The Built To Scale Podcast

Shmuel Herschberg
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  • Marketing

The Built To Scale Podcast: Direct Response Marketing, Paid Media, and Scaling Strategies for Ecommerce Brands Everyone talks about scale. Almost nobody explains how it actually happens. The Built To Scale Podcast exists to close that gap. ========================= About the Podcast Hosted by Shmuel Herschberg, CMO of Built To Scale and founder of Shyn Media, the show sits down with top marketing leaders, media buyers, and DTC operators to break down exactly what drives scalable growth: paid media strategy (Meta, Google, YouTube), creative testing and production systems, funnel optimization, conversion rate strategy, email and lifecycle marketing, and the operational systems behind brands doing real revenue. No theory, no recycled tactics. Just specifics from people who've built and scaled ecommerce and direct response brands themselves. Each episode is built for founders, CMOs, media buyers, and digital marketers who want the mechanics behind growth, not another surface-level interview. ========================= Watch and Subscribe! New episodes weekly. YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@TheBuiltToScalePodcastApple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-built-to-scale-podcast/id1885295516Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/0tTVaqWxfxnC4QcWMoG3ksInstagram: https://www.instagram.com/thebuilttoscalepodcast/ ========================= Continue the Conversation To learn more about Built To Scale, please visit https://www.builttoscale.co/ Want to talk about scaling your brand? Book a call.

  1. 1d ago

    The $23.5 Million Rookie Mistake and Why Being Needed Makes Your Business Worth Less | Marty Fahncke

    Most business owners will plan a two week vacation with more care than they plan the sale of their business, even though 100 percent of them will exit someday. Marty Fahncke has watched that gap cost owners millions of dollars. It once cost him $23.5 million of his own money, and he's spent his career since making sure other owners don't repeat it. ================================= What you'll learn: How to run the "Bali test" to find out what your business is actually worthWhy buying your closest competitor can grow revenue faster than any marketing campaignThe four exits every owner has to make before they ever sell the business (front line, management, leadership, vision)Why chasing tax deductions can quietly cost you far more than you save at the negotiation tableWhat actually separates a business that sells for 2X profit from one that sells for 10X ================================= About Marty Fahncke: Marty Fahncke is a Certified Mergers and Acquisitions Advisor (CMAA) and the founder of Westbound Road, where he helps business owners prepare their companies for sale, negotiate stronger deals, and grow through acquisition instead of relying on marketing spend alone. ================================= Key moments: 03:26 The first person to ever put a URL on a TV infomercial, and why marketers thought it would end his career08:47 How buying a competitor took two small companies to $30 million in sales in two years17:36 The food poisoning story behind a multimillion dollar acquisition negotiation34:45 The mistake that cost Marty $23.5 million, and the Harvard study on what owners lose by selling alone43:31 Why saving 20 cents in taxes can cost you $5 in valuation50:32 Why you don't have to be the foundation, you just need one that's strong ================================= Connect with Marty Fahncke:  Website: https://www.westboundroad.com LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/martyfahncke YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@westboundroad/videos ================================= Marty’s Recommended Reading:  Boomer Sells the Business by Frank Felker and Marty Fahncke: https://www.amazon.com/Boomer-Sells-Business-Step-Step-ebook/dp/B0FCCL29D2/ Who Not How by Dan Sullivan and Benjamin Hardy: https://www.amazon.com/Who-Not-How-Accelerating-Teamwork/dp/B08KYKR23H  ================================= About The Built To Scale Podcast: Follow us on LinkedIn at: https://www.linkedin.com/company/built-to-scale-agency/  For more information about Built To Scale visit: https://www.builttoscale.co/   If you have any questions, suggestions, or ideas for a future episode, please email podcast@builttoscale.co.

