You Can’t Button Push Your Way to $100M: Do This Instead With Sarah Carusona

Sarah Carusona is a Fractional CMO and Head of Growth at MentorPass, which matches startups with vetted mentors who have launched and scaled consumer product companies. As an e-commerce leader, she has driven profitable growth by overseeing $200 million in media across performance and traditional channels, managing holistic retention programs, and spearheading website merchandising and CRO. Before MentorPass, Sarah was the Director of eCommerce at OluKai, an eCommerce Growth Strategist at Common Thread Collective, and the Director of Media Buying at Tier 11.

Here’s a glimpse of what you’ll learn:

[1:41] Why you can’t hack your way to profitable growth
[9:23] How to scale from $50 to $200 million
[13:59] Ideal product categories for growth
[17:08] The importance of conveying authentic stories
[20:41] Obtaining founder buy-in for content creation
[23:51] Strategies for developing a high-performing content flywheel
[26:56] Types of content for customer engagement and feedback
[34:10] Why Sarah Carusona advises against relying on UGC and TikTok Shop
[45:21] Sarah shares her attribution system for sales-driving content
[50:56] What drove Sarah to become an e-commerce consultant?
[56:21] How brands can optimize fractional CFO roles
[1:03:01] Sarah’s early career in dance and her travels in Buenos Aires

In this episode…

When managing digital advertising, businesses often rely on outdated strategies like tweaking campaign settings in hopes of driving results. However, this approach overlooks the role of content quality and product strategy in achieving sustainable growth. So how can businesses effectively scale beyond the limits of traditional media buying tactics?

E-commerce consultant Sarah Carusona explains that modern growth relies on a combination of innovative product launches and compelling storytelling. Brands must focus on creating excitement through consistent new product releases and engaging narratives that capture consumer interest. By shifting their efforts from micromanaging ad accounts to developing robust marketing calendars and creative strategies, companies can build long-term success. Sarah also stresses the importance of moving beyond short-term fixes and reactive problem-solving toward proactive planning for future growth.

In this episode of the Up Arrow Podcast, William Harris chats with Sarah Carusona, a Fractional CMO and Head of Growth at MentorPass, about strategies for profitable brand growth. Sarah explains how to obtain founder buy-in for content strategies, why you shouldn’t rely solely on UGC and TikTok Shop, and her attribution system for content-driven sales.

Resources mentioned in this episode

Quotable Moments

"You can't button-push your way to 100 million; you need to tell a new story every single time."
"It's not the buttons you push on Meta, but the stories you tell around your brand that truly scale your business."
"If January 15 finds you down 30%, forget January. Focus on February and March to make it up."
"The head of growth role is crucial; they run the business but don't own it, which requires a delicate balance of trust and autonomy."
"One day at a time; that's the most powerful mindset you can have in this fast-paced industry."

Action Steps

Focus on developing a compelling marketing calendar: Businesses must create excitement and interest through consistent storytelling and product releases. Consistency keeps the audience engaged and has a direct impact on customer retention and acquisition.
Innovate with product offerings: Launch new or limited-edition products to captivate your audience and provide reasons for customers to return. This caters to consumer expectations for novelty and can revitalize stagnant sales periods.
Embrace storytelling: Create content that shows the “why” behind your products or brand, encouraging customer connection. Storytelling increases brand affinity and customer loyalty by humanizing your brand and creating relatable narratives.
Invest in content testing: Test various content types and styles to identify what resonates with your audience. This trial-and-error approach enables brands to refine their messaging and optimize content performance over time.
Be present and adaptable: Embrace opportunities and challenges one step at a time without getting overwhelmed by the big picture. This mindset allows leaders to make clear-headed decisions and maintain agility in the dynamic e-commerce landscape.

Sponsor for this episode

This episode is brought to you by Elumynt. Elumynt is a performance-driven e-commerce marketing agency focused on finding the best opportunities for you to grow and scale your business.

Our paid search, social, and programmatic services have proven to increase traffic and ROAS, allowing you to make more money efficiently.

To learn more, visit www.elumynt.com.

Episode Transcript

Intro 0:03

Welcome to the Up Arrow Podcast with William Harris, featuring top business leaders sharing strategies and resources to get to the next level. Now let's get started with the show.

William Harris 0:16

Hey everyone, I'm William Harris. I'm the Founder and CEO of Elumynt and the host of the Up Arrow Podcast, where I feature the best minds in e-commerce to help you scale from 10 million to 100 million. To 100 million and beyond, as you up arrow your business and your personal life. Joining me today is Sarah Carusona. Sarah is an e-com consultant with both brand and agency experience, including Common Thread Collective, OluKai, Alpha, Lion, Focal and many more. She spent over 200 million on digital and traditional channels and has managed P&Ls for seven, eight and nine figure businesses. Sarah, welcome to the show.

Sarah Carusona 0:45

Thanks, William. I'm so excited to be here.

William Harris 0:48

Yeah, we've been engaging back and forth on X so I was trying to think it was like, where did we actually meet? I think it just was through mutually seeing each other, content, liking it, commenting on it, and just being like, Hmm, this girl's got some really smart stuff to say, and I want to have her on the show.

Sarah Carusona 1:03

I appreciate that. X is a fun place to engage with people.

William Harris 1:08

Yeah, it really is. We're going to be talking about how you can't button push your way 200 million. But before we do, I do want to announce our sponsor. This episode is brought to you by Elumynt. Elumynt is an award winning advertising agency optimizing e-commerce campaigns around profit. In fact, we've helped 13 of our customers get acquired with one that sold for nearly 800,000,001 that ipoed. You can learn more on our website. Elumynt.com which is spelled E, l, u, m, y, N, t.com. That said, onto the good stuff. Why? What is the problem with button pushing your way to 100 million?

Sarah Carusona 1:41

Yeah, I think that the, you know, I got into Meta, you know, back in what was it, 2014 2015 like, where you could kind of hack your way into growth, right? Like, nobody understood ads manager. It wasn't something that was taught anywhere. It was, you know, people started to come out with courses and whatnot. And you started to, but, you know, businesses realized, hey, I can just put money there, and I can put up an ad, put up a picture, it targets the right person. People buy, etc. And so there was this element of being able to say, okay, you know, what, what? What campaign types can I set up? Who can I target? Who can I, who can I exclude? Like, there was just, there was all of these different, you know, hacks, so to speak, to really make the Meta machine work. And then it got inundated with tons and tons of advertisers and and consumers, and it's, it's just not, it's just not possible anymore. I think that there's a, I mean, I say that, that it's not possible, and then I pause for a second, because, sure, you can probably make some money doing that, but there's a ceiling to it, and that ceiling has gotten lower and lower as the years go on, because of how many people are in the industry, and because of how many people are trying to advertise, and because consumers are getting smarter, too. And so I think that. And I've been a media buyer, and I've been on the side of anybody who's listening to this, who's ever a media buyer probably has the experience of managing account that's just not doing well. And your client, your boss, comes to you, and you're like, What are you doing, Ron? And you're like, I've got the campaign type set up, right? I've got all the, you know, I've got all the cost caps, ASC, CBO, whatever your strategy is, you've got it all there, but it's not selling. And they're, you know, your boss or your client comes to you like, Well, what else are you going to do? And you're like, I mean, I can push more buttons, but it's not going to actually help you get there. Like, I need I need ads, I need content, I need product. And I think that that is where I'm very passionate on trying to shift business owners and just the conversation more towards that. Because one, it's also more interesting. And two, it's actually the thing that will affect change.

William Harris 3:55

I remember the early days of Meta, and even going back into Google, and like you said, there was a lot more opportunity for really fine tuning and button pushing. And it was fun, let's be honest, like it was addictive as a media buyer to be like, Oh, I could do this little thing over here, and I could do this. I'm going to hack my way out into this. And I still like your point, I get clients that will sometimes ask. They're like, Oh, we don't. We don't really make that many sales, you know, from 10pm on. So let's just turn our ads off every day at 10pm and it's like, well, but here's the thing you got to remember, first of all, you're spending, like, you know, let's say, $1,000 a day. That that ad spent $10 from like, 10 to midnight, because Facebook also realizes that you're not really making any sales then. But that said to the people who are seeing those ads during that time, likely might be the ones who convert the ones who convert the following morning, or whatever that might be, because they see it, they're like, Oh, I like this. I'm gonna add it to my cart, but I'm not to get a check out tonight. I'll check out tomorrow. And so the whole button pushing thing just doesn't take into account how sophisticated the algorithms have gotten now, which is a really key thing to remember as well. Yeah,

