Greg Meade

CEO & Co-Founder of CROSSNET | Forbes 30 Under 30

Gregory Meade is the co-founder and Chief Executive Officer of CROSSNET and Good Sport. Forbes 30 Under 30 Honoree.

Greg is an adept marketer forged in the start-up world with a deep social media background. Eight years of building multiple successful companies has taught him how to assemble the perfect teams and grow as an operator.

Products in Walmart, Dick's Sporting Goods, Academy Sports, Toys R Us, Scheels, and more.

Featured on Forbes, ESPN, The Today Show, Entrepreneur, Fox Sports and more.

CEO & Co-Founder

Building the biggest backyard sport to ever exist.

We thought getting into Walmart would change everything.

It almost broke us.

We had just hit our first big wave with CROSSNET…  sales were up, retailers were calling, and Walmart said yes.

Dream come true, right? Not exactly.

They put our $150 game next to $5 footballs.

We barely moved any units.

Everything got marked down and we took the hit.

That one decision set us back a year.

Everyone talks about “getting into retail,” but here’s the truth: It’s not about getting in. It’s about staying in.

Start small. Test one store, one region, one chain.

Learn what sells, how it’s merchandised, and what content actually drives people to go in-store. Then scale.

I get a lot of DMs from founders who want to go big in retail fast.

If you want help landing stores and keeping them, I’m offering 20% off 1:1 advisor sessions on Intro until December 15.

Comment “Interested Intro” and the team will DM you a private code to book.

Link to book is in the first comment.

ai tool Nano Banana standard version compared to it's pro version  🍌
 
We're living in scary times...

No alternative text description for this image

My new company is having more knockoffs on Amazon appear faster than CROSSNET ever did. 

When will Amazon stop allowing Chinese ripoffs with their AI images to take marketshare for half the price?

post 100 trial reels

one will always stick

Daniel James

Flight Performance

We accelerate growth for ambitious brands.

Enabling you to acquire more customers, more profitably at greater scale, and build lasting customer loyalty.

Founder & CEO @ Flight Performance

Bitesized Podcast

A weekly podcast and newsletter created by & made for entrepreneurs, growth marketers, and brand owners.

Founder

CROSSNET

Angel Investor

Obvi

CALIWATER Cactus Water

Spudsy

Social Chain Agency US

Amobee

Senior Strategic Account Lead

Turn

Senior Account Manager

Founder & CEO @ Flight Performance: Accelerating growth for eCommerce brands with Growth Strategy, Customer Acquisition & Customer Retention | Host of Entrepreneurship, Brand Building & Marketing Podcast Bitesized🎙

Ex: Client Strategy lead MySpace, AOL & Turn, before launching my own performance marketing agency in 2019.

Founder of Flight Performance: we help brands acquire more customers, more profitably, at greater scale & building lasting customer loyalty.

Brands we have helped drive profitable growth include Represent Clo, Kappa, Huel, Rockstar Originals, Ghost Golf, Oh Polly, Crown Affair, Before You Speak Coffee, Diet Starts Monday + more.

Core Capabilities Include: 

Customer Acquisition: Growth Strategy, Performance Creative, Media Buying
Customer Retention: Email, SMS, Subscription & Loyalty

To learn more about how we can work together shoot us an email at hello@flightperformance.co

Testimonials:

"We partnered with Flight Performance for over 2 years and they were foundational in our ability to scale as fast and successfully as we have. Their expertise in creative strategy, media buying and retention marketing made them an invaluable partner to Ghost Golf, and a true extension of our team. Highly recommend" - Andy Nalla, Founder & CEO Ghost Golf

“From the outset, Flight Performance demonstrated a deep understanding of our business goals and objectives. Their data-driven and strategic approach to customer acquisition and customer retention contributed significantly to the growth Crown Affair has been able to achieve over the last 3 years of working together” - Elaine Choi | President Crown Affair

“The Flight Performance team's ability to reduce our Customer Acquisition costs, lead by creative strategy, & Influencer content was really impressive. They worked hard to understand our goals and executed against the game plan, with great communication and results to support” - Howie Zisser | Marketing Director Public Rec


Host of Bitesized:

A weekly podcast featuring top entrepreneurs, brand builders & marketers giving actionable insights you can apply today.

