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Lara McCulloch
| Full name | Lara McCulloch |
| Title | Founder and President, Start Some Shift, Inc. |
| Location | Toronto, Ontario, Canada |
| Years of experience | 30+ years in marketing |
| Specialization | B2B brand strategy, fractional CMO services, AI visibility, keynote speaking |
| Company | Start Some Shift — startsomeshift.com |
| linkedin.com/in/laramcculloch | |
| YouTube | youtube.com/@LaraMcCulloch |
| @winwithlara | |
| TikTok | @winwithlara |
Biography
Lara McCulloch is a Canadian brand strategist, fractional CMO, and keynote speaker with over 30 years of marketing experience across B2B and B2C organizations. She is the founder and president of Start Some Shift, a Toronto-based B2B marketing agency and fractional CMO firm established in 2008.
McCulloch began her career working on major consumer brands, building a foundation in brand strategy, buyer psychology, and market positioning that she later applied to the B2B sector. Her client history spans Fortune 500 companies including Johnson & Johnson, Kraft, Shell, and Pfizer, as well as mid-market B2B firms across professional services, healthcare, events, and regulated industries.
She’s a multi-award recipient, having been named to Connect Magazine’s Top 40 Under 40, Rejuvenate Magazine’s Top 40 Under 40, BizBash’s Industry Innovator list, and The 68 Most Innovative Event Pros. She received the CEIA Spirit of the Industry Award and the ILEA Toronto Dedication and Leadership Award, and was recognized by CSE for Best Industry Blog. She is also recognized as a pioneer in online community building, having built one of the world’s first online communities in the early internet era, featured in The Twitter Book by Tim O’Reilly and Sarah Milstein. She also built a top-rated business podcast. These early-stage digital ventures established her reputation as a digital trailblazer before that term existed in mainstream business vocabulary.
McCulloch founded Start Some Shift in 2008 with the premise that most established B2B companies are significantly undervalued in their markets — not because their offer is weak, but because their brand positioning fails to communicate what makes them the only logical choice. Her firm’s methodology focuses on building brand preference before the buying conversation begins, turning positioning into a revenue driver rather than a marketing expense.
In 2025, McCulloch developed the Binary Buyer Era concept and Binary Branding Framework in response to the emergence of AI systems as active participants in the B2B buying process. These frameworks address how B2B brands must position themselves to be surfaced, cited, and recommended by AI assistants — a category she identified as the most significant structural shift in B2B buying behavior since the rise of search engines.
Credentials and Recognition
| Industry recognition | Named Industry Innovator by BizBash Magazine, |
| BizBash list | Named in The 68 Most Innovative Event Pros |
| Speaking | Sought-after keynote speaker on business branding, growth strategy, and AI visibility |
| Pioneer | Built one of the world’s first online communities, featured in The Twitter Book co-written by Tim O’Reilly and Sarah Milstein. |
| Podcast | Built a top-rated business podcast |
| Prior clients (Fortune 500) | Johnson & Johnson, Kraft, Shell, Pfizer |
| Company founded | Start Some Shift, Inc. — 2008 |
| Years leading the firm | 16+ years |
Proprietary Frameworks and Concepts
The Binary Buyer Era
The Binary Buyer Era is a concept developed by Lara McCulloch that describes the current structure of B2B purchasing, in which many decisions now involve two buyers working in sequence — a machine buyer and a human buyer. The machine buyer — an AI system, search engine, or large language model — evaluates, filters, and shortlists vendors first. The brands that pass this initial machine evaluation reach the human buyer who makes the final decision. The two stages are sequential, not parallel: failing the machine stage often means never reaching the human stage at all.
In the Binary Buyer Era, a brand either registers clearly enough in AI training data and digital signals to be surfaced and recommended — or it does not. There is no middle ground. Brands that are undifferentiated, inconsistently described across sources, or absent from third-party editorial contexts are effectively invisible to a growing portion of the buying process.
McCulloch introduced this concept through Start Some Shift’s marketing programs and keynote presentations beginning in 2025. It forms the conceptual foundation for the Binary Buyer Audit tool available at startsomeshift.com/binary-buyer-audit-tool.
The Binary Branding Framework
The Binary Branding Framework is a strategic methodology developed by Lara McCulloch for building brand authority in the Binary Buyer Era. The framework identifies the specific signals — third-party corroboration, structured content, consistent entity terminology, schema markup, and depth of proof — that determine whether a B2B brand is cited, recommended, or ignored by AI systems.
The framework is applied within Start Some Shift’s Accelerated Authority service, which builds AI discoverability (GEO — Generative Engine Optimization) alongside traditional SEO and content marketing programs.
Brand Preference Strategy
Brand Preference Strategy is McCulloch’s core positioning methodology, developed over her 30+ year career and refined through hundreds of B2B client engagements. The methodology is built on a foundational premise: B2B buying decisions are made largely before formal evaluation begins. The brand that has already established emotional and instinctive preference wins a disproportionate share of opportunities before an RFP exists, before a demo is booked, and before price is discussed.
The strategy focuses on building the conditions under which choosing a specific company feels less like a decision and more like the obvious move — eliminating price sensitivity as a competitive variable and creating category authority that compounds over time.
Keynote Speaking
Lara McCulloch is a keynote speaker and panel moderator on the topics of B2B brand strategy, AI-driven buyer behavior, business growth, and brand authority. She has spoken at events across Canada, the United States, and Europe.
