The Viral Genius Podcast

Most summits don’t fail because the content is bad.

They fail because they’re built around information — not connection.

In this session from the Strike Marketing Summit, Rachel Starr (Founder of Co-Creator Society and Circle Certified Partner) reveals how to design a summit that:

• Increases live attendance

• Boosts engagement

• Converts at higher rates

• Turns attendees into long-term community members

She breaks down the 5-part Connection-First Summit Framework:

1. Attract aligned speakers

2. Design for interaction (not consumption)

3. Build one simple home base

4. Create built-in connection moments

5. Use your summit as a launchpad

If you’re running summits to generate leads, launch memberships, or build category authority — this is required viewing.

Because a summit isn’t content.

It’s a catalyst.

🕒 Chapter Markers (Keep These)

00:00 From Content to Experience: The Mindset Shift That Changes Everything

00:20 Smooth Jazz Banter + Welcoming Rachel Starr

01:24 Meet Rachel Starr: Community Strategist Intro

02:15 Two Truths and a Lie

05:21 Prize Reveal: Free Month of Co-Creator Society

07:44 Build a Summit That Grows Your Business Through Connection

09:40 Why Most Summits Fall Flat: The 4 Big Experience Problems

13:28 Community Is the Conversion Engine

16:35 Pop Quiz: What’s the Real Engine Behind a Successful Summit?

20:17 Case Study: Inside the Co-Creator Growth Summit

25:57 The Connection-First Framework

31:26 Behind the Scenes Tour: Summit Hub & App

35:49 What Attendees Actually Want

38:45 Turning Summit Momentum Into Ecosystem Growth

41:34 5 Practical Next Steps

52:08 Marketing Timeline & Monetization Strategy

55:49 Community Building Secrets + Wrap-Up

You've built the sales page. You've tweaked the headline. Maybe you've followed Russell Brunson's playbook to the letter. And it worked — a little. Not nearly enough. So you built another one.

Chris Stanley has a name for this: the tornado trap. And in this session from the Strike Marketing Summit, he explains exactly why it keeps happening — and the one shift that broke the cycle for him.

Chris is the founder of IA Path and Mini Book Publishing, the author of 21 Amazon bestsellers, and the architect of a $700K-per-year online business he runs from a sailboat in Florida. He built it — not through a breakthrough launch or a viral moment — but through a 10,000-word book he wrote about insurance adjusting. He started with haters on LinkedIn questioning his credentials. Nine years later: $700K a year, three years running.

Here's the insight that changed everything for him: funnels cash in on belief that already exists. If someone is already searching for what you sell, a funnel converts that existing conviction into a sale. But if you're a bootstrapped founder in a new category — building something the market doesn't have language for yet — there's no existing belief to cash in on. And no funnel, no matter how well-built, can manufacture it. You need a flywheel.

What you'll learn in this session: • The 3 problems every founder faces in sequence — the credibility crisis, the tornado trap, and category confusion — and why they compound on each other • Why funnels are tornadoes (fast to spin up, fast to die) and flywheels are hurricanes (slow to build, massive and sustained impact) — and the Flywheel Law: a belief flywheel lasts 1,000 times longer than a funnel • The 5 elements of a hurricane-strength flywheel: market need, powerful POV, consistent messaging, belief echo, and category clarity • The 3-stage build system — Idea → Identity → Impact — and why a mini book is the fastest path through all three stages • The content engine that flows from a flywheel: Book → Content → Conversations → Customers • How to find your unique POV (hint: it's simpler than you think) and test your framework before you write a word

About Chris Stanley: Chris Stanley is the founder of IA Path and Mini Book Publishing. Starting as an insurance adjuster, he built a $700K/year online education business through a series of mini books — 21 of which have hit the Amazon bestseller list. He runs his business remotely from a sailboat and a school bus. His book Mini Book Flywheel releases in January 2026.

Get his free mini books: https://minibookpublishing.com/free

About the Strike Marketing Summit: The Strike Marketing Summit is a two-day virtual event for bootstrapped B2B founders who are invisible despite doing great work. Hosted by Fernando Labastida, Founder of Strike Marketing Institute, the summit teaches the Strike Marketing Model: category design, a startup book, a summit strike, content cascade, and AI amplification — the third path between blitzscaling and the content hamster wheel.

