The firm exists because of gaps Haney says he watched widen for years: sales teams and marketing teams pulling in different directions, and AI staying a keynote topic instead of becoming part of the daily work. His answer is to stay hands-on by defining the plan, then building it alongside the client\u2019s team, right down to the copy, code and AI workflows.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The keys for me aren\u2019t flashy. Do really good work, and take on the right work. Everything else follows from that.<\/p>\u2014 Jim Haney<\/cite><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\nIn this edition of Getting to Know You, we spoke with Haney about his path through the industry, the ways he engages, from a fractional CMTO seat to team trainings and project work, and the thread he says ties it all together\u2014finding the signal that actually moves the P&L.<\/p>\n\n\n\nENX:<\/span><\/strong> You\u2019ve held positions with companies ranging from OEMs to dealerships. Talk a little about how those experiences shaped you.<\/p>\n\n\n\nHANEY:<\/span><\/strong> The place to start is ESI. We had two sales divisions, a print technology group and an IT group. Two offerings, two sales teams, one company. On the IT side alone, we had a long list of partners, and every one of them wanted time with our reps. They had campaigns they believed in and real MDF dollars they wanted to invest with us. Good problems, all of them, but stack it all up and it\u2019s a wall of noise coming at one sales organization. My job became a question I\u2019ve been answering ever since: out of everything we could do, what is the handful of things that will actually move this business? I worked with Anthony Lane, our president, and our sales leaders to answer that over and over, and to keep two divisions reinforcing each other instead of competing for attention. I\u2019m proud of my time at ESI. Those were special years.<\/p>\n\n\n\nThat work carried me upward. What we were doing at ESI was what Xerox wanted to do globally for IT services, so the dealer seat earned me the global one. At that level you learn scale: regions, budgets, more people and more decisions in every room. I ran programs across the U.S., Canada, and Europe, and I got to work with some genuinely talented agencies along the way, even if I never stopped itching to just build things myself.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
And it all started in my Lanier\/Ricoh years, my ground floor: field marketing, promotions, brochures and riding along on sales calls. I\u2019ve built campaigns from the passenger seat of a rep\u2019s car and from a global budget line, and the lesson is the same in every room: find the people building toward the same goal, and keep ego out of the work.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
ENX: <\/span><\/strong>Whose advice did you lean on during your formative years in the industry?<\/p>\n\n\n\nHANEY: <\/span><\/strong>Dan Cooper, without question. I\u2019ve worked with and for Dan for about 15 years, and the discipline in how I work comes straight from him. He taught me to ask the second- and third-layer questions behind every good idea, not to kill it, but to find the edge cases that decide whether it succeeds. And above all, he taught me the linkage between the words in a plan and the numbers on the P&L. If they can\u2019t be linked, it\u2019s not a plan yet. The financials were only part of what I got from Dan. The bigger part is seeing the whole business at once, and thinking past the noise.<\/p>\n\n\n\nThe other is Anthony Lane. I\u2019ve never met anyone with a bigger heart. As president at ESI, he put people and their development first, set the standard for professionalism, and is still the best I\u2019ve ever watched in front of a room. He was the kind of leader you wanted to go above and beyond for, and I always did. My Monday Quote of the Week is a habit I picked up from Anthony, and I\u2019ve carried it ever since. It\u2019s my homage to him, a tip of the hat.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
ENX: <\/span><\/strong>What prompted you to hang your own shingle as a consultant? What do you feel makes you an effective strategist?<\/p>\n\n\n\nHANEY:<\/span><\/strong> After 27 years, I kept seeing the same patterns, from a Fortune 500 company to dealerships of all sizes, and they all trace back to volume. A leader today is running the core business while marketing, technology and AI all come at them at once, each with its own vendors, its own advice, and its own urgency. In that much motion, good work gets lost. Sales and marketing drift apart, and marketing pours real effort into work the P&L never feels, and that isn\u2019t marketing\u2019s fault. The website gets torn down and rebuilt when a new agency shows up. The CRM fills with data nobody trusts, so nobody uses it. Money goes to Google before the organic foundation is there. And AI stays on the radar, talked about, never truly put to work. Every one of those is a reasonable call made by a busy leader. They just never connect, and it adds up to motion without progress.