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.

5d ago

What is Growth Design? with Philip Lowe

Episode #231: Philip Lowe - Growth creative isn't art, and the customer is the judgeHow to build creative that moves a number (a click, a conversion, a download) instead of creative that only wins the room.For growth marketers, creative directors, and in-house studio leads deciding what to test, what to produce, and what to kill. Philip Lowe runs creative, brand, and marketing operations at Quicken, and previously built Instacart's growth creative team from scratch after starting there as a creative director for CRM. He and Jason worked together at Soothe and Headspace, and this conversation covers what actually separates creative that's good from creative that performs: hiring people who understand both brand and performance, testing hooks, concepts, and narratives as a stage gate before anything gets produced, and knowing where AI helps and where it doesn't. Philip walks through the four-pillar roadmap he uses (exploration, production, learning, infrastructure) and explains why the old path of $30,000 per storyboard and a week and a half of waiting is no longer the only option. He's blunt about the limits too. An AI-generated couple reviewing their finances cycled through eight facial expressions in seconds, which is a non-starter for a brand that has built 40 years of trust. What you'll hear Why growth creative sits at the intersection of brand and performance, and why separating the two is the biggest mistake leaders make How Philip built and staffed a growth studio at Instacart, and why the asset was the vehicle and the insight was the point Where AI delivers, including stylized worlds, claymation, stop motion, and surrealism, anywhere imperfection is the aesthetic, and where it falls flat on human emotion, eyes, hands, and quiet moments What the job of creative becomes in CRM and lifecycle when AI is reading the inbox and open rates stop being the focusChapters 00:00 - Three seconds to hook, like a comedian on stage 00:29 - What growth creative is, and why it's not decoration 01:24 - Sooth, Headspace, and having conviction in the work 04:11 - Growth creative vs. brand creative vs. design 05:56 - The kangaroo video: when it clicked 07:24 - Building Instacart's growth creative team from scratch 09:27 - Good creative vs. creative that performs 11:05 - Testing before you spend a dollar producing 12:41 - Taking on ops: from tastemakers to operators with good taste 14:24 - What changes when production gets cheap 16:38 - The four pillars: exploration, production, learning, infrastructure 18:20 - Where AI delivers a performance and where it doesn't 20:31 - Real humans, real stories, and trust in finance 21:56 - CRM and lifecycle when AI reads the inbox 24:12 - Breaking through when agents do the browsing 25:53 - Hiring for taste 27:01 - The one thing leaders get wrong 27:39 - Lightning round 29:48 - Top three takeawaysLinks & resourcesGuestPhilip Lowe, creative, brand, and marketing operations at QuickenLinkedInTikTok 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
Jul 28

