Marketing strategist. Buyer intelligence researcher. Writer.
I help companies discover what their buyers actually want, then build the language to reach them. Not louder. Not cleverer. Just closer to the truth of what someone needs to hear before they can act.
See how I can helpAbout
I studied English literature in college. Not because I planned to end up in marketing, but because I wanted to understand how language moves people. That turned out to be the only training that mattered.
After years in direct response and agency work, I noticed a pattern: most campaigns fail before the first word is written. They fail in the assumptions. The target audience profile built from demographics and guesswork. The creative brief that sounds authoritative but contains no actual buyer intelligence.
So I built something different. The Hidden Layer is a research methodology that draws on 215+ primary sources before anyone writes a headline. It borrows from Girard's mimetic theory, Zaltman's deep metaphor work, narrative psychology, and two decades of direct response testing. The result is buyer intelligence that tells you what to say and, more importantly, what not to.
I run The Cash Flow Method, a marketing firm that builds campaigns on this intelligence. But this site is not about the firm. This is where I write, speak, and think in public about the work underneath the work.
Speaking
I speak at marketing conferences, leadership retreats, and private workshops. Every talk is built on live buyer intelligence, not recycled theory. If you want your audience to walk out seeing their own marketing differently, we should talk.
Why 97.75% of marketing campaigns underperform, and what the other 2.25% know about their buyers that everyone else missed. A research-backed framework for building campaigns on intelligence, not assumption.
How to use 215+ primary sources to understand what your buyer actually needs to hear before they can act. Practical methodology your team can start using the next morning.
What Rene Girard's theory of desire reveals about why markets converge on identical messaging, and how to build a position that stands outside the imitation loop.
Book
A conversation about what happens when you stop guessing what your market wants and start listening to the intelligence that was always there. Written as a dialogue between two people trying to figure out why good businesses keep running bad marketing.
"The system did not fail you because you were difficult. It failed you because it was never designed to see you."
Twelve chapters. Philosophy meets direct response. Girard meets the ad account. This book is for the business owner who has tried everything the agencies recommended and still cannot figure out why none of it sounds like their actual customers.
Currently in development. Join the list below to be notified at launch.
Writing
Long-form thinking about buyer psychology, marketing philosophy, mimetic theory, and the places where theology and commerce share a border. Not advice. Inquiry.
Every agency runs one. It takes demographics in and produces creative briefs out, and nobody checks whether the inputs were real. A study on what happens when you replace assumption with primary research.
Mimetic desire theory was built for literature and anthropology. It turns out it also explains why every SaaS company on earth runs the same three Facebook ad templates.
Harold Bloom wrote about the interior life of literary characters. What happens when you apply that same lens to the person reading your landing page at 11 PM on a Tuesday?
Contact
Whether you want to book a speaking engagement, discuss a project, or just continue a conversation that started in one of these essays, I read every message that comes through.
lance@thecashflowmethod.com