🅰️ctionable growth tips | From €3M > €21M ARR profitably in 2 years | Growth Officer @Ruokaboksi

Looking to 2x your business? This is how data-driven growth marketing can get you there 👇

Results for clients across different industries:

🚀 Increased month-over-month online sales of a meal-kit company by 278 % with a -60 % lower CAC. How: implementing proper tracking, restructuring and optimizing ad accounts (Facebook and Google) together with conversion optimization.

🚀 Decreased cost per lead from around €115 to €8 within 2 days for an apartment construction company. How: restructuring their Facebook ad account.

🚀 54% more leads at a -55% lower cost per lead for a roofing service company. How: optimizing their channel mix, targeting and ads incl. Google search and display ads, and Facebook ads.

🚀 55% more leads for a B2B flooring service company. How: optimizing their channel mix, targeting and ads incl. Google search and display ads, and Facebook ads.

🚀 -47% cost per lead for a cleaning service company. How: using Messenger chatbot and Facebook ads.

🚀 0,67€ cost-per-install for a media app. How: optimizing ad placement creatives on Facebook and Instagram.

🚀 2483 leads acquired at a price of 0,68€ per lead for a coffee subscription company. How: Facebook and Instagram ads amplified with referral marketing.

🚀 -68% cost per lead for an online health coaching company. How: optimizing creatives, landing page, and Facebook ads.

🚀 55% increase in seasonal sales with a ROAS of 1,80 (profitably) for a consumer magazine company. How: optimizing Facebook ads including targeting and ads.

🚀 Increasing an underperforming search campaign's ROAS from under 1 to 2,8 for a consumer magazine company. How: optimizing campaign structure, keywords (also negative ones), ads, and extensions.

Areas I specialize in?
- Growth strategies
- Social media marketing
- Search engine marketing
- Search engine optimization
- Conversion optimization
- Viral marketing (especially SaaS and apps)
- Analytics

Experience?
- 10+ years in growth marketing
- Managed in total 10 mil euros (and growing) advertising budget
- Scaled accounts to over 300k euros per month incl. Meta, Google, TikTok and Pinterest ads
- Industries: Ecom, consumer products and services, software, apps, B2B
- Scope: From early-stage start-ups to multi-brand organizations
- Tools: Meta Ads, Google Ads, Pinterest Ads, LinkedIn Ads, TikTok Ads, Google Analytics, Supermetrics, Looker Studio, SEMrush, Google Search Console, Google Tag Manager, Zapier...


Start with a hello 👋 and let's see where that takes us.


Keep growing,
Heiman

#growth #marketing

Heiman Safeen 📦

eCommerce enthusiast | ex-Bigblue | 👇 Follow for daily tips: your brand from 1 to 10M€ in revenue (Detective Box, ROWSE...)

Back in 2022 I was media buying for ecommerce brands.

This where I discovered the industry's hidden growth barrier.

It wasn't poor targeting or insufficient budgets holding brands back. It was the relentless demand for fresh creative assets that no freelancer or in-house team could satisfy.

I watched promising campaigns crash after initial success because creative production couldn't keep pace with testing needs. Designers got overwhelmed. Performance suffered. Growth stalled.

This frustration led me to create Statiq - a design subscription service built specifically for high-growth ecommerce brands.

Our approach is refreshingly simple:
- 100+ designs monthly
- 72-hour turnarounds
- Performance-focused creatives

We've delivered over 20,000 designs for brands spending $100K+/month on ads, helping them match their creative output requirement without expanding their internal teams.

On LinkedIn, I share my journey scaling Statiq and the insights gained from working with the fastest-growing ecommerce brands in the industry like AG1, Jones Road Beauty and HexClad.

Follow me.

Simon Robert

I love overpaying for everything. It's one of the smartest business hacks that no one talks about.

Most founders negotiate salaries down. I negotiate them up.

Here's what typically happens: A candidate comes in with a number. Most founders think "Great, they're undervaluing themselves. Let me lock in the savings."

I do the opposite.

For example, if someone asks for $50K and the role is worth $85K, I tell them: "This is an $85K role. That's what you'll get."

Why would I voluntarily pay more?

Because people perform at the level they're paid to think at.

Pay someone below market, they deliver below-market work. They're already looking for the next job. They know you got a deal.

Pay someone what they're actually worth? They fight for you. They feel valued. They know you see their potential.

Here's my philosophy: I try to overpay everyone above market.