<\/p>\n\n\n\nI started Haney Strategy to be the one who brings it together: clear out the noise, find the signal, and connect the pieces so the effort already happening starts adding up. Plenty of people will hand you a recommendation deck and wish you luck. What makes me different is I also do the doing. I stay in the work with your team, from the message to the website to the AI workflows behind it, one set of hands carrying the whole thing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Then there\u2019s AI. I started where most people did, on ChatGPT, writing copy and building custom GPTs, and it\u2019s where I cut my teeth. An MIT certificate in AI gave me the technical foundation. The novelty really fell away when I got into Claude Code, working in the terminal. Not overnight. I started building small things at first, learning as I went, leaning on it a little more each week, and yes, coding. Templates turned into skills, skills into loops and agents, and piece by piece it came together as a system. That system runs my business today: the website, the research, the writing, the invoicing\u2014all of it moves through workflows I built. And I\u2019m still learning every day. When I advise on AI, I keep current across every major platform, but I\u2019ve deliberately gone deep in one ecosystem, Claude and the platform Anthropic has built around it, because depth is where results come from. That\u2019s what I teach teams: the work they already do, rebuilt on a system they understand.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
ENX:<\/span><\/strong> Provide an overview of Haney Strategy and the services you offer. What is your target customer profile?<\/p>\n\n\n\nHANEY: <\/span><\/strong>The first thing I tell people is that it\u2019s not one-size-fits-all. The centerpiece is fractional CMTO work: three, six or twelve months on retainer, usually starting at 10 hours a week, where we define up front what we\u2019re going after, put it in a scope of work, and then I\u2019m in your leadership meetings every week, working alongside your team. Not a report at the end of the month. A seat at the table, doing the work: the marketing, the technology and the AI, connected on purpose, because when one person owns all three, the pieces reinforce each other instead of dying in the handoffs between vendors.<\/p>\n\n\n\nAround that seat there are lighter ways in. Workshops and trainings, for a team or one-on-one, including hands-on AI training built around a person\u2019s actual day rather than a generic curriculum. A four-week team training that takes one team\u2019s real weekly work and rebuilds it to run with Claude, Anthropic\u2019s AI assistant, ending with the team demoing its own workflows. Scoped projects, most often ground-up website rebuilds designed for how buyers, and now AI engines, find and evaluate a company. And for the organization that has a good team or a good agency and just needs the plan, a paid assessment that ends in a roadmap they can execute with anyone, including me.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Who do I want to serve? Small and midsized businesses, and my deepest focus is print technology dealers and MSPs, because that\u2019s where my career has lived. I\u2019ve supported nearly every major line in this industry from both the OEM and the dealer side. I know the programs, the portals, the MDF, and the math of how a dealer actually makes money. I can close my eyes and see how a dealership runs. That\u2019s worth something on day one.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
ENX:<\/span><\/strong> How has Haney Strategy fared thus far and how have you been able to reach prospects?<\/p>\n\n\n\nHANEY:<\/span><\/strong> I launched in April, and these first months have gone into getting the company on its feet. The website, the brand, the contracts, the tech stack, the accounting, all of it from scratch. I enjoy this stage, and it rewards the thing I\u2019ve always counted on: I\u2019ve yet to meet anyone who can outwork me. I was also blessed to get out of the gate with early engagements and that work is growing.<\/p>\n\n\n\nAs for how people find me, it\u2019s been relationships and referrals, which, after 27 years, is exactly what I hoped for. People know the quality and the integrity of the work. The other door is my writing. I publish a series on my site called Signal Notes, and the traffic has been genuinely encouraging. There\u2019s no funnel behind it, no forms, no gates. It\u2019s simply how people get to see how I think, note after note. Sometimes that earns a conversation. Sometimes it\u2019s just useful to somebody. Both are fine with me.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
ENX: <\/span><\/strong>Tell us more about Signal Notes and how you approach the content.<\/p>\n\n\n\nHANEY:<\/span><\/strong> A Signal Note is a page out of my journal. It\u2019s me sharing what I\u2019m seeing, building, reading and working through, with whoever wants to read it. There\u2019s deliberately no call to action at the end, and I know that runs against every marketing playbook ever written. I didn\u2019t want anyone to feel a pitch coming. In one Note about AI loops, I gave away a working tool I had built. No form, no email address, no gate. Another one decoded, in plain English, more than 70 of the AI terms this industry keeps hearing from every stage and every vendor deck. I want to be a contributor in this space, someone who puts something useful back into the community with every Note.<\/p>\n\n\n\nI hold the Notes to two rules. They have to teach something real, or I don\u2019t write them. And they have to work for the technical reader and the non-technical one, so no jargon. Writing that way also happens to perform well in search, and increasingly in AI search. I build that visibility for clients, so I watch it closely, but with the Notes it\u2019s the byproduct, not the point.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
