Revenue Diaries Entry 41

Happy Sunday! This week’s newsletter is a mix of parenting humility, creative problem solving, and a little bit of B2B marketing heresy. 

First, a quick diary note: Last week, I promised to share the next steps in our Core Narrative work. I didn’t get to it. My bad. I’ll have it for you next weekend, along with a list of my favorite AI tools recommended by peers. Worth the wait. 

Now, here’s what's below so you don’t have to scroll aimlessly: 

On When My Kids Didn’t Need My Bullshit: A first-day-of-school morning where my stress collided with my kids’ nerves. I blew it. They didn’t need my frustration on top of everything else, and I had to own that.

On The Three-Note Lesson in Creative Problem Solving: Our Creative Director, Manny Gonzalez, solved a tricky brand challenge (how to pronounce Docebo) with a bass guitar, a jingle, and some improvisation. The best ideas aren’t always the biggest productions.

On The Death of the B2B Website. Thanks For Nothing, AI: Websites as we know them are on their way out. In a world where AI will handle early-stage discovery, your site becomes less about “what you do” and more about how it feels to work with you.

Let’s get into it.

♥️ kyle

On When My Kids Didn’t Need My Bullsh*t

I pushed the front door open, and the noise hit immediately. A cereal spoon hitting the bottom of an empty bowl and the smack of a hand hitting something soft (the skin of my nine-year-old). A quick burst of laughter that turned into yelling before I’d even set my bag down. 

Damn it.

I’d been up for several hours, in the office, trying to get ahead before the day started. But the list was long, and I was annoyed. I walked out of the office on a beautiful Monday morning, pissed. 

Heading home, brewing the anger slowly, I knew I needed to check myself before going into the house. But like most things, it was a fleeting thought. And then I stepped through the front door into a different kind of chaos. 

I know I will miss the chaos a decade from now, but it's been super annoying to me this past week. 

Shoes in the middle of the floor. Backpacks half open… two gaping black holes waiting for books, lunches, and paper. Two kids in various stages of “readiness” and both pissed at each other. 

It was the first day of school for the kids, and board meeting week for me. They were amped, but not in the fun way. Not listening. Talking back. 

My poor wife just wanted a fun morning. 

I could feel the cloud hit me before I even said a word. 

Somewhere, deep in the recesses of my “kind self” I knew this was about nerves. They were starting a new grade, new classrooms, new teachers, new students… New everything. 

But the asshole part of my brain, the one still stuck on my board deck and long list of to-dos, wanted control. And when I didn’t get it, I overreacted. 

Like it was their job to hold my frustration and respond like functioning adults, which they are not. 

I watched them ride away on their bikes, backpacks so low they almost touched the back tires. And I instantly wished for a do-over. Give me another chance to fix this! But because we are constricted by this thing called “time,” I couldn’t go back. I needed to make it right. 

Later that night, I sat them down and explained why I reacted as I did, and apologized. It was a learning moment for all three of us. 

And I also apologized to my wife for ruining a morning that should have been fun and upbeat. 

Parenting isn’t about perfection; it’s about the conversations. The times you come back, own it, and try to show up differently the next time you are pissed off. 

That morning, my kids had enough to carry. They didn’t need my bullshit too. 

On The Three-Note Lesson in Creative Problem Solving

A few weeks ago, our Creative Director, Manny Gonzalez, wrote a LinkedIn post about something he definitely didn’t have on his 2025 bingo card: writing a jingle.

Okay. Okay. I’ll give you the backstory. :) 

As an avid reader of this newsletter, you know I work for Docebo (so does Manny). It’s a unique name coming from Latin, meaning “I will teach.” Which is cool… except it’s damn hard to say. 

So, how do you teach people to say Docebo? 

• You could do a phonetic guide.

• You could have your sales team repeat it a hundred times.

• You could even record a corporate-sounding voiceover and put it on the website.

Manny tackled it head-on and picked up his bass guitar. C’mon, a Creative Director with a bass guitar. Super cool. 

Docebo has three syllables. That meant three notes. He started noodling. A few minutes later, he had something.

You are going to need to head to the LinkedIn post to listen to the jingle and the video Manny made. It’s brilliant. But the  real test came when he heard his six-year-old in the other room quietly singing:

“Doh-chay-bo.”

Boom. Done.If a six-year-old gets it, you’ve solved the problem.

Manny’s post ended with this: “If you start with the problem you’re trying to solve, everything else comes down to rolling up your sleeves and being willing to improvise.”

It’s true. Creative work isn’t always about big budgets and perfect plans. Sometimes it’s a voice memo app, a bass guitar, and a creative ear. 

And in a world where marketing overcomplicates everything, maybe the best choice is this: If you can make a kid hum it, you’ve probably nailed it.

Eat up B2C! 

