IAM1894 – CEO Disrupts the eCommerce Landscape for DTC Brands

Why it was selected for “CBNation Architects”:

In this episode, the guest speaker is Daniel Snow, the CEO and Founder of The Snow Agency.

Key Points:

The Snow Agency: This performance and social media marketing agency aims to disrupt the e-commerce landscape for Direct-to-Consumer (DTC) brands.

About Daniel Snow: Daniel Snow is an expert in launching and scaling numerous viral eCommerce brands. Over 3.5 years, he's generated over $50M in revenue.

Daniel Snow Teaser 00:00

Really means just being a great leader and leading by example. It's very easy to see as a CEO, especially when you have a bunch of employees that the company really is a reflection of your actions.

Intro 00:13

Are you ready to hear business stories and learn effective ways to build relationships, generate sales, and level up your business from awesome CEOs, entrepreneurs and founders without listening to a long, long, long interview?

If so, you've come to the right place. Gresh values your time and is ready to share with you the valuable info you're in search of. This is the IAMCEO podcast.

Gresham Harkless 00:40

Hello. Hello. Hello. This is Gresh from the IAMCEO podcast, and I appreciate you listening to this episode. If you've been listening this year, you know that we hit 1600 episodes at the beginning of this year.

And we're doing something a little bit different where we're repurposing our favorite episodes around certain categories, topics, or as I like to call them, the business pillars that we think are going to be extremely impactful for CEOs, entrepreneurs, business owners, and what I like to call the CB Nation architects who are looking to level up their organizations.

This month, we are focusing on operations. The systems will set you free. So think about systems, think about flow, sustainability, potentially working out in your morning routine, waking up early e-commerce, and different business models, think of the operations in the models that basically set up the foundation to allow the creativity within organizations, but also to make sure the trains are running on time and things are going as they should.

Now, this is extremely important because we often turn to the sexy parts of business and forget about the operations and how important that is. So, I really want to focus this month on this specific topic. So sit back and enjoy this special episode at the IAMCEO podcast.

Hello. Hello. Hello. This is Gresh from the IAMCEO podcast and I have a very special guest on the show today. I have Daniel Snow of The Snow Agency. Daniel, it's great to have you on the show.

Daniel Snow 02:00

Thank you very much for having me. Hopefully, provide some value.

Gresham Harkless 02:04

Yeah, absolutely. You're doing so many awesome things. I'm sure we'll definitely get a really valuable episode. And before we jumped in, I want to read a little bit more about Daniel. So you can hear about all the awesome things that he's doing.

And Daniel is the CEO and founder of The Snow Agency. A performance and social media marketing agency that is disrupting the e-commerce landscape for DTC brands.

Daniel is a proven expert, having launched and scaled numerous viral e-commerce brands himself over the course of 3.5 years, generating over 50 million in revenue. Daniel, great to have you on the show again. Are you ready to speak to the IAMCEO community?

Daniel Snow 02:37

I am let's get going.

Gresham Harkless 02:38

Let's do it then. So to kick everything off, I wanted to rewind the clock a little bit here, a little bit more on how you got started, what I call your CEO story.

Daniel Snow 02:46

Yeah, I got started in advertising. 1st, online through organic social media marketing. So I actually started around college growing large social media community, so to speak, so I was an undergrad biology major, and I found out during college, you could actually make money online for your phone.

So started a Twitter account at the time. I was fitness. I started a fitness Twitter account, trying to gain followers and then monetize it. Long story short, it was able to grow millions of followers, learn how to start advertising and finding different means to monetize the followers and eyeballs.

So that affiliate marketing got into some at marketing make my own content blogs, and then finally started launching my own brands. So, had a lot of experience and insight into many different avenues from the influencers and the advertisers and content and that's how when we started launching our own brands, we were so successful so quickly.

The hard part for us it was not the advertising, but just keeping up with all the demand initially. Anyways, so just like you read off the intro, we've continued launching and scaling brands for our own branch for 3 and a half years, sold the brands and then decided to start servicing other clients with all of the industry experience knowledge that we had applied to our own companies.

Gresham Harkless 04:14

Nice. I definitely appreciate that. And I think so many times you hear people they don't build the successful brands and then they just jump into helping people. But I love that you've been able to have those success, those successes, and be able to lean into that, get those skills and lessons and be able to use that now for the clients that you work with. And that's absolutely huge.

Daniel Snow 04:33

Yeah, absolutely.

Gresham Harkless 04:35

Awesome, awesome, awesome. And so, I know I touched on it a little bit, but I wanna hear a little bit more from you and how you work with your clients. Could you take us through how you serve your clients, what that process looks like, and what exactly you're doing to make that impact?

