Est. 2001 · Marketing is infrastructure
Jeff Lerner*Not the founder of ENTRE Institute. That is a different Jeff Lerner. This one lives in San Diego and thinks about narrative debt.
Founder of Misnomer Marketing, a fractional CMO practice for seed to Series B B2B founders and PE-backed portfolio companies. Author of Nobody Knows What You Do, launching Fall 2026.
The work
Growth stalls for a reason nobody names.
I did not set out to become a fractional CMO. I set out to answer a question: why do some companies with strong products scale aggressively, while others with equal potential stall? Over 25 years inside startups, Google, and AT&T, I watched the same pattern repeat. Founders build something real. Customers respond. Investors lean in. Then growth gets harder than it should. Not because the product weakens. Because the company has outgrown its story.
I call this narrative debtNarrative debtFounder-led storypaid40-person sales teamowedSeries B narrativeowedBalancecompounding: the compounding cost a company pays when its messaging outgrows its original clarity. It sits on a balance sheet no one keeps. Clearing it is the work I do, at the inflection point where traction is real but structure is missing. More about me.
Startups, Google, AT&T
Raised on behalf of clients
Successful acquisitions
Total exit value
The book
The moment your clarity stops transmitting.
Nobody Knows What You Do names the quiet problem I have watched play out inside companies at every stage of growth: the moment a company's internal clarity about what it does stops reaching the market. It distills 25 years of pattern recognition into the frameworks I use with founders today, launching September 22, 2026.
Also by Jeff: The Power of Relationships, a companion read on how careers and brands compound through authentic connection and earned trust.
Writing
Positions I am willing to be quoted on.
Category creation beats category competition.
If you are fighting on features or price inside an existing category, you have already lost the high-ground play.
Read the essay Marketing as infrastructureMost attribution is theater.
The industry's obsession with attribution models obscures the harder work of building a narrative that compounds.
Read the essay Fractional CMOScale does not require full-time presence.
It requires full-time thinking applied at the right inflection points. That is why the fractional model works.
Read the essaySpeaking
One sharp claim per talk.
Marketing is not decoration. It is infrastructure. I speak to founder and investor audiences on category design, narrative debt, and when the fractional CMO model fits. Intros run under 100 words and every talk leaves the room with a framework they can use Monday morning. Invite Jeff to speak.