The Built To Scale Podcast

An empty restaurant kills your conversion rate, however good the menu looks. Jason Fishman has run digital campaigns behind more than 500 capital raises, and his playbook is pure performance marketing: get the crowd in first, and the rest follows.

Jason’s world is selling investments, not products. But the funnel mechanics, the creative testing and the attribution problems will be familiar to anyone running DTC. We break down how he takes people from a Meta ad to a four-figure investment, why live webinars work like Apple launch events, and why chasing ROAS can quietly kill a campaign that would have scaled.

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What you’ll learn:

• How to build an Eight Point Plan before you spend a dollar on media, and why only the top 10% of issuers raise well
• Why Meta still outperforms other channels for accredited investors with $250K minimums
• The ROAS math behind investment campaigns: $1 to $2 CPCs, 1% conversion and a $1,716 average check
• The 30-minute competitor audit Jason runs every Monday: KingsCrowd, SimilarWeb, SpyFu, Meta Ads Library and Milled
• How to turn a webinar into a launch event that raises $1.7M in 24 hours, and why live beats recorded

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About Jason Fishman:
Jason is CEO and co-founder of Digital Niche Agency (DNA), a growth marketing firm based in Marina Del Rey, Los Angeles. His team has worked on more than 500 capital raises across Reg D, Reg CF and Reg A+, which together brought in hundreds of millions of dollars, all through digital channels. His first campaign raised over $2.83M on less than $50K in ad spend. He writes for the Forbes Agency Council and hosts the Test Optimize Scale podcast.

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Key moments:

• 02:57 How a growth agency ended up specializing in capital raises
• 07:27 The Eight Point Plan, and why Meta works for high net worth investors
• 11:19 Why it takes 7 to 17 touch points, and sometimes 43
• 14:35 How ROAS works when people are buying equity instead of products
• 26:27 The flying skateboard: how social proof changes buying behavior at each funding level
• 33:50 Webinars as Apple-style keynote events
• 40:36 Rapid fire: ChatGPT ads, the overrated metric, and the channels to use after Meta

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Connect with Jason Fishman:
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jafishman/
Website: https://www.digitalnicheagency.com/
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@digitalnicheagency

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About The Built To Scale Podcast:

Follow us on LinkedIn at: https://www.linkedin.com/company/built-to-scale-agency/
Follow us on Instagram at: https://www.instagram.com/thebuilttoscalepodcast/
For more information about Built To Scale visit: https://www.builttoscale.co/
If you have any questions, suggestions, or ideas for a future episode, please email podcast@builttoscale.co.

Most ecom founders stuck in seven or low eight figures think they need more traffic. Thomas McMahon says they're earning exactly the traffic they deserve, and the real blocker is something breaking inside the business.

Thomas spent years in business development at ClickBank and now runs Happy Scaling, an advisory firm for founder led ecom and direct response brands. We get into why the hustle that adds six or seven figures is often what keeps you from adding eight or nine, what the chargeback curve reveals about your funnel, and why direct response brands that never build a brand will struggle to exit.

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What you'll learn:
- Why conversion rate operations matters more than conversion rate optimization
- How to read refund and chargeback spikes to find the exact friction point in your customer journey
- Why "we learned a lot" is a crutch, and what execution actually looks like
- How to judge a new ad channel by budget, not just time, and why native fails when you treat it like Meta
- Why pure DR brands are hard to sell, and how "brand response" builds a business buyers want
- The signal that you've outgrown running your own business day to day

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About Thomas McMahon:
Thomas is the co-founder and Managing Partner of Happy Scaling, which he runs with Dominick Keenan, ClickBank's former VP of Sales. With insight into $4 billion in performance marketing and consultative high ticket selling, Thomas helps ecom founders and the vendors who serve them scale revenue, protect profits, and avoid burnout.

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Key moments:
(02:14) Vetting a business partner with 114 questions before launching Happy Scaling
(05:20) Founders don't have a traffic problem. They have an operations problem.
(10:17) Brand response vs. pure direct response
(17:58) How long should you test a new channel? Follow the money.
(21:07) Why "we learned a lot" is a crutch
(26:57) How GLP-1s and peptides blew a hole in DR supplements
(29:24) What a day 4 to 7 chargeback spike is telling you
(34:54) Who actually buys pure DR companies?
(38:28) Why DR operators resist organic, and why that's a mistake
(41:54) How Built To Scale maps ad performance by pain point and audience
(42:31) The Happy Scaling sweet spot: $5M to $50M founder led brands
(46:34) The one thing stuck founders should stop doing

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Connect with Thomas McMahon:
Website: https://happyscaling.co
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/thomasmcmahon1855/
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/happyscaling/
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/thomas.mcmahon.94695
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@happyscaling

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About The Built To Scale Podcast:
Follow us on LinkedIn at: https://www.linkedin.com/company/built-to-scale-agency/
Follow us on Instagram at: https://www.instagram.com/thebuilttoscalepodcast/
If you have any questions, suggestions, or ideas for a future episode, please email podcast@builttoscale.co.

The average email list shrinks about 22% a year, according to Nelson Aquino, and most brands are doing nothing about it. Meanwhile, they keep paying Meta and Google to reach people who already visited their website.

For episode 30, I broke the format and brought on two guests: Nelson Aquino and Paul Counts, co-owners of InboxGeek. We get into why owning your audience beats renting it, how to win back subscribers who went cold months ago, and why AI will expose lazy email marketers instead of killing the channel.

