Chris Goegan - Simplifying Business Growth with Engineered Marketing, Laguna Niguel, CA (2026)

06/12/2026

Hockey tryouts are tonight for my son. This is where he signs up for the team he’s going to play on next year. By now, the decision has been made, it’s more of a formality. It also brings this season of craziness of going to all these different skates to figure out the best fit team for my son. My wife and I, and all the parents are happier and breathe easier after tonight! Super excited about this!

I was going to write about the open rates I get on my emails. They are typically over 40% open rate, and overall about 90% of people open my emails. Most people are thrilled to get 20%.

My last email really struck a nerve and is at 48% open rate.

It got me thinking, why, in this AI crazy world, and all the marketing propaganda and garbage out there, why do I get such an exceptionally high open rate?

It got be thinking even deeper about AI and especially about business growth.

Most business owners think growth will eventually make life easier.

It rarely does.

In fact, many companies reach a point where revenue increases, the team grows, and opportunities multiply. . .

Yet the business somehow feels harder to run than ever.

Why?

Because the business is still operating on the systems, structures, and decision-making processes that worked at a much smaller size.

The company isn't broken.

It's simply outgrowing its design.

I see this all the time.

The founder is involved in too many decisions.

Teams work hard but aren't always aligned.

Processes exist, but they don't connect.

Marketing generates leads.

Sales closes deals.

Operations delivers.

But nobody is engineering the entire growth system as one cohesive machine.

As a result:

Bottlenecks multiply
Priorities compete
Accountability becomes blurry
Growth creates complexity instead of freedom
The solution is rarely more effort.

Most owners are already giving everything they have.

The solution is designing a business that can support the future you're trying to build.

That's the work I do as a Growth Architect.

Not handing over ideas and disappearing.

Helping engineer the systems, structure, leadership, and ex*****on necessary for a company to evolve into a scalable enterprise.

The thinking, the architecture, the engineering, the systems – those are the things you should be focusing on right now. Most aren’t. It can be a great weapon for you.

In my experience, there’s usually a much bigger, and much MORE EXCITING opportunity RIGHT NOW in your business. You just have to get out of the minutia to see it. But when you do . . . oh boy!!!!

The next stage of growth usually isn't about working harder.

It's about building differently.

If your business is between roughly $5M and $50M in revenue, and you suspect there's a much larger company hidden inside what you've already built, let's have a conversation.
. . I’d be happy to have a conversation.

Let's put more winning, joy and excitement in your business and life! Yes?!!

Blessings eh!
Chris

06/06/2026

Thankfully the chemical situation in Garden Grove has settled and everyone can move back into their homes. We are all relieved that the threat of a chemical explosion is gone. My family lives far enough away where we would be safe, but we're all breathing a sigh of relief. Phew!

I want to share something that is on my heart. Today's email is a little longer than most emails I send, but if is of profound importance. My mission is helping good people build great businesses, I hope this helps you.

Most founder-led companies over $1M, and especially those between $5M and $50M are successful. . .
. .but they are also strangely fragile.

The founder drives growth.
The founder solves the biggest problems.
The founder makes the key decisions.
The founder carries the relationships.
The founder holds the vision together.

From the outside, the business looks successful.

From the inside, the founder often feels like the business still depends on them to breathe.

And eventually something interesting happens.

The owner realizes:

“I don’t actually want more of THIS.”

Not more complexity.
Not more fires.
Not more operational chaos.
Not more people depending on me for every important decision.

What they really want is something bigger.

A bigger company.
A bigger future.
A bigger opportunity.
A business that scales without consuming more of their life force.

That’s the real conversation.

Because most founders are not dreaming about fixing the business they have.

They are imagining becoming the company they secretly believe they could build.

The frustrating part is this:

Most companies don’t have a real growth system.

They have:

marketing activity
sales activity
operational activity
disconnected vendors
fragmented systems
tribal knowledge
founder force holding everything together
But no integrated growth architecture.

And that becomes the ceiling.

I’ve spent most of my career solving this problem.

Before business, I was a manufacturing engineer at Ford Motor Company.

I was responsible for an entire manufacturing line producing nearly 1 million engines per year. I worked with cylinder blocks, cylinder heads, camshafts, crankshafts, and some other components.

My job was not to become the world’s greatest drilling expert or machining expert.

My job was to make the entire system produce scalable, repeatable, defect-free outcomes.

That systems thinking never left.

