Executive: Josh Churnick, Chief Marketing Officer
Company: Vertex Service Partners
Industry: Residential exterior home services (roofing-led, multi-brand platform)
Company Snapshot: A platform of regional brands supported by shared services
Format: CMO Journeys Interview
Why It Matters
Josh Churnick didn’t take a straight line into the CMO seat. His path runs through very different worlds, and it shaped a leadership style that’s both creative and deeply practical. He talks about marketing as a craft you can measure—because the customer always tells you what’s working. And for agencies, his viewpoint is refreshingly direct: he’s clear on what earns trust, what breaks it, and what a real partnership actually requires.
Their Path, in Short
Josh describes his career as “eclectic” until he found the lane that fit. Early on, he wasn’t trying to become a “home services marketing guy.” He was trying to become a better marketer—period—by learning different categories and different ways customers make decisions.
One of his earliest chapters forced him to learn the basics in a hands-on way. After high school, he built a digital platform for independent music artists. The idea was simple: give artists a place to create profiles, share show dates, and grow an audience. He partnered with Billboard magazine and worked around performance venues connected to that ecosystem. It wasn’t a neat corporate role with a neat job description. It was the messy kind of work where you learn what people care about because you have to earn attention.
From there, he moved through a mix of industries—entertainment, consumer packaged goods, restaurant groups, and insurance—building a broader sense of what makes marketing click. Over time, he noticed he was drawn to roles where the feedback loop was clear. He liked being able to set up tracking, run a campaign, and see the results plainly—“in black and white”—instead of having performance judged by taste or office politics.
That preference eventually led him into home services, where response can be direct and attribution can be tight if it’s set up correctly. For Josh, that environment made marketing feel honest. If something works, you see it. If it doesn’t, you see that too. And that’s where his voice as a leader sharpened: do the creative work, yes—but let reality decide.
Big Themes From the Conversation
Josh sees marketing as the bridge between what a company offers and what a customer needs. When marketing is great, it doesn’t just “look good.” It communicates value in a way a consumer understands and acts on.
That’s why he keeps circling back to the balance of art and science. Creative matters. Messaging matters. But he doesn’t treat creative like a mystery that can’t be tested. He talks about trying things, comparing performance, and learning through outcomes. The goal isn’t to win an internal argument about what’s best. The goal is to find what customers respond to.
A mentor’s advice helped lock in that mindset: don’t worry about what you like—worry about what works. Josh repeats that because it’s a trap he’s seen again and again. Teams fall in love with their own ideas. They chase the “cool factor.” And then they confuse their preferences with the customer’s reality.
He also talks about personal growth in a way that feels honest. Earlier in his career, he admits he cared too much about how “cool” the brand seemed. Over time, that changed. Now he defines success by impact: if marketing helps the business run better, helps the teams downstream perform, and supports the people doing the work, then marketing is doing its job.
Even when he touches on technology like AI, he frames it as exactly what it is: a tool. Useful, powerful, worth exploring—but not a replacement for judgment. In his view, marketing still needs people to guide it because marketing is still aimed at people.
Watch CMO Journeys Interview
How They Choose the Right Agency Partners
When I asked Josh what makes an agency relationship work, he didn’t start with awards or big names. He started with behavior—and he didn’t point the finger only at agencies.
His philosophy is that agencies are extensions of a marketing team. That means partnership has to be real, not performative. And the first test of “real” is transparency. If an agency is expected to drive leads, then the client has to share what happens to those leads. Without that, the agency is flying blind.
Josh’s clearest example is disposition data—what happens after the lead comes in. Did the lead convert? Did it not convert? What were the common reasons? If the client withholds that information, then optimization becomes guesswork. In his view, that’s a fast way to create frustration on both sides: the agency can’t improve what it can’t see, and the client can’t get better results from a partner it refuses to equip.
He also has a sharp definition of credibility: outcomes. In home services, he says, attribution can be very clear when tracking is built correctly. That means performance can’t hide behind pretty reporting. Results show up—or they don’t. So when agencies talk about expertise, Josh listens, but he ultimately checks whether the work drives measurable impact.
That’s why he’s cautious about “category claims.” Some agencies say they know home services, but when you look closer, their experience is thin or short-lived. Josh doesn’t say agencies can’t learn. He’s saying the learning curve can be expensive if the client becomes the training ground.
At the same time, he doesn’t want partners who only know one world. Josh credits his own mixed background with giving him ideas he can apply in new places. He values a partner with range—someone who can bring in outside lessons without losing respect for the category’s realities.
But range alone isn’t enough. He’s wary of agencies that feel “all over the place,” because they may not understand the mechanics that matter in a performance-heavy environment. The best partners, in his telling, combine real proof with real curiosity: they show they understand the category, and they show they’re still learning.
Then there’s the part agencies sometimes forget: the company still owns the deepest business knowledge. Josh puts it plainly—no agency knows a company’s business as well as the company does. That’s not an insult. It’s a reminder of roles. The strongest agencies collaborate. They ask the right questions. They build a rhythm where information flows both ways. They don’t act like the hero arriving to “fix” the client. They act like a partner who wants to get smarter with the client.
In other words, Josh isn’t looking for a vendor. He’s looking for a relationship built on shared truth—data, feedback, and the willingness to adjust when reality disagrees with the plan.
What Stood Out
The most revealing part of Josh’s story is how his definition of success matured. He openly describes moving away from the “cool factor” and toward something more grounded: impact. Marketing, to him, isn’t a highlight reel. It’s a system that supports a business and the people inside it.
That shift says a lot about his leadership. He doesn’t romanticize the job. He respects it. And he wants partners—especially agencies—who respect it the same way.
Inside Scoop
This article focuses on the journey, the leadership philosophy, and how this CMO works with agency partners.
To access the exclusive analysis, including priorities, initiatives, and opportunities, become a NextBigWin Pro member.