Sarah Carusona 4:56

and it's also that is. Your focus best put on looking at the hourly breakdown of ads manager, maybe on Black Friday, Cyber Monday, sure, but any other day like, why are founders looking at that? Why are you looking to see if you're you spent $100 on an ad that didn't convert, or if you spent, you know, $200 in a couple hours. If you're looking at that, you're not focused on the right thing. And it just, I think that's where sometimes my frustration comes into play too, because it always goes back to like, the media buyers. And just stop blaming the media buyers. Most of the time. They're not the ones who are doing something wrong, you know, unless they're blatantly like, you know, scaling budgets to $30,000 at the end of the day, or, you know, they're not following just kind of simple best practices of consolidation and, you know, checking it daily and things of that nature. They're probably not the reason that your performance is not where you want it to be. And I think that's hard for founders and business owners to accept as well, because it's a harder reality, and it puts more of the onus on them, which I appreciate, and I can understand why that's hard, but it's also the only way you're going to be able to actually get to where you want to go. Yeah, so I want to

William Harris 6:11

talk about the solutions, but before I do, want to stick on this problem just a little bit longer, because there's almost like this angel and devil on the different shoulders, right, that I see sometimes where we might be saying what needs to be said, but they might read something on Twitter because somebody decided to say, Yeah, but you can do this thing. Or even worse, and I run into this a lot, they've got a consultant from, like, a big agency, right? And it's like those typical agencies that are going to come in and they're going to say, like, well, here's best practice. And best practice says that you should do this, this and this, and it did you realize that you spent $1,000 this month from the time between 10 to midnight, and you're like, that was 0.1% of the budget first of all. So, like, wait a minute, but they've got somebody in their ear whispering these little things into them, saying, you know, you look at this and and I do think that owners want to believe that. It's because, to your point, you're just like, you want to believe that there's this thing that you could do that's going to all of a sudden, magically change you from a 4x to a 10x and you're like, This is it? This is the one thing. But it's such a lie, similar to what we see in other areas, like weight loss or whatever else, it's like, if you just lift this way, if you eat acai, you will lose the way you want to do it. It's like, well, maybe that's not the thing. And there's this other more complicated scenario, yeah, yeah.

Sarah Carusona 7:26

It's, I mean, it's so true. And I was in the fitness industry for a while, so that, like, I relate to that a whole lot, because it was, you know, yeah, if do you want to have a six pack every single day of your life? Cool, you can, you can do that. Do you want to actually, you know, measure every single thing that you eat and work out in a certain way, and not go out with friends and drink and all of those things like, you can do that. But is that actually what you want to do? And, and there is a little bit of like, again, there's probably there. There are ways that you can hack if you want to be in the accounts every single day. But again, I don't think that that's going to get you to the to where you want to be. But I do agree. You know, there are a lot of people, Twitter, agencies, whatnot, who will, you know, look at your ad account and and give those types of recommendations. One of the agencies that I really appreciated one time did an audit of when I was at OluKai. They did an audit of our account because I had an agency that I really, really liked, I fully believed in their media buying. But it's always healthy to do that every once in a while, right? Like, come in, you know, things change, let us know. They literally said to us, they were like, there's nothing we could do for you, like, you're running it really well. And I so appreciated that. And I think that a that I think is a good sign of an agency, but there's so many who will, you know, point out or try to pick out, like little things, and that's where I think there, there's a level of education that I hope that founders are able to find the right people to educate them that are, I mean, at the end of the day, we're not all, all altruistic, but you know people who have actually done it and seen what works and what doesn't work and isn't just trying to sell you something. Yeah, 100%

William Harris 9:07

let's start talking about the solutions. If you can't button your way, but button push your way to 100 million. What are the things that you should be focused on as a founder to be able to significantly scale the business? If you're stuck at that 10 million, 30 million, 50 million route, and you want to get to get 200 million what are the things they need to do? Yeah, I

Sarah Carusona 9:23

mean, I think what I have seen is it kind of comes down to two things, and they're intricately connected, and they're not necessary, so they're not really separate. And I would say it would be marketing and product, and those two things go together, right? What new products are we launching? What's that cadence of products? And then what are the stories that we're telling around those products, or the stories that we're telling around our brand? So it really, honestly, you know, another way that you could say it is the marketing calendar, like, what is it that you are doing throughout the year that adds excitement and brings new people to the brand, or brings people back and again? That's a combination of storytelling, marketing. And product. So Are you launching? You know, there's a brand. Oh my gosh, I'm blanking on the name that I was at an event. And they do knives. I'm blanking on it, but I'll look it up later. They literally drop a new knife every single Thursday. It's without, without a doubt. They drop it every single Thursday. That is their marketing calendar, and that is their business strategy, and it works really well. Is it probably a little bit annoying and frustrating for the team to have to, like, do new drops every single time, but it works because it's a new story every single time. They have an email list because they sell out every Friday, basically right after it drops, and that it just continues to bring people back to the brand frost buddy is another one that I think is a great example for anybody who's kind of looking to grow their business. The owner Brock, he is the face of the brand, and he is, you know, really active on TikTok, going, going live frequently. And he posts, I think, every single day. And he just any he combines it with new products that they're launching. Oh, there's a new, you know, I don't know football is coming out. So we're gonna have, like, all these different football frost bunnies, or there's, I don't know, maybe something happens with Taylor Swift. So they do something with that. Or, like, there's licensing, there's so many different things that they can kind of consistently do, and it allows them to be really, really profitable while also growing. And so I think that that is where I would encourage businesses to focus is, how can you and it? And this is the other hard truth of that, is that's not something you can do in month. If you're mid month and you're missing because you don't have a good story, and you don't have new products and you don't have content that is interesting and engaging, you've kind of already lost, and it's going to be really, really hard to make it up unless you want to run a sale, which is kind of mostly your only choice at that end. And then, and this is where I've seen brands over and over again get into this cycle where they're like, Okay, well, we're missing targets. Well, what are we going to do? And they start digging and digging and digging and digging and digging, and then you you're so focused on that month that you now haven't taken the opportunity to focus on the next few months. And I really, I really would encourage brands. Like, if you were in that moment where you're like, you are missing targets, bad, stop focusing on that month. Like, if january 15 you've like, are down 30% to target. Fuck January. Sorry if I'm not allowed to curse or not. Like, January's in the shitter. Go focus on February, March, and how you're going to make it and make it up there.

William Harris 12:24

Yeah, because otherwise, what you see happen is brands are going to do all the wrong things possible to, I don't know, eliminate their entire type of funnel to get as many sales as they can through some kind of a discount, or whatever that might be, and then you've completely shot February in the foot. You're just like, well, now February has no chance, because you've just completely depleted it of anything that was in from a demand standpoint there.

Sarah Carusona 12:45

Yeah, yeah, exactly. And of course, this is a, you know, I'm being a little hyperbolic here, but like, there are financial considerations, like, sometimes you've got a crap ton of inventory that you've got to get rid of in order to get cash back. Like, there are things that you've got to do sometimes, but I think that that's, it's a better it's a better approach for your brand, it's a better approach for your team, and it's a better long term strategy.

William Harris 13:05

Yeah, so product and telling the story. I'm gonna start with product. First. I had Curtis Matsko on here from Portland Leather Goods and talked about and I think Shaw ecom talked about this as well on the operators podcast. But like, you have your CAC products and your LTV products, and you've got some products that are gonna be really good at driving LTV from people who are previous buyers, and you've got others that are just meant to bring people back into the brand. Launching a new knife every single week sounds just miserable, to be honest. And I don't run that side of an e-commerce business, but I can just imagine, like the product just being like, no, but let's just say, like, you know, not necessarily saying what's the right cadence, because I think that's gonna be different depending on which brand. But what does that look like in terms of, I don't know what kind of products, how frequently, not that there's prescriptive. But like, what are the things that you're seeing? Yeah, I think

Sarah Carusona 13:05

it definitely depends on the vertical you're in and the type of brand. I think anything that's in, like the supplement industry, like new flavors are great and limited edition flavors are great. And I would encourage you, know, supplement brands to have some kind of new flavor or new Yeah, typically a new flavor at least monthly. Of your best sellers, because your consumer typically loves that type of thing. Alpha line was a good example of this. They did a pre workout out of the month. I think we ran it for, say, was almost two years, or maybe it was over two years, and it was every single month there was a pre workout that sometimes there was collaborations, and it was massive. They would sell out basically every single time. And it was great at bringing people back to it was mostly repeat customers, right? Who are coming back because they tried pre workout. And if you drink pre workout and you're pre workout fan, you know you're drinking the same flavor over and over again, it's fun to have something new. It was, again, though it's a big uplift on the 10. Team, and it's a big uplift on on your production as well. But when I actually started with alpha line in the summer, we they had just kind of stopped the pre workout a month, and we had people coming and reaching out saying, you know, we missed that. And there is so I think that there is this element of having something new and exciting for your repeat customers monthly. And then, then there's the you know, to your point, around, like your CAC products and how you bring people into the fold. I would say most of the time that tends to be kind of an evergreen product that you that you have kind of consistently. But I do still also believe that having new products that you're launching that become a they become an evergreen product. They help to bring new people in as well, because they might be OluKai, for example. You know, if we launch golf like, that's a different consumer, we launch women's, that's a different consumer and or tangential consumer. So it's a little bit of a combination of both. But I think having you got to have something new, at least monthly.

