VP Growth @mengotomars | Prev VP Digital Keranique | Key Marketing Exec in 2x Successful DTC Private Equity Exits | Obsessed with DTC, CPG & asymmetric bets

Joined June 2013
BIG NEWS → I am the VP of Growth at Mars Men. I joined Mars 10 months ago in January and I have been so immersed in my work I had yet to post this. My dream in life is to be one of the absolute best in the world at this work and Mars Men has given me a home to let my incredible passion, endless curiosity, and relentless drive to win thrive. What has guided me throughout my career is finding great mentors to learn from — @dennisyu ($1 billion spent on Meta), Thomas Shipley & Drew Surwilo (Brand Founders with $2 billion in Ecom Revenue), @BrettCurry (Founder of OMG Commerce), and now I’m so deeply excited to learn from @itmebenjamin @zachmstuck and the entire world-class team at Mars Men. Prior to Mars Men I was Vice President of Digital Marketing for a group of brands, where I was key leader through 2 successful Private Equity exits over 6 years. It was one of the most incredible journeys of my life. What excites me most about Mars Men is getting to work with Zach & Benjamin and the amazing team they have put together. Next stop, Mars. 🚀
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If you’re a major platform serving e-commerce brands, you need to offer an MCP. It’s an absolute must-have for brands that move fast, and for the growth marketers driving performance.
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One of my mentors founded brands and grew them to do over two billion in lifetime sales by focusing on building incredible products, telling customer stories and investing serious dollars behind collecting customers stories to run in ad creative, and a huge amount of offer testing I resonate a lot with this post: there is so much contradictory information online and at the end of the day the core fundamentals are so insanely important
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.
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Daniel Wallock retweeted
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.
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The same goes for CMOs and VP-level executives who may have equity, profit-sharing, and other financial interests linked to their ability to attract Top Tier Talent to their team. A personal brand can be a massive advantage in your ability to recruit.
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
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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
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"Wind extinguishes a candle and energizes fire. Likewise with randomness, uncertainty, chaos: you want to use them, not hide from them. You want to be the fire and wish for the wind." - Nassim Taleb
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"Hydra, in Greek mythology, is a serpent-like creature that dwells in the lake of Lerna... Each time one is cut off, two grow back. So harm is what it likes. Hydra represents antifragility." - Nassim Taleb
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Fascinating interview
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.
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➡️ How to Win in DTC 🔥 Build a team that pushes incredibly hard 💰 Go after products with massive TAM ✅ Deliver absurd value to your customers 💭 Ask really deep questions on WHY things work 📈 Always be learning → learn as much as possible, as fast as possible 📊 Massively raise your standards → if you want exceptional results, you need exceptionally high standards 🎉 Connect with other brilliant operators to learn, grow, and help each other win
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My expectations for myself are extraordinarily high. They are extraordinarily high because I know what I am capable of and to me working, growing, learning, pushing to solve hard and complex challenges is incredibly exciting.
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Daniel Wallock retweeted
When asked for the secret to success, I think the most underrated and overlooked strategy is trying really really really hard for a very very long time. Works for everyone I know who’s done it.
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I am starting to think this as well. The core reasoning is the performance marketers ability to faster understand and translate creative performance data to creative strategists. Performance marketers are deep in seeing what is driving performance across the ad accounts and can be much faster to find opportunities.
Starting to think performance marketers are more important than creative strategists.
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I am a huge fan of Triple Whale, Northbeam, Haus, WorkMagic, Converge and other platforms competing with each other. It makes all the products much better.
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The compensation ask of an extraordinary growth marketing executive is so much more than most brands are expecting to pay. If you're a brand in the low-to-mid 8-figure range, hiring one of these people often means equity, profit-sharing, or both on top of salary... and because this caliber of talent is sophisticated, expect some of them to want it all formalized in a real Executive Employment Agreement upfront which takes time to negotiate. The smaller your brand is the more likely this person is not going to be excited without meaningful equity.
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
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Outside of the CEO, no role matters more to scaling an 8 or 9-figure brand than your CMO or VP of Growth. Without extreme founder-level buy-in from that person, growth gets exponentially harder.
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
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I want to compound my learnings as fast as possible. I'm extremely motivated to move quickly, because the faster I learn... the faster those new learnings help drive better results. Every conversation with another brand operator. Every media test. Every dashboard I build. I'm searching for slight edges... that help me move faster and be even more effective going forward. Every single day, I'm looking to compound how much I know.
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There's a certain set of 9-figure brands where the Paid Media Culture is to make ad account changes in a systematic way each day and operate more conservatively with intra-day budget adjustments. Then there's another set that's somewhat systematic but also acts almost manically on certain days when they're finding great performance in the auction... these brands surf budgets incredibly aggressively and are very excited to try to massively scale into opportunities for greater efficiency they find in the auction.
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Every day I want to be better than yesterday. I'm in pursuit of excellence. I want to know more. I want to build better tools. I want to be faster. I want to be endlessly learning. I want to take every action I can today to build businesses that compound in value.
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