Brand Building Podcast

Mark Milutin
  • 0.0 (0)
  • Marketing
  • Weekly

The Brand Building Podcast is for founders and operators who want to understand what it actually takes to build and grow an ecommerce brand. I’m Mark Milutin, founder of Bread Loaf. After nearly 2 decades working alongside brands, I’ve learned that growth rarely comes from one great ad or one new tool. It comes from understanding your customers, building systems that keep them coming back, and making better decisions as the market changes. On the show, I sit down with founders and industry leaders to unpack how brands are built. I also share what we’re seeing firsthand across retention, paid media, creative, Shopify, and AI: what’s working, what’s changing, and where brands are leaving money on the table. Expect honest founder stories, practical breakdowns, and ideas you can take back to your own business. Listen wherever you get your podcasts, or watch the conversations and video episodes on YouTube.

  1. 1d ago

    How AI Voice Agents Interview 100+ Customers a Month, and What Brands Learn From It | Bryan Starck, Customer Conversations

    Most brands think they know their customer. Usually it’s a persona deck someone made 18 months ago. In this episode, I sit down with Bryan Starck, founder of Customer Conversations, to talk about how AI voice agents now interview hundreds of customers every month and turn those conversations into ad creative, email angles, CRO tests and retention wins. 🔍 Get your free Retention Scan: https://retention-lab.com/retention-scan 🚀 Discuss your growth strategy: https://calendly.com/markmilutin/retention-audit-kick-off?month=2025-02 🎙️ Learn more about Customer Conversations: https://customerconversations.co Bryan and I met working on the same brand years ago. Since then he’s built 100 Celsius into a subscription growth consultancy and launched Customer Conversations, which runs AI-powered customer interviews at scale for ecommerce brands. In this episode: – How email marketing has changed in 10+ years, from beautiful creative to CRM strategy – Bryan’s path from enterprise martech sales to starting his own agency – How a custom AI voice agent interviews new customers, VIPs and churned subscribers 24/7, triggered from Klaviyo – Why surveys, reviews and cancel flows only give surface-level feedback – Why customers who won’t type two sentences will talk for 15 minutes – Using AI to have the hard conversations with churned subscribers your team avoids – The daily insight feed that powers ad creative, email campaigns and CRO tests – Why your customer persona is probably wrong – Our review-mining process in Claude that builds 7 customer avatars – How AI calls caught a bad product batch within a week – What AI customer interviews cost compared to traditional focus groups – Turning customer calls into ads and testimonials, with consent – Q4 for subscription brands: why reskinning your evergreen offer often beats a brand-new BFCM promo – Why your competitor is every brand on the internet, and why Q1 is the real opportunity AI without a human touch is just efficiency. Used right, it creates more real conversations with your customers than you’ve ever been able to have.

  2. 4d ago

    Will AI Replace Video Editors? Behind the Scenes With the Bread Loaf Editing Team

    Everyone online says video editors are cooked. In this episode, I sit down with Marin and Mario, the in-house editing team behind every Bread Loaf video, podcast and ad, to talk about how we actually use AI every day and why it still can’t replace a great editor. 🔍 Get your free Retention Scan: https://retention-lab.com/retention-scan 🚀 Discuss your growth strategy: https://calendly.com/markmilutin/retention-audit-kick-off?month=2025-02 In this episode: – How Marin and Mario got into video editing: from choosing a laptop over prom to landing a first Upwork job in one week – Why every B2B company should be investing in video right now – How AI changed our workflow, from working only with client footage to creating anything we can imagine – The AI “Super 8” Venice Beach ads that replaced a six-figure photoshoot and became our client’s top-performing ads for months – The AI tools our editors use daily: Unit, Seedance 2.5, Claude, ChatGPT and ElevenLabs – Why “editors are cooked” is just a viral hook, and why Figma grew 45% even after Claude Design launched – Building our first AI spokesperson, Ellery Marsh, and why we’re telling everyone she’s AI – Why marketing content is becoming vanilla, and why originality and entertainment win next – Why good B-roll and storytelling still make or break a video The bottom line: AI without a human operator produces vanilla content. With the right editor behind it, it’s the biggest creative unlock we’ve ever had.