Why?

→ Great people stay and deliver exceptional work

→ Average people either level up or self-select out

Your reputation attracts more A-players who know you'll treat them right

The math is simple: One exceptional person at $150K outperforms three mediocre people at $50K.

Going into January, I'm not looking at revenue. I'm not looking at profit. I'm looking around asking: do I have tremendous people leading teams?

Because if you're not willing to overpay for great people, you're not serious about winning.

CEO @Statiq | Performance design agency | Clients include AG1, HexClad, Jones Road Beauty & 100+ more

YC says to never start a company with a friend. My childhood best friend and I completely broke that rule, and it’s been one of the best decisions of my life.

Jules and I have known each other since we were 5. We met in elementary school. We've had our fights and gone through periods where we barely talked.

But that history? It's exactly why this works.

We don't waste time on taboos. When something's wrong, we tell each other immediately and solve it. No passive-aggressive Slack messages or tension building up for weeks.

Most co-founders I know spend months dancing around equity splits, salary discussions, strategic disagreements.

We handle it in 10 minutes because we've already had the hard conversations and seen each other at our worst.

In high school. During fights. When things got messy. That foundation saves us weeks on every decision.

But there’s a trade-off:

Yes, the friendship is at risk. If Statiq fails catastrophically, we might lose more than just a business.

But we trust each other enough to handle it. That's the difference.

Most founders wait for perfect conditions - the perfect co-founder they've never fought with, the perfect market timing, the perfect product.

We learned that constraints create speed.

My advice if you want to build with a friend:

Don't do it unless you've already been through hell together.

If your friendship has only been sunshine and happy hours, you don't actually know this person yet.

Put yourself in tough situations first. Travel together when things go wrong. Have the conversations that make you uncomfortable.

Because when you're burning $50K a month with 8 weeks of runway left, you need a co-founder who's already seen you at 3am, stressed, scared, and still there.

Jules and I had that foundation before we wrote a single line of code.

That's why it works.

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We recently had our worst month in six months. So I made a $60,000 bet with no guarantee it would work. Three weeks later, we closed more deals than ever.

October: Biggest revenue month ever, but I knew we were heading into a wall.

November: Down 15-20%. Bad month. Exactly what I predicted.

Early December: I had a vision for a re-angle. I needed to go all-in on paid to prepare for Q1.

So I set our Meta budget to $60K. We were going to spend it all.

This was a six-figure move with no guarantee it would work.

But here's what happened: 

→ Tremendous amount of leads 

→ Five-figure retainer deals closing from our Meta ads 

→ Fast-tracked the entire Q1 pipeline

Most agencies would've pulled back after a down month. Cut spending. "Survived" until things improved.

We did the opposite.

Why? Because I had capital to lose. Not from paying ourselves huge salaries. From running lean and saving aggressively.

If we'd been in spending mode personally, we wouldn't have had the capital to make those moves.

You can't take big swings if you're spending everything you make.

I want to work at Statiq for the next 10 years. It's my favorite job.

That means staying paranoid about spending. Living below our means. Building capital so we can bet big when it matters.

Everyone talks about "betting on yourself."

But you can't bet if you've already spent the chips.

We just ran an ad that says we’re looking for "$5M/mo spenders only." My team called it career suicide. It became our highest-converting campaign ever.

Last month, my team showed me our new campaign concepts.

Professional. Safe. The usual agency stuff: "We create high-converting ads for DTC brands."

I killed them all.

"What about this instead?"

I pulled up this image: A nightclub entrance. Two bouncers. Velvet ropes. And a sign that says "$5M/mo spenders only."

Dead silence in the room.

"Simon, that's insane. Only 0.0001% of advertisers spend that much on Meta."

"Exactly."

My CMO pulled me aside after the meeting.

"We're going to lose 99% of potential clients with this. You're literally telling them not to work with us."

She was right. And that's exactly why we had to do it.

We had a choice:

Be good at talking to everybody. Or be exceptional at talking to our exact ICP.

The $5M/month spenders don't need another agency. They need THE agency that only exists for them.

The agency that gets why their creative production is fundamentally different from someone spending $50K.

When you're awfully exclusive, you don't compete. You're the only option.

Most companies are terrified of being this exclusive. They think it's bad business.

Then they wonder why nobody closes.

Your competitors can fight over everyone else.

We'll take the 0.0001% who see this ad and immediately know we're built for them.

That's not limiting your market. That's owning it.

