About Me
Hi I’m Josh. I’ve worked in marketing for a decade and SEO/content marketing for 8 years.
Here’s a snapshot:
My Background
School
BS in Mechanical Engineering, emphasis Energy and the Environment, minor in Philosophy
2016 – 2018 Starting Out
Did a lot of freelancing. Took a lot of courses. Tried a lot of different things. Notably, did a 6-month UX design and research bootcamp where I interviewed real users and learned the value of customer feedback.
2018 – 2021 Agency Strategist
Worked for a HubSpot partner agency and wrote under an award-winning journalist. Moved to Grow & Convert where I learned more about content strategy and attribution. Most of my clients were SaaS and B2B.
2021 – 2025 Freelancer to Agency Owner
Worked my way up from freelancer to running a small 4-person SEO agency. My main focus was ecom, mostly because that’s where I got my first freelancing case studies. Got a bunch of great case studies, and had plenty of failures too.
2026
Towards the end of 2025 clients started asking for AI help as I reached peak agency chaos. I was still trying to operationalize our old SEO offering, and then had to stand up a new AI offering, and when the rubber hit the road I realized I’d built a job I didn’t really want. In early 2026 after a few months of declining revenue I shut the agency down and thought hard about next steps.
I realized I love building tools (AI was great for that), and doing the SEO work, but not managing a team. After a few months off I returned to solo consulting and freelancing in late 2026. Today I work with less than three companies on SEO and GEO, and am building a small SaaS project myself.
Who I Work Best With
My favorite folks to work with approach work the same way I do:
- obsessed with product quality and customer success rate
- focused on the long term
- invested in customer research
A Hidden Theme: Talking to Customers
Here’s what you won’t see in the standard career timeline:
Starting the second I got out of college, I was obsessed with talking to customers. My dad worked at Whirlpool growing up, and a lot of the projects he worked on were really practical and focused on making people’s lives better. Less “I’m Steve Jobs and will tell my customers what they want” and more “Let me see how customers are using our fridge doors and design around them.”
I loved seeing the impact of his products in our home and thinking how they’re in other homes across the country.
Today I’m still fixated on building quality products and talking to customers.
Here’s a sample of some of the customer-focused projects I’ve worked on:
UX research → Did a 6 month bootcamp right after college. Designed user research studies and interviewed real people.
Copywriting training → Between 2021 and 2024 I spent $30k+ to train under a direct response copywriter. A critical component of our training was mining customer data and doing customer research.
Journalist Interviews → While at the Hubspot agency, I learned from an award-winning journalist how to interview SMEs and insisted on talking to my clients’ customers. When I went to Grow & Convert I doubled down on the same thing.
Customer Research Studies → Did a formal customer research project for a previous SEO customer. We’d worked together for a couple years and I offered because it sounded interesting. I designed the project and interviewed 15+ of his top customers.
Customer Value Study → While at my agency I performed a series of “customer value interviews” where I interviewed my customers with the explicit purpose of figuring out what they valued about my service and what set me apart. My favorite line from a previous customer:
“I don’t think you’re physically capable of bullshitting me”
I love that line. I’ve also repeatedly been told I’m “very transparent” by more polished CMO types.
IMO, that feedback and my customer research background tells you more about me than my work history. I work with people who love to serve their customers, sweat the details, and won’t bullshit me. If that sounds like you and you need some SEO/GEO help, feel free to reach out and I’ll help if I can.