Eric Carlson

Agency behind INC #1 fastest-growing consumer product (2020) & INC #1 fastest-growing healthcare company (2022). Co-founder of Sweat Pants Agency.

Co-Founder of Sweat Pants Agency, a high-powered performance agency, responsible for the marketing behind the INC #1 fastest growing consumer product in 2020 and the #1 fastest growing healthcare company in 2022.

Co-Founder of 10XFactory, an exclusive entrepreneurship community with 1,000+ members worldwide. 

Founder of One Cup Media, an agency whose successes include the fastest growing subscription box ever on CrateJoy, the fastest-growing direct-to-consumer golf brands in the US, and one of the fastest growing functional beverage brands in the world.

Prior to these achievements, managed over $100m in advertising. Responsible for and generated ROI on budgets as large as $4m/mo via internet, radio and TV marketing specializing in SaaS, communities and ecommerce. 

Worked for the largest privately-held financial newsletter in the world, Agora Inc, and was the Chief Marketing Officer for a private equity fund for 6 years before founding his own companies.

Other Achievements: 2x 2 Comma Club Member, Guinness World Record Holder

Co-Founder

We are best known as the marketing muscle behind the INC #1 consumer product in 2020 and #1 fastest growing company in 2021.

We helped grow many brands that you know-

- Hunt A Killer
- Schoolyard Snacks
- BombTech Golf
- Fragrant Jewels
- Bokksu
- BattlBox 
- First Day
- Coop Home Goods

And many more.

Despite managing only ~ 30 brands, we manage between $4 - $8M in ad spend per month, with several brands that we worked with from the very beginning.

If you'd like to see if we could help you, apply at http://www.sweatpantsagency.com

I’m a huge fan of remote work.

I did my first remote hire in 2009. 
A graphic designer from Bulgaria.

I fell in love fast.

The moment you open your company to global talent, hiring gets easier.
Not easier in effort.
Easier in quality.

You’re no longer limited by zip code.
You’re limited only by standards.

At Sweat Pants Agency, we’ve always hired remotely.
From day one.

And because of that, we’ve built an incredible team of A+ players.

That said.

Seeing people in person still hits different.

I was in Chicago recently for a client event and got to spend time with several team members.
Three of them I had never met in person before.
One of them I’ve worked with for six years.

Six years.
First time meeting.

It was awesome.

What made it even better is that our people don’t just do great work.
They pass the airport test.

If you’re stuck in an airport together, would you still enjoy it?

Our team is funny.
Witty.
Wise.

Remote work doesn’t replace connection.
But it gives you access to people worth connecting with.

And when those worlds overlap, even briefly, it’s pretty special.

I was listening to an interview with Mike Vrabel, now the head coach of the New England Patriots, about culture and leadership.

What stood out wasn’t a slogan or a catchy quote.
It was how specific he was about responsibility.

Vrabel talked about building something players care about.
Something they’re proud of.
Something they want to protect.

And then he said the quiet part out loud:

“I gotta protect the team. That’s my job.” 

Not protect individuals from accountability.
Not protect comfort.
Protect the team.

He was clear that caring about players and holding them accountable aren’t opposites.
They’re connected.

Sometimes it means stepping in.
Sometimes it means being demanding.
Sometimes it means making decisions that aren’t fun, but are necessary.

That idea hit home for me as a founder.

I care deeply about every person on my team.
But my responsibility isn’t to any single individual.

It’s to the team as a whole.

If standards slip and you look the other way, you’re not being kind.
You’re failing the group.

Protecting the team is caring about people at scale.

That’s leadership.

Google made a big announcement on January 8 about Gemini coming to Gmail.

But the important part isn’t the announcement.
It’s the rollout.

This isn’t a switch flip.
It’s a slow, uneven deployment that’s going to change inbox behavior over the next 6–12 months.

And for email marketers, the uncomfortable truth is this:

Nobody fully knows how this plays out yet.
But there are a few things we can already reason about.

First, why people are saying open rates may become meaningless.

