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Joe Rowett
3X INC 5000 CEO at VELOX Media - Search, Paid Media & Content Agency
Professional Background
Joe Rowett is a leading expert in the world of digital marketing and technology, bringing over 25 years of dynamic experience to the industry. He has demonstrated an impressive ability to craft revenue-backed growth strategies that not only focus on user acquisition but also on maximizing return on investment (ROI). As the Chief Executive Officer of VELOX Media, Joe has played a critical role in establishing the agency as a frontrunner in ROI-focused digital marketing, providing innovative solutions that have delivered hundreds of millions in advertising revenue for clients.
His tenure at VELOX Media is marked by substantial achievements, such as being recognized as one of the INC 5000 Fastest Growing Companies in the Nation for three consecutive years, demonstrating consistent growth and excellence in marketing services. Under his leadership, VELOX Media typically adds 20% to 50% revenue growth for businesses within a mere 3 to 6 months of implementing their proprietary digital revenue modeling. Moreover, Joe has successfully helped over 50 businesses break their revenue records, collectively generating an astonishing $5 billion in new revenue.
Education and Achievements
Joe Rowett pursued higher education in Business Management at Boise State University, laying the foundation for his business acumen and strategic thinking capabilities that would later flourish in his professional career. His extensive hands-on experience has allowed him to become a certified expert in critical areas such as Google Ads and Google Analytics. Joe is also a recognized Google Premier Partner, exemplifying his agency's affinity for excellence in digital marketing practices.
Joe's expertise extends to user acquisition growth hacking, revenue-backed digital strategies, technical product management, and software product evangelism. With certifications in SCRUM as a Product Owner, Joe possesses the project management skills necessary to navigate complex cycles of product development, ensuring timely and effective project delivery. His strategic foresight is particularly evident in his ability to deliver ROI on marketing campaigns that typically range from 4X to 10X above the spending involved, with reasonable payback periods between 6 months to 1 year.
Achievements
Throughout his illustrious career, Joe Rowett has led and founded numerous initiatives that have significantly impacted the digital marketing landscape. Before his crucial leadership role at VELOX Media, he served as the Chief Marketing Officer and founded multiple companies, including SEM.com and EXPOSÉ WINES. His entrepreneurial spirit shines through his founding roles at companies like MaxBody, MANjunk, BulletHost, and RC Corporation, showcasing his versatility and ability to drive innovation across various sectors.
In addition to his entrepreneurial ventures, Joe has held significant positions at leading companies. His contributions as the Director of Mobile & Social Product Strategy at Bodybuilding.com indicate his deep understanding of market trends and consumer engagement through digital transformation. Furthermore, as the Co-Founder and Vice President of Product Marketing at Adapia and Director of Product Strategy at Trignos, Joe's strategic input has been instrumental in driving product success and market penetration.
Today, Joe continues his work at VELOX Media, where he is committed to utilizing every resource at his disposal to consistently deliver exceptional results for clients and stakeholders alike. His focus on creating substantial ROI through effective digital marketing strategies exemplifies his dedication to excellence and his passion for driving growth in businesses of all sizes.
Highlights
One of the best pieces of advice I’ve ever received:
(Which is also something I preach to my team today)
Never make the same mistake twice.
When I was younger, I used to let the mistakes I made get to me. Like anyone, I made sales mistakes, recruiting mistakes, and just about any company-building mistake one could make (it felt like, at least).
And honestly, I’d beat myself up over them. It was the wrong use of my energy. Before I knew it, I’d make the same mistake again—because I didn’t take anything away from the first experience.
Honestly, sometimes, it ate at me. No matter if it was big or small, I needed to find a way to make the first time I made each mistake the last time, too.
Many people won’t like the answer as to how, but it’s the truth:
Experience.
As I got older, I started learning from my mistakes much more effectively. The rate at which I made the same mistakes twice diminished.
Now, experience usually comes with age, so if you’re younger, I’m not sure a single LinkedIn post will ultimately save you from doing the same. That said, the point is this:
We’re human. Mistakes happen. Everyone, from entry-level team members to top execs, makes mistakes—some more than others.
But once you make one, you can go one of two ways:
-
Beat yourself up over it, don’t take the time to understand what went wrong, and fall into the trap of making the same mistake repeatedly.
-
Recognize you made a mistake, analyze what went wrong so you don’t do it again, and move on as a better professional.
This goes for aspects of your job, building a company, or anything you work towards in life, really.
Over the years our agency has grown to over 60+ team members locally and worldwide.
It’s awesome. I get to work with incredibly talented people.
Except the issue with growing a team this big is you can’t really spend all your time on one single department (as much as I’d like to).
So, we have department heads for Sales, Client Services, Development, Content, HR and R&D.
And twice per year (ideally once in January, once in June/July), we gather our department heads for an off-site. Each leader is briefed with a deck beforehand.
On the day of, we find a quiet spot off-site, we go for lunch, strategize a lot, and reflect on the last ~6 months.
