surefoot.me

We are proud of the long-term partnerships we have with brands like Peak Design, Hydro Flask, Brooklinen, OXO, Made In Cookware and more.

We strive to create a culture where superior service is our primary sales strategy, clients and co-workers are friends and hard work is balanced with play.

Our core tenets:

- Partner with brands and companies we believe in, who give more than they take, whether that’s in the way of charitable giving, happiness or health.

- Win with integrity and put people over profit in a world that often forgets how to do those things.

- Refuse to waiver on doing what is best for our clients, even if it means less upside for us.

- Only do what we can do well, providing strategic AB testing and personalization services, and partnering with others when we veer outside the realm of our core competencies.

- Be happy. As they say, life is too short to be anything else.

If our philosophy resonates, please give me a shout at brian@surefoot.me

CEO & co-founder

CROmetrics

As employee #1, I helped grow the company to $3.5MM in annual recurring revenue and wore many hats, handling everything from client management to data analysis, QA and process implementation for clients like Facebook, 99designs, Trulia, General Assembly, Weight Watchers and more. 

As the company grew from two people to 25, I was promoted to Director of Operations, where I led various initiatives, including implementation of back-end systems and automation that facilitated internal efficiency and client success.

Director Of Operations

Test My Marketing

This was the second company I co-founded, which I spun out of a 3-day startup event, even winning a MSN influential new business contest. True story. I’m still surprised the domain name was available. 

We offered an affordable copywriting solution to help businesses craft crisp, actionable and compelling messages before publishing to their audiences. As co-founder, I led all internal operations and marketing and managed a community of freelance marketers.

Co-Founder

Rockbridge Seminary

Directed technology, online and traditional marketing, and finance.

Vice President of Operations

Director of Operations

Operations Manager

Watch Dog Time

This was my first foray into the world of business ownership, an online luxury watch repair business. If you had a broken Rolex, Tag Heuer or Breitling, I had a fix for it.

• directed all matters of finance, marketing, and daily operations 
• handled all customer service inquiries, ensuring timely responses (see what I did there?) 
• bootstrapped company and reached profitability and positive cash flow within 5 months of launch

President & Co-founder

Justice Jewelers

In this role, I found diamonds in the rough (literally and figuratively), as I was responsible for directing the buying team, small diamond buying and jewelry appraising. This is where I got my first taste of the World Wide Web (as it was referred to then), as I  managed our company websites and the Inventory Management System. 

• responsible for planned merchandise spend of $6MM annually
• directed outsourced marketing activities with ad agency
• designed and implemented a system to control purchasing budgets 
• designed and implemented a website for sale of slow moving inventory, which led to increased profitability and faster turn
• designed and implemented a purchasing process to increase inventory turn; turn exceeded industry average by 186%
• earned Graduate Gemology degree from the G.I.A.

Buying Team Manager/Marketing Coordinator/Merchandiser

Growing ecommerce businesses through CRO, UX research, and data analytics.

We're a conversion rate optimization agency for eCommerce brands looking to grow to the next level, but know they need to a better job converting traffic. 

We talk to your potential customers, find out why they're not buying, and fix those issues through a/b testing, personalization, and data-informed UX/UI design.

We help you grow by leveraging: 
-> Full-website conversion optimization
-> Landing page optimization
-> Personalization and segmentation
-> Conversion-focused web design
-> User experience research
-> Website analytics and reporting

We’ve worked with brands you know, like JensonUSA, Osprey, PENN Fishing, and The Shade Store. We’re also fired up about helping growing brands reach the next level. Some brands we've helped make this jump include Hydro Flask, Made In, Mizzen and Main, and Peak Design.

Brian Schmitt

The CRO industry is full of 25-year-olds teaching "masterclasses" after running 10 tests.

I've been doing this since 2001. And honestly, almost all of what I see from newer operators today is straight trash.

Can someone be good at CRO in two years? 

"Good" is a loose term. Can someone do it? For sure.

But if you're coming in fresh at 25 with no business experience, you're not going to be proficient.

You'll end up copycatting wins you see posted online with no strategic thought and zero customer empathy.

I've stepped in for clients after they left younger agencies. Their biggest complaint is always:

"Our tests would win, but we wouldn't see revenue translate."

When I examine their "winning" tests, I find they hit significance in 3-4 days when the sample size wasn't big enough, creating false positives everywhere.

We've found "losses" that were actually wins when re-run correctly and "wins" that were flat or actual losses.

Real experience teaches principles, not tactics.

CEO at Surefoot.me | Driving ecom growth w/ CRO, Analytics, UX Research, and Site Design

The most expensive mistake $10M+ ecommerce brands make:

They spend millions on traffic.
But 98% of those visitors leave without buying.

CRO is the lever they ignore.

Acquisition builds reach.
Optimization builds revenue.

Without CRO, your ad budget is a leaky bucket.

Recent wins from Surefoot clients:

 • Free Shipping Threshold → +$516K annual revenue
 • Centaur LP → +8.3% cart adds
 • Category Clarity in the Nav → +$149K annual lift

Different brands. 

Same pattern:
Disciplined experimentation beats design trends.

The most expensive phrase in eCommerce?

“We want to redesign the website.”

