔸 Why you need to vision-cast instead of problem-solve 🔸 Why services are the fastest way to get your foot in the door with enterprises 🔸 When to hire your first salesperson and what profile to look for 🔸 Much more Listen now 👇 • YouTube: https://lnkd.in/g3WrxpEE • Spotify: https://lnkd.in/gCQ6q8P8 • Apple: https://lnkd.in/g8Ca5JuY Thank you to our wonderful sponsors for supporting the podcast: 🏆 WorkOS — Modern identity platform for B2B SaaS, free up to 1 million MAUs: https://workos.com/lenny 🏆 Lovable — Build apps by simply chatting with AI: https://lovable.dev/ 🏆 Coda — The all-in-one collaborative workspace: https://coda.io/lenny

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Turning $10M into $300M isn’t luck it’s leverage, timing, and vision. That’s a 30x return. In public markets, it’s a $1 options play hitting $30. In venture, it’s backing the right founder before the world even knows their name. But here’s the truth, if your fund looks like 2005 and sounds like 1985, don’t expect 2045 to bet on you. The future of capital is culture-informed. Globally minded. Risk-adjusted and narrative-driven. Founders care who’s backing them. LPs care where their name is stamped. Relevance is the new alpha. If you’ve already made money, now it’s about multiplying it with meaning.

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Gemini just got a cart. ChatGPT still doesn’t. Google and Walmart quietly launched something that’s not just smart, it’s shoppable. Inside Gemini, you can now discover products, build a basket, and head straight to checkout. No redirects. No middleman tabs. That one move pulls the assistant into the transaction layer. And flips the script on who owns the last click. Meanwhile, OpenAI had the early lead with ChatGPT’s plug-ins and brand beta tools. But Walmart just decided to play both sides. It’s now integrated with both Gemini and OpenAI. The platform war has officially become a protocol war. The magic phrase? Universal Commerce Protocol. Google’s new framework standardizes how AI agents talk to retailers. From discovery to fulfillment. And it’s not just Walmart. Ant International, Shopify, Stripe, Instacart, and others are circling the same format. So yeah. This isn’t a chatbot update. It’s a new distribution layer for retail. 🧠 Implications for brands and operators: 🗺️ Expect AI assistants to replace landing pages They’ll decide what to show, not search engines or social feeds 📦 Product data gets political Only the cleanest, richest SKUs win shelf space in a conversational UI ⏳ Time-to-cart compression is real Gemini skips the classic funnel. It’s intent → interaction → transaction 🧮 Measurement is about to break How do you track an order that starts inside an AI and never hits your PDP? ⚖️ Marketplace parity will shift If Amazon’s not integrated into the agent, you’re not getting suggested. Period. This isn’t just about who shows up in the assistant. It’s about who becomes the assistant. #ecommerce #dtc #marketplaces #aiagents #retailtech

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Founders! Don't underestimate the power of a good "forwardable email". You want people to help make intros on your behalf...so be thoughtful and strategic about the content and format of your email. Use bullet points. Stick to the top 3-5 points an investor would get most excited about. Make sure you have one sentence that clearly answers: "What does this company do?" Don't make them dig for it! Have a clear ask at the end. Keep it short and make it concise. And double check formatting, spelling, font colors, etc... *Send!*

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Most creators think they need a content calendar or ChatGPT scripts to grow. But those are just surface-level tactics. They’re publishing consistently...but saying nothing. No clear offer. No bold message. No proof. No system. That’s why the audience doesn’t convert....and authority doesn’t stick. What actually builds authority (and revenue)? A system that focuses on the fundamentals: Here’s My 4-part Authority Flywheel: 1. Clear Offer – Know exactly what you’re selling and to whom. 2. Bold Message – Say what others are scared to. Polarize. Stand out. 3. Proof of Results – Show wins. Testimonials. Numbers. Your story. 4. Weekly System – Build repeatable posts that reinforce all 3 above. (This is the system I’ve used to go from 3k → 75k followers and $7k+ in digital sales with zero ads.) The real leverage is in repeating your own framework...loudly and consistently. 👉 Want help to build a content strategy for your brand/service? Book a 1:1 session with me (link in my featured section). Let’s build, step-by-step

