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I help consultants, fractionals, and agency owners find their offer-market fit and win…
Articles by Garrett
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Garrett Jestice posted thisEvery original offer is just a stack of small choices. This is one of my favorite concepts I hear Chris DuBois talk about regularly. The same service everyone else sells becomes yours through the decisions you make on it. Here are six ways to differentiate the exact same service: 1. Audience Who it's specifically for. "Marketing for SaaS" and "marketing for B2B manufacturers" are the same skill (technically) and completely different offers. 2. Scope What's included, and just as much, what you refuse to do. 3. Delivery Done-for-you, done-with-you, workshops, async. Same outcome, different experience. 4. Method Name your process. A repeatable, named system reads as more valuable than "we'll figure it out as we go." 5. Pricing Hourly, project, phases, retainer. The model itself is a differentiator. 6. Promised Outcome What the client can count on at the end. Most people skip this one, which is exactly why it stands out. No competitor matches all six. Stack three or four, and your offer already looks nothing like theirs.
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Garrett Jestice posted thisThe fastest way to stay cheap is to be good at everything. I had a call last week with a fractional marketer who wanted to raise her prices. Good work, real clients, but her rates were stuck and she couldn't figure out why. So we looked at her client list. One client had her doing LinkedIn. Another wanted a newsletter. A third wanted full strategy. Every engagement was a little different. That was the whole problem. When every client buys something different, you can't promise any of them a specific result. And when you can't promise a result, there's a ceiling on what you can charge. "I help B2B founders turn LinkedIn into pipeline" comes with a promise built in. "I do marketing for whoever needs it" doesn't. One of them gets paid for an outcome. The other gets paid by the hour. This is why so many talented generalists stay cheap. They're good at the work, but a buyer can't tell what they're actually going to get, so they get treated like a pair of hands and paid like one. The way out is narrowing. Do the same work for the same kind of client enough times and the result starts to repeat. Then you can say "here's what happens when you work with me" and actually back it up. It doesn't have to be revenue either. Could be pipeline, time saved, a launch that ships on time. It just has to be consistent enough to count on. If your prices feel stuck, this is usually where I'd look first. You're probably not narrow enough yet to promise anything. Narrow it down until you can promise a specific outcome. That's the thing that moves your price.
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Garrett Jestice posted this"Workaholism is one of the only addictions that gets rewarded." A friend said that to me last week. We were talking about what he wants his next chapter to look like. He's right. Most bad habits cost you something socially. But this one earns you praise. Answer emails at 11 pm, and people call you driven. Skip the vacation, and people call you committed. The reward is real, which is exactly why it's so hard to quit. He told me he's done with it. He wants to protect his mornings and his evenings and go hard in the middle of the day. I get it. When I started my business three and a half years ago, one of my goals was to work 40 hours a week or less and still make the same or more money. I've mostly pulled it off. The only reason it worked is I decided it up front and measured against it, instead of letting the business decide for me. Here's the trap I see with a lot of solos, though: People leave a job to get away from the grind, then quietly rebuild the same thing for themselves. Same long weeks. Same guilt for logging off. Except now there's no boss to blame for it. You didn't go out on your own to work more hours. You did it to choose them. It's worth checking now and then whether you actually did that, or just gave yourself a worse boss. Protecting your time isn't slacking. For a solo, it's part of the job.
