Hashtag Monday

Director

$80m+ generated for 106 DTC brands | Unlock Untapped Revenue, without throwing more money at Zuck 😈 | Retention Marketing for DTC Brands

I’ll cut to the chase.

If you’re a 7-figure DTC brand founder, you’re missing out on what helped me achieve 30-40% repeat purchase rates for 170+ eCommerce brands in 90 days (every time)

Look…

There’s about 1 million eCommerce agencies on LinkedIn - you don’t have time to hear what they all have to say.

You know your pain points are:

1. Struggling to get customers to make repeat purchases.
2. Watching your ad spend fail to generate profitable returns.
3. Finding it difficult to retain clients despite a successful acquisition strategy.

And therefore you also know that…

These issues are draining your resources and leaving you settling for mediocre results (and agencies / consultants).

After scaling 170+ eCommerce brands…

I understand the frustration of seeing tons of money wasted, month after month, with little to show for it. 

Your competitors are scaling, your margins are shrinking, and your growth feels stunted. 

Every time you pour money into ads, you hope for a breakthrough, but it seems like you're caught in an endless cycle of diminishing returns.

The dream of becoming the top choice for consumers feels like a distant reality.

Here’s the good news:

I’ve got data on a better way. 

I specialize in transforming your existing acquisition funnel into a repeat purchase machine.

With my proven strategies, I don’t just aim to improve your numbers – I aim to revolutionize your business.

I've generated $80M in trackable repeat purchase revenue for multiple 7, 8 and 9-figure brands.

My unique approach ensures that your customers buy twice within 21 days, drastically improving your repeat purchase rates and overall profitability. 

AKA. Your CFO will love me.

I also focus on increasing your return customer rate to 30-40% within 90 days, and boosting your average order value by 20-40%.

Want to see how I’m doing it?

DM me ‘REPEAT THAT’ or ‘I actually read your about section’

And I’ll show you why every time I present to a brand founder what they’re missing in their repeat purchase stack —- they almost fire their current email team instantly.

Trust me.

I’ve seen physical *gasps* after I run DTC founders through their own 32-page, complimentary repeat purchase audit.

DM me ‘REPEAT THAT’ or ‘I actually read your about section’

If you’re a brand that actively has new customers coming in daily.

Dolapo S.

Joe Marston 🚀

Co-Founder

Scaling e-commerce brands to 7 and 8 figures 🚀 | LU Entrepreneur of The Year Award Winner | Founder of The Leading TikTok Marketing Agency and an Award Winning Full Service Ecom Growth Agency.

3x Agency Founder.

We scale brands to 7 and 8 figures with creative, paid traffic, retention and funnel optimisation.

In 2024, having a great product is one thing…

But scaling a brand to £10M is a another.

You need a simple roadmap for profitably attracting and converting customers, at scale.

Because when you get that right…

- You stand out from competitors in the market
- You build a community around your brand
- You acquire customers at will (profitably)
- You turn customers into raving fans 

Giving you complete control over your growth.

We help our clients do exactly that with our proven system that guarantees growth.

1. Initial diagnostic to identify bottlenecks in your business
2. Developing a bespoke growth strategy for your brand
3. Creative ideation and production 
4. Unique UGC collaborations
5. Targeted advertising (Meta, TikTok, Pinterest, Snapchat)
6. Email marketing 

And having generated over £100M+ in sales across 200+ brands, we’ve know the ecommerce game inside out.

🚀 Mystery Shirt In A Box grew from £5K to £2.6M in just one year with our help
🚀 The Essence Vault is hitting 7 figure months in its second year since launch
🚀 Vintage Threads tripled their revenue working with us with a 6x ROAS
🚀 AIRfreshh went from 0% to 52% of revenue from email in 2 months!
🚀 Bene Culture saw their revenue grow 6x in 6 months with our help
🚀 The Oodie generated £2M on TikTok alone in their first year
🚀 UN:IK’s first quarter of 2023 was up 88% on 2022
🚀Grew Liam and Co. 500% year on year

Don’t put up with unpredictable, unsustainable or underwhelming growth any more.