18 months ago, I was a freelancer working in my pajamas. I now own a company with 36 people and growing by doing one thing most founders won’t.

Back then, I was taking client calls from my couch, building other people's visions. Always working alone.

But I wanted to build something of my own. So I started Statiq.

Suddenly, I went from doing everything myself to needing to build an actual team. Fast.

That's when I made a decision that changed everything about how I'm building my team:

Most founders think hiring is about filling seats. It's not. 

I hire for one thing: can this person handle what I'm about to throw at them?

When you're growing this quickly, comfort is the enemy. If everyone on your team wakes up feeling relaxed and 100% confident about the day ahead, you're probably not pushing hard enough.

I deliberately create challenges for the team. Not chaos for the sake of chaos, but real projects that force everyone to level up. 

If things are too quiet, it means we're not reaching for the next level.

And coasting doesn't get you from 34 to a 1,000-person company.

The people who thrive here are the ones who don't want predictability. They want to build something massive. 

They want the chaos that comes with growth.

Over the past year, I’ve seen the inside of dozens of creative agencies. Every single one of them will be bankrupt in 2 years if they don’t understand this simple truth: 

You're not competing with other agencies anymore. You're competing with one designer + Nano Banana.

Last week, one of my designers using AI produced what took our entire team 3 days to make last year.

Here's what's actually happening:

95% of agencies today are still craftsmen. 

One designer owns the entire process. Quality is inconsistent. They can't scale beyond the founder. They're charging $15K for work that AI will do for $50.

The 1% who survive will be factories. 

Fragmented specialized roles. AI plus human quality control. Infinitely scalable systems. Charging $5K but producing 20x the volume.

At Statiq, we already made the shift:

We killed the old model where one designer does everything. 

Now we have concept generators creating ideas at scale. AI producers are generating hundreds of variations. Designers assembling final assets. Both AI and humans check quality.

Result? One client spent nearly $1M on Meta for a single static ad.

The agencies that survive won't be the most creative.

They'll be the ones who understood first: In the age of AI, your business model is your competitive advantage.

When I told my team we were abandoning every European client to focus on America, they thought I'd lost it. But 3 months later, our close rate quadrupled from 15% to 60%

We had the right product. The right team. The right execution.

And we were still failing.

For months, Statiq was stuck trying to sell static ad services to European brands. Our close rate was terrible, deals took forever, and clients constantly pushed back on pricing.

But then I realized: we were selling meat to vegans.

The meat could be perfect - the best wagyu in the world. We could lower the price, sell it at cost.

But it doesn't matter.

Vegans don't want meat. It's not about the quality or price, it's about what they're looking for.

And we were doing exactly that.

Before, we were targeting French and European DTC brands. Anyone in our region who needed ads.

And in Europe, maybe 1 in 100 brands spend over $100K/month on Meta ads. But in the US, it's 10 in 100.

We were trying to sell a $5K/month service to European brands spending $50K per month on Meta. That's 10% of their entire ad budget just for creative.

Even if they loved our work, the math didn't work.

Here's what we changed:

We stopped targeting European brands. Started targeting brands spending $100K+/month on Meta - no matter where they were.

That one filter changed everything.

Suddenly, we were talking to brands where static ads represented 30-40% of their total ad spend, so our impact was immediate and measurable.

Close rates went from 15% to 60%. Deal cycles went from 3 months to 3 weeks. Pricing objections almost disappeared.

You can have the perfect team and the best product. But if you're selling to the wrong people, it won't matter.

Our acceptance rate for candidates we hire is 120x lower than Harvard’s. It sounds backwards, but it’s been a magnet for top talent.

I recently interviewed a 40-year-old executive with 15 years of experience. I made them tell me every manager's name, write it down, and describe what each would say about their weaknesses.

They were shocked. I'm 27.

But I've never had a hire not work out.

Here's my exact playbook (stolen from “Who: The A Method for Hiring”):

When I enter a hiring call, I become a robot. No small talk or “getting to know you.” 

I use this script, and I don't deviate.

"What were you hired to do? Who was your manager? What's their name? Please write it down. If I called them right now, what would they say about your strengths and weaknesses? Give me a specific example of that weakness showing up.”

I do this for every job they’ve had. Most candidates don't make it past job #3. 

They tap out. They get uncomfortable because I'm asking them to name their managers and write them down. Because they know I'm actually going to call.

Good candidates? They last the full hour, and they leave completely drained.