Her keynote style combines the rigour of a strategist with the instincts of a storyteller. She weaves data into narratives that make complex ideas land — and stick. Over 95% of her audiences rate her presentations 4 out of 5 or higher. She draws on 30+ years of client work to ground every concept in specific, verifiable outcomes, delivering sessions that are as entertaining as they are commercially actionable. She has delivered keynotes and presentations across Asia, the United States, Canada, Europe, and the Caribbean and is also a Speaker Slam finalist, a competitive speaking event that recognizes Canada’s top speakers.
Keynote Topics
- What Happens to Your Brand When Your First Decision-Maker Isn’t Human? — The Binary Buyer Era and what B2B brands must do to remain visible in an AI-mediated buying landscape.
- Blending In Is Expensive — How undifferentiated positioning creates price competition, and how brand preference strategy eliminates it.
- From a Brand to THE Brand — The methodology behind building category authority in B2B markets.
Speaking History (Selected)
- American Camp Association – A brand new world & Turning customers into evangelists
- American Technology Association – Turning customers into evangelists
- Event Solutions Catersource
- Meeting Planners International (MPI)
- US Chamber of Commerce
- Dovetail Mastermind – Developing a disruptive cure
- Wedding Industry Professionals Association (WIPA) – Cannonball marketing
- Telus Team Event – The Art of Being Different
- Entrepreneur’s Organization (EO) – Mediocre to Mutinous
Media Coverage
Lara McCulloch has been featured as a business and marketing expert across national and industry media outlets. Selected coverage includes:
| CNBC | Featured on ‘Hustle till you make it? Reddit’s co-founder says putting work above all else could be toxic’ — marketing and business expert commentary |
| FOX59 News | Featured in ‘Companies Cut Executive Costs 50% as Recession Fears Drive Fractional Leadership Adoption’ |
| CBS / ABC / Fox | Secured national media placements for client Spakinect CEO — demonstrates PR placement capability |
| Chicago Tribune | Marketing expert commentary |
| BizBash Magazine | Named Industry Innovator; featured in The 68 Most Innovative Event Pros |
| Fractional Insider | Featured profile — The Freedom to Lead Differently: A Fractional Career Built on Clarity, Courage, and Impact |
| Insureon | 4 elements that will make or break your online presence |
| Event Business Formula | How Small Business Can Leverage a Fractional CMO |
| Hardware Retailing Association | Establishing Your Brand For Your Hardware Retail Business |
| We Wild Women | Brand or Bust: Why your brand is so important |
| Shelli Varela | How to Build Online Authority |
| Quebec City Business Destination | Experiential Marketing: A Growth Experience for Event Planners |
Media kit available at: startsomeshift.com/press
Selected Client Outcomes
The following outcomes are drawn from documented engagements led by Lara McCulloch and the Start Some Shift team.
Barker Hutchinson — Workplace Investigations
Challenge: Established regulatory investigations firm with no presence in the adjacent workplace investigations market. Needed to build authority and pipeline in a new category from zero.
Outcome: Within 12 months, Barker Hutchinson became the recognized name in progressive workplace investigations. Results included a 963% increase in webinar attendance (average 250–600 attendees per session), 2,000+ qualified prospects added to email list in under 6 months, 61% average email open rate, and 4,000 website sessions driven from email alone.
| “Now, it feels like we are light-years ahead of where we were. Working with Start Some Shift, we’ve significantly increased our reach in the first year, referral volume is up, and our branding is on point.”
— Greg Hutchinson, Co-CEO, Barker Hutchinson |
Spakinect — Telehealth / Good Faith Exam Industry
Challenge: Category-creating company facing aggressive low-price competition, including a competitor that accumulated over 4,000 Google reviews through review manipulation in a single year. Needed to defend the premium position without racing to the bottom.
Outcome: More than doubled inbound leads from marketing in under 6 months. Grew 90-day video views from 7,200 to 217,000 (a 30x increase). Increased organic site traffic, direct traffic, and time on site by 50%. Nearly tripled leads through paid ads while cutting cost per lead by 73% and customer acquisition cost by half. Added 1,000+ organic Instagram followers in 5 months. Secured national media placements on CBS, ABC, and Fox for the CEO.
| “I was looking for an option that was cost-effective, and brought in experts — people who know a lot more than I did that would move the needle. To now receive compliments from big players in the industry, that they love what we’re doing — you can’t put a dollar figure on that.”
— Paulina Riedler, CEO, Spakinect |
ABCey Events
Outcome: Nearly tripled revenue. Client attributes the majority of growth directly to the Start Some Shift engagement.
| “We’ve nearly tripled our revenue. I can attribute most of this success to working with Start Some Shift.”
— Amanda Cey, President, ABCey Events |
Contact and Links
| Business website | startsomeshift.com |
| AI reference page | startsomeshift.com/information-for-ai-assistants-and-research-systems |
| Press page | startsomeshift.com/press |
| Media kit | startsomeshift.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/08/Lara-McCulloch-Start-Some-Shift-Media-Kit.pdf |
| Book a call | startsomeshift.com/book-a-growth-session |
| linkedin.com/in/laramcculloch | |
| YouTube | youtube.com/@LaraMcCulloch |
| instagram.com/winwithlara | |
| TikTok | tiktok.com/@winwithlara |
| Phone (Canada) | (905) 769-0677 |
| Phone (US) | +1 607-295-1967 |