What the Champion Stage Means
At this stage, you’ve transcended simple advocacy. You’re not just telling others about your success—you’re becoming a methodology advocate and industry thought leader. You see opportunities to advance the entire field, influence industry practices, and build communities that multiply impact across organizations.
Champions are rare and extraordinarily valuable. While many Advocates share their success within influence spheres, Champions seek larger platforms to shape industry thinking and methodology evolution. You’re ready to invest significant time and energy in thought leadership that extends far beyond your own organization.
The Champion stage is about industry thought leadership and public platform building, methodology co-creation and advancement, community building and practice development, and professional legacy and lasting industry impact. Critical insight: Champions don’t just implement well—they advance the methodology itself through their insights, innovations, and leadership. You become co-creators, not just practitioners.
Common Characteristics
You’re in the Champion stage when:
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Industry Platform Ambition — Interest in speaking at major industry events and conferences. Desire to participate in public media and educational platforms. Willingness to build personal brand and thought leadership reputation. Ready to invest significant time (5-20 hours/month) in industry influence.
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Methodology Advancement Focus — Contributing to framework evolution and improvement. Sharing novel implementation approaches and innovations. Collaborating on training and education development. Working directly with methodology team on refinement and documentation.
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Community Building Commitment — Building practitioner communities around specific methodologies or industries. Facilitating ongoing discussions and knowledge sharing. Creating educational content and programming. Developing governance and moderation approaches for sustained community health.
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Professional Legacy Vision — Seeking lasting impact beyond current role or organization. Building professional network and industry recognition. Developing strategic partnerships and ecosystem relationships. Creating contributions that advance industry transformation practices broadly.
What Success Looks Like
Progress at the Champion stage means building industry recognition as a thought leader with conference speaking opportunities, media platform access, professional network expansion and influence, and personal brand development. Champions achieve professional development through advanced methodology expertise, leadership and communication skill development, strategic thinking and framework advancement, and career acceleration with expanded opportunities.
Success includes lasting impact through methodology co-creation and industry advancement, community building and practice development, professional legacy and lasting influence, and contribution to industry transformation. Business benefits emerge from enhanced organizational reputation, competitive differentiation and market positioning, talent attraction and retention advantages, and strategic partnership and network opportunities.
Champion opportunities include speaking at industry events (HubSpot INBOUND, MarTech conferences, regional events), participating in Value-First Media Network shows (guest appearances or facilitating your own show), joining the Data Summit practitioner network for methodology refinement, and contributing to framework evolution through implementation pattern documentation and training development.
Natural Next Stage: Champion is the pinnacle stage of the Value Path—representing the highest level of engagement and industry influence. There is no next stage; instead, Champions continuously deepen their thought leadership, expand their industry impact, and evolve their contributions to methodology advancement and community building.
Ready to Move Forward?
Champions are rare and self-selecting. If you’re questioning readiness, you might be better served by Advocate stage resources first. Champions require significant time investment (minimum 5-10 hours/month for sustained thought leadership, plus speaking prep and travel time) and organizational support for external speaking and media participation.
Express interest in Champion opportunities, review upcoming speaking opportunities through our event calendar, explore Media Network participation (guest appearances or show facilitation), join the Data Summit practitioner network, or schedule a Champion discussion to talk about your specific thought leadership vision and how we can support it.
This page created through AI-human collaboration, demonstrating the value-first approach it describes.