Zachary Murray

Foreplay.co

Bootstrapping the fuck out of foreplay.co

Creative Director / Growth Design

Daniel James

Founder & CEO @ Flight Performance: Accelerating growth for eCommerce brands with Growth Strategy, Customer Acquisition & Customer Retention | Host of Entrepreneurship, Brand Building & Marketing Podcast Bitesized🎙

Entrepreneur & growth marketing leader with 20 years experience scaling brands online. Prior to founding my own growth marketing agency I lead client strategy at MySpace, AOL & Turn working with some of the biggest brands in the world.

I founded Flight Performance, a leading growth marketing partner, in 2020. We work with disruptive DTC/eCommerce brands accelerate growth, enabling them to acquire more customers, more profitably, at greater scale & building lasting customer loyalty.

Since launching we've helped some of the most disruptive brands in fashion, beauty & health/wellness scale, including Represent Clo, Oh Polly, Kappa, Ghost Golf, Crown Affair, Huel, Before You Speak, Rockstar Originals, Diet Starts Monday, managing over $50,000,000 in annual media spend. 

🔧 What We Do Best

Customer Acquisition:

→ Growth Strategy
→ Performance Creative & Influencer UGC
→ Paid Media (Meta, TikTok, Google)

Customer Retention & Lifecycle Marketing:

→ Email & SMS
→ Subscription & Loyalty Programs
→ Full-funnel CRM Strategy

💬 What Clients Say

"Flight was foundational to our ability to scale fast and successfully. A true extension of our team."
— Andy Nalla, Founder & CEO @ Ghost Golf

"Their strategic approach to acquisition & retention contributed significantly to our growth over 3 years of working together."
— Elaine Choi, President @ Crown Affair

"Their creative strategy and ability to reduce CAC was seriously impressive. Results + great communication."
— Howie Zisser, Marketing Director @ Public Rec

Learn more at flightperformance.co

🎙 Host of BITESIZED

BITESIZED dives into the minds of top entrepreneurs, brand builders & marketers sharing real-world stories & insights into the highs & lows of entrepreneurship, building companies, and approaches unlocking personal & business growth. Each episode unpacks powerful lessons & actionable insights you can apply into your own life and business.

Real stories. Actionable insights.

→ Spotify: tinyurl.com/Bitesized-Spotify
→ Apple: tinyurl.com/Bitesized-Apple
→ YouTube: tinyurl.com/Bitesized-YouTube

Founder & CEO

mint is a full-service performance marketing agency. we help disruptive dtc/ecommerce brands accelerate growth with cutting edge strategies across creative, influences, paid media, email & sms. 

We’re hiring a Growth Strategist at Flight Performance.

This is not a “media buyer with a new title” role.

 And it’s not a slide-deck-only strategy position either.

This is for someone who wants to sit at the intersection of:
 • commercial strategy
 • performance marketing
 • creative direction
 • and real P&L impact

Our Growth Strategists work directly with founders and senior teams to:

 • define growth priorities
 • build structured growth plans
 • translate data into decisions
 • pressure-test ideas before dollars are spent

You’ll collaborate closely with:

 • paid media teams
 • creative and content
 • analytics and reporting
 • leadership

And you’ll be expected to think like an owner, not an executor.

If you’re someone who:
 • understands performance marketing beyond channels
 • can zoom out to strategy, then back into numbers
 • enjoys accountability and high standards
 • wants to work on disruptive brands in fashion, apparel & sports, collaborate with a highly talented and driven team, to drive real impact...this could be for you.

If you’re interested, or know someone who should see this, reach out or apply via the link in the comments.

Founder @ Flight Performance: Helping fashion & apparel brands acquire more customers, more profitably at greater scale & build lasting customer loyalty | Host of Entrepreneurship & Brand Building Podcast @ Bitesized🎙

Of All The Leadership Advice I’ve Ever Received, This Is #1.

