Humans of Growth: Stories & Strategies Behind Business Growth & Business Development

Transforming LinkedIn Content into Sales Pipeline

What if your most powerful customer acquisition strategy wasn’t paid ads, cold email, or trade shows… but authentic LinkedIn content and a spaghetti-covered toddler?
In this episode of Humans of Growth, Aly Hathcock interviews Caleb Avery, founder and CEO of Tilled—a fast-growing Stripe alternative that helps SaaS platforms launch embedded payments and generate new revenue streams in weeks.
We dive into how Caleb built a high-converting marketing engine that:
Outperformed outbound sales through founder-led thought leadership
Created inbound demand with zero product—just pain point marketing
Scaled revenue while shrinking headcount by automating low-leverage work
Used build-week culture to unlock team-wide innovation and operational efficiency
Caleb also breaks down what’s working on LinkedIn in a sea of AI spam, why personal storytelling drives real pipeline, and how to turn marketing into a long-game growth multiplier—not just a cost center.
Topics covered include:• Product-led growth• Inbound marketing strategies• Founder branding on LinkedIn• B2B SaaS marketing• Vertical SaaS monetization• Demand generation vs lead gen• Culture-driven growth
Whether you're a startup founder, growth marketer, or B2B SaaS leader, this episode is packed with practical strategies to drive pipeline, retention, and revenue.----
RESOURCES:Find your dream marketing agency at PerissonNetwork.comLearn more about Tilled at tilled.com.
 

How to Build a Sales-Forward Marketing Strategy

In this episode of Humans of Growth, host Aly Hathcock sits down with Leah Keggi , Marketing Manager at Spearhead Global, one of the fastest-growing companies in spirits packaging and design.
With over a decade of experience in alcohol marketing, Leah has worked across beer, wine, and spirits—supporting everything from emerging CPG startups to legacy liquor brands. Now at Spearhead, she helps alcohol brands rethink their packaging not just as a product necessity, but as a powerful marketing and brand positioning tool.
We explore how the alcohol industry is contracting post-COVID, what that means for brands trying to scale, and how strategic packaging design can become a brand’s most powerful sales asset—especially when combined with omnichannel marketing, social media campaigns, and category-specific messaging.
You’ll also hear how Spearhead shifted their B2B messaging from "packaging supplier" to "brand partner"—resulting in higher engagement, stronger lead generation, and deeper customer loyalty. This episode is packed with insights for B2B marketers, CPG brand managers, alcohol marketing teams, and anyone navigating the intersection of sales enablement and brand storytelling.
In this episode, we cover...
The post-pandemic market contraction in alcohol and spirits
How to use packaging as a brand differentiator on the retail shelf
The psychology behind consumer buying decisions in wine & spirits
Why legacy brands often overestimate awareness
The role of color psychology and container shape in packaging design
Building a sales-forward marketing strategy that drives case velocity
Why marketers must “sell internally” to align with sales and leadership
Using LinkedIn marketing and thought leadership to humanize B2B
How brand storytelling beats feature-heavy messaging in B2B
Why attribution is broken—and how to market in a world of messy data
Balancing AI automation with the need for human connection
Lessons from building campaigns for stadiums and sports partnerships
The evolution of consumer behavior in the alcohol category
How smaller alcohol brands can justify investing in top-of-funnel content
Need help with marketing for your business? Check out PerissonNetwork.com to get connected to a top-tier marketing agency.Find Leah Keggi at LeahKeggi.com or on LinkedIn at https://www.linkedin.com/in/leahkeggi/Learn more about Spearhead Global over at spearheadglobal.com.

