Attribution is the number one thing keeping mid-market B2B teams small. Growth Science founder Tony Flores explains why the dashboard gets healthier while the business gets weaker.

Tony Flores is the founder of Growth Science. He spent 12 years in B2B SaaS in-house, then at Refine Labs, before stepping out to work on the problems he'd concluded were very difficult to solve from inside an agency: the systemic go-to-market issues that make agency engagements fail in the first place. This episode is about the biggest one, validating every marketing and sales decision through a revenue attribution report.

Scott and Tony walk through the five go-to-market objectives most teams are only funding one of, why good programs get killed at 90 days, and how to handle a CFO who wants everything tracked to pipeline.

In this episode we talk about:

• The five go-to-market objectives, and how to tell a fledgling portfolio from a mature one
• Optimizing a program before the program exists: $5K, 30 days, and a verdict nobody could have earned
• $40 clicks on a $4,000 monthly budget, and the nine months it took to run a real test
• Why "we hit 100,000 reach at 7x frequency" loses the room, and what to bring instead
• The gated ebook run two ways: give the CFO their number and still build the portfolio
• Why the problems that sink agency engagements get decided during onboarding, before anyone launches a campaign
• Whether AI search changes any of this (Tony's answer is shorter than you'd expect)

Learn more: https://getrocketship.com/

Most companies treat culture and internal branding as the same thing, and it's why their values statements never survive contact with a bad quarter. 

In this episode, Shannon Zastrow sits down with Augie Emuwa, founder of Identity Capital Consulting, to break down internal branding, the discipline that turns a values poster into something your team actually lives out. Augie introduces the Triple A Framework: Assess, Articulate, Advance, and the exact exercise to find out whether your stated values match what your people actually believe. 

Topics covered: 

• The difference between culture (the how) and internal branding (the what), and why conflating them keeps brand values stuck on a poster 
• Why your employees might already outnumber your customers and what that hidden internal audience is worth once you actually activate it 
• Purpose-driven vs. purpose-washing: how Patagonia and Ben & Jerry's built purpose into their brand DNA, and why Budweiser's campaign-only approach backfired 
• The Triple A Framework: Assess, Articulate, Advance, Augie's model for auditing internal brand alignment 
• The Word-Check exercise: a steal-this tactic for finding the gap between what your values say and what your people actually believe 

If you're leading a growing B2B organization where the founder's vision no longer reaches every desk, this episode is your playbook for closing that gap before it costs you talent and trust. Rocketship helps B2B challenger brands close the gap between positioning and performance. 

Learn more: http://getrocketship.com

Check out Identity Capital Consulting: https://www.idcapitalconsulting.com

Half of all searches now start in an AI chat box, and the content playbook that got you ranked on Google is exactly what gets you ignored by AI. In this third episode, Scott Miller and Shannon Zastrow dig into why Google's "just apply foundational SEO" guidance is an outdated narrative, and what actually wins visibility when answer engines are compressing the buyer journey and zero-click searches are the norm. Shannon introduces CURATE, Rocketship's replacement for the aging EEAT framework. Six signals that determine whether AI recommends your brand or your competitor's. Topics covered:

• Why AI search is foundationally different from traditional search and why only ~12% of AI citations overlap with traditional search results
• The CURATE framework: Context, Uniqueness, Relevance, Alignment, Trust, and Experience, a content model built for AI search, not keyword rankings
• From keywords to prompts: mining Reddit, LinkedIn, and voice-of-customer data to find the situations buyers are actually describing to AI
• Why AI-generated content is a trust killer, commodity listicles earn almost no AI traffic, and buyers prefer human-generated content roughly 8 to 1
• Why challengers like Ally Bank and ShipStation are outranking massive incumbents in AI search and how long that window stays open

If you're running a mid-market B2B company that can't outspend the incumbents on domain authority but can out-niche them on context, this episode is your playbook. Rocketship helps B2B challenger brands cut through the noise and close the competitive gap.

Learn more: http://getrocketship.com

Most B2B brands built their positioning around their industry category, and it's why they produce category-average results. In this second episode, Scott Miller and Shannon Zastrow tackle the follow-up to episode one: are you actually a challenger brand, or are you just blending in with the rest of your category? Shannon breaks down the four stages of brand growth — Entrant, Contender, Challenger, and Category Leader, and the exact point where the playbook that built your early success starts working against you. Topics covered:

• The four stages of brand growth, and why the tactics that work as a Contender become a liability once you're fighting for Challenger status
• The Great Flattening: why AI is making every brand in your category sound the same, and why it's getting worse, not better
• "Human first": how to use AI for content without losing your brand voice
• The Free/Perfect/Now framework for finding the unmet need only you can own
• Five diagnostic questions to know if you've actually made the shift to challenger brand

If you're running a mid-market B2B company that's outgrown "scrappy startup" but isn't ready to outspend the category leader, this episode is your foundation. Rocketship helps B2B challenger brands cut through the noise and close the competitive gap. Learn more: http://getrocketship.com

Most companies competing against bigger, better-funded rivals are using the wrong playbook. In this first episode, Scott Miller and Shannon Zastrow define what actually makes a brand a "challenger" and why it has nothing to do with company size.
Shannon breaks down the Growth Ceiling: the point where the tactics that built early success stop working as a company moves up market. Topics covered:

• What separates a challenger brand from a startup, an innovator, or a market leader
• Why HubSpot vs. Salesforce is a textbook challenger story
• The Lighthouse Identity: why being unapologetically specific about who you serve is the key to growth
• The Monster/Villain archetype and why challengers rarely attack competitors head-on
• Why most B2B brands hitting AI for content are accidentally sounding exactly like their competitors
• The biggest gap killing challenger growth: conveyor belt marketing

If you're running a mid-market B2B company that's outgrown "scrappy startup" but isn't ready to outspend the category leader, this episode is your foundation.
Rocketship helps B2B challenger brands cut through the noise and close the competitive gap. Learn more: getrocketship.com