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.

2d ago

Why AI Slop Backfires with Nicole Cassese

Episode #242: Nicole Cassese — Scaling brand voice without burning out the people behind it How to keep a brand voice consistent across 1,600+ assets and still protect the team writing them.For marketing leaders, creative directors, and copywriters running high-volume content with AI in the workflow. Nicole Cassese is the associate creative director owning Quicken's narrative end to end, after more than a decade building brand voice at Disney, Headspace, and Instacart. At Instacart she pushed out more than 1,600 assets inside a highly templatized CRM system, and at Quicken her team drove a 24% preference lift among new and switcher audiences by putting one research-backed unmet need in the website hero. Jason and Nicole cover where personality fits when copy is limited to a subject line, a headline, and one sentence; how to spot creative burnout before it gets bad; why brands are turning to local heroes over influencers and AI slop; and why only 2% of S&P 500 companies can say what AI actually earned them. What you’ll hear Why a messaging narrative is not a channel strategy, and how the rules change by funnel stage and channelThe Instacart CRM formula: incentive front and center, partner brand rules first, personality only in subject lines and headlinesThe AI mistake Nicole sees most: unchecked output and 10-page decks sent to answer one-sentence questionsThe burnout signal to watch for (feeling unable to step away for a 30-minute walk) and why she gives stressed team members time off, no questions asked Chapters 00:00 — Cold open: the 2% AI ROI stat00:35 — Why content factories burn out creative teams01:53 — Meet Nicole: Disney, Headspace, Instacart, Quicken03:09 — Why a messaging narrative isn't a channel strategy04:13 — Keeping voice consistent at Instacart scale05:27 — How Quicken drove a 24% preference lift06:14 — Human-centered creative for a legacy finance brand07:35 — Making time for music, poetry, and pottery08:22 — The early warning sign of creative burnout09:13 — Keeping side projects separate from the day job10:38 — What leaders should change for burned-out teams11:31 — Local heroes vs. influencers and AI slop13:25 — Agency briefs vs. community building14:10 — Instacart's pet month campaign14:47 — How AI changed the creative workflow15:46 — Rising AI costs and proving ROI16:43 — The biggest AI workflow mistake17:35 — Lightning round19:45 — Top three takeaways and this week's action Links & resources GuestNicole Cassese — Associate Creative Director, Brand & Copy, QuickenWebsiteLinkedInQuickenBand (Fabular) 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
Oct 13

What AI Still Can't Do with Will Sartorius

Episode #241: Will Sartorius - AI didn't kill the creative job, it moved it How to split ad creative work between AI and people so your ads stop sounding like everyone else's.For founders and marketers running paid social who launch plenty of ads but learn little from them. Will Sartorius, CEO of Selfmade, took over the performance creative agency after a failed acquisition left it with very little money in the bank, and rebuilt it with AI tools as GPT came out. He and Jason Shafton break down which parts of creative work AI now handles well, like tagging reviews and running time series and gap analysis on a Meta account, and which still need people: copy that makes someone feel something and angles no one has tested yet. Will walks through his "cover the logo" test, the multi-agent system Selfmade uses to write and review static ads, and why he tells lean brands to spend 50 bucks a month on a hundred AI statics before investing in storytelling. What you’ll hear How to tell activity from strategy: run a time series analysis on your ad account, correlate persona, angle, and emotion to ROAS or CAC, and relaunch winning cohorts you haven't run in months.How Selfmade's static ad system works: it scrapes a brand's website, picks untested formats from 15 to 20 static types, runs copy through multiple copywriting agents (including one built on Daniel Kahneman's heuristics), and has 10 more agents review each image before a human signs off.The common mistake of copying competitors' creative, which Will says leads to "spend purgatory," and what he learned when his own top ads failed his cover-the-logo test.Where to start: connect the Meta API (not the Meta MCP) to Claude, tag a year of ads by persona, angle, and emotion, correlate them to ROAS and CPA, and ask what you're missing. Chapters 00:00 - Intro: what's left for marketers when AI can build the strategy01:28 - Will joins: taking over Selfmade after a failed acquisition03:45 - What working every role at Selfmade taught him05:28 - Automating review tagging, and the one skill AI can't replace06:49 - Activity vs. strategy in your ad account09:06 - The cover-the-logo test and "spend purgatory"10:50 - Failing his own test11:50 - Where humans show up: the dumbbell model and the last 5%14:48 - "80% is fast, 100% is what ships": AI statics and storytelling16:22 - Inside Selfmade's multi-agent static ad system19:12 - New York's AI disclosure law for ads20:52 - A landing page for every angle you test21:32 - First fix: pull a year of Meta data into Claude22:29 - Lightning round24:26 - Jason's top three takeaways Links & resources GuestWill Sartorius - CEO, SelfmadeSelfmade websiteLinkedInTwitterNewsletter 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
Oct 6

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
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
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
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
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
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

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

48
Rating

Clean
Copyright

© Jason Shafton
Show Website

Frank Growth

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Updated Semiweekly
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