Work

Two companies. One operator. Here's what got built.

Everything on this page I built or ran myself, at a D2C cooler brand that went on Shark Tank and a B2B benefits company I took from under $100K to $20M in ARR. It's sorted by what you'd hire me for, not by where I worked.

Drafting room, halftone collage Fig. 12 · The work Scale 1:1 276 / mo $0 → $2M

Three pieces that explain the practice.

Start here
Pipeline waterfall spreadsheet, 2025 financial plan
2025 financial plan · pipeline waterfall
REVOPS Vitable Health 2020–2026Confirm

276 qualified meetings a month, from an outbound program built from scratch

RoleDesigned, built and ran it. First marketing hire. SituationVitable had a primary-care product, under $100K in ARR, and no outbound program. BuiltThe outbound program that became the company's primary revenue channel, and the infrastructure under it: CRM, attribution, lifecycle automation, reporting, and the first pipeline waterfall model. I narrowed the ICP to franchised home care agencies approaching 50 employees, then standardised sequencing and routing so 15 SDRs and 9 AEs could run it without me.
41% of 2025 pipeline and $1.46M in new ARR, from work I owned directly. ACV held at $20K; sales cycle at 30 days.
Benefits administration page with embedded demo
vitablehealth.com/benefits-administration
WEB DEVELOPMENT Vitable Health

The demo that shows the product before a sales call does

RoleConcept, copy, build. Marketing site and the demo page. SituationBenefits administration is hard to explain and easy to show, and every prospect asked to see it before they'd book. BuiltA product page with an embedded interactive demo of the employer dashboard (deductions, enrollment, setup checklist), gated behind a short form so every walkthrough became a lead. Alongside it, four gated calculators that put a dollar figure on the prospect's own problem.
4 + 1 Four calculators and one demo, all still live and still capturing leads.
Bud Light custom cooler, product photo
Custom Kase Mate for Bud Light
CONTENT Kanga Coolers 2017–2020

$500K of custom coolers sold to Bud Light, High Noon and Natty Light

RoleDevised and ran the program, with the founding team. SituationKanga was a consumer product with a $30 price point and no B2B channel. BuiltAn account-based program aimed at a shortlist of national beverage brands: micro-targeted creative made for each brand, one at a time, and the outreach that put it in front of the right buyer.
$500K+ in direct sales from a channel the company didn't have before.

Sorted by what you'd hire me for.

Everything else
Web development3 pieces
ACA Penalty Calculator page
ACA penalty calculator
WEB DEVELOPMENT Vitable Health

Four calculators that price the prospect's own problem

RoleConcept, copy, logic, build. BuiltAn ACA penalty estimator, a turnover-cost calculator, a presenteeism calculator, and a benefits-admin time-savings calculator, each gated so the result unlocks with a form. ResultFour live lead magnets, all still capturing leads.
Vitable homepage hero after the rebrand
vitablehealth.com, after the redesign
WEB DEVELOPMENTCONTENT Vitable Health

A brand redesign and a website to carry it

RoleOwned the redesign; wrote and built the site. BuiltNew identity, new positioning, and the marketing site that every calculator, demo and campaign now sits on. ResultThe site is still the one at vitablehealth.com.
Bud Light Kase Mate on the beach
Custom Kase Mate for Bud Light
WEB DEVELOPMENT Kanga Coolers

A Shopify store built to turn ads into orders

RoleE-commerce management, landing pages, email capture. BuiltThe store, campaign-specific landing pages, and the email capture that fed retargeting: the back half of a $2K-a-day acquisition program. Result4:1 ROAS across paid social, search and email.
Content9 pieces
0:40 · Vertical · Paid socialConfirm
CONTENT Vitable Health

“Poaching season never ends.” An ad for home care owners

RoleConcept, script, direction, edit.Confirm BuiltA nature-documentary parody: a rival agency owner stalks your best caregiver in the parking lot. Payoff line: be the agency with benefits. ResultA paid-social ad written for one ICP, in that ICP's own joke.
0:30 · 16:9 · Ad conceptConfirm
CONTENT Vitable Health

“Benefits got you burnt out?” A 30-second spot

RoleConcept, script, edit.Confirm BuiltA cinematic 30 seconds on the benefits administrator buried in sticky notes, ending on the Vitable card. ResultBroadcast-grade creative on a startup budget.Confirm
Animation · Sales enablement · 2 videos
CONTENT Vitable Health

