The Strategy Session

Camper Bull

Join seasoned entrepreneur and fractional CMO Camper Bull as he pulls back the curtain on building successful businesses in both digital and physical spaces. With over two decades of experience scaling companies to multi-million dollar valuations, Camper delivers actionable insights on marketing, business growth, and entrepreneurial success. Each episode of Strategy Session combines real-world case studies with proven frameworks that you can implement immediately. Drawing from his extensive experience as a fractional Chief Marketing Officer, Camper breaks down complex business challenges into clear, actionable strategies. Whether you're launching your first venture or scaling an established business, you'll gain valuable insights on: Modern marketing tactics that drive real results Building and scaling profitable business models Navigating the intersection of online and physical business spaces Revenue optimization and growth strategies Common pitfalls to avoid as you scale your company Decision-making frameworks for entrepreneurs No theory - just battle-tested strategies from someone who's been in the trenches. Listen in as Camper shares the unfiltered truth about what it takes to build and scale successful businesses in today's competitive landscape. New episodes drop weekly. Subscribe now to join the conversation with one of business's most experienced operators and marketing minds

  1. 3d ago

    Rebranding Fails: Explain The Name, Lose The Sale | with Camper Bull

    Rebranding Fails: Explain The Name, Lose The Sale | with Camper Bull A few years ago Camper sat in a client's office at a conference table long enough to seat twelve. The client liked to spread out. His own books were on the shelf behind him, inspirational posters on the wall, coffee in his hand, and he had just decided his new product would be called The Iconic Blueprint for Mastery and Momentum. Nobody else had that name, he said, so people would start searching for it. Nobody searched for it. Not once. And inside Camper's own company, the team building the product started calling it the alphabet soup. In this episode of The Strategy Session, Camper Bull uses that room to work through what an offer name actually is and what a bad one costs. He covers why the bill is heavier between one and five million than it is at fifty, what the research on processing fluency says about the way buyers read effort, the trademark objection and why it misses the mechanic, and the three tests he now runs on any name before it goes near a sales page. What You'll Learn: ✓ How to run the repeat test properly, including the one hour wait almost everybody skips ✓ The override question that reveals your offer has already been renamed by the people closest to it ✓ How to check in fifteen minutes whether anybody is searching for the words you chose ✓ What the 2008 Song and Schwarz fluency study means for the first line a stranger reads about your business ✓ The three condition filter that produces a decision: leave it, demote it, or rename it at the next launch The shift is simple and uncomfortable. The name is not where your cleverness belongs. Its only job is to be the easiest thing in your business to repeat, and everything clever you want to say goes in the line underneath it. Get The Name Tax Audit: https://venturedgained.com/name-tax-audit/  The scorecard runs all three tests from this episode with the scoring built in, so you finish with a decision rather than an opinion.   Let's Connect: LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/camper-bull/  YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@CamperBull  Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/VenturedGainedOfficial  Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/ventured.gained.official/  X: https://x.com/CamperBull  Website: https://venturedgained.com/