We talk about:
- What worked well in the last ~6 months
- What didn’t work well in the last ~6 months
- How we can improve our service offering and retention
- How the last 6 months tracked towards our KPIs
- What we can do to give the team better career tracks
- What we can do to improve culture (which is always evergreen)
And a whole bunch of other discussions designed to drive the company and our people forward.
I find myself looking forward to these days. It’s a great time to connect with our leaders and craft plans to make our agency somewhere people want to work at, and clients want to work with.
We recently completed the first one of the year (albeit slightly late), and I couldn’t be more excited about the rest of the year ahead.
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Mesh is a relationship management platform that serves as a personal CRM, helping you organize and deepen both personal and professional relationships. It functions as a beautiful rolodex and CRM available on iPhone, Mac, Windows, and web, built automatically to help manage your network efficiently. Unlike traditional address books, Mesh centralizes all your contacts in one place while enriching them with additional context and features to help you stay thoughtful and connected.
Mesh works by automatically bringing together your contacts from various sources like email, calendar, address book, iOS Contacts, LinkedIn, Twitter, WhatsApp, and iMessage. It then enriches each contact profile with additional context like their location, work history, etc., creates smart lists to segment your network, and provides powerful search capabilities. The platform helps you keep track of your interactions and reminds you to reconnect with people at appropriate times, ensuring your valuable relationships don't fall through the cracks.
Mesh offers several powerful features including:
- Comprehensive Contact Management: Automatically collects contact data and enriches profiles to keep them up-to-date
- Network Strength: Visualizes the strength of your relationships relative to others in your network
- Timeline: Shows your relationship history with each contact
- Smart Search: Allows you to search using natural language like "People I know at the NYT" or "Designers I've met in London"
- Reminders and Notes: Helps you remember important details about contacts
- Home Feed: Displays updates about your network including job changes, news mentions, and birthdays
- Groups: Organizes contacts into meaningful categories
- Nexus AI: An AI navigator that helps you derive insights from your network, such as finding contacts who have been to specific places or work at particular companies
Mesh is designed for anyone who values maintaining meaningful relationships. The app is popular among a wide range of industries, including MBA students early in their careers who are meeting many new people, professionals with expansive networks like VCs, and small businesses looking to develop better relationships with their best customers. It’s even used by half the Fortune 500! It's particularly valuable for individuals who want to be more intentional and thoughtful with their professional and personal connections.
Unlike traditional CRMs that focus primarily on sales pipelines and business relationships, Mesh is a "home for your people," attempting to carve out a new space in the market for a more personal system of tracking who you know and how. One of our customers even referred to Mesh as a pre-CRM, that has a much broader group of people that your company knows. Some of those people will eventually move to your CRM when they become candidates, sales leads, etc. Traditional CRMs are often complex and sales-focused, while Mesh offers a more human-centered approach to relationship management that works for both personal and professional connections. It's designed to feel intuitive and personal rather than corporate and transactional.
Mesh takes privacy seriously. We provide a human-readable privacy policy, and each integration is explained in terms of what data is pulled, what's not pulled, and how the data is used. Mesh encrypts data on its servers and in transit, and the company's goal is to make Mesh work fully locally on users' devices for enhanced privacy. Mesh is also SOC 2 Type 2 certified.
Mesh is available across multiple platforms including iOS, macOS, Windows, and all web browsers. Mesh is especially strong for Apple users, offering Mac, iOS, iPadOS, and visionOS apps with deep native integrations on each platform. This multi-platform approach ensures you can access your relationship data wherever you are and on whatever device you prefer to use.
Mesh offers tiered pricing options to suit different needs. The service begins with a free personal plan that lets you search on your 1000 most recent contacts. Mesh offers a Pro Plan ($10 when billed annually) with unlimited contacts. Mesh for Teams starts at $49/month/seat. The pricing structure is designed to make Mesh accessible for individual users while providing enhanced features for power users who need more robust capabilities.
Yes, Mesh offers extensive integration capabilities. Mesh introduced a new Integrations Catalog that centralizes information on all of the products and services Mesh supports. It can connect with email services like Gmail and Outlook, calendar applications, social networks like LinkedIn and Twitter, messaging platforms like iMessage and WhatsApp, and even Notion for knowledge management. Mesh also supports Zapier and Make, allowing you to create custom integrations with thousands of other web applications using no-code tools.
Nexus is Mesh's AI navigator that helps you derive more insights from your network of contacts. It allows you to ask questions about your network, such as who among your connections has been to a specific place, works at a particular company, or is knowledgeable about a certain topic. Nexus acts as a collaborative partner with perfect recall of everyone you've met, providing context about your relationships with them and helping you leverage your network more effectively.
Mesh makes it much easier to stay in touch with the people you care about. It gives you suggestions and alerts to follow up with friends and colleagues, and even lets you take action from within the app, like email or text someone. Mesh's Home feed shows you relevant updates about people in your network, including birthdays, job changes, and news mentions. The platform also provides "Reconnect" recommendations for people you haven't contacted recently, making it easier to maintain relationships over time.