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What you'll learn:
- Why your list decays every year and how to re-engage non-openers instead of buying new subscribers
- How to send emails when each subscriber is actually active in their inbox, not when your calendar says so
- Why a once-a-month newsletter with 10 links is leaving money on the table
- How story-based emails and pattern interrupts beat "on sale" emails in a crowded inbox
- How website visitor identification turns anonymous traffic into an email list you own

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About Nelson Aquino and Paul Counts:
Nelson spent 27 years in international marketing and sales at billion dollar footwear and apparel companies before leaving corporate to work with small and mid-sized businesses. Paul has been doing email marketing since 1998, when he was sending emails from a Hotmail account as a teenager. Together they bought InboxGeek, a platform that sends emails when subscribers are live in their inbox and helps brands capture their website visitors.

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Key moments:
(08:48) What InboxGeek actually does, and how it wins back cold subscribers
(11:09) Why your list quietly shrinks every year
(18:33) Why you're not emailing too much
(25:11) Pattern interrupts, open loops, and the power of empty preview text
(30:35) Is it legal? CAN-SPAM, terms of service, and where it doesn't work
(38:26) How Live Opens handles Apple Mail Privacy Protection
(44:56) Why "smart sending" isn't that smart
(47:01) AI and email: when the tide goes out, you see who's swimming naked
(1:00:05) Nelson's prediction: an email resurgence in 2027

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Connect with Nelson and Paul:
InboxGeek: https://www.inboxgeek.com
InboxGeek on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/inboxgeek/

Nelson on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/nelsonhaquino/

Paul on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/paulcounts/
Paul on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@ThePaulCounts
Paul on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/pauljcounts/
Paul on X: https://x.com/paulcounts

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About The Built To Scale Podcast:
Follow us on LinkedIn at: https://www.linkedin.com/company/built-to-scale-agency/
Follow us on Instagram at: https://www.instagram.com/thebuilttoscalepodcast/
If you have any questions, suggestions, or ideas for a future episode, please email podcast@builttoscale.co.

One tweak. $60,000. In two days. Rob Schwartz, VP of Partnerships and Strategic Initiatives at ClickFunnels, breaks down the upsell most funnel builders skip, why your first funnel should be ugly, and where AI voice agents actually make money (hint: it's not closing).

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What you'll learn:

• How a $47 VIP upsell before a webinar hit a 30 to 40% take rate and turned a "capped out" audience into $60K in two days
• Why a two step funnel (lead magnet, thank you page) beats waiting for the perfect offer stack
• How content creators leave money on the table with "link in bio" dead ends, and how affiliate links fix it without building a product
• Why AI voice agents work best as a filter, and why Rob keeps leads on the phone with AI for under a minute before a human takes over
• How Rob uses Claude connected to ClickFunnels to build pages and workflows, and to analyze sales data to decide what to offer next

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About Rob Schwartz:

Rob Schwartz is VP of Partnerships and Strategic Initiatives at ClickFunnels, where the job comes down to turning signups into revenue. He spent over 15 years as a software engineer before moving to the customer side of the house. Through his firm Ozer Digital Solutions, he builds AI systems for businesses that already have customers: voice agents that answer real phone lines, follow up systems that reach every lead in seconds, and automations wired into the tools they already pay for.

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Connect with Rob Schwartz:

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/robschwartz10

Website: https://ozerdigitalsolutions.com

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Key moments:

• 02:43 - Why the best way to understand your customer is to become one
• 07:40 - Running ClickFunnels from inside Claude
• 08:27 - The missing step between your content and your revenue
• 11:14 - The affiliate link still paying Rob five years later
• 12:59 - The VIP upsell that made $60K and created more intentful buyers
• 15:26 - "I'd rather launch an ugly funnel than a perfect funnel"
• 23:29 - AI voice as a filter: why 20 to 30% of inbound calls are the right customer
• 26:05 - Five months building something non compliant, and the pivot
• 28:40 - Why AI should hand off to a human in under a minute
• 31:42 - Agents talking to agents: where AI voice goes next
• 36:08 - Imposter syndrome and the founders stuck at day one
• 42:09 - The mindset shift that breaks revenue ceilings
• 44:18 - Using Claude to analyze two months of sales and pick the next offer

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About The Built To Scale Podcast:

Follow us on LinkedIn at: https://www.linkedin.com/company/built-to-scale-agency/

Follow us on Instagram at: https://www.instagram.com/thebuilttoscalepodcast/

For more information about Built To Scale visit: https://www.builttoscale.co/

If you have any questions, suggestions, or ideas for a future episode, please email podcast@builttoscale.co.

Founders don't stall because they lack talent. They stall because they're doing everything themselves. Tim Kanter spent 10 years stuck at $275K in revenue, then built the structure that grew his agency more than 10x and got it sold. Now he embeds a full executive team inside founder-led businesses to do the same.

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What you'll learn:

• Why being able to do everything is the exact reason founders become the bottleneck
• How to hand off decisions gradually using approval thresholds, so your team stops running everything through you
• Why every owner will leave their business "by choice or by force," and how to plan the exit before it's decided for you
• What buyers actually pay for when they acquire a service business (not your contact list)
• How to get a founder to open up the books without feeling like they've lost control
• How an embedded, rev share executive team differs from traditional consulting

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About Tim Kanter:
Tim Kanter is the Founder and Chief Solutions Officer of Kanter Solutions. He has more than 30 years of business leadership experience and built an insurance agency to 20+ employees through organic growth and acquisitions before selling it at a strong multiple in 2024. Kanter Solutions now embeds a full executive suite (marketing, tech, operations, finance, HR, and leadership development) into founder-led service businesses to help them scale and prepare for a future sale, without founders giving up ownership or control.

