ABM and full funnel enterprise playbook + MBA Disrupted on Audible

You’re reading the Growth Shuttle Insider, gathering 18,800+ B2B executives, investors, and professionals making smart strategic decisions based on a blend of macro and real-world business data.

Personalization has turned into a buzzword, but its notoriety shouldn’t neglect the importance of targeting a small, powerful list of top accounts - especially in the enterprise context.

The “shotgun approach” isn’t applicable unless you’re a rapidly growing, innovative startup, in a super niche category with an epic MOAT. Most businesses are commodities - a lesson I expanded on in my December 11 newsletter called “Content MOATs are dying fast.”

ABM helps deliver epic personalization

One of the narratives I keep iterating on is how social now sees an exodus of large cohorts of professional executives who can’t stand the current virality in feeds. As a result, they spend less time on social, and if they do, they either scroll FB and Instagram for “friends and family” conversation (not work-related), or use messengers in LinkedIn to chat, but not scrolling business posts for hours.

Account-based marketing is solving many of these problems - and I was happy to host an interview with the co-founder of FullFunnel.io, Andrei Zinkevich:

I’ve been following FullFunnel for a couple of years now, thanks to their timely, relevant, tactical, and powerful content around account-based marketing and, of course, the full funnel.

I’ll steal a page from their buyer enablement playbook that you can read in their Substack:

The buying process has slowed down over the past 2 years - nearly in half - as budgets have gone down, scrutiny going up, and brand affinity carrying more value than ever.

Brand and business longevity matter a lot

There’s an ongoing conversation around brand vs. performance marketing - one going on FOR DECADES - whereas performance worked well with zero-interest policy and massive VC-funded budgets revolving around growth. Nowadays, with AI tools popping up left and right, and endless agencies on the market, brand is playing a critical role with “time in market” + proven results and solutions delivered continuously over time.

To illustrate that with our latest agency clients in DevriX signed over the past 6 months:

• Healthcare startup: having met us at events half a dozen times, following LinkedIn since 2021, and attending an event I spoke at a while back

• Automotive delivery business: someone on the founding team attended a training of mine over a decade ago and has been following me since

• Hardware device company: former staff member for a client we’ve served for 9 years, moving to a leadership role in a global company, negotiating a contract for 6 months until we signed

• Leading hosting company: taking over a product past-acquisition and expanding the contract with us after a 3-month break assessing resources/vendors

• Cybersecurity startup: director hanging in the same community for a decade, reaching out for HubSpot implementation and expanding the contract after

Bottom line - deals take ages in a buying cycle that’s not linear. The inbound approach is omnichannel and often includes account-based marketing tactics just like FullFunnel implements (I recommend you finding the time to watch the episode today or over the weekend).

Similar principles for the Strategic Growth Circle program:

The vast majority of my consulting clients (founders and directors) have been reading the newsletter for 6+ months or have followed my work after attending events, webinars, or community meetups.

ABM helps you bridge that gap with cold customers by generating additional touch points with a selected subset of companies that represent your ideal accounts. It’s also an omnichannel playbook that covers different channels, but a truly powerful one with strong conversion rates after the first few months.

Some touch points are more valuable than others

The problem with brand ads is that seeing a logo helps, but not as much as spending 15min on 1:1 at an event with a prospect.

The longer a partner/prospect spends consuming your content or exchanging insights and taking tips from you, the more valuable the outcome.

This is why sales-led organizations push for a sales call at all times. 30 minutes with a prospect can deliver a TON of value compared to a cold ad on Facebook or a checklist on LinkedIn.

I’ve seen this firsthand with “MBA Disrupted” with several thousand sales since launching it last May.

When someone spends 3 hours going through the full context of structuring a successful digital business, a breakdown of competitive research, analyzing the total addressable market, 12 different types of digital businesses, 6+ go-to-market motions, a number of tools - and many, many more - the relevance and familiarity skyrocket, along with the trust rating.

MBA Disrupted on Audible

Thanks to Amazon’s cooperation, MBA Disrupted is now live on Audible, too:

I listen to podcasts and Audible books frequently, just like I play YouTube podcasts at home on weekends. Different formats help, and launching an audio format is further reinforcing the narrative for people who perceive information better through sound.