Growth's Most Dangerous Trap With Sara Wallace

Episode #230: Sara Wallace — Repositioning a consumer cashback app into a B2B platformIbotta is known as a cashback app. It's also a white-label promotions platform for the largest retailer in the world.For marketers at consumer companies standing up an enterprise or platform business alongside the one that made them. Sara Wallace is Head of Brand Marketing at Ibotta, which runs both the consumer cashback app and the Ibotta Performance Network. Five months into the role, after building executive marketing and global AI go-to-market strategy at Google Cloud, she's working the problem of building B2B awareness for a company whose recognition lives almost entirely on the consumer side. We get into why she treats the two audiences as genuinely separate rather than migrating one into the other, the one channel where that split breaks down, how she handles AI thought leadership under legal and compliance constraints, and why she argues brand is the engine that makes performance marketing work rather than a luxury line item. She also walks through Ibotta's annual State of Spend findings, including a decline in grocery list-making as shoppers plan loosely and let promotions fill the gaps. What you'll hear Why Ibotta doesn't try to convert cashback users into a B2B audience, and where the two narratives still collide (social media) What Google Cloud taught her about selling to CIOs and CTOs: show how you support the work their org is already doing instead of proving you're the smartest in the room Why public AI messaging stays stunted at most companies — legal exposure, and stories that aren't fully baked yet How to make the case for brand investment when leadership is pushing for immediate ROIChapters 00:00 — Cold open: brand building feels like a luxury, and why it isn't 00:45 — Intro: most companies die from brand confusion, not obscurity 02:33 — Two distinct audiences, not one rebrand 03:32 — Building awareness for the Ibotta Performance Network 05:01 — Google Cloud lessons: talking to technical buyers like people 05:46 — Rebuilding momentum under a new CRO after the CMO left 06:33 — Talking about AI inside legal and compliance limits 07:55 — Founder-led content and the CEO-hosted podcast 08:46 — Enterprise marketing lessons: Walmart, Uber, DoorDash 10:51 — Differentiating against Amazon DSP, Google Ads, and Meta 11:37 — Denver as a hiring market outside Silicon Valley 12:36 — What she hires for: ownership, fail-fast, decision-making 13:23 — State of Spend: fewer lists, more promotion-driven baskets, private label 15:28 — Brand as the engine for performance marketing 16:44 — Brands she admires: Nike and Shopify 17:52 — The overlooked story: Ibotta as a technology company 18:47 — Lightning round 19:29 — Jason's top three takeaways and the 10-minute actionLinks & resourcesGuestSara Wallace — Head of Brand Marketing, IbottaWebsiteLinkedIn 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
Jul 21

Longevity Medicine's Dirty Secret with Jim Donnelly

Episode #229: Jim Donnelly — Franchising longevity medicine without losing medical qualityHow to scale a medical franchise when you can't train a local owner to interpret biomarkers.For operators and founders standardizing a complex, high-trust service across many locations. Jim Donnelly scaled Restore Hyper Wellness to 260 locations before starting Humanaut Health, a concierge longevity practice he's now bringing to market through a franchise model he describes as ten times more complex. With his third location opening in Dallas, he walks through how he splits growth across corporate sites, franchisees, and a real estate joint venture, why the company hires and trains every doctor centrally, and how it backs a results guarantee tied to a client pledge and an accountability protocol. He shares concrete numbers, including 87% of clients arriving with metabolic dysfunction showing no sign of it six months later, and a Dallas clinic set to open cash flow positive and profitable in month one. It's a tactical look at standardizing a category most people can't yet define. What you'll hear The two rules of franchising anything: provide value constantly and remove the complexity a franchisee can't handle, plus the test that if you need exceptional operators, you don't have a franchise How Humanaut centralizes doctors, tech, and supply chain while leaving franchisees local hiring, sales culture, and marketing, each backed by a playbook Why most medical businesses fail by leaning too far to the medical or the business side, and the "you can't start at your PhD" progression that got Jim here Reframing longevity as health optimization you feel today to drive retention, and the unit-economics bar: high AUV, 20%+ net margins, and a sub-two-year paybackChapters 00:00 — Longevity is a bad word: reframing it as health optimization 02:48 — The 25-year path to Humanaut: health clubs, Restore, cancer, a car crash 05:03 — The value prop: proactive care, a focus three, and a results guarantee 08:58 — Franchising health optimization: provide value, remove complexity 13:37 — Unit economics: AUV, margins, and opening profitable in month one 18:39 — What it actually takes, plus the lightning roundLinks & resourcesGuestJim Donnelly — Co-Founder and CEO, Humanaut HealthWebsiteLinkedIn 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: Work with Winston Francois Subscribe / Follow Jason: Subscribe / Follow Jason on LinkedIn
Jul 14