Providing absolute clarity of expectations.

When expectations aren’t clear, you can’t manage accountability.
You can’t coach performance.
You can’t even say with conviction whether you hit or missed.

Clarity creates confidence.
Ambiguity creates chaos.

The best leaders don’t just set expectations, they define them.

They make the invisible, visible.
They remove assumptions.
They ensure every person knows what success looks like and what “great” actually means.

When people know what’s expected, it encourages and allows them to rise to it and having high expectations push teams to think bigger, act faster, and pursue something meaningful.

Vague expectations? They destroy trust and momentum. 

Too many leaders unintentionally set people up for failure with vague expectations. Expecting what was never clearly defined or communicated and being frustrated when things aren't met.

If expectations aren't clear and therefore not met, thats a leadership failure, not a team failure.

Leadership isn’t about control, it’s about clarity.
It’s not about status, it’s about service.

And that service starts with giving your team absolute clarity on the why, the what, and the how, so that accountability becomes natural, not forced.

TL;DR:
- Clarity is the foundation of accountability.
- If expectations aren’t clear, leadership fails no matter how strong the vision is.

It's been a crazy start to the year!

Some exciting new client partnerships, a new website in the works, goals for the year set.

Last year was all about our foundation as a company. 

Feels odd to say that, 5 years in, but as the market changes, platforms evolve, what brands need/want from growth teams and also, mine and our own expectations of what we are capable of, whats possible, how we want the company to operate - the company also evolves. Better, you have to be ahead of the curve, see around corners. 

We made no crazy pivots. 
Just continuous refinement.
Continuous improvement. 

Ultimate Clarity.

On who we are, what we do, how we do what we do, who we service, how we service them.

The analogy I use internally is building the F1 team of growth marketing companies.

A team obsessed with speed, precision, execution, results, repeatability. 

Every role has a purpose.
Every system has a reason.
Every decision ladders back to performance.
Friction points, removed.

In a market where growth has become harder, noisier, and more uncertain, discipline becomes the advantage.

Process becomes leverage.
Clarity becomes speed.

The companies that win this next phase will not be the ones doing more.
They will be the ones doing fewer things, better, with more intent.
As much about what we don't do, as what we do.

Best in class growth marketing for fashion, apparel, sport brands.

That’s what we’ve been building.
Thats what we will continue building.

Kaizen: continuous improvement. 

A phrase I resonate with so much, try and live my life by so much, I got it tattooed on my face! (sorry mum)

Data Rich, Clarity Poor.

How many measurement tools does it take to analyze and optimize an omni channel DTC brand? (There is a joke in there somewhere...)

Data should provide clarity that allows for execution, yet so many marketers spend so much time either trying to make data make sense, or worse (and something we STILL see) still relying purely on in-platform reporting.

So in a data rich, clarity poor eco-system, what should you be looking at to help make decisions that drive business outcomes from your growth marketing?

1. nMER, blended MER, ACoS
This is the truth serum.
nMER shows whether marketing is net new customers at what efficiency. Blended MER tells you if the entire system is scaling efficiently, not just one channel gaming attribution. ACoS targets set that track to overall profitability. These are the core KPIs to anchor & optimize media spend, media mix against.

2. Contribution margin, not gross revenue
 Revenue without contribution margin is noise.
Your dashboard should answer:
 “How much cash does each incremental dollar of spend actually generate?”
If contribution margin is shrinking as spend increases, you don’t have a media problem. You have a business model problem.

3. LTV by cohort, not blended averages
Blended LTV hides rot.
Cohort based LTV tells you whether the customers you are acquiring today are more or less valuable than the ones you acquired last quarter.
That’s the difference between compounding growth and quietly lowering the ceiling of the brand.

4. Incrementality as a first class metric
If you cannot separate demand capture from demand creation, you are flying blind.
Incrementality is not a “nice to have”.
It is the only way to understand whether spend is expanding the market or just redistributing existing demand.

