About Karl
I start by asking, not deciding.
Before I touch a marketing plan, I talk to sales. Before I redesign an event, I talk to the people it's supposed to serve. Most of the answers are already sitting inside the company somewhere. They just haven't been pulled together in a way anyone could use yet.
How I lead
I default to why not instead of we can't.
I'd rather ask an uncomfortable question early than a polite one too late. I notice when something's quietly stopped working, even when nothing on the surface looks broken.
Automation Summit was succeeding by every visible measure when I realized it had stopped building loyalty. Catching that early is most of the job.
I care about the details enough that I sometimes stay in them longer than I need to, especially when I'm excited about an idea. I'm working on trusting a strong team to run with the vision sooner.
What hasn't changed is the energy. People tend to leave a meeting I'm running more fired up than they walked in.
What I'm doing now
Playmaker Sports Media, and a fractional team small enough that I still write the emails myself.
Right now I'm building brand and growth strategy for Playmaker Sports Media, an adtech company doing audience curation for sports and political media.
Since joining, Playmaker's owned audience has grown from zero to more than 5,000 subscribers, sustaining a 42 to 44 percent open rate, with 643 LinkedIn followers built the same way everything else here gets built: without a big budget, using AI-enabled workflows to punch above our size.
When Playmaker saw demand from political media partners, I conceived, branded, and launched Pollmaker in a week, applying the same audience-curation model to a new market.
I'm also starting a Master's in Hospitality and Tourism Management at San Diego State, partly because the discipline of studying hospitality from the inside has already started sharpening how I think about experience design in every other industry I touch.
5,000+
Subscribers
42-44%
Open rate
643
LinkedIn followers
1 week
From idea to launch
Outside of work
Two versions of outdoor life, depending on the season.
I live between Portland and Phoenix, which means I get two very different versions of outdoor life depending on the season, and I take advantage of both. I cycle most days, spend a fair amount of time smoking meat and fish, and I'm currently deep into growing chili peppers with more enthusiasm than skill. I also volunteer at a local craft brewery, mostly because I like being around people who care that much about getting something small exactly right. I've got an old Australian Shepherd who has strong opinions about my schedule.
I also spend more time than is probably useful thinking about consciousness, multiverse theory, and the outer edges of what we actually know versus what we assume. It's not directly related to marketing. I've found it sharpens the same muscle anyway, the willingness to ask what everyone else has stopped questioning.
Contact
Let's talk about what your customers already know and nobody's asked them yet.
karl.vontz@gmail.com ยท linkedin.com/in/karlvontz