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Garrett Jestice shared this"Anything for money." That's how a founder described his software agency a few years ago. Mobile apps. Zapier integrations. Whatever the next inbound lead asked for. He had real revenue. Real clients. A full team. He also had: → Margins under 50% → A team that was always burned out → A different project every single time His words for it: "wading upstream in waist-deep water." Every project was custom, so nothing compounded. No repeatable pitch. No repeatable delivery. No case study that looked like the last one. If you're in this same spot, the fix is offer-market fit: → Same offer → Same buyer → Same results On repeat. Build that, and the business stops depending on you running it. Skip it, and you've bought yourself a high-paying job that ends the day you stop rowing. Where does your work still feel like wading upstream?Offer-Market Fit: What Makes a Service Business RepeatableOffer-Market Fit: What Makes a Service Business Repeatable
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Garrett Jestice posted thisAn hour spent running a training session for a team of 10 people is not worth the same as an hour spent doing CRM cleanup on your couch. A consultant I interviewed this week charged the same rate for both. For years. He called it his most expensive mistake. The trap with hourly pricing is that it prices your time, not your value. So your highest-leverage hour (the training session that changes how a whole sales team sells) gets billed exactly like your lowest (you, alone, fixing HubSpot fields). The market doesn't value those the same. So, why should your invoice? So he stopped. He repriced everything around phases and outcomes. A fixed price for the transformation, not a meter running on the clock. The part that surprised him wasn't the revenue. It was how it changed his own approach to the work. "When I've got two deals going, one hourly, one project, I don't even care how many hours I'm spending on the project. I just want to get the thing done." That's the hidden cost of hourly work. It quietly turns efficiency into your enemy. Get faster, get better, and you earn less for the same result. Price the outcome. Then go be as fast and as good as you can.
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Garrett Jestice shared thisA founder spent $100,000 fixing the wrong part of his business. He was sure it was a lead problem. So he hired a marketing agency, spent the budget, and waited. It didn't work. Marketing was never the constraint. The symptom rarely shows up where the cause lives. (It's difficult to clearly read the label from inside the bottle.) His real problem was offer-market fit. He custom-scoped every deal and served whoever reached out. The inputs were wrong, so the production line in his factory kept making more of the wrong thing. Picture your business as a factory with five parts: → Two inputs: your best client and your offer → Three-stage production line: marketing, sales, and delivery At any moment, one part of the factory is the constraint. It sets the pace. Improve anything else, and you've probably wasted money. This founder's fix wasn't more leads. Instead, we narrowed to one audience and one offer. Same team. Margins climbed more than 10 points. He had one of his best revenue quarters ever. The rule: when two or more parts look broken at once, check offer-market fit first. That's probably the cause. I broke down all five parts of the factory here. Which part of your factory is the real bottleneck?
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Garrett Jestice posted this"I'm just a glorified freelancer." A consultant told me that this week, half-joking. She's been at it over a decade and runs a real book of business. And she's right. Most of us who go solo call ourselves business owners. But most of us aren't, at least not yet. We're freelancers with a nicer title. I know, them's fighting words. Hear me out. The line between the two is simple: who does the work? A freelancer is the one delivering. More clients means more hours, until you hit a ceiling you can't push past without burning out. The whole thing runs on your time. A business owner mostly doesn't touch delivery, even though they might run marketing, sales, and the team. The work gets done whether or not they do it. There's nothing wrong with staying a freelancer. Plenty of people land there on purpose, cap their clients, and build a great life around it. That's a real choice. But if what you actually want is freedom of time, you won't get there by being more efficient. You get there eventually by handing the day-to-day execution to someone else, which means you need a standardized offer and a small bench of people you trust. And no, that doesn't mean building a traditional agency. A couple of trusted contractors is plenty. You can stay small on purpose. I'll raise my hand first. I'm still technically a freelancer, doing most of my own delivery today. But I'm building toward a version where I'm mostly out of it. So be honest about which one you're building. Just don't call yourself a business owner if it can't run without you doing all the work. Solos: Are you building a business you own, or a really good job you gave yourself?
