Payroll isn’t exactly what you’d call exciting—so how do you take a - let’s face it - rather boring topic like that and make it relatable, engaging, and even funny enough to capture an audience’s attention?

Joining us today is Jason Ing, Chief Marketing Officer at Gusto, a leading platform that provides small and medium-sized businesses with payroll, health insurance, HR tools, and more to empower their teams both locally and internationally. Jason has spearheaded innovative campaigns like the recent "Choose Gusto" campaign, proving that even the most unexpected topics can connect deeply with audiences.

RESOURCES

Gusto: https://www.gusto.com  Don't Miss MAICON 2025, October 14-16 in Cleveland - the event bringing together the brights minds and leading voices in AI. Use Code AGILE150 for $150 off registration. Go here to register: https://bit.ly/agile150 Connect with Greg on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/gregkihlstrom Don't miss a thing: get the latest episodes, sign up for our newsletter and more: https://www.theagilebrand.show Check out The Agile Brand Guide website with articles, insights, and Martechipedia, the wiki for marketing technology: https://www.agilebrandguide.com The Agile Brand podcast is brought to you by TEKsystems. Learn more here: https://www.teksystems.com/versionnextnow The Agile Brand is produced by Missing Link—a Latina-owned strategy-driven, creatively fueled production co-op. From ideation to creation, they craft human connections through intelligent, engaging and informative content. https://www.missinglink.company

Is your brand’s story building trust—or are you leaving credibility to chance? Our guest today is Karla Jo Helms, Founder and CEO of JOTO PR Disruptors™. Karla is an expert in transforming B2B brands through innovative public relations strategies. With a career dedicated to building trust, managing crises, and leveraging data-driven storytelling, she has helped countless businesses scale and thrive. She’s here to share her insights on harnessing the power of PR to elevate B2B brands, even in the most challenging environments.

Karla Jo Helms, Chief Evangelist and Anti-PR Strategist  Karla Jo learned firsthand how unforgiving business can be when millions of dollars are on the line—and how the control of public opinion often determines whether one company is happily chosen, or another is brutally rejected.   Being an alumni of crisis management, Karla Jo has worked with litigation attorneys, private investigators and the media to help restore companies of goodwill back into the good graces of public opinion—Karla Jo operates on the ethic of getting it right the first time, not relying on second chances and doing what it takes to excel.   Karla Jo has patterned her agency on the perfect balance of crisis management, entrepreneurial insight and proven public relations experience. Helms speaks globally on public relations, how the PR industry itself has lost its way and how, in the right hands, corporations can harness the power of PR to drive markets and impact market perception.

Resources Joto PR Disruptors™ website: https://jotopr.com/  The B2B Agility podcast website: https://www.b2bagility.com Sign up for The Agile Brand newsletter here: https://www.gregkihlstrom.com Get the latest news and updates on LinkedIn here: https://www.linkedin.com/showcase/b2b-agility/ Check out The Agile Brand Guide website with articles, insights, and Martechipedia, the wiki for marketing technology: https://www.agilebrandguide.com

As small and medium-sized businesses navigate economic uncertainty, here’s a question to consider: Are your payment systems an asset that drives growth, or are they just another expense?

Today, we’re joined by Brian Goudie, CEO of Aurora Payments. With nearly 30 years in the payments industry, Brian has guided Aurora to serve over 27,000 merchants, equipping small and medium-sized businesses with the tools they need to thrive in changing economic climates. Known for his community-centric approach to fintech, Brian is here to share insights into how the right payment systems can support business resilience and growth.

Resources Aurora Payments website: https://risewithaurora.com/  The B2B Agility podcast website: https://www.b2bagility.com Sign up for The Agile Brand newsletter here: https://www.gregkihlstrom.com Get the latest news and updates on LinkedIn here: https://www.linkedin.com/showcase/b2b-agility/ Check out The Agile Brand Guide website with articles, insights, and Martechipedia, the wiki for marketing technology: https://www.agilebrandguide.com

In a world of fleeting attention spans and oversaturated markets, how can brands truly stand out and build loyalty that lasts—even when it comes to something as overlooked as board meetings?

Today, we’re joined by Allison Capaldi, Senior Content Manager at Zeck, and Robert Wolfe, Founder of Zeck. Together, they’ve built not one but three successful brands, including Moosejaw, which sold to Walmart, and CrowdRise, which sold to GoFundMe. Now, they’re revolutionizing the way companies approach board meetings with Zeck, while continuing to push the boundaries of what it means to build a memorable and lasting brand. Allison will share her innovative "Layer Cake Approach" to branding, and we’ll hear from both Allison and Robert about their unique partnership and insights on building iconic brands.

