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From Economic Insight to Growth Strategy: What CEOs Should Do Now
At our most recent CEO Growth Talks, I spoke with Taylor St. Germaine, Senior Economist at ITR Economics. The timing couldn’t have been better — the latest GDP numbers had just been released, and Taylor broke down what they mean for CEOs planning growth.
As always, ITR brought a clear and fact-based perspective. The economy is growing. Consumer spending is strong. And while some industries are facing headwinds, opportunities abound for leaders who are ready to act.
But the real question for CEOs isn’t just what the economy looks like. It’s: how do you prepare your business to grow in this environment — and the one coming next?
From Concept to Execution: A Step-by-Step CEO Playbook for Go-to-Market Success, Part One
Mon, Jun 23, 2025 — Every CEO knows this nightmare scenario: Your team spent months crafting the "perfect" go-to-market strategy, only to watch it crumble during execution. Resources hemorrhage, timelines slip, and while you're still troubleshooting internal alignment issues, competitors are capturing the market opportunity you identified first.
Winning the Fraud and Cybersecurity Race: A Go-to-Market Blueprint for Competitive Edge
Thu, Jun 5, 2025 — Fraud and cybercrime have become a systemic, trillion-dollar drag on the global economy—but the fight to turn the curve is more than a market opportunity. Over the past few years, I have worked alongside cybersecurity and fraud-management teams in government, banking, and payments, and nothing is more satisfying than seeing a new solution stop a romance scam or prevent a pensioner from losing their life savings.
Tariffs and Your Next Chapter: Turning Disruption into Go-to-Market Growth
Mon, Apr 7, 2025 — Tariffs have been around for centuries. Commonly used to protect emerging industries or bolster national security, tariffs have evolved beyond trade tools into economic levers that can shift markets overnight. Tariffs have re-entered the conversation for mid-sized business leaders, especially those with global supply chains or international customer bases. But here's the thing: reacting like it’s still 1995 won’t cut it.
Navigating Growth: The Role of Fractional Sales Leaders in Transformative Strategies
Thu, Feb 1, 2024 — Today’s trend of hiring fractional executives is gaining momentum among growth-oriented businesses aiming to enhance their management expertise and bandwidth cost-effectively. In this article, I will delve into the dynamic world of fractional sales leaders, exploring their pivotal role in driving revenue growth, providing specialized expertise, and offering flexibility to scale sales leadership based on organizational needs. I will reveal how these leaders contribute to strategic focus, mitigate hiring risks, and deliver quick results, drawing insights from real-world scenarios.
How to Use Positioning to Own Your Market
Thu, Feb 9, 2023 — Become a big fish in your pond In my previous blog, “What Tech CEOs Get Wrong About Positioning,” we introduced the concept of market positioning – and specifically, how it helps your customers connect the dots between their needs and your product or service. Of all the marketing strategy lessons we at Chief Outsiders share with founders and business leaders like yourself, positioning ranks among the most critical. It truly is a difference-maker for businesses that wish to become the leader of the pack -- to become, in fishing parlance, the big fish in your pond.
CEO Go-To-Market Warning: Avoid the Blind Spots That Cause Products to Miss the Mark
Tue, Oct 4, 2022 — Part 1: Avoiding the Dust Bin Requires an Insights-Driven Approach Have you ever heard of the Apple Pippin or the Twitter Peek? Played a game of TowerFall on the Ouya Console? Taken an important call on your Amazon Fire Phone? If so, you are among the rarest of the rare – the chosen few who took the calculated risk of trying a new product during its brief run on earth. The world is littered with also-rans, whoopsies, and well-intentions gone awry. There are so many consumer product failures each year – some that miss with a whimper, and some that make a giant megaton splash into the depths of nowhere – that several “Museums of Failure” warehouse the worst and dimmest of the bunch. In fact, up to 95 percent of new product launches fail to hit a target, according to one market analyst.