ZeroTo1

I'm the President and Co-Founder of ZeroTo1, a full service growth, creative, and influencer agency for high growth tech and DTC brands with a high exit potential. We work with brands like Instacart, ClickUp, and Landing to achieve profitable growth through building community, best in class ad creative, and efficient growth tactics. How can we help you:

- Data driven UGC ad production and strategy
- Performance focused influencer campaigns (micro - Tier 1)
- Affiliate program management 
- Creator-affiliate programs - Turn your customers and creators into your most profitable growth channel

For more info, shoot me a DM! Always looking to connect with marketing leaders.

President & Co-Founder

Shipt

Influencer Marketing Director
My primary goal is to embed the Shipt brand into key authentic cultural moments and social conversations that drive brand advocacy through social influence.

As the department lead, I drive the brand’s influencer and strategic partnership strategies with the goal of increasing brand awareness, earned media value, content creation and brand activation across channels of engagement.

This role requires strong leadership, communications and relationship management skills to deliver comprehensive programs across social media, events, sponsorship activation, and branded content creation that helps drive brand love, advocacy, and cultural relevancy.

-Work with marketing and business development departments to assist in the ideation, identification and execution of influencer partnerships.
- Research and identify key influencers, bloggers and online media at varying levels that align with Shipt’s influencer strategy and goals
-Manage the execution of influencer engagement strategies to support launches and campaigns
- Act as the liaison between influencers and the brand, maintaining a clear channel of contact and nurturing relationships
- Negotiate the best possible investment level to reach determined goals and maintain longterm relationships
- Works closely with social and content stakeholders to optimize and integrate influencer strategies to gain content and influencer activation alignment
- Remain dialed into key influencers and trends in target markets and industry
- Prepare creative and content briefs, in support of marketing campaigns to generate content and promotion across relevant influencer network
- Ensure consistency and accuracy of brand messaging
- Manage influencer relationships and daily outreach, utilizing tools and CRM platform for efficiencies
- Recruit brand ambassadors from social media influencers, fans, and our registered users.

Founding Team & Head of Influencer Marketing

Responsible for leading and executing new city launches and expanding in pre-existing markets. 
Venue booking, public speaking, networking, event planning, and shopper recruitment.

Market Launch Lead

President & Co-Founder @ ZeroTo1 | (previously) Founding Team @ Shipt | DM me for more info on TikTok Shop, ROI Influencer campaigns, and UGC ads that convert

ZeroTo1 is the “go-to” social commerce agency of record, driving revenue for category-leading and disruptive DTC companies through social ads, performance influencer strategies, and TikTok Shop management.

Our vision is to be the world's #1 Social Commerce agency while partnering with category-leading brands to guide them to their dream outcome of an exit or IPO through our creative, community, and influencer strategies.

We’re building a world-class culture of execution that enables our employees to experience exponential professional and personal growth.

Some of our clients include: ClickUp, Instacart, Landing, Jel Sert, Lowe’s, Feit Electric, Thumbtack, The Pets Table, MUD/WTR, Manna Vitality, Spoonful of Comfort, Jenny Craig, Nutrisystem, Organifi, Step One, Create Wellness, Diletosso, & more.

One of our client's Instagram Creator Community results:

- $65.5K in revenue
- 2x ROAS
- 536 conversions (81% new customers)
- 1.2M impressions (47% of all their social impressions)
- 400 videos posted (42% of all their tagged content)

Here's where it gets interesting:
We're now funneling the top-performing videos from this community into Partnership Ads to scale their Meta account.

Using Creator Communities as a mechanism to produce a high volume of diverse partnership ads at net zero cost is the biggest value driver for brands looking to scale Meta.

Community is the competitive moat.

Riley Cronin

President & Co-Founder @ ZeroTo1 | Founding Team @ Shipt | DM me for more info on DTC Creator Communities, Influencer Whitelisting, and TikTok Shop

I didn't take recruiting seriously enough for the first 3 years building ZeroTo1. 

My process was half baked at best. I would wing interviews. I rushed job offers. And we paid for it in turnover. 

Here's some of the recruiting fundamentals that we follow now:

- Fill the funnel with a minimum of 100 qualified candidates per role (at least 50% that are currently employed)
- No winging interviews: every role has a template with the same questions to evaluate skill & culture fit.
- Use test projects & 15 min interviews to identify top 8
- Interview top 8 candidates
- 2nd round of interviews with top 3 candidates 
- Minimum of 2 reference phone calls before making a job offer

Recruiting IS the business.

Since September 1, we've welcomed 19 new team members to our TikTok Shop department:

2x Account Directors (TikTok Shop)
1x Sr. Account Strategist
2x Senior Paid Influencer & Community Strategists
3x Shop Operations Managers
1x Community manager 
1x Affiliate Recruitment Coordinator
8x Community Assistants 

If you're building a service business, don't cut corners on hiring. You're only as good as your people.