    The $23.5 Million Rookie Mistake and Why Being Needed Makes Your Business Worth Less | Marty Fahncke

  2. Sep 15

    The Profit Pyramid: How Built To Scale Actually Scales Brands | Jeremy Gillespie

    Bigger ad spend does not mean bigger profit. For our 25th episode, Built To Scale founder and CEO Jeremy Gillespie sits down with Shmuel Herschberg to open the vault on how this agency actually scales brands, and it has almost nothing to do with the number on the ad account. ================================= What you'll learn: Why Jeremy's biggest early mistake wasn't a bad campaign, it was hiring before he had systems in placeHow to use the Profit Pyramid framework to decide if an offer can actually support scale before you spend a dollar on itWhy "never be a one-legged stool" drives Built To Scale's entire channel strategy, and how Meta, Google demand gen, and YouTube each play a different role in the funnelThe real order of operations for scaling: creative first, then conversion rate, then funnel monetization, and why skipping the order breaks accountsHow to size a creative testing budget based on whether you have zero winners or several, and why 20% is the default starting pointWhere AI genuinely helps a media buying team, and why Jeremy still won't let it make scaling decisions on its own ================================= About Jeremy Gillespie: Jeremy Gillespie is the founder and CEO of Built To Scale, a performance marketing agency built around D2C health brands. Before starting Built To Scale, he ran paid media at LinkedIn and worked with startups in San Francisco, and he's personally taken ad accounts from spending thousands of dollars per month to over a half a million dollars a month in profitable spend. ================================= Key moments: 01:41 - The origin story: how three consulting clients on the side turned into Built To Scale18:03 - Creative as the tip of the spear, and why conversion rate is the next link in the chain22:38 - The 20% rule for creative testing budget, and when to flex it up27:18 - How AI tags creatives and builds persona matrices without taking over strategy43:06 - Rapid fire questions: Jeremy answers some the hottest questions facing the industry today. ================================= Connect with Jeremy Gillespie: Website: https://www.builttoscale.co/ LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jeremygillespie1/  X: https://x.com/builttoscalesf  Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/builttoscale.co  ================================= About The Built To Scale Podcast: Follow us on LinkedIn at: https://www.linkedin.com/company/built-to-scale-agency/ or Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/thebuilttoscalepodcast/ For more information about Built To Scale visit: https://www.builttoscale.co/   If you have any questions, suggestions, or ideas for a future episode, please email podcast@builttoscale.co.

    The Profit Pyramid: How Built To Scale Actually Scales Brands | Jeremy Gillespie

  3. Sep 8

    Why This Business Model is Losing to AI and What You Should Do Instead | Scott Rewick

    Scott Rewick spent $200 a day launching a new pain relief brand and it hit $300 a day in revenue almost immediately. No 90 day break-in period. No twenty person team. Just AI agents doing the work that used to take a copywriter, designer, and engineer a month and twenty thousand dollars to produce. Scott has 25 years in direct response, now runs skcommerce.ai, testing whether AI agents can build and run entire brands with a fraction of the human overhead. In this episode he lays out why he thinks mid-size DTC companies, the five million to hundred million dollar range, are getting squeezed by two or three person teams running agent stacks that never sleep. ================================= What you'll learn: How to build a working Shopify site, ad creative, and checkout flow in under an hour using AI agentsWhy the mid-size DTC company (the $5M to $100M range) is the most exposed segment in direct response right nowWhat actually breaks when you let AI run unsupervised (SKU mapping mistakes, wrong data reporting, "AI slop" creative)How to structure a portfolio of small AI-run brands instead of betting everything on oneWhy the four-hour work week thesis is more true today than when Tim Ferriss wrote it, and what people get wrong about thatHow agents are starting to talk to other agents, and what that means for how you'll manage a business in the next few years ================================= Key moments: The $200 a day test that produced $300 a day in revenue almost immediatelyThe 30-bottle checkout mistake that shipped ten times what customers orderedWhy Scott still checks his agent's reporting every morning instead of trusting it blindlyThe plan to run ten separate five million dollar brands off one centralized agent system ================================= Connect with Scott Rewick: Website: https://skcommerce.ai/ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/srewick Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/srewick/  LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/rewick/  ================================= About The Built To Scale Podcast: Follow us on LinkedIn at: https://www.linkedin.com/company/built-to-scale-agency/  For more information about Built To Scale visit: https://www.builttoscale.co/   If you have any questions, suggestions, or ideas for a future episode, please email podcast@builttoscale.co.

