We Didn't Stumble Into This.
We Spent 25 Years In The Trenches Figuring Out What Works.
Listen. David and Carolyn Matthies founded FreshThink in 2002. But the real story? They spent the next two decades inside different companies, quietly solving the exact same brutal marketing problems from opposite sides. Then, they brought it all together.
In Our Own Words.
I've spent my life chasing ideas. The worthwhile ones all seem to lead back to the same place: discover what's true, build something useful, and leave people better than you found them.
DAVID MATTHIES, CEO & Co-Founder
The best business doesn't always win. The one people notice first does. I've spent my career finding what's missing before anyone else sees it and building it, so the businesses doing it right finally get the attention they've earned.
CAROLYN MATTHIES, President & Co-Founder
We Are a Husband-and-Wife Practice.
That Was Always the Point.
Here's the truth: We are David and Carolyn Matthies. Married for over two decades. Working together almost as long. FreshThink isn't our first rodeo. It's the third company we've built together—and the one we've been preparing for our entire careers.
Why a husband-and-wife team? Because it guarantees the one thing most agencies can never promise: someone who is genuinely invested in your business is always accountable. We aren't doing everything by hand. We use best-in-class technology and an AI workforce we've spent years testing. But our judgment sits behind every single account. You get high-caliber results at scale, without ever losing the personal thread.
Let me be blunt: You don't get handed off to some junior account manager who's learning on your dime. You get the founders' judgment, backed by infrastructure that runs 24/7.
David is CEO & Co-founder—the systems thinker and technologist who has spent decades studying direct response marketing, driving FreshThink's technology and sales. Carolyn is President & Co-founder—the strategist behind FreshThink's structure, processes, operations, and client experience. Marketing ideation and new innovations are where they overlap. And that overlap is entirely by design.
David Has Been Building Online Systems Since Before There Was an Online to Build On.
Picture this: It's 1995. David is a doctoral student in conducting at Michigan State. He starts building websites from his desktop and selling them to small businesses. Ecommerce? It didn't exist. He took payments by check via fax because there was literally no other way. He taught himself everything, because there was no one else to learn from.
He ran the web business while finishing his doctorate. He joined Westminster Choir College as faculty. Then he met Carolyn. When she got an offer to leave Bell Labs for a Silicon Valley startup, he didn't hesitate. He resigned, and they moved to California.
That's when he shifted into high gear. He evolved into an innovative software developer and spent the next two decades studying under the absolute best practitioners of direct response and internet marketing.
Here is the golden rule he discovered: Your business is a system. Nothing else. That single, powerful principle drives every FreshThink engagement today.
The proof? In 2001, David built EmpowerMeOnline—the very first commercial digital learning platform for Brian Tracy's content. The result? Hundreds of paying members and over 100,000 email subscribers.
But the real secret goes back further than the websites. David trained as an orchestral and choral conductor, studying with legends like Helmuth Rilling and Joseph Flummerfelt, and guest conducting major symphonies.
Think about it: A conductor never plays a single note. A conductor builds the exact conditions where forty different musicians produce one perfect sound, on time, every time. Building a marketing system is the exact same job. You don't do the work yourself—you engineer the conditions so every part fires perfectly without you standing over it. Different orchestra. Same discipline.
Carolyn Builds the Infrastructure Other People Don't Know Is Missing Yet.
Carolyn has spent over 20 years in the rooms where new technology collides with business—long before anyone writes the playbook. Voice-over-IP. Intelligent databases. Enterprise streaming video. AI. She doesn't show up after a disruption is proven. She's in the room when it's still a massive gamble.
Here is her pattern: She gets dropped into a brand-new role. But instead of just doing the job as written, she hunts down every hidden hole. The broken processes nobody owns. The departments that refuse to talk to each other. She takes it all on, builds it right, and makes sure it's built to last.
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AT&T: Catapulted through the ranks in five years, helped launch their first VoIP product, and fought to earn marketing a standing seat at the Bell Labs engineering table.
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Experian & CoreLogic: Co-authored a patent for an intelligent database system years ahead of the industry. Later, she turned a chaotic revenue line into two Kennedy Excellence Awards in just six months.
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The Arcview Group: When COVID hit, she threw out the playbook and stood up the cannabis industry's first major webinar platform from scratch, reaching over 60,000 participants.
None of this came from a job description. It came from a relentless habit: Walk into a company. Dominate the core role. Find what's broken. Fix it. Overdeliver. Leave the place better than you found it. These aren't slogans. They are core tenets.
And she didn't jump on AI because it was a trendy buzzword. She arrived the way she arrives at everything: early, with the system already half-built in her head.
Two Disciplines. One Unstoppable Think Tank.
The Technologist
David builds the systems, wires the integrations, and wrestles the code. He has a relentless, almost obsessive pursuit to solve technical nightmares and smash through hurdles. When he locks onto a vision, absolutely nothing stops him.
The Strategist
Carolyn is the mastermind of structure and process. She builds the operations, the finance, the client experience, and the brand integrity. She clears the path so what David builds can actually scale without exploding.
