Return on Reputation

When Peter Zotto sold ProfitWell to Paddle for $200 million in 2022, most people expected him to go quiet. He didn't. He spent two years at Paddle, missed building something from scratch, and ran into a problem nobody had solved: how do you show what you've actually done? His LinkedIn said he sold a company. His resume didn't say much more. So he built Trove, a place to prove your impact through the eyes of the people who worked with you.   I brought Peter on because he wrote one of the best definitions of reputation I've heard: "The proof someone is excellent is trapped in other people's memories." Think about where your best work lives today. A client email. A shoutout from your boss in Slack. A reference call (Peter still gets one from a former ProfitWell colleague almost every week). When ProfitWell got acquired, every Drive and Slack got shut off on day one, and years of proof were gone overnight. Now AI makes every resume look polished and every candidate look the same. "Led sales" doesn't tell anyone anything. Recruiters want the how.   We talked about why a big exit doesn't mean you're done (he still drives a used 2020 Jeep Cherokee), why consumer is so much harder than B2B, the hiring mistake with ex-HubSpot reps that taught him to always ask how someone hit quota, and how ProfitWell became "the Bloomberg of SaaS" with its own studio, a full media team and pricing page teardowns that made it all the way to executives and investors.   What you'll learn Why Peter went back into startups after a $200M exit, and why he still feels he has something to prove How Trove captures the how behind your wins and who helped you get there, not just the outcome Why consumer is harder than B2B, when people who scroll for hours call a 45-second onboarding "too much work" Why nobody is thinking about you as much as you think (and why that should make posting easier) Where your career proof lives right now, and why it disappears the day you leave Why AI-written resumes all look alike and get filtered out before a human sees them How to tell a hunter from an order taker, and why "Led sales" isn't enough The ProfitWell hiring mistake with ex-HubSpot reps, and the same trap companies fall into with CMOs How ProfitWell ran hyper-personalized video campaigns with a custom landing page for every prospect How pricing page teardowns turned content into sales conversations Why it's never been easier to hit $1M ARR and never been harder to grow past it Rapid fire: the best hire Peter ever made (and almost fired in week one), whether to kill cover letters, the cold outreach move that gets VCs to reply, and what reputation means to him Timestamps 00:00 Why Start a Company Again After an Exit 01:01 What Is Trove? Proving Your Career Impact 05:17 Life After Selling ProfitWell for $200M 09:08 Consumer vs B2B: Which Is Harder?  14:17 Imposter Syndrome as a Founder 17:27 Why Reputation Lives in Other People's Memories 21:12 The Vibes Tax in Hiring 23:18 Show Your Work, Not Just Results 24:20 Hiring for the How, Not the Title 27:37 AI Resumes and the Hiring Arms Race 30:10 How ProfitWell Built a Media Machine 32:54 Content That Drives Sales 36:42 Founder-Led Marketing on LinkedIn 37:55 Rapid Fire: Best Hire and Cover Letters 43:39 What Reputation Really Means  46:28 Where to Find Trove GUEST Peter Zotto, Founder of Trove and Co-founder of ProfitWell. Trove: https://thetrove.io/ LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/peterzotto/    HOST Justin Obey, founder of Obey Creative. We help B2B founders turn cold outbound into warm conversations through a podcast-driven content engine. One episode per week. Your prospects know and trust you before your sales team ever picks up the phone. First episode live in 30 days. LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/justinobey/ Website: https://obeycreative.com/   SHOW Return on Reputation explores how founders and business leaders turn expertise into trust, authority, relationships and business growth. Subscribe to Return on Reputation for more conversations about personal branding, leadership and building a business people trust.