5. Retention velocity
Not just repeat rate, but how fast customers come back and how often.
Retention velocity is the bridge between media efficiency and long term LTV. It tells you whether growth is sustainable or just front loaded.
The shift teams need to make is fundamental.

From channel level performance to system level performance.
From attribution comfort to financial truth.
From ROAS optimization to profit optimization.

The best dashboards do not help you justify spend.

They help you decide where to deploy capital.

TLDR
- Real growth dashboards are built on nMER, blended MER, contribution margin, cohort LTV, incrementality, and retention velocity. 

- Stop ONLY optimizing ads. Start optimizing the business.

One of the biggest mistakes you can make as a leader is assuming intent equals clarity.

You can have the right intentions.
You can care deeply.
You can believe you have communicated clearly.
And still fail your team.

When expectations aren’t clear, everything downstream breaks.

You can’t manage accountability.
You can’t coach performance.
You can’t confidently say whether something was a win or a miss.

That’s not a team problem.

That’s a leadership problem.

The best leaders don’t just set expectations they define them, remove assumptions and make the invisible, visible.

And when things aren’t met, strong leaders don’t default to frustration or control.
They go back to first principles and ask a harder question:

Was the expectation actually clear?

High standards only work when people understand exactly what those standards are.
What success looks like.
What good looks like.
What unacceptable looks like.

Without that, accountability feels personal & objective.

Leadership isn’t about control. It’s about clarity.
It’s not about status. It’s about service.

And that service starts with giving people absolute clarity on the why, the what, and the how.
 
So performance can be coached.
So trust can compound.
So teams aren’t guessing.
So that you can actually hold people to the right level of expectations, standards and outcomes.

If expectations aren’t clear and therefore not met, that’s on leadership.

Every time.

TLDR:
- Clarity is not a communication skill, it’s a leadership responsibility.
- If expectations aren’t clearly defined, accountability breaks.
- When things miss, check clarity before blaming performance.

You might miss the bullseye, but don’t miss the target.

Predictability in performance marketing is hard. Not made easier by the day trading approach to forecasting, spend, and account optimization we see so consistently.

Budgets are pushed or pulled based on todays or yesterdays performance. 
Creative is chopped and changed with no rhyme or reason.
Algorithms are constantly reset. 
Optimizing towards arbitrary or in platform metrics.

All in the name of trying to “hit” today.

The opposite, allows to you to control and pull levers, within guardrails, against a future facing, predictive desired outcome, based on a number of factors including historical performance, inventory, spend splits.

It was the main challenge this fashion brand had. We developed their growth plan heading into January to not just optimize their ad account structures and creative strategy, but execute against a plan. 

The result:
• 3% above revenue target
 • 6% above MER target
 • 5% below target ACoS

We did not win every day. 
But we achieved the goal.

The goal is not daily perfection. 
The goal is predictable outcomes.

This only works when you stop running channels in silos and start thinking in systems.

• Persona and product driven creative strategy
• Allowing the algorithms to compound instead of constantly interrupting them
• Omni-channel budget management across acquisition and retention
• Decisions made at the ecosystem level, not inside individual ad accounts

Day trading is why performance feels volatile.
It's why efficiency erodes at scale.
It's why you can never be predictable.
It's why teams feel reactive instead of in control.


TLDR:
- Day Trading approaches are reactive and limit growth & predictability. 

- Accurate forecasting, disciplined execution, and an ecosystem approach to customer acquisition is how brands scale base revenue while improving efficiency.

Effective growth marketing isn’t just about scale.

Every agency, growth marketer, and paid media person talks about scale, scale, scale.

And yea, scale matters.

But truly effective growth marketing is about far more than just pushing spend.
It’s about what you are scaling, why it scales, and whether the system holds when you do.
Does the system driving scale, get sharper, more predictable, as you move through the gears of growth?

