surefoot.me

We are proud of the long-term partnerships we have with brands like Peak Design, Hydro Flask, Brooklinen, OXO, Made In Cookware and more.

We strive to create a culture where superior service is our primary sales strategy, clients and co-workers are friends and hard work is balanced with play.

Our core tenets:

- Partner with brands and companies we believe in, who give more than they take, whether that’s in the way of charitable giving, happiness or health.

- Win with integrity and put people over profit in a world that often forgets how to do those things.

- Refuse to waiver on doing what is best for our clients, even if it means less upside for us.

- Only do what we can do well, providing strategic AB testing and personalization services, and partnering with others when we veer outside the realm of our core competencies.

- Be happy. As they say, life is too short to be anything else.

If our philosophy resonates, please give me a shout at brian@surefoot.me

CEO & co-founder

CROmetrics

As employee #1, I helped grow the company to $3.5MM in annual recurring revenue and wore many hats, handling everything from client management to data analysis, QA and process implementation for clients like Facebook, 99designs, Trulia, General Assembly, Weight Watchers and more. 

As the company grew from two people to 25, I was promoted to Director of Operations, where I led various initiatives, including implementation of back-end systems and automation that facilitated internal efficiency and client success.

Director Of Operations

Test My Marketing

This was the second company I co-founded, which I spun out of a 3-day startup event, even winning a MSN influential new business contest. True story. I’m still surprised the domain name was available. 

We offered an affordable copywriting solution to help businesses craft crisp, actionable and compelling messages before publishing to their audiences. As co-founder, I led all internal operations and marketing and managed a community of freelance marketers.

Co-Founder

Rockbridge Seminary

Directed technology, online and traditional marketing, and finance.

Vice President of Operations

Director of Operations

Operations Manager

Watch Dog Time

This was my first foray into the world of business ownership, an online luxury watch repair business. If you had a broken Rolex, Tag Heuer or Breitling, I had a fix for it.

• directed all matters of finance, marketing, and daily operations 
• handled all customer service inquiries, ensuring timely responses (see what I did there?) 
• bootstrapped company and reached profitability and positive cash flow within 5 months of launch

President & Co-founder

Justice Jewelers

In this role, I found diamonds in the rough (literally and figuratively), as I was responsible for directing the buying team, small diamond buying and jewelry appraising. This is where I got my first taste of the World Wide Web (as it was referred to then), as I  managed our company websites and the Inventory Management System. 

• responsible for planned merchandise spend of $6MM annually
• directed outsourced marketing activities with ad agency
• designed and implemented a system to control purchasing budgets 
• designed and implemented a website for sale of slow moving inventory, which led to increased profitability and faster turn
• designed and implemented a purchasing process to increase inventory turn; turn exceeded industry average by 186%
• earned Graduate Gemology degree from the G.I.A.

Buying Team Manager/Marketing Coordinator/Merchandiser

Growing ecommerce businesses through CRO, UX research, and data analytics.

We're a conversion rate optimization agency for eCommerce brands looking to grow to the next level, but know they need to a better job converting traffic. 

We talk to your potential customers, find out why they're not buying, and fix those issues through a/b testing, personalization, and data-informed UX/UI design.

We help you grow by leveraging: 
-> Full-website conversion optimization
-> Landing page optimization
-> Personalization and segmentation
-> Conversion-focused web design
-> User experience research
-> Website analytics and reporting

We’ve worked with brands you know, like JensonUSA, Osprey, PENN Fishing, and The Shade Store. We’re also fired up about helping growing brands reach the next level. Some brands we've helped make this jump include Hydro Flask, Made In, Mizzen and Main, and Peak Design.

Brian Schmitt

The CRO industry is full of 25-year-olds teaching "masterclasses" after running 10 tests.

I've been doing this since 2001. And honestly, almost all of what I see from newer operators today is straight trash.

Can someone be good at CRO in two years? 

"Good" is a loose term. Can someone do it? For sure.

But if you're coming in fresh at 25 with no business experience, you're not going to be proficient.

You'll end up copycatting wins you see posted online with no strategic thought and zero customer empathy.

I've stepped in for clients after they left younger agencies. Their biggest complaint is always:

"Our tests would win, but we wouldn't see revenue translate."

When I examine their "winning" tests, I find they hit significance in 3-4 days when the sample size wasn't big enough, creating false positives everywhere.

We've found "losses" that were actually wins when re-run correctly and "wins" that were flat or actual losses.

Real experience teaches principles, not tactics.

CEO at Surefoot.me | Driving ecom growth w/ CRO, Analytics, UX Research, and Site Design

The most expensive mistake $10M+ ecommerce brands make:

They spend millions on traffic.
But 98% of those visitors leave without buying.

CRO is the lever they ignore.

Acquisition builds reach.
Optimization builds revenue.

Without CRO, your ad budget is a leaky bucket.

Recent wins from Surefoot clients:

 • Free Shipping Threshold → +$516K annual revenue
 • Centaur LP → +8.3% cart adds
 • Category Clarity in the Nav → +$149K annual lift

Different brands. 

Same pattern:
Disciplined experimentation beats design trends.

The most expensive phrase in eCommerce?

“We want to redesign the website.”

Full redesigns do not deliver the ROI you think it will, and it is almost always a waste of time and resources that brands could be putting towards what ACTUALLY drives a substantial impact: 

→ Removing friction where it counts
→ Fixing leaks in the customer journey
→ Tapping into buying psychology
→ Running smart, strategic A/B tests

Chasing shiny new designs is looking for gold at the end of the rainbow. 