William Harris 15:59

Yeah. The other thing too is, if you're not sure about how much inventory order of a new flavor or a new something, and you're just like, I don't know if this one's gonna hit as well, right? What we've done and seen very effective with other companies, would be launching it as almost like a game ahead of time, so people can vote on which flavor do you want to see. And now you've at least got some kind of like, buy in on you're like, Well, maybe you think it's a great idea, but your customers don't. Helps you get a little bit more of an idea of, like, how much demand would there be for this product too, before you go into, you know, ordering 50,000 Yeah, the wrong thing

Sarah Carusona 16:32

for sure. And that's a lot easier in the supplement industry, where your lead times are a little bit shorter, it's definitely almost impossible. In the footwear industry, it's pretty hard but, but I do think if you're able to get that type of information from your consumer, it's really, really helpful and and if you don't have the, you know, shorter lead times where you're able to do some kind of testing, or, you know, surveys are a great option for them.

William Harris 16:57

So what about you talked about telling the story, telling the right story. Are we talking about on the website, in the ads, when you say telling the right story? Like, what does that mean?

Sarah Carusona 17:08

Yeah, I think it, it kind of is a combination of a few things. It's not just the ads. I actually think of it more from an organic social standpoint and and I think that organic social kind of lens into, you know, what you end up doing from an ad perspective, from your website, from your email, etc. But you know, what are the, what are the content, not only the content pillars, but almost like the series that you continue to lean into. So I think that again, you know, frost buddy is an example. They have a kind of a series where it's like, Does it fit? And it's like, does it fit in the frost body? And so they'll do, like, just different random things and see if it fits in there or not. And it's just, it's kind of funny, and it's engaging, and people and people, you know, engage with it. There was one that I won't take credit for this. It was actually on another podcast I was listening to, but they it's a brand called smashed, and there was a intern who was hired, and she the story was and again, I don't know how much of this was true or not, but it seemed pretty true. She went to her CMO, she was like, I'm throwing out your entire marketing plan. I'm gonna get to half a million followers. And I think it was like, 60 days, and all I'm gonna do is smash a can every single day. And she would just, like, throw it up and, like, hit it with a bat and and, you know, and it massively blew up, and they had all this traffic, and it just became the story that people, I think, are engaged with, and they also want to, they want to continue to come back, because they want to know what the ending is. And so, you know, again, these are, these are examples. It's always hard to necessarily come up for what exactly that is for your brand. But I think that having a combination of kind of content pillars that tend to be similar and people are become accustomed to but engaged with, and then having kind of series, or, you know, stories that have a beginning, middle and end, and having a mixture of those throughout the year, I think can really help to again, just bring consumers back and want to learn more about your brand. And and I think, and you mentioned Sean, like the, I think the ridge wallet q3 giveaway was also a really good example of storytelling that was actually very financially impactful, of getting people to engage with the brand. And in this, you know, what was it a cyber truck or something that they were giving away? It's, it's things like that where you're actually doing something interesting and telling the story about that, versus just trying to edit videos in a really fun, catchy way, which works to get a lot of views. But you need to get, you need to have, you need to be doing something that is so engaging that people actually care to watch and engage. Yeah, there's

William Harris 19:42

only so many ways you can edit UGC video. There's only so many ways that people can say this in an influencer video. Like, there's only so much you can do with that before it just starts to look and sound and feel all the same. And so to your point, it's, it's harder, it's arguably harder to come up with, like, what's this really creative thing that we're going to do? It's not a normal brainstorm thing to say, hey, we're going to throw this up and hit these cans, right? Like, that's not a normal but you have to be able to to think of those things. But it could be hard for brands to want to invest in this. I did have fire department coffee on here, Luke, and they've done a great job with content within the coffee space for firefighters. Like, fantastic. But I'd say, from your perspective, what's it like to be able to get buy in from founders? And let's even say, from the CFO on, we're gonna spend money on this content, not necessarily gonna drive sales. We're gonna end up it's going to work in the long run. You have to trust me. Like, how do you get to that point?

Sarah Carusona 20:41

Yeah, I think this is why a lot of CMOs are only in their position for like, a year. And so, yeah, it's really, really hard. I think that, you know, I've been on the side of basically being laughed at for trying to, you know, kind of pitch things like this. But I'm also then seeing businesses over and over again, and seeing which ones are working and not working. And then I also have had, you know, C suite individuals, you know, say we can't do those crazy things. And then within the same breath, say, like, Oh, look at what liquid death is doing and how awesome they are. And so, you know, the job of anybody in the C suite, or especially in the financial position, is to is risk aversion and and there's, like, this interesting dichotomy between the CFO and the CMO, where the CMO has to take risks, and they have to be able to have ideas that some hit and some don't. And I think that the the, you know, at the end of the day, like you can do as much research as you can, and you can, you know, try to come up with the absolute best plan that you can. Some of them are going to work and some of them aren't, and that's just kind of like the reality of the situation. But I think that, because we're in a business world, when they don't work, we call the CMO or the market or the failure, versus they actually might have had a very, very good process and a very good logical, you know, thought to get to where the campaign, or whatever it was, it just might not have succeeded. And I there's a book called Think again, that I'm blanking on the author's name right now, but he had this part at the very end. They really stuck with me where it was there. There's like, good process and bad results, and then there's poor process and really lucky results. And there's a lot of people, I think, in marketing, who get lucky and are put on a pedestal as like, oh my gosh, look at what they did. It was amazing. Don't get me wrong. Like, yeah, it was great. But I think that what we need to try to do is reward process and thought, and as much as we reward luck, because if you continue to have good process, you will end up getting lucky at some point, or you will end up getting there, and hopefully it's more repeatable than just kind of like throwing spaghetti at all. And yeah, so I kind of forgot the question, but it was

William Harris 23:04

good, and I just looked up the the author's name is Adam Grant, yes, yeah. Okay, so I there's a couple of things I want to get to. I want to talk about the whole idea of, like, don't work, and let's define what that means. But before I get to that, I want to talk about the process, because I like that piece where you have to take the swings. If you don't take the swings, you're never going to find what works. And I oftentimes like as a number that I like to give, I would say like, either Pareto Principle, right? 8020, or 9010, even where it's like, look, eight out of, you know, eight out of 10 of these are going to fail, but the two of them that are going to succeed are going to succeed well enough to make up for those ideally. But to your point, like, you have to take those swings. What are some of the process pieces that you would put into developing a content flywheel that's actually going to get results? Yeah, I think what

Sarah Carusona 23:51

I would do is, is a couple things. So I'm actually working with a brand right now that we're talking about doing this, and it's a, it's a, you know, it's a husband and wife, couple and and so they are the face of the brand, right? So I am going to be working with them on defining a couple key series or campaigns that we're going to test. And so there might be, you know, three to five different ones that we align on and that it, you know, makes sense. It feels authentic to them. It feels authentic to the brand. But, you know, they're three to five kind of different, very variances on these, like, kind of storytelling series concepts and and they have, what I want to be able to do with them is be able to test those out, right? Because, you because, again, some are going to hit and some aren't. But if we only go out with one, and let's say that we, you know, it doesn't work, then it's going to be a lot harder for us to, you know. Then it's a failure, and then it becomes, well, I tried it once and it didn't work, so I don't want to try it again. But if you do three to five different ones, you start to see which ones hit and which ones don't. I just did a cut 30. Which is the there, yeah. So I've been. Doing some video content. And one of the things that they really encouraged, which I appreciate, is is posting and just continue to post and continue to, you know, it's not always gonna be perfect. And I, one of the things that I appreciate that they did is you posted and then you'd put it in Slack, and you'd get feedback. And there are people who ask, they're like, Well, why do I have to post first? Why can't I ask for feedback and then post it? And I even got a little annoyed by it, so I was like, Wait a second. Now you're giving me feedback and I gotta redo it, but I already posted it. But the reason they're doing that is because it forces you to, like, get out of your comfort zone and continue to test and try new things and realize that some things are gonna work and some things aren't. And that's just the nature of the game. And it's not that the strategy is bad, it's that it's just, again, the reality of the game. So I think going back to your question, the first thing that I would say is just accept that some things are going to work and some things aren't. You've got to try a variety of them, and be okay with that, while also accepting that this is something you have to do and that it's it's going to significantly impact your brand, because again, if you get more traffic and orders from organic channels, if we're kind of specifically talking about that, you're going to be much more profitable as a brand. And so I think that would be the first one, and then the second one would be kind of defining those kind of different buckets or content pillars and series that you want to test, and then going out and doing that, and I think the last one that I would say is working with other creators. So if you are kind of a founder led brand, then a lot of the content is going to probably be from you. If you're not a founder led brand, it's a little bit more challenging. But either way, I think figuring out that part, those partnerships and those other creators or influencers that you work with will just add kind of fuel to the flame.

