Why Keeping Customers Interested Is The Only Marketing KPI Utah Founders Should Track
Featuring Jonathan Lo, Salt Foundry (Salt Lake City, UT).
Jonathan Lo is the CEO of Salt Foundry, a Utah fractional CMO practice serving founders, owners, and growth-stage CEOs, and the author of Keeping People Interested, The Only KPI That Really Matters. Jonathan Lo holds an electrical engineering degree from the University of Illinois and began his career on a World Vision fellowship after college, where he led organic growth that scaled the nonprofit's Facebook audience past one million followers, launched the first mobile-optimized site and increased mobile acquisitions by 50 percent, and went on to manage a multi-million dollar paid media program. That nonprofit-trained discipline, where the product is an outcome and a feeling rather than a physical object, shaped the empathy-first methodology Jonathan Lo now teaches Utah founders. Through Salt Foundry, Jonathan Lo serves as a fractional Chief Marketing Officer for B2B and consumer brands across the Wasatch Front, building positioning, messaging, customer journey strategy, and full-funnel marketing systems. Jonathan Lo writes regularly on strategic frameworks, decision tools, and mental models at his author site jonathankalo.com and is most accessible to Utah founders on LinkedIn, where he personally responds to every Utah-based message.
Filmed at Bad Bet Productions, Sandy, Utah.
Episode Summary
On this episode of Utah Business Spotlight, host Peter Anthony sits down with Jonathan Lo, CEO of Salt Foundry and author of the new book Keeping People Interested, The Only KPI That Really Matters. Jonathan Lo is one of the sharpest fractional CMOs in the Utah marketing ecosystem, and the premise he builds the book around is deceptively simple. To keep people interested, you have to be interested in them. That single idea reframes every marketing decision a Utah founder makes, from positioning to pricing to the conversion rate every operator quietly obsesses over.
Jonathan Lo walks Peter Anthony through the origin of the book. The working title was Empathy Marketing, which resonated with marketers but landed flat with the founders and CEOs the book is actually written for. Jonathan Lo did his own customer research, listened to his own advice, and retitled the book around the single outcome that matters most to a business owner, attention that compounds. The result is a 100-plus reference, story-driven playbook on how to add value at every stage of the shopping journey instead of selling, selling, selling.
The conversation moves into Jonathan Lo's career arc. Electrical engineering degree at the University of Illinois. Fellowship at World Vision on a 1000 dollar a month stipend after turning down a corporate engineering path. Inside World Vision, Jonathan Lo accidentally became a marketer, growing the Facebook audience to over a million followers, launching the first mobile-optimized site and lifting mobile acquisitions by 50 percent, and managing multi-million dollar paid media. Jonathan Lo translates that nonprofit-trained discipline into a single insight Utah founders need to internalize, if you can sell nothing to somebody, you can sell something to anybody.
Jonathan Lo and Peter Anthony then unpack the Value, Price, Cost framework and the five-stage customer journey at the center of the book. The stages are unawareness to awareness, consideration, purchase, repeat, and advocate, and each transition requires a different job to be done from the brand. Inspiration to capture attention. Confidence to build trust. Ease to drive action. Satisfaction to create delight. Purpose to spark evangelism. Peter Anthony reinforces the discipline with a stat that should sit on every Utah founder's desk. Eighty percent of what an owner does is marketing, and roughly 85 percent of owners have never read a single marketing book. Find Jonathan Lo at saltfoundrystrategy.com, on LinkedIn, and at jonathankalo.com. Utah Business Spotlight is produced by INCubator Marketing Agency and filmed in Sandy, Utah.
Key Moments
00:00 The KPI Most Businesses Ignore · 00:27 Peter Anthony Welcomes Jonathan Lo · 01:13 Salt Foundry, LinkedIn, And Knowing Your Lane · 01:55 The Book Built Around Customer Interest · 02:41 Why Empathy Marketing Became Keeping People Interested · 04:20 What Makes A Book Title Actually Work · 05:23 Where Founders Can Connect With Jonathan Lo · 06:21 Strategic Frameworks And Better Marketing Thinking · 07:11 From Engineering To Global Poverty Work · 09:10 Learning Marketing Through Real-Time Feedback · 10:12 Why Nonprofit Marketing Changes How You Sell · 11:31 The Meaning Behind Keeping People Interested
Notable Quotes
"To keep people interested, you have to be interested in them." — undefined
"You cannot just obsess over your 2 to 3 percent conversion rate." — undefined
"A powerful brand means someone will choose you even if your product is inferior to someone else's." — undefined
"Sales solves everything. If you can capture interest, that solves everything." — undefined
Frequently Asked Questions
Who is Jonathan Lo?
Jonathan Lo is the CEO of Salt Foundry, a Utah fractional CMO practice, and the author of Keeping People Interested, The Only KPI That Really Matters. Jonathan Lo holds an electrical engineering degree from the University of Illinois and built his marketing career at World Vision, growing organic and paid programs that reached millions before launching Salt Foundry.
What is Salt Foundry?
Salt Foundry is Jonathan Lo's Utah-based fractional CMO firm. Salt Foundry serves founders, owners, and growth-stage CEOs as an embedded marketing leader, building positioning, messaging, customer journey strategy, and full-funnel programs across B2B and consumer brands. Find Salt Foundry at saltfoundrystrategy.com.
What is the book Keeping People Interested about?
Keeping People Interested, The Only KPI That Really Matters is Jonathan Lo's book on empathy marketing, the value-price-cost framework, and a five-stage customer journey that maps the job to be done at every transition from unawareness to advocate. The book is built for founders and CEOs, not just marketers, and is available in paperback and Kindle on Amazon.
What is the jobs-to-be-done framework Jonathan Lo teaches?
Jonathan Lo frames jobs-to-be-done as the actual outcome a customer is trying to achieve, not the surface product. A customer is not buying a kitchen knife, they are buying the ability to prepare a healthy meal for their family quickly. Mapping the real job at each stage of the journey is how Utah founders build positioning that earns attention and converts.
Where can Utah founders connect with Jonathan Lo?
Jonathan Lo is most active on LinkedIn, where he personally responds to every Utah-based message and is often open to a coffee. You can also find Jonathan Lo at saltfoundrystrategy.com for Salt Foundry, and at jonathankalo.com for the book, strategic frameworks, decision tools, and mental models.
About INCubator Marketing Agency
INCubator Marketing Agency is Utah's first AI-integrated marketing infrastructure team, headquartered in Sandy, Utah and serving small businesses, founders, and operators across Utah County, Salt Lake County, and the wider Wasatch Front.
Every engagement is built around the INCubator Method: seven core marketing systems — authority web design, local SEO, CRM and pipeline, marketing automation, AI voice receptionists, video content, and conversion-focused funnels — installed together as one accountable infrastructure so every dollar compounds month over month.
The agency was founded by Peter Anthony Wynn (Founder & Marketing Strategist) with Marc Olsen (Partner & Automation Expert) and Chelsie Wynn. INCubator operates Utah Business Spotlight, a long-form Utah small business podcast filmed at Bad Bet Productions in Sandy, Utah, and hosts Tuesday Night at the INCubator — a weekly marketing training and networking event for Utah business owners.
Contact: team@incubatormarketingagency.com · +1 385-386-6988 · Office hours Monday through Friday, 9 AM to 5 PM Mountain Time.