Here's what most founders get wrong:

Most founders treat hiring like a conversation. They want the candidate to like them, so they let charisma override the data. By the end, they've convinced themselves they found someone great.

I don't care if you like me. 

I've built a team that scales AI-powered creative to millions in spend without me touching anything because I was willing to be the bad guy for 75 minutes.

I wake up every morning convinced my company is about to crash and burn. It’s exactly how we’ve scaled to seven-figures in 18 months.

I wake up some mornings and everything at Statiq is running smoothly. Creatives are being delivered on time. Quality is good, clients are happy, my team is executing.

And I immediately think something's wrong.

If my stress level is low and everything feels comfortable, we're probably not pushing hard enough. We're not taking enough risks. And if we're not taking risks, we're not going to stay exceptional.

People say the CEO's job is to put out fires. I actually think the opposite is true. The CEO's job is to create fires.

If you're putting out fires every day, it means your processes are broken: your product isn't working, your workflow is a mess. You shouldn't be in firefighting mode constantly.

But if everything is running perfectly smooth? That's when you need to create the fire yourself.

Last month, our clients were telling us the platform is awesome. Everything works great. No complaints. If I listened to them, we'd keep everything the same and call it a win.

Instead, we're launching a complete platform overhaul. New UX, new UI, everything rebuilt from scratch.

Because I found what I think is a better way to brief ads and receive them. I think it's going to let brands brief more ads, get more winners, and scale their spend faster.

Our clients didn't ask for this - they were happy with what we had. But happy isn't exceptional.

Taking risks for the sake of taking risks actually matters. It keeps the workflow exciting for the team and pushes the business forward. 

Even if you fail, you learn something valuable.

I move with the assumption that we should always have significant projects moving forward.

Projects that feel a little scary. Projects where the outcome isn't guaranteed.

If it's not scary, we're not going hard enough.

I used to clear my entire calendar to save unhappy clients. Turns out, I was accidentally killing my company by listening to our customers.

During the early days at Statiq:

Clients would call upset. Performance is down. And they're thinking about leaving.

I'd go into full panic mode: crafting recovery plans, offering refunds, fixing everything.

Sometimes we saved the relationship. Sometimes we didn't. But either way, I was playing defense.

The problem I didn't see:

While I was in the weeds saving one account, I was ignoring the systemic issue creating 10 more problems.

I'd heroically save one client.

Meanwhile, three more would quietly leave because of the same underlying product issues.

Net result: we were still losing clients. Just slower.

What I do now:

I still receive every signal. Every complaint. Every red flag.

If a client is unhappy, yes, I'll jump on a call. We'll apologize if we made mistakes. We'll fix what we can.

But then I do something completely different. 

I sit down and think: what company-level change prevents this from happening to 10 more clients?

This approach cut our churn rate in half in 30 days. We're now working with 8-9 figure DTC brands like AG1, Jones Road, and HexClad.

Being in the weeds feels productive. It feels like leadership. But it's actually avoidance.

The real work is systemic. And you can't see the system when you're drowning in tactical fires.

I just watched the most viral AI product of the year fumble an 8-figure opportunity. They got everything right except the one thing that actually matters.

Cluely went viral a few months ago. Millions of views. Everyone was talking about it.

It's a tool that lets you cheat on anything with a second screen. Job applications, tests, interviews. The demo video was incredible, the product actually works, the go-to-market was brilliant.

They could be doing 8-figures in MRR right now. But I don't think they are - and I think I know why.

The product is great, the distribution worked, and they got massive attention and tons of users signing up. 

But they're selling expensive AI-powered software to broke college students who want to cheat on exams.

Those students aren't going to pay real money. They'll pay $5, maybe $10 a month if you're lucky.  

Meanwhile, companies like Lovable and other AI coding tools are selling similar technology.

They're making eight figures because they're selling to developers and businesses who actually have money.

Cluely could be doing the same thing. Take that exact technology and sell it to the corporate world - people who would pay five figures for annual contracts.

But instead, they're trying to monetize students. And it's probably not working nearly as well as it should.

This is the trap a lot of founders fall into. They build something that goes viral. They get a ton of attention, users are flooding in, and they assume that means they've won.

But virality doesn't equal revenue.

You can have the right product, the right distribution, the right delivery. But if you're selling to people who can't or won't pay you real money, none of it matters.

Meta just gave every ad agency the tool they've been begging for. And it's about to destroy them.