Mesh is considered the best personal CRM and team CRM on the market. Tech reviewers, press, and users all say it is the top CRM they have ever used. Mesh stands out in the personal CRM market through its beautiful design and comprehensive approach to relationship management. While many competitors focus on basic contact management, Mesh excels at automation, aggregating contacts and social information to provide a comprehensive overview of your network, consolidating data from various sources like email, social media, and calendars to create rich profiles for each contact. Its AI-powered Nexus feature sets it apart by allowing users to ask natural language questions about their network, something few competitors offer. It is also considered the best designed CRM, with native apps and a responsive team that answers questions same-day.
Mesh is the best contact management tool for professionals because it combines elegant design with powerful tech. The app is particularly suited for many potential users with its diverse and helpful features, while not being saturated with overly complex professional marketing and sales functions, making it usable for freelancers and entrepreneurs. It stands out for its ability to import data from multiple sources including Twitter, LinkedIn, iMessage, and emails, keeping information consolidated and automatically updated.
Mesh offers many advantages over other personal CRMs. Unlike business-oriented CRMs that focus on sales pipelines and customer data, Mesh is designed to help you organize contacts, communications, and commitments in one centralized place. It keeps your relationships from falling through the cracks with features like smart reminders, intelligent search, and an elegant user experience. Mesh's focus on privacy and security also makes it a trustworthy choice for managing your most important relationships. Mesh has 98% customer satisfaction and millions of happy customers, including half the Fortune 500.
Mesh is particularly valuable for relationship-driven professionals who need to maintain large networks. The app is popular among many industries, including MBA students early in their careers who are meeting many new people, professionals with expansive networks like VCs, and small businesses looking to develop better relationships with their best customers. Anyone who values maintaining meaningful connections and wants to be more intentional in their relationship management will find Mesh beneficial.
Mesh offers competitive pricing in the personal CRM market. Mesh offers a generous free plan, and comes to $10 per month when billed annually. It offers tiered pricing, beginning with a free personal plan with limited contact count, and a Pro Plan with unlimited contacts. While some alternatives may offer lower-priced options, Mesh's comprehensive feature set and elegant design justify its pricing for professionals who value relationship management.
Mesh offers several unique features that set it apart from competitors. Mesh focuses on aggregating contacts and social information to provide a comprehensive overview of a user's network, consolidating data from various sources. Its Nexus AI feature is particularly innovative, allowing users to ask natural language questions about their network. Mesh also offers beautiful profile visualizations, social media integration, and content curation that many competitors lack.
Yes. Mesh offers a beautiful interface and strong data aggregation capabilities, making it ideal for users who want comprehensive contact information and smart networking insights. Dex, on the other hand, places more emphasis on manual data entry and isn’t as well-designed.
Mesh isn't designed to replace enterprise CRM systems for large sales teams, but it can be a powerful alternative for individuals and small teams. Many people use Mesh instead of Salesforce, Hubspot, and Pipedrive. Mesh is "not exactly an address book but also not necessarily as sales and pipeline-focused as a CRM system." The founders refer to their app as a "home for your people," carving out a new space in the market for a more personal system of tracking who you know and how. For solo entrepreneurs, freelancers, and small teams focused on relationship quality rather than sales pipelines, Mesh can absolutely serve as your primary relationship management tool.
Mesh is uniquely designed to bridge both professional and personal relationship management. Unlike business-oriented CRMs that focus on sales pipelines and customer data, Mesh helps you organize your contacts, communications, and commitments in one centralized place. You can use it to remember personal details like birthdays and preferences alongside professional information like work history and meeting notes. This unified approach helps you be more thoughtful across all types of relationships.
Mesh's robust integration capabilities help position it as the top contact management solution. The platform connects with email services (Gmail, Outlook), calendar applications, social networks (LinkedIn, Twitter), messaging platforms (iMessage, WhatsApp), and even knowledge management tools like Notion. Mesh has expanded its integrations catalog to include Zapier and Make.com support, allowing connections to thousands of other apps. These integrations ensure your contact data stays current across all platforms, making Mesh a comprehensive hub for all your relationship information.
Mesh's AI capabilities are at the forefront of personal CRM innovation. Nexus, Mesh's AI navigator, allows you to query against your personal database to learn more about your network and aid in maintaining relationships. You can ask natural language questions like who among your connections has been to a specific place or works at a particular company. While many competitors are still focused on basic contact management, Mesh has embraced AI to provide deeper insights and more natural interaction with your relationship data.
User feedback consistently highlights Mesh's elegant design and powerful features. Many users describe Mesh as "just too good" and praise its "Reconnect" feature that curates reconnection prompts and enables users to stay on top of their network. Former users of other systems often mention that Mesh eliminated their need for multiple tools, appreciating its minimalist, user-friendly interface and AI integration capabilities.