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Key moments:

• (00:54) Selling rocks door to door at age seven
• (04:28) The common thread in every business he's helped scale
• (06:13) The "floor" concept: what founders need to stop touching
• (11:34) By choice or by force: why you need an exit plan now
• (16:45) Why he walked away from consulting
• (21:02) The day one conversation with a CEO who runs personal spending through the business
• (23:25) Getting founders to hand over financial visibility
• (30:17) Stuck at $275K after 10 years, and what changed
• (35:14) Why he isn't retiring at 49
• (37:24) The $100 million foundation goal

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Connect with Tim Kanter:
Website:https://kantersolutions.comEmail: tim@kantersolutions.com
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/timkanter/

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About The Built To Scale Podcast:

Follow us on LinkedIn at: https://www.linkedin.com/company/built-to-scale-agency/

For more information about Built To Scale visit: https://www.builttoscale.co/

If you have any questions, suggestions, or ideas for a future episode, please email podcast@builttoscale.co.

Alan Schulman has 40 plus years in advertising and marketing. He wrote TV spots for Leo Burnett, FCB, and McCann Erickson before becoming one of the first creatives to take digital seriously. He was the first Chief Creative Officer ever hired by a consulting firm in the US, building out Deloitte Digital from two studios to seven.

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🚨 Spoiler Alert:
He worked on the 2014 Super Bowl ad "God Made a Farmer" for Dodge Ram.

Now he runs Contagious Content, built around a simple idea: content has to move at the speed of the conversation happening right now, not the speed of your media plan.

In this episode Alan makes a case that surprised even Shmuel: if you don't have the budget to do brand and performance and content all at once, start at the bottom of the funnel, not the top. Earn your way up. He explains why "poetry" still beats "plumbing" in storytelling.

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What you'll learn:

• How to sequence your marketing budget when you can't afford brand, content, and performance at the same time
• What "poetry before the plumbing" means and why it matters more as AI tools multiply
• How AEO and GEO (answer engine optimization) are replacing traditional SEO as LLMs become the new search interface
• Why conversational AI UI is going to break the business model of point-and-click SaaS platforms
• The real story behind building the digital side of a Super Bowl ad, and how long that process actually took

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About Alan Schulman:

Alan Schulman is the Founder, CEO, and Chief Creative Officer of Contagious Content, a studio built around creating content at the speed of cultural conversation. He spent his career at many of the leading ad firms before becoming the first Chief Creative Officer hired by a consulting firm in the US at Deloitte Digital, where he was a founding partner.

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Key moments:

• Why Alan calls a customer journey "just a funnel laid on its side"
• The Oreo "Dunk in the Dark" example and what it means to actually be contagious
• What went into building the digital component of the 2014 Dodge Ram Super Bowl campaign
• Why Alan tells his own team "don't show me another AI dashboard"

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Connect with Alan Schulman:
Website: https://www.contagiouscontent.us/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/alanschulman/
Alan’s Channel on Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/artist/4GovOqCZQqcOzCZSPTeaG7?si=0qdOQcrERwK4TmQY6i2xUw

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About The Built To Scale Podcast:

Follow us on LinkedIn at: https://www.linkedin.com/company/built-to-scale-agency/

For more information about Built To Scale visit: https://www.builttoscale.co/

If you have any questions, suggestions, or ideas for a future episode, please email podcast@builttoscale.co.

Most business owners will plan a two week vacation with more care than they plan the sale of their business, even though 100 percent of them will exit someday. Marty Fahncke has watched that gap cost owners millions of dollars. It once cost him $23.5 million of his own money, and he's spent his career since making sure other owners don't repeat it.

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What you'll learn:

• How to run the "Bali test" to find out what your business is actually worth
• Why buying your closest competitor can grow revenue faster than any marketing campaign
• The four exits every owner has to make before they ever sell the business (front line, management, leadership, vision)
• Why chasing tax deductions can quietly cost you far more than you save at the negotiation table
• What actually separates a business that sells for 2X profit from one that sells for 10X

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About Marty Fahncke:

Marty Fahncke is a Certified Mergers and Acquisitions Advisor (CMAA) and the founder of Westbound Road, where he helps business owners prepare their companies for sale, negotiate stronger deals, and grow through acquisition instead of relying on marketing spend alone.

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Key moments:

• 03:26 The first person to ever put a URL on a TV infomercial, and why marketers thought it would end his career
• 08:47 How buying a competitor took two small companies to $30 million in sales in two years
• 17:36 The food poisoning story behind a multimillion dollar acquisition negotiation
• 34:45 The mistake that cost Marty $23.5 million, and the Harvard study on what owners lose by selling alone
• 43:31 Why saving 20 cents in taxes can cost you $5 in valuation
• 50:32 Why you don't have to be the foundation, you just need one that's strong

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Connect with Marty Fahncke:

Website: https://www.westboundroad.com
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/martyfahncke
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@westboundroad/videos

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Marty’s Recommended Reading:

Boomer Sells the Business by Frank Felker and Marty Fahncke: https://www.amazon.com/Boomer-Sells-Business-Step-Step-ebook/dp/B0FCCL29D2/

Who Not How by Dan Sullivan and Benjamin Hardy:
https://www.amazon.com/Who-Not-How-Accelerating-Teamwork/dp/B08KYKR23H

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About The Built To Scale Podcast:

Follow us on LinkedIn at: https://www.linkedin.com/company/built-to-scale-agency/

For more information about Built To Scale visit: https://www.builttoscale.co/

If you have any questions, suggestions, or ideas for a future episode, please email podcast@builttoscale.co.

