Hi! I’m really glad you’re here.
I’m Sarah, a GTM advisor and executive coach with 25 years of experience in marketing, sales, go-to-market, leadership, and coaching.
This newsletter is a bit of a mishmash of the things I think about and support people with most often:
Go-to-market (GTM): GTM is a broad subject, loosely defined as the unified strategy a company uses to engage with customers to convince them to buy their product or service. It encompasses marketing, sales, customer success, and even elements of product.
Startup marketing strategy: I arrived at the broader discipline of GTM via a long career in marketing, and so I think a lot about brand, demand generation, product marketing, digital marketing, and what lessons from my work with scale up and enterprise companies I can apply to startups.
Leadership: Leadership is so often the point of failure at a startup, that in the process of advising companies on GTM and marketing, we almost always end up talking about leadership. As someone who has studied organizational psychology and been in the workforce so long, I have a lot of thoughts about leadership!
My Background
Over the last 25 years, I’ve held a variety of marketing and sales leadership roles, working for companies of all sizes in all industries. I’ve been a VP, a CMO, an individual contributor, a solo marketer, a consultant, and an analyst.
I’ve worked for pre-seed tech startups all the way up to Fortune 500 companies and federal agencies. I’ve worked for and with thought leaders like Madeline Albright, Adam Grant, Claes Fornell, and Sangram Vajre, and brilliant founders whose names you haven’t heard who bootstrapped their own MVP.
I’ve had successful exits and failures that often taught me more than the successes.
I live in Richmond, Virginia, with two teenagers, a cat, and an overwhelming desire to add a dog to our pack.
I currently work as head of research for the analyst firm GTM Partners. They specialize in mid-market B2B companies, and I’m filling the gap by helping companies under $15M in revenue with advisory work and executive coaching.
I’d love to work with you!
Why Did I Call This Newsletter “the Work Doula”?
Usually associated with birth and death, doulas are people who support a person or family through a time of transition.
They are not medical professionals, but they are highly trained and very experienced. Doulas provide support, options and choices, advocacy, and encouragement.
They help you navigate any system that may be complicated, overwhelming, joyful, scary, or a million other things.
My 25 year career in corporate America has brought me joy, pain, conflict, success, pride, resentment, failure, creativity, and more.
Anything that is that intense? You need a doula. Doulas walk you through hard, life changing things with a lot of experience and information you may not have.
What’s With All the Trees?
I love trees.
They symbolize stability, growth, and change all at the same time.
Even when they look dead, they have everything they need lying dormant inside them.
They can bend without breaking. They can grow slowly or quickly.
They have a vast underground system called the mycorrhizal network which connects individual plants together to transfer water, nitrogen, carbon and other minerals.
There are even individual trees called hub trees, or "mother trees," are older, well-established trees with deep roots and extensive fungal connections. These hub trees access deep water sources and, through the mycorrhizal network, detect distress in neighboring trees, providing them with essential nutrients.
So yeah, trees are cool.
Let those of us who have more experience, network, or resources help those with less!
I would be most grateful if you would subscribe, and if you find something useful or interesting, please tell people about it!
If you want to work with me , I’d love to talk.
