Frank Growth

Jason Shafton
  • 5.0 (5)
  • Marketing
  • Updated Monthly

Frank Growth is a sharp, execution-first podcast about how companies actually grow. Hosted by Jason Shafton, it features candid conversations with founders, operators, and investors who are in the work right now. The focus is real decisions: distribution, demand, pricing, org design, incentives, and what breaks once the early playbooks stop working. No hype. No recycled advice. Just clear thinking from people accountable for outcomes.

  1. 16h ago

    Commerce for Weirdos with Bryan House

    Episode #240: Bryan House - Tearing up the enterprise GTM playbook as a challenger brand Elastic Path cut its website to two forms, its marketing team from 13 people to 3, and its implementation bids to a third of the price of competitors.For B2B leaders at challenger brands whose activity metrics look busy while growth stays flat. Bryan House is CEO of Elastic Path, a composable commerce platform competing with Shopify, BigCommerce, and Commerce Tools in a market where nearly every company already has a commerce platform. Looking at the data, he found little to no correlation between sales and marketing activity and outcomes, and not one downloaded analyst report form fill had ever turned into an opportunity. He and Jason get into cutting the top of the funnel down to two forms, putting competitors on the homepage, bringing implementation in-house to remove the incentive gap with systems integrators, and using AI and better product to move commerce implementation toward six weeks and $100,000. What you’ll hear Why Elastic Path replaced BDR cold calling, nurture campaigns, and gated content with two forms on its site: get in touch or request a demoHow marketing went from 13 people to 3, with Claude and product managers covering messaging, positioning, and sales trainingThe trap of falling back on proven sales systems, like swapping BDRs for AI BDRs, when the underlying motion isn't workingBryan's test for contrarian moves like naming competitors on your homepage: what's the downside risk, and is it catastrophic? Chapters 00:00 - Why enterprise B2B go-to-market is stuck02:00 - Bryan joins: rewriting the classic enterprise GTM playbook04:13 - No correlation between activity and outcomes06:29 - Being ready when buyers raise their hand07:51 - Commerce for weirdos09:45 - Finding the right customers as a challenger brand11:52 - Putting competitors on the homepage13:52 - Taking implementation to six weeks and $100,00016:06 - Bringing implementation in-house and the SI incentive problem17:56 - Cutting marketing from 13 to 3 and letting Claude do product marketing20:31 - Expansion vs. new logos21:46 - Where the growth is: mid-market B2B e-commerce24:17 - Lightning round26:37 - Jason's top three takeaways Links & resources GuestBryan House - CEO, Elastic PathWebsiteLinkedIn About Frank Growth Frank Growth is a podcast about how companies actually grow: real operators, real constraints, real decisions. Hosted by Jason Shafton. Promotional links Work with Winston FrancoisSubscribe / Follow Jason

    Commerce for Weirdos with Bryan House

  2. Sep 29

    Your Back Office Is Obsolete with Adam Spector

    Episode #239: Adam Spector - Why startups should automate or outsource before they hire How to decide whether a task needs a new hire, AI, or an outside vendor.For founders of early-stage, venture-backed companies with 5 to 75 employees who are about to add headcount. Adam Spector is the founder and CEO of Chore, which runs the back office (HR and fractional chief of staff work) for early-stage, venture-backed tech companies with 5 to 75 employees. Chore came out of a company that raised about $10 million but couldn't raise its next round; Adam split it in two, took the services team, and set out to make it profitable. We cover why he now asks "How can we solve this with AI?" before every hire, what happened when he gave each go-to-market team member a monthly qualified-lead target after his head of go-to-market left, and why he thinks founders should outsource admin instead of building an internal team for it. One detail: Chore averages 2-3% of a customer's total monthly expenses, against about 10% at the average company. What you’ll hear The question Adam asks before hiring, and the Claude project tied to Chore's CRM that now pulls the weekly sales metrics his former head of go-to-market used to compileHow Adam reset his go-to-market team: one metric per person, a set number of qualified leads per month in each channelWhy the team pushed back on that target, and why Adam decided it was not going to be a fit long termThe objection Chore hears most ("that seems expensive"), and Adam's math on a roughly $1,500-a-month service versus 10 to 20 hours of a founder's timeGrowth by subtraction: why managers shouldn't be a crutch, and Adam's view that managers may be irrelevant at fast-moving companies within a year or two Chapters/Timestamps 00:00 - Cold open: the go-to-market team pushes back00:40 - Intro: founders have a curiosity problem, not a team problem02:07 - What Chore does and who it serves03:20 - Splitting the company and building a profitable services business04:24 - Why referrals are Chore's main growth channel05:36 - Premature hiring and asking "How can we solve this with AI?"06:55 - "That seems expensive": 2-3% versus 10% on admin08:33 - Resetting the go-to-market team10:39 - Hiring curious builders11:36 - Ollie, Chore's AI ops co-pilot12:55 - Why AI doesn't have to kill services margins13:38 - Growth by subtraction and managers as a crutch14:43 - What managers are for in the future of work15:35 - The hiring audit: automate, outsource, delegate16:48 - The most expensive back-office mistake founders make17:27 - Lightning round18:37 - Where to find Adam19:15 - Top three takeaways and one action for this week Links & resources GuestAdam Spector - Founder and CEO, ChoreChore WebsiteLinkedInXEntrepreneurial Excellence Podcast About Frank Growth Frank Growth is a podcast about how companies actually grow - real operators, real constraints, real decisions. Hosted by Jason Shafton. Promotional links Work with Winston FrancoisSubscribe / Follow Jason