On The Death of the B2B Website. Thanks For Nothing, AI

If you follow my writing and social posts, you know I’m not a huge fan of B2B marketing. I believe most of us are still stuck in 2015, and not just strategy, website design… 

You know what I’m talking about: a homepage with the hero message, a product menu, some gated assets, and a big shiny, tested a thousand times “Book a Demo” button. 

Boring.

Here’s the problem. AI is significantly shifting the way websites will function over the next couple of years. Will we even have websites? OH MY GOD. No website? 

AI-powered search and conversational agents (among many other things) are already changing how buyers find, research, and interact with brands. If you’re in marketing, you need to start thinking NOW about what your website will be when it’s no longer the FIRST or even SECOND touch in the buyer’s journey. 

Good thing you are reading this because I’m thinking the same thing. What do we do now? Let’s look at the ideas around an invisible UI from our friends in B2C marketing (the cool kids). 

Invisible UI: Lessons From Consumer Tech

An article by Dane Bowen has been circulating the marketing team at Docebo, and was the push to write this article. His concept of the invisible user interface is simple but powerful: 

The best interfaces don’t announce themselves. They appear when you need them and disappear when you don’t.

In B2C, it’s super obvious. You swipe gestures on mobile, menus hide on the school, there are tap and hold options. Super clean. In B2B, it’s a hella trickier. Your audience might be slower to adopt new patterns, more skeptical of any “cool” hidden functionality, and more reliant on visible cues. 

The lesson here isn’t to hide your navigation or replace CTAs with mysterious gestures. First of all, I wouldn’t even know where to begin. 

“WAVE YOUR HAND IN FRONT OF YOUR SCREEN FOR A DEMO. ERROR. ERROR” 

It’s more about designing for intent and context: 

• Minimize clutter when the user is consuming content.

• Surface CTAs when they’re most relevant, not just because you can.

• Test subtle, intuitive enhancements (like scroll-triggered menus) without breaking established habits.

Invisible UI in B2B should be an evolution. It shouldn’t SHOCK the system, god forbid. 

Let’s just get rid of websites, then. C’mon. Why Not? 

There’s a hot take floating around that AI search will kill the corporate website. It’s not wrong. Let’s be honest, AI is going to handle a huge portion of early-stage discovery and fact-gathering. But that doesn’t mean your website is going to disappear. It just stops being the primary information source for buyers (sorry Mr. Website). 

In the next five years, here’s what I believe will change: 

• AI will answer “what you do” directly in the search interface.

• Conversion points may live outside your domain, with AI booking demos or generating RFPs on your behalf.

• Your site will act more like a brand hub (thank the LORD jesus), a place to feel the company and experience the product.

In other words, facts will be commoditized. Story and experience will be the differentiator.

So what do we do? I’m glad you asked. 

I believe you should structure a website redesign and strategy across three layers: Machine-Facing, Human-Facing, and Conversational. 

1. AI-Ready Content Layer (Machine-Facing): Feed the hungry AI bots with clean, accurate, structured data so it represents you correctly:

• Schema-marked product details

• Plain-language use cases

• Short, fact-first customer proof points

• High-signal FAQ knowledge base

• Centralized press and analyst validation

2. Brand Experience Layer (Human-Facing): You don’t need a massive site. Slim it down. Focus your sitemap on depth over breadth. And don’t give me the, “but we are Enterprise software” excuse. 

• Narrative-driven homepage

• Multimedia customer stories

• Vision and category point-of-view

• Interactive, ungated product tours

• Careers and culture showcase

3. Conversational Conversion Layer: Let’s talk to something or someone instead of a static lead form. You want an intelligent, embedded AI assistant. 

• Always-on AI chat to answer questions, compare competitors, and book demos in-line

• Conversational pricing and feature requests

• Dynamic CTAs that surface only when visitor intent is high

Get these three layers working together, and your site stops being a static brochure. It becomes an active system, one that feeds the hungry AI, pulls buyers into your story, and helps convert them. From here, it’s about knowing where to start and how to roll it out without losing your audience along the way.

Okay, Kyle. Where do I start

If your buyers are slower to adopt new interaction patterns, you don’t rip out your navigation and replace it with gestures overnight. You start small:

• Maintain familiar entry points while layering in subtle invisible UI to reduce clutter.

• Test in high-intent areas (like product pages) before rolling out sitewide.

• Pair every “invisible” interaction with a visible cue so no one feels lost.

• Measure relentlessly — let behavior data guide the pace of change.

Why bother? Because the buyers who land on your site in the future will have already “met” your brand through an AI agent. They’ll arrive informed but unconvinced. Your job won’t be to explain what you do (our AI friends have that covered) Your job will be:

• Reinforce the narrative AI told them

• Prove you’re credible and differentiated

• Make it effortless to take the next step, whether that’s self-serve or sales-led

The B2B website isn’t dying. It’s evolving from a boring brochure into something different, something alive. A conversion-optimized storytelling machine, built for both machines and humans: facts & feelings. The marketing leaders who start building for that reality now will own the advantage when the rest of the market catches up.