I simply carried it into business growth.

Over the years, I went deep into:

sales
persuasion
conversion
marketing
advertising
traffic systems
scaling
leadership
operational growth
But eventually I realized something important:

Traffic is not the real constraint.

Marketing is rarely the real constraint.

The real constraint is usually that the company was never architected to scale independently of the founder.

That’s why some companies grow…
but become heavier and more exhausting at the same time.

And that’s why many businesses worth $10M–$15M today could potentially become businesses worth $100M–$500M with the right growth architecture, leadership systems, scalability infrastructure, and enterprise design.

That’s the work I do.

I architect the growth systems that scale founder-led companies from $5M to $50M - and sometimes to $500M.

Not just through marketing.

Through:

growth architecture
conversion systems
leadership alignment
scalability systems
founder dependency reduction
operational infrastructure
enterprise value expansion
strategic growth engineering
The goal is not simply “more revenue.”

The goal is to help founders build:

a scalable company
a more valuable company
a company capable of operating beyond founder dependency
a company positioned for a significantly larger exit
a company that creates more freedom instead of more operational burden
In many cases, we are not fixing the business, we are transforming it into the company the founder originally imagined building.

Same company.
Same market.
Same core strengths.

Different operating reality. And that is a whole lot more exciting.

One founder has a business that could likely sell right now for around $12.5M.

But with the right growth architecture, scalability systems, leadership structure, and enterprise design. . .
. . the opportunity may be closer to a $250M outcome over the next 3-5 years.

That’s not a marketing campaign.

That’s enterprise transformation.

And importantly, the founder does not want to spend the next decade buried deeper in complexity to get there.

They want a bigger future… without remaining trapped inside the machine they built.

That’s the shift.

Most businesses do not fail because the owners lack effort.

They fail to scale because:

the systems are fragmented
growth depends on the founder
conversion leaks exist
leadership structures are weak
priorities conflict
ex*****on is disconnected
nobody is engineering the entire growth system coherently
That’s what I help solve.

Not as a consultant handing over ideas.

As a Growth Architect helping design and implement so the business can transform into a scalable enterprise.

If your company is between roughly $5M and $50M in revenue and you believe there may be a much larger future hidden inside the business. . .
. . I’d be happy to have a conversation.

Let's put more winning, joy and excitement in your business and life! Yes?!!

Blessings eh!
Chris

05/25/2026

If you’re wondering how I can help you, this is important.

Here’s how I help . . . I scale founder-led companies from $5M to $50M and sometimes $500M. Let’s say a company is doing $5M, they might have an exit valuation of $12.5M because the business is the founder.

Let’s say we take that same business, grow revenues, and remove owner-dependency. I think William Wallace (Braveheart) would say “Freeeeeeedommmm!!” :)

Let’s say we do that. Say revenues grow from $5M to $25M and the exit valuation increases from 2.5x to 10x.

That would mean the business could be sold for $250M.

This can be done in 3-5 years.

There’s a flow and a pattern to do this. I've developed this over the last 35+ years and call it Engineered Growth Systems.

I keep things naturally organized. Here’s what I do:

Diagnose
Architect
Identify constraints
Establish growth engine
Remove founder dependency
Install systems
Delegate intelligently
Govern performance
Scale enterprise value
My team and I work with existing teams, or we can supply whatever is needed. This is our Growth Partner Program.

Interested?

You can email me back to start the conversation. Or you can go here to learn more: https://www.chrisgoegan.com/cmo/

If you need help with this, reach out and let's chat.

Let's put more winning and joy in your business and life! Yes?!!

Blessings eh!
Chris

05/23/2026

I worked with a founder once who told me:
“We need better systems.”

And he did.

He needed better systems in marketing, sales, operations, and fulfillment. But that wasn’t the real problem.

At first glance, it looked like a systems issue. But after a few minutes, another pattern appeared: The business only moved cleanly when the founder was personally involved.

The team waited for approval on almost everything.
Projects slowed the moment the founder got pulled into sales, strategy, client issues, or putting out fires. Everyone was looking to the owner for direction.

Good people were in place - they had the right people in the right seats.
But ownership still felt fuzzy.

Nobody seemed fully responsible for driving ex*****on forward.

So the founder tried to fix it with:

more meetings
tighter management
accountability systems
project management software
operational frameworks like EOS
SOPs
dashboards
And yet somehow, he still felt like the glue holding everything together.

He got pulled into everything.