    Your Back Office Is Obsolete with Adam Spector

  3. Sep 22

    The Best Kept Secret Sport with Ozge Erturk

    Episode #238: Ozge Erturk - Hitting #1 in the App Store on zero paid media FloSports is profitable, covers 25+ sports, and has a million subscribers. Its CMO explains how that math works.For subscription operators, growth leads, and anyone marketing to an audience the mainstream ignores. Ozge Erturk is the CMO of FloSports, a profitable streaming company covering wrestling, motorsports, cheer, jiu jitsu, and D2/D3 college athletics - categories most media companies won't touch. She joined four years ago and reset the entire marketing department, expanding its scope from brand and acquisition to the full funnel, bringing all paid media in-house, and treating pricing as a growth lever. In this episode she breaks down the split between demand capture and demand creation, why she refuses to spend money manufacturing interest that doesn't exist, and what she learned running subscriptions at Amazon and Match.com Group before this. She also explains why 95% of FloSports customers sign up to watch one specific event, and why that single fact shapes everything about the pricing and retention strategy. What you'll hear The demand capture vs. demand creation split, and why she's "not in the business of making you a hockey fan"How she reset the marketing org: full-funnel ownership, paid media brought in-house, vertical-agnostic functionsThe influencer marketing bet that didn't translate into subscribers, and her two hypotheses for whyHow to make free content and a paywall work together instead of choosing one Chapters 00:05 - Cold open: the Kyle Larson test00:44 - Three ways companies get niche audiences wrong03:21 - Demand capture vs. demand creation05:31 - What changed leaving Amazon for FloSports07:46 - The marketing decisions behind profitability09:29 - 95% sign up for one event: pricing and annual plans10:53 - Fast Company and #1 in the App Store, with zero paid media12:06 - Why the influencer hire didn't work14:44 - Hiring a technical marketer, not a brand marketer16:34 - What industrial engineering taught her about marketing17:45 - Roku, fast channels, and the paywall strategy19:25 - One playbook or one per sport?20:39 - The participatory audience nobody is serving21:55 - "Best kept secret in sports": feature or bug?23:15 - Lightning round24:55 - Jason's top three takeaways Links & resources GuestOzge Erturk - CMO, FloSportsWebsiteLinkedIn About Frank Growth Frank Growth is a podcast about how companies actually grow - real operators, real constraints, real decisions. Hosted by Jason Shafton. Promotional links Work with Winston FrancoisSubscribe / Follow Jason