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The cUAS Market Just Hit Escape Velocity. $14.66B by 2034. 24.7% CAGR. Market Research Future dropped the numbers. $1.61B today. $14.66B in ten years. That's not growth. That's an explosion. Why? Lasers and electronic systems now dominate 60% of the market. Cost per kill dropped from $30,000 (traditional interceptors) to $5 (directed energy). When you can defeat a $200 drone for less than a cup of coffee, the economics flip. The fragmentation is staggering. 500+ companies building RF/Wi-Fi jammers. From startups to billion-dollar conglomerates. Low barriers to entry mean everyone's competing. And innovating. Annual investment exceeds $1B globally. Conservative estimate. • U.S. DoD: $3.1B in FY2026 for cUAS • NATO/EU: $500M+ for Ukraine scaling • Private sector: Another $500M in VC and R&D Three technologies dominate. • Lasers (IPG Photonics CROSSBOW, UK DragonFire) • RF jammers (Dedrone, DroneShield, SRC) • AI detection (autonomous targeting, swarm prediction) Regional breakdown shows the shift. North America leads (45% share) but Asia-Pacific grows fastest (29% CAGR). China and India aren't waiting for perfect solutions. The strategic reality? Ukraine proved drones are the new artillery. 2M built in 2024. 5M planned for 2025. Every major conflict will be a drone conflict. Current needs. Arctic-rated components, AI edge processors, non-Chinese supply chains. If it defeats swarms at -40°F, they're buying. The market's speaking. Are you listening?

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The new frontiers of search are all AEO-adjacent. A few interesting signals we've been tracking: Investors are pouring money into AEO tool builders. Last month, Profound closed a $20M Series A (Kleiner Perkins). Athena pulled in a $2.2M seed. Scrunch raised $4M from Mayfield. And you can bet dozens of other players are quietly raising as well. Nearly every tool shares one core function: Tracking whether your brand actually appears in AI-generated answers. Some of these platforms now measure distribution of answers (since LLMs give different outputs every time you ask the same question). Others specialize by audience, like Scrunch focusing purely on developers. But there’s still a glaring gap: Question Research → Which questions matter most for your brand to show up in? Optimization → Once you know, how do you improve your presence in those answers? No tool does these yet. Whoever solves them unlocks a huge advantage.

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Decreasing a website’s load time by 1 sec could add $1.37M/yr in sales. So while AI and templates let you build things fast and cheap, they cost your business a literal fortune. Here’s the breakdown: Page load speeds are commonly measured as FCP (First Contentful Paint) and LCP (Largest Contentful Paint). The 2024 implementation of Google Core Web Vitals turned speed into a make-or-break metric. // Speed impacts SEO Sites have a 2.5 sec LCP threshold before Google penalizes them in search results. (Source: Google Search Central) // Speed impacts ad costs Google Ads penalizes slow sites through Quality Score. (Google Ads documentation) Poor performers pay up to 400% more per click than optimized competitors. (ClickExpose) // Speed impacts conversion rates Multiple studies show every second of load time costs 4.42% in conversions. (Hubspot/Portent) Amazon calculated that every 100 milliseconds of latency costs them 1% of sales. (Conductor/Amazon case study) That's $3.8 billion per year for them. So… How slow are the most popular AI-powered web-building tools? Google has a tool you can use to check. It’s called PageSpeed Insights. I ran the largest AI builder’s own demos through it as I wrote this. (Remember, 2.5 sec LCP is the minimum threshold):  // Durable ai - 3.9 sec FCP and 4.4 sec LCP  // Builder io - 5.8 sec FCP and 14.0 sec LCP // GoDaddy AI - 2.7 sec FCP and 3.5 sec LCP Popular template builders performed marginally better, but still failed. In a fact-checked test by Cybernews: // Wix - 3.3 sec FCP and 6.8 sec LCP  // Squarespace - 3.3 sec FCP and 3.6 sec LCP And for context… Our own site (with all of our graphics and animations): // TECHYSCOUTS - 0.3 sec FCP and 0.9 sec LCP How would 1 second impact your business?  I’ll put some math in the comments to show you…