About Allison Capaldi

Allison Capaldi started her passion for brand and brand building in 2002 when she was one of the first employees at Moosejaw Mountaineering, founded by Robert and Jeffrey Wolfe. From that moment on, the world of brand building was in her blood. From a small back office carved out of a retail store where they’d put customers on hold to say ‘hold on let us check in our warehouse’ (spoiler, there was no warehouse), to being acquired by Walmart and more recently, by Dick’s Sporting Goods, it was the maniacal pressing of the brand that made it all work.An irreverent sense of humor, a fanatical approach to customer service and a cult following around the globe helped to create a brand full of authenticity well before that was a buzzword. Following the Wolfe brother’s next endeavor (along with award-winning actor Edward Norton), Allison landed at CrowdRise, which eventually became the largest fundraising platform for non-profits in the United States. Kind of cool. Making giving back notable, cool and fun was the goal and it worked. CrowdRise was eventually acquired by GoFundMe. Fast-forward to business number three of Robert, Jeffrey and Edward and Zeck was born. Out of real life experience of now having sat on multiple boards and dealing with multiple boards, everyone realized there was a real problem. First of all, board meetings were miserable - we’re solving that. The brand is right back to taking center stage on a problem that is extremely corporate and lackluster. And, it’s working again. Allison calls her branding approach the Layer Cake Approach and can talk about it until she’s blue in the face. It’s not about creating a brand that looks good and says the right thing - it’s about the layers. The details. The miniscule fine print on the receipt that actually is engaging - and for the 2% of people who read it, they’re yours forever. A graduate from the University of Michigan, Go Blue, she’s devoted her working life to these brands. She’s also a decent singer, brings her own hot sauce to her sister-in-law’s house and can’t go to bed unless the kitchen is clean. That’s all. About Robert Wolfe Robert Wolfe is the founder and former CEO of Moosejaw and CrowdRise. More recently, Robert started Zeck. Zeck is entirely reimagining the miserable board meeting process Robert started Moosejaw in a tiny shop when he had really big hair. Moosejaw’s aim was to make retail and e-commerce fun and engaging and they also pressed their own Moosejaw brand, which became pretty cultish, in a good way. Despite being incredibly foolish, Moosejaw was acquired by Walmart. No one can believe it but it’s true. Robert wanted to make sure he had some sort of decent impact, so along with his smarter brother, Jeffrey, and actor and philanthropist, Edward Norton, he launched CrowdRise. CrowdRise focused on making giving back notable, cool and social. CrowdRise eventually became the largest fundraising platform four non-profits in the US and was acquired by GoFundMe. After spending time as an operator running board meetings and, on the other side of the table, as a board member, Robert launched Zeck to change the process entirely. Zeck transforms the dynamic between the leadership team and the board, making board meetings strategic and forward thinking. Never again will you get into a board meeting to have a deck that you already read, read back to you. Such a waste of time. Robert has no interests or hobbies and is a terrible sleeper. He has been an advisor to several companies and is faster than Usain Bolt at replying to any message. But, publicly Robert only boasts about his Honorable Mention for ‘Best Breakdancer Using an Old School Cardboard Mat’. Also, ‘for’ is spelled incorrectly above on purpose. 

Resources Zeck website: https://www.zeck.com The B2B Agility podcast website: https://www.b2bagility.com Sign up for The Agile Brand newsletter here: https://www.gregkihlstrom.com Get the latest news and updates on LinkedIn here: https://www.linkedin.com/showcase/b2b-agility/ Check out The Agile Brand Guide website with articles, insights, and Martechipedia, the wiki for marketing technology: https://www.agilebrandguide.com

Is your marketing operations team set up to be a strategic driver of growth, or are they stuck managing tools and putting out fires?

Today, we’re joined by Mike Rizzo, Founder of MarketingOps.com. Mike is here to discuss the 2024 State of the Marketing Operations Professional Report, which is based on insights from over 600 MOps professionals. This report sheds light on the evolving role of marketing ops, the challenges they face, and the opportunities for B2B leaders to elevate the function as a strategic driver of growth.

About Mike Rizzo

Mike Rizzo, is the Community-led Founder of MO Pros and MarketingOps.com. With his extensive background in marketing Mike helped build, launch, manage and optimize Mavenlink's first-ever user community and Client Advisory Board programs. He is the founder of MO Pros - The Community for Marketing Operations Pros that is growing with an average of 110 new members every month. He is also the co-host of the podcast called Ops Cast by MO Pros. As the founder of MarketingOps.com, Mike is taking a community-led approach to building resources that are purpose-built for MO Pros.

Resources

MarketingOps website: https://www.marketingops.com

The B2B Agility podcast website: https://www.b2bagility.com

Sign up for The Agile Brand newsletter here: https://www.gregkihlstrom.com

Get the latest news and updates on LinkedIn here: https://www.linkedin.com/showcase/b2b-agility/

Check out The Agile Brand Guide website with articles, insights, and Martechipedia, the wiki for marketing technology: https://www.agilebrandguide.com

In a world where sales cycles are getting longer, what’s holding your business back from reaching the right person at the right time?