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Garrett Jestice shared this"Does my offer even make sense? Will people even buy it?" Every solo and agency owner has thought some version of this. It's the doubt that keeps people stuck, quietly tweaking an offer in a Google Doc instead of putting it in front of anyone. One of our 10x Solo members, Hassan S. Ali, dropped a string of wins in our Friday thread last week. The one that stuck with me: A prospect call where his value prop got nonstop head nods and "you're describing exactly what we're going through." Then: "Can we start Monday?" And off the back of that one conversation, he's already sharpening his positioning, because talking to a real buyer showed him what they actually care about. His takeaway, in his words: talk to more people. That's the whole thing. No offer gets validated in your head. It gets validated in real conversations with people who actually have the problem. The doubt shrinks every time you talk to someone instead of sitting alone with the question. And those conversations don't just close deals, they show you how to sharpen the offer itself. This is some of what happens inside 10x Solo every week. Members working through the same doubts you're sitting with, sharing what's working, and pushing each other to do the dang stuff. We're at about 85 members now and growing. We've been adding a lot lately, more workshops, more resources, more value, and the price is going up soon to match it. Right now it's $199/year. Join before the increase, and you lock that rate in for as long as you're an active member. If you've been thinking about it, now's the time. https://10xsolo.com/
Garrett Jestice commented on a post
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Welcome to the self-employed crew! I think you're going to love it! I've been doing it for the last 4 years, so reach out anytime if I can help in any way.
Plus, any friend of Kortney Osborne is a friend of mine. 😁
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Garrett Jestice liked thisGarrett Jestice liked thisIn 2020 I was working at Weave for Kortney Osborne. Unemployment rates were skyrocketing. Working for a company that served small businesses, we felt there was something we could do. So, we launched a podcast interviewing small business owners. In conjunction, we announced a contest to help motivate people to start their own business (and win a year of Weave). I remember interviewing Sean Foster about starting PLUNJ (a now multi-location franchise) and Milind Kopikar about product market fit. We even included some of our talented colleagues to share insights on their specialities (Jake Goeckeritz and Kent G.). Fast forward to today, and it certainly feels like we're facing similar unemployment distress, but in different markets. This time, tech has not been the safe haven it turned out to be in 2020-2022. But the call for creativity to solve the problem is extended again-- the gauntlet cast. And I've accepted. So, here goes! KC Brothers, fractional marketer extraordinaire. If you find yourself or your company in need of fractional marketing, reach out. Would be fun to work together again!
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Garrett Jestice liked thisGarrett Jestice liked this"My client is treating me like an employee." Nine times out of ten, that's a you problem. (Sorry not sorry cuz we all need to hear this.) The instinct is to blame the client. They're difficult. They're a bad fit. They don't respect your expertise. Sure, some clients suck, and you can fire them. But in our experience, most of the time, your lack of structure is the real culprit. Because your clients are trying to fill a vacuum. If you haven't shared a roadmap, haven't shared context for what's coming next, don't set agendas before the call, clients will stop waiting for guidance and start issuing directions. What do you expect? They're managing uncertainty the only way they know how. The same thing happens with scope. High fee clients do not deserve unlimited scope. They deserve exceptional delivery inside the scope they agreed to. The moment you let clients pressure you to change your SOW, you've told them exactly how to manage you. The client's job is to want more! Your job is to know when more helps and when it hurts. You’re the expert. This is one of the less obvious things we coach clients through at Duo, and it's one of the most valuable. Your offer can be tight. Your positioning can be sharp. Your marketing can be working. You can be closing clients left and right. All of that is the goal, BUT none of it matters if you haven't solved the boundary problem. Because you still won't be able to protect your time. You still won't be able to protect your values. And what the hell is the point of building a business for yourself if every client is driving you crazy? That's a you problem. (The first step is admitting you have a problem and most of us have this problem sooo…) Send the agenda. Protect the scope. Give clients something to follow instead of a vacuum to fill. Do that and the "employee" feeling disappears. There's nothing left for them to direct. Voila.
