🔥 You’ve been burned before…

You've tried this once already. You hired the agency. You got a login, a dashboard you never open, and an invoice every month like clockwork.

Impressions, up. Engagement, up.

So you asked the one question that pays your bills: so where are my customers?

The answer was a slide deck.

Here's what nobody told you: Most agencies sell you exposure. They rent you attention and pour it on top of a machine that was already broken underneath. More traffic into a leaky bucket isn't growth. It's a bigger water bill.

Getting sold again is the last thing you need. So I don't.

I sell revenue, not exposure.

I fix the machine before I pour a dollar into it.

And I only take on work I already know I can move.

📖 How I got here

I was six when my dad hooked a computer up to the TV and we typed a game out of the BASIC manual, line by line.

Built my first website at twelve.

I've always been a builder. That never changed. Only the tools did.

At USF I went through the Honors College for a B.A. in Public and Cultural Communication, cum laude. The part that stuck wasn't on the diploma. It was an unofficial emphasis in Integrated Marketing Communication under Professor Loyd Pettegrew, and it planted the one idea I still run on: one machine, not five separate campaigns. Attract, convert, close. All one thing.

First real job out of school was Verizon Yellow Pages. I finished as the number one White Pages salesman in the company, on the number one sales inside team in the nation.

But the lesson that stuck came free. My dad's welding shop had no ad budget, so I filled out a free directory listing in the online version for him. The phone rang.

Get found, get called. All these years later, that's still the whole job.

At the St. Petersburg Times I doubled my territory in a year, then moved into the direct mail division. That's my direct-response bloodline. Write the thing, mail the thing, count what comes back.

Then Hollywood. I worked at Little Big Room Studios in Burbank under multi-platinum engineer Brad Gilderman, was an assistant on American Idol Season 8, landed the Guitar Hero account off a cold call, and touched the Kanye "Heartless" remix after a live performance on the show.

I also got Mark Cuban and Jeffrey Katzenberg on the phone. Cold calls. No warm intro, no connections.

Here's why that matters to you, and it's not the names. A cold-outreach engine, built right, opens any door. The same engine that gets a billionaire on the line is the one that fills a local pipeline. It's the machine, not the Rolodex.

Then came a hard stretch, the kind I'll spare you. Zero budget, back against the wall.

So I did the only thing I know how to do. I sat down at a public library computer, rebuilt my dad's website from scratch, and the phone rang again.

Same lesson. Same machine. No money required, just the reps.

I founded Chess Club Media in 2011 to run that machine for other people. That's still the job.

🏆 The kind of results I get

Terry Brown sells church insurance in Florida. When he found me, he was twelve months from quitting a business he'd run for thirty years. His words: frustrated, going backwards, ready to sell the whole thing. He'd already tried two other people who called themselves experts. No results.

So we rebuilt the machine. All of it.

New website and a UX study. SEO until he ranked page one for "church insurance quotes" and held the Florida local 3-pack. Meta and Google ads. A church-insurance e-book with chapters in his own voice. A blog. Guest posts and link building. A brand kit. Video and audio production. And a church-quote lead funnel that routed every lead straight to him, hundreds of leads a year, 441 in one of them.

Here's what that did, in his words.

He became his carrier's #1 producer in the entire state of Florida, three years running, with six-figure annual revenue growth. And here's the part that matters most.

Fourteen years. Same client. That's the answer to every one-and-done agency you've ever hired.

In his own words:

"I was 12 months from quitting my business of 30 years. I was frustrated and going backwards... I have been the company's top producer in Florida the last three years in a row. If not for our partnership I would have sold my agency."

He didn't just stay. He sent me other clients, including the USA Memory Championship. You can read Terry's story and the rest in the reviews.

And the machine travels. I ran the whole marketing department for VenturePort, a venture-funded SaaS startup in Stockholm, as their interim CMO. On a near-zero budget I generated 150+ beta sign-ups and landed them press in EU-Startups and Swedish Tech Weekly. Their CEO's words: I "put VenturePort on the SEO map, with a near-zero budget."

