Jesse Heslinga
Growth engineer  ·  Paid acquisition  ·  Based in Finland, remote or onsite

I'm a marketer who builds.

Nine years in marketing and 75+ ad accounts of paid acquisition. Over the past year I built my own business operating system with Claude Code, with no coding background. It runs my company every day, and one person now covers work that would normally take a team.

Watch the 3-minute demo jesse@groovemedia.io LinkedIn
Mission Control  /  walkthrough

Mission Control, running live

Three minutes through the system: clients, tasks, the ad account auditor, the AI agents. Recording goes here.

Built solo with Claude Code  ·  no coding background 3 min walkthrough
What I built

Four systems that do work I used to do by hand.

All of it started as a problem in my own business that nobody had time to fix. That's usually where the useful builds are.

  • Mission Control

    Clients, tasks, documents, calendar and an AI chief of staff that can read and act on all of it. One app, replacing the six tools I was paying for.

    Local-first  ·  React + SQLite  ·  built solo

  • Google Ads auditor

    25 rules that check every account for the mistakes that quietly cost money. Wasted spend, broken tracking, budget capped campaigns, conversion actions counting the wrong thing.

    25 checks  ·  every client  ·  read-only

  • Content engine

    Drafts blog posts and LinkedIn posts trained on what I've actually written, researches the topic first, and publishes straight to the site as a draft.

    Voice-trained  ·  publishes to CMS

  • Alerting

    Watches every ad account hourly and pings Slack the moment something breaks. A second one does the same for client email, so nothing sits unanswered.

    Hourly  ·  Slack  ·  rules, no guessing
Case studies

Two accounts, start to finish.

The short version is on the card. Open one for what the account looked like, what I changed, and what it did.

Hairtec  ·  Hair clinic
+92%

Monthly revenue from €250k to €480k, with CPA up 13%.

Nearly double the revenue over two years, for €10 more per lead. They came to me in 2024, after five other agencies.

CPA€75 → €85
Booked out4 months
AppyBee  ·  Gym software, SaaS
576%

Return on ad spend and fees by October 2024.

Lead volume was only half of it. The positioning was attracting personal trainers when the business needed large gyms.

Period2024 → now
MarketsExpanding since 2025
Experience

75+ accounts, five verticals, nine years.

Marketing since 2012, with two years producing music in between. Clinics, home services, legal firms, SaaS and B2B. Direct work only, no account managers in between.

Ads that underperform usually have a cause upstream of the campaign. The offer is weak, the targeting is off, or the tracking is reporting something that isn't true. The campaign is where you notice it. So I look there first, before anyone touches a bid.

  1. 2021 → now

    Groove Media Founder, Helsinki

    • Run paid acquisition for clients across clinics, home services, legal, SaaS and B2B. Strategy and execution both, no handoff.
    • Own the full funnel: offer, targeting, landing pages, campaigns, tracking and reporting.
    • Built the entire internal operating system with Claude Code, with no coding background. Client and task management, an AI content engine, a 25 check Google Ads auditor, and alerting that catches account problems before they show up in results.
  2. 2018 → 2020

    SMP Amsterdam Audio Producer

    • Wrote and produced music for television, film and commercials. Worked on the feature film Verliefd op Cuba, which sold over 400,000 tickets in Dutch cinemas and went platinum.
    • Started out self-taught, producing on the side. SMP offered me a full time job.
  3. 2015 → 2018

    MyMobia Online Marketer, Amsterdam

    • Part of a small team building and running online marketing campaigns. Owned the quality and performance of the campaigns.
    • The link between the clients and the creative team.
  4. 2012 → 2013

    Muziekgebouw aan 't IJ Marketing Intern, Amsterdam

    • Six months in the marketing department. Newsletters, advertisements, and content for the website and social channels.
Education and courses
  • 2026 PPC Mastery PPC Hub
  • 2020 Customer Acquisition Specialist CXL Institute
  • 2020 Online Marketing Liftoff Marketing
  • 2013 BA Media, Information and Communication Amsterdam University of Applied Sciences
What I want next

A growth role where building is part of the job.