If Gmail is preloading emails to generate summaries, classify priority, or surface AI Overviews, that email technically gets opened even if the human never meaningfully engages.

So you could see:
- Stable or rising open rates
- Falling clicks
- Falling downstream revenue

Not because your emails got worse, but because the AI answered the question before the user needed to click.

That doesn’t kill email.
It changes what email has to do.

Second, Gmail is no longer just filtering spam.

It’s filtering relevance.

The upcoming AI Inbox isn’t chronological.
It’s algorithmic judgment.

Which means your emails now compete on:
- Relationship strength
- Historical engagement
- Clarity of intent
- Whether the AI thinks this is actionable

That’s a different game than subject-line optimization.

Third, here’s how I’d actually be thinking about this if I were running email today.

Not predictions.
Not hot takes.
Just smart bets.

1. Design for summaries
Front-load the value.
State the offer, deadline, or core point early.
If Gemini summarizes your email in one sentence, make sure that sentence works for you.

2. Stress-test your emails
Paste a campaign into an AI.
Ask: “Summarize this in one sentence.”
If the summary is vague, misleading, or boring, that’s a problem.

3. Expect list quality to matter more than list size
AI prioritization rewards engagement history.
Small, active lists beat massive, tired ones.

4. Replies may matter more than clicks
If users are one-click replying with AI-generated responses, replies may become a stronger signal than links.

Don’t overreact yet.
This is rolling out unevenly.
Defaults will change.
Anyone speaking in absolutes right now is guessing.

The real takeaway isn’t “email is dead.”

It’s this:

Email is no longer just written for humans.
It’s written for the AI that decides what the human sees.

And we’re all going to be learning that together, in real time.

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ChatGPT didn't like this question in job screenings lol

Shopify just shipped something that matters more than most people realize.

This week, Shopify and Google rolled out the Universal Commerce Protocol (UCP).

In plain English:

It’s a standard that lets AI agents transact with merchants.
Not just recommend products.

Discovery → cart → discounts → checkout → fulfillment
…inside AI surfaces like Gemini, Copilot, and ChatGPT.

The part that’s new isn’t “AI shopping.”

It’s the plumbing.

UCP is an attempt to solve the N×N integration problem:
Every agent needing a custom build for every merchant.

Instead:
One protocol.
Open by default.
Merchants can choose which AI channels they want to enable.

If this works, the next few years get weird (in a good way).

Shopping won’t always start on a website.
More “I need X for Y” in a chat box.
Fewer tabs.
Fewer steps.

And as marketers, that’s going to shift what we obsess over.

Not because landing pages suddenly don’t matter…

…but because there’s a new layer being inserted before the landing page:
the agent.

How products get understood.
How they get compared.
How they get chosen.
How the purchase happens.

We’re early.
Nobody has the playbook yet.

But this feels like Shopify saying:
“AI agents are going to be a real distribution surface — so we’re building the rails now.”

You ever hear a line in an ad…

…and instantly know it’s going to work?

I stole a hook from a random YouTube ad last week and tested it.

It started like this:

“You’ve heard we ____… and that’s true.”

That’s it.

Simple.
Almost stupid.

But it does 4 things fast:

- Assumes the viewer already knows you
- Confirms credibility
- Builds trust in 5 seconds
- Earns the next sentence

We ran it.

And it absolutely crushed.

To the point we sold out of the inventory tied to the offer in about 3 days.

So if you’re writing founder ads (or any direct response creative)…

Try this pattern:

“You’ve heard [claim]… and that’s true.”

Examples:

You’ve heard our products last forever… and that’s true.

You’ve heard we’re picky about quality… and that’s true.

You’ve heard our support team is fast… and that’s true.

You’ve heard we don’t ship junk… and that’s true.

It’s a cheat code for credibility.

And it’s easy to test.

Something weird happened on Meta starting around January 5th and 6th.

A bunch of accounts saw a major drop in the percent of link clicks that turned into Landing Page Views (LPVs).

And I don’t mean a small drop.