Daniel Snow 04:45

Yeah. So all of our on our agency we're full-service agency, so we do everything from advertising and all the various platforms. To email marketing, SMS marketing we also have a creative studio that does branded photo branded video website design, direct response, video, et cetera. So we work on our, some clients do just content.

Some concept. Clients are just Google, so just email some everything. What I like to think is the reason why we're successful is that for all of our services, we are the ones providing the strategy to the clients versus. I know a lot of other agencies out there are always letting the clients tell them what to do.

We like to remind people, if you hire agency, you want our expertise. So, that's like the way we think about things. Yeah, a lot of our, a lot of our strategies, especially on the advertising growth are really content driven just because now with how Facebook and all these other social media platforms are taking away a lot of the growth hacking, audience strategies and bidding strategies and this and that.

So, all it really comes down to is the creative strategy. And what you can do to optimize the customer experience on the website. So those are really the 2 most important things we're thinking through when we work with every single client is really trying to understand what the why customer by the various products, why they don't.

So that we can present those in our content on the website, et cetera, as we found, that's really like the best way to get customers to resonate with the products as they see the advertisements. So, yeah.

Gresham Harkless 06:25

Nice. I appreciate you for bringing that down and sharing all the different pieces. And it's so funny as you were talking about that strategy piece, how important that is. I just was envisioning and maybe just because I'm a little hungry. It's just. like you go to the supermarket and you get all the ingredients, but you don't know how to put them together and you need that strategy piece so that you actually can get what you saw on the food network.

So it's so important from a marketing perspective that it's not just about, oh, I have access to Facebook or I have access to Instagram or I know about my website or something like that.

That strategy piece takes it to another level. And that's really when you start to see the impact that you ultimately hope to make.

Daniel Snow 07:02

Yeah, yeah, you said very well.

Gresham Harkless 07:04

Nice. And so, would you consider that to be what I call your secret sauce? It could be for you personally or the business or a combination of both. But is it that ability to understand the changes to have that success and to translate that to being able to help the clients that you work with?

Daniel Snow 07:19

Yeah, I would say our secret sauce also is just really. Being able to problem solve, I think that every single client has, as I see it, it's ongoing. Like, where is the factor that, you know, that can be improved upon?

You mentioned content website, this that. And then all the underlying things behind content, you can't say all the content's not working. Let's do something else. You have to break it down into each kind of component of that. Same with the website, same with the ad buying process, et cetera, et cetera.

So, I think the fact that we're just able to consistently problem solve. And think through problems and a meticulous kind of manners is really what makes us good at you, yeah.

Gresham Harkless 07:59

Yeah, I feel like that's so necessary and just about all businesses, but definitely in marketing to be able to tap into that because I think so many times people want to do something and do it for the next, 15 years, but I think understanding that you can always improve and look at those things that you can improve upon.

As you mentioned, the growth hacking to some degree within, the businesses and the marketing that you're doing so that people can have and see the success and continue to maybe even improve from where they thought they could before.

Daniel Snow 08:26

Yeah, absolutely.

Gresham Harkless 08:28

Awesome. Awesome. Awesome. So I wanted to switch gears a little bit and I wanted to ask you for what I call a CEO hack. So this could be like an app, a book or a habit that you have, but what's something that makes you more effective and efficient.

Daniel Snow 08:39

I think the thing for me, that makes me or at least the company as a CEO is, I would say, is just what I call actively managing which means following through. I think that for many leaders doesn't have to be a CEO. It could be your managers, managers in the company, or even just your employees in the company.

If you're not following through and actively managing your team, which then translates to the rest of your team, things just don't progress. And I know this happens a lot in and throughout just many companies, people say, oh, I asked the person for this, and you ask why didn't it get done? There was no follow-through.

So, for me, as the CEO, I think that's just literally 1 of the most important things, because that can be emulated in every single facet of the business, sales, HR, recruiting day to day for us, advertising, working with clients. The follow-through is the 1 of the most important parts of the entire job.

The other thing for me as the CEO, which I try to have the rest of our company is to just be accountable to be able to own up to a mistake. You're making a mistake, take ownership in your work. Which hopefully translates the rest of the company as well, especially an agency, agencies get a bad rep for treating clients like a client, not like your own business.

So, that's really kind of like, 1 of the most important foundations I try to set for my company.

Gresham Harkless 10:02

I wanted to ask you now for what I call a CEO nugget. So this could be a word of wisdom or piece of advice. It could be around marketing, or it might be something you would tell a client, or if you have to do a time machine, you might tell your younger business self.

Daniel Snow 10:13

I would say the number 1 most important thing is to not be scared to seek out help and ask questions. I know a lot of times CEO, you think that you could just feel like you have the ability, but you have this thought process.