  • A growth team that wants to try things, and uses AI further than pasting prompts into ChatGPT.
  • Fully remote, or on site in Finland. Europe or US East for the timezone.
  • An open place to work, where an entrepreneurial and self-starting mindset is welcome.
  • A product or service I can get behind. Climate tech or anything eco-friendly is a plus.
  • Room to still be out of my depth in three years.
Jesse Heslinga
If employing in Finland is the blocker: I run Groove Media, a registered company, so contracting through it is an option. Same work, no EOR setup on your side.
Get in touch
jesse@groovemedia.io
LinkedIn
Hairtec  ·  Hair clinic  ·  2024 → now

Monthly revenue from €250k to €480k, with CPA up 13%.

Monthly revenue€250k → €480k+92% over two years
CPA€75 → €85+13% over the same period
Booked out4 monthsFully booked, in advance
The account when I took it over

Hairtec asked me to take over their Google Ads in the summer of 2024. They had been through five other agencies by then and none of the results had stuck.

The problems were visible in the first hour. Campaign structure was outdated and split across multiple accounts, there was no server side tracking, the landing pages were not built to convert, and the social campaigns were optimised for reach instead of leads.

What I changed
  • Server side tracking first, so the account stopped losing data. With Google Ads, input equals output. The better the data going back to the platform, the better the bidding gets.
  • Consolidated the structure. Several accounts and scattered campaigns became one account with enough volume for smart bidding to actually learn.
  • Added a Performance Max campaign fed with offline conversion data. Performance Max is risky in lead gen, but feeding it real closed leads means it bids for quality instead of the cheapest form fill.
  • Rebuilt the landing pages, ran the social campaigns for conversions rather than reach, and added top of funnel work for brand recognition. Most of the wins are made outside the ads platform.
What it did

Monthly revenue went from €250k to €480k over two years. Cost per lead moved from €75 to €85 across the same period, so 92% more revenue cost €10 more per lead.

They are fully booked four months in advance. Demand went far enough past capacity that they raised prices by 35%, and they are now looking at how to expand to deliver it. We are still working together in 2026.

We have been working together for six months and have seen more effective Google and social media engagement, with a 20% saving on our advertising budget. Jesse is thorough and methodical. This has resulted in a much stronger foundation than before, after previous collaborations with more than five companies. Thanks to his approach we finally have complete peace of mind, which gives us the time to focus on our core processes.

Cengiz, Managing Director of Hairtec
AppyBee  ·  Gym software, SaaS  ·  2024 → now

576% return on ad spend and fees by October 2024.

ROI576%By October 2024, covering ad spend and fees
Who the ads pulled inGyms, not PTsThe buyer the business actually needed
MarketsExpandingInto new countries since late 2025
The account when I took it over

Jan, the CEO, was running all of the marketing himself, without a clear strategy, consistent messaging, or a defined position in a crowded market. The brief was a predictable lead flow.

Underneath the volume problem was a targeting one. The positioning was attracting personal trainers, and the business needed large gyms with a lot of members.

What I changed
  • Worked with SaaS branding and positioning specialists to sharpen who AppyBee is for, so the ads stopped pulling in the wrong buyer. Fixing that upstream was worth more than any bid adjustment.
  • Server side tracking, for the same reason as always. Input equals output.
  • Consolidated search campaigns aimed at the highest intent keywords, with a Meta remarketing layer behind them.
What it did

576% ROI by October 2024, covering both the ad spend and the fees. Since the end of 2025 we have been expanding into other countries.

Groove Media has been an absolute pleasure to work with, and we continue to rely on their expertise. The deep understanding of digital media shines through in the high quality work they consistently deliver. Responsive, professional, and always going above and beyond to ensure client satisfaction.

Jan, CEO of AppyBee