This happens a lot, especially with smart founders.

They see patterns quickly.
Make strong decisions.
Connect dots other people miss.

That’s usually why the business grew in the first place.

But over time, something subtle happens.

The company starts depending on the founder’s judgment instead of operating from a system that carries that judgment forward.

So the founder becomes the coordination layer.

And eventually, the bottleneck.

At first, their involvement creates speed.

Problems get solved quickly.
Decisions happen fast.
Momentum stays alive because the founder keeps pushing things forward.

But as complexity grows, and as the business gets pressure tested under load, that same involvement starts creating drag. The bottleneck usually comes from strength, not weakness. The founder is so capable that everyone keeps routing decisions back through them.

And for a while, it works.

Until growth increases complexity.

Then the very thing that helped the business grow becomes the thing slowing it down. At every stage of growth you’ll hit points where your frustration can boil over. I like this saying I heard a long time ago: “Different level, different devil.”

Real scale starts when the founder stops being the center of ex*****on and starts designing the system the business operates from.

Completely different role.

Completely different company.

“Fast because of you” and “fast without requiring you” are two very different businesses. And it creates an entirely different way of HOW you approach and architect growth.

If you need help with this, reach out and let's chat.

Let's put more winning and joy in your business and life! Yes?!!

Blessings eh!
Chris

05/16/2026

People are constantly searching for the next big breakthrough in their business.

Better marketing.
Better systems.
Better AI prompts.
Better strategies for scaling their business.

But most of the time, they’re trying to find those breakthroughs while protecting the very assumptions that are keeping them stuck.

That’s the trap.

Take AI for example.

AI is one of the most remarkable tools we’ve ever had access to. Most people use it as an assistant – for research, strategy, brainstorming, deep analysis, and decision-making.

But if we’re honest?

A lot of people are really using AI to confirm what they already believe.

They go in with a presupposition.
Then they ask questions designed to validate it.

And AI will happily help you do that.

The problem is that confirmation rarely creates breakthroughs.

Breakthrough thinking comes from seeing something differently.
From uncovering blind spots.
From challenging your assumptions.
From first principles thinking.

It comes from being willing to ask:

“What if I’m wrong about this?”

That’s where growth lives.

Not in protecting your current worldview.
But in challenging it.

This reminds me of when I started working with Michael E. Ge**er.

Michael wanted to sell more Dreaming Rooms. And to be clear – The Dreaming Room is brilliant. Any business owner serious about reimagining their company should experience it.

But as I started talking with people and researching positioning, I began pushing back on some assumptions.

Hard.

I challenged the positioning.
I challenged whether we were selling the right thing.
I challenged the messaging.
I challenged the belief that everyone automatically wanted what was being offered simply because it was valuable.

And Michael pushed back too.

Strong personalities tend to do that.

But eventually, after enough difficult conversations, something shifted.

I still remember him saying:

“Chris. . . do you realize what you’ve uncovered?”

That moment became the seed for what eventually turned into the book “Beyond the E-Myth.”

Because suddenly the conversation changed from: “How do we fix broken businesses?”

To: “What if we taught people how to build businesses correctly from the beginning?”

That breakthrough may never have happened if nobody challenged the assumptions.

And this is why “Who Not How” matters so much.

Who around you is willing to challenge your thinking?

Who is willing to tell you the truth instead of simply agreeing with you?

Do you have people around you brave enough to push back?
Or just “yes men” or people trying to keep you comfortable?

And when someone challenges you or pushes back. . . what happens?

Do you get defensive?
Angry?
Dismissive?

Or do you pause long enough to consider that they may be helping you see something you couldn’t see on your own?

Most business owners say they want growth. But growth often begins with intellectual honesty. It begins when you stop asking people – or AI – to reinforce your beliefs, and start asking them to challenge them.

Because the biggest breakthroughs in your business usually happen right on the other side of a difficult truth.

So let me leave you with two questions:

How are you challenging your assumptions?

And who is challenging you?

Let's put more winning and joy in your business and life! Yes?!!

Blessings eh!
Chris

05/08/2026

Most business owners think they have a marketing problem.

They don’t. It's deeper.

They think:
“We need more sales → so we need more leads → so we need more marketing → so we need to get the latest traffic or AI gimmick. If we can just fix our marketing, that changes EVERYTHING!”

So they turn it up.
More traffic. More campaigns. More spend.

And for a while. . . it feels like the right move.