When Jeffrey Zhao was running Slope, a design and marketing agency, his team did organic social for B2B companies. They tried every tool out there. None of them fit. Sprout, Hootsuite and Sprinklr were built years ago for consumer brands, back when social meant brand awareness and not much else. B2B needed something different: execs posting, employees engaging, approvals moving fast, and a way to tie all of it back to pipeline. So Jeffrey built it. That’s Ordinal, and he was the customer before he was the vendor.   I brought Jeffrey on because I use Ordinal every day (this isn’t a paid episode, I promise) and because he can see who posts and who goes quiet across a huge number of B2B companies. That view makes the pattern hard to ignore. Company page reach has dropped more than 60% in the last two years. Meanwhile, the companies winning on LinkedIn have execs and employees posting every week. People buy from people. The hard part is making that consistent when your CEO is stuck in board meetings.   We got into why exec teams stop posting (usually they just get busy), why “I have nothing interesting to say” is almost never true, and how one social manager can now run content for 20 execs plus an employee program, a job that used to take 10 people. Jeffrey also shared how Clay grew its LinkedIn from 8,000 followers to over 120,000 with a one-person social team, and why writing the post is only about 10% of the work.   What you’ll learn Why B2B social covers the whole funnel, from brand awareness down to closing deals The three reasons exec teams go quiet on LinkedIn, and the one role that keeps them posting 3 to 5 times a week Why LinkedIn feels “cringe” to people who don’t use it (and what they’re missing) How to find 3 to 5 posts’ worth of ideas a week in your call recordings, Slack threads and Notion docs The CFO who headlines finance conferences for thousands of people and still thought he had nothing to say How posting on LinkedIn can raise your cold email response rates, even when nobody engages with the post Why your LinkedIn posts work as built-in social proof in the middle of a long deal cycle The two-second profile fixes that 90% of companies skip, even though prospects are one click away from booking a demo How Clay scaled to 15 to 20 execs posting every week with a tiny team Where AI helps, where it turns into slop, and why hiring a human still gets most teams better results today Rapid fire: the most underrated post format, whether there’s a best time to post, the LinkedIn habit Jeffrey would ban, and if you should keep or kill your company page   TIMESTAMPS 00:00 Intro: LinkedIn for B2B Growth 00:08 How LinkedIn Builds Business 00:47 From Agency to SaaS: Slope to Ordinal 04:01 Why B2B Social Media Is Different 05:08 Executive and Employee Advocacy 08:01 AI in Social Media Management 10:11 Why Executives Stop Posting on LinkedIn 14:31 No Time and Nothing to Say? Fix It 20:05 Personal Profiles vs Company Pages 21:50 Authentic LinkedIn Posts That Work 22:23 How Thought Leadership Drives Pipeline 23:53 LinkedIn Posts as Social Proof in Sales 24:52 LinkedIn DMs and Profile Optimization 27:11 Clay’s LinkedIn Growth Case Study 29:21 Executive LinkedIn Posting Strategy 32:18 AI Writing vs Human Content 36:01 Content Approvals in Slack 36:40 Rapid Fire: LinkedIn Tips 38:51 What Reputation Means + Wrap Up GUEST Jeffrey Zhao, Co-founder of Ordinal. Ordinal: https://www.tryordinal.com/ LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/zhaojeffrey/   HOST Justin Obey, founder of Obey Creative. We help B2B founders turn cold outbound into warm conversations through a podcast-driven content engine. One episode per week. Your prospects know and trust you before your sales team ever picks up the phone. First episode live in 30 days. LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/justinobey/ Website: https://obeycreative.com/   SHOW Return on Reputation explores how founders and business leaders turn expertise into trust, authority, relationships and business growth. Subscribe to Return on Reputation for more conversations about personal branding, leadership and building a business people trust.

