Why Most Brands Stop Growing (And How To Fix It) | Stephen Cozzolongo

Keith N: Foreign. The sponsor of Liftoff with Keith is the one and Only Compass Strategic Advisors.com an experienced partner to help you navigate everything from cap tables to stock option and compensation plans, and all types of backroom and marketing services. There is no better friend to the startup CEO than Compass. Check them out at Compass Strategic Advisors. Hey, friends. Today's guest is Steven Kozalungo, a growth marketer, agency founder and performance driven operator who believes that how you do one thing is how you do everything. A former collegiate swimmer, Steven has developed an obsession with measurement optimization and continuous improvement traits of today's growth marketer and something that carried him from the pool into the world of business. After managing large scale paid media programs, including work with Dick's Sporting Goods, he helped scale an agency from 150k in revenue to more than 6 million and today serves as a co founder of Digital Position, a performance marketing agency helping brands go from 5 million to 500 million in accelerated growth. His team has worked with brands like Dooney and Bourke, Peter Belar and Fleet Feet, achieving dramatic gains through SEO, paid media and revenue growth programs through a relentless focus on data execution and accountability. Super excited to have a conversation about what really changes the game today in performance marketing, leadership and scaling agencies, the metrics that actually matter, and what founders can learn from the mindset of an athlete. Let's get Stephen out here and talk liftoff. All right, Steve, so we're going to jump right into that. Is that okay with you?

Stephen Cozzolongo: Yeah. Let's go, man.

Keith N: Welcome to the liftoff. So excited to have you here, man. I like talking to athletes too. For some reason. We really get into some fun conversations, you know, a little bit of your background as a swimmer, professional collegiate swimmer. Um, I mean, how did that prepare you for, um, going into, you know, business and running a services firm like you do?

Stephen Cozzolongo: Yeah, so that's a great question because I think about swimming all the time. I have, I have, uh, a two year old and I have one on the way. And lots of people will say like, all right, well what kind of sports do you want? Or like, that's a common question for guys to, to have when they're, when they're talking about their kids.

Keith N: Right.

Stephen Cozzolongo: And I find myself just reflecting back on my swimming career and realizing that, you know, it's not the most fun sport by any means. Right. You're, all you're doing is just working out and not breathing or talking to anybody for hours at a time. Um, um, however, just being able to do something that makes you uncomfortable, that's challenging over and over again. Um, you know, working your butt off for an entire year just to drop your best time by.01 seconds. Right. And that's like, literally maybe like a, uh, just like a, an inch. Right. Um, that kind of mindset and that type of preparation and work that I did as a, as a child, um, and into, you know, my adulthood in college definitely prepared me for what it takes to be a business owner. Right. Because there is going to be a lot of stuff that is uncomfortable, that is challenging, that is really tough, that you're gonna have to grind out every single day to be successful and doing

Keith N: it on your own. A lot of alone time. Um, people don't realize, they think you're always walking around talking to clients and team members, but a lot of that time you spend is solopreneur in it, figuring out what has to be done. Right?

Stephen Cozzolongo: Yeah, Yeah. I think, uh, a lot of your, your 9 to 5 is talking to team members, talking to new business, uh, talking on calls, whatever it might be. Uh, but it's, you know, the five to midnight hours when you actually have to like, work on the business, get some of that work done, follow up to all those calls and conversations and, and that's the tough part.

Keith N: Right on. Stephen, by the way, congrats on your second good luck. And then a shout out to my two, um, who were both swimmers and water polo players.

Stephen Cozzolongo: Wow. Uh, nice.

Keith N: Yeah. And they loved it after doing the baseball, basketball, kind of, you know, as a kids, they jammed in that in high school and I was kind of surprised, but what a fantastic experience, both conditioning physically and mentally in that sport. Hey, Jumping right over to, uh, uh, how you do one thing is how you do everything is the Steve mantra I hear. Explain or share a little bit of detail on that.