If you want to see how we could help scale your brand, send me a DM saying ‘SOAR’

If you're not ready yet, I post daily educational content to give you all the secrets.

Founder

E-commerce growth agency offering bespoke services to online businesses looking to increase their sales and scale their brand.

Some DTC brands are exiting at just 3x EBITDA. Others are hitting 12x. That’s a £90M difference on a £10M EBITDA business.

A few weeks ago, I co-hosted a private event in Dubai with Emmett Kilduff at The Fortia Group, one of the top M&A advisors in eCom.

Room full of 8-9 figure operators. 

One takeaway came up again and again:

The biggest exit premium isn’t from brand.
It’s from how early you start planning.

We broke down:
- Why DTC brands are leaving millions on the table at exit
- What actually moves your multiple (hint: it’s not your ROAS)
- The 8-part framework Fortia use to engineer $100M+ exits

It’s all in the deck. And I’m giving it away.

If you’re doing £10M+ and thinking ahead 12–36 months, this will save you millions.

Drop “EXIT” below and I’ll send it over.

Building DTC brands to 8 and 9 figures | Founder of Soar With Us & For You Advertising | Triple Whale's "Agency of The Year" Winner

This prompt turned my chaotic life into a game and 3x’d my income

I was drowning in emails, missing follow-ups, and constantly feeling like I was “busy” but not making progress. 

So I decided to build a Life Operating System from scratch using principles from:

✅ GTD (task management & clarity) from the book Getting Things Done

🎯 Gamification (LifeQuest-style goals, stats, XP) using teachings from Dan Koe

🐢 Slow Productivity by Cal Newport (focus on fewer, deeper tasks) 

📊 Dan Martell’s Audit-Transfer-Fill method (to finally delegate the right things) 

🤖 And AI tools like Notion, Motion, Superhuman AI, Apollo, HubSpot, 

The result?

It’s built on:

- GTD for mental clarity
- Gamified goals (with XP, stats, and level-ups)
- Slow productivity (deep focus > doing more)
- Audit → transfer → fill to delegate *properly*
- And AI tools like Notion, Motion, Superhuman, Apollo, HubSpot, GHL

It genuinely changed how I work.

No more missed follow-ups. Life kinda feels like a game now, in the best way.

I turned it into a plug-and-play ChatGPT prompt you can customise for your own setup.

Want it?
Like this post and reply “prompt” in the comments and I’ll send it over.

Must be following

We’ve stopped using ROAS and CPA as our north stars. Here’s why.

Since the Andromeda rollout, Meta’s algo is making delivery decisions before ROAS or CPA ever show up.

Which means:

→ If you’re still using CPA to spot winners, you’re already too late.
→ If you're scaling on ROAS alone, you're scaling old data.

We’ve rebuilt how we benchmark creative across every account and replaced the old north stars with these two:

1️⃣ CPMR: Cost Per 1,000 Reached Accounts

This tells us how efficiently we’re reaching net new people, not just blasting the same warm pool.

→ High CPMR = your creative looks repetitive, low-signal, or unengaging
→ Low CPMR = Meta sees your ad as scroll-stopping, high-signal, and worth delivering

We track this by:

→ The account level (trend over time)
→ Format level (UGC vs static vs story-style)
→ Persona level (motivator x demo)

2️⃣ New Visitor %

Cheap reach means nothing if it’s not fresh.

This tells us how well a creative is breaking out of its bubble and unlocking new demand.

→ High CTR but low New Visitor %? You're just retargeting your existing crowd.

→ Low CPMR + high New Visitor %? Signal to scale.

→ High CPMR + low New Visitor %? Scrap it. Meta’s not even trying with that asset.

This metric = your clearest look at creative incrementality.

We’ve now built both metrics into every client dashboard.

They're how we:
- Spot early winners
- Catch creative fatigue before performance tanks
- Scale without flying blind

Most brands won’t adapt fast enough. But Andromeda is live. And Meta’s already deprioritising ads that don’t play by the new rules.

You can build a business with anyone.
But you can only succeed for six years
and scale it to seven figures in profit
with someone you genuinely trust.

Everyone told us that being friends in business was a recipe for disaster.
Yet here we are.
Six years later.
Still good friends.
Still building.
Leading the agency game.
Multiple businesses together.
Nowhere near finished.

