Nate Thoreson

Case Studies

Work that moved the needle.

A sample of work from the Lean Marketing Accelerator. Founders who came in with a specific problem and left with a measurable result.

$20K in 12 Days

How Plumbing Vine Smashed Their Sales Record

A trades business with a slow pipeline needed fast revenue. One focused campaign broke their all-time sales record in under two weeks.

100% ROI

Growth Through Strategic Joint Ventures

A dog training business doubled their investment by identifying the right referral partners and structuring a joint venture that ran itself.

$70,000

The One Simple Move That Generated $70,000 in Predictable Revenue

One strategic shift in how they packaged and priced their offer turned unpredictable income into a repeatable revenue engine.

40% Conversion

The $8,000 Conference That Converted 40% of Attendees into Leads

A SaaS company invested in a single industry event and built a lead capture system that turned nearly half the room into qualified pipeline.

341% Opt-In Increase

How One Pop-Up Drove a 341% Opt-In Increase for Ready Rig

A single on-site change to their lead capture approach tripled the rate at which visitors were joining their list, with no additional ad spend.

Automated Onboarding

How Gymforce Automated Its Onboarding and Scaled with Lean Marketing

A fitness business rebuilt their client onboarding from scratch using automation, freeing up the team to focus on growth instead of admin.

60 Leads in 2 Days

A $1 Trial That Rebuilt an Entire Funnel

A medical AI SaaS company was stuck on a friction-heavy free trial with no reliable acquisition engine. I restructured their pricing around a $1 first-month trial, and within a year it had become their number one lead source.

Full Model Pivot

From One-Off Training to a Recurring-Revenue Reseller

A Bitcoin mining education company sold one-time training with no repeat revenue. I rebuilt their positioning from client interviews, then designed a tiered offer stack that turned them into a Value-Added Reseller with recurring income and a clear upsell path.

$62K ARR in Week One

Turning a Restaurant Into a Membership Business

A farm-to-table restaurant ran on transactional dining alone. I built and launched a membership program that generated $62K in recurring annual revenue in its first week live, on top of a new book and course line that added $20K in a single month.

10x Revenue in 12 Months

From Solopreneur to a Team of 30

An in-home healthcare company started with one owner and one client. I rebuilt their lead generation and positioning until demand outpaced what they could deliver, and the business grew into a 30-person team serving 26+ active clients.

~90% Sales Conversion

A Niche Repositioning That Changed How They Sell

A chiropractic practice had no clear specialty and inconsistent pricing. I repositioned them around prenatal and pediatric care, rebuilt their pricing and new-patient process, and built the funnel behind it, pushing their close rate to roughly 90% and putting them on pace for $400K in annual revenue.

My Methodology

The Lean Marketing Operating System

Most teams chase more leads when what they need is to fix one broken step in their funnel. That's where I come in. Over the last 10 years, I've applied a simple, repeatable approach across 150+ businesses. It works whether you're pre-launch or scaling past product-market fit, whether you're a solo founder or a team of 20. Here's how it works:

Metrics First, Always.

I used to hate math, and now I'm obsessed with the numbers. If you're not tracking the right metrics, you're just guessing. With every client, I map the customer journey and track the key metrics from top to bottom, from traffic and opt-in rates through click-throughs, sales calls, close rates, churn, and lifetime value. People think they want more leads, but what they want is more revenue. The path to more revenue is always sitting in your metrics.

Talk to Customers

Before we write a headline, design a funnel, or touch your messaging, talk to your customers. You might think you know what problem you solve, but what matters is what your customers say. Talk with your customers to uncover how they describe their pain, what pushed them to buy, and what nearly stopped them. This gives us the language we need to craft content that converts. It also kills assumptions, fast.

Build the Funnel

Now that we know the pain points and see where users are dropping off, we build the system. We start with one clear lead generation strategy based on where your audience already spends time. From there, we create a funnel that removes friction and keeps momentum. Every piece of content, every step in the funnel, and every offer should do one thing, and that's solve the core problem your customers are trying to fix.

Track, Test, Adjust

This is where growth compounds, and it gets skipped way too often. We track what matters, test new approaches, and use those insights to make better decisions. Customer behavior changes. Markets evolve. Messaging that worked a year ago might fall flat today. I help you build that feedback loop into your operations, so you're never relying on guesswork.

Scale On Autopilot

Once the system's working, we scale it. This is where automation and AI come in. As tools to help your team move faster and do more with less, we automate what's repeatable, speed up what's slow, and use AI to extend your output without adding overhead. We only scale once we know it works.