The biggest moat on TikTok Shop is investing into building an engaged creator community on discord

Here is the creator community playbook we've built to increase creator retention, monthly content, avg videos per affiliate, converting affiliates, avg GMV per affiliate, and monthly GMV growth

Setup the server into 3 tiers and segment the channels by tiers:
Tier 1: Ambassador (open collab)
Tier 2: VIP (target collab)
Tier 3: Paid Creators (fee for monthly deliverables and retainers)

Use bots to onboard new creators, automations to send out reminders, and a ticketing system to field questions/issues that can't be solved by other creators  

Launch Monthly Content Challenges:
Pay creators for the videos they create as long as they follow a viral content brief

Keep the Conversation Going:
Respond to every creator message in the community channel
Prompt the community with questions, polls, and feedback

Content Coaching:
Drop top converting videos into the community chat 3x per week with a breakdown of performance & learnings so creators can replicate it

Celebrate small and big wins:
Share an updated leaderboard of top affiliates 1x per week
Shoutout creators for completing challenges and hitting milestones
Shoutout creators for being helpful in the community

Host Monthly Creator Webinars:
Communicate the vision for the brand and community
Celebrate wins and top performing affiliates
Invite top affiliates to host a training session to review their creative process, top hooks, and angles 
Announce upcoming challenges, promo periods, and opportunities
Share new product drops
Open it up to Q&A to get feedback on how to better serve your creators

Paid Creator Management:
Setup 1:1 channels with all of your paid creators for tighter feedback loops on providing briefs, content approval, and coaching

Building an engaged creator community on discord isn't easy, but it is worth it once it starts to accelerate your creator flywheel

We just scaled a book from 0 to #7 in their category in their first 60 days using this cold start frame work:

1. TikTok Exclusive Bundle 
2. Creator Community to manage all affiliates, campaigns, & challenges
3. 20-30% commissions
4. $10k/mo paid creator budget / 300 paid creator videos/ mo
5. Viral content briefs 
6. $20k/mo ad spend to start
7. Sampling minimum of 500 affiliates 
8. Consistent execution of all the fundamentals

If you're struggling to break out of cold start ($65k/mo) start here ^

We added a few more heavy hitters to the team this week.

Seeing output and quality jump as the last wave of hires hits the 30–45 day mark.

Producing better results, more consistently, with the new processes in place.

Super early but the investment in better talent and systems is starting to compound.

The talent density at zeroto1 is dirty right now.

Price is the ultimate lever when it comes to building a successful agency.

When we launched our TTS serrvice
Pods: over utilized, managing 8-10 clients
Client churn: high
Employee retention: terrible, especially at account manager level
Results: inconsistent
Client LTV: average 
Overall Talent grade: C-

In March I spent a day with Alex Hormozi and his first recommendation was to raise our prices. Since then we've doubled our monthly retainer.

Today
Pods: capped at 5 clients
Client churn: low (reduced by 34%)
Employee retention: 89%, our AM layer is stacked
Results: consistent
Client LTV: 15% increase and growing monthly 
Overall Talent grade: B

Improvements made since increasing price:
It forced us to go up market = better quality clients
We have the budget to pay for more experienced talent
More resources per pod
Better talent has rounded out our strategy with new and better processes
The standard of execution and output has raised
I'm learning new things from our team weekly

The gap between where we are and where we want to be is big, but we are closing it and it's exciting to be apart of.

Offering in-house live production is one of the biggest advantages our clients get when partnering with zeroto1 to manage their TikTok Shop strategy.

The impact of a well-executed Live strategy:
- Immediate increase of 5% - 10% GMV out of the gate for shops in the $65k range

- A powerful organic lever that increases overall channel ROI (higher margin than affiliate or ads)

- A predictable revenue stream that stabilizes and sustains Shop GMV

- A measurable lift across the entire ecosystem: affiliate videos, ads, and shop tab. We consistently see a 3-day trailing GMV bump after brand lives (in-platform halo)

Since officially launching our studio in May, we’ve been building it brick by brick and the foundation is strong.

Today we have:
	•	4 trained live hosts on staff
	•	2 booths running simultaneously daily
	•	8 active live clients

Live is going to be massive for social commerce and is a key part of zeroto1 2026 growth plan.

But what excites me most is the opportunity to carve out our own white space.

Right now, the “live playbook” across TikTok looks and feels the same.

A big focus for us is how we can break the rules and while unlocking leaps in performance:

- More entertainment driven and interactive
- creative set designs
- Getting out of the studio ”beat the streets style”

If you’re out of cold start ($65k/mo) and focused on efficiency, live insthe best short term and long term lever to invest in.

Not sure where to start? 

Start with 25 hours a month, be consistent, craft an exclusive live offer, and get after it 🙌

Founder Acquisition.com, Co-Founder Skool.com. My new book $100M Money Models is out. [3.6M copies sold] Get yours now.👇

Your biggest threat isn't your competition:




It's the mediocre version of you that you've accepted as good enough.

taplio

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