We’ve been friends since our early teens.
We failed twice before Soar.
We lived together for two years.
We learned each other’s strengths the hard way.

Then we moved to different cities.
And that’s where most Co-Founder friendships fade.
Not because of conflict.
Because every call becomes a work call.
And the friendship slowly disappears.

So we do the opposite.
We intentionally protect the relationship that built the business.

Olly flew out to Dubai last week.
No heavy agenda.
No rush.
Just space to reset properly.

Half work.
Half downtime.
One of the most productive weeks we’ve had all year.

We hosted a private Ecom roundtable with The Fortia Group.
Shared what we’re seeing in the market.
Answered questions.
Then kept the discussion going over dinner.

We organised a supplier for our new brand launch next year (more details on that soon).

We caught up with agency friends we’d only spoken to online.
Face-to-face made everything sharper and more actionable.

Random conversations turned into strategy.
Breaks turned into breakthroughs.
The quiet moments gave us clarity heading into 2026.

And the friendship got stronger again.
Which always makes the business stronger.

Founder lesson:
If you don’t protect the friendship,
you won’t protect the business.

Keep the relationship alive.
That’s how you survive long term.
And that’s where the real profit comes from.

Feeling overwhelmed with gratitude right now… 😄

This is our agency 2025 Black Friday social.

4 years ago this was a handful of people.

Now we have over 70 people in one room and that’s not even everyone…

So grateful for everyone who’s helped us on this journey

We’ve scaled 8 and 9-figure brands where one founder-led ad outperformed everything in the account and generated £2million in revenue.

When it’s raw, real, and structured right, founder content becomes a scaling lever, not a brand play.

But most brands get it wrong.

Either they overscript and kill authenticity… Or they throw up iPhone clips with no strategy.

So we built a framework that fixes that.

A simple cheat sheet that breaks down:

- The 9-part emotional arc behind every high-converting founder ad
- The exact storytelling structure that hooks, converts, and builds trust
- Plug-and-play hooks that stop the scroll
- Real examples from top-performing brands
- The best questions to ask to pull founder story gold

It’s punchy, practical, and built for scale.

If you're a founder (or you're running a brand where the founder *is* the story), this will help you turn your origin story into real revenue.

Like this post
Drop “founder” in the comments and I’ll send it over
(Make sure we’re connected so I can DM you).

The Christmas tradition we refuse to change, even as the agency explodes in size.

Every year, our team gets more spread out.
(because world-class teams are built by finding world-class people, wherever they are).

London. Manchester. The Midlands. Up North.

Different cities. Different roles. Same mission.

But one tradition hasn’t changed:

The Soar With Us Christmas Party will always remain in Leeds, the city where it all started 6 years ago.

Back when it was just a handful of us, a couple of desks, and a vision we were probably too ambitious (or too naive) to question.

Fast-forward to now and the team is bigger, stronger, and working across the whole country… yet everyone still makes the trip back to Leeds for one night.

Not because they have to.

But because it means something.

It’s the one time of year we all hit pause, get in the same room, and remember how far this thing has actually come.

The energy. The stories. The laughs. The “do you remember when we…” moments.

Agencies grow fast. People move. Teams evolve.

But this tradition is an anchor. A reminder of the roots.

Massive love to everyone who travelled in and made it such a good night.

🚀 Here’s to another year of growing, building, and doing what we do best.

some people wake up at 4am
run 30 miles
ice bath
no excuses

you see david goggins
and suddenly normal feels weak
average feels like failure

when i was younger
focus was impossible
discipline felt like a myth

I bounced between ideas
half finished everything
always distracted
always chasing the next hit of motivation

I thought success meant becoming extreme
superhuman
wired different

but the truth is quieter

you do not need perfect focus
you need daily progress
one small action
one hard choice
one uncomfortable task

not heroic
just consistent
today’s world makes it harder to stay steady
endless noise
constant comparison
highlight reels everywhere

so i stopped trying to be extraordinary overnight
and started trying to be better than yesterday

one focused hour
one hard email
one real workout
one honest decision

done daily
that stacks
that compounds
that changes everything

discipline is not a personality
it is a habit
repeated long enough
to transform into identity

clear lesson
you win by moving forward a little every day
not by trying to become goggins overnight

WONDERSKIN turned a peel-off lip stain into 670,000+ units sold in the UK - powered almost entirely by TikTok affiliates.

