About Us
Influence is the elusive superpower many businesses seek but never find.
With the right kind of influence, you can get people to see your business in a positive light grow to appreciate you become your customer and develop a lasting, mutually beneficial relationship. Many have the germ of the idea..but it isn’t complete.
Here, we create unique systems of influence—veritable engines that leverage powerful messaging technologies and processes to drive your business’s most desired outcomes.
Influence
Influence is the product of the empathy that business builders and marketers like you develop with customers. Once that alignment occurs, you express it through influence—i.e., through helping them make choices about what they do and how they do it. And in return, their responses affect your choices as well.
Just as our environment influences us, we Influence our environment. It’s a soulful dance. If you can hear the music, we can help you find the graceful movements that are not only meaningful but rewarding.
How do we help you find your influence? Through a fantastic combination of consultative workshops and strategy sessions we call the Influence Generator Program.
Engines
Engines are what we call the designs + technologies that enable you to connect with people, communicate your value, influence them and turn them into ongoing customers.
Another way to look at them is as strategically built processes, self-service tools, or most commonly, combinations of the two.
At Influence Engines, we put the relentless force of influence to work for you.
Our Purpose
We feel deeply that business builders and marketers are agents of accomplishment. They help people solve problems and get things done. To do that well, they have to care deeply about the people they want to help, listen to them, understand them—empathize with them.
What many business people don’t realize—or if they realized it once, they’ve forgotten—is that the degree to which they are successful is directly related to the degree of empathy that infuses their products and services, how they do business and their brands.
The empathy that a business has with its customers is what brings it into the light. We often characterize it as the business’s soul. The more businesses that we can help bring into the light, the better the world will be for them and their customers.
Our Mission
We’ve made it our mission to find solutions to problems that businesses face in
- Communicating their value,
- Connecting meaningfully with customers and
- Developing those relationships profitably
…in an increasingly noisy and competitive market that is more often price-driven than value-driven.
Our Vision
Our vision is that the business builders and marketers we work with:
- Leave obscurity,
- Leverage the best design and technology to become one with their customers
- Profit meaningfully and
- Celebrate when they do
And it’s our unique systems of influence—what we call engines—that harness compelling content, powerful processes and applications to drive their business’ most desired outcomes.

Kevin Barnes
Founder
Helps Brands solve problems and identify opportunities for market growth and development. Experience mentoring and coaching business leaders, mid-level managers, and tacticians. Focused on helping organizations get the most out of their people, resources, and assets.
Accomplished in bringing industry-leading products to market from conception, through design, to commercial release. Strong problem solving skills with emphasis on the customer experience.
Specialties:
- Brand Development
- Marketing Strategy
- Product Management

Kevin Barnes
Co-Founder
Helps Brands solve problems and identify opportunities for market growth and development. Experience mentoring and coaching business leaders, mid-level managers, and tacticians. Focused on helping organizations get the most out of their people, resources, and assets.
Accomplished in bringing industry-leading products to market from conception, through design, to commercial release. Strong problem solving skills with emphasis on the customer experience.
Specialties:
- Brand Development
- Marketing Strategy
- Product Management
Robert Helstrom
Co-Founder
Dynamic and multi-talented marketing and product leader with ability to seamlessly integrate brand, content and data to spur top-tier revenue performance.
Record of cultivating innovative environments and promoting team-wide collaboration. Keen eye for crafting robust strategies to develop, launch, and position brands and products for top market share.
Specialties:
- Marketing Strategy and Management
- Content Marketing – strategy, creation, automation
- Product Management and Marketing – throughout lifecycle, launch campaigns, community-building
Authentic
We will represent ourselves and our intentions honestly to our coworkers and to our customers. We will be ourselves, even if that means being occasionally silly, a little less than perfect, and sometimes more than a little dorky.