How He Works

Most hiring pages list skills as a flat collection, all at equal weight. This isn’t that. Below are the things Neum is genuinely strong at, things he is capable of without claiming mastery, and honest gaps he would rather tell you about than have you discover later. The honesty is the point.

Strong

Technical SEO, AEO, and content strategy

Neum has been doing SEO at a high level for 20 years and continues to track where search is actually going, not where it was. In 2026 that means AEO (Answer Engine Optimization) matters as much as traditional SEO: getting cited by ChatGPT, Claude, Perplexity, Gemini, and Google’s AI Overviews is where a growing share of high-intent traffic originates. Neum is actively exploring AEO strategies and thinks about search positioning with LLM retrieval in mind, not just Google’s ten blue links.

On traditional SEO, he works at the infrastructure level: redirects, content architecture, internal linking, site speed, and rendering concerns, not just the keyword layer. Recent relevant proof points: doubled organic traffic at Micro Focus, built Classic Aviation’s long-tail content strategy into 2 to 3 organic leads per day with zero ad spend.

On local SEO, he has taken multiple small-business clients from invisible to dominant in their service areas through Google Business Profile optimization, local content strategy, review velocity management, and citation consistency. Local search is where most of his Stacked Agency clients compete, and it’s a discipline he’s genuinely good at.

Paid media, especially Meta

Drove daily lead volume 10x at Fundwise through Facebook. Sustained Cove’s cost per acquisition under $400 (with peak campaigns under $300) while roughly doubling annual sales volume. He has successfully run ad programs at seven-figure monthly spend and knows how the math works at that scale.

Web development in service of marketing

Front-end is his strongest ground: HTML, CSS (since 2006), and working JavaScript. On the back end he has shipped Python (Django since 2007), WordPress, enough Postgres to build real product databases, and ERP integrations with Sage 100 and Fishbowl. He is not the best engineer in the room and will not claim to be one. The point is that when a marketing project needs a landing page, a custom tool, or an integration, he builds it himself instead of waiting on a dev team.

AI integration as daily operating practice

Claude Code, OpenRouter, n8n, Telegram bot pipelines, always-on AI agents running on a Mac Mini in his house (he calls it “Gavel”). This is not prompt engineering as a side hobby. It is daily operational infrastructure across both Cove Smart and Stacked Agency.

Independent execution when needed, strong team contribution by default

Neum can operate as a one-person marketing function when the role calls for it; he has done that repeatedly across his career and shipped measurable results each time. He is not a lone wolf by temperament. He has led sales teams, mentored developers (including his nephew learning to code), taught classes regularly, and contributes to the whole team’s performance at Cove, not just his own. He does his best work on small-to-midsize teams that execute quickly and are invested in each other’s success.

Measurable results orientation

He will not take a role or a client where the success metric is “brand awareness” with no performance component underneath. Numbers tell you when you’re winning or losing. He treats that as a feature, not a constraint.

Capable

Copywriting and creative

Solid copywriter. Can write a good tagline, a good email, a good landing page. Won’t claim he’s the best creative in the room and prefers performance-validated work over purely stylistic swings.

Multi-channel strategy and contractor orchestration

Comfortable orchestrating ad contractors across Meta, Google, Snapchat, Bing, and TikTok and aligning creative, CRO, and organic around the same numbers. Happier executing than delegating, but able to do both when the role requires it.

Some React and modern frontend

Has shipped React projects with AI assistance. Capable, not a specialist. If the work depends on deep React architecture expertise, he is not the right person.

Honest gaps

Traditional PR and analyst relations

Has sent the occasional press release. That is the extent of it. No relationships with tech press, no history of managing analyst briefings, no interest in building either from scratch.

Pure brand marketing without direct response underneath

If the brief is “build the brand, trust the process, we can’t measure it,” he will be unhappy and will underperform. He does not believe in buying TV and praying.

B2B marketing at scale

He has done some B2B (Micro Focus, Listen Technologies’ dealer side), but the vast majority of his career has been direct-to-consumer. Long enterprise sales cycles, RFPs, and procurement loops are not his environment.

People management in slow or threatened cultures

The dealbreaker is the culture, not the headcount. He would enjoy running a 15 to 30-person marketing org inside a company oriented around growth, testing, and innovation. What he does not want to run is a big team inside a culture that treats high-output hires as “wage-busting” or pushes every decision through three committees.

Slow, committee-driven work environments

This is a cultural fit issue, not a company-size issue. He works well with large organizations whose teams move fast and whose decision-makers are accessible; he works less well where basic execution stalls in approvals or where the distance from decision to action is counted in months. His preference is for smaller companies or nimble teams inside larger ones, because that is where he can have direct impact and get quick decisions. Plenty of large organizations have teams like that; it is not about size so much as pace.

International and multi-region growth

He has not done international expansion as an operator. Living in China with his family for a year and a half does not count as doing international marketing.

Influencer and affiliate program management

Has been an affiliate for companies but has never built or run an affiliate program at scale, and has minimal experience standing up an influencer program.

If what you need maps to the Strong column, Neum is likely a strong fit. If it lives in Capable, it is worth a conversation. If it is in the Honest gaps column, Neum is not your person and he will tell you so directly. Either way, the fastest way to know is a real conversation: neum@stackedagency.com.

See Neum’s experience