The Value Path - Jun 25, 2026

Part 1 made the case: you don't create advocates, you equip them — and advocacy almost always begins internally, with a customer making the case up their own chain, long before it ever becomes a public quote. Part 2 is the how. Joshua Oakes and Chris Carolan work through the actual tactics for the Advocate stage of the Value Path ('I tell others about you') — the specific, repeatable moves that make genuine advocacy more likely, instead of trying to manufacture it on a quarter-end timeline.

The throughline is Joshua's own Who-First lens: advocacy is a reputation-staking act. When a customer tells a peer or makes the case up their chain, they are putting their own identity on the line — so the first tactic is never the testimonial ask, it is reducing the advocate's reputation friction and starting with the lowest-risk act (the internal forward) before the highest (the public, on-camera quote). From there: equip internal advocacy first with a forward-ready artifact rather than a 70-slide dump; catch the realized-value moment ('that was so easy') instead of soliciting it; make every ask a gift the advocate benefits from rather than a favor to your pipeline; fit the act to the advocate's authentic sphere; and open the mindset gate from 'a vendor I bought from' to 'a partner whose win is partly my story.'

Grounded in the Value Path (Value Creator → Adopter → Advocate → Champion), the Five Core Beliefs (Natural Value Flow and Emergence), Joshua Oakes' Who-First framework (the Reputation friction factor, the Mindset gate, the Compliments signpost), and the Measurement trap — with the AI-native throughline running underneath: detect realized-value language as it happens, store it as structured data by stakeholder, and surface the right moment to the right person when they are ready to share. Part 2 of the Advocate stage; the Champion stage is a story for another day.