Before that, Mondo Ride, a VC-backed Nairobi ride-hailing startup going head to head with Uber and Taxify, brought me in for a full rebrand. We took them from a scrappy startup to a refined, strong brand, grew ride volume roughly 150% while cutting marketing spend, and I shot the photo that ran in their Quartz Africa coverage myself. Their head of growth called me "a universal soldier of marketing." Same machine. New markets. Global competitors. Still beat the competition.

⚙️ How I work

I don't run a random pile of tactics. I run one machine.

It's called the Breakthrough Protocol, and it's the backbone of how I get a business found, chosen, and called. Five pillars, in order, because the order is the whole point. You can't write the offer before you know the customer. Ads don't work until there's somewhere for the traffic to land.

Here's the machine.

• Your Customers. First I map how your best customer actually talks, thinks, dreams, and fears, and what makes them finally reach for their wallet. Everything downstream is built off this.

• Your Offer. Then we make your offer so good the right person feels stupid saying no. Not a discount. A reason to buy now instead of "someday."

• Your Profiles. Your profiles get tuned to pull in leads on autopilot. This one traces back to the very beginning, when I filled out a free directory listing for my dad's welding shop and the phone rang the next day. That was the whole discovery. Optimize where people already look, and the leads come to you. Everything I've built since is that same move at scale.

• Your Content. Monthly content that builds trust and authority, shipped consistently instead of "when I get around to it."

• Your Ads. A Meta sequence, awareness plus retargeting, built from your own videos or AI avatars we generate. Not "boosting a post." A specific customer, moved to a specific action.

That's the Breakthrough Protocol. One machine, not five separate campaigns.

Here's where it usually breaks.

You've got a great business, and customers still can't find you. Somewhere in the machine there's a hole, and every dollar you spend leaks out of it. Usually it's one of these.

• You're invisible where people are actually looking for you.

• Your tools don't talk to each other, so leads fall through the cracks.

• A lead comes in hot and goes cold before anyone follows up.

• Nobody sees you consistently, so you're a stranger every time.

• And you're the bottleneck. It only works when you're the one doing it.

More traffic into a leaky bucket isn't growth, it's a bigger water bill. My job is to find which hole is yours and plug it. Then run the machine so it doesn't come back.

🤖 AI that runs inside your business

The machine above gets you customers. This is the other half of what I build now: AI systems that live inside your business and quietly do the work that used to fall through the cracks.

• A 24/7 voice agent that answers the phone and books the job while you're on a roof, in a chair, or asleep. Miss fewer leads without hiring a receptionist.

• Automations that wake up your dead lead list and follow up the second a new lead comes in, so nothing goes cold.

• First-to-market lead intelligence dashboards that hand you an unfair advantage in B2B and B2C prospecting, with the right prospects ranked and ready before your competition sees them.

• Website and DM chatbots that answer, qualify, and route around the clock.

• A second brain trained on how you work, so your content, your quotes, and your team all sound like you, at scale.

• Custom GPTs, Claude skills, prompt systems, and workflows built to take the busywork off your plate.

• Custom web apps and internal tools, built fast. Have an idea? I vibe-code it into working software while other shops are still writing the proposal.

• An AI roadmap for your business: exactly where AI gives your team hours back, what's worth building, and what to skip. It's the easiest place to start.

• One-on-one coaching and team workshops, so your people actually use this instead of fearing it.

I run this the same way I run everything: build first, prove it, then scale. I've already put live voice agents in the field booking real calls. And because I'd rather show you than sell you, I'll build you a working sample before you spend a dollar.

🎯 Who I do it for

I do this for two kinds of people. Mostly local high-ticket service businesses. And a handpicked, referral-fed few: funded startups and founders. Same operator in both rooms, but not the same playbook. Each one gets the approach its problem actually needs.

For local high-ticket service businesses.

The insurance agent. The orthodontist. The contractor with two idle vans. The counselor with a waitlist she can't fill on purpose. The restaurant everybody loves once they finally walk in.