Your Bookkeeper Is Failing You with John Zdanowski

Episode #228: John Zdanowski — Why you're losing money on 80% of your customersMost owners can tell you last month's revenue but not which customers actually make them money. This episode gives you the math to find out.For founders and operators—especially DTC brands—who suspect they're spending too much to acquire customers who never come back. John Zdanowski is co-founder and CEO of Weekly Accounting and a Harvard MBA who describes himself as a sonar engineer applying signal-processing math to business data. He previously co-founded Assembled Brands, a $100M fund that has seen the financials of 3,000+ emerging consumer brands—the vantage point where his core thesis formed: most brands optimize for revenue growth and quietly lose money on customers who only buy once. In this episode he walks through his "fourth statement" (audience to first-time customer to repeat), the sets of books every business already has or still needs, and why he runs accounting on a weekly cadence instead of monthly. He gets specific: the lifetime-gross-profit-to-CAC ratio, why a 1.7 ratio means you're grinding the engine, and how he turns a quarterly goal of $189,000 for 6,100 customers into a weekly target of $14,500 and ~470 customers. What you'll hear The "fourth statement" framework: turning audience → first purchase → repeat into unit economics you can forecast growth and saturation from How to run the numbers weekly—divide a quarterly goal by 13, compare this week to the same week last year—for 52 feedback loops a year instead of 12 The common mistake: optimizing for revenue growth and losing money on one-time buyers instead of optimizing for contribution The first number to calculate: lifetime gross profit (purchases per customer × average order value × gross margin) ÷ CAC, and why anything near 1.7 means you're overspending to acquireChapters 00:00 — The fourth statement: audience, first purchase, repeat 01:16 — Why most owners are flying blind on customer profitability 02:44 — Assembled Brands, and optimizing for contribution over revenue 03:59 — The break-even math on a first-time DTC customer 05:22 — What bookkeepers actually deliver vs. what you need 07:07 — Two sets of books, then a third, then a fourth 08:05 — Weekly cadence: 52 feedback loops instead of 12 09:53 — Daily vs. weekly vs. monthly, and troubled to world-class 11:58 — The integrated financial model: weekly tied to the quarter 14:45 — Warning signs your accounting is broken 15:25 — Why accounting is a venture-scale opportunity 17:11 — Inside the Weekly Accounting platform 19:48 — The one number: lifetime gross profit to CAC 20:32 — Lightning round 21:59 — Takeaways and a 10-minute actionLinks & resourcesGuestJohn Zdanowski — Co-founder & CEO, Weekly AccountingWebsiteLinkedIn 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
Jul 7

The Three-Sided Growth Problem with Robin Izsak-Tseng

Episode #227: Robin Izsak-Tseng — Marketing one brand to three audiences at onceMost B2B companies fight to win one customer segment. WellHub has to win three at the same time.For marketers and operators running multi-audience, marketplace, or multi-country growth. Robin Izsak-Tseng is VP of global B2B marketing at WellHub, a corporate wellness platform serving over 40,000 companies across 18 countries. She runs a three-sided marketplace — HR buyers, fitness partners, and the employees who use it — through three distinct teams that report to one CMO. In this episode she breaks down how those teams stay aligned without becoming siloed, how acquisitions like Urban Sports Club buy instant brand recognition, and why pulling back GymPass paid search and web properties too early after the rebrand opened a door for a competitor in Brazil. She also names the simple mistake complex teams make: assuming the same level of market maturity everywhere, when a household name in one country still gets "what's WellHub?" at marketer dinners in another. What you’ll hear How WellHub structures three marketing teams (B2B, partners, B2C) under one CMO and keeps them aligned around a single company story Using zip-code-level data to map partner supply down to individual neighborhoods, not just cities Why cutting GymPass search bids and web properties too soon let a competitor gain authority in Brazil When to put the product in employees' hands first (a SoulCycle class, 30 days on the diamond plan) so engagement opens the door to HRChapters 00:00 — The market-maturity trap (cold open) 00:42 — The three-sided growth engine 02:46 — Inside WellHub's triple-sided marketplace 04:48 — Proving ROI on employee wellness 05:49 — Acquisitions and instant brand recognition 08:24 — The GymPass to WellHub rebrand 10:08 — Martech, HubSpot, and AI disruption 15:35 — Events and the product-led sell-through 20:11 — The biggest mistake: assuming market maturity 22:58 — Lightning roundLinks & resourcesGuestRobin Izsak-Tseng — VP of Global B2B Marketing, WellHubWebsiteLinkedIn 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: Work with Winston Francois Subscribe / Follow Jason: Follow Jason on LinkedIn
Jun 30