Stephen Cozzolongo: That, yeah, definitely. Those are, that's one of the things that, ah, I like to implement into our, our business or our team culture. Um, I mean, it's exactly what it means, right? How you do one thing is how you do everything. If you start thinking about that a lot, you start looking at things differently. Right? Like you might. You realize that you can make a lot of, um, inferences about somebody based on what you're seeing them do pretty consistently. Um, or, uh, how I use that in my own life is, you know, I like to work out every single morning before I do anything I need to work out, because that's going to allow me to be a better father, husband, ah, business owner, leader, uh, you. You name it, or even like a friend. Right. Um, and by having that mindset and applying it to everything that I do, such as working out, I think you find yourself like reflecting really positively on, you know, your, your output in, in everything else that you do. So just. Sorry. I guess that was like a pretty long winded way of just saying that, uh, if you are working out and you have the choice to, to maybe skip a rep or you have the choice to kind of dog it, right. You have to think to yourself how you do one thing is how you do everything. So if I do that today and I skip that rep and maybe I only know about that, are you going to kind of do the same thing when it comes to something hard? Um, when it comes to business. Right. Are you going to kind of skip responding to that email right away? Are you going to um, just like not do something all the way to completion?

Keith N: No, I love. Yeah, I think it's a great example and I think it's something that resonates with most founders who have that sort of alpha dog mentality. Um, but you have to do that in all disciplines of your work as well, not just in, in one thing. Um, I have a certain talk track I wanted to kind of review with you and that's thinking about marketing as a startup company. And I feel like there are companies that really overindex in terms of measurement and those that under index in terms of measurement. And if you see that yourself, is there a pattern there? And how do you sort of counsel companies in terms of not only what to measure but how to measure it? It sort of segues into like a cultural um, fit as well.

Stephen Cozzolongo: M. I see both of those, uh, examples happening all the time. Right. So when it comes to under, under measurement, um, when you go and ask the CEO or the leadership team, hey, what's actually working, they can't tell you. Right. And that's, that's definitely a problem. Or um, you know, maybe they for example are, hey, I know that we're spending on Google and Facebook for example and I see that roas in the platform is good, but what does it actually mean towards the business? Right. So they're under indexing. They don't, they aren't actually tying platform metrics to business goals and business KPIs like, right? What is uh, the actual profitability of this advertising spend? How much top line revenue are you driving? Is what you're doing actually profitable? So that's definitely, that can be a problem, but that's a lot, that's a lot easier to fix. Uh, the other Challenge, and I run into this a lot too, is probably more of like the mid sized companies, um, and they are over indexing and they're just spending too much time. Almost like we call it, we used to call it like spreadsheeting yourself to death. Right. Because you would just sit there in Excel and Google sheets and try to manipulate all the different data as much as you possibly can to try to give you a story when in reality if you just backed up and just said okay, maybe it's uh, I actually have to like run this test, fail fast and cheap right here, figure out if it's working or not. Right. Um, or maybe, um, maybe those KPIs actually don't, don't actually have like a big impact to the bottom line or the top line. Um, so a lot of these people who are over indexing are just spending way too much trying to figure out how um, like data will give them the answers when they sort of forget that there's a human, there's a human on the other side that's actually purchasing either your product or your services. And that customer, like psychology and the messaging and that kind of stuff is actually going to have a greater effect on the outcome.

Keith N: You've, you've worked with companies that were, you know, six figures and turned them into seven, eight, nine figure kinds of companies and looked at these huge budgets. How do you, you turn that company around? How do you get them to focus on the right things and not doing too much measurement, but doing the right measurement?

Stephen Cozzolongo: Yeah, it really starts with taking inventory of that business. Right. Because every single business out there, they have some good and they have some bad. Right. And what, as a, as a marketer, one of the first things that we have to do is identify what type of resources and what type of talent already exist. Now where can we, as a, as a good partner in an agency, come in and fill in those gaps or those holes and try to uh, work more collaboratively with the existing team or their existing talent. Um, so that's the best way that we can actually come in together and, and take a business from you know, six figures, maybe seven figures to 10, 50, uh, even like $100 million. Right?