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Right now, acquirers are studying your market. They're mapping every player in your category. And most have no idea it's happening: I learned this firsthand while building Bleacher Report. While we were heads down building... Media giants analyzed every move we made. They tracked our digital signals: Search rankings, social engagement, and content velocity. This invisible scorecard determined everything. At Bleacher Report, we saw an opening others missed. ESPN focused on professional journalists. We planted our flag in fan-driven content instead. Everyone said we were crazy. That decision was worth $200 million. We didn't just pick a different lane - we created one. By 2012, we had tens of millions of monthly users choosing our fan perspectives over polished ESPN articles. Here's the framework for owning your category: 1. Map competitor positions using actual data 2. Find gaps where nobody's planted a flag 3. Align that gap with growing demand 4. Commit fully without hedging 5. Defend your position Most founders skip steps 1 and 2 entirely. The biggest mistake: trying to be everything to everyone. Winners pick one lane and dominate it completely. Acquirers pay massive premiums for clear category leaders. After Bleacher Report, I repeated this at Inverse. Found another unclaimed category: science meets pop culture. Within 2 years: 30+ million monthly unique visitors. Plant your flag before others notice the opportunity. Acquirers are currently mapping your category. If you're not deliberately positioning yourself, you're already losing. I spent years deconstructing what made our category positioning work. Now I help founders claim their categories before competitors wake up to the opportunity.

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This clip is valuable but I realized I misspoke. Or rather left some critical things out. I enjoyed speaking with 🏢 Stash Geleszinski CCIM on his podcast recently. Thanks again for having me on Stash. Always great to connect with you. We spoke about AI, content, distribution and lessons from building a business from 0. In this clip I was covering the importance of distribution as a complement to great content. That's true. But I realize now my statement was misleading. I made it seem that content quality wasn't important as long as the distribution is there. That's not true. Of course, the more targeted the distribution is the greater room for error you have. But without great content, distribution on social is a waste of money. Additionally even with great content, distribution could be a waste of money if its cost is not reflective of its positioning toward your ICP. This is our core principle at our company. The jargon in our about section reads: "In general we believe the future of content marketing lies in cost-effectiveness, not gross reach. Intent (with content and distribution) remains our core focus..." So to summarize: 1. As content becomes more saturated, underpriced channels of distribution will become increasingly valuable to be seen. 2. On that same vein, the quality of the average post will decrease leaving a vacuum for quality content to thrive. These skills will become more important than ever. This is irrespective of AI although that will be a contributing factor to this as well. What I was trying to go for with this clip was that as social grows, reach becomes commoditized as algorithms become saturated. Therefore it's difficult to gain reach on the backs of great content alone. That's true. But it's also true that distribution channels inherently become less targeted (on average). Hence my point about cost-effectiveness and why I feel this was misleading. I find podcasts valuable to think through things and then re-watch them like game film to see where I can be better. So thanks again Stash - Was a pleasure.

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Sprouty raised a $550k seed round from AltaIR Capital to bring evidence‑based, AI‑powered parenting support to more families worldwide. The app currently helps parents navigate the first two years of their child's life, offering insights, personalized recommendations and exercises during the most demanding phase of parenting. The team built Sprouty from real experience. They bootstrapped the product to 1.7 million families across North America, Europe, Australia, and Latin America. All of that growth came from a simple idea executed well: give parents clarity, calm, and one trusted place for support. Sprouty's opportunity is clear. AI is creating a new wave in consumer products where personalization drives usefulness, stickiness, and far better unit economics. On top of that, the parenting market renews itself every day, and the need for reliable guidance is universal. But the real reason we invested is the team. They're focused, deeply committed, and they've built a strong product with limited resources. More importantly, they know exactly where they're going next. I'm glad to support founders who execute with this level of clarity and discipline. Congratulations to Dmitrii Rumbeshta and the team on this milestone!

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Most agencies depend on referrals or the occasional inbound lead. Unfortunately, it’s unpredictable and keeps growth out of your control. That’s why we built something different: Account-Based Podcasting. In this Scrappy ABM episode, I sat down with Joseph Lewin, our Head of Podcast Strategy, to break down exactly how we generated $2M in revenue in two years from a podcast that started with zero listeners. We walk through the 3 questions every agency should answer before launching a show and a 30-day framework for turning guest outreach into pipeline.
 Grab the tips: https://lnkd.in/gx5xH5xk

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