What it looks like to be a great Executive in DTC brands is not talked about enough. I've been an Executive in 2x different Private Equity exits and in successful DTC Turnarounds: As an Executive your role can be massive. You need to be able to inspire your team, agencies, partners, and affiliates. You need to be able to work with leadership to set the yearly forecast for your business unit (and each channel) and own it. I've found it helpful to have understanding of asymmetric bets. I've found it helpful to constantly be looking for opportunities where you can have small but compounding advantages: slight edges. You need to be open, interested, excited, while also being able to discern what opportunities are going to be worth putting resources into. At times your role is going to be to protect your team's time. Other times your role is going to be to create plans that are so ambitious they will tell you it's not possible. You are going to hear a ton of ideas and suggestions from the CEO, ownership, investors, board members, and agencies or ad platforms. Your role is to have enough experience, data, intuition, and maintain such a deep network of other brand executives and media buyers you keep up with that you are able to make great choices. While you are able to advocate what you see as the most optimal direction you also need to be open to sometimes the company may choose another direction to go in. Your role is to be endlessly learning and on the look out for upcoming changes with Meta, Google, SaaS, regulation, and the entire DTC space. At times your role will be to represent your area of the business to bankers, potential investors, or buyers. While you may know your business deeper than anyone… you need to understand how to focus on what matters. You need to know how to make the complex simple. These Executive roles can be incredibly dynamic, highly cross-functional, and require exceptional people skills. My belief is these roles can be so much larger than any job description gives them credit for. They can take an exceptional balance of skills.

So much contradictory bs on here. As someone that’s built a portfolio of brands that will do over $200m this year…here’s the playbook: Make good ads that educate and entertain. Test new offers to unlock performance. Treat retention like growth, hack it. Make great products.

One of the most significant reasons to build a personal brand is it helps you recruit absolutely top-tier talent If I ran a brand or an agency, I would do everything I could to build a personal brand... specifically to help with recruiting → 🔥 Top talent can be incredibly selective with the opportunities they choose to work on ✅ Your posts signal exactly how you think, lead, and operate... which attracts the right people who already share your values 📈 Instead of pitching talent outbound, top performers start coming to you inbound, already excited to work with you

My conversation with @PeterRahal, one of the best CPG founders on the planet. 0:00 Life after selling RXBAR for $600 million 7:29 Going all in and burning the boats 11:48 Building the most important food company of the 21st century 13:49 How a brand is like a human being 21:07 Why Peter always chooses the hard path 28:17 From zero to $300 million in two years 29:59 Why Peter started selling frozen cod 32:51 The organization is the product 36:56 Why he recruits former founders 41:15 Buying his supplier and victimizing his competitors 51:56 How Neil Mehta and Greenoaks earned a spot on the cap table 55:47 How Peter fundraises 1:00:31 Running a business is like a river 1:04:16 Why the company is named Medici 1:06:28 Bureaucracy is not inevitable 1:11:48 Why Peter has 25 direct reports 1:16:06 Peter's principle of reactionary leadership support 1:17:45 On divine discontent and loving the fight Includes paid partnerships.

Starting to think performance marketers are more important than creative strategists.

I’ve heard a lot of CMO offers in my time that were like “hey wanna make me and my family generational wealth and if it all goes according to plan I’ll give you $275k? I’ll also text you 24/7 with my uneducated performance concerns” Obviously, those kinda offers don't wanna make someone obsess about your business in the way that they need to in order to be a great CMO. (and this isn't a dig at any of my past employers, ovbiously I didn't take any offers that sounded like that^) So now that I've quit CMO life, here's my unbiased advice for founders who want to lock down good marketing talent: 1. Pay them so much they never think about money 2. Create a clear path towards them getting wealthy by working for you and hitting certain goals, in writing, and review it with them compared to actual business performance twice a year. 3. Listen to them when they tell you what they want and what motivates them. Not everyone's the same, ask them what they need to be happy & locked in to growing your brand in the short- and long-term. 4. Stop acting like you're not on the same team. It should never be You vs Them. It should be You Both vs The World. 5. Deliver on every single thing you promise them. Or, you won't retain good marketing talent for long

I have never seen a brand with a "fractional CMO" grow for a full year hardest role in the whole org. cant be part time, cant even be full time. needs to be founder level of bought in