⏱️ CHAPTERS

00:00 Funnels vs Flywheels 

00:35 Meet Chris Stanley 

02:35 Seven Days to 700K 04:30 Tornado or Hurricane 

05:52 Origin Story and Proof 

08:07 Mini Book Breakthrough 

09:10 Life Currency Giveaway 

12:19 Three Business Problems 

12:51 Credibility Crisis 15:00 Tornado Trap Funnels 

16:38 Borrowed Demand Explained 

18:38 Hurricane Flywheel Mindset 

21:40 Flywheel Creates Belief 

22:15 Flywheel Law Giveaway 

25:17 Category Confusion Fix 

27:05 Mini Book Flywheel System 

29:07 Mini Book Flywheel 

29:28 Book Becomes Business 

31:02 Hurricane Flywheel Elements 

31:42 Warm Water Market Need 

32:59 Point of View Gravity 

34:11 Messaging and Belief Echo 

35:15 Category Clarity Eye 

36:18 Build Your Flywheel Stages 

37:03 Idea Identity Impact 

39:24 Mini Book Authority Boost 

42:28 Content to Customers Loop 

44:01 Funnels Versus Flywheels 

45:07 Giveaway and Free Books 

49:08 Writing a Book Fast 

51:17 Series Bundle Walkthrough 

53:08 Finding Your Unique POV 

54:24 Testing Frameworks 

57:43 Book Revenue and Wrap Up

🎯 Ready to stop being invisible? Book a free 30-minute strategy call with Fernando: https://calendly.com/fernando-aimarketingcasestudies/call-with-fernando

📬 Subscribe to the Startup Strike newsletter — category design, summit strategy, and founder visibility, every Tuesday: https://strikemarketing.news

#StrikeMarketing #CategoryDesign #BootstrappedFounder #MiniBook #VirtualSummit #B2BMarketing #InvisibleExpert #ContentMarketing #SalesFunnel #Flywheel

Most companies compete harder. Very few change the game.

In this Strike Marketing Summit fireside chat, Kevin Maney and Mike Damphousse unveil the thinking behind their upcoming book, The Category Creation Formula — a decade of real-world category design distilled into a clear, repeatable framework.

This is not positioning theory. It’s market-making strategy.

Drawing from 10+ years of hands-on work with startups, scale-ups, and enterprises (including LinkedIn, Guidewheel, and more), Kevin and Mike break down how new market categories actually emerge — and why most companies miss the moment.

The core insight:

Every new category follows the same logic:

Context + Missing + Innovation = New Market Category

In this conversation, you’ll learn:

Why category design is strategy, not marketing

How new contexts (AI, geopolitics, supply chains, social shifts) create entirely new problems

How to identify what’s missing before competitors see it

Why the Adjacent Possible determines whether innovation succeeds or dies

How iconic leaders (Steve Jobs, Jeff Bezos, Uber) instinctively followed this formula

Why category design must be CEO-led, not delegated

Why categories are a long game, built through sustained “strikes,” not one launch

Kevin and Mike also share never-before-public material from their new book, including:

How to set category rules so competitors are forced to follow you

Why great category names combine old language + new meaning

How to write a Category Point of View (POV) that aligns product, sales, and marketing

Real stories of founders who finally “saw” their category — and unlocked growth

If you’re building something new - or struggling to stand out in a crowded market - this session offers a mental model that clarifies everything downstream: product, messaging, GTM, and growth.

This is category design, evolved.

⏱️ Key Moments

00:00 Why new contexts create new markets

02:05 The origins of the Category Creation Formula

05:54 Real category design case studies

09:31 Context + Missing + Innovation explained

12:06 Steve Jobs as the ultimate category designer

14:04 The “Adjacent Possible” framework

18:46 How category rules get set (Uber example)

22:54 How to build a true Category POV

36:56 Common myths about category design

44:28 Why category creation is a long game

49:38 Guidewheel: a modern category success story

How do you grow a business when content is everywhere, AI is flooding the market, and trust is harder than ever to earn?

In this Strike Marketing Summit session, Darrell Vesterfelt breaks down the growth system he’s used to:

Drive $100M+ in revenue

Generate 100,000+ summit registrations

Turn live events into compounding community engines

Help creators and companies build million-dollar communities

Darrell’s journey spans early webinars in 2012, 150 webinars in 12 months at ConvertKit, launching massive summits like the School of Traditional Skills (101,000 signups in year one), and now leading growth at Mighty Networks.