Double down on what works and optimize the rest.

Most people think CRO is about button colors and call-to-actions.
It’s not.

It’s about truth.

When we run a test, we’re asking:
“What actually drives buying behavior, not what we think drives it?”

Sometimes that truth hurts.
It shows your $82k redesign was vanity.
It proves your CEO’s favorite headline does nothing.
It humbles teams who “knew” their customer.

But that’s why it works.

CRO turns “we believe” into “we know.”

And once you operate from truth, every other part of your business compounds faster.

When a brand tells me “it should be working,” I know we’re about to find revenue.

“Our PDP should convert better.”
“Our new landing page should outperform the old one.”
“Our loyalty program should increase retention.”

The problem?
None of those sentences include proof.

We’ve run over 9,000 tests across ecommerce brands.
Roughly half the time, the “better” version loses.

That’s not failure.
That’s the tuition you pay for certainty.

You can either spend millions building what should work…
Or a fraction testing what actually does.

If everyone follows “best practices,” who’s left to stand out?


So many CRO audits start with the same sentence:


“We follow best practices.”


And that’s usually the problem.


Because “best practices” mean “what everyone else already tried.”
They’re safe. Predictable. Easy to copy.


But optimization isn’t about copying. It’s about discovery.


Your audience, product, and price point are unique.
Your winning version probably breaks at least five “rules.”


If your pages look like your competitors’, you’re fighting for scraps.


CRO is how you break away, safely.
You earn permission to zig while they all zag.

How's it going today? 

Feeling the anticipation or feeling the heartburn?

Every brand has one assumption about its customers that has never been tested.

What’s yours?
(Serious question.)

Pearl Talent

Helping top US-based startups find phenomenal overseas talent.

Julian.capital

Julian.capital is a deeptech seed fund writing $500K checks. We're among the best at growth and design, and that's what we help you with. Feel free to submit your deck at www.deepchecks.vc.

Songbird Therapy

Business Operations

McKinsey & Company

Business Analyst

Ascend

Ascend (ascendbuild.co) helps property managers and residential real estate developers optimise rental pricing. We've helped real estate developers with over 150,000 units in aggregate optimise their rental portfolios.

Co-Founder | Next 36 2020 Cohort

Lolly Medical

Lolly Medical was a mental health and primary care platform that aims to make mental and preventative care more accessible by creating a more efficient and transparent doctor booking process. 

- Led product development with engineers including taking ownership of the product roadmap, scheduling product development, assigning resources and following up on work results
- Formed product hypotheses through knowledge and understanding of the market, customer requirements, and the competitive landscape
- Conducted user interviews, research with end-users, and gathered key stakeholder pain points to define the scope of the Minimum Viable Product.
- Developed pitch decks and fundraising strategy, resulting in grant funding from the Alumni Ventures Group and I-Corps Program

Think Tanks and Civil Societies Program (TTCSP)

- Organized and spoke on a panel at the 2018 Latin American Think Tank Summit in Montevideo, which included 70 delegates from 20 countries around Latin America, North America and Europe
- Coordinated the 2019 AI Summit in Palo Alto, CA in partnership with the Brookings Institute as well as the 2019 North America Think Tank Summit in collaboration with the Urban Institute and Peterson Institute for International Economics

Summit Coordinator

TalkED

TalkED is an indigenous language preservation platform that aims to preserve the stories of over 170 languages in the Philippines.

- Founded an indigenous language preservation platform recognized as one of the five Harvard Social Innovation Collaborative Global Trailblazers and presented at the 2015 Igniting Innovation Conference as well as to the UN Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues
- Led platform development, including managing a team of developers and conducting research interviews with linguists at the Philippine DepED and leaders of indigenous tribes 
- Directed partnerships development with: Philippine Department of Education, Metro Dagupan Information and Communications Technology Council, University of Luzon, Wired Magazine, Davao Center of Indigenous Leadership.

Founder

Empowering Brilliant Minds Foundation

·Fundraised 250,000 pesos to develop wells and provide shirts and drinking water to indigenous aetas in the mountains of Pampanga, Philippines.
· Raised over 350,000 pesos for school supplies, feeding programs and medical missions to over 500 public school students in Pasig City.

Youth Council Executive Board

Placing top overseas operators with pearltalent.com

Monty Ngan

The most underrated hiring strategy? Let your top performers do the recruiting.

Nobody talks about this enough.

The best hires don't usually come from job posts- they come from your team's networks.

A-players know other A-players. And they only refer people they'd actually want to work with.

Early on, I didn't realize how powerful this was. One of our team members would casually mention: "Hey, I know someone who'd be perfect for this."

And that person would join and immediately crush it.

Because top performers don't refer mediocre people- they bring in others who are as good as they are. Peers of the same caliber whom they trust and respect.

Now we actively encourage it. When hiring, the first thing we do is ask the team: "Do you know anyone?" 

Most of the time, someone does- and those hires integrate seamlessly and hit the ground running. 

A-players want to work with other A-players. They're not threatened by talent. They're energized by it. 

One great person attracts others, and a team full of them makes recruiting easy because everyone wants in.

But this only works if you have A-players to begin with. If your team isn't performing at a high level, their referrals won't either. People recommend people like themselves.

If you're struggling to find great people, look at your current team. Are they the kind of people who know other great people? Would they be excited to refer their friends?

Build a team of A-players first. The rest takes care of itself.

#startups #entrepreneurship #leanstartups #leadership #hiring #team

Co-Founder @ Pearl Talent | Specializing in placing top overseas operators

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