I’ve turned the book into a living, breathing organism, with readers welcome to my Growth Shuttle Slack community (mentioned in a few places in the book). As a result, I run weekly goal-setting exercises with the group, answer questions on the spot, provide resources, share recommendations, make intros, and support the continuity of businesses in this environment.

This relationship-building journey covers multiple channels as well - this newsletter, the podcast, my Slack community, the book (and other content resources), along with other interviews, mentions, or posts I author on the way. Keep reading to find the latest stories in the section below.

Mario

🤖 The state of AI in 2025 + why consultants and freelancers have an edge. I wrote a detailed piece on the current state of AI, why most people limit themselves to basic ChatGPT prompting, and how consultants and freelancers hold more power today with automating their processes and delivering high value in a fraction of the time.

⌨️ How to retain clients for 8-9 years in a competitive industry? I hosted a webinar for the Agency Owners Association a few months back and Austin recapped the key takeaways in a recent post. I touch on important factors around defensibility and partnerships worth reading here.

✍️ Gen Zs and older executives speak different languages. The workforce is young, but targeting executives requires special training. I spend a good chunk of time iterating on this topic with my teams - especially the 25-year-olds who have great work culture and are passionate for high-ticket contracts, but are blasted with loads of TikToks and reels targeting teenagers.

Bonus point: interviewing your ICP often reveals different terminology or slang you have to adapt in your sales copy, landing pages, ad creatives, and more. A common example is “blogging platform” vs. “CMS” vs. “WCM” vs. “enterprise content management platform” vs. “digital experience platform” and a handful of other variations, often meaning the same thing for different industries.

📰 10 ways to increase workplace productivity. Initially authored for Entrepreneur, John Magill recommended my article on LinkedIn and I’m sharing it here as well.

🎥 On market research, customer feedback, and long-term relationships. Gert Mellack interviewed me on his podcast where I’ve unpacked a lot of my strategic thinking on developing businesses and growing my agency and consultancy here.

🔖 Build attribution models that actually work. Reporting tools often oversimplify what’s really happening. This attribution model checklist shows how to assign credit where it’s due — so your budget decisions aren’t built on assumptions.

🔖 Boost ROI with smarter pricing. Pricing based solely on costs can miss what buyers are really willing to pay. These value-based pricing strategies offer a structured way to align prices with perceived value, improve customer retention, and increase returns.

🔖 Scale agile with precision. Getting Agile to work at scale means dealing with real constraints: people, processes, and priorities. This isn’t a playbook—it’s a look at key strategies for enterprise-level transformation that actually hold up across fast-moving firms.

🔖 New ways APIs are reshaping marketing analytics. From real-time tracking to segmenting audiences more effectively, APIs are now a core part of marketing operations. A breakdown of API use cases in marketing shows how they're helping teams cut back on repetitive work and gain cleaner insights.

🔖 Align for revenue growth. When sales and marketing aren’t on the same page, it shows in the numbers. These six alignment metrics offer a practical way to spot disconnects, move deals faster, and get more value from your efforts.

📰 AI hype meets financial reality. Big Tech has committed over $325B to AI infrastructure, but the real test is whether it will deliver meaningful returns. This piece unpacks how investors are reacting and how major platforms are adjusting course in this AI martech roundup.

📰 ByteDance's strategic data advantage. TikTok may be the front-facing brand, but it’s ByteDance’s large-scale behavioral data collection and early bets on AI infrastructure that are positioning the company as a serious player. See how ByteDance uses user data on a large scale to close the gap with U.S. tech leaders.

📰 Shape the future of tech. TechCrunch is looking for speakers for its 2025 conference. Apply by May 16 to speak at TechCrunch Disrupt 2025 if you have to share practical insights with over 10,000 people building and funding the next wave of technology.

📰 A new class of car sharing. By allowing remote operators to steer EVs from afar, Vay is rethinking how car sharing works. The model reduces labor costs and increases vehicle utilization, offering a new angle on urban transportation. Its U.S. rollout is gaining traction while facing familiar regulatory resistance in Europe.