Two explainer animations, made start to finish by one person

RoleEverything: script, storyboard, animation, edit, voiceover. Built“Better Health”, the brand promo, and “Benefit Overview”, the product walkthrough. ResultTwo videos, zero agency invoices.
App walkthrough · 16:9 · Sales enablement
CONTENT Vitable Health

Every sales enablement asset the team carried

RoleWrote and designed all of it. BuiltSales decks, one-pagers, battlecards, the app walkthrough video (embedded here), and the webinar deck: the library nine AEs sold from. ResultOne library, kept current, owned by one person.
Kanga Coolers truck
The Kanga truck
CONTENT Kanga Coolers

Creative for 1M+ followers and $2K a day in ads

RoleCreative direction and production, with the founding team. BuiltThe organic program across Instagram, TikTok and Spotify, and a monthly YouTube series, “The Fun Factory”, that the 15- to 60-second ads were cut from. Result1M+ organic followers; 4:1 ROAS on the paid side.
Brand film · 16:9Confirm
CONTENT Kanga Coolers

The Kanga brand video, shot and cut in-house

RoleShot, edited, graphics. BuiltThe brand film made for the store and the feed. ResultThe creative that ran the store's ads and product pages.
Vertical · Product launchConfirm
CONTENT Kanga Coolers

A product launch in a vertical video: the Clemson design

RoleConcept, shoot, edit.Confirm BuiltLaunch video for a Clemson-themed Kanga design, made for the feed the customers were already on. ResultThe launch creative for one design, start to finish.Confirm
YouTube · Brand film · Starts at 3:15
CONTENT Kanga Coolers

“No Way.” The Shark Tank story, told by the company that lived it

RoleVoiceover script, edit, graphics. BuiltKanga's own recap of the Shark Tank experience, published for the audience that watched the episode. ResultThe video the company points to when someone asks “wait, you were on Shark Tank?”
Documentary · Long-form · Starts at 0:51
CONTENT Kanga Coolers

“Beyond the Breaking Point.” A documentary edit

RoleGraphics, editing, voiceover script. BuiltA documentary on Brent “Red Dog” Symes, produced during the Kanga years.Confirm ResultA finished film, in Ultra HD, on YouTube.
AI services2 pieces
Quote builder screenshot
AI SERVICES Self Help Co

This site, and the tools behind it, were built AI-led by one person

RoleDesigned and built the whole practice on Claude, Clay, Instantly and n8n. BuiltThe Self Help Co site, the pricing and quote builder that turns a scoping call into a signed SOW, the diagnostic calculator, and the image system every visual on this site comes from. ResultA department's output from one seat. The roadmap tags on Engagements are the same system I'll build for you.
Automation map
AI SERVICESREVOPS Vitable Health

Lifecycle automation that raised attendance from 58% to 65%

RoleDesigned the process, built the automation. BuiltRedesigned the process between a booked meeting and a held one, then automated it so fewer booked meetings died on the calendar.Confirm ResultAttendance from 58% to 65%. Opportunity creation up 5%.
RevOps3 pieces
ICP / segment chart
REVOPS Vitable Health

One ICP decision that held ACV at $20K and the cycle at 30 days

RoleMade the call; rebuilt targeting, sequencing and routing around it. BuiltNarrowed Vitable's ICP to franchised home care agencies approaching 50 employees, then rebuilt the outbound program to match. Result$20K ACV and a 30-day sales cycle, sustained.
Pipeline waterfall spreadsheet
Pipeline waterfall model
REVOPS Vitable Health

The company's first pipeline waterfall model

RoleBuilt it; owned reporting. BuiltCRM, attribution, lifecycle automation and reporting from nothing, and a waterfall model the leadership team planned against. ResultA single source of truth for pipeline from 2021 on.Confirm
Product roadmap / plan diagram
REVOPSCONTENT Vitable Health

The case that turned a primary-care product into a benefits platform

RoleWrote the case; positioning that followed. BuiltMade the argument, from the funnel, that Vitable needed MEC and ICHRA plans to sell as an end-to-end platform, and then repositioned the company once it did. ResultTwo product lines that are now the front of vitablehealth.com.

Design I do when nobody's paying for it.

