Why I Started This
Notes from someone who keeps showing up before the playbook exists.
Why I Started This
I have been on the leading edge twice in my career, and both times I did not fully recognize it until I was already deep in the work.
The first time was 2006. I was employee number four at what became the first social media marketing agency in the United States. Nobody had a playbook. The platforms were months old. We were figuring out what marketing even meant in a world where the audience could talk back. It was uncomfortable and exciting in equal measure, and the people who leaned into it came out the other side knowing something the rest of the industry was still catching up to.
The second time was 2024. I was building the go-to-market operation at an AI platform inside one of the most regulated industries in the country. Again, no playbook. The tools were changing faster than the strategies. The terminology was still being invented. And the gap between what the technology could do and what most organizations understood about it was enormous.
That gap is where I have always done my best work.
This publication is my attempt to think out loud about what it means to lead marketing and revenue teams through moments like this one. Not from the other side of it, with the clean retrospective and the tidy lessons. From inside it, while the ground is still shifting.
I am not here to tell you I have the answers. I have field notes. Observations from building things that did not exist before, in conditions that did not come with instructions. Some of those observations will be about AI and go-to-market. Some will be about leadership, about operating with limited resources, about what changes when the rules change faster than the teams. All of it will be honest about what I know and what I am still figuring out.
Here is what you can expect. One post per week, sometimes more. No paywalls, at least for now. Writing that tries to be useful to people who are building, leading, and operating, not just observing. I will share frameworks when I have them, questions when I do not, and the occasional thing I got wrong, because that is usually where the interesting part is.
If you are a marketing leader, a GTM operator, or someone trying to navigate what AI actually means for how you build and run a revenue function, I think you will find something worth your time here.
If that sounds like you, subscribe. The next post is already written and it is one I am proud of.
Welcome to Field Notes from the Leading Edge.