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https://www.connectd.com/stories/grant-keller
Grant gave Connectd 5 stars. Check out the full review...
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Grant Keller spent 30 years helping marketing teams harness data and technology to build capability and drive performance — first in an entrepreneurial environment, then in the corporate world. After three decades as an executive, he was ready for something different: more flexibility, more variety, and the freedom to work across multiple ventures rather than being locked into one. The Connectd T2P programme gave him the framework to make that transition, helping him define his value proposition, unlearn 30 years of executive muscle memory, and build a portfolio advisory career focused on startups and scale-ups in marketing, data, and AI. Within 18 months, he had converted two paid engagements through the Connectd platform — with a third in the pipeline.
Snippit Media
Fractional
"The founder is 100% operational, spending 10 hours a day looking after their existing client base — it's very hard to lift your head out and see the wood for the trees. As an outsider, it's often easier to see the real problem they're solving and articulate it clearly. That's where I can add real value."
Grant Keller, Board Advisor, Qmunity.xyz & Snippit Media: I spent about 15 years in what was a very entrepreneurial environment — building something out of nothing, starting a business, scaling a business. Then I spent the second half of my career in a very corporate environment. Both were interesting in their own ways, but on reflection, I very much enjoyed the entrepreneurial world more. It's what got me excited — being able to build something without the confines, the bureaucracy, and the long timelines to get approvals that come with a corporate environment.
After a 30-year career, I did want a little more flexibility to focus on other things in my life. Advisory felt like a really natural option. It allowed me to step out of the day-to-day while still doing meaningful work, and to focus on other projects and interest areas. Working with Connectd has really helped me bring that to life and manifest it.
If you're building something of your own, you're 100% focused on it most days of the week — and it is one thing. But advisory work, working with three or four different companies in a similar area, brings a bit of variety, which is also really nice. You go a little broader across each venture. You don't have to go as deep, but you contribute value where you can across a couple of opportunities.
Grant Keller: It was a journey. I've probably been doing it for 18 months now, and the pro bono placements were very useful for me. I did two of them shortly after my training. There's a lot of muscle memory that you build after 30 years as an executive — whether in a scale-up or a corporate environment — and I think there's a lot of muscle memory you need to unpick. You're very used to making decisions, seeing them executed, and making sure they're happening the way you want them to. Advisory is very different. The realisation hits that it's somebody else's business. You're there to advise, to help them avoid the pitfalls and all the traps that you've probably fallen into yourself before.
It's a very different role, and the pro bono placements were great for that. They helped you unpick that muscle memory and bring new value — less operational, more strategic. At the end of the day, it's advice that you're providing.
Going through that process was a bit of a transition for me. I spent a lot of time on the Connectd portal, and what really worked was looking for opportunities that I found genuinely interesting — businesses where I felt I could really add value. I understood the market, the clients, the competition, the challenges they'd face, and the mistakes they could potentially make. That for me was the key: going deep on a handful of opportunities rather than going broad and generic across many.
My first outreach was typically through the portal — a very top-line note on my interest in the business, why I thought I could add value, and an advisor résumé. From there, I'd look to set up a face-to-face meeting. For those meetings, the key is to be thorough, be researched, and take it very seriously. That strategy — going deep on a few opportunities — is what really worked. Within the Connectd network, I've converted two opportunities to paid engagements, which I'm currently working on, and I have another one in the pipeline that I'm in conversations with the founder about.
Grant Keller: This is something that came out clearly in the Connectd training, and it was really helpful in terms of understanding the value you bring and how to articulate it. Everyone who goes through the T2P programme has probably been an executive for many years and has very broad experience — they could talk about many different things. But I think you really do need to go quite deep and focus on the things that genuinely interest you and the specific vertical where you can add the most value.
For me, it was really about growth — go-to-market strategy, understanding how to position and message in the marketplace, and how to take that message to market through the right channels. That became my USP, and it seems to have worked well. Going very deep in a specific vertical is what made the difference.
I think it's less a case of standing out and more a case of fit — finding the right opportunities where the USP you bring is a match, and where you understand the markets, the challenges, and the clients they're going to be going after. That's really what makes the difference.