What clients & coworkers say

From strategy to execution, I've helped founders and teams turn messy marketing into growth that compounds.

Nate is one of the most naturally talented people I've had the opportunity to lead. His brain moves incredibly quickly. He can get dropped into something complicated, understand it faster than most people, and then do something even more valuable: make it understandable to everyone else. I watched him do this repeatedly at Lean across AI, systems, coaching and client work.

Nate was particularly exceptional in a room. We could put him in front of a group of clients with completely different businesses, problems and levels of sophistication, and he could somehow make the conversation useful to everyone. He knew how to meet someone where they were without making the more advanced people bored or the less advanced people feel behind. That is a real skill, and Nate made it look easy.

He was also instrumental in some of our earliest work figuring out what AI could actually do inside our company and for our clients. Not AI as a novelty, but AI applied to real work, real systems and real problems. Nate was willing to experiment before there was a playbook and then help us turn what worked into something other people could actually use.

Anna Kloth

CEO at Lean Marketing

We are so grateful for Nate and the work he did for our company! He helped us completely upgrade our website and overall online presence. He was flexible to work with, respected deadlines, and went above and beyond to make sure we were truly happy with the final product. Since the revamp, our website now accurately represents us, our traffic has increased, and we feel genuinely proud of our online presence.

Farai Grohman

Marketing Manager at Kotaco

Nate made building a website for my business seamless and stress free. He brought great ideas to the table for both functionality and to increase the productivity of the site. Nate's constant communication gave me confidence in how the website was moving along. I would 100% recommend.

Josh Sternberg

Founder of Sternberg Homes

Nathaniel is an exceptional writer, fantastic at taking small bits of information and turning it into long form content. I was consistently impressed with the engaging content he created, especially his ability to craft compelling blog posts. His versatility extended to email marketing, web page design, and landing page creation. He was an incredibly valuable asset to the team!

Jafrah LaVoy

Marketing Specialist at Vistal

From the moment Nathaniel joined our team, his calm and professional demeanor set him apart. Regardless of the challenges we faced, including tight deadlines and stressful situations, Nathaniel remained composed and focused on delivering high-quality work. His expertise in digital marketing, SEO strategy, and website development is truly impressive and was invaluable to our team's success.

Leora Hillman

Marketing Specialist at Vistal

Professional Experience

I've had the opportunity to work with businesses across diverse industries in varying size and culture, from scrappy startups, to Fortune 100 multi-national corporations.

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Jan '26 - Present

Principal, Marketing Product & Program Design

Lean Marketing

Lean Marketing is a B2B marketing consultancy serving founders and growth-stage teams. Principal-level role leading product design, program architecture, AI systems, and company strategy as a member of the core leadership team.

Client Retention & Lifetime Value: Lifted renewal rate from 20% to roughly 70% and Customer Lifetime Value nearly 60% by architecting AI-driven reporting and health-scoring systems that caught at-risk renewals before they became unrecoverable.
Client Marketing Outcomes: Repositioned a healthcare practice around a defined niche, driving a ~90% close rate and $167K in H1 collections; scaled a hospitality client's paid social to 4x ROAS and a record $109K month.
Recruiting Infrastructure & Team Building: Designed the recruiting system that cut source-to-place from 6 weeks to 3, directly hiring and managing 20+ marketing coordinators at 90%+ retention across 50+ total placements.
AI Marketing Platform: Designed and scaled an AI writer trained on each client's foundational documents (offer, ICP, messaging, tone of voice) to 200+ clients at 60%+ monthly active usage, owning the full product lifecycle from UI/UX through roadmap.
Program Architecture: Designed the scalable frameworks and implementation systems adopted by 200+ companies across SaaS, fintech, ecommerce, and B2B, scaling the Accelerator to $2.5M ARR.
Executive Marketing Advisory: Senior strategic advisor to 80+ founders simultaneously, 150+ total engagements, diagnosing each client's core growth constraint and prescribing the fix, driving an estimated $15M+ in additional client revenue.

May '25 - Jan '26

Marketing Accelerator Manager

Lean Marketing

Promoted to build the systems and IP that turned the Accelerator from an unstructured offering into a repeatable and scalable coaching product, while still running client coaching directly.