But this isn’t a tactics talk.

It’s a systems talk.

What you’ll learn:

Why summits aren’t campaigns — they’re engines

The real reason webinars worked at ConvertKit (hint: product-market fit comes first)

How one summit took a company from zero to 5,000 paying members in a week

Why AI is killing courses — and elevating community

How just 30 people can be the foundation of a real business

Why results matter more than features (and always will)

Darrell also introduces a powerful shift happening right now:the move from education → participation, and from content → community.

If you’re a founder, marketer, creator, or operator trying to stand out in an AI-crowded market, this session lays out a clearer path forward than most “growth hacks” ever will.

⏱️ Key Moments:

00:00 Why ambitious goals matter03:38 From webinars to 100K-person summits07:13 Turning a summit into instant traction15:31 Product-market fit vs. pushing the boulder uphill23:44 Growth lessons from ConvertKit29:42 Why challenges outperform courses33:09 How AI is changing learning forever35:48 Why small communities can be big businesses41:22 Community as the new growth advantage46:43 Results > features (the real differentiator)

Bryan Funk grew a company from $1M in ARR to $100M in just a few years using a go-to-market method I’m convinced will be the killer GTM strategy for 2026 and beyond.

And here’s the part that hit me hardest: He was doing Strike Marketing before the term even existed.

Back in December, I made a very public bet.

I decided that Strike Marketing could become a legitimate category, not just a framework, not just a clever phrase, but a real way of thinking about go-to-market that cuts through the marketing industrial complex.

So I spent eight weeks organizing the Strike Marketing Summit to launch the category into the public eye.

What I didn’t expect was that one of the speakers would completely validate the model…and quietly add a twist that made it even stronger.

That speaker was Bryan Funk.

The Poster Child for Strike Marketing (Before It Had a Name)

At Virtuous Software, Bryan wasn’t just “doing marketing.”

He was heading up category strategy.

Together with the team, he helped launch Responsive Fundraising as a new category inside the nonprofit world, reframing how modern fundraising should work in an always-on, donor-centric environment.

That alone is notable.

But here’s where it gets interesting.

The Book Came First. Not the Product.

Virtuous’s founder and CEO, Gabe Cooper, didn’t just pitch a product.

He wrote the book Responsive Fundraising, laying out the philosophy, the methodology, and - most importantly - the language of the category.

That book did what great category books always do:

It didn’t sell software. It taught a new way of thinking.

Then Came the Event Engine

Here’s the move most companies miss. Bryan didn’t treat events as one-off lead gen stunts. He designed and launched a quarterly virtual summit engine whose sole job was to promote the category.

Not Virtuous. Not features. The category.

Over time, those summits turned Responsive Fundraising from an idea into an established concept inside the nonprofit space.

This is Strike Marketing in its purest form: designed moments that force a market to pay attention.

Speakers Weren’t “Guests.” They Were Megaphones.

Another key detail most people gloss over: Bryan didn’t just invite speakers and hope they promoted. He worked with each speaker before the summit - extensively.

He made sure they understood:

* The category context

* The narrative arc of the event

* Where their talk fit into the bigger story

The result?

The speakers didn’t just deliver talks. They became evangelists for the category.

High-Production Signals Authority

Then Bryan and his team added a powerful signal.

They created a hybrid in-person speaker experience with a virtual audience, flying speakers into Virtuous’s warehouse-style offices, building three stages, and hiring a professional production crew to livestream every session.

It felt less like a webinar…and more like a TEDx-level experience.

Content That Actually Deserves Authority

Here’s the quiet genius part. Bryan created the ultimate expression of Google’s EEAT framework - content rooted in Experience, Expertise, Authority, and Trust.

Each summit generated:

* Dozens of high-credibility content assets

* Enough material to fuel an entire year of marketing

* Content sales teams could actually use

What higher authority content can a company create other than what the speakers at their own summits can produce?

The Whole Company Was Involved

One final piece most GTM teams never pull off. Sales reps. Customer success. Marketing.

All were involved in recruiting speakers, shaping topics, and feeding insights back into sales conversations. The category galvanized the company, and got everybody on board with the same mindset, vocabulary and belief system.

The Punchline

Little did Bryan Funk know…he may have been one of the first Strike Marketers - years before the term was ever coined.

If you want to see what this looks like in practice, I highly recommend watching Bryan’s full talk.