Bigger ad spend does not mean bigger profit. For our 25th episode, Built To Scale founder and CEO Jeremy Gillespie sits down with Shmuel Herschberg to open the vault on how this agency actually scales brands, and it has almost nothing to do with the number on the ad account.

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What you'll learn:

• Why Jeremy's biggest early mistake wasn't a bad campaign, it was hiring before he had systems in place
• How to use the Profit Pyramid framework to decide if an offer can actually support scale before you spend a dollar on it
• Why "never be a one-legged stool" drives Built To Scale's entire channel strategy, and how Meta, Google demand gen, and YouTube each play a different role in the funnel
• The real order of operations for scaling: creative first, then conversion rate, then funnel monetization, and why skipping the order breaks accounts
• How to size a creative testing budget based on whether you have zero winners or several, and why 20% is the default starting point
• Where AI genuinely helps a media buying team, and why Jeremy still won't let it make scaling decisions on its own

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About Jeremy Gillespie:

Jeremy Gillespie is the founder and CEO of Built To Scale, a performance marketing agency built around D2C health brands. Before starting Built To Scale, he ran paid media at LinkedIn and worked with startups in San Francisco, and he's personally taken ad accounts from spending thousands of dollars per month to over a half a million dollars a month in profitable spend.

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Key moments:

• 01:41 - The origin story: how three consulting clients on the side turned into Built To Scale
• 18:03 - Creative as the tip of the spear, and why conversion rate is the next link in the chain
• 22:38 - The 20% rule for creative testing budget, and when to flex it up
• 27:18 - How AI tags creatives and builds persona matrices without taking over strategy
• 43:06 - Rapid fire questions: Jeremy answers some the hottest questions facing the industry today.

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Connect with Jeremy Gillespie:
Website: https://www.builttoscale.co/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jeremygillespie1/

X:https://www.instagram.com/mariasparagis/https://x.com/builttoscalesf

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/builttoscale.co

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About The Built To Scale Podcast:

Follow us on LinkedIn at: https://www.linkedin.com/company/built-to-scale-agency/ or Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/thebuilttoscalepodcast/

For more information about Built To Scale visit: https://www.builttoscale.co/

If you have any questions, suggestions, or ideas for a future episode, please email podcast@builttoscale.co.

Scott Rewick spent $200 a day launching a new pain relief brand and it hit $300 a day in revenue almost immediately. No 90 day break-in period. No twenty person team. Just AI agents doing the work that used to take a copywriter, designer, and engineer a month and twenty thousand dollars to produce.

Scott has 25 years in direct response, now runs http://skcommerce.ai, testing whether AI agents can build and run entire brands with a fraction of the human overhead. In this episode he lays out why he thinks mid-size DTC companies, the five million to hundred million dollar range, are getting squeezed by two or three person teams running agent stacks that never sleep.

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What you'll learn:

• How to build a working Shopify site, ad creative, and checkout flow in under an hour using AI agents
• Why the mid-size DTC company (the $5M to $100M range) is the most exposed segment in direct response right now
• What actually breaks when you let AI run unsupervised (SKU mapping mistakes, wrong data reporting, "AI slop" creative)
• How to structure a portfolio of small AI-run brands instead of betting everything on one
• Why the four-hour work week thesis is more true today than when Tim Ferriss wrote it, and what people get wrong about that
• How agents are starting to talk to other agents, and what that means for how you'll manage a business in the next few years

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Key moments:

• The $200 a day test that produced $300 a day in revenue almost immediately
• The 30-bottle checkout mistake that shipped ten times what customers ordered
• Why Scott still checks his agent's reporting every morning instead of trusting it blindly
• The plan to run ten separate five million dollar brands off one centralized agent system

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Connect with Scott Rewick:
Website: https://skcommerce.ai/

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/srewick

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/srewick/

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/rewick/

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About The Built To Scale Podcast:

Follow us on LinkedIn at: https://www.linkedin.com/company/built-to-scale-agency/

For more information about Built To Scale visit: https://www.builttoscale.co/

If you have any questions, suggestions, or ideas for a future episode, please email podcast@builttoscale.co.

Payment processing sounds boring. That's exactly why most merchants ignore it, and exactly why Maria Sparagis says it's one of the highest leverage levers in your business.

Maria has spent almost 25 years in payments and founded DirectPayNet to help high risk merchants stop losing revenue to default settings, bad decline handling, and a checkout flow nobody ever tested. In this episode she breaks down how a few overlooked toggles in your payment gateway can move conversion by 3 to 10 percent, why a decline should never be treated as a dead sale, and why relying on one payment processor is one of the riskiest things an ecommerce brand can do.

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What you'll learn:

• Why default settings on Stripe and Shopify Payments are quietly killing conversions
• How to turn a declined transaction into a recovered sale instead of a lost one
• Why every merchant needs to know their decline ratio, refund rate, and chargeback rate
• Why relying on a single payment processor puts your entire business at risk
• How AI powered chargeback alerts are starting to predict fraud before it happens
• Why testing your own checkout flow with a fresh set of eyes can expose the friction that's costing you sales

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About Maria Sparagis:
Maria Sparagis is the founder of DirectPayNet, a payment processing company built for high risk ecommerce merchants in supplements, subscriptions, travel, and more. She has nearly 25 years of experience in payments and also hosts the Click and Convert podcast, with over 600 episodes on conversion, customer service, and turning overlooked parts of the business into profit centers.

