The WizardJake Tlapek — The Wizard of Marketing. Author of Eight Dominoes.
People don’t buy features. They buy dreams.
Marketing strategy for founders and teams who are done with theory.
Generated for clients
Brio Studio & Wizard Marketing. Built from zero, sold on his terms.
Followers who stayed for the truth, not the pitch
Ways to work together.
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From $400Private consulting
One-on-one strategy. Find the bottleneck, fix the message, compound the results. Strategy Sessions from $400, a full marketing audit, or Jake inside your team as fractional CMO.
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Free to joinThe Mastermind
The Eight Dominoes community. Free to join. Membership adds group consulting with Jake twice a week, six course tracks, and his WhatsApp.
See what’s inside
Out nowEight Dominoes
The messaging framework that compounds into awesome clients. Jake’s book, out now in paperback and Kindle.
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Raw marketing truths, no fluff. Jake is available for podcast interviews and panel discussions.
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Jake’s favorite tools
The software stack the Wizard actually uses. Vetted, annotated, updated when something better comes along. No kickbacks that cloud the judgment.
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“The hardest system to debug is people.”
The brutal truth.
I didn’t learn marketing in a classroom. I learned it in the trenches, making mistakes that cost real money and figuring out what drives revenue. I started in the Air Force as an IT Tech, learning how complex systems work. Thirteen years of marketing taught me the hardest system to debug is people.
I’ve made two exits: Brio Studio and Wizard Marketing, an SEO and web shop I built over seven years and then sold. Now I’m back out on my own, consulting directly with founders and teams who are done with theory. Along the way I watched the same pattern play out across every industry I touched: good businesses losing to worse ones because they sold the product while the competitor sold the dream. That pattern became Eight Dominoes, my book — out now.
Somewhere in there I also co-designed a published card game, Grifters (Indie Boards & Cards). Different shelf, same lesson: people don’t buy the box. They buy the night they’ll have around the table.
I’ve generated over $100 million in measurable revenue for clients. If you want honest strategy from someone who’s earned his insights through bruises, not blog posts, you’re in the right room.
Eight Dominoes.
A messaging framework that compounds into awesome clients.
The best product doesn’t win. The best-understood product does.
A domino topples another one and a half times its size — physicist Lorne Whitehead proved it in 1983. Twenty-nine of them would fell the Empire State Building. Messaging works the same way: speak to the feeling your customer is actually buying, and every message after it lands harder.
- 01
Core Attraction
The emotion your customer is actually buying.
- 02
Attention Catalyst
The hook that earns the first three seconds.
- 03
Value Proposition
The promise that earns the next sixty.
- 04
Impact Chain
The stakes that make inaction feel unbearable.
- 05
Your Mechanism
The named system that makes you unreplicable.
- 06
Barrier Breakdown
The objections that quietly kill deals.
- 07
Embracing Limitations
Turning your weakness into proof.
- 08
The New Opportunity
Replacing the category instead of competing in it.
See the full framework — with the famous campaign behind each domino →
I wish I’d written this book.”Marty Marion, thirty years positioning Fortune 100 brands, who wrote the foreword
$17.99 paperback · $9.99 Kindle · free on Kindle Unlimited. Hardcover and audiobook on the way.
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Scars from the trenches.
- 2024
Started the room
Began building the peer group for founders and marketers who are done with theory. It runs today as the Eight Dominoes Mastermind.
- 2023
Chief Evangelist at Finch
Built campaigns that moved revenue. Called out the industry’s worst habits in public. Did it without permission.
- 2021
The TikTok leap
Four hundred followers in the first month. Then one video hit, and 10,000 arrived overnight. Kept posting twice a day, telling the truth — 110K+ stayed. Content that doesn’t convert is noise.
- 2018
Exit #2 — Wizard Marketing
Built Wizard Marketing, an SEO and web shop, from zero by obsessing over discoverability and conversion architecture. Then sold it.
- 2016
Co-designed Grifters
A hand-building card game made with David Fulton and published by Indie Boards & Cards.
- 2014
Exit #1 — Brio Studio
Built and sold Brio Studio, the first exit that proved the model. Every lesson from that sale was applied to the next one.
- 2008
The foundation
U.S. Air Force IT. Discipline, systems architecture, and learning to execute when the stakes are real.
The verdict.
What they said when Jake did the work.
“Jake is everything we hoped for. We saw impressive results in a quicker time frame than expected.”
“The most transparent experience I’ve had. Weekly updates. I recommend Jake to every company I know.”
“Jake consistently goes above and beyond. His expertise has significantly contributed to our success.”
The Grimoire
Latest from the Grimoire.
Marketing truths, teardowns, and the occasional spell. The psychology behind why people buy — written down.
The Objection Is Never the Objection
When a buyer says your price is too high, they are almost never talking about price, and answering the price is how you lose the deal politely.
Your Hook Earns Three Seconds. Your Promise Earns the Next Sixty.
Most businesses write one value proposition when the job needs two, and the missing one is where the audience walks out.
You Cannot Out-Optimize the Wrong Emotion
The cleanest funnel in your category still dies if it sits on top of an emotion your customer does not feel.
Summon the wizard.
Tired of theory? Tell me what’s broken in your business. Be specific: numbers, costs, consequences. I’ll tell you straight if I can fix it.