Listen on Spotify: tinyurl.com/Bitesized-Spotify
Listen on Apple: tinyurl.com/Bitesized-Apple
Watch on YouTube: tinyurl.com/Bitesized-YouTube

“One of my favorite podcasts. Great content packed with actionable insights.” - Neal Goyal | Tapcart
"Hands down one of the most valuable podcasts I listened to in this field" - Ben Simons

Founder & CEO

mint is a full-service performance marketing agency. we help disruptive dtc/ecommerce brands accelerate growth with cutting edge strategies across creative, influences, paid media, email & sms. 

Last Friday I visited one of our clients new HQ's here in LA.

We've been working with them now for 3 years, this will be our 3rd Q4 with them and they will do more revenue this month, than in the entire first year where we started working with them in Q3.

Its mind blowing the size of operation needed to support a $100M+ fashion brand & over the years, visiting their offices and warehouses just continue to expand and expand.

Outside of great product, great marketing & collaboration, one thing stands out as to why this partnership has now extended over that timeframe. 

Its not just performance. It's trust.

We have had down months & performance challenges along the way, but they never doubted our ability to be the team to navigate through the good and the challenging.

In part, that trust has been earned and given due to the growth we have collectivley achieved.

But its also the fundamentals of how you/we show up every day.

You either rise or fall to the level of expectations & standards you set for your team… and then accept.

Out-care,
Out-learn,
Out-own every challenge & outcome.

Here's to another monster Q4. Lets see how big next years warehouse is.

Founder @ Flight Performance: Helping fashion & apparel brands acquire more customers, more profitably at greater scale & build lasting customer loyalty | Host of Entrepreneurship & Brand Building Podcast @ Bitesized🎙

The Founder/Leader Evolution

The further you go as a founder, the more you realize leadership isn’t a title you hold. 

It’s a responsibility you earn every day through your behaviour, your clarity, and your consistency.

Early on, you run the company by doing everything.
Later, you run the company by hiring the people who run everything.

And that shift is where most founders get stuck.

Real leadership is quiet, disciplined, and often uncomfortable. It’s not about being the loudest voice in the room. It’s about being the one who sees the problem early, asks the right questions, and creates the conditions for better thinking and higher standards.

It looks less like “directing” and more like:

Being the one who keeps the team anchored when the environment gets chaotic.
Being the one who removes ambiguity so everyone knows what matters.
Being the one who reinforces standards when it’s inconvenient, not only when it’s easy.
Being the one who can zoom into details when it counts, and zoom out when the team needs perspective.
Being the one to set the pace.
Being the one who steps in with accountability, not defensiveness.

Great leaders operate from a place of service because they’re not optimising for ego, they’re optimizing for outcomes.

They want the team to think better, do better, and become better.
They want clarity, not control.
They want progress, not perfection.
They want truth, not comfort.

I often recall the Ray Dalio quote: 'embrace reality and deal with it'

And its such an obvious yet hard thing to always strive for as a leader, beacuse the reality doesnt always look pretty.

At a certain stage, leadership becomes less about deciding and more about developing. 

Less about pushing and more about guiding. Less about doing the work and more about building the environment where great work happens consistently.

The best leaders don’t position themselves above the team. They position themselves beneath the mission.

And they show up every day asking one question: What does the team/company need from me today to move closer to the standard we said we wanted?

When you lead from that place, you build a team that is resilient, aligned, bought into the mission, and capable of carrying the company far further than you ever could on your own.

TLDR
- Leadership evolves from doing the work to developing the people who do the work.
- Great leaders remove ambiguity, uphold standards, and operate from service, not ego.
- The best leaders don’t sit above the team. They sit beneath the mission.
- Leadership is the daily discipline of creating the environment where great work becomes normal.

Our Biggest Black Friday Ever.

$31,250,368 in revenue achieved on $7,149,055 in spend for our clients at an avg 18% ACoS. We beat forecasts, hit our ACoS targets and were on average up 32% up YoY.