📰 Marketing analysts step into the C-suite. As automation and data tools become standard, marketing analysts are moving into roles with broader influence. CMOs are rethinking org charts and assigning analysts to high-stakes strategy work. What that shift looks like in the age of AI.

📰 Tariffs threaten brand loyalty. Apple’s hold on its customer base may not hold if iPhone prices climb to $2,000. Analysts say rising costs from tariffs could test how much loyalty actually exists. More on the pricing pressure in this Fortune report.

📰 De-extinction as innovation strategy. Colossal Biosciences isn’t just bringing back dire wolves. It’s exploring how biological restoration can inform new frameworks for adaptation and longevity. Their work in genetic resurrection offers a lens into designing systems that are more resilient over time.

📰 Safe AI, big valuation. OpenAI co-founder Ilya Sutskever has returned with Safe Superintelligence, a new venture that just secured $2B at a valuation of $32B. The effort centers on building powerful systems while keeping risk in check from the start

📰 UK startups face a capital crunch. As funding slows, more British founders are incorporating in Delaware and flying to San Francisco to meet investors. The move reflects broader concerns about the local venture landscape. Here’s how UK startups are struggling to raise capital and what this trend signals for global investors.

Let’s see the latest offers from Flippa. Don’t forget to sign up for their newsletter for daily/weekly/monthly offers such as these.

Dog Support Harness FBA: A 6-year-old Amazon store selling dog mobility aids with $9.4K annual profit and a $17 AOV, backed by a 4.4-star rating, priced at $35,000.

Travel Blog & Ecom: An 11-year-old dual-income brand with 550 SEO articles, $57K annual profit, and 2.45K referring domains, priced at $153,967.

Spanish YouTube Business: An 8-year-old anime-focused channel with 2.7M subscribers and 383.6M views, earning $103K annually, now listed at $180,000

WordPress Plugin: An 8-year-old plugin business with $2.9K MRR, 800 daily downloads, and $69.6K annual profit, priced at $350,000.

Coloring Books Store: A 9-year-old business with $233K annual profit, $14 AOV, 400+ products, 187K followers, and $2K MRR from subscriptions, priced at $595,000

Udemy E-Learning Platform: A 10-year-old business with 2.1M students and 59 programming courses, generating $829K annual profit at a 92% margin, listed at $2,050,000.

PowerPoint & Slide Template Store: An 11-year-old SaaS generating $64.6K/month profit at 79% margins with 3,700 subscribers and 95% recurring income, priced at $4,130,710

Napkin Advertising Company: A 5-year-old B2B business serving 100K+ retail clients with $1.6M profit and 63% margins, now priced at $4,590,000 (reduced from $7.3M).

Need My Help?

Keeping myself busy - here are the main projects I focus on:

🌐 Scaling enterprises on top of WordPress? DevriX provides martech retainers to SMEs, publishers, eCommerce, SaaS, and more. Our plans start from $1,200/mo to $40K/mo and we manage high-traffic platforms (hundreds of millions of monthly views), B2B SaaS apps, partnership management solutions, supporting $10M - $250M businesses with scalability, custom funnels, CRO, big data augmentation, AI-driven processes, HubSpot workflows, programmatic SEO - and everything a modern business requires in digital in 2025.

🚀 Work 1:1 with me? At Growth Shuttle, I run two popular plans: Async Advisory for $3M - $30M founders and executive teams and the smaller Strategic Growth Circle for $100K - $500K entrepreneurs, agency founders, scale ups.

🌠 Feature your business across the community? The B2B Ecosystem includes this newsletter and 40 other digital properties (directories, newsletters, blogs, SaaS, and social accounts) targeting B2B executives. See how your business can benefit.

📈 International founder looking into US LLCs? Check out doola and their “Business in a Box” model. Suitable for both foreigners and US citizens and both for residents and non-residents.

📊 Into digital M&A? I work closely with Flippa’s marketplace. They offer a vast variety of online businesses for any buyer’s interest. Or if you’re ready for an exit, Flippa provides the tools to list your business and close the deal.

💼 Looking for investment opportunities? Check out SeedBlink and use Equity to manage your ESOP tables in-house.