Let me try to figure out. Let me try to figure out, but really the fastest way to learn something new or the fastest way to implement something. It's a really leverage experts because you can't figure out everything yourself. You can't be the expert in everything simultaneously.

So, for me, when we started just asking questions, networking with other companies that are even in similar environments, going out and seeking experts that can help with our department leaders. That's when things started to really just move faster in our company. So I would say that's number 1.

The other thing is what I realize is just, you hear this a lot in college and networking is the most important thing, but network, even if you're not running an agency. Your network number 1 takes time to build.

So building it for as long as possible and making real connections with these people is 1 of the most important fundamental things I think is being the CEO. When it comes to, raising money, finding clients. Making great hires really anything you can think of in your business even finding a new resource.

And let's say you need a new, I don't know, head of a new department, new hire. If you have a tremendous network, that's what can help you make those hires. Building that as early as possible. How do you build that? Go to events, go out of your way to ask questions, get active on social media, build your own social media profiles and whatnot, is just honestly, one of the most important things.

You can be the greatest networker in the world, like that can take you pretty far if you can build a team around that. So yeah.

Gresham Harkless 12:06

That's absolutely huge. Was there something that kind of sparked that for you or is that something that was ingrained in everything that you did?

Daniel Snow 12:12

Not really, I think, for me, it's something that I've always that came natural to me just because I do enjoy meeting people. I'm curious. I like asking questions. And then just realizing that, and, as my career began continuously mature, what's the, the 1 kind of pattern I noticed from the best CEOs. We're all that they have these phenomenal networks that they built out. And that's why they're getting the best clients.

That's why they're getting the best referrals. That's why they're getting key hires. It's all from just that build that this tremendous network that they built and once again, building real connections with all these people. So, yeah.

Gresham Harkless 12:52

Yeah, I appreciate you for sharing that. And I love how you got in that building real connections because it's not just passing business cards and saying, Oh, I know this person or connected with this person on LinkedIn is getting to really know them and that takes time and effort. And I appreciate you for sharing that.

And so I want to ask you now my absolute favorite question, which is the definition of what it means to be a CEO. And we're hoping to have different quote-unquote CEOs on the show. So Daniel, what does being a CEO mean to you?

Daniel Snow 13:17

To me, being a CEO really means just being a great leader and leading by example. It's very easy to see as a CEO, especially when you have a bunch of employees, that the company really is a reflection of your actions. And if you do something, other people will assume that they can act that way.

And it's hard to see it immediately your actions, but over time, you can truly see how companies are a reflection of you as a leader.

So, to me, at high level, that's just what it comes down to is just being a great leader for your company leading by example because a lot of times to, especially in any company, you're providing for people's family. You're writing for their personal kind of financial lives, and in fact, their personalized and whatnot.

So, taking that, really seriously and trying to create the best company possible. It's like the it's like the duty you have as that as the leader. So, I'm realizing how meaningful it is to be in that position. This is how I see it.

Gresham Harkless 14:21

Yeah, it's huge. And I love that word duty. And I was thinking like, when you were speaking of responsibility and kind of a charge that you have just to make sure that you are creating that the, I guess that ripple effect that you ultimately hope to have. And as we talked about accountability piece earlier, if you are accountable, then the people around you are going to be accountable as well, too.

And that runs the game and there's so many different ways that you can do that and create that vision within the organization and that manifests itself outside of the organization as well, too.

So Daniel truly appreciate that definition and I appreciate your time even more what I wanted to do is just pass you the mic, so to speak, just to see if there's anything additional that you can let our readers and listeners know.

And of course, how best they can get a hold of you and find out about all the awesome things you're working on.

Daniel Snow 15:02

Yeah, if any listeners or whatnot, or any direct consumer space, you're growing a brand, you're running an agency anything in that line. I'm happy to answer questions personally, you can follow me on Instagram is Dapper Twitter is I am Dan Snow or even email me at Dansnowagency.com. We'd love to connect with any of your listeners. And yeah, once again, I hope anyone found anything of value today and thank you for having me.

Gresham Harkless 15:33

Yeah, appreciate you for taking some time out just to make it even easier. We'll have the links and information in the show notes, but thank you so much for remind us of how important it is to build relationships and connections and how we should do that in a way by which we're creating such a great environment for our team members and those that we're even working with.

So, thanks so much for embodying that and appreciate you for remind us of it, and I hope you have a phenomenal rest of the day.

Outro 15:57

Thank you for listening to the IAMCEO podcast, powered by CB Nation and Blue 16 Media. Tune in next time and visit us at iamceo.co. IAMCEO is not just a phrase, it's a community.

Don't forget to schedule your complimentary digital marketing consultation at blue16media.com. This has been the IAMCEO podcast with Gresham Harkless, Jr. Thank you for listening.

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