Marketing is infrastructure.
Not decoration. It belongs upstream of the campaign.
Read more about marketing as infrastructure
Marketing Executive · Author · Founder
Jeff
Jeff
Lerner.
I build the story behind companies that scale.
25 years across startups, Google, and AT&T. Founder of Misnomer Marketing. Author of Nobody Knows What You Do.
Yes, that Jeff Lerner.
No, not that one.
This is Jeff Lerner, the marketing executive: founder of Misnomer Marketing and author of Nobody Knows What You Do. Based in Carlsbad, California. Definitely not the founder of ENTRE Institute.
The Receipts
25
$425M+
$2.5B+
4
Things I
Believe.
Category creation beats category competition.
Own the definition. Win the market.
Read more about category creationClarity compounds.
Every quarter, the gap gets more expensive.
Read more about clarityMost growth problems start as narrative problems.
Fix the story. The numbers will follow.
Read more about narrative problems
The Work
25 years.
25 years.
A few defining moments.
Category-defining products made legible to mainstream buyers.
Cricket / AT&T
$80M+ eCommerce revenue. 71% lower traffic acquisition cost. Acquired by AT&T.
Flock Freight
VP Marketing. 619% MQL growth. $375M+ raised. Valued above $1B.
Misnomer
Founder. Fractional CMO practice.
Nobody Knows What You Do
Author. September 22, 2026.
The Book
Nobody Knows
Nobody Knows
What You Do.
I spent 25 years watching good companies become harder to understand as they grew. Eventually I gave the problem a name.
Narrative debt.
A five-layer framework for closing the gap between what you do and what the world believes.
- Why the gap forms
- What it costs
- How to close it
- How to compound it
- How to prove it
Writing
Positions I'm
View all articles
Positions I'm
willing to defend.
Narrative debt: why good companies become harder to understand as they grow
The compounding tax a company pays when its messaging outgrows its original clarity. How the gap forms, what it costs, and why naming it is half the work.
Category creation beats category competition
If you are fighting on features inside someone else's category, you have already lost the high-ground play. Choosing the game is the decision that decides the rest.
How to build a marketing system that works on $5K a month
Most early-stage budgets fail on allocation, not size. The system that makes a small budget compound instead of leak.
Fractional Leadership
Why the best CMOs own the number, not the channel.
Relationships
The real compound interest in your career.
Speaking
Put me
Put me
on a mic.
Keynotes, podcasts, panels, firesides, and conversations about how companies become understood.
Invite Jeff to speakNarrative Debt
What it costs to scale a story the market hasn't agreed to.
Category Design
Choose the game before you play it.
The Fractional CMO Model
How senior marketing firepower moves earlier and faster.
Formats
- Keynotes
- Podcasts
- Panels
- Firesides
What I'm Building
What I'm
What I'm
building now.
Misnomer
Fractional CMO practice that fixes the story, builds the system, and owns the number.
Visit MisnomerNobody Knows What You Do
The book that defines Narrative Debt.
Explore the book
Ascendly
$5,000
Flat engagement fee. Different company. Different mandate.
Visit Ascendly
Off the Clock
The rest
The rest
of the story.
Baseball, school boards, and dogs have taught me more about organizational communication than most boardrooms have.