  3. Oct 24

    Stop Bribing Customers With Coupons: 3 Win-Back Plays That Drive Repeat Revenue Without a Discount

    Most win-back campaigns start the same way: “We miss you, here’s 20% off.” When the customer doesn’t respond, the coupon gets bigger. That can work, but you’re training your customers that if they ignore you long enough, you’ll lower the price. 🔍 Get your free Retention Scan: https://retention-lab.com/retention-scan 🚀 Discuss your growth strategy: https://calendly.com/markmilutin/retention-audit-kick-off?month=2025-02 In this episode, I break down the 3 win-back plays we’re building right now that don’t start with a discount. They start with one question: what should this customer logically buy next? – Play 1: Turn your win-back into education. How a specialty outdoor brand uses the founder’s how-to content to sell the consumable every customer eventually needs – Play 2: The “bought A but never bought B” segment. How a travel gear brand targeted past buyers who never purchased the companion accessory: one audience, one product, one job – Play 3: One product, one reason to care. Why focused campaigns beat emails that try to be a homepage – The exercise to steal: map your top 5 first-purchase products to their logical second purchase, and build 5 new cross-sell campaigns from your own data – When a discount actually makes sense: 180+ days lapsed, strong margins, inventory reasons The discount should be the lever, not the strategy. Your best win-back campaign might not need a coupon at all. It might just need the right product.

  4. Oct 22

    7 Klaviyo Leaks Quietly Draining Revenue From $5M+ Ecommerce Brands (Audit Checklist)

    Grab your Klaviyo login and audit your account with me. These are the 7 leaks we keep finding when we audit established ecommerce brands doing $5M+ a year. These aren’t beginner accounts: they’re real companies with real teams and agencies. Some of these problems are embarrassingly simple, which is exactly why they survive for years. In this episode: – UTM tracking turned off, and why your attribution is lying to you – Email footer, compliance and unsubscribe hygiene – Image-only emails that say nothing when images are blocked – The “welcome flow from hell”: 15 emails with 7-day gaps – Smart Sending quietly breaking your lifecycle flows – Emails so long that Gmail clips them, footer and all – Dark mode and mobile QA: what your customer actually sees – Bonus: site abandonment, low-review escalation, back in stock, sunset flows, and “email zero” At the end, I give you a simple way to score your own account. None of these leaks looks catastrophic on its own, but together they’re 10 small leaks draining one big bucket. Sometimes the expensive problems are just seven boring things nobody checked. Want us to audit your account for you? ✅ Elevate your brand’s Email & SMS marketing: https://breadloaf.typeform.com/to/rotiGDm7?typeform-source=www.youtube.com 🚀 Book your free Retention Scan: https://calendly.com/markmilutin/retention-audit-kick-off?month=2025-02

  5. Oct 17

    AppLovin for Black Friday 2026: What to Copy, What to Skip, and How to Build Your Q4 Ad Plan

    In this episode, I go through the whole playbook section by section. I cover what’s worth copying, where I disagree, and how I’d turn it into a real Q4 plan for brands doing $5M+ a year. Spending more and making more ads is not a strategy. What I cover: – Why your BFCM campaigns should be live in October, not Thanksgiving week – ROAS vs. CPP: which campaign goal fits your offer, and why holiday bundles change the answer – Day 0 vs. Day 7 conversion windows, and how to match them to your customer’s buying cycle – Universal vs. Prospecting vs. Discovery: what each audience strategy is actually accountable for – How much budget to start with and how to scale without wrecking your margins – Dynamic Catalogs, Interactive Pages, and why 81% of AppLovin’s top-spending video ads run longer than 30 seconds – How much creative the top 5% of advertisers upload every week, and why you shouldn’t copy it blindly – The five shopper phases from Cyber Monday to New Year’s, and what to change in each My biggest takeaway: don’t manage Q4 as six separate platform dashboards. Manage it as one business. Want help planning your Q4? ✅ Elevate your brand’s Email & SMS marketing: https://breadloaf.typeform.com/to/rotiGDm7?typeform-source=www.youtube.com 🚀 Discuss your growth strategy: https://calendly.com/markmilutin/retention-audit-kick-off?month=2025-02