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Garrett Jestice liked thisGarrett Jestice liked thisMost elite consultants and B2B fractionals don't have a lead generation problem. They have an offer-market fit problem. They remain trapped on a stressful pipeline roller coaster—delivering brilliant results for a client one month, only to realize their pipeline has gone completely quiet the moment they stop actively grinding for the next deal. In this episode of Back On T-R-A-C-K, I sit down with Garrett Jestice, Founder of 10x Solo and former B2B SaaS CMO, to break down how to stop running a frantic, bespoke hustle and start building a highly repeatable revenue engine. We dive into: • Translating B2B SaaS product-market fit frameworks straight into high-ticket services. • The "Offer-Market Fit" framework: Selling the exact same outcome to the same buyer on repeat. • Designing a high-converting, low-friction "intro offer" to open corporate doors seamlessly. • How standardizing your delivery model instantly protects your calendar and scales your profit margins. Stop reinventing your services for every single client proposal. It’s time to win your best clients on purpose. Join us live on Back on T-R-A-C-K.
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Garrett Jestice liked thisGarrett Jestice liked thisI've worked with 22 B2Bs to level up their content programs in the past few years and I've seen five foundational thing most B2B content programs are missing. Not one of my clients had all five in place. Things like a named purpose for your content, messaging that takes a stand, and a sane workflow. When these things are absent, here's what happens: --Content is never connectable to revenue --Writers burn out fighting a chaotic process --Sales ignores the content because they don't understand how it can help buyers --You end up publishing crap content because no one ever set quality standards The fix is about building the program on something solid before production starts. (It's never about more content or better writers.) Warning: this is not the sexy stuff, but skip it at your own peril. Read more about what these problems are and how to fix them in today's newsletter.The 5 things missing for almost every content program I've worked onThe 5 things missing for almost every content program I've worked on
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Garrett Jestice liked thisGarrett Jestice liked thisEvery six months I do a retrospective where I look back and see what worked, what didn't, what I need to focus on next, etc. Here are my three main takeaways from the latest one... 1) Chase joy, not money. Sure, money is nice. But I've come to realise that there are lots of things that no amount of money will make me want to do. And so I'm phasing out the stuff that doesn't light me up completely. I'm going to be stricter about how I spend my time and what my offer entails. 2) My strength lies in systems. I've always used systems to help streamline things I do, both in my personal and business lives. I've realised there's a gap in the market for helping other solos develop these systems for their own businesses. More on this coming soon. 3) People light me up. When I think about the things I've enjoyed most over the past six months, a common theme is people. Meeting them, chatting to them, getting to know them. So I'm rejigging my offer to focus more on the coaching side of things. And I'm going to make an effort to go to more in-person events. No real call to action here. Just wanted to update y'all. Does anyone else do a retrospective like this?
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Garrett Jestice liked thisGarrett Jestice liked thisNerds are cool! At least that's what I was trying to convince my nephew of... Regardless of what he thinks, I'm proud to be a nerd. And AI is helping me live my best nerdy life ever! If you're ready to bring on a battle-tested marketing paladin to lead your party to victory, let me know! I'm looking for a marketing leadership role where I can build and execute a marketing strategy with a direct impact on growth, lead and coach team members to level up their XP, and slay dragons along the way. Want to interact with my resume? Check out this interactive stat sheet! https://lnkd.in/gEP2HzbD
Experience & Education
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10x Solo
View Garrett’s full experience
See their title, tenure and more.
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Licenses & Certifications
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Beyond the Script: 2-Day Live Customer Interview Training
Hannah Shamji Research Inc.
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Honors & Awards
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2022 Utah Business Marketer of the Year (SAMY award) winner
Utah Business
2022 Utah Business Marketer of the Year (SAMY award) winner
2022 Utah Business Digital Marketing Campaign of the Year -
William & Eleanor Jones Leadership Scholarship
Marriott School of Management
Chosen by Marriott School of Management administration to receive this half tuition scholarship during the Winter 2013 semester for demonstrated leadership.
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Larry Dahle Marketing Scholarship
Marriott School of Management Marketing Institution
Chosen by Marriott School of Management professors to receive half tuition scholarship during the Fall 2012 semester.
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Thought Leadership Award
Target Corporation
Received prestigious award from senior management for demonstrating strategic insights and creative problem solving skills during the internship. This award was given to only 5 out of the 250+ interns.
Languages
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Dutch
Limited working proficiency
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Sranan Tongo
Limited working proficiency
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