leadership
Joy’s Law: “Most of the smartest people work for someone else.”
External Talent Benefits: Boards and Businesses in the AI age are prioritizing fresh, external perspectives. In today’s environment, boards are choosing outside executive perspectives because independent, battle-tested leaders bring the objectivity, agility, and insight required to drive transformation faster than internal succession alone.
This shift signals a clear mandate: boards value leaders who bring agility, strong stakeholder management, and digital fluency over traditional tenure.
Harnessing dispersed external knowledge fuels innovation by transcending organizational boundaries and tapping into intelligence that no single entity can monopolize.
Greg Parrott, Founder of The X-Mentor
Hi, I’m Greg Parrott, founder of The X-Mentor.
I focus on one outcome: Increasing the value of your brand.
Experience: 30 years of experience across branding, marketing, VC/PE startups, SMB scaleups, and global enterprise software.
Change: Helping organizations overcome inertia: clarifying strategy, aligning teams, and translating customer insight into growth.
Consulting: Advising leaders at every stage—from founders to executives—by grounding strategy in a deep understanding of customers and the human needs that drive behavior.
ROI: This approach has helped companies attract and retain the right customers and generate hundreds of millions, and in some cases billions of dollars in enterprise value.
Trust: Built on a simple but durable truth: businesses that put customer value first always win in the end.
mission
To help Executive Decision Makers accelerate growth by Managing Customer Experiences like a Business.
value
How We Co-Create Value for Customers and Businesses
Journey-centric Operations: Collaborate to align more deeply with customer needs and goals.
Journey Analytics & Orchestration: Create real-time customer insights to reveal predictive and actionable behaviors that drive higher goal completion.
Journey Economics: Connect financial outcomes directly to customer outcomes. Facilitate value-based conversations with your CFO. Take action: pull levers, and manage cost and profitability in real-time.
Benefit: Gain real-time clarity to drive faster, smarter decisions. Outflank competition. Grow Your Business.
GROWTH | PROFITABILITY | INNOVATION
Industries
*
Solutions
*
Experience
*
Innovation
*
Industries * Solutions * Experience * Innovation *
Financial Services
Cloud and AI strategies that redefine customer relationships by aligning with individual financial goals.
Banking
Insurance
Investors
Retail & Consumer Goods
Smart AI Strategies that handles the boring stuff and makes shopping feel effortless and enjoyable.
Data & Automation
Customization
Personal Marketplaces
Technology
Technology Strategies for modernizing human experiences and answers the question: “What should we build together?
Technology Business Management
New Product Strategies
Digital Transformation
Innovation
Envisioning Human-Computer interactions in the AI age.
New Business Cases and Monetization
Personalized Use Cases and Experiential Metrics
Transformation Roadmaps and Feature Sets
Research & Insights
Discovery, Customer Needs, Jobs To Be Done, Methods.
Market Research
Customer & User Research
Technology & Product Research
Healthcare
Hyper-personalized care that reshapes modern healthcare by centering on each patient’s unique needs.
Providers
Payors
Health Systems
Education
Personalized educational frameworks designed to meet the evolving demands of a digitally-driven world.
Equitable Access
Digital Learning Tools
Dynamic Course Composition
Telecommunications
AI strategies that elevate customer experiences and empower a connected, digital workforce.
Blended (AI & Human) communications
Optimized teamwork and connectivity
Enhanced collaboration and productivity
Value Consulting
Create New Customer-Business Value Exchange.
Functional and Economic drivers and benefits
Experiential Value and Customer Journey Analytics
Symbolic Value and Brand-based Values
XPM Experience Performance Management
Manage Customer and User Experiences like a Business.
Establish Journey-centric Design Operations
Enable Journey Analytics and Journey Orchestration
Manage Profitability through Journey Economics
Make shift happen
About Greg
journey
THE VISION: Bridging Branding & User Experience
Pioneered HyperBranding™, shifting marketing from mass broadcast to personalized digital interactions.
FIRST CLIENT: Apple Computer
Launched HyperBranding™ with Apple, pioneering interactive branding experiences.
MICROSOFT: Global Customer Support Redesign
Redesigned Microsoft's Global Customer Support System, opening doors to the Microsoft Business Intelligence Group.
MICROSOFT: Business Intelligence Group
Contributed to the development of a Corporate Performance Management solution, discovering the link between customer experience and financial performance.
MICROSOFT 365: Experience Performance Management
Developed the first Experience Performance Management dashboard for Office 365's SaaS Go-To-Market strategy, connecting experience metrics with operational outcomes.
APPTIO: Technology Business Management
Contributed to the development of a new business category (TBM) that enabled Cost Transparency, Financial Planning, Variable Spend. $1 Trillion IT spend under management.
IBM: Head of CX & UX Performance
Introduced CX & UX Performance Management Practice to IBM Cloud, Data & AI Division. Managed CX & UX Process Improvement across the portfolio by working with cross-functional leadership teams on User Adoption, Journey Analytics, Customer Value, Retention.
OUTSYSTEMS: Sr. Principal CX Strategist
CX & UX Strategist driving customer-centric transformation, accelerating value delivery with AI-powered experiences for low-code application modernization.
THE X-MENTOR: Editor & Publisher, X-Economics™
Created the leading publication on design's business impact, reaching 1M+ professionals monthly. Introduced X-Economics™, turning CX & UX journeys into measurable business outcomes in The Age of AI.
impact
HyperBranding™
Transformed interactive design into Branded Interactive Experiences for The Information Age, including:
Apple E-WORLD: Launched the first global online community for Kids. Led to rapid adoption of Macintosh brand over PC for young adults.
Encyclopedia Britannica CD: Out-sold every product in their category by 2X, won multiple Design Awards.
CVS: The first online pharmacy, outflanking VC funded initiatives, #1 online pharmacy in the United States.
Wells Fargo Home Mortgage: Branded website outperformed all major players in their market.
MICROSOFT: Office 365 GTM
Grew Office 365 subscriber base to 4.4m users in 1 QTR, leading to Office 365 annual revenue of $2.5B.
Increased Office 365 Subscription Sharing >3x.
Fastest growth of any product in Microsoft’s history.
Office Division became top Microsoft revenue source.
Outflanked Google Docs to lead Productivity market.
Office 365 (now Microsoft 365) remains top productivity suite in the market.
IBM: Cloud, Data & AI Division
Cloud Division achieved a 12-point increase in their overall NPS over a period of one year.
IBM CFO reports “very healthy acceleration in cloud key growth area.” Exceeding analysts’ expectations.
IBM Hybrid Cloud saw biggest sales increase in 10-years, Stock jumped 7.5%, $16.7B in sales.
IBM acquired APPTIO in 2023.
XM Consulting: Low-Code, No-Code Market Impact
Fusion Teams can “compose” their own software.
BUs are using generative AI and prebuilt software component catalogs to reduce app redundancy.
Accelerated Time-to-Value, from months-to-minutes.
#1 Gartner Enterprise Low-Code Application Platform.
XPM (Experience Performance Management)
Leading The Value-to-Customer Conversation.
Achieving Journey Management Maturity.
Ensuring Businesses Stay Competitive.