Creative marketing leader - 25 years experience leading marketing within startups and Fortune 50 technology companies. Company founder/CEO (successful exit). Wharton MBA
I led a global marketing team at Microsoft for 4 years marketing the brands you know... (Microsoft 365 subscription + Word, Excel, Powerpoint, OneDrive, Outlook, Teams, Xbox Game Pass) My team drove over $400M in value overseeing more than 200 customer lifecycle campaigns and 250 experiments across all phases of the customer lifecycle from awareness, to acquisition, to onboarding, engagement, retention and reactivation.
I have led all manner of startup & small business marketing efforts from driving viral growth at Marco Polo, a video messaging app that exploded under my tenure in 2016 & 2017 going from 200k users a month to over 5M, to winning a marquee award 🏆 for most innovative marketing campaign at the Assisted Living Federation of America's annual trade show (...for the startup I founded), to growing my side-gig (bike race promotion) into the biggest cyclocross bike race in the country.
A lifelong entrepreneur, I've started 7 companies, including one full-fledged VC backed startup, raising more than $8M in institutional funds with a successful exit to a public company. I've purchased two companies and sold one other. If you are a founder or company owner, I can empathize with the ups & downs of entrepreneurship and can be a sounding board to you.
I take pride in bringing joy and humor to the workplace, (even though most of my jokes fall flat... at least I try). My focus on creating a great culture has earned me dozens of accolades from colleagues (see below).
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If you are looking for a thoughtful strategist, entrepreneur, marketing expert or Fractional CMO, please reach out!
💥 Fractional CMO (Chief Marketing Officer)/ (aka Part-time CMO)
💥 Advisor to company owners & founders
💥 Marketing leadership
💥 Marketing strategy
💥 Artificial Intelligence (AI) - how to incorporate into your marketing and company
💥 Customer lifecycle marketing: awareness, acquisition, onboarding, monetization, engagement and retention
💥 Channel marketing strategies and plans including email, web, search (SEO/SEM-paid ads), paid social (Facebook, Instagram, etc), in-product marketing, social media, viral channel
💥 Marketing campaign experimentation
💥 Marketing platform audit and development
💥 Website, and company audits
💥 Coaching/leadership/advice
💥 Financial models to predict growth and cashflow required to reach goals
💥 Developing and monitoring KPIs, OKRs, targets
💥 Conversion Rate Optimization (CRO)
Some unique disciplines that I'm super deep in:
💥 Viral growth, the viral channel, & viral coefficient
💥 Experimentation to drive growth, both product experiments as well as marketing.
💥 Using awards programs and contests to drive marketing outcomes
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A few things about me personally:
- I'm married with two kids in college
- I'm an avid cyclist and bike racer. Now I own (with partners), a bike race promotion company to fill my weekends
- Outdoor adventures make me smile
- I'm a gardener and raise bees (just gentle ones... mason & leafcutter bees)
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Some kind words that have been shared by colleagues:
“...exceptional leadership skills, collaborative nature, strategic vision, and drive to achieve. His entrepreneurial spirit and strategic vision are evident in his ability to identify opportunities and lead the team towards identified business objectives” Timo, Microsoft
“Equally adept at thinking big, analytically and tackling the details to execute on a shared vision, he leads by example. Chris approaches all matters with a genuine curiosity which helps him deeply understand consumers, empathize with colleagues, be user-obsessed and read the ever-changing competitive landscape. Inspiring as a leader and so much fun to work with.” Nathasha, Marco Polo
“Chris is a super-creative thinker, and his ideas are always on point to strategy. He generated an amazing number of ideas that were critical to our success. He brings a strong analytic skill set which he focused on driving revenue. He can think through any challenging issue and come up with plans and ideas for marketing, sales and finance. He balances his focus on driving success with a true concern on focus on people and culture.” Jay, SeniorHomes.com
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Startup Consulting