William Harris 26:44

I love it. What are some of the pillars that you would say that would make good content, or at least good content tests, you're going to test out five things here coming up. What are some of the things you're like, hey, maybe make sure you're testing something like this, something like this, yeah, like this,

Sarah Carusona 26:56

yeah. I definitely do behind the scenes. Behind the Scenes always works. You know, just, you know, as simple as warehouse videos. You know, this is check out all of the boxes that we're packing up here. Or, like, if you again, if you're a founder led and you're creating the actual product, like, talk about it. Talk about the mistakes that you made, the the positives, the negatives. If you're, you know, supplement industry and you're trying out new flavors, you know, video, video yourself, tasting the different ones. Some are good, some aren't. So I think that would be one big one that I would do. I would also do kind of, again, a little bit of like, behind, not just behind the scenes, but a story behind the brand. Like, why did you create the brand? What's important about it to you? Why are you passionate about it? And then I think new product features, so anything, anytime you're dropping a new product, I think making sure that that is out front and center. And then again, you talk about the why behind it, and you talk about what you know, why it's exciting. I mean, that's kind of a little bit of an obvious one, but definitely do that. And then what else? I mean, yeah, go

William Harris 28:01

ahead. Well, I like those. And there's two that I was gonna call out. One is what you said about, like, telling them about what you just did here, or whatever. That reminds me of something that Matt, Matt Van Swol said he was on here previous guest, but he's head of subscription at Wyze the cameras. And one of the things he said was he's like, you know, ask your customers for their feedback on, like, what they want, do what they want. And then the thing that a lot of people forget is to tell them that you did what they wanted in the first place. And to your point, it's like, Look, if you're coming out with this, like, make sure that they know. Like, by the way, we listened to you and we did it. And here it is, don't forget to communicate that. The other one that I like, that you talked about, though, is trying out new flavors, like testing about yourself, right? It's like, some are good, some are bad. What do you think about content that just goes over the top, that's even, let's just say, so far removed from actually being direct response content similar to, like, smashing cans. But it's like, if you're testing out content for different flavors, and it's like, I don't know, like, Jelly Belly, really bad flavors, you're like, this is, you know, we, we're just debating between blue raspberry and bar flavored whatever here, you know, so we're gonna go ahead and just try both of these out like it doesn't necessarily, it's not direct response at all. Does it go too far, or is it helpful still, in its own way too? Yeah,

Sarah Carusona 29:12

it's, it's such a good question. So one of the things that I talked about with a couple with a couple brands, and I actually, when I was at alpha line, it was a project that I kicked off, and then they, after the kind of our engagement ended, they just finished it, but I'll tell you about it. So what I said is, I was like, We need a video that is that can go go viral, or at least get a ton of views, that does three things. One, it has an emotional reaction. The consumer has an the viewer has an emotional reaction that can be, you know, it could be, it could be sadness, it could be excitement, it can be humor. You know, whatever it is. Two, they know what we sell. Like they know that we sell a supplement. And three, they remember our name and. And, and I was like, that's the prompt. Just, let's do those three things. And, and actually, at alpha lime, our creative strategist, one of them was the co founder, they came up with a bunch of ideas. And one of the ones that they just launched, I'm really excited to I was really excited to see it is a, it was a little girl selling pre workout outside of a gym. And so she's, like, she's miked and everything. And there's, it looks like a lemonade stand. And she's like, you know, there's like, Jack guys walking by, and she's like, would you skip leg day? Like, you know, just like, say these, like, funny, like, random things, and then people are trying in, and she's, you know, just like, it was just so cute. It was so good and and so, like I said, they, one of the co founders, sent me the video, and they, like, already had a ton of shares and likes and saves and whatnot. Now I think that's great. I think that hits on all three of them. But the question will be, you know how it plays out for them and in the long run? And also, you know that that's, again, that's kind of like a one and done thing, like they need to continue to do that and continue to kind of bring that in. But I think again, liquid death, I think is a great example of this. Is they have so many videos where you walk away, you know what they sell, you probably laugh and, you know, it's liquid death. But I've seen a lot of brands, and I've been given videos for brand awareness where I'm like, it's cool. I got an emotional reaction, but I have no idea what we sell, like you have no and that that is not what you want. So that would be the parameter that I would use as kind of the brief to to try to work within, again, you're some are going to hit, some aren't, but that's kind of how I would

William Harris 31:37

go about that. So follow up to that, because I love those three things. Let's touch on the brand side, like that. They know they were going to remember your name. And I see a lot of branding agencies get involved. And this happened to one of our clients this year. They brought in this big, massive branding agency, and they were so excited about it. They were going to do all these things to revolutionize the ads that we were running for them. And, like, the overwhelming amount of their feedback was like, Oh yeah, the logo needs to be bigger on this ad. It's just like, Okay, I mean, fair. Like, that's helpful. But at the same time, you're like, This ad is performing very well. I don't know if just adding a bigger logo is going to be the thing. Now, from a direct response thing, it's not gonna do it, right? Maybe is it gonna help them remember the brand. But when you're talking about, like, helping them to remember the name. It's not just adding, like, a bigger logo to the ad, like, What are you talking about, to help them remember the name?

Sarah Carusona 32:27

Yeah, it's a hard one. And that's actually the one that I'm thinking about for the video for alpha line. Because I was like, when I watched, I was like, hmm, I actually don't know if there was enough branding in there, but, well, we'll see. Though, I think supplements are easier and and like, liquid death is easier because they can hold the product. And it's like, I see liquid death, I see the product, like, that's pretty easy. Clothing is a lot harder. Clothing, footwear, it's, unless it's in your face, it's, it's a lot more challenging. So I think that is where you've got to have, you've got to have elements of branding. And I would say I would encourage that to be towards the beginning, because, you know, not everybody's gonna watch to the end. I yeah, I don't know. It's a little bit of a hard one. I also think, though, that with these types of videos and where they're gonna be posted, primarily they're gonna be posted social. So unless we're talking about TV ad, which is totally different, if they're posted on social, they're coming from your handle, which, like, has an element of branding in it itself. So I don't think you need to go overboard with it. I think it just has to be there.

William Harris 33:30

Yeah. And I like, I like the idea of audible brand as well. And I think we missed that sometimes too, because there's the visual side of things. And while a lot of people do listen to it on silent, watch the video on silent whatever, for the channels that people are listening to, especially YouTube wherever, yeah, you can't pass up that. That hearing the brand name as well, totally Yeah,

Sarah Carusona 33:48

yeah, especially if you got a brand name that's might be harder to pronounce. Are you not sure how to pronounce? Yeah?

William Harris 33:53

Like Elumynt, yeah. What about so hate is maybe a strong word, but you seem to at least loathe the term UGC. Why do you loathe UGC? Where's the term? I actually, yeah,

Sarah Carusona 34:10

I don't know what? Yeah, I don't know, like, really, where that came from. I just got really annoyed by it, because I think the reason I loathe it is because it's used so broadly. And I think I've just been in multiple situations where we were like, Oh, we just need UGC, or like, let's get more UGC. And I'm like, but what are we talking about? Like, are we talking about actual UGC? Are we talking about paid UGC? Are we talking about paid actors? Because there's, like, there's so many different types. And I think the other part that I get annoyed about, and I don't know if they will ever change. But I'm so sick and tired of, if you go on, you know, TikTok, Instagram, whatever, every single you know influencer that is talking about a product is talking about it in a positive way, you will very, very rarely find somebody who's like, I just got this cup, and I hate it because they're getting paid, because they're all getting paid. You. And and especially on TikTok Shops, it's like, it's, it's just, it's so commoditized. It's like, why? I mean, it's almost like if every review site only had five star reviews, like, what's the point of reviews at that point? So I guess there's, there's a couple elements that kind of annoy me with it, but I think primarily it's just like, can we define UGC differently as either, like, it's a paid influencer, it's a paid content creator slash actor, or it's actually somebody we just gave the product to and maybe gave them a discount to give us a review, yeah,

William Harris 35:35

almost like customer generated content, like they actually are a customer. And that's so I will say we don't do a lot of influencer stuff, but when we do influencer work, it's mostly going after who already is a customer of yours and has bought from you 10 times. Like, yeah, that's the person we want to reach out to and just say, Hey, by the way, we happen to notice that you have purchased 10 times you have 100,000 followers. Would you be up for doing something? Yeah, I like that content a lot more because they're already bought into it. That one would be user generated content, or at least customer generated content. So calling the other stuff like you said, it's like they're paid actors. They're either paid actors who are influencers, and they have the potential to influence other paid actors who are not influencers, but you can at least pay them to make content because they're good at making content, and you can turn that into a good ad or something. UGC, I see your point about it just being just a bad it's a misnomer, really,

