Benjamin Boman

Podcast

All episodes from my personal podcast. A collection of discussions with interesting people in marketing, product and freelancing.

  • Joe Wilkinson from Artisan Strategies on Free vs Paid, AI Pricing and User Acquisition Strategy [#29]

    Joe Wilkinson is an AI product growth strategist who scaled SaaS businesses from $3M to over $100M ARR – including as Director of Growth at Lucid where he ran thousands of monetisation and experimentation tests.

    He now runs Artisan Growth Strategies, working directly with founders to fix and maximise revenue from existing users. In this episode we get into when free actually makes sense, how to find paying users inside a free base, and what’s changing with AI pricing in 2026.

    Timestamps:

    • 00:01:00 – The commitment problem with free vs paid
    • 00:02:30 – When free makes strategic sense
    • 00:06:00 – Using free users for product data – good signal vs bad signal
    • 00:09:00 – How to identify and qualify the 20% who will pay
    • 00:19:00 – Getting real willingness-to-pay signal in conversations
    • 00:22:30 – Freemium vs fully paid – how to decide
    • 00:37:00 – AI pricing trends and what’s coming in 2026

    Key links:

  • Mony Chhim on LinkedIn Ad Strategy, B2B Ad Creatives and Advertising Funnels [#28]

    Mony Chhim is a freelance LinkedIn ads manager and the go-to LinkedIn advertising expert in France, where he also hosts the B2B marketing podcast Marketing B2B (110+ episodes). In this episode we get into why LinkedIn ads require a completely different approach to Meta and Google, how to structure a funnel across cold and retargeting layers, and the specific bidding, targeting, and creative decisions that actually move the needle.

    Timestamps:

    • 02:00 – Why LinkedIn ads, and how it compares to Meta/Google
    • 05:00 – Biggest mistakes LinkedIn advertisers make
    • 08:30 – Awareness vs lead gen split
    • 11:30 – Best lead gen offer types
    • 14:30 – Retargeting on LinkedIn – frequency, audience size, filters
    • 18:00 – Minimum budget to start
    • 23:30 – Bidding strategy
    • 28:30 – Live campaign walkthrough for a B2B SaaS company
    • 32:00 – Campaign objectives by format and funnel layer
    • 37:00 – Conversation ads – format, length, what works
    • 39:00 – Thought leader ads and video – two big trends

    Key links:

  • Kevon Cheung on Building in Public, Project Portfolios and Social Growth [#27]

    Kevon Cheung is the founder of Public Lab and creator of Build in Public Mastery. In this episode, we get into what building in public actually means beyond the surface-level “post your revenue milestones” approach — and how to use it as a real lead gen strategy even when you’re starting from zero.

    Timestamps:

    • 00:00 – What build in public actually means
    • 05:30 – Why milestone posts only work with momentum
    • 10:30 – Building credibility vs. follower count
    • 17:30 – Build in public for service businesses
    • 22:00 – Single project focus vs. running multiple things
    • 30:00 – Engagement as the foundation, not the growth driver
    • 42:00 – Bite-size content vs. long-form recaps

    Key links:

  • Paul-Louis Valet on Newsletter Ads, Sourcing and Performance Optimization [#13]

    Paul-Louis Valat is the acquisition marketer at Plezi, a B2B marketing automation tool for startups and SMBs. In this episode, he breaks down how he used newsletter advertising to acquire users for Plezi One – what worked, what didn’t, and where the real value hides in the channel.

    Timestamps:

    • 00:02:00 – Newsletter ads for B2B SaaS
    • 00:03:00 – Products that perform with newsletter ads
    • 00:04:00 – Finding and vetting newsletters
    • 00:07:00 – Ad copy format
    • 00:08:00 – Placement types
    • 00:10:00 – The newsletter sweet spot
    • 00:13:00 – Landing page conversion benchmarks

    Key links:

  • Yannick Veys of Hypefury on Twitter Growth and Automating Social Growth [#9]

    Yannick Veys is the co-founder of Hypefury, a Twitter marketing automation platform. In this episode, Yannick breaks down how SaaS and service businesses can build their Twitter presence from scratch – covering growth strategy, content cadence, automation tactics, and how to layer in sales without killing your engagement.

    Timestamps:

    • 00:00 – How Hypefury was built and Yannick joining as co-founder
    • 03:00 – Starters vs. growers – knowing which one you are
    • 05:40 – What Twitter is actually good for (and what it’s not)
    • 07:00 – Links in tweets – standalone vs. threads
    • 11:00 – Building from zero – engagement vs. content ratio
    • 13:00 – Auto-commenting
    • 23:00 – Visual content – why it’s still underserved on Twitter

    Key links:

  • End of season 1, what’s next?

    This wraps up season 1, which was about digital lifestyle businesses. All episodes were very interesting to do but I am looking forward to changing pace and focusing more on marketing, particularly related to SaaS businesses which is the theme for the upcoming season 2. See you there, or connect with me on LinkedIn.

  • Ryan Kulp of Fork Equity on the Slight Edge, Starting vs Growing and Buying Companies [#2]

    Today, we’re talking to Ryan Kulp of the digital fund Fork Equity about building a digital business portfolio.

    Ryan has an interesting background spanning New York and Silicon Valley and both building and marketing, with success in this leading to his current portfolio of apps and businesses. This gives him a very well-rounded view on the buy, grow or build question and very practical advice to share.

    For those looking to build their own portfolio, check out Ryan’s training here. Or learn more about Fork Equity.

    Timestamps:

    • 06:30 – Kinetic vs. potential energy as a framework for creative output
    • 11:30 – How Fork Equity started
    • 14:00 – Why you only need a small edge over the average competitor
    • 20:00 – Starter vs. grower
    • 26:30 – Why growers get a confidence boost
    • 38:00 – The six stages of buying a company,
    • 46:00 – How to quickly vet an opportunity
    • 48:30 – Making the deal
    • 53:00 – Asset sale vs. share sales
    • 56:30 – How Ryan structures his offers
    • 1:03:00 – Running multiple projects without burning out on context switching
    • 1:12:00 – When to install a team (and why day one is too early)
    • 1:16:00 – Where to find Ryan and Fork Equity

    Key links:

  • David Woodworth of Hilokal on Product/Market Fit, Mobile Ads and Community Growth [#1]

    Hello there, how’s it going? Today I’ll be chatting to David Woodworth, CMO and Co-Founder of Hilokal, a drop-in language learning social app. David has grown the app from zero to 200,000 users with a highly engaged community.

    We discuss his journey from where he pivoted out of his brick-and-mortar business into a technology-based application with significant month-over-month user growth.

    Timestamps:

    • [00:04:45] How to know if you’ve actually hit product-market fit before you scale
    • [00:06:00] Why group audio beat 1-on-1 calls
    • [00:08:30] Why $800/day in ads nearly killed their community
    • [00:10:45] What viral growth actually means and how to engineer it
    • [00:13:30] How they created compounding community growth
    • [00:17:00] Mapping the full funnel and finding your real growth bottleneck
    • [00:20:00] Why downloads are a vanity metric and what to track instead
    • [00:26:00] What’s next for Hilokal

    Key links:

    • The Cold Start Problem by Andrew Chen
    • Growth Hacking by Sean Ellis
    • Hilokal app / David Woodworth on LinkedIn