Off the clock

A poster series for artists I listen to, and logos drawn for friends and one-off clients. Not the day job; it's here because design is part of how I think, and you should see it before you hire me for it. Confirm section

Smokepurpp poster
Smokepurpp
Smokepurpp, posterConfirm
Desiigner Timmy Turner poster
Desiigner
Desiigner, Timmy Turner poster
A$AP Rocky poster
A$AP Rocky
A$AP Rocky poster, Kodak Portra treatment
One-off marksLogos drawn for friends and small clients
Rooster with tennis racquet, oval crest, 09.12.2026
Event mark, rooster & racquet, 2026Confirm
DBJ crest with two pigs on a spit
DBJ pig-roast crestConfirm
Cowgirl riding a shrimp, Self-Indulgence
Self-Indulgence, shrimp rodeoConfirm
Net Zero fish logo
Net Zero logoConfirm
Letter B built from a guitar
B, guitar monogramConfirm
30 minutes · No commitment

Want one of these built for you?

Every piece on this page is on the Engagements menu at a fixed scope and a fixed price. Thirty minutes on which one your funnel actually needs.

No deck, no pitch.

Surveyor's collage: a claim staked on a floating mesa, cowboy and orange sun, section 24 platted
Self Help Co

Let me Kyle Self help you find a repeatable path to product market fit.

Most early stage companies waste entirely too much time, money, and effort finding, getting in front of, and selling to their ICP. Our specialty is figuring this out as quickly and affordably as possible, help set it up for scale, and hand over the reigns.

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The average {{ stageLabel }} company 
spends upwards of {{ stageAmount }} 
preparing their GTM foundation.

Engraved surveyor's compass, its degree ring marked to 154.8°
43%

of failed startups blame product–market fit. The median one raised $11M first.

Source ↗
CB Insights · 431 post-mortems
Pressure gauge with 70% of its 0–200 PSI scale filled
70%

of startups scale before they’re ready. 93% of them never pass $100K a month.

Source ↗
Startup Genome · 3,200+ startups
Surveyor's chain laid in rows, the first 12% marked
12%

of experiments produce a real win. The median company runs 34 a year.

Source ↗
Optimizely · 127,000 experiments
Open pocket watch, 17% of the dial marked against the historical arc
17%

of seed companies reach Series A within 24 months. It used to be 25–30%.

Source ↗
Carta · 3,365 US startups

If one of these is yours, the first step is the same in every case: find out which part of the funnel is actually broken before spending on any of it.

How it works

Roadmap in hand inside 30 days
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Same order, every time

Everyone starts with the audit. What changes afterward is how much gets built and how close I sit to the team: à la carte, Build, Scale or Embedded. How engagements work →

What I build, at fixed scope.

One operator, a department’s output, because research, drafting, design, build and enrichment all run on AI systems I’ve built. Every item has a definition of done, ships with a handoff pack, and lands in your own accounts.

Freight depot, lot 84, manifest
FIG. 02 · MANIFEST · LOT 84

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Reach for this when
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Deliverables {{ cat.count }}
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Not offered

Paid media buying, SDR management, and domain or deliverability management. Systems yes, people no. I build what the SDR works, I don't manage the SDR. I'll introduce you to a specialist for any of them.

Archival crew photograph: the team this replaces
FIG. 03 · THE OLD CREW
Roadmap tagged by leverage

Human / AI-assisted / automated, on every line.

Fixed-scope deliverables

Defined project, defined outcome, defined price.

Systems that hand off

Everything I build runs in your accounts after I'm gone.

Proof

Two go-to-market functions built from nothing, the deliverables they were built out of, and what the founders said afterward.

Case studies · example deliverables
Vitable Health
$100K→$20M
ARR while I ran marketing
Six years as the first marketing hire, seed through Series A. Positioning, site, CRM and outbound built from nothing.
Vitable Health
276
qualified meetings a month
Booked through cold email outreach, paid channels and SEO/AEO content, feeding 15 SDRs and 9 AEs.
Vitable Health
41%
of pipeline from owned work 
$1.46M in new ARR from channels I ran directly, on an ICP narrowed to home care agencies near 50 employees.
Kanga Coolers
$0→$2M+
revenue, bootstrapped
Paid social, search and email running $2K a day at 4:1 ROAS, plus the pitch that closed Mark Cuban on Shark Tank.
Kanga Coolers
$500K+
B2B sales from ABM
Custom coolers sold to Bud Light, High Noon and Natty Light with micro-targeted creative, one brand at a time.

