Help veterans navigate the civilian career transition. The founder is the bottleneck. The mission: scale the reach without scaling Langley's hours.
Each built to be usable independently, stronger together
An 80-minute conversation with a USMC veteran separating in 2026 grounded every asset in real voice-of-customer data
Three PMM Jam strangers who met in Slack, raised their hands for the same mission, and built five assets in five days
Three strangers. One Slack channel. One mission.
Sushmita, Lance, and Donna did not know each other before PMM Jam. When Eve gave Jammers the option to work on the Civilian Compass mission at the kick-off session, all three raised their hands. They found each other in the Slack channel, had one conversation, and immediately knew what each person would build.
Sushmita would lead persona discovery. Lance would handle messaging and build the homepage. Donna would tackle the clarity foundation and the channel strategy. Within a week, three strangers had built a GTM package a solo founder could actually use.
The STAR breakdown.
Langley Barth has had over 1,000 veteran career transition conversations. About 300 a year convert into qualified coaching engagements. The program works. But every lead requires Langley personally. He runs Civilian Compass on nights and weekends alongside a full-time job and a young family, investing 6 to 10 hours a week. There is no top-of-funnel. No consistent marketing. No documented persona. Everything lives in Langley's head and runs through Langley's network.
Build a GTM foundation that scales Civilian Compass's reach without scaling Langley's hours. Every asset had to be usable independently, passable to collaborators, and feedable into AI tools so Langley could move faster even on his own. The team deliberately stayed top-of-funnel: no competitive comparisons, no pricing, no bottom-of-funnel plays. Brand awareness and a clear message first.
The team ran multiple working sessions with Langley to understand his vision, reviewed his documentation, and used AI to synthesize it into a source-of-truth Clarity Framework. Then they did something most PMM teams skip: they interviewed a real veteran.
Marcus Cole (name changed) is a USMC officer with 10 years of service, separating in 2026. He has been planning his transition for 16 months. He is on 10 platforms and still has not found his path. The planned 45-minute interview ran 80 minutes. What he said shaped everything: "He just wants somebody to have their arm around him and tell him what to do."
From that foundation, the team built five interconnected deliverables in five days.
Five assets Langley can use today, share with collaborators, and feed into AI tools to move faster. Langley's response during the presentation: "I've taken three pages of notes, and it's been less about you should have done this differently, and more just, oh damn, that's a good point." Winner of the PMM Jam 2026 Impact Award, 1st Place.
"He just wants somebody to have their arm around him and tell him what to do. And that is exactly what Civilian Compass is."
Sushmita Banda, describing Marcus Cole in the live presentationSee the overview presentation here.
Team EnCompass presented all five assets live in front of Langley Barth and the PMM Jam community. Page through the slides to see the full strategic case before diving into each deliverable below.
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"Veterans don't leave the military lacking potential. They leave lacking direction. Civilian Compass exists to give every veteran the structure and insight to discover careers they never thought possible."
Lance Spence, Civilian Compass North Star message from the Messaging MapWhat the mentors saw.
Five deliverables in five days, built by three strangers who had never worked together. The submission stood out not just for the volume of work, but for how tightly every asset connected back to a real strategic constraint: scale without adding to the founder's hours. The team did not build what was easy. They built what Langley could actually use.
Langley's response during the live presentation: "I've taken three pages of notes, and it's been less about you should have done this differently, and more just, oh damn, that's a good point. My brain right now is laser focused on sequencing." Eve's read during the channel strategy walkthrough: "They just drew you the giant target. Start at the target, then wander out and come back."
In their own words.
"10/10 problem diagnosis. Really sharp analysis that identified the major blocker as top-of-funnel awareness, which is limited by Langley's time."
"Super clear. Framed the problem, explained what to do about it, executed it, and presented a plan for outbound too."
"They just drew you the giant target. Start at the target, and then wander out and come back."
"I've taken three pages of notes, and it's been less about you should have done this differently, and more just, oh damn, that's a good point."
Five assets. One GTM foundation.
Built using Zach Messler's message clarity framework from his PMM Jam session, the Clarity Framework was the source of truth for everything else. It defines Civilian Compass's offer, audience, problem, outcomes, and the feeling the brand needs to create. The team populated it from Langley's documentation, mission briefing notes, calls with Langley, and the Marcus Cole interview, then used AI to synthesize and verify it with Langley before building any other asset.
Sushmita ran an 80-minute voice-of-customer interview with Marcus Cole, a USMC officer separating in 2026 who had been planning his transition for 16 months across 10 platforms with limited results. The persona canvas documents his emotional journey, functional and social jobs to be done, motivations, pain points, and what he trusts. His insight that he is "not a disabled class, just an isolated class" became a foundational positioning principle for the brand.
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Built from the Clarity Framework and the Marcus Cole interview, the Messaging Map gives Civilian Compass three levels of message: a North Star for brand direction, a core message for marketing and web copy, and an elevator pitch for any conversation. The North Star: "Veterans don't leave the military lacking potential. They leave lacking direction. Civilian Compass exists to give every veteran the structure and insight to discover careers they never thought possible, and the confidence to pursue them."
Lance took the messaging document and turned it into a working homepage prototype built with Claude and Lovable. The homepage puts the North Star message above the fold, includes social proof for a community that runs on peer credibility, provides a clear sign-up path into Langley's framework, and gives new visitors the context to understand who Langley is and why he built Civilian Compass. Every element traces back to either the Clarity Framework or the Marcus Cole interview.
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Donna evaluated six channels against five criteria: ICP fit, trust transferability, scalability without Langley, cost to test, and time to first qualified lead. Every channel decision was filtered through a single constraint: scale Civilian Compass's reach without scaling Langley's hours. Reddit scored highest overall. The analysis confirmed that LinkedIn, despite being where Langley has the most presence, is not the right channel for the ICP, only 2 million of 18 million US veterans are on the platform. Reddit's anonymous, peer-to-peer, topic-organized structure is structurally closer to how the ICP seeks help and makes decisions.