Until the results don’t match the effort.

I was brought in by a $40M company to help them “do more marketing.”

But I’ve been around the block enough times to know the problem people think they have is usually not the real problem.

They were selling a $6,000 service. . .
And it was costing them $5,000 to deliver it.

The owner nearly had a heart attack when I showed him this. He had no idea. He also wanted to punch a wall when I showed him what was really going on in his business. Once he calmed down, he got determined and excited for good reason.

He did NOT have a marketing issue.

But guess what was getting blamed?

Marketing.

Here’s the truth:
Marketing is the oxygen for growth. . . but oxygen alone doesn’t build a business.

And when the rest of the system is off, more marketing doesn’t fix it.

It exposes it.

That’s why scaling feels harder than it should.

If you want to learn more, I made a short video where you will learn:

The THREE main factors affecting the success and failure of marketing
Why “more leads” can actually make your problem worse
The real reason your marketing feels like it’s underperforming
How their profit per client increased by thousands of dollars
How fixing one area added millions to their bottom line
How they were able to drop their CAC (Client Acquisition Cost) by up to 90%
How their marketing became 5-10x more effective. . . without spending another dollar
The “leaky bucket” problem that’s quietly killing your growth
If you’re trying to scale. . .
and it’s not happening the way it should this will probably hit a nerve.

👉 Click here to watch the video.

You can keep turning up the marketing. . .
. . Or fix what’s actually holding your business back.

Let's make your business easier and more fun.

Let's put more winning and joy in your business and life! Yes?!!

Blessings eh!
Chris

05/03/2026

If your business isn’t growing. . . it’s probably suffocating.

Sounds dramatic, but it’s true.

When I look at businesses that are stuck, there are usually three missing pieces:

Marketing
Freedom / Scaling Systems
Leadership
All three matter. A lot. I’m writing about this in my new book.

But today, I want to talk about the one that fuels everything. . .

Marketing is the oxygen of your business.

No oxygen? You suffocate.
No marketing? Your business stalls fast.

Now here’s the problem. . .

There’s more noise than ever.

The average person sees somewhere between 4,000 and 10,000 marketing messages every single day.

AI-generated posts.
Polished ads.
Endless content flooding every platform.

We’re now at a point where tools are being built just to figure out whether something was even created by a real person.

That’s how crowded it’s become.

So if you’re doing what everyone else is doing, guess what?

You disappear.

The businesses that win today aren’t louder.
They’re clearer.

They stand for something specific.
They speak to someone specific.
And they tell a story that actually means something.

That’s the difference.

A strong brand promise.
Real differentiation.
Authentic storytelling.

Not perfect. Not overproduced.

Real.

I started leaning into this over a decade ago – before “lo-fi” was even a thing. Simple videos. One take. No polish. I've had people tell me that the lighting is garbage, the sound is off, my hair is a mess (ok, I have needed a haircut before some videos!). I've had so many people tell me so many things that were wrong.

And you know what?

The people that respond, the people that actually buy from me, they love it! I'm told over and over again that they love the message and authenticity. I've had people say "I want to talk with you because I feel you're one of the few people in the world who knows something who I can get an honest answer from."

That’s what connects.

Because people don’t relate to perfect.
They relate to real.

AI is powerful, no questions about it. Use it.

But if you rely on it to do all your thinking?

You’ll blend into the noise instead of rising above it.

Don’t be a clanging cymbal.

The goal isn’t more content.

It’s better connection.

So if you want to grow your business, start here:

Get clear on your message.
Define what makes you different.
Tell the story that only you can tell.

That’s your oxygen.

And without it. . . everything becomes hard.

Let's make your business easier and more fun.

Let's put more winning and joy in your business and life! Yes?!!

Blessings eh!
Chris.

04/25/2026

On Winning . . . Do You Hate Losing Enough?

There’s a video going around of an NHL coach, Rick Bowness. He is so upset and distraught I thought his head might explode. (You can see the video here on X . . . https://x.com/barstoolsports/status/2044261601520341497?s=20

He’s been around the game a long time. One of the winningest coaches in hockey.

And after his team collapsed down the stretch – blew their playoff shot – he didn’t sugarcoat it. In their final game they had 3 hits and 23 giveaways, in hockey, that is an abysmal effort.

He said: “They don’t care. Losing doesn’t bother them. You have to hate losing.”

That’s it.

Winning really comes down to two things:

You have to love to win. . .
And you have to hate to lose.

