The Built To Scale Podcast

By Shmuel Herschberg

Everyone talks about scale, but how do brands really scale? That’s what Shmuel Herschberg is uncovering on The Built To Scale Podcast. Join him for a behind-the-scenes look as he sits

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FAQs about The Built To Scale Podcast:

How many episodes does The Built To Scale Podcast have?

The podcast currently has 9 episodes available.

The Built To Scale Podcast episodes:

May 20, 2026Your Company Thinks It's Using AI. It Isn't. | John Munsell
Most companies think they've "adopted AI." They have a Copilot license, maybe a chatbot on the website. John Munsell calls that dipping your toe in the water. Real adoption looks completely different and the gap between where most companies are and where they need to be is costing them millions.
What you'll learn:
Why "AI adoption" is being measured wrong and what the right metric actually is
How John's 10 Levels of AI Mastery framework pinpoints exactly where your team is falling short
Why 90%+ of employees at most companies are stuck at level two or below (and how to fix it fast)
How proper training can compress 19-24 months of individual AI growth into 4-6 weeks
Why governance and training are the two things companies leave for last and why that is the most expensive mistake they make
How team makeup (the PAEI framework) determines whether your AI initiatives succeed or stall
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About John Munsell
John Munsell is the CEO of Bizzuka and the author of "InGrain AI." He sold his digital marketing agency client portfolio in 2022, right before ChatGPT went public, and spent the following years building a framework to help companies move from AI curiosity to full workforce transformation. His InGrain AI Certified Implementer Program is developing the next generation of Chief AI Officers.
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Key moments
(06:54) The $19K website that became a $150K engagement.
(13:33) Why "AI adoption" is a lie.
(14:22) Introducing the 10 levels of AI mastery. John breaks down the framework his firm uses to assess real proficiency, not usage, across entire organizations.
(21:03) The brick exercise. John splits 40 employees into groups and gives them five minutes to list as many uses for a brick as possible.
(28:36) Shadow AI is already in your building.
(33:57) The three-tier governance model.
(44:40) What the 10 levels of AI adoption actually look like.
(47:18) Training and governance are last on every company's list.
(50:25) How to get a resistant workforce to actually adopt AI.
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Connect with John Munsell:
Website: https://www.bizzuka.com
Book on Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0F2Z6H53T/
New book waitlist: https://www.ingrain.ai/2026
Free economic impact assessment (valued at $547, but free for my listeners! Use code SHMUEL for 100% off): https://www.bizzuka.com/impact
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About The Built To Scale Podcast:
Follow us on LinkedIn at: https://www.linkedin.com/company/built-to-scale-agency/
For more information about Built To Scale visit: https://www.builttoscale.co/
If you have any questions, suggestions, or ideas for a future episode, please email [email protected].
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55min
May 14, 2026Sculpting Your Life: From Rock Bottom to 3 Million Lives Changed | Paul Hoffman
Most people know what they want. The problem is they're their own biggest obstacle.
Paul Hoffman has lived multiple lifetimes in one. He wrote one of the most iconic advertising jingles in history, built and lost everything, found his way back, and has since spent decades helping over 3 million people redesign their lives from the inside out. As founder of Sculpting Your Life and creator of a binaural beat brain technology distributed by Mindvalley, Paul's framework is part neuroscience, part philosophy, entirely grounded in lived experience.
What you'll learn:
Why your subconscious mind is running the show, and the only way to change how you think
Paul's 7-step "Tuning In" framework for identifying what's holding you back
How to build a morning ritual that sets the frequency for your entire day
Why scaling starts with your foundation, not your funnel
How Paul uses AI as a creative tool without being technical at all

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About Paul Hoffman:
Paul Hoffman is the founder of Sculpting Your Life and a personal transformation architect who has worked with over 3 million people worldwide. He is a former advertising jingle writer behind the iconic "Have You Driven a Ford Lately?" campaign and the creator of a binaural beat brain technology marketed globally through Mindvalley. He speaks, coaches, and builds tools designed to help people stop living by default and start living by design.

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Connect with him at:
WhatsApp/Cell: (323) 810-5588
Email: [email protected]
Website: https://sculptingyourlife.com/
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/PaulHoffmanProfile
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/paulhoffman7946 & https://www.instagram.com/agoodmorninggreatday

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Key moments:
5:14 - The Ford jingle, imposter syndrome, and early career
9:01 - November 14, 1988: the day that changed everything
13:50 - The moment Paul knew he had to reinvent himself
15:11 - How meeting T. Harv Eker launched the second chapter of his career
18:36 - Why a morning ritual is not optional
19:11 - The evening ritual: highlights vs. insights
33:55 - Paul's full morning ritual, step by step
42:09 - The 7-step Tuning In framework
43:19 - Paul's take on AI and why it's just a conversation
46:41 - What he would tell his 25-year-old self
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About The Built To Scale Podcast:
Follow us on LinkedIn at: https://www.linkedin.com/company/built-to-scale-agency/
For more information about Built To Scale visit: https://www.builttoscale.co/
If you have any questions, suggestions, or ideas for a future episode, please email [email protected].
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53min
May 08, 2026The #1 Lesson After Sending a Billion Emails | Ryan Healy
If your email list is underperforming, the problem probably isn't your copy. It's your domain reputation, your segmentation, and the fact that you're mailing the wrong people.

