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When Sarah Carusona showed up to a DTC event last year, she didn’t know it would spark her first client. That client’s still with her. Today she runs BA Commerce, where her team drops into brands and drives growth from the inside.

For DTC founders scaling from $5M to $20M who need strategy and execution in one package.

What you’ll learn:

Why fractional CMOs often fall short and what brands really need instead
How to drop in a trained operator who owns growth from top to bottom
The key metrics Sarah watches before touching a budget: contribution margin, AMER, LTV, and the “organic ratio”
Why most influencer budgets are broken and what happens when you tie pay to performance
How to focus your team’s time when there’s no room for fluff

Who this is for:

Founders and growth leads who are tired of hiring gaps, agency fluff, and shiny-object distractions

What to steal:

Rebuild your org chart around execution, not job titles
Structure your influencer deals like paid media, not PR
Get obsessed with contribution margin and work backward from there

Timestamps

00:00 Why micro-iterations waste ad spend

02:00 Sarah’s global move and early consulting leap

04:00 Building BA Commerce and the growth operator model

09:00 How Sarah evaluates brands and sets growth metrics

12:00 Creative fatigue, Andromeda, and persona-driven ads

15:00 Creator partnerships and a tiered influencer program

17:00 Why organic content still drives the biggest wins

19:00 Modern Meta account structure and testing philosophy

21:00 The biggest mistakes high-growth brands make

23:00 Why product quality drives everything in growth

25:00 Attribution, incrementality, and Sarah’s forecasting model

27:00 How Sarah uses AI and where she draws the line

Hashtags

#dtcpodcast #ecommerce #dtcbrands #mediabuying #growthmarketing #metaads #ugcads #influencermarketing #digitalstrategy #founderstories #shopifybrands #emailmarketing #smsmarketing #marketingpodcast #directtoconsumer

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Ep. 90 - MOVIE EPISODE: "The Shining"

Books N' Betches

Themes: isolation, setting, and snowbound tension

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