Sarah Carusona 36:29

yeah, yeah. And, I mean, I was a little bit hyperbolic in those

William Harris 36:31

videos, but ever Okay, what about you said that 99% okay, maybe more hyper, 99% of brands shouldn't be on TikTok Shop. Why? Okay,

Sarah Carusona 36:49

yeah, another hyperbolic statement. But okay, I think this is one where, so I went down and read a poll of TikTok Shops, and I was like, Okay, I think it was one of those ones where I was kind of avoiding for a little bit transparently. I mean, OluKai was not gonna or wasn't as interested in it at the time when I was still there and then, but then as I kind of left there and started consulting with other brands. Like, okay, this is something I need to figure out. And for some reason I was also adverse to it, because I was just like, I don't know. I don't know why. But anyways, I was like, I gotta figure this out. I gotta understand. So anytime I'm trying to understand something, I go really, really deep, and I ask a lot of really annoying questions. And so I was really grateful. And this is where the Twitter X community comes into play. I reached out to a couple people who, like, they were like, Oh yeah, I'll jump on a call with you. I've, you know, I've scaled this for it was BK beauty. And then, yeah,

William Harris 37:41

Paul, yeah, Paul. I can't remember his last name right now, either, but like, yeah, they're crushing it on TikTok Shop live especially, yeah,

Sarah Carusona 37:48

yeah. He was great. And he just like, jumped on a quick call with me. He sent me some resources. Like, super, super nice. This guy, Zen, who's also big on TikTok Shops. He also, we ended up working with them for a little bit at alpha lime. So lots of really, really great people in the community. But as I as I asked more and more questions, I was like, Wait a second, so I am going to as a brand. I'm gonna pay an agency to run my TikTok Shops. Then the agency is going to pay other content, I don't know, call it like a agent, basically, other content agencies that have a bunch of creators in a Slack group or a discord group. So we're then going to pay that group, and then we're going to pay the content creators, and then we're going to send them product, and then we're going to put money behind the ads. And I was like, Wait a second, can you help me or said, and then on top of that, you can reward your creators with, you know, hey, sell, you know, a million dollars in GM and we'll give you a cyber truck or something. And so as I, as I understood that more and more, I was like, Wait a second, this is, this is MLM. Like, we've just, like, invented MLM, yeah. But true, yeah. And so that was, like, my first realization. I was like, What the hell. And when you see people who I think, again, I think there's people like BK beauty and frost buddy, again, they're doing TikTok Shops wonderfully and and I know frost buddy is profitable. I believe BK beauty is as well. So there's people who are doing it well. But I think a lot of people on TikTok Shops are like, we did 3 million in GMV and this and this and like, how much are you actually making? Because after all of those costs, and then TikTok takes 6% and then TikTok also funds discounts for you. So like, hey, we'll discount your product for you. It's just, it's insane from a business perspective, how much it eats into your profit. And so yes, there's the halo effect, and yes, there's that. But I think on top of all of that, if you don't have, if you're not getting good content from any of those affiliates, if you're literally just getting somebody who's like, here's this cool thing I got for free, and would you like to buy it the. And it's just a complete waste of money. And so I don't think TikTok Shops is something that people should ignore, but I think they should invest in it from their own perspective first, like BK beauty his I think his wife is a great content creator and had a community of women who were, you know, doing makeup tutorials and stuff awesome you own that you can foster that and you're growing it there frost buddy, like he's doing most of the content, and most of their sales are coming from him. But if you're trying to do it, not from yourself, but you're trying to do it from affiliates, that's where I think that 99% of brands

William Harris 40:37

are gonna fail. Yeah, yeah. I think that you're spot on. If people want to dig deeper into how to do it themselves, I will point them to another episode I had with Dan Hepner. He is, I believe, the number one food and beverage TikTok Shop, live person right now on TikTok Shop, and he's crushing it there. Gives a lot of good points of what he's doing on TikTok Shop, live. I mean things that seem counter intuitive, that you're like, wait, it's TikTok. But I think he said, like, you have to be there at least two hours to do the live. Otherwise it's pointless, because it cycles it like, every 40 minutes. Like, he gets into really, like, like, these really interesting details on there that I think are worthwhile. But to your point, if you're not owning it, you you're maybe going to be a little bit behind. You almost have to get to the point where it's like, how do you own that content? A little bit

Sarah Carusona 41:17

more. Yeah, yeah. I think that's a it's a really good point. It's definitely going back to button pushing. It's not a button you can just turn on and all of a sudden scale your brand. Yeah.

William Harris 41:26

So if you're a button pusher, and you like to push buttons, there's a lot of buttons to push there, and this is a good thing to sink your teeth into, versus saying, what are the buttons that we're gonna push on Meta to all of a sudden double our performance? Yeah, yeah, for sure. You had talked about, like, whether or not some of the content works or doesn't work, and I really liked the phrasing that you use there. So it's like, we're investing in this, you know, these five different ideas. And then the CMO is like, hey, some of our work, some of them won't. We've seen some that I'm still not sure are gonna work. And I'd love to know your thoughts, maybe even on, like, the Jaguar thing, because it was interesting. And to your point, like they pushed some buttons, they or they took a shot, right? It's like, okay, well, is this gonna work? But aside from that, how do you define if content like that worked or didn't work, knowing that it might not drive immediate sales?

Sarah Carusona 42:16

Yeah? Yeah. It's a great question. I think there are a couple metrics that I would look towards. So one would be the, and I'm thinking specifically a video here. A one would be the watch time. You know, how long are people watching it? And what's that average watch time? If your average watch time is, call it 15 seconds like, that's really strong. I think if you can get it to 2025, seconds, that's really, really strong, then I would look at what's the content within that 20 to 25 seconds. 25 seconds, like, does it show your brand? Does it show your product? And, you know, does it create an emotional connection, which is a little bit more arbitrary, but if you had at least know, does it show your brand, and does it show your product? And you know that the average watch time is 20 to 25 seconds, you've got a pretty good idea that it's building brand awareness. Like you can, you can be pretty darn sure on that, at least on the initial parts, right? And what I would do is, is, if I were a brand, and I was trying to create this video, you know, I would try to create it organically, get to that average watch time, then I would start promoting it and putting a little bit of dollars behind it. And what you can do then is, you can then see and you can test it on different platforms and say, Okay, on YouTube, we're paying 10 cents per 22nd video watch. We're on TikTok. We're paying five cents on, you know, Meta. We're paying 15 cents, whatever it is. And then you can push your budget based on that. Now that's just like to start. Now, the bigger question is, is it leading to more traffic? Is it leading to our sales? And that's where I would look at your percentage. Sorry, let me take that back. That's where I would look at your volume of orders and traffic that are coming from non paid channels. Yep, love it. And so I would, however, I'd include branded search in there. So yeah, so if you can lump in, how much traffic are you getting from direct, organic and paid, branded search, lump that together and see if that starts to increase as you're doing this, you know, content strategy, then I would say, and I would be able to go to my CFO pretty confidently and be like, hey, remember how we were paying this much for every single person? Now we're paying this much it. That's how you can see if it's working.

William Harris 44:18

Yeah, I think that's a thing that people maybe neglect too often, or they put too much emphasis on their paid traffic and their media buyers, to your point where it's like, if Meta fails, the business fails, and it's like, this is not a good situation. The whole point of running the ads, the whole point of building up the content, the whole point of all of this is to get to a point where you have a bigger amount of direct and organic coming as well. Because if you don't, then that means there's a number of other problems that you maybe haven't addressed. One is there's not a product recognition or brand awareness. Two is, you're not getting the word of mouth that you should be getting from all of these customers, and so maybe you have a product problem that you need to look into as well. There's something that's inhibiting other things from being able to start keeping up with what you're doing on paid.

