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Growth Is Not a Channel Problem. It’s a Behavior Design Problem — Here’s the System.

/ 6 minutes of reading

I recently revisited three books have been sitting on executive shelves for decades — Gladwell’s The Tipping Point, Godin’s Linchpin, and Cialdini’s Influence — and most business leaders have read at least one of them. The problem is they read them separately.  As I read through them again, I started to see parallels and …

Growth Is Not a Channel Problem. It’s a Behavior Design Problem — Here’s the System. Read More »

Your CMO Has a 14% Approval Rating. Here’s the Behavioral Science Behind Why — and What to Do About It.

/ 8 minutes of reading

There is a CMO identity crisis, but the crisis isn’t a marketing performance problem.  It’s a framing problem–and the fix starts with understanding how decisions are really made in the C-suite.   It is early May 2026. Q2 execution pressure is real, and boards are starting to ask the uncomfortable question: is the growth plan …

Your CMO Has a 14% Approval Rating. Here’s the Behavioral Science Behind Why — and What to Do About It. Read More »

Ambiguity Is the New Objection: What Tariff Uncertainty Is Doing to Your Buyers’ Brains — and How to Break the Paralysis

/ 7 minutes of reading

Your pipeline isn’t frozen because your product isn’t good enough. It’s frozen because your buyers’ brains are doing exactly what evolution designed them to do when the world feels unpredictable: nothing. Here’s the context. April 2026 opened with U.S. import tariffs having risen from roughly 2.2% at the end of 2024 to nearly 13% …

Ambiguity Is the New Objection: What Tariff Uncertainty Is Doing to Your Buyers’ Brains — and How to Break the Paralysis Read More »

Social Proof at Scale: Engineering Credibility for Mid-Market Growth

/ 8 minutes of reading

It is April 15, 2026. Tax Day. Q1 is officially in the rearview. And for most mid-market revenue teams, the question that’s dominating the next 90 days isn’t “how do we generate more leads?” It’s something harder, and more honest: “Why are qualified buyers still hesitating?” The answer is rarely your product. It’s belief. …

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Decision Fatigue in the Buyer’s Journey: The Executive’s Guide to Frictionless Sales

/ 7 minutes of reading

It is early April 2026. Q1 is closed. Q2 targets are freshly posted. And somewhere on your team, a smart rep is scratching their head wondering why a qualified buyer who seemed genuinely excited three weeks ago has suddenly gone quiet. The buyer is not uninterested. They are exhausted. Not physically—cognitively. And that distinction …

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The Endowment Effect in B2B: Why Your Customers Won’t Leave (Even When They Should)

/ 7 minutes of reading

It is April 1st. A day for pranks, tricks, and manufactured surprises. Here is the real joke hiding in most B2B boardrooms: leadership teams spend enormous energy trying to win new customers while quietly ignoring the behavioral science that keeps existing customers loyal, sticky, and growth-ready — even when a competitor is offering something …

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Think Like a Marketer, Talk Like a CEO

/ 7 minutes of reading

How to translate marketing into the numbers—and narratives—leadership will fund. It is mid-March 2026. Q1 is closing, Q2 plans are getting locked, and every leadership team is asking the same question in different ways: “Is this working—and what should we do next?” This is where marketing either becomes a growth engine… or gets treated …

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Revenue Architecture: Building Systems That Survive Leadership Transitions

/ 8 minutes of reading

This weekend, most of us lost an hour of sleep. The clocks jumped forward on March 8th, and for a few days, the rhythm feels slightly off—like the system didn’t get the memo. Revenue leadership transitions work exactly the same way. A sudden shift exposes whether your go-to-market engine runs on mechanics or on …

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RICH SMITH'S BlOG

Award winning Chief Marketing Officer, Founder, and Investor with a history of building profitable companies and top-tier brands for the financial services, fintech, data, martech, health care, insurance, and consumer financial products industries.  

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