Predictability is what connects growth marketing to inventory, demand planning & actual business growth over paid media return.

When forecasts are accurate and performance stays within guardrails, brands can plan buy depth, manage cash, avoid reactive discounting.

Especially in fashion, where you are not scaling one SKU, you are managing dozens or hundreds at once.

The ecosystem has to scale, not just your paid media budget.

Scale without that ecosystem & predictability is just volatility with a bigger budget.

The brands that win long term are not the ones that scale the fastest.

They are the ones that scale what actually compounds.


TLDR:

- Effective growth marketing is not only about scale. 

- Its about establishing an ecosystem that compounds, predictability, that translates and supports the back end operations of the brand.

There are inflection points in every career or business.

Moments that either slingshot you to the next level, or quietly become the ceiling that caps your growth.

In my experience, they almost always sit at one of two extremes.

The brink of failure.
Or the brink of breakout growth.

Both are uncomfortable.
Both expose weaknesses.
Both demand a decision, not a strategy deck.

At the brink of failure, the signal is obvious.
Cash is tight. Performance slips. Pressure mounts.
You are forced to get disciplined or die.

At the brink of breakout growth, the danger is more subtle.
Revenue is up. Opportunities are everywhere. The team is stretched.
And the cracks start to show.

This is where most businesses stall.

Not because they failed, but because they did not upgrade their standards, systems, or leadership fast enough to match the new level they were entering.

Growth amplifies everything.
Good decisions compound.
Bad habits become expensive.
Lack of clarity turns into chaos.

Every major step change in my career came from recognizing one of these moments early and choosing discipline over comfort.

Tighter focus.
Clear ownership.
Better systems.
Higher standards.

The inflection point itself does not decide your future.
How quickly you respond to it does.


TLDR:
 • Inflection points show up at the brink of failure or breakout growth
 • Both feel uncomfortable and expose weaknesses
 • Growth stalls when standards and systems do not level up fast enough
 • Discipline and clarity determine whether you break through or plateau

From Firefighter To Architect

This mindset shift changed the way myself and our teams handled the inevitable challenges of building a company and being a leader.

If you’re building a company or leading a team, you’ll face challenges. daily. At varying degrees of severity!

And most people’s default reaction is the same: put out the fire.

It feels productive. 

You fix the issue, move on, and get back to work. 

But if you’re always putting out fires, you’re not actually building fireproof systems. And you’re likely putting out iterations of the same fires over and over again. Worse, you are accepting that this is the way it is, and always will be.

Reactive. Busy. Short term thinking.

I've been there and had phases where this was our reality.

An issue comes up → we scramble → fix it → move on. 

But the inevitable happens and a week or month later, the same type of issue resurfaces in a different form. 

Seems so obvious in hindsight, but this mindset shift really changed how I, and how I ask our teams to think about and approach challenges, roadblocks, set backs:

Don’t think: “How do we fix this?”
Ask: “Why did this happen?”

This small reframe forces you to slow down, zoom out, gather data & feedback to understand, and ultimately solve for the root cause of the issue.

Stops you exhausting efforts putting out fires, still leaving embers and smoke along the way, and it doesn't take much for them to flare back up when you only approach things at surface level.

Because every recurring problem is feedback:
 • If communication keeps breaking down, your structure is unclear.
 • If deadlines keep slipping, your planning is off.
 • If people keep making the same mistake, your process isn’t documented properly or you have the wrong people in the wrong seat.

Once we started asking “why,” we stopped reviewing and solving surface-level issues and started auditing and solving for the root causes.


TL;DR:
- If you’re constantly solving the same problems, you’re not building your foundation, you’re firefighting and accepting reoccurring issues as an inevitable reality.
- Shift your mindset from “How do we fix this?” to “Why did this happen?”
- Solving problems drives short term progress. Preventing them builds compounding momentum.

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Zachary Murray

Daniel James

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The Battle

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