We’ve broken down the funnel behind it.
(It’s the same model we’ve seen drive £50K+/day on TikTok Shop.)

Here’s how it works:

- Commission-first: Creators are incentivised to sell, not post
- Creator-led testing: Affiliates generate content → we test → scale what works
- Live demos, deep FAQs, product trials: Affiliates become educators
- Smart segmentation: Top creators grouped by format, vertical, and product
- Flywheel structure: Paid → Organic → Affiliate → Shop content → Repeat

TikTok called it a “halo effect” - Wonderskin’s affiliate buzz even spilled into Amazon sales.

It’s a playbook any DTC brand can use.

Want the full teardown?

1. Like this post
2. Comment “Wonderskin”
3. Make sure we’re connected so I can DM you the board

Reposts = bumped to the top of the list.

Last month, GMV jumped from £200 to £6,000/day in under a week.

And the biggest driver? A creative format we didn’t expect to work on TikTok at all. 

High-production, Meta-style assets.

Specifically, the founder answering FAQs direct to cam, layered with an AI voiceover. Originally built for Meta. 

We assumed it would feel too polished, too “ad-like” for TikTok.

But it’s now outperforming everything and driving 90%+ of total paid spend.

Yes, the brand’s also scaling through affiliates, which is bringing fresh eyes. But the real volume? It’s coming from these signal-rich, high-prod assets.

It’s made us rethink our assumptions around cross-platform creative.

What we thought would only work on Meta is now a top performer on TikTok.

We’re 100% testing this across more accounts.

This one realisation changed how I approach 2026 entirely.

I went to a founder dinner a few weeks ago.
Hosted by Noel Andrews and Olly Richards.
A room full of operators at completely different stages.

Some just out of uni, signing their first clients.
Others running 7-figure businesses, sharpening how they work.
Every single person. 
Open. Sharp. Honest.

And it hit me.
If you stay in the same rooms, you keep solving the same problems.
The same way.

I sat next to Frankie Thorogood.
Fresh off winning hyrox, (congrats again)
We spoke about protecting your energy.
Being intentional with where your time goes.
Operating at your best by choosing your inputs.

On my other side, people right at the start of their journey.
Ambitious. Uncertain. Hungry.
Felt like looking back in time.

You grow faster by switching environments.
Different levels.
Different ideas.
Different perspectives.

You pick up things you’d never learn on your own.
From operators.
From high performers.
From newcomers hungry to prove themselves.

It changes how you think.
It sharpens you.

The lesson?
Put yourself in rooms with people who think differently.
That’s where the real growth happens.

What’s actually converting on Meta right now (Q4 trends from high-spend accounts):

If performance is flat heading into peak, it's probably not your product.

You're just not building for how Meta works today.

Here’s what’s cutting through right now:

1️⃣ Statics still scale

- Bold text, stat-led headlines and timelines are outperforming generic benefit copy.
- We’re seeing AI-style visuals + punchy copy drive scroll-stopping CPMs.
- Think: big numbers, human tone, ad that feels like a post.
- Native-feeling carousels work too, but only if you drop the polished brand voice.

2️⃣ Hooks > polish on HPs

- The best-performing hooks right now feel ripped from organic:
  "Here's what most brands get wrong..." or "Why I stopped doing X..."
- We’re leaning into founder/influencer POVs stitched into scripted flows.
- Objection-led HPs convert, especially “vs” style frameworks (us vs them, old vs new).

3️⃣ UGC is less about format, more about diversity

- The TikTok Shop-style raw look is working, but only when you mix creator POVs.
- Our top UGC ads use 4–5 creators hitting the same problem from different angles.
- Voiceless demo ads are creeping back into rotation too. Worth testing again.

In short:
→ Statics need specificity and visual edge
→ HPs win on story, not polish
→ UGC scales through multiple voices, not one creator

The numbers are in for Black Friday 2025.