Example deliverables

Everything I’ve built → Work

Who this is for

I work with a narrow band of company on purpose: the shape where one operator plus systems genuinely replaces a function. Here is the spec, plainly.

Stage · motion · shape
Stage 01
Seed to Series A Typically $1M–$6M raised, 12–30 months of runway. Post-seed and pre-Series-A is the sweet spot.
Bootstrapped, past $1M ARR Same shape without the raise: profitable, growing, no marketing function yet.
Too early: pre-product, pre-revenue Nothing to diagnose yet. Come back once something is selling.
Motion 02
Founder-led sales, hitting the ceiling A repeatable customer exists and one person is the entire funnel.
Mid-market and enterprise B2B Deal sizes $10K–$250K, cycles of one to six months, three to twelve stakeholders.
Product-led with a sales assist Self-serve signups that need positioning, sequences and a CRM behind them.
Shape 03
1–40 people, no CMO Often a generalist marketer or an agency you inherited; no one owns the system.
One accountable owner A founder or a revenue lead who can make decisions in a 45-minute call.
Ready to own what gets built Every account, asset and automation lands in your name, not mine.

Start with a conversation.

Thirty minutes on where your go-to-market stands. If a diagnostic makes sense, it starts there. If it doesn't, I'll tell you what I'd do instead.

Book a call

No deck, no pitch.

Every engagement opens the same way.

Two weeks of diagnosis, a ranked roadmap, a decision in week three, then a fixed allowance of work sized to what the audit finds. One operator, systems that hand off, and you own everything from day one.

How an engagement works

Four phases · every engagement · same order
Surveyor at work: reconnaissance and 90-day traverse
FIG. 01 · RECONNAISSANCE
1 Weeks 1–2 · decision week 3

Audit: the Funnel & Stack Audit

A fixed-scope diagnosis with no ongoing commitment. Half a week of discovery (intake pack, kickoff, stakeholder interviews), then a week of research, then the deliverable. It's the opening of every engagement, and for some companies it's the whole engagement.

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You get One polished audit document and a strategy call in week three. Yours to run, with or without me.
Book the audit call
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Four ways to continue

After the audit, the roadmap is yours. Pick work off the menu as you need it, or take an ongoing engagement that bundles a fixed allowance of work with a standing cadence. What changes is how much gets built and how close I sit to the team.

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Experiments

Where the audit supports it, I'll steer you toward an Experiment over a stack of deliverables: a written hypothesis, the list, sequence, page and automation to test it, four to six weeks live, and a read-out that ends in an explicit kill, iterate or scale call. It produces a result, not three assets.

Four things founders say

If one of these is your sentence, the shape of the engagement is already known. The audit confirms it.

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What gets built
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Not sure which fits?

Everyone starts with the same two weeks. In week three you'll have a ranked roadmap, and we'll both know whether à la carte, Build, Scale or Embedded is the right next step.

Book a call

No deck, no pitch.
About

The operator behind the practice.

I'm Kyle Self. I've built the go-to-market function twice, from the first dollar, in two businesses that had nothing in common: a cooler brand that went on Shark Tank and a benefits company selling to home care agencies. Self Help Co is that job, done for one company at a time.

Kyle Self in conversation, cowboy hat and bolo tie
Kyle Self · Philadelphia, PA
Vitable Health
$100K→$20M
ARR while I ran marketing
Six years as the first marketing hire, seed through Series A. Positioning, site, CRM and outbound built from nothing.
Vitable Health
276
qualified meetings a month
Booked through cold email outreach, paid channels and SEO/AEO content, feeding 15 SDRs and 9 AEs.
Vitable Health
41%
of pipeline from owned work 
$1.46M in new ARR from channels I ran directly, on an ICP narrowed to home care agencies near 50 employees.
Kanga Coolers
$0→$2M+
revenue, bootstrapped
Paid social, search and email running $2K a day at 4:1 ROAS, plus the pitch that closed Mark Cuban on Shark Tank.
Kanga Coolers
$500K+
B2B Sales from ABM
Custom coolers sold to Bud Light, High Noon and Natty Light with micro-targeted creative, one brand at a time.

I've done this twice. The second time was nothing like the first.

Two companies, two playbooks
2017–2020 · Greenville, SC · Co-founder, Head of Marketing

Kanga Coolers

Five of us started Kanga in a Clemson entrepreneurship class. The product was a koozie for an entire case of beer; the first 150 sold locally in three weeks.