Where do they overlap? Marketing and raw innovation. That's the shared think tank. Over two decades of corporate-scale pattern recognition combined with elite technical execution. It shapes exactly what gets built next.
But here is the one trait they both share: If they don't know something, they figure it out. Period. Whatever it takes to get the mission done. David attacks the technical unknown. Carolyn slashes through the red tape. Neither one waits for permission to start.
Put these two together, and you get what normally takes a half-dozen expensive executives to cover. A technologist who ships without flinching. A strategist who builds the structure so it scales without breaking.
Listen closely: One without the other is useless. A brilliant machine with no business to carry it is a toy. A well-run business with no engine is a dinosaur. That is exactly why FreshThink is a two-founder practice.
Built to Scale Without Losing the Personal Thread.
We didn't build FreshThink to hand-hold one client at a time forever. And we absolutely didn't build it to become a generic call center. We ruthlessly tested platforms until we found the ones we trust. Then we built the tech and the teams to run them. That is how we support clients 24/7 without the quality falling off a cliff.
This answers the big question every smart buyer asks: What happens if one of you is out? We are an AI company. Our custom AI workforce covers client needs around the clock. The processes are bulletproof. No single person's availability will ever be your problem.
But make no mistake—none of this changes how we feel about the work. We treat your business like it's our own. That's not a cute tagline. It's the reason our technology exists: so the caring part of this job never gets crushed by the growing part. We want to work with driven people who want to dominate their industry. We'd rather go deep with a few of those companies than spread ourselves thin with a hundred mediocre ones.
We've Built Marketing Inside Companies From Startup to $126 Billion.
A $20M company isn't a stretch for us. It's the exact playground we've spent our careers operating in, on both ends.
| Company | Scale |
|---|---|
| AT&T / Lucent Technologies | $126B (Carolyn personally owned a $1M budget just for the VoIP product launch) |
| Experian | $8.4B |
| Coldwell Banker | $6B |
| CoreLogic | $2B |
| Hummert International | $30M (current FreshThink client, family-owned since 1936) |
| The Arcview Group | $4M |
| MyJane | $1.5M, early-stage startup |
We have run marketing and operations at every single point on that scale. From a hungry startup finding its first customers, to a $126B enterprise launching a product across an entire industry. Wherever your business sits today, we've already built for it.
In Their Own Words.
On Carolyn's Work
Carolyn began at MyJane in a new role, pulling together and leading all Marketing initiatives. She soon became my right hand... probably the most incredibly organized, productive and creative leader I have had the pleasure to work with.
KIMBERLY KOVACS
President, The Arcview Group
When Carolyn took over at Experian her challenges were too numerous to list... to her great credit not only did she overcome those obstacles, she spearheaded one of the most innovative campaigns ever created in the B2B world.
TRENT CANNON
General Manager, Stratum Data
Carolyn is a strategic genius. Rarely have I met an individual who thinks creatively and strategically and executes go-to-market plans as effectively and efficiently as Carolyn.
LISA MANYON
Marketing Strategist, Writer, and Speaker
Carolyn brought a thoughtful, creative, and highly dedicated approach to our project. She truly overdelivered in the depth of her work, the care she took to understand our business, and the quality of what she produced for Hummert. Her passion for her work was evident throughout, and she became a trusted guide and sounding board, like a marketing coach to us as much as a consultant. We are grateful for the partnership, the momentum she helped create, and the strong foundation her work has given us to build on. I would welcome the opportunity to work together again down the road.
JULIE HUMMERT
CEO, Hummert International (founded 1936)
On David's Work
We use David for our web design, AI automation, sales and marketing platforms, and AI answering services... They have added tens of thousands of dollars to our bottom line.
BRYAN WAYNE GEER
Business Owner
David's ability to execute and deliver is second to none. On top of that, his work ethic is superior. I wish I had ten more like him. He's the kind of partner every business needs in their corner.
JOHN COSTIGAN
Transformational Sales Trainer
David is a rare combination. He gets marketing, can make things beautiful, is on top of the latest technology, speaks everyday language, and is trustworthy.
CHRIS GOEGAN
Business Growth Strategist
David Matthies has enormous musicality and technical skill that he uses to communicate with integrity, honesty and great passion.
HELMUTH RILLING
Founder and Director, Internationalen Bachakademie Stuttgart
My conductor of choice! ...He brings the orchestra to life and moves audiences like no other conductor I have ever worked with.
KATHY MATTEA
Two-time Grammy Winner
Four Things We Believe That Shape Every Engagement.
Diagnosis before prescription.
We do not propose work until we have looked at the business and seen what is leaking.
The Profit Gap IQ Report is the diagnosis. Everything downstream of it is the prescription.
Truth even when it stings.
If your website is not doing the job, we say so. If we do not think we are the right fit, we say that too. The cost of false comfort is much higher than the cost of an uncomfortable conversation.
Build the machine, then stay with it.
Most agencies build, hand off, and disappear. We build the machine and stay with it. Refining. Updating. Keeping it sharp as the world around it changes.
Depth over breadth.
We do not work with everyone. We work with serious business owners who already have a real business and want a real marketing system installed.