Today, we’re joined by Joshua Garrison, Vice President of Content Marketing and Product Education at Apollo.io, a leading go-to-market platform used by millions of sales professionals and SMBs globally. Josh is not only a sales leader but also the author of the Amazon bestseller Outbound Sales, which shares the exact strategies, templates, and frameworks that helped Apollo.io achieve unicorn status and $100M ARR. With over 2.5K purchases in its first month, Josh’s book has become a must-read in the B2B sales community.

About Joshua Garrison

Joshua Garrison leads the content marketing and customer education teams at Apollo, the leading go-to-market (GTM) solution for sales and marketing teams.

A two-time founder, he has built and sold one company. He has led sales and marketing teams everywhere from tiny businesses to multi-billion dollar publicly traded companies. From that experience, Josh developed his “full-cycle selling” framework, a data-backed perspective on what works and what doesn’t.

As a third generation entrepreneur and career salesperson, he is passionate about helping people achieve their goals and master the art of sales. He lives in the San Francisco Bay Area with his wife, baby, and cats.

Resources

Apollo website: https://www.apollo.io

The B2B Agility podcast website: https://www.b2bagility.com

Sign up for The Agile Brand newsletter here: https://www.gregkihlstrom.com

Get the latest news and updates on LinkedIn here: https://www.linkedin.com/showcase/b2b-agility/

Check out The Agile Brand Guide website with articles, insights, and Martechipedia, the wiki for marketing technology: https://www.agilebrandguide.com

How aligned is your organization when it comes to driving growth—are internal silos or misaligned goals or expectations holding you back from reaching your full potential?

Today, we’re joined by Robert Chatwani, President and General Manager of Growth at Docusign.

Before joining DocuSign in 2023, Robert was the Chief Marketing Officer at Atlassian, where he helped scale the business to nearly $3 billion in revenue. He also held leadership roles at eBay, where his teams supported $35 billion in annual trading volume.

About Robert Chatwani

Robert Chatwani leads Docusign's Marketing & Growth organization to scale its digital strategy across marketing, product, technology and sales and is responsible for Docusign's product-led growth and execution. He also leads all CMO functions, including product marketing, field marketing, communications and public relations, content, creative and brand strategy.

Before joining Docusign in 2023, Robert served as Chief Marketing Officer at Atlassian, where he oversaw teams across marketing, brand, communications and data science, and worked with the product organization to help scale Atlassian's business to nearly $3B in revenue. Prior to Atlassian, Robert served as Chief Revenue & Marketing Officer for social e-commerce platform Spring. He also spent more than a decade at eBay, ending his tenure as CMO of North America where his teams supported $35 billion in annual trading volume.

Resources

Docusign website: https://www.docusign.com

The B2B Agility podcast website: https://www.b2bagility.com

Sign up for The Agile Brand newsletter here: https://www.gregkihlstrom.com

Get the latest news and updates on LinkedIn here: https://www.linkedin.com/showcase/b2b-agility/

Check out The Agile Brand Guide website with articles, insights, and Martechipedia, the wiki for marketing technology: https://www.agilebrandguide.com

Are your landing pages truly working for you, or are you caught in a cycle of driving traffic to pages that fail to convert effectively?

Today, we’re excited to welcome Sahil Patel, CEO of Spiralyze. Sahil leads a company that has optimized over 34,000 landing pages for SaaS leaders using insights from more than 130,000 A/B tests. With his deep expertise, he’s here to share actionable strategies for improving conversion rates, debunking common testing myths, and escaping the trap of underperforming landing pages.



About Sahil Patel

Sahil Patel is the CEO of Spiralyze, a leading company specializing in predictive CRO and data-driven landing page optimization. Prior to Spiralyze, Sahil was the CEO and founder of ER Express, a successful SaaS company, which he led for 11 years before its sale in 2021.

With over 23 years of experience in sales, operations, software development, and finance, Sahil also holds an undergraduate degree from Emory University and an MBA from Harvard.

Throughout his career, Sahil has worked with renowned organizations such as Netflix, Podium, NBA, Lowe’s, Harvard University, and Gusto. He specializes in landing page conversion optimization, running over 130,000 A/B tests for clients, and offers unique insights into best practices for efficient A/B testing.

Sahil is based in Atlanta, where he lives with his wife and two daughters, and pursues his passion for music through his Rush cover band.

