30 Jun We Built the Growth Engine Framework We Wish We’d Had

Stop me if you’ve heard this one before.

You’re at a high-growth company. The product’s strong, the people are sharp, there’s real momentum in the air, and somehow, everyone’s still on the same page. That was Navicure for me and Dan.

It was the dawn of SEO, paid search, and marketing automation. We were experimenting with demand gen, lead scoring, and attribution. I was in-house. Dan was a partner. He ran his own creative firm, and together we helped shape Navicure’s earliest go-to-market strategies. He was the first marketing hire. I was the second. And we didn’t stop there.

Years later, Navicure was acquired by Bain and scaled into something much bigger. Great company, just not the same scrappy stage I loved. I landed at PE-backed Office Practicum, a pediatric-specific EHR company that felt like early Navicure all over again. First person I called? Dan.

We built the strategy, launched the campaigns, tracked the buyer intent, and refined the tactics. Then came Personify. Then Barnacle. Seventeen-plus years in the trenches with one constant throughline: we do our best work when we’re building growth systems for smart, driven teams who need traction NOW.

What We Learned Along the Way

There’s a difference between doing marketing and driving growth.

We kept seeing the same problems: good teams stuck in the same traps. Same pressure from boards and investors to “show progress”,  whether that’s traction for the next raise or EBITDA performance ahead of a recap. Same chaos behind the scenes: no real strategy, not enough time or headcount to execute at the level needed.

Eventually, it clicked:

• • Companies don’t need more vendors. They need partners who can act like a senior growth team from day one.
  • We could do it all – strategy, execution, creative, optimization — in less time and for less money than hiring five separate
  • Buyers don’t behave the way your CRM says they should. They bounce around, skim, forward links, DM a peer. And, unfortunately, ghost you.
  • Growth isn’t linear anymore. It’s nonlinear, peer-influenced, and trust-led.

So instead of wishing someone else would solve these problems, we did what we’ve always done and we built the thing ourselves.

Why SRGP Exists

In 2025, we launched Sjogren + Ray Growth Partners (SRGP) to help companies build and run the kind of growth engine we always wished we had. We’re not new, just newly focused.

We didn’t patch up the funnel. We scrapped it completely.

We replaced it with something that mirrors how modern buyers actually behave. We call it GTM//Zero™. It’s our blueprint for building your growth engine. That engine is made up of distinct, buyer-type-specific strategies we call Buyer Motions.

Each Motion is its own self-contained system with the channels, creative, messaging, and KPIs, that align with how that buyer behaves and how much attention they have at any given point. Stack those Motions together and you’ve got your full SRGP Growth Engine, built to:

• Generate qualified pipeline
• Speed up demo-to-close
• Show investor-grade traction
• Reduce CAC and improve payback
• Deliver narratives you can fund

We Don’t Just Build the Engine. We Run It.

We’ve been the overwhelmed first hire. The people you lean on when you’re under pressure to produce more pipeline. The partner you trust when a lot is on the line and the clock is ticking.

So we built SRGP to be exactly the partner we always wanted. A senior growth team that is strategic, creative, analytical AND easy to work with. A team that embeds quickly, proves their worth on day one, and provides meaningful results fast.

Here’s what you can expect from us. By day 120, we’ll have launched one complete Buyer Motion built around a high-value persona, delivering the kind of signals that matter whether you’re gearing up for a raise or optimizing for enterprise value: demo requests, stakeholder engagement, attribution mentions, early pipeline lift. It’s not the whole engine yet. But it’s the part that drives funding and fuels confidence in your GTM motion. It’s also our performance review.

Let’s Get to Work

If you need to show traction, prove your GTM is actually working, or create measurable momentum ahead of your next raise, board review, or transaction, we’d love to talk.