GO with Joe

Not every product gets bought for the same reason. Is your product providing a solution to a problem, or simply satisfying enjoyment? The answer could be “both.” In this episode, Joe breaks down the difference between marketing to a conscious "what for" and marketing to an unconscious “just cause,” using Go Brewing's newest product launch as the live case study. It's a conversation about psychographics over demographics, and why the products that fit their market often stop trying to explain themselves as demand grows.

Key Takeaways:

• How do psychographics differ from demographics, and why does that distinction change how you market?
• What separates an "optimizer" customer from someone who just wants to enjoy the moment?
• How do you launch a new product without fracturing the brand equity of your flagship?
• What can Meta's ad targeting teach founders about running multiple personas at once?
• How does addressing an objection upfront change the way a landing page converts?
• Why challenger brands should always have a "Shark Tank product" in the pipeline.

For: Founders and marketers weighing how to position a new product against an established brand, especially when the audience for each doesn't fully overlap.

Topics: Psychographics, brand extension, product positioning, ritual-based marketing, paid social strategy, founder risk-taking

How understanding your niche can define brand values 

Joe breaks down the persona exercise that shaped Go Brewing from day one: picture one real customer, sell to them, and let everything else (voice, story, product) follow from there. But a sharply defined target market can limit a brand's reach if what the brand stands for doesn’t transcend its core customers. Is your product or service just solving a problem, or is it uniting a community?

Key Takeaways

• How picturing one specific customer, down to the truck he drives, shaped every decision behind Go Brewing.
• Why claims like "fastest growing" don't actually sell anything, and what does instead.
• How narrowing your persona can widen your total addressable market instead of shrinking it.
• What storytelling did for Go Brewing that a features list never could have.
• Why the word "Go" became a mentality before it ever became a beer.
• How defining who a brand is NOT for is what actually gives it values worth having.

For: Founders and marketers stuck trying to appeal to "everyone" who need a framework for narrowing in on who they actually serve.

Topics: Target audience, brand persona, TAM, storytelling in marketing, non-alcoholic beer industry, Go Brewing origin story, brand values, positioning strategy.

How customer engagement systems bridge the gap between subjective experience and measurable ROI 

A guy doing push-ups while drinking a beer sounds like a bar bet, not a business strategy. But at HYROX in New York, it became Go Brewing's best-performing piece of customer data collection — out of 500 people who played, 150 signed up to become brand creators on the spot. Joe breaks down how Go turned a goofy activation into a real engine for finding future customers, the math he uses to know if a sponsorship is actually worth the price, and why most brands at these events leave with nothing unique to their business. 

Key Takeaways:

• How Go built a custom CPM calculator to evaluate sponsorship pitches and decide what's actually worth the asking price.
• How a beer pushup contest at HYROX turned a memorable experience into measurable brand engagement.
• Why Go built an entire activation app, leaderboard, and follow-up system using Claude Code instead of developers or off-the-shelf event software.
• Why good brands are focused on customer experience and great brands are focused on customer engagement
• How Go looked beyond budget, to focus their brand-building on 3 things: intention, execution and insight

For: Founders and marketers who treat events as a cost instead of a measurable, data-driven channel.

Topics: Event marketing, brand activation, customer data, sponsorship ROI, retention, AI tools for business.

The Real Pitch Is Identifying the Problem.

Most salespeople lose before they even start, not because their product is bad, but because they're leading with the wrong thing. In this episode, Joe breaks down a real conversation he had with a 401k salesman who couldn't get anyone on the phone, and walks through how asking questions (being curious!) helped to reframe the pitch from product to problem. No sales playbook required.

Key Takeaways:

• Why leading with your product kills the conversation before it starts
• How to identify the real problem your prospect doesn't know they have
• The art of selling the problem first, then teasing the solution
• Why curiosity and empathy are the actual sales tools
• When to stop talking and why closing and opening in the same breath kills deals

For: Entrepreneurs, sales professionals, and business owners who want to connect with prospects more effectively and close with more confidence.

Topics: Sales strategy, communication, entrepreneurship, business development, problem-solving

How to let them know you understand the problem.

After a frustrating sponsorship call that went sideways fast, Joe breaks down the communication framework he's used in boardrooms, hiring conversations, and high-stakes pitches for over two decades with Ford, GM, Costco, Walmart, and hundreds of other businesses. This isn't just a sales playbook. It works anywhere two people are trying to better understand each other (even at the dinner table with teenagers).

Key Takeaways:

• Why asking questions—the right ones—is the single most powerful thing you can do before saying anything about yourself
• The difference between “mirroring” and reframing and when to use each
• Why asking for specific examples unlocks actionable and useful information
• How to close with confidence without overcommitting or saying something you can't walk back

For: Founders, salespeople, job seekers, hiring managers, and anyone who needs to move a conversation forward and make something happen.