You're the best-kept secret in your market. You do the work better than the loud shop across town, and the loud shop is eating your lunch anyway.

I fix that. Not with a logo refresh. With one machine that attracts strangers, converts them into leads, and helps you close them. Attract, convert, close, wired together, running every day. Since 2011, that's what I've built for owners like you.

For funded startups and founders.

When a board wants growth and a runway won't wait, I step in as your fractional or interim CMO and run the whole marketing department. Not one channel. The department. Strategy, brand, SEO, paid, content, PR, and the team, held together as one system that a CEO can actually report on.

That's the same work behind the VenturePort and Mondo Ride results above. It's also the work behind Kasha, a women's-health e-commerce company across Kenya and Rwanda. I ran a growth sprint that returned roughly 6x on ad spend and grew their blog traffic 8x, and in the year around that work the company publicly reported 936% growth. The systems kept running long after my part was done. I build growth that outlives the engagement.

Two different rooms, two different playbooks, one operator who's delivered in both.

✅ What you actually get

Here's what actually shows up when you hire me.

The operator who does the work, not an account manager you meet once. The person who maps your machine is the person who builds it. No junior three levels down. No handoff to a team you'll never talk to. You get me, in the trenches, doing the work.

A machine you own. Fire me tomorrow and it keeps ringing your phone. I don't build you a habit you have to keep paying to feed. I build you an asset, not a dependency. When I'm done, the thing that brings you customers belongs to you, not to some login you'd lose the second you cancel.

Real customers and real revenue you can see and feel. Not a dashboard you never open, full of pretty numbers that go up while your bank account doesn't. You'll know it's working the way owners always know. The phone rings more. The right people walk in. You stop white-knuckling it.

A method that's been run across 150+ businesses in 7 countries, with today's tools behind it. This isn't my first machine. It's the same one I've run for local shops and funded startups, sharpened every year since 2011. Proven method, modern tools, one operator who owns the result.

The way you'll know it landed is what I call the 3 R's.

• Revenue. More money coming in, and you feel it. Not a slide you have to squint at. The kind you can point to.

• Recruitment. Better people and better opportunities start showing up. A machine that's working attracts talent and doors. A broken one repels both.

• Relaxation. You finally exhale, because it's covered. The growth engine runs without you gripping the wheel, and that ease is the proof.

Now the part everybody's tense about. The money.

Here's how I price. Tell me your budget and tell me what winning looks like for you, and I go all-in to get you the most of it. Winning isn't always cash or a full calendar. Sometimes it's your brand finally looking the part. Sometimes it's spending less to get the same result. Sometimes it's filling a role you couldn't fill. Sometimes it's just the relief of it being handled. You tell me what that is for you, and that's the number I chase.

That's why the range is wide. A few thousand for a one-time build, up to mid five figures for an ongoing engagement. It's wide because I meet you where you are and work inside your budget, not because there's a package I'm trying to fit you into. I meet you where you are, and I don't disappear.

So here's the move. Book a no-pressure discovery call and I'll map your growth machine live, right there on the call, where the leads are leaking and what I'd fix first. You keep that map whether or not we ever work together. I'd rather prove it on your business than pitch you on mine. Want the receipts first? Read what they say.

🏆 Recognized & Featured by

• WeWork: Featured speaker and recognized as an official LinkedIn Community Advisor

• Nairobi Garage: Recognized as a “leading digital marketing agency” in East Africa and featured speaker

• The Nehemiah Project: Invited speaker for entrepreneurial training programs

• South Lake Chamber of Commerce: Awarded “Most Innovative Social Media Marketing” and featured speaker

• Lake Technical College, Lake-Sumter State College Entrepreneurial Institute, and Lake Union Key Club (Seattle): Featured speaker and workshop leader

• Wits University (South Africa): Hosted the Study Abroad MBA program at our former Nairobi satellite office for a live Q&A and marketing deep dive