    Why This Business Model is Losing to AI and What You Should Do Instead | Scott Rewick

  4. Sep 1

    The Hidden Profit Lever Most eCommerce Businesses Ignore is Costing You Money | Maria Sparagis

    Payment processing sounds boring. That's exactly why most merchants ignore it, and exactly why Maria Sparagis says it's one of the highest leverage levers in your business. Maria has spent almost 25 years in payments and founded DirectPayNet to help high risk merchants stop losing revenue to default settings, bad decline handling, and a checkout flow nobody ever tested. In this episode she breaks down how a few overlooked toggles in your payment gateway can move conversion by 3 to 10 percent, why a decline should never be treated as a dead sale, and why relying on one payment processor is one of the riskiest things an ecommerce brand can do. ================================= What you'll learn: Why default settings on Stripe and Shopify Payments are quietly killing conversionsHow to turn a declined transaction into a recovered sale instead of a lost oneWhy every merchant needs to know their decline ratio, refund rate, and chargeback rateWhy relying on a single payment processor puts your entire business at riskHow AI powered chargeback alerts are starting to predict fraud before it happensWhy testing your own checkout flow with a fresh set of eyes can expose the friction that's costing you sales ================================= About Maria Sparagis: Maria Sparagis is the founder of DirectPayNet, a payment processing company built for high risk ecommerce merchants in supplements, subscriptions, travel, and more. She has nearly 25 years of experience in payments and also hosts the Click and Convert podcast, with over 600 episodes on conversion, customer service, and turning overlooked parts of the business into profit centers. ================================= Key moments: Why Stripe's default settings might be actively hurting your conversion rateThe real cost of treating a decline as the end of the saleWhy she recommends every serious merchant run a backup payment processorHer take on where AI is headed in fraud prevention and approval decisions ================================= Connect with Maria Sparagis: Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/maria.sparagis LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/mariasparagis/ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/mariasparagis/ Website: https://directpaynet.com/ ================================= About The Built To Scale Podcast: Follow us on LinkedIn at: https://www.linkedin.com/company/built-to-scale-agency/  For more information about Built To Scale visit: https://www.builttoscale.co/   If you have any questions, suggestions, or ideas for a future episode, please email podcast@builttoscale.co.

    The Hidden Profit Lever Most eCommerce Businesses Ignore is Costing You Money | Maria Sparagis

  5. Aug 25

    From BMW Engineer to Funnel Architect and Your Price Was Never the Price | Angelo Ferraro

    People love to buy. They hate being sold. Angelo Ferraro built his entire business on that one line, and this episode breaks down exactly how. Angelo went from engineer at BMW to running the backend machine behind some of the biggest direct response funnels in ecom, nutra, and telehealth. He explains why the price tag was never really about the number, why a phone call recovers deals that email never will, and why most sellers are leaving 10 to 20 percent of their revenue sitting on the table because they think the funnel ends at checkout. ================================= What you'll learn: Why buyers make decisions on emotion first and rationalize the price secondHow to structure a funnel differently for ecom, nutra, and telehealth based on where the buyer already standsWhy a simple abandoned cart phone call can recover around 25 percent of lost salesHow adding a call center layer can recover 8 to 12 percent of gross monthly revenueWhy the same product upsell alone can lift revenue by 20 to 22 percentWhy putting a phone number on your funnel builds trust even if nobody calls it================================= About Angelo Ferraro: Angelo Ferraro is the founder of Gold Angels Agency, where he builds funnels for nutra, ecom, and telehealth brands. He is also a business developer for I Sell For You, a company specializing in abandoned cart recovery, welcome calls, and backend cross selling. He left a career as a BMW engineer after two life altering wake up calls and rebuilt himself inside the direct response world. ================================= Key moments: The two accidents that pushed Angelo out of engineering and into marketingWhy he believes the funnel never actually endsThe real math behind lifetime value across survival niche, nutra, and telehealth offersHis take on AI, video editing, and why he thinks the human is still 3 years from being replaced================================= Connect with Angelo Ferraro: Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/GA.Angelo.Ferraro Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/goldangelof/ ================================= About The Built To Scale Podcast: Follow us on LinkedIn at: https://www.linkedin.com/company/built-to-scale-agency/  For more information about Built To Scale visit: https://www.builttoscale.co/   If you have any questions, suggestions, or ideas for a future episode, please email podcast@builttoscale.co.