Topics: sales framework, communication skills, active listening, negotiation, persuasion, discovery calls, pitching, leadership, business strategy, entrepreneurship, mirroring, Chris Voss

Here's 4 Simple Steps to Get Started.

Most people are using AI to write emails and clean up presentations. Joe is using it to build software, run research, and solve real business problems…before his burrito arrives.

The barrier isn't skill. It's jargon. Words like "code," "skills," "terminal," and "MCP" make this technology feel like it's not for you. It is. All you need is curiosity and a clearly stated problem.

Key Takeaways:

• Why describing your problem beats describing your solution, and why that shift changes everything about what AI can do for you
• The real difference between AI chat and Claude Code, and why most people never make the jump
• How Joe built a fully functional website over lunch with zero coding knowledge, and the exact four steps that got him there
• What "skills" actually are, why the word sounds scarier than it is, and how they make AI dramatically more useful over time
• Why personalized software built exactly how you want it is now available to anyone willing to ask a dumb question

For: Entrepreneurs, business owners, and anyone who suspects they're leaving most of AI's potential on the table.

Topics: Claude Code, AI tools, automation, no-code, problem solving, entrepreneurship, productivity, Go Brewing

Joe's building his second $100M+ company — and this time, the blueprint looks completely different.

As Joe begins his investor journey for Go Brewing, what he's learning is forcing him to rethink how he sees the business from the ground up. In this episode, Joe breaks down why top-down market projections fail with serious investors, how he built a store-level sales model that actually predicts performance, and why the most valuable thing he's selling might not be the beer at all.

Key Takeaways:

• Why savvy investors don’t just buy a share of a growing market.
• How to use Census Data to map hyper-local growth opportunities
• How to leverage the accretive value of your entire business, not just your product or service
• Why Joe's elevator pitch is about “how” not “what”
• The question every founder needs to answer before they can build something worth acquiring

For: Entrepreneurs thinking about their first or second raise, founders trying to understand what investors actually want to see, and anyone building a business that touches physical inventory or CPG.

Topics: Investor strategy, bottom-up financial modeling, capital efficiency, unfair advantage, CPG vs. SaaS risk, building to acquisition, AI in business operations

On standing out in a world where everyone's using the same playbook and why breaking through is only half the battle.

You have three seconds. Maybe less. And if you spend them looking like everyone else, no amount of polish is going to save you. But here's what nobody talks about: getting attention without something thoughtful and meaningful to back it up is just noise. Joe breaks down how to stand out in the moments that matter in sales pitches, resumes, retailer meetings, and social media, and why the goal was never just the click. It was always the connection.

What you'll learn:

• Why the middle is the most dangerous place to be and how to get out of it
• How AI is flattening the playing field on resumes and what to do about it
• The cat-on-a-unicorn RFP story and what a lost pitch can teach you about fit
• Why "what's in it for them" only works if you get through the door first
• How Joe is approaching Go Brewing's next big retailer pitch differently than everyone else in the room

For: Entrepreneurs, founders, job seekers, and marketers who know they have something worth saying and are tired of being overlooked.

Topics: standing out, differentiation, attention, pitching, personal branding, marketing strategy, entrepreneurship, Seth Godin, Purple Cow, social media algorithm

Are you running on autopilot, or actually paying attention to how you feel?

Most people know something's off before they can name it. Joe breaks down why self-awareness alone won't move the needle, and why the only way out of a funk, a spiral, or a stretch of low performance is to stop waiting and start doing. Even one small thing.

Key Takeaways:

• Mood follows action (credit: Rich Roll). Recognizing the problem is step one, but action is what actually changes how you feel.
• Feeling anxious? Often it means you're underprepared.
• The Short List Hack: write down three to-dos. Knock one out right now, not tomorrow.
• Small moves count. The mechanism matters less than simply starting.

For: Anyone who knows what's wrong but can't seem to get out of their own way.

Topics: Mental health, anxiety, motivation, habits, self-awareness, mindset, entrepreneurship, productivity

Most marketing strategies aren't failing because of budget or tactics. They're failing because nobody asked why.

Joe has seen too many organizations spending real money on content calendars, vanity metrics, useless KPIs, and social media strategies that will never move the needle. He's done pulling punches. In this episode, Joe breaks down why the way most businesses and nonprofits think about communication is outdated, and what it actually looks like to build a strategy that connects effectively with audiences and delivers outcomes beyond activity.

Key Takeaways:

• Why a “bad” skip rate on social content is a symptom, not the problem
• How to use the "five whys" to find out if your strategy is actually worth executing
• How proving effectiveness with organic content is a litmus test for better paid performance
• What a failed skydiving stunt on live TV reveals about purposeful disruption
• Why the most effective communication is often the least scalable — and why that's the point

For: Entrepreneurs, marketers, nonprofit leaders, and anyone who's ever spent money on a strategy and wondered why nothing moved.

Topics: Social media strategy, marketing ROI, content strategy, nonprofit marketing, brand communication, purposeful disruption, storytelling, entrepreneurship