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Key moments:

• Why Stripe's default settings might be actively hurting your conversion rate
• The real cost of treating a decline as the end of the sale
• Why she recommends every serious merchant run a backup payment processor
• Her take on where AI is headed in fraud prevention and approval decisions

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Connect with Maria Sparagis:
Facebook:https://www.facebook.com/maria.sparagisLinkedIn:https://www.linkedin.com/in/mariasparagis/Instagram:https://www.instagram.com/mariasparagis/

Website: https://directpaynet.com/

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About The Built To Scale Podcast:

Follow us on LinkedIn at: https://www.linkedin.com/company/built-to-scale-agency/

For more information about Built To Scale visit: https://www.builttoscale.co/

If you have any questions, suggestions, or ideas for a future episode, please email podcast@builttoscale.co.

People love to buy. They hate being sold. Angelo Ferraro built his entire business on that one line, and this episode breaks down exactly how.

Angelo went from engineer at BMW to running the backend machine behind some of the biggest direct response funnels in ecom, nutra, and telehealth. He explains why the price tag was never really about the number, why a phone call recovers deals that email never will, and why most sellers are leaving 10 to 20 percent of their revenue sitting on the table because they think the funnel ends at checkout.

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What you'll learn:

• Why buyers make decisions on emotion first and rationalize the price second
• How to structure a funnel differently for ecom, nutra, and telehealth based on where the buyer already stands
• Why a simple abandoned cart phone call can recover around 25 percent of lost sales
• How adding a call center layer can recover 8 to 12 percent of gross monthly revenue
• Why the same product upsell alone can lift revenue by 20 to 22 percent
• Why putting a phone number on your funnel builds trust even if nobody calls it

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About Angelo Ferraro:

Angelo Ferraro is the founder of Gold Angels Agency, where he builds funnels for nutra, ecom, and telehealth brands. He is also a business developer for I Sell For You, a company specializing in abandoned cart recovery, welcome calls, and backend cross selling. He left a career as a BMW engineer after two life altering wake up calls and rebuilt himself inside the direct response world.

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Key moments:

• The two accidents that pushed Angelo out of engineering and into marketing
• Why he believes the funnel never actually ends
• The real math behind lifetime value across survival niche, nutra, and telehealth offers
• His take on AI, video editing, and why he thinks the human is still 3 years from being replaced

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Connect with Angelo Ferraro:
Facebook:https://www.facebook.com/GA.Angelo.FerraroInstagram:https://www.instagram.com/goldangelof/

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About The Built To Scale Podcast:

Follow us on LinkedIn at: https://www.linkedin.com/company/built-to-scale-agency/

For more information about Built To Scale visit: https://www.builttoscale.co/

If you have any questions, suggestions, or ideas for a future episode, please email podcast@builttoscale.co.

Most media buyers think a 1.5 ROAS is a win. Tyler Ryan has seen billions of dollars of data that says it might be a slow bleed.

Tyler is the founder of LTV Numbers, now rebranded as Data Driven OS, and he has analyzed over three billion dollars in direct response and ecommerce sales. Before any of that, he was an engineer at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, working on the team that landed the Curiosity Rover on Mars within a mile of its target. That level of precision is exactly what he brought into performance marketing, and this episode is the payoff.

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What you'll learn:

• Why a 1.5 ROAS on day one can quietly become a loss by day 60
• What the "direct response dip" is and how to spot it in your LTV curve
• Why the real decision-making window for LTV is 30 days or less (not years)
• How Joel Marion scaled BioTrust from zero to $150M by knowing one number that 99% of the room did not
• Why optimizing for AOV at the expense of the back end is the most common and most expensive mistake in direct response
• How Data Driven OS and its autonomous analyst Otto proactively surface the decisions you should be making before you even think to ask

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About Tyler Ryan:

Tyler Ryan is a UCLA physics graduate and former NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory engineer who pivoted into performance marketing and built LTV Numbers from scratch into a platform used by 100+ companies. His software has analyzed over three billion dollars in sales data across direct response, ecommerce, health and wellness, info products, and coaching businesses. He recently rebranded as Data Driven OS, focused on solving the full visibility gap, not just LTV tracking.

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Key Moments:

• 02:48 - Tyler's origin story: from NASA to entrepreneurship
• 16:21 - The Joel Marion story that created LTV Numbers
• 23:28 - ROAS vs LTV: what the front-end numbers are hiding
• 28:01 - The "direct response dip" and the "surge and grow" LTV fingerprints
• 31:25 - Why the LTV window that matters is just 30 days
• 39:28 - Why rising CPMs make LTV non-negotiable right now
• 42:56 - What startups need to design before they launch
• 44:43 - Data Driven OS and Otto, the autonomous analyst

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Connect with Tyler Ryan:

Website: https://datadrivenos.com/
Email: tyler@datadrivenos.com
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/tyler_datadriven/

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About The Built To Scale Podcast:

Follow us on LinkedIn at: https://www.linkedin.com/company/built-to-scale-agency/

For more information about Built To Scale visit: https://www.builttoscale.co/

If you have any questions, suggestions, or ideas for a future episode, please email podcast@builttoscale.co.

Most people think buying a business means signing the papers, hiring a GM, and collecting checks from the beach. David Hori bought a company that got acquired by Toyota, then decided to spend his career telling people why that hands off dream is mostly a myth.