£93M+ in attributed revenue for our clients. $32M+ in spend. 

That’s what we drove for our clients this November alone.

Up 117% YoY in attributed revenue.
Up 185% YoY in spend.

We talk a lot about creative. Media. Testing. Signals.

But none of it works without the right people behind it.

The people who stay curious. Who build systems. Solve problems. And show up sharp, every day.

This year, we got the full Soar Group in one room - all four agencies:

Soar With Us, Hambi Media, Launch With Us, and For You | TikTok Growth Agency.

One group. One mission. One standard.

Looking around the room at our Black Friday social (80 people deep) you could feel it.

Massively proud of what we’ve done.
Even prouder of who did it.

We recently ran a multi-cell Conversion Lift and A/B test on Meta to test what really drives performance in 2025 and this is what we found…

Scaling on Meta used to be about spend.

Now? It’s about signals.

This year at Soar With Us, we rebuilt our whole model around one idea:

👉 High-volume, persona-driven creative = better performance.

Brands adopting this model are now seeing:
→ 34% lower CPA
→ Faster learning cycles
→ Higher hit rates across all funnel stages

To prove it, we ran a multi-cell Conversion Lift + A/B test across our highest-volume accounts, testing two hypotheses:

1. More ad variants = better outcomes
2. Partnership Ads outperform BAU creative

Here’s what we found:

🧪 Test 1: Volume vs Control
• 25 ad variants vs 5
• 171 more purchases, despite 59,000 fewer impressions
• 15% lower cost per conversion
• Biggest gains with 18–34s, Meta’s most expensive demo

🧪 Test 2: BAU vs Partnership Ads
• 800 incremental conversions vs 520
• CPA: $25.63 vs $39.34
• ROAS: >10x vs BAU creative

Key takeaway?

More diverse creative = more net-new customers.

But it’s not just about quantity.

You need distinct formats, fresh personas, and messaging mapped to real pain points. That’s what feeds Meta’s Andromeda AI and unlocks incremental reach.

If you're still running 5 ads per campaign, you're not scaling. You're recycling.

The brands pulling ahead in 2025? They’re launching 1000+ ads/month, without creative fatigue, because their pipeline is built on persona insights, not guesswork.

Can’t believe we’re sharing this for free…

This episode is INSANELY valuable.

Listen to how our MD went from employee number 1 to leading a company of 70+ in 6 years.

Shoutout to Matt Lewis 

Give it a watch on YouTube. D2C diaries

This is how you scale to 8 figures on TikTok Shop in 2026.

Olly Hudson will be joining Peter Nettesheim to break down the strategy behind $23M in TikTok spend, plus a full BFCM debrief.

📅 Date: December 9th
⏰ Time: 5:00 PM – 6:00 PM (UK time, GMT, UTC+0)

Webinar Content:
✅ Step-by-step TikTok Shop blueprint
✅ Insights behind $23M+ in TikTok ad spend
✅ The TikTok first creatives strategy to scale from 7 to 8 figures
✅ How to optimise for short-form high converting creatives on TikTok
✅ Key insights from BFCM 2025: what worked and how to position for 2026

Only 100 seats available - register now! https://lnkd.in/eqfMdmT5

There’s a moment every founder hits where growth isn’t the problem - it’s everything underneath it.

You’ve scaled revenue. You’ve built a team. But everything else starts to crack.

That’s exactly where we were 18 months ago.

This week, we sat down with Matt Lewis, our Managing Director at Soar Group, to unpack how we rebuilt the *infrastructure* behind our agency as we scaled to 80+ people.

They talk through:

→ What changed operationally as we scaled to 80+ people
→ Over-focusing on revenue growth
→ How feedback loops were operationalised
→ The forecasting model Matt built
→ Using role-specific KPIs that ladder up to the P&L
→ Matt’s origin story as employee #1

Behind the scenes, Matt’s been one of the most important drivers of how we operate today.

If you’re building a team or running into growth pains, this one will land.

🎧 Catch the full episode here https://lnkd.in/eFkcg6b9

We’re giving away our Meta blueprint to show you how to stop wasting budget, escape creative fatigue, and scale with confidence in 2026.