Sarah Carusona 45:00

Yeah, yeah, exactly, exactly

William Harris 45:03

you were talking about. You hate working with ambiguous data, and so maybe you've already covered this a little bit, but this was on DTC newsletter, and I really appreciated kind of what you're talking about there. So you developed an attribution system take us through that. Is this? Is this similar to what you're talking about there? Is this a little bit deeper? No, it's

Sarah Carusona 45:21

a little bit, well, it's similar, yeah, I would say it's very similar. So the, you know, attribution system I should develop tour or started to use, is basically last click like, and which, I know that some people listen to this and be like, Who the fuck is she? Last click is the worst thing ever. 14 is calling you, I know, yeah. Need to stop listening immediately. The so what I started to develop, and it was like, it was a culmination of experience at common thread and other places, but where I got to a point where I was like, I just I need to be able to forecast. I need to have a mathematical model that leads to my forecast. If my CFO or my boss is saying we need to make this many dollars, I need a mathematical way to say, okay, like, where are all those dollars coming from? And in the world of attribution, you know, one plus one equals 14. And I was like, I'm just, I can, you know, yeah, you can kind of muddle the numbers together, and you can say, well, let's use one day click on Meta and call that truth. Or let's use, you know, I don't know one day click on on Google. I don't even think they have about one day click but you know, there's ways you can do that. And I was like, I just want the math to math. And so what I started to do is met is, is build this out from a bottoms up perspective, on a last click basis. So basically, if you know how what your last click CPA is on Google, and you know what your last click CPA is on Meta, and let's just keep it simple and say that that's your media mix. You can say, Okay, I'm going to spend this much on Meta, this much on Google. Here's my last click. CPAs, great. I know I'm going to get, call it 100 last click orders from my pay channels. Sweet. Now let's say you want 200 orders. Well, then I know that typically I send out X number of emails per month, and on a last click basis, they get this many conversions. Okay, we got 50 conversions from email. Then you got 50 conversions that you've got to make up. That's your organic, offline and so then you've got to look historically like, Hey, do we historically get 50 conversions from organic or offline channels? You know, do we get, do we get that many, that much traffic? And that's where your gut check can come into play. And you're like, Okay, we do or we don't. And now all of this, then maths into your total orders, and you then have clear targets that you can set for those individual channels. But the biggest part of this is you have to have, you have to be able to hold both truths at the same time, one that your last last click is the only place where math, maths and two last click doesn't tell the consumer journey. And if you're a smart marketer, you can be able to understand those two things. And you can say, okay, yeah, I'm not gonna set my CPA, my last click CPA for Facebook, the same as I am for Google. Like, why would I do that? That would be a dumb thing for me to do. I'm gonna set my Facebook on it. I don't know. Maybe it's $200 maybe it's 150 whatever it is. And then Google is something different, and then, but it at least gives you a place to be able to model this out. And then what you have to be able to do, though, is, in month, say that you're absolutely crushing and you're getting, you know, way more new orders than you thought, and your your CAC is way lower than you thought. But hey, guess what? Your last click, CPA and Meta is 20% higher than you forecasted. I don't care, because you know what's probably happening is you're probably you've got way more organic traffic than you thought. And so that's where you say, okay, cool, Meta. Meta buyer, I know I told you to try to hit this actually, I'm going to increase that, because it looks like we're getting more organic traffic, and I'm seeing great click through rates and whatnot on Meta, and we're seeing great on platform results on Meta, so the signs are pointing towards Meta still working. Just might not be last click attributable.

William Harris 48:47

Yeah, I appreciate the way you explain that, because I definitely was in the camp where you're like, last click and I'm like, wait, hold on. Like, what did you say? But I like the way you went with this, because to your point, as long as you as long as brands understand this, we've run into this with a lot of brands that say the brands that seem to get stuck around that like $50 million range, almost the the unifying, common thing that I've seen with a lot of them is they have some type of in house attribution system they developed 10 years ago based on last click, and they haven't been able to get past that. And so they're significantly under investing in top of funnel channels like Facebook or something else, right? And so they're just like, Yeah, but Google brand search is at this compared to Facebook prospecting, so we're gonna invest more in Google brand search. And you like, yeah, that's not how that works. And so I think you'll agree with this. One of the ways that we like to look at like, well, how does that equate, at least in terms of of actual money? Is we love to run geo holdout tests, but at the very least, I need to see something that says, okay, a $300 CPA on Facebook equals $100 in actual CPA. Okay, now I can optimize towards a $300 CPA in Facebook, and that is what we do. We do still use last. Click one day click for a lot of like, what we're doing, because, to your point, that is the most sure way of saying, if you're on track of what you're doing or not knowing that that's not the full attribution, but at least knowing it's something I could optimize around and say, Are we on track today for what we would expect seven days results to be as a result of the top funnel stuff we're doing? Yeah,

Sarah Carusona 50:18

no, exactly. And that's where, like, you know, I like this model as your starting base, right? But that's, again, it's not the end all be all. Like, if you've got the budget and you've got the means to do geo holdout tests, to do incrementality tests, to use mmm, MTA, like, use all the things that you can, and then you've got to contextualize it together and make the best decision you can with the information you can. But I do think that this is a really good model that anybody can use, even if they don't have the budget.

William Harris 50:44

Love it. Um, I want to shift into a little bit of like your background and what drove you decide to go out on your own and become an E com consultant.

Sarah Carusona 50:56

Yeah. So I have kind of an interesting career trajectory. I was a degree in dance, and I was really broke for a very long time. I was a professional dancer, dancer and a professional waitress, and then I got into the fitness industry, and I liked that, and I kind of got into social media and whatnot from there and and then one day, my husband was like, you know, hey, if you Well, he was my boyfriend at the time. He was like, you know, you're kind of good at this to good at this digital marketing thing, like you might want to think about doing that as a career. And I kind of laughed in his face. I was like, No way. Like, I'm never working at a desk. I'm not working at nine to five. That's not me

William Harris 51:33

dancing. Yeah,

Sarah Carusona 51:34

little bit, yeah. But I started to muddle on it as well, as well as looking at my bank account that was very, very low, and I had $0 to my name, and I had, you know, student debt and all of those things. And I was like, Okay, maybe there's something here. And so over the last, you know, eight, nine years, I basically dove into it. But I remember, I remember going into it, and I remember specifically having a conversation with a mentor of mine who had worked at nine to five, and then he went off on his own in the fitness industry. And he's still off on his own. And I remember talking to him, and I was just like, What do you think about this? Like, is this? Is this crazy and and he was like, you know, asking, you know, how old I am, and kind of what I'm looking to do and whatnot. He's like, wow, you do it for a few years. Like, do it for a few years. Like, get, you know, get yourself financially stable, like, you know, pay off your student debt, things of that nature, and then if you want to go off on your own again, and and it kind of stuck with me as, like, not something that I really thought about every, you know, every day or, like, every year. I've been working for other companies for the last eight, nine years now. But I think it was, it kind of came back to me more recently, and I think that for me, I I kind of realized that I was ready to move on from OluKai, and I was not motivated to look at other businesses and other jobs, and I couldn't figure out why. Because I'm a pretty mo I'm a pretty self motivated person, like, when I want to do something, I do it, and I couldn't figure out why. And I was like, I would like, something's not sitting right with me. And then I just had a thought of, like, working for myself. And I was like, that feels really good. Like, something about that feels really good. And and then I also my husband, I have always wanted to, we love to travel. We've been to like, 20 plus countries, and we've always talked about living out of the country, and we were both kind of talking about, like, our next steps. And we have a place in Chicago, but it's a rental property. We love Utah. We love the mountains. We were like, maybe we'll buy a place out there. Maybe we'll move out there, maybe we'll both get a new job. And I had this like, moment of realization. I was like, if we don't go now and get out of the country now and move and do this, we're never going to do it, because if I get another corporate job, if you get another corporate job, if we buy a place in Utah, like we're not going, No, we're sticking here. We don't have kids. You know, our families, like, knock on wood, are relatively healthy and and God love him, he was like, Okay. And so, yeah. So I went out on my own, and I started as a kind of fractional CMO for a couple businesses. So alpha line was one of them, and Cascada another. And I it was, it was a really good experience with both of those brands. I worked for both of them for about three months, and then kind of the engagement ended, and for various reasons, but I think where I kind of got to is that the fractional CMO type of job is actually not what I want to do either, which is kind of crazy, because I think that it is a very unless you set it up in the right way. It can be, it can be hard to be set up for success, and you can end up taking on too much that you can actually impact. So I think on both sides, it's not. It didn't work for me. So what I'm currently doing is more ecom consulting, so I'm coming in to businesses and I'm focused on a specific problem or a specific project that they want me to focus on, and and that so far has been miles and lengths so much better, because it really sets up clear expectations on both sides and and I've seen. Us on the brand side as well. When I was at OluKai, we hired Alex Greifeld, who did a project for us. Yeah,

William Harris 55:05

she was on the show here too. Yeah, she's very smart. Love it. Yeah, she's incredibly

Sarah Carusona 55:09

smart. But it was like that, I think opened my eyes to like what this could be. Because I was in, I was in the brand, you're busy as hell. You're trying to figure out a bunch of things, but you've got this big problem that you don't have time to focus on. And I, you know, was level able, luckily enough, to reach out to her, and I was like, Can you help me understand how we fix this problem? And she did, basically, I think, was like a six to 12 week project with us, and was able to give us a massive deck that had, like, just tons of really, really rich information that basically gave us a road map to what we need to do next. And when I did that on the brand side, I was like, that is so valuable. And so that's kind of more so where I'm at now, yeah, you need

William Harris 55:49

to be able to bring in somebody that you can trust to do a good job, because you don't have the time to do that right now, but you like but I it's a problem that needs to be solved. I love that you brought this up before when you and I had chatted a little bit about the, some of the problems with being the fractional CMO or like, in charge of, you know, growth and marketing is sometimes you're taking on things that you can't necessarily always impact. Yeah, what are, what are some things that brands can do better to set those positions up to be successful? Yeah?

