Forwrd Agency

We help winning ecommerce & SaaS brands grow faster & more profitable.

Market leader in performance-focused YouTube ads for ecommerce & SaaS.

Co-Founder

FRED & FELIA

Chief Marketing Officer

BRUNA The Label

waterdrop®

Built & grew D2C across Europe & US to $100 million ARR. Responsible for PnL and 80% of company revenue. Built teams and established leads for ecommerce, acquisition, retention.

Head of Online

iProspect

team lead, digital marketing (search, shopping, display, video, paid social, CRM, CRO, analytics)

Senior Performance Marketing Consultant

MMCAGENTUR für digitale Kommunikation GmbH

Digital Project Manager & Performance Marketing

meediiaa

Digital Marketing, Web Design & Development

Hi! 👋 I'm Chris.

I started out in marketing & ecommerce 15 years ago.

Built D2C for waterdrop from $5 to $100 million in three years.

And worked as a fractional CMO with several 7- to 9-fig brands.

Today, I help winning ecommerce brands grow faster & more profitably with Forwrd Agency.

Invest and operate my own portfolio businesses and and share my learnings through Forwrd Thinking Pod & Newsletter.

_


4 ways I can help you:


① Grow faster & more profitable: Book a free strategy call and let's have a chat:
→ https://calendly.com/forwrd-agency/discovery


② Become a guest at our Forwrd Thinking podcast: Write me your topic.


③ Newsletter: Sign-up for my weekly Forwrd Thinking newsletter & receive learnings & critical thoughts about ecommerce, D2C & growth. → forwrdthinking.com


④ If you are looking for advisory or investors in D2C or SaaS, send me a message.

Christian Hoppe

WE ARE HIRING | Established for eCommerce Growth | Cutting-Edge Growth Marketing

Most brands running Google Ads are leaving a ridiculous amount of money on the table.

Not because the channel doesn’t work—but because they’ve built it wrong. Wrong structure. Wrong strategy. Wrong expectations. Then they wonder why performance plateaus or CPAs creep up month after month.

At Adcubator, we fix that.

We’re a Google Ads agency managing over 9 figures in annual ad spend for some of the most aggressive, fast-moving DTC brands in the market—BRĒZ, Hey Shape, Calming Co, Eskiin, Pure Diffuser, FluffCo, Dore & Rose, and a few others we can’t name (yet).

We don’t “manage” accounts.
We engineer paid search systems that unlock scale—without sacrificing margin or efficiency.

Our job isn’t to make things look good in a dashboard. Our job is to make Google Ads a high-leverage, cold-traffic scaling machine that brings in incremental revenue, not vanity ROAS.

What makes us different?

✅ We treat Google like a performance channel, not a checkbox.
✅ We rebuild accounts to unlock scale—fast.
✅ We think like operators, not service providers.
✅ We give you visibility on what’s actually working—and what’s dead weight.
✅ We separate branded vs. non-branded, cold vs. warm, net new vs. recycled—because blended ROAS is a lie.
✅ We don’t report for the sake of reporting. We drive decisions based on cash, margin, and efficiency.

We also run our own eCom brands. That means we know what it’s like when your ad spend is directly tied to inventory, cash flow, and profitability. We’re not theorizing in slide decks. We’re in the trenches too.

If your Google Ads account is stagnant, bloated, or “working” but not winning—there’s a better way to run it. One that’s faster, leaner, and built to scale cold traffic profitably.

That’s what we do. Every day. If you want to unlock Google Ads as a true driver of incremental revenue and scalable growth—send me a message.

Jem Bourouh

I don't hire classic job roles anymore.

Instead, I only hire for outcomes.

"Hire slow, fire fast" is a well-known business advice everyone knows about.
But why are people fired 99% of the time?

When outcomes are not met.

Usually, that's the fault of HR or the founder, tho. Because success for the job role was never clearly defined.

Here's what I learned building Adcubator:

If a role doesn't own an outcome, it's not a role.

We don't hire people to "help the team".
We hire people to own outcomes.

For example, we just hired a new operations manager.

The expected outcome and success metrics were clearly mentioned in the job post:

– 95% task compliance
– 30% reduction in onboarding time
– zero knowledge silos
– average L10 meeting rating of 8.5/10 or higher

When you define outcomes upfront, three things happen:

1. You remove yourself from execution
2. You create real leverage
3. You attract people who take ownership

Outcome-based hiring removes dependency.

Most founders hire to add capacity.

The best founders hire to remove themselves.

Google Ads for High-Growth DTC Brands | Trusted by BRĒZ, Hey Shape, Calming Co, Eskiin, Pure Diffuser, FluffCo, Dore & Rose | Managing 9 Figures in Annual Ad Spend | Founder @ Adcubator

At Adcubator, we fired 12 clients last year.

We do this to protect our team.

