Manufacturers deserve a marketing leader who gets manufacturing.

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My career started as an outside sales rep for five furniture manufacturers. I drove to customers, carried samples, walked trade show floors, made cold calls, and sat across from buyers trying to earn their business. I sold millions of dollars worth of product and discovered something unexpected along the way. It wasn’t the selling that captivated me. It was the making. Working with people who build real things, who solve real problems, who take raw materials and turn them into something the world needs.

Those years on the road taught me things no marketing textbook ever could. I learned how manufacturers think. I understood the trade show from the exhibitor’s side. I did the sales presentations. I saw firsthand how marketing, sales, and distribution have to connect and how rarely they do. I learned what drives people to take action, because I was the one on the phone trying to make it happen.

Eventually, I took on the marketing function at the rep firm. Built out the website, developed a digital presence, helped open a physical showroom. That’s when I realized the marketing side was where I could create the most leverage.

In 2011, I started working directly with manufacturers. My first client made metal giftware: trophies, medals, enamelware, silverware. Beautiful products. Minimal marketing. A story I’d hear over and over again in the years that followed. In 2013, I became a HubSpot partner and started building the systems and infrastructure that would become the foundation of everything I do today.

Back then, most manufacturers didn’t understand digital. They came from a traditional background: trade shows, catalogs, word of mouth. I helped them make the transition. Websites. Ads. Content. Video production. Working alongside marketing directors on strategy. One engagement at a time, I built a practice around manufacturers who needed someone to own the marketing function, not just execute tasks.

Along the way, I worked with outside agencies on behalf of my clients. I saw the same pattern every time: most agencies approached it from the angle of what product they could sell, not what results the client actually needed. I wanted to work differently. I wanted to understand the business first, put the client’s interests at the center, and build marketing that actually drove growth.

Over the years, I worked with a wide range of precision manufacturing operations: optics, electronics, heavy equipment, specialty tools, battery packs for critical applications. I ran hundreds of marketing experiments. I built repeatable systems that could generate results quickly. And I developed a deep understanding of how manufacturing companies actually sell, through direct sales teams, distributors, reps, and increasingly through digital channels that most manufacturers were ignoring.

That experience became Industrial Growth Lab. Not an agency. Not a consultant who shows up with a slide deck and disappears. A fractional marketing executive with deep manufacturing expertise who sits inside your business, understands your market, and builds the growth engine you’ve been missing.