Frank Growth

Frank Growth is a sharp, execution-first podcast about how companies actually grow. Hosted by Jason Shafton, it features candid conversations with founders, operators, and investors who are in the work right now. The focus is real decisions: distribution, demand, pricing, org design, incentives, and what breaks once the early playbooks stop working. No hype. No recycled advice. Just clear thinking from people accountable for outcomes.

Frank Growth is a business podcast hosted by Jason Shafton, with 38 episodes on record and a Required Pod Score of 80. PitchCentric scores this show on Booking Probability, Listen Score, and live audience signals refreshed every 24 hours.

Jason Shafton hosts Frank Growth, a business show with 38 episodes published.

Our AI reads these to draft pitches. Use them as grounding for a pitch that cites a real guest and a specific topic.

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  Episode #233

  Stop Writing Only for Humans with Jesus Requena

  Aug 18, 202628 minS2

  Episode #233: Jesus Requena — Dropping SEO entirely to optimize for LLMs Sanity stopped producing SEO content and started building pages only machines will read. Roughly 60% of last month's signups came from LLMs. For B2B growth leaders watching organic traffic fall and trying to work out what replaces it. Jesus Requena is CMO at Sanity, and previously led growth marketing at Figma, demand gen at Unity and Algolia, and growth at Hex. After watching client SEO traffic fall to a tenth of what it had been, he stopped SEO content production entirely and rebuilt Sanity's content for LLMs to parse rather than humans to read. He walks through the three-layer playbook: fixing contradictions across 100 to 200 pages on their own site, converting roughly 1,000 FAQ pages from user-centric to LLM-centric, building five single-topic microsites excluded from Google, then correcting third-party citations that conflicted with their own story. Sanity moved from ranking 15th or 20th in LLM visibility to top five. What you'll hear Why visibility comes from reasoning: if an LLM can reason your concepts clearly, it recommends you, which makes first-party consistency the starting point How they executed it — crawling their own site to find unclear terms, writing content no human is expected to read, and partnering with AirOps to fix obsolete third-party citations Why attribution breaks when signups arrive through a CLI or MCP without ever touching the website, and the self-reported "where did you find us" question they fell back on Where to start from zero, in order: audit your own site, then third-party mentions, then microsites — plus the caveat that Reddit's influence is fading and LLMs are pulling more from video Chapters 00:00 — Cold open: "We literally just stopped any SEO content" 00:38 — The AEO shift: what's going wrong and what works 02:12 — Meet Jesus Requena: Figma, Unity, Algolia, Hex, Sanity 02:45 — The common thread in marketing to technical audiences 04:30 — SEO traffic drops to a tenth, and the bet that followed 06:15 — The three layers of AEO content 08:22 — Citations, visibility, and going from 15th to top five 10:37 — Authority, and becoming the thought leader for the LLM 12:07 — 1,000 FAQ pages and five microsites excluded from Google 14:23 — Why brand investment went physical: events, swag, billboards 17:30 — Measuring attribution when nobody clicks 19:17 — Is the growth repeatable or is it timing? 20:41 — Where to start from zero 22:38 — Scaling agents, and humans handling the exception 23:59 — Lightning round 25:14 — Jason's top three takeaways Links & resources Guest Jesus Requena — CMO, Sanity Website LinkedIn About Frank Growth Frank Growth is a podcast about how companies actually grow—real operators, real constraints, real decisions. Hosted by Jason Shafton. Promotional links Work with Winston Francois Subscribe / Follow Jason