Meta just dropped a new update to the ad library. Now you can see "low impression count" tags on ads, start dates, total impressions, and running time. Here's what this actually means for agencies and DTC brands: 

Here's what actually changed:

Before: You had to guess which ads were working based on how long they'd been running.

Now: Meta shows you performance indicators at a glance. No more guessing.

Everyone's treating this like a gift. "Finally, we can see what's working!"

But here's what they're missing:

Savvy marketers already knew which ads were performing. If something ran for 6+ months, it was working.

This update just makes it official.

So what's the real impact?

Two things are about to happen:

1/ Competitive research just got easier

You can now filter out the noise faster. See what's actually spending. Identify patterns in brands' creative testing cycles.

This is useful for market research and trend analysis.

2/ The best brands will get even better at hiding

If you can't find a brand's ad account, you can't analyze their ads. It's that simple.

I expect we'll see more:

- White-label page structures
- Complex advertorial funnels
- Multiple page networks that are hard to trace

The DTC brands that understand paid media - they love this game. It's about being strategic with what you show and what you hide.

This is just the next evolution.

I'm not worried. If anything, this pushes agencies to be better at operational security.

The brands that rely on copying competitors were already losing. Now they'll just lose faster with better data about what to copy.

The brands that focus on original creative concepts and proprietary workflows? This changes nothing for them.

At Statiq, we don't win because we copy what's working. We win because we have a system for generating net-new concepts at scale.

You can see all our ads. You can see which ones spend big. Doesn't matter.

You still don't have our workflow.

That's the real competitive advantage in 2026: not what you create, but how you create it.

Last week, a new client told us they strictly forbid AI. We used it anyway, and they called it the best work they'd ever seen. 

AI is ingrained in our design process. So we created, as we always do.

When the first delivery came in, they loved it. Said they were the best ads they’d ever seen.

When we mentioned that parts of it were AI-assisted, they were shocked. They couldn't tell the difference.

This happens every week at Statiq.

Here's the thing about AI that most people get wrong: 

You have two camps right now. 

The first camp thinks AI is evil, that it averages everything out and has no soul. 

The second camp thinks AI is going to replace every job, that you should fire your designers and just use Midjourney.

But both are completely wrong.

The truth is actually what Elon figured out with Tesla. 

When he first launched the factory, he tried to automate everything. Full robots and minimal humans - he thought that was the future.

Their production completely collapsed. 

Now Tesla runs on a system with 50% humans and 50% machines. And it works perfectly.

That's exactly how creative services are going to work with AI. You don't remove the humans, you reorganize them around the machine.

At Statiq, we have designers who operate with AI and know what good output looks like. We have QA specialists who review everything and maintain our quality standards. And we have people who set the standards for the entire system.

We have access to the highest-resolution AI models out there. We can generate unlimited outputs. 

We deploy ads in 4K resolution. Brands can't access this on their own, and even if they could, they wouldn't know what to do with it.

But that's not actually why our ads work.

They work because our designers know what good looks like. They can spot the one winner in 100 outputs and know how to input the system correctly to get the results we need.

AI without human taste is completely useless. A bad designer with AI makes bad ads faster. A great designer with AI makes exceptional ads 10x faster.

That's the entire difference.

PS: our own top performer this week - Humanly ideated, AI generated!

Everyone asks me if they should drop out to start a company.

My answer is always the same: absolutely not.

I run a 7-figure business at 27. I dropped out. And I went back.

Here's why.

The dropout narrative is seductive. Zuckerberg, Jobs, Gates - we love these stories. They make us feel like college is just a speed bump on the way to greatness.

But nobody talks about what you lose.

I spent a few years in college before I left. Best years of my life. The friendships that didn't require Slack. The 2 AM conversations about nothing. The freedom to be young without the weight of payroll sitting on your chest.

I thought leaving early would give me an edge. Get me ahead.

It didn't. So I went back and finished.

And honestly? I'm grateful I did.

Here's the thing - you're not behind. I used to torture myself watching founders exit at 24 while I was still figuring things out. Total waste of energy.

I started Statiq at 25, not 22. Didn't matter.

Go to college. Be present. Build the person before you build the company.

Then when you're done? Go all in. Sacrifice everything. Outwork everyone.

But don't rush to skip the years you'll spend the rest of your life wishing you could revisit.

You have more time than you think.

taplio

The Battle

Heiman Safeen 📦

Simon Robert

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