Keith N: Yeah, I love that. What about um, when you jam in, you guys focus on SEO, you do paid media, you do all kinds of different stuff. Um, how do you view those? Discreetly is one more awareness is one more lead gen. How do you kind of construct the uh, the proper plan?

Stephen Cozzolongo: Yeah, that's a great question because there is no easy answer. I, um, would say that it really depends on, on the business itself, the industry, and maybe even going back to what we were, ah, previously talking about the skills that are there. So for example, you know, if you have a CEO of a company that is really, uh, in the mix in terms of like the industry, the product, the knowledge and everything like that, you actually might be able to do a little bit more organic because you could take their expertise and then blast that out everywhere, make content, um, get cited in different publications, um, you know, participate in different conversations and stuff like that. On the other hand, you may have a leadership team or team that doesn't have the talent, that nobody wants to be the face of the company. Um, and we actually have to rely a little bit more on paid advertising. Right. Or some, some paid channels. So yeah, there's a lot of variables that go into it, I would say. I think both are super important. But I could, you can really take digital marketing as a whole and say you have two arms. You have your paid and you have your organic or earned. Right. And then everything is related to that, whether that's web dev, that's content, um, uh, you know, those are all ancillary services or, or are parts of both paid and organic.

Keith N: You've, you've also done a lot of work with B2C and major CPG brands.

Stephen Cozzolongo: Right?

Keith N: But you also have done some work with B2B. How do you, when you enter a new account, are you working with a brand that's seven, eight figures? ARR. How do you treat them differently? Or is it the same kind of process?

Stephen Cozzolongo: It's the same process when you're trying to get to know them and try to understand what's actually going to move the needle. The only thing that actually changes are the tactics and when to apply those tactics and how to prioritize those tactics. Right. Because at the end of the day you want more sales or you want more leads. Um, you can really boil down everything in marketing, even on the paid and organic side, whatever. If you roll that up, you have content. Content fuels the distribution or the clicks. How do we generate traffic to your website or any storefront that you have? And then you have your customer experience. So content, clicks, customer experience, those three Cs. That is everything to marketing. Right.

Keith N: So Those replace the four P's now.

Stephen Cozzolongo: Yeah. And no matter what, that applies to B2B. That applies to B2C.

Keith N: Yeah.

Stephen Cozzolongo: Uh, there is.

Keith N: Who doesn't want more leads and more sales at this point? Although obviously leads is a different terminology in cpg. I would Imagine. But how do you, when you, when you're consulting with that company, that's sort of, let's say they're one of the fast growing AI tech companies, whether they sell to consumer or business. Right. Because sometimes it's a little bit, uh, cloudy. How do you um, instruct them or what do you see them doing? That's correct. And what do you see them doing that they're, that maybe is incorrect or that they should be doing?

Stephen Cozzolongo: Yeah, well, it's easier to point out some of the things that they do. Incorrect. Right. So if you're one of those startups and you're, you know, you have like this tool or you have this solution that uh, is for everybody, right? That's, that's the kind of like mentality or I have like this, this massive tam. It's, you know, 50 million people that could or should be using my tool or solution. That's not really the case. What you really need to be doing is, is segmenting your audience or your ICP into like very specific buyer Personas. Especially with AI now you have the ability to, you know, hone in really and get as close to one to one marketing or personalization as you possibly can. Once you completely nail down one of your buyer Personas or your ICPs, then you just copy and paste that formula to the next icp. So then you could scale horizontally. But a lot of businesses just say, here's my generic message, here's my generic offer. Apply this to anybody, um, out there. When in reality it's uh, it should just be, hey, this is a perfect solution for a small business owner who is doing X amount of revenue, who only has, you know, one to five, uh, brick and mortar locations and operates in, you know, like the service industry. Right. Because then now you're, you're just, you're attacking their exact pain points, you know, exactly what they're thinking, how to connect with them emotionally. And you're tailoring the content, uh, the clicks and the customer experience all to that specific icp.