It’s one of the cleanest real-world validations of Strike Marketing I’ve ever seen.

Most founders don’t fail because they execute poorly.They fail because they execute really well—on the wrong thing.

In this opening panel of the Strike Marketing Summit, we dig into a critical but often misunderstood idea:

👉 Category design comes before marketing.

Before funnels.Before ads.Before content.Before AI tools.

Featuring a powerhouse group of category design practitioners and strategists—Kevin Maney, Mike Damphousse, Chris Stanley, Pablo Gonzalez, and Fernando Labastida—this conversation breaks down why marketing tactics fail when the underlying category hasn’t been designed intentionally.

You’ll learn:

- Why marketing can’t fix a poorly defined category

- How category design shapes the market before demand generation

- The Category Creation Formula: Context → Missing → Innovation

- Why language and vocabulary determine how markets form

How founders accidentally inherit categories—and the constraints that come with them

If you’re building a startup, launching a second-act business, or trying to escape competition traps, this session will change how you think about growth.

00:00 Introduction to Market Perception

00:49 Welcome to Strike Marketing Summit

01:27 Overview of the Summit Agenda

03:16 Deep Dive into Category Design

07:44 Panel Discussion: Defining Category Design

20:40 Identifying Market Problems

29:46 Engaging with Your Target Market

30:15 The Importance of CEO Involvement

30:57 Best Practices for Category Design

31:50 The Category Formula: Context, Missing, Innovation

34:15 Creating a Compelling Category Narrative

36:41 Challenges in Category Design

41:12 Mobilizing a Category

49:04 Real Estate and Category Design

55:18 Closing Thoughts and Next Steps

📌 This panel set the intellectual foundation for the entire Strike Marketing Summit.

Most brands are still screaming for attention. Scott Martin believes the future belongs to the ones who earn trust.

In this episode of The Viral Genius Podcast, Fernando Labastida sits down with Scott Martin — CEO of Groundswell Origins, author of Groundswell: The Unseen Wave of Business Growth, TEDx speaker, and creator of the upcoming book Title Shift. Together, they unpack one of the most important shifts happening in marketing today: the move from an attention economy to a trust economy.

Scott explains why consumers are overwhelmed, skeptical, and tired of “growth hacking theater”… and why the brands that win next will be the ones that build authentic, coherent experiences from the very first touchpoint all the way through delivery. He calls this new category Brand Coherence — the strategic bedrock for sustainable growth in an age of AI, content overload, and mistrust.

You’ll also hear:

Why “trust → like → know” is the new buying cycle

How AI-generated perfection is accelerating mistrust

What Scott learned from decades in growth hacking — and why he walked away from it

How his Groundswell Method helps companies grow without traditional marketing

The power of circles of trust, superconsumers, and founder-led category creation

Why patience may actually be the greatest “growth hack” of all

This is a rich, future-forward conversation about designing brands people actually believe in — and why transformation (not tactics) is the real engine of word-of-mouth.

If you’re a founder, marketer, creator, or anyone trying to build something that lasts, this episode is a north star.

CHAPTERS

00:00 — Introduction: Content Overload & Mistrust00:46 — Meet Scott Martin02:11 — The Premise of Title Shift03:26 — Entering the Age of Mistrust04:49 — Circles of Trust & the Return to Community06:50 — Defining a New Category: Brand Coherence08:44 — Sustainable Growth Marketing09:14 — What Brand Coherence Really Means16:02 — The Groundswell Method Explained20:05 — Transformation as the Ultimate Growth Loop26:46 — Lightning Strikes & Community Building33:28 — Closing Thoughts & What’s Next

Where to Find Scott Martin

Website: https://groundswellorigins.com

YouTube: https://groundswell.tv

LinkedIn: Search Scott A. Martin – Groundswell

Groundswell Inner Circle Community: https://groundswellinnercircle.com

Podcast: The Groundswell Podcast (available on all major platforms)

Register here → https://summit.strikemarketingsummit.com/talks/the-future-of-content-operations/

If you’ve ever been seduced by the endless parade of shiny AI tools—and then wondered why your content still doesn’t work—this conversation with Audra Carpenter is your wake-up call.

Audra has been doing content marketing since Obama’s first term. She’s logged her “10,000 hours” inside the chaos of AI implementation, and she’s emerged with something founders desperately need: a practical, battle-tested blueprint for turning AI into an actual operating system for your content. Not a toy. Not a trick. A system.