I ran marketing from the first sale to $2M+ in annual revenue, bootstrapped, and drafted the pitch that got us a deal with Mark Cuban on Shark Tank.

Consumer D2C is a paid-media and content game, so that's what I built: a prospecting and retargeting program running $2K a day at 4:1 ROAS across paid social, search and email, and an organic audience of over a million followers.

What I built
The ABM program that sold $500K+ of custom coolers to Bud Light, High Noon and Natty Light, with micro-targeted creative, one brand at a time
Positioning, ICP, the tech stack, the Shopify store, creative production and the analytics behind all of it
A monthly YouTube series, "The Fun Factory", that the 15- to 60-second ads were cut from
2020–2026 · Philadelphia, PA · First Marketing Hire, Founding Team

Vitable Health

I joined Vitable as its first marketing hire, before it had $100K in ARR, and stayed through $20M. B2B benefits is an outbound and enablement game, so that's what I built.

The outbound program became the company's primary revenue channel: 276 qualified meetings a month, feeding 15 SDRs and 9 AEs, on an ICP I narrowed to franchised home care agencies approaching 50 employees. That focus is what held ACV at $20K and the sales cycle at 30 days.

In 2025 the work I owned directly produced 41% of pipeline and $1.46M in new ARR.

What I built
The revenue infrastructure: CRM, attribution, lifecycle automation, reporting, and the company's first pipeline waterfall model
The brand redesign, the website, and every sales enablement asset: decks, one-pagers, battlecards, four gated calculators, an interactive product demo
The case for MEC and ICHRA plans, which turned a primary-care product into an end-to-end benefits platform

Same person, opposite playbooks. That range is the practice: one operator who can decide what the go-to-market should be, then build it. Not a strategist who hands off a deck, and not a production shop waiting on a brief.

On the record.

Don't take my word for it
Kyle on site in the early Kanga Coolers days
Kanga Coolers · Greenville, SC
01 · Shark Tank

Pitched Kanga to the Sharks. Left with a deal from Mark Cuban.

Kyle Self, Shopify Masters
Shopify Masters
02 · Shopify Masters

Interviewed on building a D2C brand from a college apartment: surveys, long-form content, and the ads cut from it.

Kyle Self
Kyle Self · Philadelphia, PA
03 · LinkedIn

The long version, and the people who'll vouch for it.

Three things I believe about go-to-market.

Point of view
01

The function is collapsing into one seat.

What took a department five years ago (positioning, content, web, ops, outbound) is now owned by one person or a very small team, with AI carrying the production load. Self Help Co is built for that shape. It's why a single operator can hand you a landing page, a sales kit, or an enriched prospect list in days rather than sprints.

02

Get the top of the funnel right first.

Positioning is the highest-leverage decision you'll make. At Vitable, narrowing the ICP to one segment did more for ACV and cycle time than any campaign I ran. Everything downstream, from channels to content to sales process, should react to what's working at the top, not be planned ahead of it.

03

Systems, not headcount.

Every deliverable I ship is built to run without me: a documented pipeline, a CRM you own, a list that refreshes itself. If the work needs a person managing it every day, it isn't on my menu, and I'll tell you who to hire.

Human AI-assisted Automated
Every line of every roadmap I write carries one of these.
30 minutes · No commitment

Start with a conversation.

Thirty minutes on where your go-to-market stands, and whether a diagnostic is the right next step. If I'm not the right person, I'll say so on the call.

Book a call

No deck, no pitch.
Work

Two companies. One operator. Here's what got built.

Everything on this page I built or ran myself, at a D2C cooler brand that went on Shark Tank and a B2B benefits company I took from under $100K to $20M in ARR. It's sorted by what you'd hire me for, not by where I worked.

Drafting room, halftone collage Fig. 12 · The work Scale 1:1 276 / mo $0 → $2M

Three pieces that explain the practice.

Start here
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Sorted by what you'd hire me for.

Everything else

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Design I do when nobody's paying for it.

Off the clock

A poster series for artists I listen to, and logos drawn for friends and one-off clients. Not the day job; it's here because design is part of how I think, and you should see it before you hire me for it. Confirm section

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One-off marksLogos drawn for friends and small clients
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30 minutes · No commitment

Want one of these built for you?

Every piece on this page is on the Engagements menu at a fixed scope and a fixed price. Thirty minutes on which one your funnel actually needs.

No deck, no pitch.
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