Keith N: Uh, Steven, can I ask you to talk a little bit more about how you're using AI? It's such an exciting area, but it's also um, ripe with a little bit of concern. I'll leave it at that. But there's also uh, the power of it can't be denied. So how do you use it as a competitive advantage but not crossing the line?

Stephen Cozzolongo: Yeah, yeah, definitely. So I'll give you two examples of how we use it. One on organic and one on paid. Uh, so on the Organic side, when you were trying to make content, you can use AI to actually interview the experts and then use those transcripts, those AI transcripts to help you simplify all that messaging and that entire conversation to then transform those conversations into the right type of content that needs to be distributed on whichever channels are appropriate for your customers. Uh, and that's something, that's a great way to use AI because before you had to actually write all this kind of stuff down from memory or take all these different notes and it was a lot harder to scale that content. What I see is wrong is when people think that they can just create 50 pieces of content, 50 blog posts in one day, because they're just scaling with AI, that's not going to get ranked. Nobody cares about that. That's not going to be interesting. People don't want to read that. Uh, on the paid side, you know, one thing that's happening all over the place is people are um, they're using AI tools or AI to help them optimize different accounts. Okay, that's great. That doesn't mean that paid advertising as like, ah, as a service is dead. That only means that the best paid advertisers and paid managers right now can just optimize more, optimize faster. And now like the real hurdle and challenge is that you can now like the challenge is uh, optimizing multiple platforms or managing, you know, tons of different platforms. Right. Like before you met, you might just say I need like a Google Ads Agency and a Meta Ads agency and like they could be separate. Now a single person can optimize Google Meta, TikTok, Bing, Pinterest, Amazon, Walmart, you name it. Right? All together in one. So it just, it arms the best with um, uh, a better tool to, to now get more results faster.

Keith N: Right. Okay, now I've got a question from one of my founders, a B2B tech company. Yeah, um, I'm a limited, uh, budget. Ambitious growth goals. What are the three things you'd focus on right now if you were me?

Stephen Cozzolongo: Yeah, limited, uh, budget. I mean I hear that all the time. And ambitious growth goals. Uh, two things that uh, is just, I mean like that's 90% of people out there right now, right? Uh, what I would do right now and the easiest thing that the only cost is time is to inject yourself into these conversations that exist online already, right? Like this is the best way to connect with customers. Right now on Reddit, for example, if you are saying, if you are a tool for uh, helping m, uh, book calls or Something like that for a business. Um, start looking at Reddit in different forums and find the people and your customers who are asking the questions about like, hey, I have like this problem, is there a solution for this? Or what's the best tool for xyz? That's a great way place for you to chime in and say, hey, I wrote this blog post about this, this and this, or here are three ways that I would go about solving this problem. One of them might happen to be your tool or your B2B service or solution that you have. Um, but I would educate people as much as you possibly can. Um, I think that also at least starting out by writing whatever you're doing, whatever you're learning and whatever you're building, um, at least if you start writing and blogging about that on your website, you can now repurpose that content for, um, you know, maybe making it into a video one day or maybe making into an ad at some point. So then when you are ready and your budgets do increase, you could basically just turn that on. You already have the hard work completed and then you can distribute that across any of the paid platforms or platforms that you're thinking of.

Keith N: So, uh, that's building in public, sharing information, being an evangelist, maybe a little thought leadership mixed in there.

Stephen Cozzolongo: Yeah, exactly. Yeah. These are the hard.

Keith N: You become a content creator of sorts. Huh, huh.

Stephen Cozzolongo: Yeah. And these are really hard things. I mean everybody struggles with, struggles with this. So I mean all these businesses who have limited budget and have ambitious growth, ambitious, uh, growth goals, you know, that's would be the cheapest way to start. Although I do realize that that is difficult.

Keith N: Steve, you started digital position a little while back. You built it quite a bit. I'm kind of curious. Ah, um, what did you see just in terms of building your business? What turns you into, you know, a nice little shop to uh, to a fast growing. I got more, I need more people here. We got more business coming in. What was, what was it that really landed you in that fast lane?