A huge collaborative team effort across the board from the flight performance team and our clients. Still analyzing some aspects, however some quick high level takeaways:


1. Brands went early, consumers went late. 

We were pacing slightly behind on some brands leading into Friday, but the surge was huge.  Consumers are getting more and more savvy. They are not tricked by false urgency. They know Black Friday (and Cyber Monday) will be the biggest actual offers.
 
This is something brands will have to re-strategize & forecast around in future years. 


2. The months leading into Black Friday are crucial. 

Building demand, how you manage your media spend against new, engaged, existing, in the build up to big marketing moments, how you balance your email/sms cadence, in the months (and really, across the entire year) have meaningful impacts on big marketing moments such as BFCM. 


3. Price isn't the only variable.

Discounts work. Value works better. It's all in how you position. 
The key thing here is do not just take a blanket approach to everything. 
How you treat VIPs, new customers, engaged segments, lapsed... the goal of BFCM is not to sell everything at such a discount it kills any margin...
Its to push fence sitters over the line, its to increase LTV of existing customers, its to convert built up demand of new audiences, and sure... shift some overstock of inventory and clear the shelves for the new year.

4. Evergreen Ads + Billboards

I mentioned this in a pre-BFCM post: keep your evergreen ads on and run billboard style promotional ads. This worked incredibly well for us across the board. Existing ads have learnings, the billboard ads punch people in the face with the offer. We set things up in a way to guarantee delivery of the BFCM only posts, while being able to maintain performance across evergreen.

From an agency perspective:

- We tripled our ad and email output for the month
- Had 24/7 coverage for clients to leave no stone unturned on performance
- Morning, Afternoon, Evening optimization check in points, strategic decisions made, client updates sent

Massive shoutout to the whole Flight Performance team, our clients, and the partners that support us.

How To Win On META

So often we hear:

- We cant scale
- When we try and scale performance drops

And it nearly always comes down to the same fundamental issues.

- Overly fragmented campaigns and budget
- No clarity on audience definitions/segmentation
- CBO, ABO, Cost Caps - all and every manual tinkering applied
- No structured creative strategy
- Optimized against ROAS, not business metrics
- Siloed channel execution and measurement

Treating paid media like they are day trading on the stock market: chasing short-term wins, reacting to every fluctuation, rebuilding campaigns daily.

The winners in 2025–2026 will be those who build data-driven creative systems, & treat META as part of the broader customer acquisition ecosystem, anchored to actual business results not in platform performance.

The way to maximize your META performance, as part of your broader acquisition ecosystem: 

- Creative Testing Framework

Stop testing 100 ads that say the same thing & look the same.
Start testing different concepts, unique narratives, hooks, and tones that speak to specific audience mindsets.

Think about creative layering: 

Cold: discovery & narrative validation
Engaged: Angle reinforcement & social proof
Repeat: Offer testing, product education, retention triggers

For fashion & apparel brands specifically, collection ads, instant experience ads, how you 'merchandize' in your ads is crucial.

- Creative Diversity

Meta’s algorithm rewards diversity over pure volume. 
Volume comes in waves: higher volume of diverse creative to find winners, narrow down and scale whats working, adding more volume through iteration/new concepts. Rinse and repeat.

- Data Consolidation

Day Trading mentalities don't just keep you in a perpetual state of making decisions on todays and yesterdays performance; they encourage constant in platform tinkering.

Consolidate your ad account to prioritize creative testing & scaled campaigns based on winners. This can be product specific, category specific, collection specific - depends on the brand/products.

Your goal is to maximize the signals fueling the AI/Machine learning, minimize fragmentation of campaigns and budget, and limit time spent in learning phases. 

- Anchor to Business Goals

The biggest thing with Meta outside of creative priority & data consolidation is to anchor it into your broader customer acquisition strategy. 

Your ROAS doesn't mean jack shit if its not driving new customer acquisition at the overall target nMER/MER.

You cannot execute META in a vacuum to your other channels and be so beholden to daily in platform performance fluctuations. 

Case in point for this sports apparel brand we started working with in September.
Increased revenue, increased MER/nMER, Decreased ACoS.