  2. Oct 9

    The SBI Feedback Model Skips The Most Important Step | with Camper Bull

    The SBI Feedback Model Skips The Most Important Step | with Camper Bull Criticism from a peer and criticism from you are not the same thing, even when the words are identical. When you have the title, your offhand correction lands with ten times the weight you intended, and the team slowly stops bringing problems forward because every problem now comes with a small sting. Years ago Camper Bull sat in the most stressful meeting of the quarter. A hundred million dollar contract, a room full of people on both sides, and a salesman who opened by taking the blame for every problem on the agenda before anyone else could speak. Camper was certain the advantage had just been thrown away. What had actually happened was that the fear left the room, and the real problems came onto the table. In this episode of The Strategy Session from Ventured Gained, Camper works through a way of giving feedback he calls Curious Before Corrective. Most leaders already have the SBI feedback model. Situation, Behavior, Impact is the Center for Creative Leadership's structure for delivering a clean correction, and it works. This episode is about the two moves that come before you reach for it. It also covers the limit honestly. When the clock is running and the mistake is about to reach a customer, you give the fast answer, and you still owe the curious conversation afterward. What You'll Learn: ✓ Why the leader with the title has no such thing as a small correction, no matter how small the words are ✓ What the research on psychological safety says about teams that surface more errors than their peers ✓ Why an error is worth reading before it is worth covering ✓ The difference between handing someone an answer and handing them the way you arrived at it ✓ Why absorbing the blame at the top of a hard meeting raises ownership rather than lowering it Make it safe, get curious, then transfer the model. Give someone the answer and you fix today. Give them your thinking and you fix every tomorrow. A guru hands you a feedback script and sends you on your way. Camper is a fractional CMO and COO who sits across the table from founders while the mistake is still warm. He sits at the seam between marketing and operations, because at one to five million dollars that is where the leak is. Get The Curious Before Corrective Debrief Guide: https://venturedgained.com/curious-before-corrective/    Let's Connect: LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/camper-bull/  YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@CamperBull  Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/VenturedGainedOfficial  Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/ventured.gained.official/  X: https://x.com/CamperBull  Website: https://venturedgained.com/

  3. Oct 6 ·  Video

    Four Publishing Decisions Matter. Nine Do Not. | with Camper Bull

    Four Publishing Decisions Matter. Nine Do Not. | with Camper Bull Camper Bull wrote his first book, had a friend read it line by line, and then sent it to a professional editor with a note explaining that it had already been edited. He thought he was being efficient. What came back had so much red on it that his first reaction was offense. Then he read the comments, and the offense turned into the most useful lesson of his publishing life. In this episode of The Strategy Session from Ventured Gained, Camper takes that manuscript apart and uses it to name the four decisions that actually move the outcome of a book. Editing. Cover. Distribution. Bulk printing for events. He has published twenty three books, and he names the four he closes first with every author he works with, along with the nine he tells them to leave alone until those four are done. What You'll Learn: ✓ What a developmental editor reads for that a proofreader will never look at, and where that gap shows up for the reader ✓ The three signals a buyer takes off a cover before the title registers, and why genre conventions decide the design ✓ Why Camper treats the cover as the line in a production budget never to economize on ✓ How Amazon's own platform and the trade distribution account divide the territory between them ✓ Why the print run you carry into a speaking room is a pipeline decision that happens to involve a printer Editing a paper and editing a book are two different jobs. Hire the right one for each. That is the first of the four, and it is the one most authors get most wrong. The other three are just as short. Close all four and, in the projects Camper has watched, the book ships in about eight weeks. Leave them open while you settle the nine downstream questions, and month six arrives with the book still a draft. A guru hands you a framework and a community and lets you sort out which parts apply. Camper is a fractional CMO and COO who sits at the seam between marketing and operations, because at one to five million dollars that is where the leak is, and he closes your four decisions against your actual calendar and your actual budget. Get The Four Decision Publishing Checklist: https://venturedgained.com/four-decision/    Let's Connect: LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/camper-bull/  YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@CamperBull  Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/VenturedGainedOfficial  Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/ventured.gained.official/  X: https://x.com/CamperBull  Website: https://venturedgained.com/