Ryan Healy has been in email marketing since 2002 and has sent over a billion emails across brands like Organifi, BIOptimizers, and Agora Financial. He's now co-founder of Upsender, an ESP (email marketing service platform) and list management agency. This episode is a masterclass in how email actually works in 2026.
What you'll learn:
Why a "million person list" is probably worth nothing, and how to diagnose whether your list is actually viable
The deliverability fundamentals that determine whether your emails land or disappear, including domain reputation, IP health, and sender scoring
How to structure split tests properly so you're optimizing toward revenue, not vanity metrics
Why segmenting down to your most engaged users is the fastest way to rehab a struggling account
What the brands that are actually scaling on email have in common, and where the ones that plateau are falling short

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About Ryan Healy:
Ryan Healy co-founded Upsender, an ESP and email agency that has worked with roughly 70-80 clients over the past three and a half years, including major players in health, wellness, and financial publishing. He's one of the few people in this industry who has seen email evolve from local server software to AI-driven personalization at scale.

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Connect with him at:
Website: https://upsender.com/
Email: [email protected]
X: https://x.com/HeyHealy
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/HeyHealy/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/heyhealy/
Telegram: https://t.me/HeyHealy

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Key moments:
7:00 - When Ryan realized email was a backend revenue engine, not just a channel
17:00 - The shared IP vs. dedicated IP breakdown
20:00 - Primary inbox strategy and the Troy Erickson method that added 5 raw percentage points in open rate
29:00 - The right way to run email split tests in sequence
34:00 - Why Ryan built his own ESP and what it does differently
41:00 - The exact anatomy of an email list business that scales vs. one that dies
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About The Built To Scale Podcast:
Follow us on LinkedIn at: https://www.linkedin.com/company/built-to-scale-agency/
For more information about Built To Scale visit: https://www.builttoscale.co/
If you have any questions, suggestions, or ideas for a future episode, please email [email protected].
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51min
May 04, 2026The Ultimate Asset When it Comes to Building a Brand: Relationships | Nicole Starling
Most marketers chase tactics. Nicole Starling built a seven-figure affiliate career by doing something almost no one does well: actually following through.
Nicole made the leap from 30 years of professional performing into digital marketing in 2020 with no background, no network, and no safety net. What she learned in the trenches of affiliate and influencer marketing cuts straight to the core of why most brand partnerships underperform.
What you'll learn:
Why follow-through and accountability are more powerful growth levers than any funnel tactic
How Nicole closed over a million dollars in affiliate sales for a single product through cold outreach and relationship management
The real difference between influencer marketing and affiliate marketing, and how to structure deals that protect your budget
Why brands are overpaying for content creators who can't deliver, and how to structure smarter partnership deals
The truth about email marketing in 2026: not dead, but definitely not a one-trick pony
How to build a diversified creator strategy across micro and macro partnerships without blowing your budget

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About Nicole Starling:
Nicole Starling spent 30 years as a professional musician performing 12-18 shows per week before pivoting into digital marketing in 2020. She's now Partnership Manager at Starling Studios, where she builds and manages affiliate and influencer relationships for brands across health, wellness, and e-commerce. Her superpower is relationships: she's known for relentless follow-through and building the kind of trust that actually converts.

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Connect with her at:
Email: [email protected]
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/nicole-starling-4bb58a310/
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/nicoledesireestarling
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/nicstarling/

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Key moments:
[0:00] Why a 30-year musician became a digital marketer overnight
[11:22] The one word Nicole credits for scaling a product past $1M in sales: follow-through
[20:21] Nicole's honest take on the current state of email marketing
[28:55] Affiliate vs. influencer marketing: where they overlap and where they diverge
[36:32] What it actually means to be a content creator in 2026
[42:23] The smart way to diversify your influencer budget instead of betting on one big name
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About The Built To Scale Podcast:
Follow us on LinkedIn at: https://www.linkedin.com/company/built-to-scale-agency/
For more information about Built To Scale visit: https://www.builttoscale.co/
If you have any questions, suggestions, or ideas for a future episode, please email [email protected].
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48min
April 28, 2026You're Wasting Over 50% of Your Day | Ben Harris
Ben Harris has placed over 10,000 virtual assistants in three years. His first question to every overwhelmed founder is always the same: what are you doing right now that someone else could handle for $10 an hour?
That question changes everything.

