For owners of B2B service companies

A weekly note on getting your business to run without you.

Most service businesses don't have a growth problem. They have an owner carrying too much of it. I'm Jon Grogan, a fractional CMO and COO, and every week I send one decision from inside the companies I operate, the process behind it, and the number it moved.

Written from inside these businesses

The operating seat · Sample note Saturday, 7:00 AM

Field notes

We stopped letting the owner approve every quote. Close rate went up.

For three years every estimate over $2,000 waited on one person's phone. The team called it "the Tuesday pile." We wrote a two-page pricing playbook, set a ceiling the dispatcher could approve alone, and moved the owner to a weekly review instead of a daily gate.

Quotes went out in hours instead of days. Here's the playbook, the ceiling we picked, and what it did to the number.

Quote turnaround 3 days → 4^hrs

Quotes out the door, week by week

Jon Grogan — Fractional CMO + COORead the full note in your inbox →

01 — What you getjongrogan.co

What you get

Three kinds of note. All from the week that just happened.

Field notes

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:=++++++++++======---::::........... 
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JGEst. 2015 · Tulsa, OK

Playbooks

The process behind one decision, written so your team could run it.

Hiring, pricing, routing, handoffs. The stuff that lives in the owner's head until somebody writes it down.

ProcessStructurePeople

By the numbers

One number from a real business, and what moved it.

Field notes · Playbooks · Numbersjongrogan.co

Senior operating help, without the full-time salary. Start with the free version.

02 — ResultsOperator, not observer

By the numbers

Real stories with exceptional growth.

The owners were doing too much. Here's what we changed and what the numbers did.

01 / 04

Windows and doors · Oklahoma · site, brand, and performance marketing since 2024

47 → 435

Page-one keywords in two years

Top-three rankings 20 → 97 over the same stretch · Semrush, US

A window and door manufacturer with fifty years of reputation and a marketing budget still tied to traditional channels. We rebuilt the brand and the site around one job, quote requests, then stood up performance marketing to bring the right local demand in.

Two years on, the company sits on page one for more than four hundred searches in its market, nearly a hundred of them in the top three, and it is still climbing. In local construction search, that is what dominance looks like.

Dominant

435 page-one keywords, 97 in the top three

Rebuilt

Fifty years of trust, moved online without losing it

Fed

Performance marketing aimed at quote requests

WebsiteBrandPerformance marketingSEO

03 — Recent notesThe list reads it first

Recent notes

Read a few before you decide.

The archive →

03 Your Marketing Isn’t Underperforming. Your Business Is. Jul 15, 2026· 11 min read I’ve watched too many owners fire agencies for problems that weren’t the agency’s fault. I get some version of the same call almost every month. A business owner reaches out. Read → 02 Sometimes Your Agency Doesn’t Want You to Fully “Win”… Jul 7, 2026· 8 min read I have run agency SEO programs for years before I finally admitted the pattern out loud from my constituents. I get some version of the same call every couple weeks. A business owner. Read → 01 AI Didn’t Kill SEO. It Killed Bad SEO. Jul 1, 2026· 7 min read Everyone keeps asking me if it’s over. I’m sitting here watching it work better than ever. A guy I’ve known for a few years called me recently trying to figure out his next step in business. Read →

04 — Who writes thisTulsa, OK

Jon with his wife and daughter at a Tulsa Drillers game — Drillers game · Tulsa, OKSummer 2026

Who writes this

Husband. Dad. Tulsa through and through.

I started Animus Digital in 2015 and spent the next decade inside hundreds of small and mid-sized businesses, close enough to see what was really going on. The product was usually fine. The owner was buried. The message was muddy because nobody had time to make it clear.

That's the work I care about now. I come in as a fractional CMO and COO at the same time, sit next to the owner rather than above them, and measure myself on one thing: did the founder get their business back, and is it bigger than when I showed up. I'm relationship driven to a fault and I get more passionate about a client's business than is probably reasonable.

Off the clock I'm a husband and a dad, and our little family is usually out doing something around Tulsa and cheering for this town as it grows.

You do not rise to the level of your goals. You fall to the level of your systems. The line I build businesses around

Right nowWhere I'm working today

AYS RentalsOperations and growth · portable restroom and site services, Oklahoma ↗

Kingsway CharitiesSystems and operations · donated medical supplies to clinics that need them ↗

Animus DigitalFounder since 2015 · the team I bring in for the full build ↗

05 — Hire meFractional CMO + COO

Need more than a newsletter?

Hire the operating seat.

A fractional CMO and COO in one chair, usually for a year or two, with one goal: a business that runs well enough that it no longer needs me.

What you getRoleWhen

Every process in the business, mapped and writtenOperationsWeeks 1–4

Brand and positioning rebuilt around the customerMarketingWeeks 3–8

Org structure, hiring, and the hard conversationsPeopleOngoing

Daily decisions and C-suite reliefOperating seatWeekly

Playbooks and staff guidance so a manager can run a daySystemsOngoing

Hand it back and leaveExitLast

A good fit usually looks like

B2B service company with a team, not a solo operator
Owner led, and the owner is tired of being the only one who knows how it all works
Real revenue, but growth has stalled or outrun the operation

06 — Join the listFree · No spam · Leave anytime

One note. Every week.

Get your business back, one note at a time.

Free. No spam. Leave anytime. Written for owners who are the bottleneck.