  4. Oct 2

    The Book Deal That Worked And Still Cost Her | with Camper Bull

    The Book Deal That Worked And Still Cost Her | with Camper Bull There is a version of this decision that nobody argues with and almost nobody runs. Score it properly and the answer usually arrives faster than the argument does. The pattern Camper Bull keeps meeting is an author treating a traditional deal as the senior option and their own imprint as the runner up, then finding out years later that the advantage had been pointing the other way the whole time. The episode is built around a breakfast conversation in which one author discovered exactly that, out loud, years after she signed. In this episode of The Strategy Session from Ventured Gained, Camper works through the hybrid move he now recommends to almost every author who tells him they want a traditional deal. Put the book out yourself first. Let it work inside the business for twelve to eighteen months. Then look again, with proof in hand. The math on a publishing contract has been published for thirty years, and almost no author runs it on their own book before signing. What You'll Learn: ✓ How one breakfast conversation changed the first question Camper asks an author ✓ Why a deal that succeeds by the publisher's own definition can still be the expensive route ✓ The hybrid move, and the two outcomes it produces after twelve to eighteen months ✓ How to walk into a publisher conversation talking about terms rather than asking permission ✓ What changes in your work when an imprint stops functioning as a verdict on it A major imprint is a real credential, and in a few specific markets it is the thing that gets an author booked. The question is narrower than it sounds. Is that particular market worth a year and a half of waiting, the rights you sign away, and a smaller share of every copy sold? Answer it with numbers and the choice stops feeling like a referendum on whether you are a real author. A publishing guru sells you the framework and moves on to the next cohort. Camper Bull is a fractional CMO and COO who sits at the seam between marketing and operations, because at one to five million dollars that is where the leak is, and a book lands directly on that seam. The Publishing Route Decision Matrix is the worksheet behind this episode. Five scored inputs, one verdict, and a contract checklist for the authors who still decide to sign. Get The Publishing Route Decision Matrix: https://venturedgained.com/publishing-route/    Let's Connect: LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/camper-bull/ YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@CamperBull Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/VenturedGainedOfficial Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/ventured.gained.official/ X: https://x.com/CamperBull Website: https://venturedgained.com/

  5. Sep 25

    With Your Shield Or On It: How To Hand Off Work | with Camper Bull

    With Your Shield Or On It: How To Hand Off Work | with Camper Bull The president of the company walked out of his office as the elevator doors were closing and gave Camper Bull five words. He was on his way to the airport to negotiate a contract worth somewhere between fifty and a hundred million dollars, priced three and a half cents at a time, and up to that moment nobody had told him how to do any of it. That silence was deliberate, and it is the reason the deal worked. In this episode of The Strategy Session from Ventured Gained, Camper takes that handoff apart and looks at what his president gave him and, more usefully, at what his president refused to give him. He calls the model the Handoff Line. Above the line are three things a leader owns and has to transfer clearly: the outcome, the guardrails, and the stakes. Below the line is the method, which belongs to the person doing the work and to nobody else. Most delegation breaks because the leader hands over the task and holds onto the how, which was the only part worth handing over in the first place. The reason this is hard is the same reason you were promoted. You were the best operator in the room, so telling people how to do the work feels like the most generous thing you have to offer. Camper argues the case against himself here as well, on the days when prescribing the method is genuinely correct, and on when the temporary ladder has to come away again. What You'll Learn: ✓ What the president did not do on the way to that elevator, and why the instruction he refused to give was the part that mattered ✓ What people do with their effort when the why is taken away from them, and why they will fill the blank you left with a target you never set ✓ How a guardrail makes someone's freedom usable, and why a limit set before the work starts carries further than a leader standing over the work ✓ The difference between initiative with a check in and instruction with a leash ✓ Which of the three things above the line leaders forget most often, and the five minute fix to run before the next handoff The how is the part you are best at. It is the reason you were promoted and it is the reason the work keeps finding its way back to your desk. Hand over the finish line, the constraint and the weight. Then let the doors close. The guru version of this is a model, a download and good luck with the rest. Camper is a fractional CMO and COO who sits at the seam between marketing and operations, because at one to five million dollars that is where the leak is, and he sits across the table from founders while they write the handoff that decides whether the work comes back. The Handoff Line Worksheet is the one page version of the model in this episode, filled in before the handoff rather than after it has already gone wrong. Get The Handoff Line Worksheet: https://venturedgained.com/handoff-line/ Let's Connect: LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/camper-bull/  YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@CamperBull  Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/VenturedGainedOfficial  Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/ventured.gained.official/  X: https://x.com/CamperBull  Website: https://venturedgained.com/

