Ashleigh Paholek is the founder of TIER Communications. Drawing on ten years on air, she gives career women the strategies and frameworks to speak under pressure. She'd been creating content for years and knew how to build an audience.
Going in circles
Ashleigh knew how to make top of funnel content and grow a following, but needed it to land in a new US market. She'd found one type of video that performed and kept repeating it, and when it didn't lead to sales she knew something was off. She just couldn't name it. She'd tied views to success, so any middle or bottom of funnel post that didn't rack up numbers felt like a flop, and she'd shy away from making that kind of content again.
In reality she just didn't know the strategy, or what success actually looked like for that content. Losing her passion for creating, she was frustrated at herself and at the algorithm. She'd tried to solve it alone. The school of TikTok, advice from friends in marketing, plenty of Googling. But as a founder wearing every hat, she couldn't be sure any of it was working.
As she puts it, "You can Google all of this stuff. But knowing whether what you're doing actually works? That's the part you can't Google."
Why Wedge
A move to the US made it non-negotiable. Ashleigh needed the marketing to work, and she wanted to understand it well enough to keep carrying it forward herself. What drew her to Wedge was that Kim practises what she teaches. "The difference between Kim and other strategic marketers is that she's actually doing it herself. I wasn't taking strategy from someone who'd read about it. I was taking it from someone living it."
The work
The groundwork came before any strategy. "The work Kim did before we even got to strategy blew me away." An extensive, data and AI-led breakdown of Ashleigh's target market: what they search, what they consume, what's in conversation, and where she should be showing up. Deeply personalised. "She fully understood me and my market."
Rather than forcing a single niche, Kim built out the different personas Ashleigh's brand speaks to, so every piece of content has a clear audience and a clear definition of success. Having just launched a new product, Ashleigh finally understood the point of middle and bottom of funnel content, and how to measure each. "A flop by top of funnel standards can be doing exactly its job."
The shift
There was a moment it clicked. They'd mapped her content pillars, but Ashleigh still wasn't sure what belonged in each funnel stage, so she asked Kim to explain it another way. Kim did, in a way that landed completely. "Now I think the way she does. I can take one idea and see how it works as top of funnel, then break it down into middle of funnel. It makes creating content so much easier." Her range expanded, and consistency got easier because every pillar and idea was laid out in a way that made sense to her.
Her confidence and rhythm came back, helped by having someone to be accountable to. "She feels like a genuine supporter." And crucially, Ashleigh didn't want her hand held. She wanted a strong baseline framework she could take and run with. "That's exactly what I got."
The bottom line
"Kim gave me back my confidence and my consistency. She broke down strategy in a way I fully understood, built it around my actual market using real data, and treated me like a strategic peer, not a beginner. I left with a framework I can carry forward myself, which is exactly what I wanted."
For anyone still trialling and erroring on their own, Ashleigh's take is simple. "Kim has done it herself, and that changes everything. If you're tired of trial and error on your own, this is the investment."