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  Episode #232

  His AI Employee Works While He Sleeps with Andrew Mok

  Aug 11, 202627 minS2

  Episode #232: Andrew Mok — What the CMO job becomes when AI runs the mechanics HeyGen doubled to $200M ARR in eight months, is cash-flow breakeven, and runs on about 130 people. Its CMO explains how marketing actually operates there. For marketing leaders deciding what to keep, what to cut, and what to hand to an agent. Andrew Mok spent 12 years at Turo building a category nobody believed in, then joined HeyGen as CMO four months ago in the middle of its fastest growth stretch. He walks through the operating details: a verticalized stack that runs inference 10x cheaper than general video models, 100 to 200 customer interviews a week piped into an internal MCP that any employee can query, and a personal agent named Mara (marketing automation and research agent) that hands him a metrics digest on his drive into the office. He's also blunt about the parts most people won't say out loud — that job replacement is real, and that it will come mostly from lean AI-native companies growing into big ones, not from big companies running layoffs. He does three to five customer interviews a week himself, and that's the metric he checks every week. What you'll hear The three Cs he runs on — customers, company fundamentals, culture — and how customer voice became infrastructure instead of a slide: 100–200 interviews a week, curated by agents, queryable for pain points, churn reasons, and competitor chatter. How Mara actually gets used: metrics digests over voice in the car, deep dives before he reaches the office, and why documents and decks went from a multi-week exercise to 30 seconds. What was slowing the company down: leading with technical capability instead of the human problem, which works on AI enthusiasts and stalls with the mainstream. Plus how Turo handled its worst crisis — the New Year's terror attacks — by putting everything in the open instead of covering it. Jevons paradox applied to video: lower the price and friction, and quantity goes up. HeyGen's five-person internal video team produces roughly 100x more video than a company not using AI tools, and it's the biggest video team Andrew has ever run. Chapters 00:00 — Cold open: AI-native companies will hire far fewer people 00:49 — Intro: if AI handles the mechanics, what's left of the CMO job 03:29 — 12 years at Turo and what long tenure teaches you about brand 04:34 — The New Year's terror attacks and handling crisis with transparency 05:44 — Turo vs. HeyGen: trusting a stranger with your car vs. a company with your likeness 06:52 — Who the real customer is: small business owners, skewing older, not AI enthusiasts 08:26 — Why he left Turo, and the introvert founder story behind HeyGen 09:51 — $200M ARR, doubled in eight months: what marketing changed at that velocity 11:09 — Breakeven economics: owning the model and running inference 10x cheaper 12:16 — Customers, company, culture: 100–200 interviews a week and an internal MCP 13:56 — Mara, the marketing agent: morning digests, campaigns, weekly team updates 15:27 — Which bottleneck disappeared first, and what's still hard 16:23 — AI and jobs: replacement comes from lean new companies, not big layoffs 18:21 — Jevons paradox: lower the barrier to video and demand outstrips it 19:50 — Hyperframes: why HTML, and why they open sourced it 21:56 — What surprised him inside an AI company: refusing deepfakes when allowing them would pay 23:17 — Lightning round 23:51 — The creator who kept her livelihood after long COVID 24:45 — Where to find Andrew 25:20 — Jason's top three and one action for this week Links & resources Guest Andrew Mok — CMO, HeyGen Website LinkedIn X Mentioned Hyperframes — HeyGen's open source HTML-based video rendering framework, on GitHubJulia McCoy's YouTube channel About Frank Growth Frank Growth is a podcast about how companies actually grow—real operators, real constraints, real decisions. Hosted by Jason Shafton. Promotional links Work with Winston Francois Subscribe / Follow Jason

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  Episode #231

  What is Growth Design? with Philip Lowe

  Aug 4, 202632 minS2

  Episode #231: Philip Lowe - Growth creative isn't art, and the customer is the judge How to build creative that moves a number (a click, a conversion, a download) instead of creative that only wins the room. For growth marketers, creative directors, and in-house studio leads deciding what to test, what to produce, and what to kill. Philip Lowe runs creative, brand, and marketing operations at Quicken, and previously built Instacart's growth creative team from scratch after starting there as a creative director for CRM. He and Jason worked together at Soothe and Headspace, and this conversation covers what actually separates creative that's good from creative that performs: hiring people who understand both brand and performance, testing hooks, concepts, and narratives as a stage gate before anything gets produced, and knowing where AI helps and where it doesn't. Philip walks through the four-pillar roadmap he uses (exploration, production, learning, infrastructure) and explains why the old path of $30,000 per storyboard and a week and a half of waiting is no longer the only option. He's blunt about the limits too. An AI-generated couple reviewing their finances cycled through eight facial expressions in seconds, which is a non-starter for a brand that has built 40 years of trust. What you'll hear Why growth creative sits at the intersection of brand and performance, and why separating the two is the biggest mistake leaders make How Philip built and staffed a growth studio at Instacart, and why the asset was the vehicle and the insight was the point Where AI delivers, including stylized worlds, claymation, stop motion, and surrealism, anywhere imperfection is the aesthetic, and where it falls flat on human emotion, eyes, hands, and quiet moments What the job of creative becomes in CRM and lifecycle when AI is reading the inbox and open rates stop being the focus Chapters 00:00 - Three seconds to hook, like a comedian on stage 00:29 - What growth creative is, and why it's not decoration 01:24 - Sooth, Headspace, and having conviction in the work 04:11 - Growth creative vs. brand creative vs. design 05:56 - The kangaroo video: when it clicked 07:24 - Building Instacart's growth creative team from scratch 09:27 - Good creative vs. creative that performs 11:05 - Testing before you spend a dollar producing 12:41 - Taking on ops: from tastemakers to operators with good taste 14:24 - What changes when production gets cheap 16:38 - The four pillars: exploration, production, learning, infrastructure 18:20 - Where AI delivers a performance and where it doesn't 20:31 - Real humans, real stories, and trust in finance 21:56 - CRM and lifecycle when AI reads the inbox 24:12 - Breaking through when agents do the browsing 25:53 - Hiring for taste 27:01 - The one thing leaders get wrong 27:39 - Lightning round 29:48 - Top three takeaways Links & resources Guest Philip Lowe, creative, brand, and marketing operations at Quicken LinkedIn TikTok About Frank Growth Frank Growth is a podcast about how companies actually grow: real operators, real constraints, real decisions. Hosted by Jason Shafton. Promotional links Work with Winston Francois Subscribe / Follow Jason