Normally you’ll see something like:
75% to 90%+ LPV rate

But suddenly it was showing:
20%
30%
40%

At first, a lot of people assumed it was iOS.

But when you break it down by device…
it didn’t look isolated.

It was happening across the board.

Not every account got hit.
But enough did that it mattered.

And yes, I think it impacted performance.
Most people forget this though.
Meta is not a controlled environment.

It is not a static platform you figure out once.

It is a living codebase.
Constantly changing.

Every day you’re dealing with:
Marketplace competition
Seasonality
New placements and formats
Measurement quirks
Delivery changes
And yes, bugs

This is why I laugh when people talk about Meta like it’s a clean science experiment with stable variables.

It’s more like trying to run a business on top of a product that’s being rebuilt mid-flight.

Also, I’ve noticed this pattern for years.

When engineers come back from holiday break, weird stuff spikes.
Big dev pushes.
More unexpected behavior.

Good news: it looks like it’s already correcting.

This morning, multiple accounts I checked were back to:
80% to 85%+ LPV rate

So traffic quality should normalize quickly.

But the bigger takeaway is simple:

Meta is imperfect.
And it changes constantly.

So if performance randomly drops, don’t assume you suddenly got worse at ads overnight.

Sometimes the platform is just having a week.

Topline growth is the laziest definition of winning.

It’s the horsepower stat of business.

Impressive.
Incomplete.

Winning might be:
- Financial security
- Low stress
- Strong margins
- A business that serves your life

Every business has a natural size where it’s happiest.

Pushing past that size is a choice.
And it usually means more complexity.
Lower margins.
More headaches.

Make that choice consciously.

I was listening to the Operators Podcast today.

Northbeam did a 2025 “year in review” using data from 1,000+ brands.

Spend. Revenue. CAC. MER.
Even some early AI-search traffic.

A few things jumped out:

1) Topline growth was real… but it wasn’t “free.”
They called out roughly:

- Spend up ~7% YoY
- Revenue up ~6% YoY

So yes, the market grew.

But…

2) Efficiency got harder.
They mentioned:

- CAC up ~8% YoY
- MER down ~2% YoY

Not catastrophic.
Just enough to change how the year “felt.”

3) Small brands were the only cohort that actually declined.
Brands doing < $5M were the ones that shrank YoY.

And what’s brutal is… even while shrinking, CAC still went up.

That’s the kind of stat that makes you think:
this isn’t just account-level performance.
There’s some platform + macro gravity in there too.

4) Growth by AOV looked like a ladder.
Low AOV brands grew.
High AOV brands grew.

But the $50–$100 AOV bucket was slightly down.

My read: it’s getting harder to sit in the middle without having either:

“impulse economics” (cheap enough to buy fast)
or

“premium economics” (high enough AOV to absorb costs)

5) Channel mix shifts a lot as brands scale.
One of the cleanest trends they showed:

As companies get bigger, Google becomes a smaller % of spend.
(They had an example range like ~50%+ for tiny brands to ~14% for $100M+.)

Meta stayed dominant across sizes.
But the biggest brands were also allocating more into channels like TikTok / Snap / YouTube.

6) AI search traffic is tiny… and growing fast.
Still basically a rounding error today.

But it moved from ~0.01% of visits to ~0.06% by December.
And revenue tied to it hit ~0.14% by December.

Not “bet the business” numbers.

But it’s directionally interesting in the same way early TikTok was.

Overall, it felt like 2025 was a year where:

“Good” still worked but “average” got punished faster.

Retention is great.

But sometimes the smartest retention strategy is:

pull revenue forward from high-risk customers.

Example:

Someone tries to cancel.

They get saved with a discount.
Cool.

But now they’re marked as high risk.

So a few weeks later…
hit them with a quarterly/annual upgrade offer.

Because if they’re going to churn anyway…

you’re better off securing:

- commitment
- cash flow
- higher LTV
- lower business volatility

This is how real subscription brands get stable.

Not with cute dashboards.

With revenue engineering.

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