• USF Alumni Magazine: Featured article highlighting Mikel’s contributions as a USF Honors College alumnus

• AppSumo: Published Mike’s LinkedIn Profile Workbook as an approved resource

• U.S. Chamber of Commerce: Recognized for the eBook “The Chamber Made Me Famous”

• “The Blueprint” by Brennan Dunn: Featured Chess Club Media and Mikel’s marketing insights as an example of great copywriting

📣 In the press

• FOX Business / FOX News Radio

• Quartz Africa: Coverage of Mondo Ride during our East Africa growth work

• Seattle Times: Sunday front-cover feature for our client Brass Tacks

• KING 5 Seattle: Three broadcast news segments for our client Brass Tacks

🎓 Certifications & Training

Formal training and certifications earned across the platforms our work runs on. Some are current, some are point-in-time credentials that still verify. Every one is real and independently verifiable at the links below.

• Anthropic (Claude): Certified in Claude 101, Claude Code 101, and Claude Platform 101. Hands-on training in the AI platform, Claude Code, and the Claude API that powers our build work.

• Google Ads: Certified in Search, Search Professional, Display, Apps, and AI-Powered Shopping ads.

• LinkedIn Marketing: Certified in Marketing Strategy, Advertising Fundamentals, Content & Creative Design, and Marketing Insider.

• Meta (Facebook Blueprint): Certified in the Marketing API and the Facebook Pixel for campaign measurement and audience building.

🧠 Advisory Boards

• Pig On The Pond Scholarship Fund & Community Festival

• Clermont Elementary School

• Lake Tech Digital Design College

• USA Memory Championship

• Mondo Ride

• Audidio: board member for the indie music-video streaming platform founded by the late Nik Sharp

📚 Authorship & Thought Leadership

• Author of “Link in Bio: Three Words That Shook the Stormy Seas,” a guide to navigating today’s digital attention economy

• Author of “Mike’s LinkedIn Profile Workbook,” featured on AppSumo

🔗 Connect with Mikel & Chess Club Media

• Chess Club Media:LinkedIn · YouTube · Instagram · Facebook

• Mikel Jorgensen:Personal site · LinkedIn · Instagram · TikTok · YouTube · Facebook · X

• Mikel J (music):Spotify · Apple Music · SoundCloud

❓ Frequently asked questions

Do you offer AI, or just marketing?

Both, and they connect. Alongside the growth machine, I build AI systems into your business: a 24/7 voice agent that books jobs, automations that revive dead leads, a second brain trained on how you work, and a roadmap that shows your team exactly where AI earns its keep. Real systems wired to do real work, not a ChatGPT login with a retainer stapled to it. And because I'd rather show you than tell you, I'll build you a working sample before you spend a dollar.

Who actually does my work?

You get the operator who's run growth for 150+ businesses across 7+ countries, in your corner from start to finish. I lead every engagement and stay in the trenches on it. When a job calls for a specialist, I bring in a vetted one, but you're never handed off to a stranger. The person you hire is the person who does the work.

What areas do you serve?

I'm based in Clermont, Florida, and I work with clients all over the United States and around the world. Local Central Florida businesses are close to my heart and easy to meet in person, but the machine works anywhere, and plenty of my clients have never been in the same room as me.

How long have you been in business?

Since 2011. From our home base in Clermont, Florida, Chess Club Media has served clients all over the United States, from Central Florida to the Seattle area to Southern California, and internationally across Kenya, Rwanda, Sweden, the United Arab Emirates, and Mexico.

What if I have been burned by an agency before?

Most of our clients have been. That is exactly why the first step is a no-pressure call where I map your growth machine and show you where you are losing customers, whether or not we ever work together.

How do we start?

Book a discovery call. We find where you are losing customers, build you a working sample, and you decide from there.

📍 Where we work

Chess Club Media, LLC, Clermont, Florida. We're proud to serve Central Florida, Lake County, and the greater Orlando metro, and we work with clients across the United States and internationally. Call or text (352) 325-2993, or get in touch.

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