TL;DR:

- Stop day-trading your ad account against todays and yesterdays performance.
- Optimize performance to broader business objectives & omni-channel metrics
- Creative Diversity > Volume to achieve the right blend of both

“Hire smart people and get out of their way” sounds like great leadership advice.

The problem? It’s oversimplified and in practice, it often leads to chaos, not high performance.

True leadership isn’t about disappearing once you’ve hired talented people.

It’s about creating the right balance between autonomy, coaching, and alignment.

I use the 10:80:10 framework:

10%: Give clarity up front. Define the problem, set direction, and connect it to company goals.

80%: Let your team run. This is where smart people thrive, executing, iterating, and solving.

10%: Step back in. Review, coach, and refine to ensure work ties back to the broader mission.

And sometimes, that mix shifts. Maybe it’s 20:70:10 or 20:50:30 depending on the person, project, or stage of growth.

The point is:

👉 Great leadership isn’t “hands-off.”
👉 It’s structured delegation that empowers people to perform while still driving continuous improvement and alignment.

“getting out of the way” without coaching or alignment doesn’t make you a good leader.
It just makes you absent & even the smartest individuals need and likely want coaching & challenging.

Brands say they want breakout growth.

But their actions say otherwise.

They want the upside of experimentation without the discomfort of failure and that’s exactly why they plateau.

Every breakout moment in brand growth starts with an experiment that could’ve flopped.

The problem is most brands don’t actually test, they tinker, relying on 'whats worked' even if whats worked hasn't gotten them exactly where they want to be.

I see this so much too with brands launching into new markets. How does a UK or AUS brand resonate in the US, and vise versa. You cant just rely or think that whats worked in your home market is going to resonate. 

Growth doesn’t come from creative certainty, it comes from creative diversification that’s well structured and never getting stale. repetitive. lost in a sea of sameness.

Being willing to push boundaries, constantly testing and not limiting testing variables.

To be blunt, some brands need to get out of their own way!!! sorrynotsorry.

When you remove the fear of failure from your creative process, you remove the ceiling on performance.

You can’t find breakout growth if you only run “safe” ideas.

The brands that win are the ones that treat creative testing as R&D, not risk.

Experiment often. Measure everything.

Every “failure” is just data that gets you one step closer to breakout growth.

We’re in a Data-Rich, Clarity-Poor Ecosystem.

Let’s take a 9-figure brand’s marketing ecosystem.

Minimum, they’re running 6 figures in paid media daily across Meta, Google, TikTok, CTV, Programmatic, OOH...

Add to that:

- Thousands of influencers and affiliate agreements
- Owned social platforms, PR, SEO, podcast ads, newsletters
- Sophisticated email & SMS retention programs
- Billboards, pop ups, sponsorships
- POS across DTC, TikTok Shop, owned stores, retail, app channels.

They’ve got a BI tool, an attribution platform, GA4, creative analytics dashboards, and in-platform data from every channel.

Add to THAT:
- Silod execution of all channels listed
- No single strategic and metric objective
- No unified execution of core performance channels

Thats the common scenario of brands that we initially audit and work with at Flight. Successful, growing, but on hard mode.

The challenge with a data rich environment is, every source tells a story. None of them tell the same one. Execution is mostly anchored to making INDIVIDUAL channels 'successful'

Data-rich, clarity-poor. Silod execution.

Here’s the real issue:

It’s not a lack of data. It’s a lack of structure around it & interpretation to make the correct decisions. 

Data paralysis sets in where more time is spent trying to make the data make sense, than is spent asking the right questions of the data, to make better decisions.

Most brands have the data to make better decisions they just haven’t built the framework that connects it to meaningful action, nor are they asking the right questions.

The best growth marketers and teams simplify data. The unify strategy and execution across ALL channels, held to key north star metrics. 

They ask the right questions of the data & use it to both: understand where you are, and what levers to pull to get you to where you need to be.

What are the right north star metrics?

- Customer Acquisition: what’s driving profitable new customer growth.
- Customer Retention: what’s sustaining it through repeat behavior.
- LTV: what’s compounding it over time.
- Contribution Margin.

Everything else creative analytics, media metrics, platform data should anchor up into those.