  6. Sep 22

    The Book Title Mistakes Every Expert Author Makes | with Camper Bull

    The Book Title Mistakes Every Expert Author Makes | with Camper Bull Camper Bull's first book got a title with zero poetry in it, and that single decision opened more doors than almost anything else in his career. A graduate program offered him a course. A professional speaking community invited him in. Clients started calling, and the book had not done a single day of paid marketing yet.  On this episode of The Strategy Session, Camper Bull, fractional CMO and COO and founder of Ventured Gained, explains why clear beats clever when it comes to naming a book, and walks through the exact process of finding the keyword your buyer is already using to describe the problem you solve. A solo fractional CMO can help you market a book once the title is locked. This episode covers the decision that happens before that, the one you cannot edit after the book ships.  What you'll learn: ✓ Why a title that needs an explanation has already lost the sale ✓ How to run the three second rule with five people in your actual target audience ✓ How to find the keyword your buyer already uses instead of inventing new language for them to learn ✓ Why the hundred bad titles exercise breaks perfectionism faster than waiting for the perfect idea ✓ Where cleverness actually belongs, so it never costs you the sale The right title is already sitting in your buyer's search bar. This episode gives you the exact process to go find it. Get the Title Generation Worksheet: https://venturedgained.com/title-generation/    Let's Connect: LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/camper-bull/  YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@CamperBull  Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/VenturedGainedOfficial  Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/ventured.gained.official/  X: https://x.com/CamperBull  Website: https://venturedgained.com/

  7. Sep 18

    Go From Outline to Manuscript in a Weekend | with Camper Bull

    Go From Outline to Manuscript in a Weekend | with Camper Bull Camper Bull is dyslexic. He has also published twenty three books, and he has a specific explanation for how both of those things are true at once. For years he assumed the problem was discipline, that if he could just sit down and force himself to write, the book would come out. What actually stood between him and the book was the medium. On this episode of The Strategy Session, Camper Bull, fractional CMO and COO and founder of Ventured Gained, explains why most expert books die in a Word document and lays out the method he has used to publish twenty three books without sitting down to write any of them. The books were built entirely through speaking, starting with four recorded seminars that became his second project management book. An agency will edit your manuscript once it exists. This episode is about how the manuscript gets made in the first place. What you'll learn: ✓ Why writing punishes people who think in spoken language, and how speaking restores your actual voice ✓ The arithmetic that turns a weekend of recordings into a full length manuscript, at one hundred and thirty to one hundred and fifty words per minute ✓ How to teach to capture, so a paid course or workshop funds the recording of your book ✓ The room setup and recording day workflow that keeps a manuscript sounding like one voice ✓ Why batching recordings into one or two focused days beats a year of scattered evenings A different medium is what actually finishes a carried book, and this episode gives you the exact setup to switch. Ask yourself which twenty minute recording you could make this weekend. Get the Recording Day Checklist: https://venturedgained.com/recording-day-checklist/   Let's Connect: LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/camper-bull/ YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@CamperBull Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/VenturedGainedOfficial Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/ventured.gained.official/ X: https://x.com/CamperBull Website: https://venturedgained.com/

About

Join seasoned entrepreneur and fractional CMO Camper Bull as he pulls back the curtain on building successful businesses in both digital and physical spaces. With over two decades of experience scaling companies to multi-million dollar valuations, Camper delivers actionable insights on marketing, business growth, and entrepreneurial success. Each episode of Strategy Session combines real-world case studies with proven frameworks that you can implement immediately. Drawing from his extensive experience as a fractional Chief Marketing Officer, Camper breaks down complex business challenges into clear, actionable strategies. Whether you're launching your first venture or scaling an established business, you'll gain valuable insights on: Modern marketing tactics that drive real results Building and scaling profitable business models Navigating the intersection of online and physical business spaces Revenue optimization and growth strategies Common pitfalls to avoid as you scale your company Decision-making frameworks for entrepreneurs No theory - just battle-tested strategies from someone who's been in the trenches. Listen in as Camper shares the unfiltered truth about what it takes to build and scale successful businesses in today's competitive landscape. New episodes drop weekly. Subscribe now to join the conversation with one of business's most experienced operators and marketing minds