Joshua Oakes

Joshua Oakes spent years consulting with organizations on product marketing and customer acquisition challenges—repairing broken processes, connecting disjointed systems, removing roadblocks, building measurement strategies. But every engagement revealed the same underlying problem: Companies simply did not understand who their customers were, what they wanted, or how they felt. This pattern led to a profound conclusion that became the Who First Framework: Without documented, validated, actionable customer understanding, it doesn't matter what else you get right—systems, processes, hiring, unit economics, pricing. Companies that don't know their customers are living on borrowed time or borrowed money.

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Professional Background

The Pattern That Changed Everything

Joshua's career included head of client services at a Nashville consultancy, founding Measurable Advantage consultancy (2014-2017), and digital marketing analytics across multiple industries: SaaS, higher ed, healthcare, music licensing, non-profit, entertainment, telecom. He worked with companies at every stage—100-year-old organizations, enterprise firms, 2-person startups, pre-seed ventures.

Regardless of company size, industry, or maturity, the same problem appeared: The company did not understand who their customers were. At best, every executive and employee had their own uncommunicated assumptions. At worst, they thought demographics explained everything.

Traditional personas weren't helping. They were made-up, unvalidated assumptions that sat unused in folders. Teams couldn't apply them. They didn't reflect actual customer behavior or needs. And critically—they weren't validated against reality.

This realization became Joshua's life's work: creating frameworks for documented, validated, actionable, measurable customer understanding that organizations can actually use.

Who First Framework: Beyond Demographic Assumptions

The Who First Framework provides an alternative to traditional personas and ICPs (Ideal Customer Profiles):

Audience Profiles™ - Not personas based on demographics and assumptions, but validated profiles based on documented customer understanding:

• Documented - Written down, not in people's heads
• Validated - Tested against actual customer behavior
• Actionable - Teams can actually apply them to decisions
• Measurable - Connected to business outcomes

This isn't customer research for the sake of research. It's strategic understanding that drives every business function from product development through customer success.

The Who First principle: If you don't have a strategic, disciplined understanding of your customers that you can apply from signal recognition through partnership advocacy, then no level of process, tools, or talent will bring sustainable growth.

FranDev Lab: HubSpot for Franchise Growth

In November 2024, Joshua launched FranDev Lab—specialized HubSpot consulting for franchisors using the platform for franchise sales and development. The positioning is clear: "Turn HubSpot from a source of stress to a source of truth for Franchisors."

Franchising presents unique challenges:

• Non-transactional, high-friction acquisition process
• Multiple stakeholders (franchisee candidates, franchisors, existing franchisees)
• Long sales cycles with complex evaluation
• Need for both sales tracking and relationship management

FranDev Lab provides:

• Franchisor-specific HubSpot configuration and setup
• Custom object strategies for assessments and diagnostics
• Deal tracking optimized for franchise development stages
• Reporting that shows what's actually working
• Training and enablement for franchise development teams

The FranDev Lab Report newsletter delivers twice-monthly guidance for franchisors, with paid tier offering deep-dive playbooks, templates, frameworks, and executive-level strategic content.

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