What you'll learn:
How to run a time audit that reveals exactly where your days are going (the 15-minute timer method Ben credits to Alex Hormozi)
What a "$10 task" actually looks like and why letting go of them is harder than it sounds
How Ben's VA manages his entire email inbox so he never misses what matters and never has to think about the rest
Why AI won't kill the virtual employment industry, and what history tells us about tech that was supposed to eliminate jobs
The three-phase Meta ads testing structure Sphere Rocket uses to scale a B2B service business
What Ben looks at every single day to know whether his marketing is working

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About Ben Harris:
Ben Harris is the CMO of Sphere Rocket Virtual Assistance and a former executive at ClickFunnels and ClickBank. He started selling autographed football cards on eBay as a teenager, scaled a supplement brand to become the top-rated pre-workout on Amazon, and most recently built a full web application using Claude Code with zero prior coding experience. He has spent the past decade sitting in rooms he says he had no business being in, and learning from everyone in them.

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Connect with him at:
Website: https://sphererocketva.com/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ben-harris-online/
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/ben.harris.750331
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/benharrisonline
More about Sphere Rocket:
Free Resources: https://sphererocketva.com/resources
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Key moments:
[00:09] Ben's origin story: from eBay hustle at age 12 to ClickFunnels and beyond
[13:20] What "buying back your time" actually means for a business owner
[17:12] The 15-minute kitchen timer trick for auditing where your time really goes
[20:00] The $10 task in practice: how Ben's assistant manages his entire inbox
[28:35] Will AI replace virtual assistants? Ben's take, including the ATM and internet parallels
[36:17] How Sphere Rocket runs Meta ads to acquire B2B clients and what ROAS looks like at day 40
[46:10] "Marketing problems are math problems" and what every operator needs to know about their numbers

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About The Built To Scale Podcast:
Follow us on LinkedIn at: https://www.linkedin.com/company/built-to-scale-agency/
For more information about Built To Scale visit: https://www.builttoscale.co/
If you have any questions, suggestions, or ideas for a future episode, please email [email protected].
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50min
April 22, 2026Stop Being Afraid to Sell to Your Email List | Liss Graham Ellis
Do you have a revenue engine sitting in the form of an email marketing list? Many do and they are scared to turn it up and email en masse. Liss Graham Ellis has been managing and monetizing email lists for over a decade. Her verdict is blunt: if you have buyers on your list, you should be selling to them. A lot. One of the first things she does when she takes over a new list is simply start offering buyers more opportunities to buy. Because whoever ran it before her was afraid to ask.

What you'll learn:
What each subscriber is actually worth per month (buyers vs. leads, and why the gap is much bigger than you think)
Why a 100-word email outperforms a long-form essay and what your real job as an email sender actually is
The silent mistake bleeding subscriber volume (hint: not all your acquisition streams are connected to your ESP)
Why most brands are over-jabbing and under-punching, and how to fix the balance immediately
How email, SMS, TikTok, direct response, and direct mail work together to build a full brand universe
Why your email list and social channels are business assets with real valuation value, not just marketing tools

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About Liss Graham Ellis:
Liss Graham Ellis is the founder and president of List Management, where she manages and monetizes email lists for clients across health, e-commerce, and direct response. She is also the co-founder of a TikTok Shop management company helping brands connect with influencers to scale on the platform. Her path into marketing was accidental: she entered a fitness transformation contest, won, landed on a podcast, and built a full business from there without a single day of formal marketing training.
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Connect with her at:
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=61557548173916
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/lisst_management/
TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@mlgraham9
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Key moments:
3:46 - What a buyer vs. lead is actually worth per month on your list
8:26 - The 100-word email argument (she got challenged on this publicly and she is right)
11:00 - The jab/punch imbalance and why you are leaving clean money on the table
14:46 - How TikTok Shop works and why most direct response brands are missing it
28:51 - Why direct mail is making a serious comeback in 2026
36:53 - The SMS trick that comes directly from your email performance data

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About The Built To Scale Podcast:
Follow us on LinkedIn at: https://www.linkedin.com/company/built-to-scale-agency/
For more information about Built To Scale visit: https://www.builttoscale.co/
If you have any questions, suggestions, or ideas for a future episode, please email [email protected].
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40min
April 16, 2026Scaling Health Brands & the Move That Doubles Your Returns | Dr. Jesse Ropat
Most health brands are faking it. And the market is starting to notice. Built To Scale CMO Shmuel Herschberg sits down with Dr. Jesse Ropat, a doctor of pharmacy turned direct response creative strategist, to break down why authentic authority is becoming the single biggest lever in health and wellness marketing. This is not a conversation about lab coats. It is a conversation about what actually moves the needle.