  6. Oct 14

    How Orita Uses AI to Fix the Email Timing Problem Most Brands Don’t Know They Have | Daniel Brady

    Most brands focus on what they send. Orita focuses on when — and the results speak for themselves. Daniel Brady, co-founder and co-CEO of Orita, joins me to break down how their ML platform models customer behavior to predict the exact moment someone is ready to buy. From win-back flows delivering 5-10X performance to a BFCM Scenario Planner built for Black Friday prep — this one is packed. Topics covered: – Why “last 90 days active” segmentation is leaving money on the table – Causal modeling vs. propensity scoring — what actually works – Win-back flows that improved 5-10X with zero content changes – BFCM email strategy and how to use Orita’s Scenario Planner – The $7M raise and what’s next for cross-channel retention If you want us to analyze your brand’s retention strategy: ✅ https://breadloaf.typeform.com/to/rotiGDm7?typeform-source=www.youtube.com 🚀 https://calendly.com/markmilutin/retention-audit-kick-off?month=2025-02

  7. Oct 12

    Stop Letting Your Black Friday Offer Break at 3AM — The BFCM Framework That Actually Works

    Last Black Friday, a brand we work with had someone up until 3:00 AM fixing a broken promotion. Spend threshold. Free gift. Sounds simple. Wasn’t. This happens every year. Brands sit in a conference room, invent the world’s most clever Black Friday offer — and forget there’s an actual ecommerce store that has to execute it. In this episode, I break down the BFCM framework Bread Loaf uses with clients: the 3-second offer test, why one hero offer beats twelve competing discounts, VIP early access done right, developer sign-off before anything goes live, and the four-point checklist every brand needs before the holiday calendar locks in. Your marketing can be exciting. Your checkout should be boring. That’s the goal. ✅ Elevate your brand’s Email & SMS marketing: https://breadloaf.typeform.com/to/rotiGDm7?typeform-source=www.youtube.com 🚀 Discuss your growth strategy: https://calendly.com/markmilutin/retention-audit-kick-off?month=2025-02

  8. Oct 10

    Stop Training Your Customers to Wait for a Sale — The Offer Ladder Explained

    f your customers can predict your next sale before you announce it, you’ve got a problem. Most brands default to percent off because it’s easy — but flat discounts do nothing to change buying behavior. They just make the thing customers already wanted cheaper. In this episode, I break down the offer ladder Bread Loaf uses with clients: why BOGOs and bundles outperform percent off, how to build hot campaigns so you’re never starting from a blank doc when revenue dips, what run rate is and how to use it, and how to properly segment win-back audiences so you’re not sending the same coupon to everyone. Before your next promotion, ask yourself: am I giving the customer a reason to change their behavior — or am I just lowering the price? ✅ Elevate your brand’s Email & SMS marketing: https://breadloaf.typeform.com/to/rotiGDm7?typeform-source=www.youtube.com 🚀 Discuss your growth strategy: https://calendly.com/markmilutin/retention-audit-kick-off?month=2025-02

See All (100)

About

The Brand Building Podcast is for founders and operators who want to understand what it actually takes to build and grow an ecommerce brand. I’m Mark Milutin, founder of Bread Loaf. After nearly 2 decades working alongside brands, I’ve learned that growth rarely comes from one great ad or one new tool. It comes from understanding your customers, building systems that keep them coming back, and making better decisions as the market changes. On the show, I sit down with founders and industry leaders to unpack how brands are built. I also share what we’re seeing firsthand across retention, paid media, creative, Shopify, and AI: what’s working, what’s changing, and where brands are leaving money on the table. Expect honest founder stories, practical breakdowns, and ideas you can take back to your own business. Listen wherever you get your podcasts, or watch the conversations and video episodes on YouTube.

Information

  • Creator
    Mark Milutin
  • Years Active
    2023 - 2026
  • Episodes
    100
  • Rating
    Clean
  • Copyright
    © Copyright 2022 All rights reserved.
  • Show Website
    Brand Building Podcast