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Join David's "Discover A Less Stressful Way To Sell Your Business" Webinar:
🚨 SPOILER ALER! David is offering listeners a free webinar for our listeners:

👉 Sign up here: https://learn.toplineops.com/pod-webinar-1/

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What you'll learn:

• Why "buy a business for passive income" is one of the most dangerous pitches in the acquisition space
• How to define your buy box so you stop chasing every deal and start closing the right ones
• Why staying in your lane, even when it feels limiting, gets you to the finish line faster
• The four pillars David uses in his durability diagnostic to determine what a business is actually worth to a buyer
• Why three years of financials tell a truer story than one great year
• The overlooked alternative to a full sale that lets an owner keep working in the business they built

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About David Hori:
David Hori is the founder of Top Line Operators, where he teaches people how to buy, stabilize, and scale existing businesses instead of starting from zero. Before this, he built and scaled startups in the VC world, including a company acquired by Toyota in 2023. He now runs a weekly webinar for business owners who are exit curious and is opening up a free beta of his durability diagnostic tool for listeners of this episode.

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Connect with David Hori:
Website:https://www.toplineops.com/LinkedIn:https://www.linkedin.com/in/iamdavidhori/Instagram:https://www.instagram.com/thedavidhori/YouTube:https://www.youtube.com/@thedavidhoriTikTok:https://www.tiktok.com/@thedavidhori

=================================

About The Built To Scale Podcast:

Follow us on LinkedIn at: https://www.linkedin.com/company/built-to-scale-agency/

For more information about Built To Scale visit: https://www.builttoscale.co/

If you have any questions, suggestions, or ideas for a future episode, please email podcast@builttoscale.co.

Did you know 81% of people want to write a book? Yet, only 3% ever finish one. Michael Giannulis built Dictate to close that gap, not by making writing easier, but by removing writing from the process entirely. You talk, an AI named Silas asks the right questions, and a book comes out the other end in your voice.

Michael spent two decades in direct response marketing before building Dictate, and this conversation covers the mechanics of the product, the legal reality of AI generated books, and the pricing and go to market strategy behind a company he thinks could become his biggest yet.

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Get Michael's Free Author Blueprint:
🚨 SPOILER ALER! Michael is offering listeners a free Author Blueprint.

👉 Grab it here: https://startdictate.com/builttoscale

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What you'll learn:

• Why the legal system won't let you copyright a book an AI mostly wrote, and how Dictate gets around it by tracking a "voice DNA" percentage before it starts writing
• How a 15 to 20 question AI interview turns into a 25 to 30 page book blueprint in under 30 minutes
• The difference between copywriting and copy thinking, and why that distinction matters more now that AI can write copy on demand
• Why a published book functions as the most effective sales page a service business can have, and how it opens doors to paid speaking

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About Michael Giannulis:
Michael Giannulis has worked in direct response marketing since 2006, building and scaling multiple companies in ecommerce and education. He is the founder of Dictate, an AI platform that turns expert knowledge into a professionally published book through conversation instead of writing.

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Key moments:

• (11:00) The $50 payment plan tweak that instantly lifted upsell conversions, and the Coke and Pepsi decoy pricing story behind it
• (17:23) Copywriting versus copy thinking, and why that edge still matters in an AI world
• (27:43) Inside the AI interview: how a 25 to 30 page book blueprint gets built in under 30 minutes, and why people cry when they see it
• (31:41) The legal reality: why you can't copyright a book an AI mostly wrote, and how Dictate's "voice DNA" tracking gets around it

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Connect with Michael Giannulis:
LinkedIn:https://www.linkedin.com/in/michaelgiannulisInstagram / X / Facebook: @mikegiannulis
Website:https://startdictate.comEmail: hello@startdictate.com

=================================

About The Built To Scale Podcast:

Follow us on LinkedIn at: https://www.linkedin.com/company/built-to-scale-agency/

For more information about Built To Scale visit: https://www.builttoscale.co/

If you have any questions, suggestions, or ideas for a future episode, please email podcast@builttoscale.co.

Most Amazon sellers who try TikTok Shop fail within 30 days. Not because they lack budget, but because they're still thinking like Amazon sellers.

Can Chan has spent over a decade building an eight figure e-commerce business, first on Amazon, then as one of the first sellers on TikTok Shop when it launched in the US. In this conversation, he breaks down why the two platforms require completely different mindsets, why creators (not keywords) drive 70% of TikTok Shop revenue, and why he shut down his own AI product the moment he saw ChatGPT and Gemini catching up.

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What you'll learn:

• How to calculate the real starting investment for launching on Amazon, and why $50K is the floor, not the ceiling
• How to shift from a keyword mindset to a creator relationship mindset when you expand into TikTok Shop
• How top TikTok Shop sellers structure creator commissions (20% to 40%, sometimes more) to build a reliable affiliate engine
• How to recognize when a product or business line needs to be killed before a competitor, or a better AI model, does it for you
• How AI is cutting Amazon ad management teams from 5 to 6 people down to 2 to 3 while lowering ad costs
• Where Can sees the next major opportunity forming at the intersection of AI and physical products

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About Can Chan:
Can Chan is an eight figure e-commerce operator based in China and the founder of Top Tier League, a global community for TikTok Shop, Amazon, and AI driven commerce operators. He has sold on Amazon for more than a decade and was among the first wave of sellers on TikTok Shop in the US, and he now runs a proprietary AI platform that manages Amazon ad spend for eight figure sellers.