Sarah Carusona 56:21

Yeah. It's a it. That was probably one of my hardest I actually just record a video on this that I got to edit later this week, but that was probably one of my harder learnings this year, was that I don't like the head of growth role. I actually really don't like it, and I think that it's, I think it's an incredible role. I'm so glad I've been able to do it. I'm so glad that I in this industry and able to work with it. But I think that brands need to realize how difficult that role is. And I think that, I mean, for example, I was just talking to somebody yesterday who reached out and was like, you know, growing business, and he's like, I think I need to hire somebody. I need to kind of get out of the business, like, I'm managing this and this, I'm in the ad accounts, I'm managing this agency, this agency. And I was like, Yeah, you need a head of growth. And I was like, and that's not going to be me. I'm not going to do that. And the reason why is at least, like, again, it's a good role for a lot of people to get into. So I don't want people to take this, take away from this that it's not something that they want to do. I actually would encourage a lot of people to do it, but I think that for brands, they have to realize that that role, at least from what I've seen, they basically run the business, but they're not the owners of the business. So there's, like, a few main things that make it really hard. One, like, they're probably paid really well, which is awesome, but at the end of the day, like they probably don't have equity and and so, you know, it's still not their business. And then two, because it's not their business, they really don't have the decision making power that they need. And so they're what I've seen, where I've seen this break down is head of growth wants to do X and thinks that X will help X strategy will help the business. CMO, CEO, CFO, whatever it is, like business owner, it disagrees and thinks this other strategy will be better. So head of growth says, okay, like, I'm gonna choose my battles. I'll do that strategy instead. But typically, like, they might not be. It's either they're not invested in it, or, like they don't understand it the way that the see the business owner does, or it's not the vision of the business owner. They do that strategy. It doesn't work. Business Owner blames head of growth. Head of growth is, like, pissed off because they're like, I didn't want to do this in the first place and and so that it's kind of a similar, like relationship to what you're talking about, like the CMO and the CMO and the CFO, like there's this, like, you've got to have just such a great level of trust and be able to let people try new things and hold them accountable, but hold them accountable to the process and and, yes, hold them accountable to the results, but also not blame them if the results aren't what they thought they were going to be, if they had a really solid process in mind. And I think that that's where you've got because the head of growth has to be able to take risks. They have to be able to, you know, they have to be able to operate independently to a certain extent, and not have somebody kind of like over their shoulder being like, what are the numbers today? What are they? What did you do? That's that's where I think it can be really, really challenging. I think

William Harris 59:27

that you summed it up well with the idea of they have to be able to make mistakes, or at least take risks. Like, is a better way of putting it because, and I think if they communicate it better that way, if you are in that position as a head of growth, just making sure that you say you're like, hey, we're going to test out five things. Four of them are going to fail. The fifth one might also fail, but we're not going to unlock that 100 million dollar growth without testing something out. So yeah, these are the things we're going to test and why we have there. And I think if there's that, that if the CEO CFO. If everybody can buy into that mentality, then I think that they're in a good spot, because it is a CFO. I don't know. I'm not a CFO. I don't think they're going to test something out as a CFO. Hey, we're gonna just give this a shot here. This yo, from a finance perspective, to see if this, it's a really kind of cut and dry kind of thing. For the most part, there are some creativity on the CFO side, but it's a little bit more. This is just what we do. But in order to unlock that growth, you have to be able to just take some really interesting takes to see what happens. Yeah,

Sarah Carusona 1:00:28

and I think the other thing on the head of growth role, which, again, it can be set up differently at different places, but I've been in positions multiple times where, as a head of growth, I'm only in charge of the button pushing, which goes back to, like, the button pushing theme. So I've been in positions where I don't have control over the marketing, I don't have control over the creative that's given to me. I don't have control over the marketing calendar that's given to me. I don't have control over the product that's given to me. So I'm just given all of this stuff which are, like, the key ingredients of success, and then when it doesn't work, I'm blamed, like, but I can, I, can I help with the marketing just a little bit? Can I, like, maybe talk about that with you beforehand, you know, and then, and it becomes this. That's where, like, it becomes a challenging and, like, a blame situation, because, you know, everybody wants to, everybody wants to succeed at the end of the day. And that's where I think, you know, business owners can, if they can create a real, good collaborative team environment. Because, again, that could work where, ahead of growth might not be in charge of the marketing, but the the marketing team and the head of growth have to be in sync, and have to not be kind of pointing fingers, but more so, you know, working together and understand each other's language, to be able to when something's not working, dive in and both understand it together, versus saying, like, well, I need better ads, or, well, you need to button push better. Sure

William Harris 1:01:47

you I'm gonna this might flop, but you, you inspired a thought in my head that I'm gonna try out right now that I haven't tested out out loud yet. But it's almost like you're being given these ingredients, right? And it's like they gave you two eggs, they gave you, you know, X amount of flour, and they gave you whatever, and you're like, great, I made the best cake I could possibly make with that, because that's the ingredients you gave me. They're like, we really wanted brownies. You're like, I understand that, but like, if you wanted brownies, you have to give me the ability to say, I only want one egg and I need some oil too. Not a baker, so I might be getting those ingredients wrong. But the idea here is that's like, I will make the best with the ingredients that you give me. But if you put me in a position where you want me to make something different, something different, you have to allow me to choose the ingredients as

Sarah Carusona 1:02:25

well. Totally, yeah. And then have that conversation of, maybe it's a half brownie cake. Like, I can do that. Like, are you okay with that?

William Harris 1:02:32

Cookies and brownies? Isn't there a name for that? A Brookie is okay? I want to make a Brookie. Okay. Well, I need to do this. I need to make a rookie, yeah,

Sarah Carusona 1:02:41

yeah, something like that. Yeah, no, I totally agree. I

William Harris 1:02:45

want to get to know Sarah a little bit more than as well. You've hinted at a couple of fun things, one of which is dance that you originally started in dance. What inspired you to get into dance? What kind of dance like? Tell me a little bit more about this, this dance path, yeah,

Sarah Carusona 1:03:01

I don't know, have you ever heard of river dance? I

William Harris 1:03:06

mean, like, like the Irish river dance, or whatever. Like, yeah, okay, then, yes, yeah. But

Sarah Carusona 1:03:10

I was, I think it was like, six or five years old. It was on Channel 11, like PBS, on my mom's TV, and I remember seeing it, and I was like, Oh, I was just, I was in awe. And I just, I loved the production. I loved the music. I loved, like, there's the the main dancer, she had, like, long red hair. And I was like, Oh, my God, I want to do that. And that's kind of what started for me. And I've never done Irish dancing, but I think, yeah, I really liked the just the expression and the and the athleticism of it, and I think that that's what really got me into it. Because I am a, I'm a pretty analytical person, which I kind of forgot about for like, 10 years of my life, but I'm also a pretty creative person, and so I liked the combination of those two. And, yeah, so, I mean, I went to college for dance. I went to the University of Iowa. I graduated early, and then I was at a I was in like, a couple programs in Chicago, and then I actually went to Israel for five months and did it. I lived on a kibbutz and dance there. I'd never been out of the country. It was very interesting. I think I knew, like, one person who was Jewish in my life, and I was, yeah, it was very interesting, but I Yeah, so anyways, like, I really enjoyed it for a lot of reasons. But I think the thing that, like, finally got to me, and I call it, like my breakup with dance, was that it, there wasn't a there wasn't a mathematical model to success, right? Like I could, I can do, I can do the things as well as I possibly could. But I guess, like two things, like one, I don't I've got very short legs and very short arms, and I can't do anything about that. That is just the way I am built. And so I've got a long torso, short arms and short legs, and that is like, not typically what you want for. Dance and and I would have, like, I had an art director one time. She used to, I got into this company, and I was dancing for them. And she used to, like, I would do the I would do the routine, and she'd be like, Sarah, I just don't feel your body. Like, I need you to feel your body. And I'd be like, Ow. How you've got to give me more than that. And so I think, like, as I as I was in dance, and I started getting into fitness because I was sick of waitressing, and I was in fitness, and I was like, oh, there's a right and there's a wrong, like, there's a right and there's a wrong way to squat, and I can teach somebody how to squat and know if it's right or wrong. And then we can progressively, we can progressively lift heavier weights, like it actually, like works and and to me, that was just a really cool, you know, phenomenon. And then I got into fitness, and then from there, as I learned about digital marketing, I was like, Ooh, numbers. I remember those. I know how to use those. And then art I could do this. This is fun,

William Harris 1:06:05

blending the two together. I love you called out PBS too. I don't even know if PBS is around. I assume it still is, but it's like we all have like apps that we watch everything on now. So it's like PBS doesn't get a whole lot of love. But things that I liked on PBS when I was a kid was, there was this comedian pianist named Victor Borga. I don't know if you remember seeing this one as well, but he was a hilarious, like, old man comedian who would play the piano like, and he played the music upside down. I don't know it was really funny. And it's one of those weird things that you're just like, it's your Irish, yeah? So it's like, Oh, I love those childhood PBS memories.