If you can’t answer:

What’s driving efficient new customer acquisition?
What’s driving higher repeat behavior and LTV?
How do these connect across your channels?

Then you don’t need more data.
You need a better omni channel strategy & data clarity.

TL;DR:
- We don’t have a data problem in marketing, we have a clarity problem.
- The best marketers are the ones who ask the right questions of simplified data sets.
- Silod execution will keep you in data rich clarity poor mode.
- Unify acquisition, retention and treat channels as levers to achieve north star metrics.

The Best Growth Marketing Teams Do This ONE Thing Better Than Others:

As a growth marketing company, our job is to drive profitable customer acquisition at scale and drive higher repeat rates and CLTV for our clients.

Initial analysis is always historical.

What have you done, to get to where you are.

This provides context on how effective and efficient a brand has been at driving the right business outcomes through paid media & email/sms.

Where most come unstuck however is their analysis lands them on tactics.

- Implement x ad account structure
- Test y type of creative
- Send more emails

It's what I call the 'day trading' approach to growth marketing. Forever reactionary to todays and yesterdays performance.

The best growth marketers use this information to create a roadmap for your acquisition and retention ecosystem.

The apply predictive modeling to forecast future business results - the tactics are then levers to attain them.

How this looks like in practice at a high level.

Day Trading: 

A brand is spending $10k per day at a 4 MER - thats good lets spend more today and see how it goes.

Growth Strategy:

1. How has spend influenced nMER, MER and your repeat customer cohorts?

This information provides the foundation for budgeting and forecasting against a revenue goal - both at the channel level and inter-channel audience segmentations.

Day Trading:

Lets test more statics and videos and see what works.

Growth Strategy:

1. The main drivers of performance have been x static, y video on xyz products.

This information is used, in correlation with product sales velocity data to align creative strategy with hero products, collections, categories. Creative strategy and diversification is then applied based on this information, and differentiated against based on funnel stage (hello correct audience segmentations in platform to be as accurate as possible).

TLDR:

- You cant 'day trade' your way to sustainable and scaleable growth.
- The best growth marketers predict & shape future growth as a cohesive ecosystem
- The best growth marketers use creative, budgets, channels etc as levers to attain that goal

No-One Goes On Social Media HOPING To See Your Ads

People open social platforms to be entertained, inspired, informed, to discover, not to be or feel interrupted.

So the brands that grow aren't the ones pushing more aggressively. They’re the ones who earn attention first, then earn the right to convert it.

And what’s changing is how that attention is being earned.

Across IG, TikTok, and YouTube, you can how this has evolved to where each platform provides brands a different way of connecting with consumers.

Short-form that creates pattern interruption

Content that signals a brand actually has a point of view.

Long-form that slows people down - Founder stories, design process, decisions, philosophy. The kind of depth that gives a brand weight and makes the product feel considered. Behind-the-brand content that gives consumers context and relatability.

The thinking, the conviction, the standards that shape the product and the experience.

This matters because product-market fit in fashion has evolved.
It’s no longer just do people want this product?

It’s now: do they want the product, understand the message immediately, and feel something about the brand delivering it?

Product gets you into the conversation.

The story, the positioning, the message, the emotional connection is what moves you from “interesting” to “inevitable.”

Consumers are selective with what they give their attention to.
You don’t earn that attention by posting more.
 
You earn it by saying something that matters, showing something worth noticing, and building a world people actually want to enter.

If you're building or marketing a fashion brand today, the question isn't:

“How do we get people to care?”

 It’s: “What are we saying, what are we showing, and why is it worth stopping for?”

TLDR:

- People don’t connect with ads; they want stories worth their attention.
- Short-form sparks interest; long-form builds depth and trust.
- In fashion, PMF = product + message clarity + emotional positioning.
- Brands win by earning attention through effective storytelling.

This will be my 6th EOY recap season for Flight Performance

Here is how things have progressed over that time.

