Get the next conversation in your inbox
One signal-dense note when a new episode lands. No noise.
The Value Path - Jul 9, 2026
July 9, 2026
Chris Carolan and Who-First's Joshua Oakes close the eight-stage Value Path walk with the Champion stage's green-flag side: the things a business does FOR a champion, not the outputs it extracts FROM them. Opens with a skit — an excited customer offers a webinar, and the company can't say yes.
Key takeaways
The champion moment is the lowest-lift, potentially highest-impact marketing act a business can engage in — and the one most organizations are worst at supporting. When a champion offers to build a webinar, the default machinery ("submit the form," "throw it over the wall to marketing") produces nothing.
Joshua Oakes' (Who-First) input-vs-output distinction is the spine: the easy, extractable activities give you a high degree of control over the output and are easy to measure; the activities that cultivate genuine value give you control over the inputs only and are hard to measure.
Every green flag on the Champion board is something the business does FOR the champion; every red flag is an output the business extracts FROM them. Flipping from extract-and-measure to invest-and-support is the whole shift.
"The more you tighten your grip, the more these opportunities are going to slip through your fingers." (Joshua Oakes, Who-First) Controls — templates, intake forms, triage — are not inherently wrong, but they narrow the aperture value flows through.
Measurement realism, not measurement rejection: be realistic about what value is measurable. Champions are not employees with punch lists that roll up to a board metric.
The four green-flag moves: give champions a stage, co-create methodology with them, support the community they build, and enable their industry influence. Customer advisory boards and the HubSpot user-group program are worked examples.
The mature champion-enablement move is to invest in the champion first and trust the value comes back, rather than gating support on check-in thresholds and impression counts.
You cannot manufacture humanity; a paid or scripted testimonial reads as sponsored. Ask the champion what they want, and build your understanding from the real language people use about your product.
This episode completes the eight-stage Value Path walk (Audience → Champion): all humans have the capacity to move through every stage, and a business can choose to support them at each one.
Keep learning
You just watched the work. Now build it.
The next step is doing it yourself — live, with people on the same path.
Get the next conversation in your inbox
One signal-dense note when a new episode lands. No noise.