Clay

Been building in silence for 9 years. Will start to share more of what that actually looked like. The wins, the mistakes, what scaled and what didn't. First article is live, more coming regularly.

1360 creative concepts tested in october alone. Up from around 400/month earlier this year. We onboarded 6 new creative strategists in october (each with their own pod of editors). Still convinced independent pods are the way to go for scaling creative without sacrificing quality 📈

You’re assuming the angle died because one ad stopped working. Could just be people are tired of watching that exact video. You can still keep the message and change everything around it. Say you sell a sleep supplement and your winner is a woman in bed saying “i used to wake up at 3am every night” Take that same story but have a 50yo guy tell it in his kitchen at dawn, a nurse coming back from a shift, or just make a static of a phone lock screen showing 3am The message is already proven, you’re giving it a completely different execution. What doesn’t work anymore is changing the hook text, cutting the first 3 seconds or swapping the music and calling it a new ad. It’s still basically the same video for Meta. Thats what i meant by iterations being overrated. New angles are a different thing: a different problem, a different reason to buy. Someone waking up at 3am vs a founder who can’t fall asleep because his brain won’t switch off vs someone who want to cut outmelatonin. Same product but what makes them buy is different. We do both >> new executions of proven messages + new angles to reach other buyers. Happy scaling 🫰🏽

Hot take: creative iterations are massively overrated imo. We’ve been able to scale much harder on meta since we stopped obsessing over them. The problem with iterations is that you're usually talking to the same people. What actually unlocked new spend for us was testing completely new angles. different problems, different buying motivations, different audiences. Stop trying to make 20 versions of your winning ad, find the next angle that wins with a completely different audience 🫡

Bali lately. Getting ready for our biggest Q4 yet and already making big plans for 2027. Life’s good 🫰🏽

“yes dear all ready” always check in person 🛫🇨🇳

$200M+ on one brand 🥷🏽 Give yourself years to build the business, but stop giving yourself weeks to make simple decisions. Get the tests live, learn, move again. Put the patience into improving the product, retention and hiring people who actually own their shit. Micro impatience, macro patience 🤝

Want more winners? Give each strategist their own editors and let the pods compete. They race to find winners, get bonuses when they do, and ship new concepts the same week they spot it. Keep the team lean af and let them cook 🏴‍☠️

Scaling is cool. Taking a week off while the business keeps doing millions is cooler. Hire people you trust with decisions (not just tasks) and give them room to run. Your job is to see the whole board, not play every piece 👾

Proof packaging matters: Graza put olive oil in a squeeze bottle. Easier to use, looks good on the counter 🫒 One of those ideas that sounds obvious only after someone else does it. Boring category + sharp positioning + great branding = $$$

$28M in 90 days. Excited for Q4 🎢

last getaway before Q4 lockin 🥷🏽

product research isn’t that deep. some boxes you need to check imo: 70/80% gross margin $60+ natural AOV (minimum) real reason to reorder easy to understand in 3s a few obvious SKU extensions huge + growing TAM You don’t need a secret winner. Better branding, offer and creatives can make “saturated” products print for years 🎰

One thing I learned scaling creative: Don’t build one giant team. Build multiple pods, let them think independently and compete for spend. You want 5 different brains trying to find new winners, not 20 people following one strategist 🎨

otw to $100M+ this year 📈 Few things I learned along the way: - Market > marketing (you can’t outspend a small market) - Obsess over product quality, customers always notice - Build a creator roster, not a freelancer list (fresh creatives on repeat from creators who know your brand and keep getting better) - Your creative system should be a learning machine (each batch makes the next one smarter) - SOP the boring shit (that’s how you remove yourself) - One clear owner per department (ambiguity kills speed) -At scale, 1% wins become millions (keep testing offers/bundles, obsess over retention, get email dialed in) - Never let one supplier / 3PL become a single point of failure - Delegate/hire before you feel ready, that’s how you create room to think bigger. Still figuring it out btw. Just with slightly bigger numbers 🙃

The biggest shift you can make is building like someone could buy your business tomorrow. It also forces you to fix all the shit a buyer would flag later: messy financials founder dependency relying on one supplier no recurring revenue weak repeat rate zero SOPs and half the business living in old slack messages You can hide the mess while scaling but due diligence will expose all of it real quick. ofc building properly is harder and way more boring, but worth every penny. Definitely beats opening a new shopify every 8 months lol

$28M Q3 while euromaxxing all summer Excited for Q4 🏹

$200M later, a few things I think matter a lot in ecom rn: - obsess over the product (great marketing might get the first order, but only a great product gets the next five) - invest in real brand assets (original shoots, recurring faces and a visual world people can recognize) - keep a solid roster of creators so you always have fresh UGC coming in - use AI to scale creative testing, but keep humans in the loop (more volume means nothing if the output sucks) - test genuinely different concepts on Meta (changing 15 hooks on the same ad isn’t creative diversity) - give every area one clear owner (everyone else can help, but one person is accountable) - build backups before you need them (supplier, 3PL, payment processor…eventually everything breaks once) Move fast on what’s changing but stay boring on the fundamentals 🫡

Just hit 200M in lifetime sales, god bless zuck 🎰 AMA

Revenue per employee > employee count. Never understood the headcount flex. Most of the time it just means more payroll, more meetings and more people managing people. Give me a few killers owning each function + a good COO. A few calls a week with them, make the important decisions, that’s it. If everything still needs the founder, adding more people won’t fix it 😶‍🌫️