The $10 Million Rule with Seth Lowery

Episode #226: Seth Lowery — The $10M rule that kills good ideas, not just bad onesHow to decide which growth bets to fund when every idea on the table already looks good.For marketing and growth leaders drowning in too many opportunities and a team that's too small to chase them all. Seth Lowery is VP of Marketing at Octane, a fintech that has originated over $8 billion in consumer loans and runs both a lending arm (Roadrunner Financial) and an in-house SaaS layer—with close to 50% of the company in product and tech. On Seth's first day, his CEO handed him a single rule: a new initiative needs to clear $10 million in incremental originations to get approved. In this episode he breaks down why that number is a guideline rather than a hard rule, how it forces his team into P1/P2/P3 backlogs, his four-prong method for working with sales, and how he runs three different go-to-market motions—OEMs, dealers, and B2B2C—at the same time. What you'll hear The $10M incremental-originations bar, and why Seth treats it as a compass rather than a cage The four-prong method for sales and marketing: to sales, for sales, through sales, and in lieu of sales Why the hardest no's are the easy internal asks—a better-looking slide deck, an event t-shirt—and why he tells his team "let me be the bad guy" How he runs three GTM motions at once while deliberately keeping Octane's own brand in the backgroundChapters 00:00 — Cold open: the problem isn't too few ideas, it's too many 00:33 — Intro and the initiative-overload problem 02:35 — Lending company or tech company? 03:40 — Where the $10 million rule came from 05:13 — How the rule changes what to run and what to kill 06:30 — The hardest no's and "let me be the bad guy" 07:57 — Running a remote team to results, not hours 08:40 — The four-prong method for sales and marketing 11:21 — Hiring for B2B and channel marketing over fintech 12:15 — Octane's moat: the octane score and the soft pull 12:54 — Running three GTM motions at once 15:04 — The overlooked lever: loyalty 15:34 — The two biggest prioritization mistakes 16:33 — Lightning round 17:53 — Jason's top three takeawaysLinks & resourcesGuestSeth Lowery — VP of Marketing, OctaneWebsiteRoadrunner FinancialLinkedIn 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: Work with Winston Francois Subscribe / Follow Jason: Follow Jason on LinkedIn
Jun 23

The Taylor Swift Effect with Blakely Neilson

Episode #225: Blakely Neilson — Building a high-growth EdTech brand when buyers aren't on LinkedInThis episode is a tactical playbook for marketing to a buyer that ignores LinkedIn, retargeting, and white papers: the school district.For operators and founders selling into education, or any relationship-first market where you can't performance-market your way to pipeline. Blakely Neilson came from finance and joined the founding team at Parallel Learning, an EdTech company building virtual special education services for school districts in over 25 states. She built the B2B marketing function from scratch as the company pivoted from DTC to B2B, which meant trading paid social and paid search for conferences, webinars, email, and thought leadership, and shifting the message from emotion and urgency to compliance, scale, and risk mitigation. She gets concrete about what works: a lemonade-stand booth during a California heat wave, a Taylor Swift email sent the minute the engagement news broke, and using AI to track Google alerts so the message can adapt when a district like Wake County cuts $18 million from special education. What you'll hear Why the DTC-to-B2B pivot meant moving from paid acquisition to an organic mix of conferences, webinars, email, and thought leadership, with messaging built around compliance, scale, and risk mitigation How the team pairs marketing with revenue at conferences, sets up pre-conference meetings, and uses creative on-the-ground tactics like a lemonade stand during a heat wave to drive top-of-funnel leads Why leading with "we're radically changing the field through AI" backfires with late-adopter special-ed buyers, and why the message instead focuses on absorbing administrative burden How to keep one core message constant while tailoring execution state by state, using Google alerts to flex when budgets get cutChapters 00:00 — Cold open: why most B2B EdTech marketing is boring 00:27 — Why EdTech marketing breaks the standard playbook 01:33 — Meet Blakely Neilson and Parallel Learning 02:32 — From finance to building marketing through a DTC-to-B2B pivot 03:39 — Building trust with relationship-first district buyers 04:44 — Making conferences a real pipeline driver 05:59 — The webinar formula that stands out post-COVID 07:17 — Marketing an AI product to AI-skeptical buyers 08:27 — Pop culture, the Taylor Swift email, and humanizing B2B 11:05 — Awareness vs. conversion in a two-sided marketplace 11:45 — Scaling across 25 states with Google alerts and AI 13:01 — Sales and marketing operating rhythm 13:50 — Lightning round 15:22 — Jason's top three takeawaysLinks & resourcesGuestBlakely Neilson — Founding team, Parallel LearningWebsiteLinkedIn (Blakely)LinkedIn (Parallel Learning)Instagram 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
Jun 16