Year 1: Damn, Im actually able to work for myself, sign clients, hire people? Maybe this could actually work.
Year 2: This is WORKING. Next year lets go big.
Year 3: Scaling isn't that easy, loads broke, but lessons were learnt.
Year 4: Bringing in investors created and highlighted challenges beyond the obvious day to day, we have to go back to bootstrapped mentality and our core capabilities. Biggest lesson - the right people in the right seats is the #1 thing that dictates business performance. 
Year 5: We've really clarified our reason for existing, our approach, big time lessons in terms of broader business partnerships but we survived them & got better as a result, next year is all about foundational refinement - scale can only happen off the back of that unless you accept chaos and mediocrity.

Year 6:

This year we got super clear on our vision, mission, approach, standards and expectations. 

It set the precedent for who and how we hired. How we held teams accountable. How we structured the org. How we communicate to our teams. 

We clarified our ICP, removed and turned away partnerships that didn't align. 

Standards across the board increased significantly. Our approach tailored to our ICP - results improved to this level of focus. 

We leant into data, tech and AI in a meaningful way to supercharge our teams, and further improve the outcomes and experience we deliver our clients.

We got SUPER close to our business model. Refined scopes, refined operations, reviewed them maniacally, adjusting accordingly.

So much more, which I will highlight in a future post...

My biggest takeaway from this broader look back is... business goes in seasons.

Growth isn't linear. 

Growth isn't only just about revenue. 

We have had bigger top line financial years than 2025 - but 2025 is by far the best year in terms of our team, our capabilities, the quality of our client partnerships, the outcomes achieved for our clients, our business fundamentals, how the team shows up and the quality of our work, communication.

We have a world class team. 

We have a unique approach thats proven.

We have exceptional, disruptive brand partners.

We set, met and continue to push the highest level of standards and expectations we have for ourselves, our work and the outcomes we deliver.

Starting a business is hard.
Scaling a business is hard.
Maintaining and refining a business over multiple years, thats where you prove your value and abilities.

Predictability in Performance Marketing Is Hard

Every brand wants growth.
More revenue month over month.
Lower or stable acquisition costs.
Higher repeat rates and LTV.

Yet most brands struggle to achieve this consistently. And even when they do, they struggle to maintain it. Predicting it? Forget it.

Not because execution is bad.
Not because the channels stopped working.

But because there’s no forward-facing strategy anchoring everything back to the actual business, not just what the platforms are reporting.

This is where many performance teams fail.

They end up day trading.
Optimizing to short-term fluctuations.
Reacting to yesterday’s data.
Chasing efficiency signals that look good in isolation but don’t compound.

When I founded Flight Performance, I realised quickly that being a great executional paid media or lifecycle team wasn’t enough.

The real value of a growth partner isn’t just delivering outcomes today.

It’s helping a brand predict, and shape the future, with enough confidence to make better decisions across the entire business.

When you lack predictability;

Inventory decisions are harder
Cash flow becomes uncertain
Executional efforts are guesswork
Budget allocation becomes emotional
Everything turns transactional and reactive

The best growth teams plan, forecast, build systems that connect marketing inputs to business outcomes.

That’s why every brand we work with operates against what we call Flight Plans.

Rolling 30-60-90 day growth plans. And for mature clients, 12-month forecasts and roadmaps.

Built on:

Marketing moments
Inventory realities
Omni-channel strategy, budgets, executional alignments
Email and SMS calendars
Historical performance and trend analysis
Seasonality
Leading indicator metrics that actually matter

The question we are always answering is simple:

What do we expect revenue to be, day by day, while holding required nMER, MER, ACoS and contribution margin targets?

That answer dictates:

Creative strategy
Lifecycle strategy
Channel mix
Budget allocation
+

In 2025, across our client base, we've landed within roughly 7 percent of forecasted revenue while still hitting required efficiency metrics.

Now we’re pushing this even further by building predictive models, leveraging AI on top of years of data and operator experience, to make planning even more accurate and forward-looking.

I'd even argue predictability at a lower base is better than Yo-Yo performance at a higher one. 


TLDR
- Most brands struggle because they 'day trade' for short term performance.
- The best growth marketers focus on predictability, forecasting and business alignment.
- Execution without a forward-facing plan leads to reactive decision making.
- Sustainable growth comes from connecting marketing inputs to real business outcomes.

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