Resources

Spiralyze website: https://www.spiralyze.com

The B2B Agility podcast website: https://www.b2bagility.com

Sign up for The Agile Brand newsletter here: https://www.gregkihlstrom.com

Get the latest news and updates on LinkedIn here: https://www.linkedin.com/showcase/b2b-agility/

Check out The Agile Brand Guide website with articles, insights, and Martechipedia, the wiki for marketing technology: https://www.agilebrandguide.com

Is your B2B e-commerce content working as hard as it should be? In a rapidly evolving digital landscape, strong content creation and management could be the key to unlocking both customer engagement and business growth.

This was recorded live at Opticon 2024 in San Antonio, TX. Today we’re diving into the role of strong content creation and optimization in e-commerce with Ashlyn Fulton, Senior Digital Content Manager at D’Addario & Company, which has both B2B and D2C customers and operates in over 130 countries and has over 5,000 SKUs available online.

We’ll discuss the unique challenges of content for both D2C and B2B e-commerce, the impact of generative AI, and how platforms like Optimizely are shaping the future of e-commerce content management.

Resources

D'Addario website: https://www.daddario.com

Optimizely website: https://www.optimizely.com

The B2B Agility podcast website: https://www.b2bagility.com

Sign up for The Agile Brand newsletter here: https://www.gregkihlstrom.com

Get the latest news and updates on LinkedIn here: https://www.linkedin.com/showcase/b2b-agility/

Check out The Agile Brand Guide website with articles, insights, and Martechipedia, the wiki for marketing technology: https://www.agilebrandguide.com

Is your B2B buying experience stuck in the past? If you’re making your customers email for a quote while competitors offer seamless online purchasing, you could be losing the next generation of buyers.

Today we’re discussing the Amazonification of B2B commerce with Alex Sayyah, CEO of Aleran Software. We’ll dive into how B2B companies are adopting B2C principles in e-commerce and why Gen Z and Millennial buyers are pushing for a shift to seamless, online purchasing—even for complex products.

About Alex Sayyah

Alex Sayyah brings over 20 years of experience leading eCommerce, digital innovation, and revenue teams for global B2B and B2C brands.

As a strategic, data-driven and growth-focused executive, Alex lives by the mantra: push harder. With proven success creating strategic roadmaps that drive market development and expansion,

He has managed teams and revenue goals across the Americas, Europe, and Asia, and is exceptional at growing omni-channel marketing programs for online/offline businesses.

Alex has helped generate $130+ million dollars worth of digital revenue by correctly identifying the opportunity in direct download software industry trends, structuring a compelling suite of products for Consumers and Businesses, and building a marketing machine to capture the benefits.

Resources

Aleran website: https://www.aleran.com

The B2B Agility podcast website: https://www.b2bagility.com

Sign up for The Agile Brand newsletter here: https://www.gregkihlstrom.com

Get the latest news and updates on LinkedIn here: https://www.linkedin.com/showcase/b2b-agility/

Check out The Agile Brand Guide website with articles, insights, and Martechipedia, the wiki for marketing technology: https://www.agilebrandguide.com

To be truly successful with AI, capturing data is only the beginning. You need to understand and contextualize in terms of your business it to truly harness the power of artificial intelligence and get real returns.

Today we’re going to talk about going beyond the hype of AI to get real, tangible results and unlock benefits that approaching data in the right way can enable.

To help me discuss this topic, I’d like to welcome Emily He, CMO at Gong.

About Emily He

Emily He is the Chief Marketing Officer at Gong. Ms. He leads all aspects of Gong’s marketing strategy and execution, helping the company accelerate its Revenue Intelligence category leadership. She has over 20 years of experience leading global GTM functions at Fortune 100 enterprises and high-growth technology startups.

Ms. He joined Gong from Microsoft where she was the Corporate Vice President of Business Applications, responsible for leading global marketing strategy and driving business growth for products and services targeting line-of-business buyers, including Microsoft Dynamics 365 and the Power Platform. At Microsoft, she oversaw marketing strategy for Microsoft Copilot for business functions, including sales, marketing, service, finance, supply chain, and IT. Prior to Microsoft, Ms. He was the Senior Vice President of Global Marketing at Oracle. Ms. He was also the CMO of DoubleDutch (now Cvent) and the CMO of Saba Software (now Cornerstone Ondemand).

Resources

Gong website: https://www.gong.io/

The B2B Agility podcast website: https://www.b2bagility.com

Sign up for The Agile Brand newsletter here: https://www.gregkihlstrom.com 

Get the latest news and updates on LinkedIn here: https://www.linkedin.com/showcase/b2b-agility/

Check out The Agile Brand Guide website with articles, insights, and Martechipedia, the wiki for marketing technology: https://www.agilebrandguide.com 

B2B Agility with Greg Kihlström is produced by Missing Link—a Latina-owned strategy-driven, creatively fueled production co-op. From ideation to creation, they craft human connections through intelligent, engaging and informative content. https://www.missinglink.company"""