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  Episode #230

  Growth's Most Dangerous Trap With Sara Wallace

  Jul 28, 202621 minS2

  Episode #230: Sara Wallace — Repositioning a consumer cashback app into a B2B platform Ibotta is known as a cashback app. It's also a white-label promotions platform for the largest retailer in the world. For marketers at consumer companies standing up an enterprise or platform business alongside the one that made them. Sara Wallace is Head of Brand Marketing at Ibotta, which runs both the consumer cashback app and the Ibotta Performance Network. Five months into the role, after building executive marketing and global AI go-to-market strategy at Google Cloud, she's working the problem of building B2B awareness for a company whose recognition lives almost entirely on the consumer side. We get into why she treats the two audiences as genuinely separate rather than migrating one into the other, the one channel where that split breaks down, how she handles AI thought leadership under legal and compliance constraints, and why she argues brand is the engine that makes performance marketing work rather than a luxury line item. She also walks through Ibotta's annual State of Spend findings, including a decline in grocery list-making as shoppers plan loosely and let promotions fill the gaps. What you'll hear Why Ibotta doesn't try to convert cashback users into a B2B audience, and where the two narratives still collide (social media) What Google Cloud taught her about selling to CIOs and CTOs: show how you support the work their org is already doing instead of proving you're the smartest in the room Why public AI messaging stays stunted at most companies — legal exposure, and stories that aren't fully baked yet How to make the case for brand investment when leadership is pushing for immediate ROI Chapters 00:00 — Cold open: brand building feels like a luxury, and why it isn't 00:45 — Intro: most companies die from brand confusion, not obscurity 02:33 — Two distinct audiences, not one rebrand 03:32 — Building awareness for the Ibotta Performance Network 05:01 — Google Cloud lessons: talking to technical buyers like people 05:46 — Rebuilding momentum under a new CRO after the CMO left 06:33 — Talking about AI inside legal and compliance limits 07:55 — Founder-led content and the CEO-hosted podcast 08:46 — Enterprise marketing lessons: Walmart, Uber, DoorDash 10:51 — Differentiating against Amazon DSP, Google Ads, and Meta 11:37 — Denver as a hiring market outside Silicon Valley 12:36 — What she hires for: ownership, fail-fast, decision-making 13:23 — State of Spend: fewer lists, more promotion-driven baskets, private label 15:28 — Brand as the engine for performance marketing 16:44 — Brands she admires: Nike and Shopify 17:52 — The overlooked story: Ibotta as a technology company 18:47 — Lightning round 19:29 — Jason's top three takeaways and the 10-minute action Links & resources Guest Sara Wallace — Head of Brand Marketing, Ibotta Website LinkedIn About Frank Growth Frank Growth is a podcast about how companies actually grow—real operators, real constraints, real decisions. Hosted by Jason Shafton. Promotional links Work with Winston Francois Subscribe / Follow Jason

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  Episode #229

  Longevity Medicine's Dirty Secret with Jim Donnelly

  Jul 21, 202623 minS2

  Episode #229: Jim Donnelly — Franchising longevity medicine without losing medical quality How to scale a medical franchise when you can't train a local owner to interpret biomarkers. For operators and founders standardizing a complex, high-trust service across many locations. Jim Donnelly scaled Restore Hyper Wellness to 260 locations before starting Humanaut Health, a concierge longevity practice he's now bringing to market through a franchise model he describes as ten times more complex. With his third location opening in Dallas, he walks through how he splits growth across corporate sites, franchisees, and a real estate joint venture, why the company hires and trains every doctor centrally, and how it backs a results guarantee tied to a client pledge and an accountability protocol. He shares concrete numbers, including 87% of clients arriving with metabolic dysfunction showing no sign of it six months later, and a Dallas clinic set to open cash flow positive and profitable in month one. It's a tactical look at standardizing a category most people can't yet define. What you'll hear The two rules of franchising anything: provide value constantly and remove the complexity a franchisee can't handle, plus the test that if you need exceptional operators, you don't have a franchise How Humanaut centralizes doctors, tech, and supply chain while leaving franchisees local hiring, sales culture, and marketing, each backed by a playbook Why most medical businesses fail by leaning too far to the medical or the business side, and the "you can't start at your PhD" progression that got Jim here Reframing longevity as health optimization you feel today to drive retention, and the unit-economics bar: high AUV, 20%+ net margins, and a sub-two-year payback Chapters 00:00 — Longevity is a bad word: reframing it as health optimization 02:48 — The 25-year path to Humanaut: health clubs, Restore, cancer, a car crash 05:03 — The value prop: proactive care, a focus three, and a results guarantee 08:58 — Franchising health optimization: provide value, remove complexity 13:37 — Unit economics: AUV, margins, and opening profitable in month one 18:39 — What it actually takes, plus the lightning round Links & resources Guest Jim Donnelly — Co-Founder and CEO, Humanaut Health Website LinkedIn About Frank Growth Frank Growth is a podcast about how companies actually grow—real operators, real constraints, real decisions. Hosted by Jason Shafton. Promotional links Work with Winston Francois: Work with Winston Francois Subscribe / Follow Jason: Subscribe / Follow Jason on LinkedIn

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