Domino Growth: From One House to a Vertically Integrated Brand

What happens when you lose everything in the 2008 crash?
You rebuild smarter.
In this episode of Humans of Growth, Jorge Vazquez, CEO of Greystone Investment Group, shares his raw, unfiltered journey from financial advisor to real estate mogul. We talk through the pivotal moment he had to choose between securities and social media, how he leveraged MySpace to kickstart his real estate career, and the painful but powerful lessons of losing 22 properties and starting over with $10K and a borrowed couch.
In this episode, you’ll learn:
Why most businesses fail to build resilience—and how Jorge created a recession-proof model
How social media forced him to pick a lane (and why it was the best decision he ever made)
The compounding power of property management and monthly cash flow
How Jorge uses his real estate business to fund a nonprofit teaching youth financial literacy
What it really takes to grow a vertically integrated real estate brand (without selling your soul to scale)
If you care about growth that lasts, you’ll walk away with lessons on grit, strategy, and staying grounded.
Helpful Resources:Want to learn more about real estate? Check out graystoneig.com or propertyprofitacademy.com
 
Want the SparkNotes to this episode? Check out this Domino Growth article on GraystoneIG.com
Need help with marketing? Schedule a free strategy session at perissonnetwork.com.

What Every SaaS Founder Should Know About Product-Led Marketing

What happens when a SaaS founder takes the chaos of everyday family life and turns it into a SaaS with a product-led growth engine? In this episode of Humans of Growth, host Aly Hathcock sits down with Nathaniel Robinson, CEO and founder of Trustworthy.
Together, they unpack how Trustworthy has grown through product-led growth (PLG) by focusing on user experience, referral loops, and genuine customer empathy. Nathaniel shares how his team leverages onboarding optimization, freemium strategy, and AI innovation to transform household chaos into clarity — all while creating organic, sustainable growth.
You’ll learn:
Why clarity and focus are the ultimate growth levers for startups.
Why shifting from free trials to freemium boosts conversion rates, customer lifetime value (CLV), and organic adoption
How AI-driven personalization, automation, and LLM-optimized content are redefining customer experience (CX) and reducing churn.
The power of referral marketing, network effects, and multi-user collaboration in a product-led viral loop.
Why marketing around life transitions beats traditional pain-point tactics.
And how product-led virality turns users into your most powerful marketing channel.
If you’re a founder, marketer, or growth strategist looking to understand how to scale through product-led marketing, this episode is for you.
If you’re a human, you need Trustworthy. Trustworthy is a secure, all-in-one Family Operating System that helps households organize, store, and share vital information — from legal documents and passwords to insurance, finances, and medical records — in one encrypted platform.
Visit trustworthy.com to get started for free.
Need marketing support? Head over to PerissonNetwork.com for a free strategy session.

When Reddit & Quora Become Your Growth Team

In this episode of Humans of Growth, host Aly Hathcock sits down with Sam Miller, CEO and co-founder of Kasheesh, a fintech app that lets users split purchases across multiple credit, debit, and gift cards.
What started with a real-life pain point and a single Reddit thread has grown into a seamless digital solution reshaping how Americans manage liquidity. But it didn’t come easy. From navigating skeptical investors and battling financial institutions to building SOC 2–compliant infrastructure and earning organic user trust, Sam shares how Kasheesh scaled... without spending a dime on ads.
You’ll learn:
✔ Why Kasheesh grew fast with zero paid marketing
✔ How Reddit and Quora fueled product-led growth
✔ What VCs and banks misunderstood about their customer base
✔ How SmartSplit (AI) helps users protect their credit score
✔ The role of internal culture, hiring, and sprint cycles in fast-moving product innovation
✔ Why financial literacy is core to Kasheesh growth strategy
Whether you're building a fintech product or trying to scale without performance marketing, this episode is a masterclass in customer-centric growth, scrappy GTM, and building trust through product.______________________RESOURCES:Get help finding the right marketing partner. Get help acquiring business funding.

What Makes You Different When Everyone Says the Same Thing?