    From BMW Engineer to Funnel Architect and Your Price Was Never the Price | Angelo Ferraro

  6. Aug 18

    Why Your ROAS Positive Numbers Might be Lying to You | Tyler Ryan

    Most media buyers think a 1.5 ROAS is a win. Tyler Ryan has seen billions of dollars of data that says it might be a slow bleed. Tyler is the founder of LTV Numbers, now rebranded as Data Driven OS, and he has analyzed over three billion dollars in direct response and ecommerce sales. Before any of that, he was an engineer at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, working on the team that landed the Curiosity Rover on Mars within a mile of its target. That level of precision is exactly what he brought into performance marketing, and this episode is the payoff. ================================= What you'll learn: Why a 1.5 ROAS on day one can quietly become a loss by day 60What the "direct response dip" is and how to spot it in your LTV curveWhy the real decision-making window for LTV is 30 days or less (not years)How Joel Marion scaled BioTrust from zero to $150M by knowing one number that 99% of the room did notWhy optimizing for AOV at the expense of the back end is the most common and most expensive mistake in direct responseHow Data Driven OS and its autonomous analyst Otto proactively surface the decisions you should be making before you even think to ask ================================= About Tyler Ryan: Tyler Ryan is a UCLA physics graduate and former NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory engineer who pivoted into performance marketing and built LTV Numbers from scratch into a platform used by 100+ companies. His software has analyzed over three billion dollars in sales data across direct response, ecommerce, health and wellness, info products, and coaching businesses. He recently rebranded as Data Driven OS, focused on solving the full visibility gap, not just LTV tracking. ================================= Key Moments: 02:48 - Tyler's origin story: from NASA to entrepreneurship16:21 - The Joel Marion story that created LTV Numbers23:28 - ROAS vs LTV: what the front-end numbers are hiding28:01 - The "direct response dip" and the "surge and grow" LTV fingerprints31:25 - Why the LTV window that matters is just 30 days39:28 - Why rising CPMs make LTV non-negotiable right now42:56 - What startups need to design before they launch44:43 - Data Driven OS and Otto, the autonomous analyst ================================= Connect with Tyler Ryan: Website: https://datadrivenos.com/ Email: tyler@datadrivenos.com Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/tyler_datadriven/  ================================= About The Built To Scale Podcast: Follow us on LinkedIn at: https://www.linkedin.com/company/built-to-scale-agency/  For more information about Built To Scale visit: https://www.builttoscale.co/   If you have any questions, suggestions, or ideas for a future episode, please email podcast@builttoscale.co.

    Why Your ROAS Positive Numbers Might be Lying to You | Tyler Ryan

  7. Aug 11

    Why "Buy a Business, Get Rich" Is Bad Advice and What You Should Do Instead | David Hori

    Most people think buying a business means signing the papers, hiring a GM, and collecting checks from the beach. David Hori bought a company that got acquired by Toyota, then decided to spend his career telling people why that hands off dream is mostly a myth. ================================= Join David's "Discover A Less Stressful Way To Sell Your Business" Webinar: 🚨 SPOILER ALER! David is offering listeners a free webinar for our listeners: 👉 Sign up here: https://learn.toplineops.com/pod-webinar-1/ ================================= What you'll learn: Why "buy a business for passive income" is one of the most dangerous pitches in the acquisition spaceHow to define your buy box so you stop chasing every deal and start closing the right onesWhy staying in your lane, even when it feels limiting, gets you to the finish line fasterThe four pillars David uses in his durability diagnostic to determine what a business is actually worth to a buyerWhy three years of financials tell a truer story than one great yearThe overlooked alternative to a full sale that lets an owner keep working in the business they built ================================= About David Hori: David Hori is the founder of Top Line Operators, where he teaches people how to buy, stabilize, and scale existing businesses instead of starting from zero. Before this, he built and scaled startups in the VC world, including a company acquired by Toyota in 2023. He now runs a weekly webinar for business owners who are exit curious and is opening up a free beta of his durability diagnostic tool for listeners of this episode. ================================= Connect with David Hori: Website: https://www.toplineops.com/ LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/iamdavidhori/ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/thedavidhori/ YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@thedavidhori TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@thedavidhori ================================= About The Built To Scale Podcast: Follow us on LinkedIn at: https://www.linkedin.com/company/built-to-scale-agency/  For more information about Built To Scale visit: https://www.builttoscale.co/   If you have any questions, suggestions, or ideas for a future episode, please email podcast@builttoscale.co.

