Thirty years of creating things that worked.
Agencies, products, platforms and long advisory relationships. The thread through all of it: start with what the business actually needs, create the system that delivers it, and stay long enough to see it compound.
I worked for the marketing and business strategist Jay Abraham, who taught me that every technical decision is a commercial decision in disguise. In 1994 I started a digital agency, and it ended up serving more than 100 Fortune 500 companies and creating products the market took years to catch up to. The agency was acquired in 2001.
I spent the mid-2000s investing in early mobile, commerce and social startups, and the 2007 crash wiped most of that out. Why say so? Because the leaders I work with have usually survived something too, and I only work with people I can be completely honest with.
Since 2008 I've advised companies at inflection points, mostly for a decade or more each. Every one of them came through someone who already knew me. The case studies on this site are the ones I can document; the pattern behind them is the same every time: somebody tells me what a company is doing, I hear the gap, and I ask what would happen if they did it another way.
People call me Kirker. They called my dad Kirker too.
How the pattern formed.
Working for Jay Abraham
Start with the revenue outcome, work backward to the strategy, and never fall in love with a tactic. That discipline runs through everything since. When I look at a company's marketing and technology, I don't see systems. I see revenue architecture, or the absence of it.
Founded The Stirling Bridge Group
A boutique digital agency, started when most companies were still debating whether they needed a website. It grew into one of the most technically sophisticated agencies in the country, serving 100+ Fortune 500 companies, many through a partnership with TMP Worldwide, with 99%+ client retention over its seven years.
PinID
Robert Stover brought me the idea for closed-loop attribution: a unique identifier on every mail piece, so a response by web or phone could be traced back to the household, the campaign and the offer. I told him it couldn't be created, then created it. It went on to 200+ enterprise customers in recruiting, mortgage and insurance.
LoanLink.com
Created for Dave Savage's mortgage business: the first mortgage website tied to PinID direct-mail tracking, showing who was responding, which mailing produced which lead, and which loan officer should get it. Later the same year, the first secure online loan application connected to desktop underwriting, integrated with Calyx Point. The industry caught up years later.
MortgageSites.com
LoanLink worked, so we made it a product. LoanSitePro, run from MortgageSites.com, gave lenders, brokers and banks across the country what LoanLink had: the online loan application connected to Calyx Point, rate quotes and calculators, phone verification of applications, and PinID tracking of every mailing, on their own sites. LoanLink and MortgageLink were among its first customers, and Todd Duncan took it to the industry. It was software as a service before anyone called it that.
Terminix
Terminix, through TMP Worldwide, asked for a heat map of termite reports by zip code. I asked whether they had a database of the homeowners nearby, and together with their team we created a full direct response system on PinID: mail pieces connected to personal web pages, inbound and outbound call center routing, and behavior-driven follow-up. It ran Terminix's lead generation for more than a decade, with $500M+ in attributed revenue. Case study
Naming the work
By then I had spent years standing in the gap between marketing teams and technology teams, translating in both directions and creating the systems that connected them. There was no title for it, so I gave it one: Chief Technology Marketing Officer. I've practiced it continuously since; how I work describes the discipline.
Veterinary Pet Insurance
Together with VPI's team, rebuilt petinsurance.com: the quote engine, enrollment, payments, renewals and retention, and separate experiences for pet owners, policyholders, veterinarians and breeders. Online revenue grew from $330K to $16.8M in four years, about 40% of the company's new sales. VPI is known today as Nationwide Pet Insurance. Case study
Acquisition, investing and the crash
Stirling Bridge was acquired in 2001. I worked for the acquiring firm through 2003, then invested in early mobile, commerce and social startups until the 2007 crash took most of it. Instead of retreating, I reoriented: the highest-impact place to apply decades of cross-domain experience was not inside one company but across many, at the moments that mattered most.
The advisory practice
Not hourly consulting. Long relationships with companies at inflection points: growth ceilings, pre-acquisition positioning, technology migrations, marketing and technology out of alignment. A regional window and door company came to me that year spending heavily on advertising it couldn't measure; we fixed the residential side, ad spend fell 62% while leads rose 160%, and the company went on to build a national dealer network, grow to nearly $100M, and get acquired in 2022. That growth was theirs. I still work with them today. Case study
Social, CRM, automation and IgnitionLabs
Social, CRM and marketing automation became part of the client work. The same year I started IgnitionLabs, a product studio for problems software should already have solved. It began with MeatSmokingCalculator, the cook-time tool I wanted and couldn't find; today it also includes KeepsYa for youth sports clubs, HalfSecond for athletes and their coaches, and Stetwell, a content and publishing system that runs on several clients' sites. All small on purpose and self-funded. Each is a live test bench: if I tell a CEO how to price, position or measure something, I have usually just done it with my own money.
AI enters the work
Generative AI for client research, keyword and competitive analysis from 2019. From 2021, creating software with AI on Pinch, a startup I helped take from an idea to venture funding, when the tools were new enough that most developers dismissed them. That path, from thesis to market, is what Market Entry Intelligence now packages. I set the direction and the standards; AI-assisted development does what used to take a team.
Rathvane
An intelligence company delivering the research and strategic analysis that used to require a Big Three consultancy, at the speed and intimacy only a small firm can offer. AI is part of the infrastructure; the methodology and the judgment are human, and the findings come with their sources, so you can check them yourself. It is the advisory discipline, productized, and it powers the research inside Market Entry Intelligence.
Twenty of more than a hundred. The Fortune 500 work was 2003 and earlier; the systems it ran on, PinID, LoanLink and the closed-loop attribution behind them, are the same ideas the advisory work applies today.
Anyone can produce a spike. Compounding takes years. An 18-year relationship still running. An online business that went from $330K to $16.8M and was acquired by Nationwide. An attribution system that generated half a billion dollars over a decade. Those don't come from an engagement. They happen when someone stays.
“I don't work with anyone I can't be completely honest with, and I don't leave until the compounding is real.”
Let's see what we can create together.
Tell me a little about your company. If there's a fit, the next step is a conversation of about 30 minutes, at no charge.