We put clients first” is meaningless… unless you can prove it.In this episode of Humans of Growth, host Aly Hathcock sits down with Ben VerWys, founder of Fiduciary Financial Advisors (FFA)—a wealth management firm that has scaled to 40+ advisors without spending a dime on traditional marketing.
Ben shares the strategy behind FFA’s organic growth engine, built entirely on clear positioning, brand values, and referral-based momentum. Instead of flashy funnels or paid ads, Ben focused on building a value proposition that’s fact-based, legally enforced, and transparently client-first—in an industry where most messaging is vague and undifferentiated.
Whether you’re a founder, marketer, or scaling a professional services brand, this episode is a masterclass in how to turn your internal values into external growth.
You’ll Learn:
Why “we put clients first” is meaningless without proof
How to create a differentiated brand in a commoditized market
Why fee transparency and fiduciary-only models are winning
How FFA built an inbound growth engine with zero ad spend
The marketing power of operational decisions (not slogans)
Why most “top 10 firm” lists are SEO plays, not value indicators
How FFA turned tax planning into a scalable referral lever
Why advisor experience can be as important as client experience
The mindset shift that took Ben from reluctant founder to growth CEO
If you're ready to build a brand that grows through trust & differentiation, this episode is for you.Learn more about Fiduciary Financial Advisors at forfiduciary.com.
Need marketing support? Head over to PerissonNetwork.com for a free strategy session.

From Zero Awareness to Market Saturation in 12 Months

Can a brand go from total obscurity to industry recognition in just one year - without a huge ad budget or big marketing team?Ray Huang, Senior Director of Marketing at Canopy Connect, joins the show to unpack exactly how he did it.
When Ray joined Canopy Connect, the company was a 12-person insurtech startup with zero brand recognition, no real marketing infrastructure, and a fragmented market.Fast forward 12 months: they’d saturated their niche, dominated industry events, and flipped their cold-start problem into pipeline momentum.
In this deep-dive, Ray reveals his full B2B go-to-market strategy—how he prioritized brand awareness over bottom-funnel lead gen, why memes outperformed traditional creative, and how Facebook outpaced LinkedIn in ad ROI by 10x. He also shares how he transitioned from solo marketer to team leader, built a paid media engine from scratch, and used list-based targeting to run smart, scalable ABM-style campaigns.
We cover:
Building brand awareness in a niche B2B market
Paid media strategy: Facebook vs. LinkedIn for insurance tech
Content marketing and early-stage demand gen
Why low-funnel attribution often misleads startup marketers
Using first-party data to scale ABM campaigns
Growth marketing vs. brand marketing tradeoffs
Hiring sequence: content, demand gen, partner marketing
How to justify brand spend to the C-suite (and get buy-in)
If you're a Chief Marketing Officer looking to increase market saturation or a startup CEO needing to get your company off the ground, this episode is your roadmap.Want to learn more about Canopy Connect? Check out usecanopy.com.
Need help with marketing? Go to perissonnetwork.com for a free strategy session.

Scaling Without Social Media Ads: The Power of Partnership Marketing

In this episode of Humans of Growth, host Aly Hathcock interviews Ryan Duitch, CEO of Arro Finance, to explore how a fast-growing fintech startup scaled through organic growth, partnership marketing, and bold brand positioning—without relying on traditional paid media.
Whether you're a growth marketer, startup founder, or marketing strategist, you'll get a behind-the-scenes look at the startup marketing strategy that helped Arro acquire thousands of users with under $12K in ad spend. Ryan breaks down how his team leverages B2B2C growth, affiliate partnerships, and funnel strategy to reduce CAC (customer acquisition cost) while boosting LTV (lifetime value).
Inside, you'll learn:
How to drive user acquisition through partnership marketing instead of paid ads
The role of brand strategy in lowering CAC and improving retention
Why customer trust and brand messaging beat traditional performance marketing
How Arro Finance uses financial education and AI to improve conversion rates
Why smart marketing automation and product marketing fuel growth at scale
Lessons in crafting a scalable marketing funnel without breaking your budget
This episode is packed with real, tactical insights for anyone building a brand in a competitive market—especially in fintech, SaaS, or mission-driven startups.
Learn more about Arro Finance at arrofinance.com.
Looking for the right marketing partners to grow faster?Head to perissonnetwork.com for a free strategy session.