The hardest lesson I learned building an 8-Fig agency wasn't about closing deals or running Google ads.

It was about protecting my team from the wrong clients.

One example:

Client "Joe" had a $1.3k AUD budget and expected miracles. He micromanaged every decision, questioned every strategy, and paid late every month.

My team was exhausted. Bad-fit clients don't just hurt margins. They break teams.

Those types of clients create constant urgency. They undermine confidence. They make your best people question why they're there.

So I started firing clients.

Now, we only work with clients who:

1. Trust our expertise
They respect what they pay for. They don't override strategy with opinions or second-guess every move.

2. Pay on time
This isn't about cash flow. Late payments signal lack of respect. We only work with brands on mutual respect.

We are picky, yes.

But our 2+ year average retention proves that we're doing something right. 

When you say no to bad fits, good clients stay longer. Better clients refer to better clients. Standards compound.


P.S. Do you fire your own clients?

I don't manage any of our 200+ client accounts.

Only a select few.

Not because I'm detached from clients or I'm "too busy." But because my role is strategy, not execution.

The moment a CEO still needs to push buttons, the business hasn't scaled yet.

Most people misunderstand:

Not managing client accounts doesn't mean not being involved. I'm still pushing buttons where it matters.

Only for a select few and during important campaigns like black friday.

I still manage long-term partners like Wlad myself. He's become a very good friend over the years.

I join their strategy conversations.
I sit in Google rep calls on their behalf.
I protect long-term outcomes.

But I'm not running campaigns, not optimizing ads daily and I'm not in execution calls.

That's handled by our A+ team.

It's my strategy that my team then executes daily.
If I had to manage accounts, we wouldn't have scaled.

That's the difference between running your business and being stuck in your business.

I design all the campaign structure, direction, and priorities. They handle campaigns, optimizations, and day-to-day decisions.

That's how you scale past 85 people.

Founder-led execution doesn't scale, founder-led strategy does.

Most Google Ads agencies compete on tactics.

We compete on elite access.

In a commoditized market, everyone sells the same thing. The same offer, strategies, and case studies.

All of it gets copied within weeks.
But relationships? Those are hard to replicate.

With my agency Adcubator, we have direct access to more than 80 Google reps.

(Most agencies only have none or to max. 1-2)

Those relationships don't come from networking.

We built them over the past few years because our agency performs at the top of the ecosystem.

Elite access gives us daily competitive advantages:

– 20-30% participation in pilots
– MMS and AGT relations for excellent support
– Latest insights from internal meetings at Google
– We anticipate platform changes before anyone else
– We get context around why things are shifting first
– We're inside the feedback loop, competitors are not

Most agencies will never be invited to those discussions.

They don't manage to spend at that level.
They don't stay in one lane long enough to build trust.
They're interchangeable, not ecosystem partners.

This advantage compounds every year.

The gap widens. The feedback loop tightens.

The moat becomes impossible to close.

In a market where everyone sells the same thing, insider access becomes the only real advantage.

Most Google Ads agencies are either pull marketing specialists or YouTube guys.

Neither will get you category leadership. 

I've seen dozens of agencies fail their clients. Because they're "really good at brand search" or "crush it on YouTube".

The problem isn't that they're bad at what they do. 
It's that they only do one thing.

Here's what actually builds category leadership:

1. Brand Search → capture existing demand
2. Non-Branded Search → capture transactional, commercial, navigational and informational intent
3. Shopping → dominate product discovery
4. PMAX → channel diversification
5. YouTube → create new demand
6. Display → trigger & capture latent demand

You need all of it working together. You actually need to dominate every channel.

Because let me tell you:

Half-assed multi-channel is worse than single-channel excellence.

If you're going to spread across channels, you better be exceptional at all of them. Otherwise you're just diluting your budget and brand.

But when you truly master the full funnel?

That's when you stop competing on price.
That's when you own your category.
That's when your competitors can't keep up.

Single-channel specialists will always hit a ceiling.

Multi-channel dabblers will always underperform.

Only full-funnel masters build sustained competitive advantage.

Any Google Ads "expert" who tells you that you can scale with $10 per day is lost.

Yes, technically, you can run Google Ads with $10 per day. 

I am not arguing that. But don't pretend that this number has anything to do with real growth.

I'm spending 8-figures in ad spend A MONTH for all my clients combined.

No one of them is launching a campaign at less than $50/day.

Small budgets don’t scale. They never did. And never will.

What $10 actually does:

– lets you test at a few keywords
– gives you directional signals, not insights
– helps you understand search intent at a surface level
– maybe brings in a lead in very low-competition niches

That’s it.

What it does not do:

– create statistically reliable data
– survive bad days, seasonality, or volatility
–compensate for weak creatives, offers, or shops
– build a predictable acquisition system

Google Ads is an auction + data + iteration game.