If your best ads are dying faster...
If your testing is getting noisier...
If your CPA is climbing and you’ve got no idea why...

You’re not doing anything wrong. But you are operating in the wrong system.

Meta’s algorithm isn’t targeting people anymore, it’s matchmaking content.

It doesn’t care who your audience used to be. It cares which creative is most likely to hook a specific person right now.

We’ve built a guide that shows you exactly how Meta’s new algorithm operates.

It’s the same framework we’ve used with 8 and 9-figure brands to turn falling performance into profitable scale, without increasing spend or burning creative teams out.

Inside the playbook:

- Why Meta’s “Andromeda” update has broken your old testing structure
- The Entity ID system no one talks about (but that’s throttling your reach)
- 8 creative vehicles that get treated as net-new by the algorithm
- A 4-week roadmap for testing faster without guessing
- How to stop iterating for your team, and start iterating for Meta

The algorithm has moved on. Your results won’t follow unless your process does too.

Want it?

Like this post
Drop “Meta” and we’ll send it over (make sure we’re connected so I can DM you).

We’ve scaled pet & homeware brands in markets with 100+ competitors.

Here’s what actually cuts through.
(and it’s not a better product)

→ “Us vs them” outperforms pain-led messaging
These categories don’t trigger visceral problems so instead of selling relief, we’re seeing brands scale by positioning their solution as the elevated choice.

→ Homeware scales when you stop talking about the product and start showing the life it upgrades
Think luxury, ease, or emotional enhancement of a space.
The goal is: “This makes my life feel better.”

→ Pet content is all about aspiration, not need.
The core motivator? “My pet deserves the best.”
Not health stats. Not price. Just pure emotional resonance.

→ Convenience is the untapped lever
Especially for homeware brands speaking to maternal or over-capacity personas. If it saves time, stress, or mental load, say that clearly. It works.

→ Don’t ignore the saturated market reality
There’s no shortage of pet food or homeware options.
What wins is category contrast. Your creative should say:
“We’re not like the rest and here’s why.”

If your pet or homeware brand is stuck explaining the product, zoom out.

Start showing what it means for the person using it.

Working in another niche and want a breakdown like this?

Drop me the category and I’ll tell you what’s converting right now.

We were too focused on growth, not out of stupidity but out of naivety.

This year we ran Soar With Us completely differently.

We stopped chasing volume.
We stopped hiring reactively.
We stopped pretending top-line growth meant success.

Here’s how we actually ran the business in 2025 and why it's been our most important year yet:

Forecasting became a strategic weapon.
No more gut-feel growth targets.
We built full-funnel forecasting across revenue, client mix, hiring, and profit targets, driven by a balance of commercial ambition and team capacity.
It's removed chaos and clarified decision-making across every department.

Culture got rebuilt from the inside out.
We didn't write values in a vacuum.
We ran a full-day offsite with the entire team to rewrite our mission, values, and behaviours, then operationalised them into hiring, reviews, and even client relationships.
Result? Better people, better work, better culture.

Client strategy > client volume.
We halved onboarding capacity and focused on deeper, higher-value partnerships.
That means fewer clients, more strategic impact, and significantly higher retention.
We’re finally seeing the compounding effects.

Feedback became a competitive advantage.
We built a culture of kind candour, rolled out 360 feedback across the company, and trained every manager on how to receive and close the loop on feedback.
It’s helped us level up faster than ever before.

Revenue came from within.
For too long, we were addicted to new business.
Now, 40%+ of our growth is from client expansion - cross-sells, up-sells, and moving partners through value tiers.
It’s lower friction, higher trust, and way more profitable.

Most people assume the next level of growth comes from more work, more ads, more hiring.

For us, it came from subtraction.
→ Less noise
→ Fewer distractions
→ Clearer intent

We’re ending 2025 leaner, smarter, and more strategic than ever before.
2026 is about scaling with that same clarity.

If you’re in agency leadership and you’re scaling fast, but feeling stretched thin, here’s the blueprint that helped us get here: https://lnkd.in/eFkcg6b9

taplio

The Battle

Dolapo S.

Joe Marston 🚀

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The Battle

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Joe Marston 🚀

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