    Why "Buy a Business, Get Rich" Is Bad Advice and What You Should Do Instead | David Hori

  8. Aug 4

    81% of People Want to Write a Book; Only 3% Do It: Talk Your Book Into Existence | Michael Giannulis

    Did you know 81% of people want to write a book? Yet, only 3% ever finish one. Michael Giannulis built Dictate to close that gap, not by making writing easier, but by removing writing from the process entirely. You talk, an AI named Silas asks the right questions, and a book comes out the other end in your voice. Michael spent two decades in direct response marketing before building Dictate, and this conversation covers the mechanics of the product, the legal reality of AI generated books, and the pricing and go to market strategy behind a company he thinks could become his biggest yet. ================================= Get Michael's Free Author Blueprint: 🚨 SPOILER ALER! Michael is offering listeners a free Author Blueprint. 👉 Grab it here: https://startdictate.com/builttoscale ================================= What you'll learn: Why the legal system won't let you copyright a book an AI mostly wrote, and how Dictate gets around it by tracking a "voice DNA" percentage before it starts writingHow a 15 to 20 question AI interview turns into a 25 to 30 page book blueprint in under 30 minutesThe difference between copywriting and copy thinking, and why that distinction matters more now that AI can write copy on demandWhy a published book functions as the most effective sales page a service business can have, and how it opens doors to paid speaking ================================= About Michael Giannulis: Michael Giannulis has worked in direct response marketing since 2006, building and scaling multiple companies in ecommerce and education. He is the founder of Dictate, an AI platform that turns expert knowledge into a professionally published book through conversation instead of writing. ================================= Key moments: (11:00) The $50 payment plan tweak that instantly lifted upsell conversions, and the Coke and Pepsi decoy pricing story behind it(17:23) Copywriting versus copy thinking, and why that edge still matters in an AI world(27:43) Inside the AI interview: how a 25 to 30 page book blueprint gets built in under 30 minutes, and why people cry when they see it(31:41) The legal reality: why you can't copyright a book an AI mostly wrote, and how Dictate's "voice DNA" tracking gets around it ================================= Connect with Michael Giannulis: LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/michaelgiannulis Instagram / X / Facebook: @mikegiannulis Website: https://startdictate.com Email: hello@startdictate.com ================================= About The Built To Scale Podcast: Follow us on LinkedIn at: https://www.linkedin.com/company/built-to-scale-agency/  For more information about Built To Scale visit: https://www.builttoscale.co/   If you have any questions, suggestions, or ideas for a future episode, please email podcast@builttoscale.co.

    81% of People Want to Write a Book; Only 3% Do It: Talk Your Book Into Existence | Michael Giannulis
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The Built To Scale Podcast: Direct Response Marketing, Paid Media, and Scaling Strategies for Ecommerce Brands Everyone talks about scale. Almost nobody explains how it actually happens. The Built To Scale Podcast exists to close that gap. ========================= About the Podcast Hosted by Shmuel Herschberg, CMO of Built To Scale and founder of Shyn Media, the show sits down with top marketing leaders, media buyers, and DTC operators to break down exactly what drives scalable growth: paid media strategy (Meta, Google, YouTube), creative testing and production systems, funnel optimization, conversion rate strategy, email and lifecycle marketing, and the operational systems behind brands doing real revenue. No theory, no recycled tactics. Just specifics from people who've built and scaled ecommerce and direct response brands themselves. Each episode is built for founders, CMOs, media buyers, and digital marketers who want the mechanics behind growth, not another surface-level interview. ========================= Watch and Subscribe! New episodes weekly. YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@TheBuiltToScalePodcastApple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-built-to-scale-podcast/id1885295516Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/0tTVaqWxfxnC4QcWMoG3ksInstagram: https://www.instagram.com/thebuilttoscalepodcast/ ========================= Continue the Conversation To learn more about Built To Scale, please visit https://www.builttoscale.co/ Want to talk about scaling your brand? Book a call.

Information

  • Creator
    Shmuel Herschberg
  • Years Active
    2026
  • Episodes
    27
  • Rating
    Clean
  • Copyright
    © 2026 Shmuel Herschberg
  • Show Website
    The Built To Scale Podcast