The Bootstrapper's Revenge with Alex Roy

Episode #224: Alex Roy — Bootstrapping an AI company for 12 years, no fundingHe founded an AI company in 2014—when AI was a punchline—bootstrapped it with zero outside capital, and landed Fortune 50 clients.For founders and growth operators figuring out how to build (and sell) AI products in a market that shifts every few weeks. Alex Roy is the founder of SalesBox AI, a single-founder, bootstrapped company he started in 2014 after 20+ years in martech (MarketFirst, TrueInfluence). With no outside funding, he reached Fortune 50 clients through a partner-led, agency managed-service model—building the part of the product that generated both capital and data first. In this episode he walks through why he moved from lead-centric to a buying-group, opportunity-centric model, how SalesBox's agents work toward one unified revenue goal, how he proves ROI to enterprises burned by AI promises, and why he says product-market fit now lasts "maybe a month." What you’ll hear Why he scrapped lead-centric and account-based marketing for a revenue/opportunity model that scores and prioritizes buying groups How he bootstrapped: building the managed-service module first to capture both capital and data, then reaching Fortune 50 through a partner-led agency model Where founders go wrong—chasing the hype to "hop off" in a couple of years instead of building, and not yet knowing when to override the agent How to apply it: start with a pilot before a full rollout, and learn how the system makes decisions so you know when to step inChapters 00:00 — Cold open: don't build it for free 00:31 — Intro: the three AI traps 01:50 — What breaks when you scale revenue 02:29 — Betting on AI in 2014 03:39 — Building in 2014 vs. 2026: PMF as a moving target 05:10 — Why bootstrap, and what it cost 05:52 — Landing Fortune 50 clients with no VC logos 06:38 — What makes SalesBox AI different 08:00 — How the platform works 08:51 — Lead to account to buying group 09:45 — Hype vs. real: start with a pilot 10:27 — What AI can't do: knowing when to override 11:37 — Proving ROI to burned enterprises 12:56 — What founders get wrong about timing 14:39 — Advice: get someone to pay the first dollar 15:38 — Lightning round 16:22 — Live demo: RevOps, voice agents, LinkedIn 20:47 — Where to find Alex + the offer 21:28 — Closing takeawaysLinks & resourcesGuestAlex Roy — Founder, SalesBox AIWebsiteLinkedIn MentionedGet $1,000 in SalesBox AI credits 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

5

out of 5

5 Ratings

Honest and Fresh

05/06/2024

Sutton216

Can’t wait for more episodes of this. Love the honest take and the spouse POV

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.

Creator

Jason Shafton
Years Active

2024 - 2026
Episodes

37
Rating

Explicit
Copyright

© Jason Shafton
Show Website

Frank Growth