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Key moments:

• 09:00 The real difference between Amazon's keyword driven model and TikTok's discovery driven model
• 10:42 Breaking down the actual dollar investment needed to launch on Amazon
• 18:14 How affiliate creators work inside TikTok Shop and why they drive most of the sales
• 22:39 How top sellers like Goli throw parties and give away prizes (including a Lamborghini) to their best creators
• 25:30 Why Can shut down his own AI image generation business in under two months
• 30:03 How his current AI platform cuts Amazon ad management costs and headcount

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Connect with Can Chan:
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/can-chan-966a632b
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/can.chan.774033
Top Tier League: http://toptierleague.com

=================================

About The Built To Scale Podcast:

Follow us on LinkedIn at: https://www.linkedin.com/company/built-to-scale-agency/

For more information about Built To Scale visit: https://www.builttoscale.co/

If you have any questions, suggestions, or ideas for a future episode, please email podcast@builttoscale.co.

Most people ask "why me?" Dr. Charles Livingston learned to ask "why not me?" That one shift turned a chiropractor into a digital marketer, and a digital marketer into the founder of one of DTC's most respected premium coffee brands.

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What you'll learn:

• How Charles validated Life Boost Coffee with affiliates before spending a single dollar on paid media
• Why he still forwards every customer support ticket to his personal Gmail, even with 40+ employees
• How to navigate commodity pricing swings and supply chain chaos without blowing your margins
• The exact channel sequencing he used: affiliates first, then paid, then multi-channel expansion
• Why "certified organic" isn't enough, and how third-party toxin testing became a core differentiator
• How the GLP-1 trend is reshaping product formulation across the health and beverage space

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About Dr. Charles Livingston:

Dr. Charles Livingston is a chiropractor turned serial entrepreneur and the founder and CEO of Life Boost Coffee. Before Life Boost, he built Fat Loss Factor and Perfect Origins, two of the affiliate marketing world's most successful digital health brands. He has been operating in direct response marketing for over a decade and brings a practitioner's lens to product development, performance marketing, and scaling DTC brands.

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Key moments:

• 0:00 Cold open: "Why not me?" The mindset shift that changed everything
• 3:52 How bulletproof coffee led to founding a company
• 9:00 Affiliate-first go-to-market: validating before spending on paid
• 12:09 Why Charles still reads every support ticket
• 15:00 Navigating coffee commodity pricing and supply chain chaos
• 32:25 Managing 50+ SKUs and the cost of too many products
• 34:46 GLP-1s, protein trends, and where product innovation is heading
• 45:41 The retail leap: Whole Foods, purchase orders, and floating cash
• 47:42 What a holiday vendor show taught him about buyer psychology

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Connect with Dr. Charles Livingston:

Website: http://lifeboostcoffee.com
Email: drc@lifeboostcoffee.com

=================================

About The Built To Scale Podcast:

Follow us on LinkedIn at: https://www.linkedin.com/company/built-to-scale-agency/

For more information about Built To Scale visit: https://www.builttoscale.co/

If you have any questions, suggestions, or ideas for a future episode, please email podcast@builttoscale.co.

The affiliate marketing playbook that worked in 2022 is not just outdated. It is actively working against you. Andra Ionescu, started off as an affiliate manager at MaxWeb, and has recently been promoted to the CEO role. She has seen every side of this industry since 2012, and is here to tell you exactly what has changed and what to do about it.

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What you'll learn:

• Why native advertising is the most underrated channel in performance marketing right now and how to structure your first campaign with a pre-lander that actually converts
• How to run the 70/30 budget split between a scaling pipeline and a testing pipeline so you never run dry on winners
• Why Meta's Andromeda update killed the old targeting playbook and why creative volume is now your primary lever
• How AI overviews have taken over 60% of supplement-related searches and what you need to do now to stay visible
• Why making your account manager your best friend is the single highest-leverage move any new affiliate can make

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About Andra Ionescu:

Andra Ionescu is the CEO of MaxWeb, one of the leading CPA performance networks in direct response and e-commerce. She has been in the industry since 2012, working across vendor, affiliate, and operations roles before taking the top seat. MaxWeb works across Meta, native, Google, and email, running exclusive offers at scale in health, nutra, and e-commerce.

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Connect with Andra Ionescu:

Website: http://www.maxweb.com

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/andraionescu90/

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/andra.ionescu.90/

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/andra.ionescu.90

Affiliate World Budapest: (Shmuel and Andra are both speaking): https://affiliateworldconferences.com/

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Key moments:

• 10:12 - Why VSLs still work when the hook lands in the first minutes, and why the staged, polished format is dying
• 17:45 - Why native is the long-term play and how Meta's Andromeda update changed the cost and learning curve
• 30:12 - How AI overviews are dominating supplement search results and why the old affiliate SEO playbook is broken
• 38:51 - Why the next phase of affiliate marketing is about training AI, not just people
• 40:48 - The single most important move any new affiliate can make before spending a dollar on ads

=================================

About The Built To Scale Podcast:

Follow us on LinkedIn at: https://www.linkedin.com/company/built-to-scale-agency/

For more information about Built To Scale visit: https://www.builttoscale.co/

If you have any questions, suggestions, or ideas for a future episode, please email podcast@builttoscale.co.

Affiliates and media buyers don't build your funnel. They pour gasoline on a fire that's already burning. Francisco Bervis, Head of Marketplace at Everflow, breaks down exactly what brands need to prove before any partner will touch them, and the real math behind who gets a $400 CPA and who gets $60.

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What you'll learn:

• Why your brand needs tested creatives and a working funnel before any affiliate will work with you
• How to validate a lander or ad creative for as little as $20 to $50 before scaling spend
• The real CPA gap between premium GLP1 weight loss brands and smaller competitors, and what drives it
• How a "quadruple win" referral structure builds long term affiliate loyalty instead of one off introductions
• Why relationship marketing still beats pure performance metrics in affiliate partnerships
• What Everflow's marketplace actually does for brands looking for the right partners

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About Francisco Bervis:

Francisco Bervis is Head of Marketplace at Everflow, where he audits and matches brand offers with the affiliates, publishers, and media buyers who can actually scale them. His path there runs through zoology, lead generation, business development for East Fifth Avenue, and cart recovery strategy at HelpGrid, giving him a rare view into both sides of the affiliate equation.