Most people say they want to win.
But not everyone hates losing enough to do what it takes.

And that’s where everything breaks down.

Because when that edge isn’t there. . .
Complacency creeps in.

“Good enough” becomes acceptable.
Missed deadlines? Acceptable.
Lack of effort? Acceptable.

And before you know it – you’re not losing by accident.
You’ve built a culture that allows it.

There’s a line from the show that’s popular in the hockey community “Shorsey”:
“The boys don’t hate to lose enough.”

That’s real.

Lou Holtz once said he changed his entire program after seeing a player – who barely even played – cry after a loss.

Why?

Because he cared.

And that’s what winning teams are built on.

People who care.
People who compete.
People who take it personally.

So here’s the reality check:

Do you have a winning culture?

Do your people care?
Do they compete?
Do they hate losing?

Because if they don’t. . .

It doesn’t start with them.

It starts with you.

You set the standard.
You define what’s acceptable.
You decide what gets tolerated – and what doesn’t.
You build the culture, and it's either by design or by default.

So take a hard look at your business.

And ask yourself:

Do I have a winning culture? What am I allowing that’s holding us back from winning?

Fix that. . .

And everything changes.

Winning = joy.

Let's put more winning and joy in your business and life! Yes?!!

Blessings eh!
Chris

04/10/2026

On the lighter side of things today. . . one of my core values is fun.

We’re the best in the world at what we do – and I believe in enjoying the ride along the way. After all. . . you know the saying: all work and no play. . .

So here’s something fun 👇

Laura Eiman sent this to me (I’m a big fan of Laura). She was laughing about how I introduced AI to her 4 years ago and she was a total deer in the headlights.

Fast forward to today. . . she’s doing some incredible things with it.

She sent me this video with what might just be the greatest prompt ever. Honestly – this is what everyone is looking for with AI.

Take 30 seconds and check it out:
https://www.instagram.com/reel/DR_IheAE0_4/?igsh=NHAxc2hnd21rbXdk

Then tell me if I’m wrong 😄

Hope that gave you a smile.

Blessings eh!
Chris

04/04/2026

Most businesses are dealing with something far more immediate than AI.

Chokepoints in their business.

Here's a 10-second test to identify yours. . .

If you’re like most business owners, you don’t have a time problem.

You have a clarity problem.

Specifically:

You’re not 100% certain what your real constraint to growth is right now.

And without that clarity, it’s very easy to spend months — or years — solving the wrong problem.

So here’s a simple way to think about it.

A quick diagnostic.

No spreadsheets.
No complicated models.

Just a few honest questions.

At your current stage of business, which of these feels most true?

1. The market isn’t really paying attention to us yet.
You’re putting offers out there, but traction is inconsistent. Leads are unpredictable. Growth feels uncertain.

2. We’re getting attention, but it’s not the right kind.
You’re attracting prospects, but they’re not ideal. Conversions are inconsistent. Your market positioning may not be clear.

3. We’re growing, but margins feel tighter than they should.
Revenue is coming in, but pricing pressure, competition, or lack of differentiation is making it harder to scale profitably.

4. We’re established, but growth feels harder than it should.
There’s complexity. Teams, systems, and moving parts. But things don’t feel as predictable or aligned as they could be.

You don’t need to overthink this.

One of those likely stands out. That’s your choke point.

And once you see it clearly, something important happens:

You stop trying to fix everything. . .
. . and start focusing on what actually matters.

Because each one of those constraints requires a very different solution.
. . If you try to fix #1 with systems… you’ll slow yourself down.
. . If you try to fix #2 with more leads… you’ll create more noise.
. . If you try to fix #3 with more sales… you may actually make the problem worse.
. . If you try to fix #4 by adding more complexity… you’ll bury the real issue.

This is where most businesses get stuck.

Not from lack of effort. But from lack of precision.

The founders who scale efficiently don’t do more. They relentlessly do what matters most – at the right time.

They identify the constraint.

Then they align the right Who and the right How to solve it.

Everything else becomes secondary.

If you had to choose . . . Which one are you dealing with right now?

Because once you get that answer right, everything else starts to move a lot faster.

Isn't that what we all want - faster growth? That and more freedom.

Let's do both.

Let's put joy and excitement back in your business. (It sure beats the alternative!)

Blessings eh!
Chris.

Chris Goegan - Simplifying Business Growth with Engineered Marketing

06/12/2026

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