Revenue Growth: Scaled the Accelerator from $216K to $1.5M ARR in under a year by architecting the frameworks, SOPs, and 4-phase client curriculum, the systems and content that turned coaching into a repeatable, revenue-driving product.
Client Marketing Highlight: Restructured a hospitality client's revenue model around a new membership program, generating $62K ARR in week one and a record $90K month; built a conference lead-capture system for a SaaS client converting 40% of attendees; guided a healthcare client onto a first-ever seven-figure pace.
Coaching IP Development: Built 20+ custom GPTs (website copywriters, messaging analyzers, content-pillar builders) that let clients execute marketing work between coaching sessions instead of stalling.
Marketing Operations Automation: Built AI automation that analyzed coaching calls and fed content ideas to the team, saving 7 people 10+ hours per week each.
Demand Generation Systems: Designed a marketing-plan automation system generating 1,200 opt-ins in a single week, combining client intake, AI generation, and one-page strategy output.

Apr '24 - May '25

Marketing & Business Advisor

Lean Marketing

Client-facing advisory role delivering hands-on marketing strategy and execution, while building the coaching frameworks that let the program scale.

Client Marketing Highlight: Restructured a SaaS client's acquisition model around a $1 paid trial that produced 60 leads in 48 hours and became their top lead source; guided a healthcare client from one client to a full pipeline, a 775% monthly revenue increase.
Advisory Scale: Ran 8+ advisory sessions weekly across 4 companies per call (SaaS, fintech, Web3, AI, professional services), diagnosing growth constraints and building marketing assets live.
Marketing System Implementation: Guided clients through a 4-phase build spanning positioning, CRM/pipeline, lead gen, and constraint-based coaching across hundreds of launched campaigns.
Client Growth: Scaled personal advisory load from 30 to 100 active clients over 13 months without sacrificing delivery quality.

Nov '22 - Feb '24

Marketing Specialist II

Vistal

Vistal is a private equity firm. Led digital marketing strategy and execution, SEO, paid demand generation, analytics infrastructure, and a full website redesign, as part of the marketing team.

SEO & Website Redesign: Grew organic traffic 212% and organic share from 13% to 60% in 12 months by leading a full technical and content SEO overhaul alongside a site-wide redesign, replacing a paid-dependent acquisition mix with a durable organic channel.
Demand Generation: Delivered CTRs 130% above industry benchmark across Google, Meta, and LinkedIn, building multi-channel paid programs from scratch across a private equity portfolio with no prior paid acquisition function.
Analytics Infrastructure: Built GA4, Tag Manager, and CRM integrations that replaced gut-feel marketing decisions with data that the leadership and marketing teams could act on.

Oct '22 - Present

Web3 Marketing Lead

DropChain

Designed the full visual brand and led all marketing efforts for a web3 marketing SaaS suite. Built and executed the social media, retention, and growth strategies from scratch. Led UI/UX design across the product to simplify onboarding and boost engagement. Implemented the full marketing stack including email infrastructure, analytics, and automation.

Nov '21 - Oct '22

Senior Communications & Project Manager

Microsoft | Razor Consulting Solutions

Embedded communications and project management role supporting a 300-person Microsoft team through a major organizational restructuring.

Change Management: Cut attrition 20%+ during a company-wide restructuring by training 200+ employees and building the communication infrastructure that kept a 300-person team aligned through the transition.
Workflow Redesign: Reengineered the client-request workflow, cutting processing time 64% over three months across 100+ monthly requests.

Nov '19 - Oct '21

Content Manager

Microsoft | Razor Consulting Solutions

Managed customer education content strategy for Microsoft Cloud Services, overseeing vendor-led multi-channel campaigns and building internal testing infrastructure to validate content performance.

Content & Testing Infrastructure: Produced 100+ content pieces and designs for Microsoft Cloud Services education, then built and ran an internal A/B testing program running 4 tests monthly to validate what actually worked.

Jun '19 - Nov '19

Product Marketing Coordinator

FlexMLS

Managed product launch of new mobile product including collateral design and writing, strategy, social media management and outreach to 240,000+ existing customers. Worked closely with product management, development, and graphic teams as the lead writer for all external marketing materials.

Jan '17 - Aug '22

Co-Founder & Director of Marketing

Webblen

Webblen is a VC-backed Web3 mobile platform built to connect people through real-world events and local community. Built the brand, marketing team, and growth engine from the ground up as co-founder.

Community Growth: Built a 50,000+ member community entirely through organic acquisition, with $0 paid spend, owning brand and positioning from the company's founding.
Product Launch: Generated $300K+ in token liquidity within 6 months of the mobile app launch by leading go-to-market, brand, and positioning end to end, turning a pre-launch concept into a liquid, adopted product inside two quarters.
Team Building: Scaled the team from 3 to 10 over a five-year tenure, building the marketing function from the ground up.