    The Best Kept Secret Sport with Ozge Erturk

  4. Sep 15

    Stop Buying Users Who Leave with Michelle Matthews

    Episode #237: Michelle Matthews - Acquisition is the easy part in health and wellness This episode is about the gap between what marketing promises and what the product delivers, and what that gap actually costs a company. For growth leaders, founders, and product teams building for people who show up on a bad day. Michelle Matthews is a product and service designer with over 15 years of experience building consumer and healthcare products, at scale and from inception, including work with Brightline and Headspace. She started as a social worker, and she brings that systems view to onboarding flows, research practice, and behavior change design. Jason and Michelle cover where marketing hands off to product, why a clean divide between the two breaks the story users experience, and how to measure real change instead of engagement. She describes a user interview at Brightline where a participant walked from marketing assets through the end of onboarding and asked, are you messing with me. When a mental health company overpromises, the fallout is not just churn. It is bad reviews, lost trust, and therapists warning each other on Reddit before they apply. What you'll hear The three B's from Irrational Labs: name the behavior you need, find the barriers in someone's real life, then design a benefit that counteracts each oneHow Brightline rebuilt onboarding by body storming the signup as a phone call, so the first question is how can I help you instead of what is your child's insurance card numberWhy targeting the entire mindset matrix brings in low-intent users who leave bad reviews, skip appointments, and damage lagging metricsThe pre-research exercise: write down your assumptions, your biases, and the answer you are hoping for, then rewrite any question that leads people toward it Chapters 00:00 - Cold open: are you messing with me00:41 - Why acquisition is the easy part in health and wellness02:50 - Social work to UX and what therapy training carries over03:40 - The day someone signs up for Brightline is not a good day04:55 - Selling research to a team that just wants to ship05:54 - Where marketing stops and product takes over07:09 - Headspace versus Calm: the Tylenol and the vitamin08:31 - Engagement metrics versus real change, and the three B's10:07 - Why marketers and researchers keep landing in the same rooms12:08 - Where a growth-obsessed CMO gets it wrong14:28 - Mindsets instead of personas, and the cost of spray and pray15:42 - What overpromising costs: reviews, trust, and hiring17:44 - Growing from ego versus growing in a way you can sustain19:31 - Career advice for early-career designers in an AI job market21:20 - Nobody is sticking around: the first thing to look at22:31 - Design is not just screens23:04 - Lightning round and Soft Futures Links & resources GuestMichelle Matthews, product and service designer, consumer and healthcare productsLinkedIn About Frank Growth Frank Growth is a podcast about how companies actually grow, real operators, real constraints, real decisions. Hosted by Jason Shafton. Promotional links Work with Winston FrancoisSubscribe / Follow Jason

    Stop Buying Users Who Leave with Michelle Matthews

  5. Sep 8

    Turn Marketers Into AI Strategists with Elyssa Steiner

    Episode #236: Elyssa Steiner - Rebuilding a 21-person marketing team in 30 days Marketing is not a lead factory. It is a growth system, and the operating model is the ceiling on what ships.For CMOs and marketing leaders who inherited a team built for a smaller company. Elyssa Steiner is Chief Marketing Officer at Kahua and a B2B growth leader with more than 15 years of experience. She came from nearly nine years at Cantaloupe, through multiple acquisitions and the sale of the company, into construction project management software, and restructured a 21-person team in her first 30 days while the revenue org was verticalizing around her. She and Jason get into how she backed marketing targets into revenue targets in a workshop with the VP of sales three weeks in, why she refused to accept MQL volume as the definition of success, and how she built 14 vertical ICPs using internal knowledge and AI as a first draft. Her VP of sales called them 90 to 95 percent of the way there after 45 days, and they became custom GPTs the whole revenue org now uses. What you'll hear Structuring marketing around verticals instead of channels, with solution marketers embedded in each sales pod as the vertical SME and one digital team running paid across all of themBacking marketing targets into revenue targets using historical conversion data, then tracking marketing sourced opportunities and closed won deals by vertical instead of MQL volumeThe mistake she names directly: scaling AI before standardizing the process, which she says she learned firsthandHow to run the ICP exercise yourself, ship it at good enough, and let your sales SMEs throw darts at it rather than spending six months making it perfect Chapters 00:00 - Why marketing teams have a throughput problem, not a strategy problem02:31 - Leaving fintech for construction software, and what carries over03:14 - What she found walking in the door, and why the team was hungry for clarity07:12 - Keeping four vertical pods from turning into four silos08:19 - Writing marketing OKRs that back into revenue, and why not MQLs10:09 - Building 14 ICPs with AI in 45 days12:39 - ABM from 18 accounts to 400, and the budget constraint reframe14:07 - Selling AI to federal buyers when trust is the whole story17:05 - Throughput across brand, product marketing, and advocacy18:59 - The daily AI mandate, no layoffs, and everyone becoming a strategist22:41 - Marketing to a buyer who has been burned before23:38 - Lightning round Links & resources GuestElyssa Steiner, Chief Marketing Officer at KahuaKahuaLinkedIn About Frank Growth Frank Growth is a podcast about how companies actually grow, real operators, real constraints, real decisions. Hosted by Jason Shafton. Promotional links Work with Winston FrancoisSubscribe / Follow Jason