What you'll learn:
Why putting a real credentialed doctor in your VSL directly improves ROAS, click-through rates, and lowers refund rates
How to balance persuasive claims with compliance without crossing the line
The creative testing framework Jesse uses to squeeze maximum performance out of every ad concept
Why long-form VSLs are still printing money and what the future format looks like
How to use AI as a drafting tool without letting it flood your ad account with slop
Why volume of creative is the name of the game on Meta right now and how to build a system around it

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About Dr. Jesse Ropat:
Dr. Jesse Ropat holds a doctorate in pharmacy and has spent the last several years applying that credential where few others have: direct response marketing for health and wellness brands. He writes scripts, films creative, and serves as the credentialed authority figure for some of the top-performing VSLs running on Meta today. His unique combination of clinical knowledge and creative strategy gives the brands he works with a compliance edge and a conversion edge at the same time.

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Connect with him at:
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jesseropat/
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/JesseRopat/
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/jesseropat/

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Key moments:
06:11 — Why fake doctors are a ticking time bomb for your brand
12:17 — The right time to bring a doctor into your funnel (hint: earlier than you think)
13:29 — Long-form VSLs: still working, still printing
16:36 — How close to the line can you push claims with a real authority figure?
22:37 — How Jesse uses Claude to build first drafts without producing garbage
26:22 — The hook, body, and CTA structure behind his mini-VSL ads

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About The Built To Scale Podcast:
Follow us on LinkedIn at: https://www.linkedin.com/company/built-to-scale-agency/
For more information about Built To Scale visit: https://www.builttoscale.co/
If you have any questions, suggestions, or ideas for a future episode, please email [email protected].
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39min
April 10, 2026ROAS Is a Lie. Here's the Metric That Actually Builds a Business | James Klein
Most e-commerce brands are optimizing for the wrong number. James Klein has spent 25 years in the supplement space watching founders chase ROAS while their businesses quietly decay. In this episode, he makes the case that lifetime value is the only metric that truly matters — and breaks down exactly how to build around it.
What you'll learn:
Why a high affiliate CPA model is structurally broken and what to do instead
How to build a retention engine that turns first-time buyers into multi-year customers
Why blended ROAS across all channels gives you a clearer picture than platform-level reporting
How to use the first 30 days post-purchase to build a relationship, not just push the next sale
The difference between running offers and building a real brand (and why only one of them scales)
Why the Spanish-speaking market in the US is one of the most underserved and highest-spending segments in direct response

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About James Klein:
James Klein is the CEO of Harmonium and Adonis Vitality, with 25 years in the nutritional supplement industry. He has built brands, scaled e-commerce companies, and advised dozens of seven and eight-figure health entrepreneurs. His focus is retention, lifetime value, and building businesses that are worth something — not just offers that convert once.

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Connect with him at:
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/james-klein-2a33904
Harmonium: https://harmoniumhealth.com/
Adonis Vitality: https://adonisvitality.com

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Key moments:
08:32 — When James first realized LTV mattered more than front-end ROAS
14:14 — What he does with a customer in the first 30 days (and why it's not a sales push)
23:57 — The deep fake problem in VSLs and where the platforms are headed
28:41 — The underserved Spanish-speaking market hiding in plain sight
36:29 — Why looking at Meta and Google separately is costing you clarity
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About The Built To Scale Podcast:
Follow us on LinkedIn at: https://www.linkedin.com/company/built-to-scale-agency/
For more information about Built To Scale visit: https://builttoscale.co/
If you have any questions, suggestions, or ideas for a future episode, please email [email protected].
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43min
March 12, 2026The Built To Scale Podcast Trailer | Shmuel Herschberg
The Built to Scale podcast, hosted by Shmuel Herschberg, focuses on the discipline of scaling in digital marketing. The podcast is aimed at people building and growing digital marketing businesses, and it provides candid talks about the wins, setbacks, and real lessons from industry experts.
Takeaways
Scaling is a key focus in digital marketing
Podcast is for people building and growing digital marketing businesses
Chapters
00:00 Introduction to Built to Scale Podcast

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Follow us on LinkedIn at https://www.linkedin.com/company/built-to-scale-agency/

For more information about Built To Scale visit https://builttoscale.co/

If you have any questions, suggestions, or ideas for a future episode, please email [email protected].
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2min

FAQs about The Built To Scale Podcast:

How many episodes does The Built To Scale Podcast have?

The podcast currently has 9 episodes available.