Direction Beats Effort

You're working harder than ever, and the returns keep shrinking. More ads, more hires, more campaigns—and somehow the needle barely moves.

In this episode, Todd sits down with Pete Steege, founder of B2B Clarity and author of On Purpose and Radical Clarity, to unpack why effort stopped being the constraint and direction took its place. They talk about the "accidental CEO" problem—the technical founder who built the product, watched customers show up, and then looked up one day running a company nobody handed them a manual for. Pete walks through his CMP framework, the difference between a target customer and a bullseye, and why most marketing problems are really clarity problems in disguise. Todd pushes back in a few places too, especially on AI and founder authenticity.

It's a grounded conversation about what happens when the old moat stops working and the honest question is what you've been avoiding.

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