The Built To Scale Podcast

Everyone talks about scale, but how do brands really scale? That’s what Shmuel Herschberg is uncovering on The Built To Scale Podcast . Join him for a behind-the-scenes look as he sits down with digital marketing leaders and presses them on the specifics of scaling, and how ecommerce and direct response brands grow to new heights. Built for founders, CMOs, and digital marketers who want to learn what actually drives scalable growth. Learn more about Built To Scale here: https://www.builttoscale.co/

The Built To Scale Podcast is a business podcast hosted by Shmuel Herschberg, with 28 episodes on record and a Required Pod Score of 80.

Shmuel Herschberg hosts The Built To Scale Podcast, a business show with 28 episodes published.

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  The Built To Scale Podcast

  Reflections on 40 Years in Marketing: Super Bowl Ads, Storytelling, and AI Slop | Alan Schulman

  Sep 29, 202653 min

  Alan Schulman has 40 plus years in advertising and marketing. He wrote TV spots for Leo Burnett, FCB, and McCann Erickson before becoming one of the first creatives to take digital seriously. He was the first Chief Creative Officer ever hired by a consulting firm in the US, building out Deloitte Digital from two studios to seven. ================================= Spoiler Alert: He worked on the 2014 Super Bowl ad " God Made a Farmer " for Dodge Ram. Now he runs Contagious Content, built around a simple idea: content has to move at the speed of the conversation happening right now, not the speed of your media plan. In this episode Alan makes a case that surprised even Shmuel: if you don't have the budget to do brand and performance and content all at once, start at the bottom of the funnel, not the top. Earn your way up. He explains why "poetry" still beats "plumbing" in storytelling. ================================= What you'll learn: How to sequence your marketing budget when you can't afford brand, content, and performance at the same time What "poetry before the plumbing" means and why it matters more as AI tools multiply How AEO and GEO (answer engine optimization) are replacing traditional SEO as LLMs become the new search interface Why conversational AI UI is going to break the business model of point-and-click SaaS platforms The real story behind building the digital side of a Super Bowl ad, and how long that process actually took ================================= About Alan Schulman: Alan Schulman is the Founder, CEO, and Chief Creative Officer of Contagious Content, a studio built around creating content at the speed of cultural conversation. He spent his career at many of the leading ad firms before becoming the first Chief Creative Officer hired by a consulting firm in the US at Deloitte Digital, where he was a founding partner. ================================= Key moments: Why Alan calls a customer journey "just a funnel laid on its side" The Oreo "Dunk in the Dark" example and what it means to actually be contagious What went into building the digital component of the 2014 Dodge Ram Super Bowl campaign Why Alan tells his own team "don't show me another AI dashboard" ================================= Connect with Alan Schulman: Website: https://www.contagiouscontent.us/ LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/alanschulman/ Alan’s Channel on Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/artist/4GovOqCZQqcOzCZSPTeaG7?si=0qdOQcrERwK4TmQY6i2xUw ================================= 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 .

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  The Built To Scale Podcast

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

  Sep 22, 202654 min

  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 worth Why buying your closest competitor can grow revenue faster than any marketing campaign The 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 table What 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 career 08:47 How buying a competitor took two small companies to $30 million in sales in two years 17:36 The food poisoning story behind a multimillion dollar acquisition negotiation 34:45 The mistake that cost Marty $23.5 million, and the Harvard study on what owners lose by selling alone 43:31 Why saving 20 cents in taxes can cost you $5 in valuation 50:32 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 .

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  The Built To Scale Podcast

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

  Sep 15, 202647 min

  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 place How to use the Profit Pyramid framework to decide if an offer can actually support scale before you spend a dollar on it Why "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 funnel The real order of operations for scaling: creative first, then conversion rate, then funnel monetization, and why skipping the order breaks accounts How to size a creative testing budget based on whether you have zero winners or several, and why 20% is the default starting point Where 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 Scale 18:03 - Creative as the tip of the spear, and why conversion rate is the next link in the chain 22:38 - The 20% rule for creative testing budget, and when to flex it up 27:18 - How AI tags creatives and builds persona matrices without taking over strategy 43:06 - 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 .

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  The Built To Scale Podcast

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

  Sep 8, 202642 min

  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 agents Why the mid-size DTC company (the $5M to $100M range) is the most exposed segment in direct response right now What 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 one Why the four-hour work week thesis is more true today than when Tim Ferriss wrote it, and what people get wrong about that How 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 immediately The 30-bottle checkout mistake that shipped ten times what customers ordered Why Scott still checks his agent's reporting every morning instead of trusting it blindly The 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 .

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  The Built To Scale Podcast

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

  Sep 1, 202642 min

  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 conversions How to turn a declined transaction into a recovered sale instead of a lost one Why every merchant needs to know their decline ratio, refund rate, and chargeback rate Why relying on a single payment processor puts your entire business at risk How AI powered chargeback alerts are starting to predict fraud before it happens Why 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 rate The real cost of treating a decline as the end of the sale Why she recommends every serious merchant run a backup payment processor Her 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 .

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