    Turn Marketers Into AI Strategists with Elyssa Steiner

  6. Sep 1

    The Marketing Engineer with Nick Lafferty

    Episode #235: Nick Lafferty on Marketing Engineering, Category Creation, and Closing His Own Deals He was the first marketing hire at Profound, and within weeks he was shipping production code and taking sales demos himself. For founders making their first marketing hire and for marketers deciding what to learn next. Nick Lafferty is the Founding Marketing Engineer at Profound, where he joined as the first marketer on a 20-person team that has since grown to 200 and raised Series A, B, and C in 10 months. He walks through what a marketing engineer actually does, what broke as the company scaled, and why he put himself in the lead round robin and gave close to a hundred demos when there weren't enough AEs to cover pipeline. He also breaks down the system he built to connect HubSpot deal data to LinkedIn impressions, the interview question he opens with, and why he is openly against token maxing. Before Profound, Nick ran growth at Loom through its acquisition by Atlassian. What you'll hear Why the first marketing hire should be a marketing engineer, with a product marketer as the fast followHow Nick shipped a social proof quote to the live contact sales page in 15 minutes using Cursor, and the required "how did you hear about us" field that powers his attribution systemWhat broke first at speed: lead routing running through a Google Sheet, deliverability issues, and then more meetings than sales reps to take themHow Profound builds a category by publishing research to customers in Slack first, then LinkedIn, then email and webinars Chapters 00:00 - Cold open: "I have contracts with real ARR tied back to my name"00:45 - Frank Growth intro: three things going wrong with marketing teams02:11 - Nick's background, from Loom to Profound03:02 - What a marketing engineer actually does03:50 - The first thing he ever shipped, and it's still live04:45 - Building the LinkedIn to HubSpot attribution system05:47 - The result: 20% of inbound lead forms from LinkedIn06:37 - What broke first at scale08:18 - Hiring the first four marketers09:14 - The interview question: show me your GitHub repo10:21 - What Loom taught him about horizontal products12:00 - Marketing a category that didn't exist 18 months ago13:23 - The research drumbeat, and giving customers early access in Slack15:04 - Why Profound turns away the self-service market15:45 - Profound University and the marketing engineer job board16:34 - From analytics product to AI agent workbench17:37 - What to look for in a first marketing hire today18:50 - Anti-token maxing, and where marketing engineers come from20:04 - Lightning round21:30 - Jason's top three takeaways and one thing to do this week Links & resources Guest Nick Lafferty, Founding Marketing Engineer, ProfoundLinkedInX/TwitterProfoundProfound on LinkedInProfound Index About Frank Growth Frank Growth is a podcast about how companies actually grow: real operators, real constraints, real decisions. Hosted by Jason Shafton. Promotional links Work with Winston FrancoisSubscribe / Follow Jason

    The Marketing Engineer with Nick Lafferty

  7. Aug 25

    Nobody Has The Playbook Yet with Dave Steer

    Episode #234: Dave Steer on repositioning a brand around AI in three months Webflow's CMO had 90 days to relaunch the website, reposition the brand, and ship an ad campaign.For marketing leaders whose board just told them to become AI native, and who don't have a playbook for it. Dave Steer is CMO at Webflow, leading brand, demand, and product marketing after two decades at GitLab, Cloudflare, Twitter, Facebook, and Mozilla. His mandate came from the board and leadership team, timed to Webflow Conf three months from his start date. We cover how he reorganized a 50-to-60-person marketing team around AI tools, why he ran positioning as an executive exercise with April Dunford rather than a marketing one, and where he draws the line between what a human writes and what an agent touches. He also walks through Webflow's AEO Maturity Index, a study of 2,000 US websites where the average site scored about two or three, and where the problem was site structure rather than content volume. What you'll hear Why positioning is a corporate strategy activity, not a marketing activity, and who has to be in the roomHow the team moved from a relay race of specialists to treating everyone as an orchestrator and connectorThe two instincts that go wrong first: buying a pile of ChatGPT licenses, and optimizing for day one instead of day twoWhere the human/agent line sits: the human owns the argument, the agent owns the permutation Chapters 00:00 - The human owns the argument, the agent owns the permutation00:33 - Three ways marketing leaders are handling the AI mandate badly02:24 - The three things every CMO has to be expert in now03:11 - Where the three-month mandate came from05:00 - What "agentic" means when the web has two audiences06:14 - April Dunford and why positioning is an executive staff exercise07:13 - The AEO Maturity Index: 2,000 sites, average score of two or three08:40 - Rebuilt, not retooled: ending the relay race12:26 - Four human roles: strategist, orchestrator, creator, connector17:13 - The single biggest mistake CMOs are making right now18:55 - Lightning round20:49 - Top three takeaways and one thing to do this week Links & resources Guest Dave Steer, Chief Marketing Officer, WebflowWebsiteWebflow ConfLinkedIn About Frank Growth Frank Growth is a podcast about how companies actually grow. Real operators, real constraints, real decisions. Hosted by Jason Shafton. Promotional links Work with Winston FrancoisSubscribe / Follow Jason