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Key moments:

• 0:00 - Francisco's gasoline analogy: what media buyers actually do for your brand
• 6:37 - The cold call that generated $1.6 million for a nonprofit fair, and the lesson behind it
• 18:35 - What Everflow actually is, and why lifetime value matters more than first look conversion
• 30:21 - Why untested creatives are the fastest way to get rejected by a media buyer
• 38:24 - The real CPA numbers behind GLP1 weight loss brands, big and small
• 43:08 - The quadruple win: why Francisco gives away 2% of revenue for life

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Connect with Francisco Bervis:

Telegram: http://t.me/fbervis

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/thatsfrank/

Everflow Marketplace: https://www.everflow.io/enablement/everflow-marketplace

Affiliate World: https://affiliateworldconferences.com/

=================================

About The Built To Scale Podcast:

Follow us on LinkedIn at: https://www.linkedin.com/company/built-to-scale-agency/

For more information about Built To Scale visit: https://www.builttoscale.co/

If you have any questions, suggestions, or ideas for a future episode, please email podcast@builttoscale.co.

Most hiring fails before a single resume is reviewed. The job description is vague. The compensation range is too low to attract the right talent. The "one role" you posted is actually three jobs crammed into one. And then you wonder why six weeks in you're starting over.

Michele Lambert has been inside this problem since 2012. She has built remote teams for direct response brands, internet marketers, and multi-million dollar online businesses. She has supported New York Times bestselling launches, built a Rolodex of thousands of vetted A players, and now runs Bella Connections, a recruiting and team-building firm built specifically for the online business world.

This conversation gets into the stuff most founders skip.

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What you'll learn:

• Why you should build your 90-day KPIs before you ever write a job description, and how that one shift changes everything about the hire
• How listing a narrow comp range quietly filters out your best candidates before you ever see their resume
• What values alignment actually looks like in a remote team, and why it matters more than skills
• The resume mistakes that get candidates blacklisted across the entire direct response space
• Why applying straight through the process beats DMs and intro requests every time
• How AI is reshaping hiring right now, which companies are winning, and what candidates need to do to stay irreplaceable

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About Michele Lambert:
Michele Lambert is the founder of Bella Connections, a remote recruiting and team-building firm specializing in the direct response, e-commerce, and online business space. She has been building high-performance remote teams since 2012 and maintains a curated Rolodex of thousands of vetted operators, marketers, and executives. She is also co-launching Level A, a career program designed to help people land six-figure roles in the online business world.

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Key moments:

• 4:32 - The two mistakes founders make before posting a single job (clarity and comp)
• 13:23 - The 90-day desired outcomes framework: how Michele sharpens the hire before searching
• 17:45 - Why most A-player candidates won't even look at sub-six-figure listings
• 19:49 - How to tailor your resume without lying
• 28:22 - What makes a candidate unforgettable
• 35:26 - Michele's honest take on AI replacing jobs, and where she's hopeful and scared

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Connect with Michele Lambert:
Website: https://bellaconnections.com/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/michele-lambert-66792395/
FaceBook: https://www.facebook.com/michele.lambert.14811

=================================

About The Built To Scale Podcast:

Follow us on LinkedIn at: https://www.linkedin.com/company/built-to-scale-agency/

For more information about Built To Scale visit: https://www.builttoscale.co/

If you have any questions, suggestions, or ideas for a future episode, please email podcast@builttoscale.co.

Most marketers chase what's trending. Kristen Palmer has spent two decades identifying what never stops working.

What you will learn:

• Why the webinar funnel is generating six and seven figure weeks in 2026 and how to build one that converts
• Live vs. evergreen: which price points demand which format and why cold audiences cannot handle high ticket
• What a real eight-figure audit actually uncovers (and why it will make you want to audit your own funnels today)
• Where AI is most dangerous for marketing teams and how to set rules of engagement before it creates chaos
• How Kristen replaced a project manager role with an EA and an AI agent connected to ClickUp and Slack

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About Kristen Palmer:
Fractional CMO and founder of 5D Strategy. Nearly two decades in direct response and health and wellness, including Agora Publishing where she helped 10x their affiliate program. Specializes in moving eight-figure brands toward nine and ten figures by fixing marketing and cross-functional systems simultaneously.

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Key moments:

• 06:31 The one marketing principle that will still work 20 years from now
• 08:03 Why the webinar funnel is making a full comeback in 2026
• 11:13 Three webinar funnels running at the same time: how it actually works
• 25:24 Eight-figure companies that still do not know their own metrics
• 28:47 Real audit finds: broken calendars, two brand guides, two ICPs in circulation
• 34:10 The AI skill managing a 10-person video team via ClickUp and Slack
• 36:40 The AI media buyer skill: 8 weeks in and already calling campaigns accurately

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Connect with Kristen Palmer:
Website: https://5dstrategy.com/

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/kristenpalmer/
Email: kp@5dstrategy.com

Calendly: https://calendly.com/kristinpalmer

=================================

About The Built To Scale Podcast:

Follow us on LinkedIn at: https://www.linkedin.com/company/built-to-scale-agency/

For more information about Built To Scale visit: https://www.builttoscale.co/

If you have any questions, suggestions, or ideas for a future episode, please email podcast@builttoscale.co.