A great restaurant can lose a customer before that person ever tastes the food. Aman Devgan, President and General Manager of Menufy by HungerRush, joins me to talk restaurant marketing, online reputation and the cost of being invisible. In Menufy's survey of 1,000 U.S. consumers, 59% said they'd decided not to order from a restaurant because they couldn't find basic information online. Among Gen Z, it was 71%. Wrong hours. An outdated menu. Customers who leave without ever telling the owner why. We talk about how independent restaurants can take back their customer relationships from third-party delivery apps, make direct online ordering easier, and turn Google reviews into more business. Aman shares customer stories, explains how Menufy is testing AI-powered personalized marketing, and breaks down his approach to building teams that outlast the leader. Then we get into something more personal. Aman has built a reputation with boards, business partners and teams, but he's been reluctant to share it publicly. His reason will sound familiar to a lot of experienced founders and executives: making decisions with incomplete information is part of the job. Being wrong in public feels different. We talk about personal branding without performing, sharing what you've learned, and treating social media as a way to help people. WHAT YOU'LL LEARN Why restaurants lose customers before they ever place an order How direct ordering helps owners regain control of their guest relationships Why Google reviews and an accurate Google Business Profile matter to restaurant growth How Menufy is testing AI to make restaurant marketing more personal Why accountability, honest feedback and daily behavior shape company culture The leadership lesson Aman never forgot: everyone has a gift Why experienced executives hesitate to build a public personal brand How to create useful content without pretending to have every answer TIMESTAMPS 00:00 Meet Aman Devgan of Menufy 02:36 Why Restaurants Lose Customers Before They Order 06:50 Rising Prices and Restaurant Profitability 08:36 Menufy, HungerRush and Taking Over a Founder-Led Business 12:36 Leadership, Accountability and Company Culture 16:07 The Leadership Lesson Aman Never Forgot 17:49 Direct Ordering and Independent Restaurant Stories 20:24 What Menufy's Marketing Platform Does 23:05 AI and Personalized Restaurant Marketing 24:50 Taking Back Control of Customer Relationships 26:04 Google Reviews, Reputation and Direct Orders 28:01 Why Experienced Executives Stay Invisible 31:45 Personal Branding Without Performing 35:06 What Aman Would Share Publicly 36:55 Rapid Fire: Google Listings, Leadership and Restaurant Tech 38:35 What Reputation Means to Aman 39:25 Where to Find Aman and Menufy GUEST Aman Devgan, President and General Manager of Menufy by HungerRush. Menufy: https://restaurant.menufy.com/ LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/amandevgan/ HOST Justin Obey, founder of Obey Creative. We help B2B founders turn cold outbound into warm conversations through a podcast-driven content engine. One episode per week. Your prospects know and trust you before your sales team ever picks up the phone. First episode live in 30 days. LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/justinobey/ Website: https://obeycreative.com/ SHOW Return on Reputation explores how founders and business leaders turn expertise into trust, authority, relationships and business growth. Subscribe to Return on Reputation for more conversations about personal branding, leadership and building a business people trust.

When Matt Crane moved back to Boston after a decade in the San Francisco startup scene, he kept asking everyone one question: "What are the five best startups in Boston?" Nobody could name five. So he started a newsletter as a side project. Almost four years later, MGMT Boston is one of the fastest-growing local media companies for venture-backed startups, with a newsletter, a newsfeed, a podcast, a short-form video series and a lot of in-person events. It still has one full-time employee. Him.   I brought Matt on, live at Startup Boston Week, because he's the face of a company he insists is a business, not a personal brand. He never wanted to be on video. He did it anyway, in person, and that's when everything started moving faster. By the end of this conversation, we landed on something more useful than "build your personal brand": people trust people, and the fastest way to earn that trust is to put someone else in the spotlight.   We also got into how he runs a media company with one full-time person and about half a dozen contractors. His plan is to "agentify" everything operational and put every human hour into the one thing AI can't fake: showing up in person. He's picky about who he partners with, too. He'd rather wait for the best startups to come to him than fill a slot with the wrong company, because the companies he highlights are the brand. And he's honest about what it cost to get here, including two slow Augusts when he wasn't sure MGMT would ever become a real company.   