ENX:<\/span><\/strong> What are some of the major challenges facing your target client base, particularly the dealer community?<\/p>\n\n\n\nHANEY:<\/span><\/strong> Start with the honest math. Print isn\u2019t going away. It\u2019s changing: people still need it and want it, just not at the volume of ten years ago. As A3 gives way to A4, the click and service revenue comes down with it. That pressure is real, and it isn\u2019t the dealer\u2019s fault. The response is diversification, and there\u2019s no shortage of doors: IT services, managed security, document workflow and physical security. But every one of those doors brings its own economics, its own talent question, and its own timeline. Each one is an article of its own.<\/p>\n\n\n\nWhat I\u2019ll say here is that there\u2019s no silver bullet for any of it and that includes AI. I say that as someone who uses AI more than almost anyone I know: I\u2019m working as much as I ever have and you get out of it exactly what you put in.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So my honest answer on the biggest challenge is focus. Don\u2019t try to be everything to everyone. Start inside the business you already have, the MIF you\u2019ve already earned, figure out which accounts fit the next service, and have the patience to ride it out. Pick a lane and be great in it. That\u2019s what sets a dealer apart, and it\u2019s the advice I run my own company on. My lane is connecting marketing, technology and AI into one engine, and this channel is home.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
ENX:<\/span><\/strong> What will be your keys to growth moving forward?<\/p>\n\n\n\nHANEY: <\/span><\/strong>The keys for me aren\u2019t flashy. Do really good work, and take on the right work. Everything else follows from that.<\/p>\n\n\n\nStay a student of the craft. This market is moving fast, and the offering will keep molding itself around what customers and the market need. What Haney Strategy looks like a year from now should be shaped by the people it serves.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
And as the work expands, I\u2019ll add talent to the company. More hands, but always my two eyes. That\u2019s why it\u2019s my family\u2019s name on the letterhead, and the people who know me know exactly what that means. When I help a company, I\u2019m helping a brand, and behind that brand are employees, and behind them are families. I\u2019ve never taken that lightly.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
ENX:<\/span><\/strong> What are your company\u2019s goals for the next 12 months, and what will success look like in your eyes?<\/p>\n\n\n\nHANEY:<\/span><\/strong> Twelve months from now, the measure that matters most is that the companies I work with are growing because of the work. A fuller pipeline. Marketing that finally shows up in the P&L. An AI workflow or two that hands a team back real hours every week.<\/p>\n\n\n\nI\u2019m deliberately not tying my own success to a revenue number, because if the work is exceptional, the revenue follows, and chasing it for its own sake is how the work stops being exceptional. What I want to build is momentum: a growing book of work I\u2019m proud of, and every client ending an engagement ready to renew, ready to refer, and ready to build the next thing together. If that\u2019s true, and I\u2019ve earned a real foothold in this industry as someone worth bringing in, that\u2019s the year I\u2019m after. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
At the beginning of this year, Jim Haney tapped one of technology\u2019s immortals\u2014the late, great Steve Jobs\u2014for a pithy observation to use in his email Quote of the Week series. \u201cIf you are working on something that you really care about, you don\u2019t have to be pushed,\u201d Jobs noted. \u201cThe vision pulls you.\u201d The message was fitting, as it wouldn\u2019t be long before one vision in particular guided Haney\u2019s heart and career. Haney has spent 27 years on both sides of the office technology industry. He came up in field marketing at Ricoh, rose to global IT services responsibility at Xerox and went on to senior marketing and technology leadership for dealers including Novatech and Doceo. In April, he set out on his own in the form of Haney Strategy. The Spring Hill, Tennessee-based consultancy is built on a conviction he carried through every one of those prior seats, which is marketing, technology and AI run best as one growth engine under one senior leader. The firm exists because of gaps Haney says he watched widen for years: sales teams and marketing teams pulling in different directions, and AI staying a keynote topic instead of becoming part of the daily work. His answer is to stay hands-on by defining the plan, then building it alongside the client\u2019s team, right down to the copy, code and AI workflows. The keys for me aren\u2019t flashy. Do really good work, and take on the right work. Everything else follows from that. \u2014 Jim Haney In this edition of Getting to Know You, we spoke with Haney about his path through the industry, the ways he engages, from a fractional CMTO seat