    Nobody Has The Playbook Yet with Dave Steer

  8. Aug 18

    Stop Writing Only for Humans with Jesus Requena

    Episode #233: Jesus Requena — Dropping SEO entirely to optimize for LLMsSanity stopped producing SEO content and started building pages only machines will read. Roughly 60% of last month's signups came from LLMs.For B2B growth leaders watching organic traffic fall and trying to work out what replaces it. Jesus Requena is CMO at Sanity, and previously led growth marketing at Figma, demand gen at Unity and Algolia, and growth at Hex. After watching client SEO traffic fall to a tenth of what it had been, he stopped SEO content production entirely and rebuilt Sanity's content for LLMs to parse rather than humans to read. He walks through the three-layer playbook: fixing contradictions across 100 to 200 pages on their own site, converting roughly 1,000 FAQ pages from user-centric to LLM-centric, building five single-topic microsites excluded from Google, then correcting third-party citations that conflicted with their own story. Sanity moved from ranking 15th or 20th in LLM visibility to top five. What you'll hear Why visibility comes from reasoning: if an LLM can reason your concepts clearly, it recommends you, which makes first-party consistency the starting point How they executed it — crawling their own site to find unclear terms, writing content no human is expected to read, and partnering with AirOps to fix obsolete third-party citations Why attribution breaks when signups arrive through a CLI or MCP without ever touching the website, and the self-reported "where did you find us" question they fell back on Where to start from zero, in order: audit your own site, then third-party mentions, then microsites — plus the caveat that Reddit's influence is fading and LLMs are pulling more from videoChapters 00:00 — Cold open: "We literally just stopped any SEO content" 00:38 — The AEO shift: what's going wrong and what works 02:12 — Meet Jesus Requena: Figma, Unity, Algolia, Hex, Sanity 02:45 — The common thread in marketing to technical audiences 04:30 — SEO traffic drops to a tenth, and the bet that followed 06:15 — The three layers of AEO content 08:22 — Citations, visibility, and going from 15th to top five 10:37 — Authority, and becoming the thought leader for the LLM 12:07 — 1,000 FAQ pages and five microsites excluded from Google 14:23 — Why brand investment went physical: events, swag, billboards 17:30 — Measuring attribution when nobody clicks 19:17 — Is the growth repeatable or is it timing? 20:41 — Where to start from zero 22:38 — Scaling agents, and humans handling the exception 23:59 — Lightning round 25:14 — Jason's top three takeawaysLinks & resourcesGuestJesus Requena — CMO, SanityWebsiteLinkedIn About Frank GrowthFrank Growth is a podcast about how companies actually grow—real operators, real constraints, real decisions. Hosted by Jason Shafton. Promotional links Work with Winston Francois Subscribe / Follow Jason

    Stop Writing Only for Humans with Jesus Requena
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Ratings & Reviews

5
out of 5
5 Ratings

About

Frank Growth is a sharp, execution-first podcast about how companies actually grow. Hosted by Jason Shafton, it features candid conversations with founders, operators, and investors who are in the work right now. The focus is real decisions: distribution, demand, pricing, org design, incentives, and what breaks once the early playbooks stop working. No hype. No recycled advice. Just clear thinking from people accountable for outcomes.

Information

  • Creator
    Jason Shafton
  • Years Active
    2024 - 2026
  • Episodes
    46
  • Rating
    Clean
  • Copyright
    © Jason Shafton
  • Show Website
    Frank Growth

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