The Turning Pro Podcast

Noah Tucker is the Founder & CEO at Social Snowball, an affiliate & referral marketing platform driving millions in revenue for over 2,000 brands like Solawave, Obvi, and Javy Coffee.

In this episode, we cover Noah’s journey scaling his company as a non-technical founder, challenges faced when starting a business solo, and the highs and lows of rapid growth.

Drew Marconi is the Co-Founder & CEO at Intelligems, a profit optimization platform built for ecommerce brands like OpenStore, Branch, Obvi, and many more. Before launching Intelligems, Drew served the VP of Marketplace Ops at Via where he built out their data analytics function.

In this episode, we dive deep into the value of coaching in personal and professional growth, transitioning from reactive to proactive communication, signing and closing million-dollar brands, and designing Intelligems’ GTM and demand gen content playbooks.

David J. Sitt is the Founder & CEO of Ship Essential, one of the fastest growing e-commerce fulfillment partners in the country. Based in New York City, Ship Essential partners with major consumer brands like Madhappy, Atoms, Cadence, Lechery, Brunch, and many more.

In this episode, we unpack David’s lessons on balancing work and family life, building a business model focused on fast delivery and best-in-class customer service, scaling Ship Essential from its origins in Brooklyn basement spaces, and his own Turning Pro journey.

In our third Q&A episode, we dive into tactical lessons on team delegation (who, not how), mistakes we’ve made in the sales and closing process, running effective offsites with our extended remote teams, and why leads ghost during negotiation stages.

Cael Schwartz runs growth and brand at Mugsy, a fast-growing Shopify brand that is redefining men's clothes for the modern guy. Before joining Mugsy, Cael was the Head of Consumer Brand Strategy at Barstool Sports and the Head of Product & Growth at Birddogs.

In this episode, we unpack how Cael prioritizes authenticity in content creation, building in public within the e-commerce community on Twitter, crazy life lessons learned from working at Barstool Sports, and the unpredictable nature of job security in the startup world.

Zach Hamed is the Founder & Co-CEO at Clay, a venture-backed startup that enables folks to manage all of their personal and professional relationships – all from a single dashboard. Since launching officially in 2021, the team has raised over $8M from leading investors to fuel growth.

In this episode, we cover how Zach approaches his personal relationship-building in both business and life, the outsized ROI on maintaining connections as careers progress, and how entrepreneurs and founders can improve their ability to identify and foster key relationships.

In our second Q&A episode, we dive deep on how first-time founders can tactically improve their delegation skills (and the biggest mistakes we’ve made), Ben’s time management best practices to boost productivity, and why founders need to spend 80% of their time on their core strengths.

Matt Smolin is the Founder & CEO at Hang, a radically new type of loyalty experience for ecommerce brands around the world. Since launching, Matt has raised more than $10M in funding to fuel loyalty for brands like Bleacher Report, Asics, Qalo, Madhappy, and many more.

In this episode, we cover Matt’s tactical advice for finding investors and raising capital, his own ups and downs while hacking on early iterations of Hang, and why he swapped LA for New York City as the future home of his company – and why he’d never go back.

In our first Q&A episode, we dive deep on our biggest learnings (and mistakes) from Season 1 of the podcast, the inside growth stories at Verbatim and Platter, and how we’ve been able to balance high-volume content creation while building our own companies in tandem.

Jack Raines is one of the fastest-growing content creators on LinkedIn and X, with a combined audience of over 100,000 across channels. Based in New York City, Jack recently finished his MBA at Columbia Business School and is a full-time editor and creator at Sherwood Media.

In this episode, we dive deep on Jack’s tactical lessons in audience growth, the outsized ROI on consistency and authenticity to break through the noise, and why he thinks Business School is a contrarian bet in 2024.