to team trainings and project work, and the thread he says ties it all together\u2014finding the signal that actually moves the P&L. ENX: You\u2019ve held positions with companies ranging from OEMs to dealerships. Talk a little about how those experiences shaped you. HANEY: The place to start is ESI. We had two sales divisions, a print technology group and an IT group. Two offerings, two sales teams, one company. On the IT side alone, we had a long list of partners, and every one of them wanted time with our reps. They had campaigns they believed in and real MDF dollars they wanted to invest with us. Good problems, all of them, but stack it all up and it\u2019s a wall of noise coming at one sales organization. My job became a question I\u2019ve been answering ever since: out of everything we could do, what is the handful of things that will actually move this business? I worked with Anthony Lane, our president, and our sales leaders to answer that over and over, and to keep two divisions reinforcing each other instead of competing for attention. I\u2019m proud of my time at ESI. Those were special years. That work carried me upward. What we were doing at ESI was what Xerox wanted to do globally for IT services, so the dealer seat earned me the global one. At that level you learn scale: regions, budgets, more people and more decisions in every room. I ran programs across the U.S., Canada, and Europe, and I got to work with some genuinely talented agencies along the way, even if I never stopped itching to just build things myself. And it all started in my Lanier\/Ricoh years, my ground floor: field marketing, promotions, brochures and riding along on sales calls. I\u2019ve built campaigns from the passenger seat of a rep\u2019s car and from a global budget line, and the lesson is the same in every room: find the people building toward the same goal, and keep ego out of the work. ENX: Whose advice did you lean on during your formative years in the industry? HANEY: Dan Cooper, without question. I\u2019ve worked with and for Dan for about 15 years, and the discipline in how I work comes straight from him. He taught me to ask the second- and third-layer questions behind every good idea, not to kill it, but to find the edge cases that decide whether it succeeds. And above all, he taught me the linkage between the words in a plan and the numbers on the P&L. If they can\u2019t be linked, it\u2019s not a plan yet. The financials were only part of what I got from Dan. The bigger part is seeing the whole business at once, and thinking past the noise. The other is Anthony Lane. I\u2019ve never met anyone with a bigger heart. As president at ESI, he put people and their development first, set the standard for professionalism, and is still the best I\u2019ve ever watched in front of a room. He was the kind of leader you wanted to go above and beyond for, and I always did. My Monday Quote of the Week is a habit I picked up from Anthony, and I\u2019ve carried it ever since. It\u2019s my homage to him, a tip of the hat. ENX: What prompted you to hang your own shingle as a consultant? What do you feel makes you an effective strategist? HANEY: After 27 years, I kept seeing the same patterns, from a Fortune 500 company to dealerships of all sizes, and they all trace back to volume. A leader today is running the core business while marketing, technology and AI all come at them at once, each with its own vendors, its own advice, and its own urgency. In that much motion, good work gets lost. Sales and marketing drift apart, and marketing pours real effort into work the P&L never feels, and that isn\u2019t marketing\u2019s fault. The website gets torn down and rebuilt when a new agency shows up. The CRM fills with data nobody trusts, so nobody uses it. Money goes to Google before the organic foundation is there. And AI stays on the radar, talked about, never truly put to work. Every one of those is a reasonable call made by a busy leader. They […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":166,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[4429],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.enxmag.com\/twii\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/70975"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.enxmag.com\/twii\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.enxmag.com\/twii\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.enxmag.com\/twii\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/166"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.enxmag.com\/twii\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=70975"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/www.enxmag.com\/twii\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/70975\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":71154,"href":"https:\/\/www.enxmag.com\/twii\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/70975\/revisions\/71154"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.enxmag.com\/twii\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=70975"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.enxmag.com\/twii\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=70975"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.enxmag.com\/twii\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=70975"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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