Sarah Carusona 1:06:40

Yeah, yeah, I gotta look that up. But name sounds familiar.

William Harris 1:06:45

You mentioned that you hadn't traveled out of the country when you were there, but now you mentioned earlier that you've been to like, 20 countries, and currently you're living in Buenos Aires. Why Buenos Aires? And how do you like it so far? Yeah,

Sarah Carusona 1:06:59

so we kind of like, I said, we started with that conversation of, let's move out of the country and and then my husband said, Okay, let's do it in 12 months. I sat on that for a week, and I was like, I can't wait that long. Let's go down. And so then we started narrowing it down. Like we we love Europe. We love Spain. We've always talked about living in Spain. But then as we started talking about it more. We realized time zone might be a little bit more challenging than we were ready for right now. I do think it's doable. So then we're like, Okay, what about South America, or South or Central America? And my thing was, I want to move first to a place that we I was like, let's just I think it will be better to go somewhere we've been at least once, because we at least know it, and then we can move from there. So then that narrowed it down pretty large, because we've been to basically, like, Mexico City, we've been to Medellin, and we've been to Buenos Aires, and so Mexico City, we were like, it doesn't feel far enough away, but we both love Buenos Aires. So we were like, Let's, let's start here. And yeah, I mean, it's, it's definitely been great. I think we're probably staying here for another I know we're staying here for another two months, and then we're thinking about going somewhere else after that. We're Lima is high on the list. But, I mean, Buenos Aires, like, for anybody who's wants to travel, it's great. It's very European, like, it feels like Spain. A lot. People are super, super nice. I think the things that are challenging for me is, I don't eat meat, and so it's a very, very meat heavy culture, and a little less spices. There's like pepper is, is the most spice you'll typically get. You can find other spices, but it's a little bit if I try to find, like a Thai curry, for example, I have a really hard time doing that, which, again, is not the worst thing in the world. We're very much enjoying it, but it's gonna be fun to visit a few other countries and cities.

William Harris 1:08:53

That's cool. That sounds like a great idea. We've got a couple people on our team that have become digital nomads to a point as well, and work from Mexico for three months and then move somewhere else and just like, that's great. I love that that our profession allows you to Pretty much, yeah, you want,

Sarah Carusona 1:09:09

I love that you allow that for your team too. Because I, I know a lot of people, and even, even as a consultant, I've, I've had some people be like, but you're going to be living where are you going to have internet? Yes, yes, AM, and it's going to be great. But, yeah, I think that it's, it's so doable, and it's just a, it's a fun, you know, way to experience the world. And just open your eyes up to, I think even though the US is very big, it can feel small, and you can assume that the rest of the world is like the US, but there's just, there's, there's so much more out there.

William Harris 1:09:46

Yeah, that's cool. Are there any quotes that you live by where you're like, This is something I have in my office or on my phone, and you're like, This is a quote that I just love repeating over and over again to myself and people i know i. Yeah.

Sarah Carusona 1:10:01

Well, my office changes daily. But the one that I the one that I say a lot, is one day at a time, one day at a time. And sometimes I even say, like, one hour at a time, or one step at a time. And I think, I think, you know, my mom has said that to me when I was a kid and and it's one where I think it as somebody who's a, I don't want to call myself a high achiever, but like I, you know, I am very ambitious. You can try to do too many things at once, and while you're doing one thing, you're thinking about the 10 other things that you want to do. And then I think there's also, you know, a level of anxiety that can come with unknowns and what's next, and what are you going to do next? And as an E com consultant right now, you know, I, I, you know, I know I've got clients through this time. I don't know what's going to happen after that. I'm not sure what's going to happen after that, and that can lead to a lot of anxiety. But I think taking it one step at a time, one day at a time, one hour at a time. It's like, what's the next best thing that you can do? Let's focus on that, and then you focus on the next best thing that you can do, because that's what you can control.

William Harris 1:11:06

I love that. There's a Bible verse that goes very much hand in hand with that, if that's okay for me to share here, which is your word is a lamp unto my feet and a light into my path. And the reason why I've always latched on to that one is for that same reason, where, if you think about a lamp at night time. That means everything else is dark. And so if it's a lamp to your feet, all you can see are your feet, and probably one step in front of your foot, and then it's just dark in front of you, around you, behind you. And so you can't see if, overall, where you're going is a rough spot you're like. But I know that this step right here is solid ground. I can see that much as I'm going to take that step. And sometimes it's all you need to take. That's all you need to take and just let the other stuff just kind of handle its own.

Sarah Carusona 1:11:46

Yeah, yeah. It's yeah, because at the end of the day, that's all, that's all you can control. And think it also helps you be a lot more present, too. And I just went out of my first yoga retreat in Patagonia. It was

William Harris 1:11:57

absolutely gorgeous, really, Patagonia even it was, it was,

Sarah Carusona 1:12:00

it was so be, I want to go back. But we, we did a walking meditation, which, like, you know, there were some things, anytime you go on a yoga retreat, you gotta be like, Okay, what? Like, I'm in it. I'm in it, even though you're like, I'm just walking and what am I doing? And why am I just walking around? But when I was doing it, though I was like, you know, I was like, noticing, like, flowers and leaves and different things and and what I thought of is, I was like, I'm never there's so many times where I'm just not present, where you're just, you're in it, but you're again, you're thinking about the next 10 things that you've got to do, versus like, actually being present.

William Harris 1:12:36

Yeah, that's good, speaking of being present in moments. Sometimes we have embarrassing moments. I understand that you are a big Harry Potter fan, and there's a fun story to go along with this.

Sarah Carusona 1:12:47

Yeah, yeah, I've been a Harry Potter fan since I was a kid. I was, I was lucky. I kind of was the perfect age for it, right? Like, my mom read it to me when I think I was like, 11, so or No, I think it was like, a little younger than that. So it was just like, I kind of grew up with of grew up with it, and I but I was also I grew up in a small town. And so it was like, there wasn't a big group of, like, Harry Potter fans that I could latch on to. There was kind of like a small group, and it was, you know, little bit like made fun of sort of a thing and and so when I was in high school, and I think it was like the sixth book was coming out or something, and I I had a friend who lived in Pennsylvania, and I flew to Pennsylvania, and she lived in a bigger town. She had a big group of friends who were all Harry Potter fans. So it was like, way more fun. And we all dressed up and we went, we got the book at midnight, and we the next morning, on the front page of that town's newspaper was a picture of me standing with a Harry Potter book, a little wand, like a scar on my head. And I just, like, had, like, the dorkiest look on my face you could ever have. And so we laugh. I'm like, Oh, haha. I mean, it's in Pennsylvania, like, I'm fine. I live in Illinois, and nobody in my hometown who I'm secretly hiding that I'm a Harry Potter fan will ever know. And I go back to, you know, I go back to my town. We're at a, like, in the library, at one of our classes, and, like, Google is starting to become a thing and whatnot, and and for some reason, we're like, Ha, let's Google people's names and see what happens. And somebody googles Sarah Carusona, and literally, it's my face off on the screen, book, wand, dorkiest face. So again, and I like, I like, lunge across, and I'm like, No, and I x it out. But then I like, start looking around, and everybody in the class is like, laughing, and they're all starting to Google my name. Like, how do you spell it? So anyways, for about I don't know how long it was, it had it been, like five or six years. If you Googled my name, that was the image that came up. I can't find it anymore, so if anybody can, go for it, but yeah, it was fun. You've done a good job of

William Harris 1:14:54

cleaning up the internet of that. That's why you got into digital marketing in the first place. Was to get rid of that. Yeah, there you go, Sarah. It's been absolutely amazing talking to you and learning from you. If people wanted to learn from you, follow you, work with you. What's the best way for them to get in touch or stay in touch?

Sarah Carusona 1:15:12

Yeah, it's just my name. I'm on X, I'm on LinkedIn. I am on TikTok. I'm trying to grow my following on there, so would love a follow there, but yeah, just my first and last name, Carusona, and yeah, would love to connect with anybody. And William, thank you so much for having me. This is really fun. I love what you're doing with the pod and the agency. And yeah, really honored to be here.

William Harris 1:15:37

Well, thank you again for sharing your time, sharing your knowledge and wisdom with us. Thank you everyone for listening. Have a great rest of your day.

Outro 1:15:42

Thanks for listening to the Up Arrow Podcast with William Harris. We'll see you again next time, and be sure to click Subscribe to get future episodes.

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