I’ve spent 20 years in growth and performance marketing, and most of my consumer career selling food online. I started in paid and organic search, managing more than $10M in spend against CPA targets for brands like Kodak, Walmart, HSBC and IBM. Later I ran CPG and DTC ecommerce at Southside Market and grew online revenue tenfold with no added budget or headcount.

Today I own a P&L at Daxko and run the AI systems behind marketing output across five brands. I build the workflows myself in Claude Code, Make.com and n8n, then teach the team to run them. I work best in writing, with clear owners, documented decisions and results that hold up in front of finance. I’m based in Austin, TX.

What I work on

• Daxko. As VP, GTM AI & Digital Experience at the company behind Zen Planner, Club Automation, Exercise.com and SugarWOD, I own Digital Services (websites, SEO and AEO, paid digital and AI-powered services for nonprofit, club and boutique fitness customers) and the AI systems behind our go-to-market.
• Full Stack Tactical. My own practice. We build AI-powered marketing systems for churches, from single campaigns to fully managed growth operations.
• Digital Pastor. AI-powered guest engagement for the local church, so no first-time guest slips through the cracks.
• Full Stack Agents. My Substack. I document real AI builds for marketing teams: the org charts, the workflows, the Claude Code sessions and the mistakes.

A few results

• Shipped 43 AI workflows against a target of 8, giving the marketing team back 62 hours a week.
• Cut churn on recurring digital services from 25% to 15%, and repriced the service lines I own for a 50%+ EBITDA gain.
• Grew DTC ecommerce at Southside Market from $200K to more than $2M a year with no added budget or headcount.
• Ran search media at Neo@Ogilvy for the Kodak and Walmart ecommerce businesses, which together drove $500M in online revenue.

How I got here

I served in the U.S. Navy as a Submarine Sonar Technician 1st Class, then went into search marketing. Since then I’ve been Assistant Search Director at Neo@Ogilvy in New York, built the digital media practice at Fogarty Klein Monroe, ran client services and operations at Forthea and led CPG, restaurant and ecommerce marketing at Southside Market & Barbeque before joining Daxko in 2022. I hold a BS in Business Administration from the University of Oregon and an MBA in Marketing from West Texas A&M. I’ve spoken at IHRSA, NAYDO and the YMCA CMO Conference. Brands I’ve worked with are on my client history page.

Off the clock

Hot sauce came first. I founded Sweat ‘N Spice Hot Sauces in 2003 and started Hot Sauce Blog alongside it, which reached 100,000 visits a month and got coverage in Business Week and the New York Daily News. I built and sold that business. These days I also cook far too much on a Big Green Egg and write about it at the Big Green Egg Blog.

Latest writing

See all my writing →

Let’s talk

If you’re working on growth marketing, putting AI to work in a marketing team, or helping a church use AI well, I’d like to hear about it. LinkedIn is the best way to reach me.

Thanks for stopping by.
— Nick