Stephen Cozzolongo: What landed me in the fast lane is doing a good job and over delivering as much as you possibly can. I think all the most successful businesses, I think it's, it's pretty difficult to reach a million dollars. Right. So a lot of small businesses are struggling to do that and you know, hopefully they get there, but, uh, I don't know. There's going to be a lot of challenges in the way. Right. But along the way to a million dollars, we just treated every single client as if they were our only Client and our most important client. And uh, responsiveness is crucial. Right. Everybody wants to feel like they are the only client, um, in their head. That's the only thing that they think about. They are not considering that somebody may have 5 different projects, 10, 20 different projects on their plate. And frankly, frankly, they don't care. They're paying for the service and they want results. Uh, so I would, you know, I would have that mindset and just make them feel like they are the only client that you have. Uh, and that will lead to referrals and that just leads to just a, uh, uh, a snowball effect of growth.

Keith N: It's one of those things often talked about, not, not quite cliche, but uh, under promise, over deliver. How hard is that to teach?

Stephen Cozzolongo: It's, it's pretty hard to teach. I, to be honest, I don't know if you can actually, if you could teach some of those skills. I feel like they're in those intangibles that you have to find, uh, that already exists in people's like, personalities. And that kind of goes back to what we were originally talking about, you know, like a background in, in sports and doing hard things and practicing and being consistent for years and years on end.

Keith N: I totally agree.

Stephen Cozzolongo: Yeah. So that they know and they have, and they've built up, uh, that way of thinking in that skill set. So now when they bring it to the, to the real world or the business world, they can, they can apply that.

Keith N: Steve, that's fantastic. Listen, thank you. This has been a great conversation. If people want to learn more about what you're doing, how do they get in touch with you? Digital position, your fractional CMO stuff, what's the best place to find you?

Stephen Cozzolongo: Yeah, yeah, check me out on LinkedIn. Uh, that would be great. Send me a, send me a message. We'd love to have a little conversation with you there. I'm always looking for opportunities to, to meet with people, um, help people whenever possible, uh, and create some sort of community. Um, and then also head over to digital position.um. com, always check out some of our blogs and our resources. We are constantly trying to give away all the secrets to exactly what we're doing. Uh, if you, if you are curious about marketing, if you, um, you know, are a small business and, and you, you are constrained with budgets and you do have ambitious goals, uh, uh, then you can always read some of our content and hopefully you can, you can get some takeaways for free and apply that to your business.

Keith N: That's fantastic. And are you hiring right now you're, you're in North Carolina, is that correct?

Stephen Cozzolongo: Yeah, I'm in North Carolina. Charlotte. Charlotte, North Carolina. However, everybody on our team is remote. We have full time w. Two employees across the. Across the U.S. um, we're always hiring. Right? We always want to hire the best talent out there. Uh, I think that's, that's another mindset that everybody or all small businesses should have. Uh, I should always be hiring, always be looking for quality, um, employees or team members because they're really hard to find.

Keith N: I hear that. Hey, but final question. What's your stroke?

Stephen Cozzolongo: So som. Uh, the hundred, 100 yard backstroke, and 100 yards fly.

Keith N: Yeah. That's so hard.

Stephen Cozzolongo: Yeah, it was, it was fun. It's fast, it's. It's still a sprint, but, uh, yeah, it was.

Keith N: Uh. Did you ever. Did you ever play water polo?

Stephen Cozzolongo: Uh, uh, we did sometimes on training trips, we'd go to, you know, our college team would go to Florida and then we would have inter. Like, we would play other teams that were, that were training in Florida or things like that. Or sometimes, um, you know, if our, if our coach let us have a day off, maybe we'd do something like water polo.

Keith N: Well, it's just training and then it's the combination of, you know, you're a solo practitioner in the. In these, in the swimming pool, and then you're a team player in the. A water polo. It gives you a little taste of both.

Stephen Cozzolongo: Yeah. Yep, exactly.

Keith N: Well, Steve, this has really been a fun chat. I appreciate your time and good luck. We'll stay in touch and, uh, I look forward to reading more of your work.

Stephen Cozzolongo: All right, thank you.