In this speaker-preview episode, Audra breaks down:

🔥 Why AI is incredible at “macro” work—but fails spectacularly at the micro decisions humans make without thinking

(“AI will 100% miss the tiny nuances you make unconsciously. It’s a black box.”)

🔥 The hidden, unconscious micro-steps that make or break your content workflows

She explains why everyone gets stuck when they try to “just have AI write the blog post.”

🔥 The 3 roles every company will soon have: Architect, Operator, Automator

And why founders must stop chasing tools and start building infrastructure.

🔥 How to build AI-powered workflows that actually scale your business

Agents aren’t autonomous yet—but the workflows she’s building today are “sexy, powerful, and real.”

🔥 Why the ONLY unfair advantage left in marketing is your humanity

As AI removes barriers, differentiation becomes emotional, relational, and strategic—not technical.

About Audra’s Strike Marketing Summit Talk

Title: From Workflows to Intelligence: The Future of Content OperationsWhen: Friday, December 12 · 1–2 PM CT (2–3 PM ET)Where: Strike Marketing Summit (100% virtual & free)Register: https://summit.strikemarketingsummit.com/talks/the-future-of-content-operations/

This session is a must-attend for founders, marketers, and operators who want to build a content machine that runs with AI—not against it.

Audra will show you how to shortcut years of trial and error… and finally get AI to produce consistent, usable, on-brand output.

Soundbites You’ll Love

“Not all the shiny tools.”

“AI is great at macro work—not the micro.”

“I want to shortcut it for you.”

“Workflows are the future. Agents aren’t here yet.”

“Marketing is still marketing—we just have a different tool.”

Navigating Data Challenges for AI Success

In this episode, Fernando Labastida talks with Eduardo Ortiz Ramírez about one of the most overlooked barriers to AI success: the quality of a company’s data and processes. Eduardo explains why data problems can derail even the most ambitious AI initiatives—and why the solution isn’t always a massive, expensive digital transformation.

Instead, he shares a more practical path: intelligent reinvention. This approach centers on identifying strategic pain points, implementing quick wins, and modernizing processes in targeted, high-impact ways.

If your organization is struggling to make AI work—or you're unsure how to prepare your systems and people for AI adoption—this conversation gives you a roadmap for getting unstuck.

Chapters

00:00 Introduction to the Viral Genius Podcast00:40 Understanding Intelligent Reinvention

Bryan Eisenberg has shaped modern digital marketing more than almost anyone alive. He and his brother Jeffrey pioneered ideas like conversion rate optimization (CRO), persuasion architecture, and scent, and authored 11 bestselling books that defined the field.

In this Strike Marketing Summit preview, Bryan joins Fernando Labastida to unpack a critical shift:

In a world where AI curates our choices, stories — not facts — determine which brands survive.

What You’ll Learn

Why AI leads convert 23× better than SEO leads — and what this means for visibility, differentiation, and demand generation.

How AI is changing search behavior from “ranking” to story recall, giving brands with strong narratives a structural advantage.

Why marketers must craft “brandable chunks” — simple, vivid pieces of vocabulary customers repeat and algorithms latch onto.

How the average person now absorbs 15,000+ marketing messages per day, and why your messaging must cut through instantly.

Why great companies win by telling origin stories and belief stories that customers can retell in their own words.

Case Study: The Tri-Chord Method

Bryan breaks down a real-world transformation of Dr. Matt Delgado, an Austin chiropractor whose brand exploded after shifting to:

A clear origin story rooted in healing his own autoimmune condition

A belief story built around the nervous system as the “master system”

A signature methodology — The Tri-Chord Method — now recognizable inside AI tools

Sticky vocabulary like:

AQ (Ask Quotient)

The body was meant to move

Timeout Prescription

This approach created a story customers wanted to repeat… and that AI systems began to surface.

Why This Matters

If your brand sounds like everyone else’s — “family-owned,” “great service,” “high quality” — AI will flatten you into irrelevance.But if you engineer the right stories, the algorithms will recall you.

Where to See Bryan Live

Strike Marketing Summit 2025📅 Friday, December 12🕛 12 PM – 1 PM CSTTalk: The Stories We Sell

Register here: https://summit.strikemarketingsummit.com

A must-listen for any founder, marketer, creator, or practitioner who wants to stand out in an AI-driven world.