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I post about growth, AI and the farm most days of the week. Follow me on LinkedIn →
Growth leader · AI-native GTM · Author
Engineering intelligent growth.
I'm Director of Growth Marketing at Journify, a VC-backed B2B startup, and I've spent 15+ years running growth at Autodesk, Workday, InVision, Smartsheet and startups, plus several businesses of my own. In Growth, Engineered I share what I'm learning about building B2B growth with AI, paid media and the signals that predict revenue: the lesson, the numbers behind it, and the move I'd make now.
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As featured in
Hi, I'm Sophia
Advice from someone who still runs the campaigns.
I run growth hands-on, from the campaigns to the data that tells us which ones turned into revenue, so everything I share comes from a campaign, a dashboard or a sales conversation I was part of that month.
I didn't start in tech. I built several businesses first, including a wedding photography studio and a frozen yogurt shop, and sold the yogurt shop after it hit seven figures. Being a small business owner is still the biggest reason I think about growth the way I do. Until it's your money paying for the ads and your payroll to cover on Friday, you don't fully get what a lead is worth.
15+
Years in paid media and growth12M+
Users of the AutoCAD 360 mobile app I helped launch at Autodesk$1M+
In sales at the frozen yogurt shop I co-founded, before I sold it2
Books on Asian food and farmingWhere I've done the work
Growth, Engineered by Sophia Eng
Fifteen years of lessons, one at a time.
What I'm learning building B2B growth with AI, paid media and the signals that predict revenue. Each edition takes one lesson from 15+ years of running growth, or something I'm still figuring out about AI and go-to-market, and turns it into something you can use with your own pipeline.
Free on Substack. Edition one is out now. No sold email addresses, and you can unsubscribe in one click.
- 01The takeaways
Three to five points up top.
- 02The story and the research
One lesson, with the numbers behind it.
- 03One original chart
The idea, drawn so you can share it.
- 04My rules and a checklist
What I'd do, ready to use this week.
- 05Three news items
What changed, with my one-line take on each.
How I think
Growth is a systems problem.
A form fill isn't the finish line. The ad platform needs to learn which leads became pipeline, sales needs to know which accounts deserve a call today, and someone has to own the handoffs in between. Most of my week goes to those handoffs, and they are what I write about.
Paid acquisition
Google Ads and LinkedIn Ads, run in-house and judged by pipeline instead of cost per lead.
Signal engineering
Clean first-party data and offline conversions, so every ad platform learns from what sales closes instead of who fills out a form.
AI-native GTM
Enrichment, automation and AI tools where they save hours, with a person on every judgment call.
Self-serve growth
What we're getting ready for in the US, and how acquisition changes when the product does the selling.
Experimentation
One hypothesis per test, written down before launch and recorded win or lose.
GTM engineering
Enrichment, CRM and automation connected, so targeting, routing and follow-up run without anyone copying data between tools.
From the operator's seat
Recent notes and experiments
Work with me
Bring this to your stage, or your product.
Your audience leaves with something to change on Monday
Talks on AI-native go-to-market and connecting ad spend to revenue, built from work I'm doing this quarter. I've spoken at Google, GrowthHackers Conference and SaaStock, and taught growth at CXL alongside Sean Ellis.
Content your buyers will finish
Your buyers scroll past ads. They stop for someone they trust using your product on a real growth problem and telling them what happened. I make that kind of content with a short list of AI, GTM and ad-tech brands.
What people say
What it's like to work with me
"Sophia is one of the most driven and down to earth people I've met in growth."
"I was fortunate to meet Sophia, an incredibly intelligent and strategic growth marketer."
"Sophia recognized in rapid fashion where the marketing challenges were."
"Sophia … is very results-driven, but at the same time carries authenticity."
Artificial Intelligence × Ancestral Intelligence
The newest tools at work, the oldest habits at home.
On weekdays I'm feeding conversion data back to Google and testing what AI can take off a growth team's plate. On weekends my kids and I milk our cows and turn the milk into yogurt and butter, with kitchen skills they learned from their grandmother, on our farm in the foothills of the Appalachian Mountains. AI gives me speed. The land keeps asking me whether something will still be working in ten years, and I want both kinds of intelligence on any team I'm part of.
Growth is more than what I do. It's how I live.
Learn it in five minutes, not fifteen years.
One lesson in each edition from the campaigns, companies and businesses I've run, and from what I'm still learning. Free on Substack.