And auctions don’t reward tiny budgets.

So yes, start small if you must. But be aware about what you’re doing. You’re testing viability, not building a scalable acquisition funnel.


P.S. If you're an ecom founder who likes big numbers and even bigger results, DM me.

This outreach message shows how lost (and desperate) some founders really are.

I’m seeing those kind of DMs daily:

“Welcome to my network! Hey %firstname%. Ahaha just joking Jem.”

Congrats. You got my attention.
Just not the kind you wanted.

What is the intended outcome here?

Am I supposed to reply with "Wow, that was funny and original. Please take my money"?

That’s definitely not how scalable businesses are grown.

If an agency really had great results, they would not send those kind of messages.

Cold DMs like this are a symbol of no brand, no demand, no positioning and no results.

My approach has always been:

Results → Brand → Network → Inbound

You don’t win by sending cringey DMs. You win by being obvious. Obviously competent, obviously trusted, obviously in demand.

If you deliver 11/10 results, the rest will come by itself.

So please, stop wasting time by sending weird cold DMs. Focus on the best marketing method: results.

Curious to hear your take.

I don't get people reading tens of time management books to finally be productive and get things done.

Yet, I manage 85+ people and 200+ clients, which I would definitely call "productive".

Your day shouldn't be about filling time. It's about protecting it:

1. Block your calendar for calls

I only do external calls on Tuesdays and Thursdays, with almost no exceptions. This keeps me focused on internal tasks that actually move the needle.

If you don’t block your calendar, you are in constant reactive-mode and your productivity will be close to zero.

2. Pick 2-3 priorities. That's it.

Every morning, I write down 2-3 tasks that MUST get done. If I have more than 3 priorities, my list is wrong.

People who are busy with hundreds of tasks at the same time, rarely accomplish anything at all.

3. Protect your focus

Caffeine and good frequencies for 1 hour blocks. No social media. It's that simple. But most people can't even do 10 mins without distraction.

It's always the simplest things that work.

Instead of reading and watching productivity hacks, just do the work.


P.S. How do you stay productive?

We only work with one client per category.

Even though we leave multiple seven figures on the table each year.

But results are our highest priority.

And you can't deliver your best work when your incentives are split across competitors.

Most agencies say they're "partners". They say they care about results. Then quietly work with 3-5 competitors in the same niche.

Why?

Obviously it's easier, it scales faster and it maximizes short-term revenue.

But it breaks trust long term.

Clean incentives build better outcomes.

When clients know every insight is theirs, every decision is made in their best interest, the relationship shifts. This builds real trust and the best results.

This rule only works if you're selective.

If you take everyone, you can't maintain it.
If you rely on volume, you won't survive it.

We say no more often than yes because our goal is always to work long-term with our clients.

We care more about outcomes than logos.

Performance needs clean incentives.

I don't learn new skills myself anymore.

I buy knowledge by hiring it.

Because my time became too expensive to spend on learning curves. It just takes too much time.

Early stage, I learned everything by myself. Built the first funnels, learned everything about Google I could find, set up the systems, tested new angeles etc.

That made sense then. Because I had more time than I had money back then.

Now? Different game.

When the business already works, learning new skills yourself becomes the bottleneck.

You're not just learning. You're delaying execution while you figure it out. So I started hiring knowledge instead.

I hire people from other agencies or brands. 

What I get:

– Their pattern recognition
– Their mistakes already made
– Their 10,000 hours compressed into week one

When I hire someone who's already mastered a skill at a competitor's company, my business scales instantly.

Hiring knowledge is not just paying for output but rather for getting experience density.

It's all about understanding leverage.

At scale, learning yourself is slower than hiring it.

You don't need to master every skill to lead the person who does. Leadership isn't execution.

When you have more money than time, you shouldn't collect more skills. Hire them.

I flew back from Zanzibar just to speak at Eddie Maalouf's event tomorrow.

Eddie's putting together one of the biggest events in the agency space.

$300M+ combined revenue on one stage.

I'm covering "The Leverage Gap: why most agencies stay small and how to break out."

To be honest, most agency owners hit a ceiling they don't even see coming. Because they never built real leverage.

They're still the bottleneck, still doing the work and trading time for money at 7-figures.

That's what I call a "well-paid job with more stress".

Tomorrow I'm breaking down:

– Why your team can't replace you (and how to fix it)
– The exact systems that got us to 85+ people
– How we went from me doing everything to an 8-figure agency that runs without me

Dubai. Feb 3-5.

If you're running a 7-8 figure agency and want to actually scale past yourself, this event is it.

P.S. Will I see you tomorrow?

taplio

The Battle

Christian Hoppe

Jem Bourouh

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The Battle

Christian Hoppe

Jem Bourouh

Followers

Posts

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);}Jem Bourouh's LinkedIn Performance

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