Full redesigns do not deliver the ROI you think it will, and it is almost always a waste of time and resources that brands could be putting towards what ACTUALLY drives a substantial impact: 

→ Removing friction where it counts
→ Fixing leaks in the customer journey
→ Tapping into buying psychology
→ Running smart, strategic A/B tests

Chasing shiny new designs is looking for gold at the end of the rainbow. 

Double down on what works and optimize the rest.

Most people think CRO is about button colors and call-to-actions.
It’s not.

It’s about truth.

When we run a test, we’re asking:
“What actually drives buying behavior, not what we think drives it?”

Sometimes that truth hurts.
It shows your $82k redesign was vanity.
It proves your CEO’s favorite headline does nothing.
It humbles teams who “knew” their customer.

But that’s why it works.

CRO turns “we believe” into “we know.”

And once you operate from truth, every other part of your business compounds faster.

When a brand tells me “it should be working,” I know we’re about to find revenue.

“Our PDP should convert better.”
“Our new landing page should outperform the old one.”
“Our loyalty program should increase retention.”

The problem?
None of those sentences include proof.

We’ve run over 9,000 tests across ecommerce brands.
Roughly half the time, the “better” version loses.

That’s not failure.
That’s the tuition you pay for certainty.

You can either spend millions building what should work…
Or a fraction testing what actually does.

If everyone follows “best practices,” who’s left to stand out?


So many CRO audits start with the same sentence:


“We follow best practices.”


And that’s usually the problem.


Because “best practices” mean “what everyone else already tried.”
They’re safe. Predictable. Easy to copy.


But optimization isn’t about copying. It’s about discovery.


Your audience, product, and price point are unique.
Your winning version probably breaks at least five “rules.”


If your pages look like your competitors’, you’re fighting for scraps.


CRO is how you break away, safely.
You earn permission to zig while they all zag.

How's it going today? 

Feeling the anticipation or feeling the heartburn?

Every brand has one assumption about its customers that has never been tested.

What’s yours?
(Serious question.)

Co-founder & CEO @ Revenue Roll

3rd-generation entrepreneur and co-founder and CEO of Tie.

Tie helps ecommerce brands de-anonymize their highest-value web traffic with names, email addresses, advertising IDs and demographic attributes. We’re trusted by brands like Macy’s, Cozy Earth, Crunch Fitness, Caraway, and Baby Brezza.

On average, our customers de-anonymize up to 90% and grow their cart abandonment list by 225%. Join them: meettie.com.

Michael Diesu

I’ve cut the amount of time I spend on bad fit candidates by at least 80% by just being direct about what it takes to work at Tie. 

Some people are subtly put off by it, but that’s the point.

You can't be half-in when it comes to working at a startup. Especially not in any high-intensity leadership position.

If someone's been grinding for years and they're burned out? They've earned the right to find something more stable.

But it’s my job to ask the uncomfortable question early. It saves both of us from a painful mismatch 6 months down the road.

“Every SaaS company will need to implement a services model that delivers outcomes to stay competitive” Hmm. Here's my take:

I think this position is directionally correct but has some serious tradeoffs.

The orthodox position is that SaaS companies should target 85%+ gross margins. It's what separates pure SaaS from tech-enabled service companies in disguise.

The 85% gross margin obsession comes from exit math.

When strategic buyers or public markets value your company, they're looking at software multiples (8-12x revenue) vs. services multiples (1-2x revenue).

If you're running 60% margins because half your revenue is managed services? You're not getting a software valuation. Meaning, you have to work much harder to deliver for investors and employee shareholders.

Klaviyo tried to build a services arm. They killed it. Because when you become a services company, you get valued like one… and it’s HARD.

On the flip side, optimizing for exit math without delivering customer outcomes is how you build a company that dies slowly.

Brands aren’t buying more tools. They’re buying outcomes. And if you offer ZERO support beyond "here's the login, good luck"? You churn. And churn is worse for your exit than lower margins.

So where's the middle ground?

Light-touch services, not fully-managed services.

You can guide customers to outcomes without building a headcount-heavy services business.

At Tie, we don't have a professional services arm. But we provide guidance, onboarding, and strategic input to help customers get value faster.

In short: our job is to teach customers how to fish. We don’t fish for them.

Here’s my framework I use:

- Help customers succeed (non-negotiable)
- Don't scale services linearly with revenue (this kills your model)
- Invest in enablement, not execution (teach, don't do)

85% gross margins isn’t the north star for its own sake.

It's building a company that delivers outcomes AND gets valued like software.

What’s your take?

When you say yes to a one-off feature request, you're saying no to core product improvements that benefit everyone.

When you chase every vertical, you never become the obvious choice for any specific one.

Strategy is as much about deciding what not to do, explicitly and publicly, as it is deciding what to do.

When you write down what you won't do, you give your team permission to ignore distractions and execute with clarity.

I encourage any founder reading this to take this as a challenge.

Write down your Do Not Do list. Share it with your team. And watch what happens when everyone stops hedging and starts executing.

taplio

The Battle

Brian Schmitt

Michael Diesu

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taplio

The Battle

Brian Schmitt

Michael Diesu

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Engagements

Likes

Performance Score.css-goub6s{font-size:var(--chakra-fontSizes-md);font-weight:500;color:var(--chakra-colors-gray-600);display:block;margin-top:var(--chakra-space-1);}Brian Schmitt's LinkedIn Performance

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Performance ScoreBrian Schmitt's LinkedIn Performance