What you'll learn Why Matt chose to compete hyperlocal, digital and in person all at once, after learning in ad tech how brutal the "darkest oceans" of competition can be The moment he realized a media company without video doesn't work, and why he calls it an expansion instead of a pivot Why he thinks you have to put your own face on it first if your reputation is on the line, instead of hiring reporters to do it for you What Bill Gates, Microsoft and Lenny's Newsletter taught him about why people outpace brands on the internet Why he calls personal branding "the worst branding ever," and what the best creators do instead How a one-person media company uses AI to publish a funding story in about 45 seconds, and where he refuses to let AI do the work His advice for anyone uncomfortable on camera, including the harsh YouTube Shorts comment he couldn't argue with (it hurt, and he deleted it) The "sign it in blood" commitment he thinks every creator needs, and why debating whether to post on Tuesday or Wednesday means you've already lost The hardest part of growing past the early stage: saying no to good opportunities so you can chase the great ones The two Augusts when he wasn't sure MGMT had enough momentum to become a real company, and why he has no plan B TIMESTAMPS: 00:00 Matt Crane's Founder Story 01:31 From Finance to Startups and Back to Boston 04:39 How MGMT Boston Started 08:47 Hyperlocal Media and IRL Events 10:19 From Newsletter to Video Content 12:37 Why Founders Should Be the Face of the Brand 19:07 Covering Venture-Backed Startups 21:57 What Makes a Great Founder 24:46 Scaling Content Without Losing Quality 26:09 Saying No to Good Opportunities 28:40 AI-First Company: AI vs Human Content 32:21 Getting Comfortable on Camera and Staying Authentic 37:03 Startup Partnerships and Ecosystem 39:31 Expanding to Life Sciences 40:17 Business vs Personal Brand 41:36 Rapid Fire: Boston Startup Scene and No Plan B 45:47 Where to Find MGMT Boston Guest: Matt Crane, Founder of MGMT Boston https://mgmtboston.com/  https://www.linkedin.com/in/matthewhcrane/    Host: Justin Obey, founder of Obey Creative. Obey Creative helps B2B founders who are invisible in their market solve a zero inbound pipeline by delivering a podcast-driven content engine from one conversation per week. First episode live within 30 days. https://www.linkedin.com/in/justinobey/  https://obeycreative.com/    Show: Return on Reputation. Reputation drives everything. Without trust, building a strong business is close to impossible. The companies that lean hardest into the personal brands of their founders and their people will outperform the ones that don't.

John Hill hasn't applied for a job in 25 years. His reputation keeps opening the door. Recorded live on stage at Startup Boston Week, John (VP of Story at Whop) walks through a career built on relationships. A sports journalist handed a website in 1997. The Michigan State alumni director helping people find work in the 2009 recession. The face of LinkedIn's higher education push. A decade building the Techstars global network. And now Whop, where anyone can start a business with AI. The most useful part for founders is his system. He takes 20 actions on his network every weekday, about 15 to 20 minutes a day, and it adds up to roughly 5,000 moments of help a year. He also explains why mapping the 100 people who can change your company's path matters more than your go-to-market plan. In this episode: Why founders now have to build two brands, their own and the company's How to build your network before you need it Why entrepreneurship is a skill you can learn "Investors need you. You don't need investors." His dad's story, from Savin Hill to Wharton, and a business card from a stranger at Penn Station Why trust and community become the real assets in the AI era Why he bought Cazenovia College Chapters:  00:00 Live at Startup Boston Week 00:26 From sports journalist to accidental founder 01:51 "Bless your heart": building alone in 1997 03:15 Jump off the cliff, build the plane 05:02 Techstars and the give-first network 06:32 Getting a job vs. being the job 09:31 Recruited by LinkedIn 11:32 "I haven't applied for a job in 25 years" 12:49 Build your brand and your company's brand 13:15 Map the top 100 people for your startup 14:00 20 network actions a day 15:22 64,000 investable startups vs. 8 billion people 16:28 Why he joined Whop 17:55 LinkedIn found you a job. Whop is the job. 19:03 Broken for corporate 19:53 Entrepreneurship is a skill 22:42 His dad's story: Savin Hill to Wharton 25:57 The stranger with golf clubs at Penn Station 29:21 Always the dumbest person in the room 30:10 Reputation, network and trust in the AI era 31:34 Rapid fire 32:35 Investors need you 33:10 Best founder stories: SendGrid and a 19-year-old on Whop 34:43 What reputation means to John 36:18 He bought a college 37:41 Keep dreaming big Connect with John Hill LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/msuaajohn/ Whop: https://whop.com Return on Reputation is hosted by Justin Obey, founder of Obey Creative. Conversations with founders about the reputation that builds companies. Obey Creative: https://obeycreative.com #ReturnOnReputation #StartupBostonWeek #PersonalBrand