Glow25

Glow25 ist die europaweit führende Plattform für Schönheit, die kein Alter kennt. Unser fachübergreifendes Team an Expert:innen aus Biologie, Gesundheit & positiver Psychologie entwickelt funktionale Lebensmittel, Gewohnheiten und Community-Erfahrungen, die Menschen dabei unterstützen, sich beim Blick in den Spiegel (wieder) wohl in ihrer Haut zu fühlen.

Co-Gründer & Strategischer CEO

Primal State Performance GmbH

Die Primal State Performance GmbH gilt als eine der führenden Plattformen für gesunde Leistungsfähigkeit im deutschsprachigen Raum. 

Unser +100-köpfiges Team entwickelt und vertreibt funktionale Lebensmittel, Techniken und Hilfsmittel für mehr Energie, Fokus und Wohlbefinden im Alltag.

🌱 Co-Founder Glow25 | 🚀 Top 100 Fastest Growing Companies Europe | 🇩🇪 Top 3 fastest growing eCom in GER | ❣️ Top 3 Best Employers in Berlin | 🎤 New Podcast: LebensWerk (Link in BIO)

✍️ Hey! My name is Rafa. I am currently spending my days as the Strategic CEO of Glow25, a brand with a mission to change the narrative of "aging" from something we are scared of to something we can celebrate. If you don't know this brand, and you are based in DACH, it's not unlikely that your (grand)parents do. The fact, that...

...our team of around 120 people is nominated as:

🌎 Top 100 fastest growing companies in Europe (Financial Times Europe), 
🇩🇪 Top 3 fastest growing eCom brand in Germany (Statista), 
❣️ Top 3 best rated employer in Berlin (Kununu)...

...literally gives me chills.

Not, because our legendary team is bootstrapping this project from 0 to 9-figure level in around 3 years without classical investment rounds or VC money. 

BUT...

...because this "street credibility" gives me a chance to respectfully discuss with old school founders, CEOs, and leaders of other companies...

...if building a sustainably successful business and team REALLY requires elbows, blame & shame games, systematic passive-aggressive behavior, a culture of pressure and fear, or reducing humans to their mere performance.

Humbly, I am convinced that it does not. 

🌱 My intention on this platform is to share my journey as founder, leader, CEO, and human with the mission to have a meaningful impact in this life:

How? Not by „saving the world“ or „building an empire“ or „legacy“.

But by courageously discovering and expressing who I am, and why I am here. 

If these words resonante, happy to connect.

R

Rafael Frenk

🤯 Rekordmonat: Während sich Marketer weltweit auf Black Friday vorbereiten, ist der „Glowember” schon halb vorbei.

Dieses Jahr hat das Glow25-Team die bislang durchdachteste, umfangreichste und kreativste Kampagne für Black November erstellt. 

Wir nennen sie "Glowwember". 

Das Ergebnis:

Rekordumsätze mit dreistelligem Wachstum im eigenen Onlineshop.

Wir haben schon jetzt bereits an 3 Tagen den Umsatz des Black Friday letzten Jahres übertroffen. 

Absolut wild. Und ich bin super stolz auf das gesamte Team ❣️

Wer im E-Com arbeitet, kennt die Situation vor dem großen Sale:

Bestände checken.
Rabatte kalkulieren.
Creatives entwickeln.
Kampagnen aufsetzen.
Onlineshop vorbereiten.

und so weiter …

Obendrauf noch hohe Ziele und maximaler Druck.

Ich kenne viele E-Com Brands, die während dieser Zeit sogar eine Urlaubssperre verhängen und trotzdem nicht hinterherkommen. 

Und das ist völlig nachvollziehbar.

Als Glow25 noch viel kleiner war und noch Primal State hieß, war ich für die Black November Kampagnen verantwortlich, das Team damals waren noch 2 weitere Kollegen.

Ich weiß noch, wie ich Tag ein Tag aus bis nach Mitternacht am Schreibtisch saß und irgendwie noch Copy, Landeseiten, Emails und Co. zusammengebaut habe. 

Also falls du eine kleine E-Com-Brand gerade baust: I feel you. 

Heute läuft das alles etwas anders.

Glow25 ist erwachsener. 

Wir haben dedizierte Teams für Content, Performance Marketing, Logistik, Finance und alle anderen Departments, die bei einem Sale involviert sind.

Gefühlt "jede Person" im Team hat irgendwo mit angepackt. Und bereits viele Wochen vor November mit dem Kampagnenbau gestartet.

Jetzt geht es darum, den November auch erfolgreich abzuschließen. 

Auch unser Logistik-Team darf die Rekordumsätze in zeitnahe Lieferungen für unsere Kundinnen in ganz Europa verwandeln.

Woran ich mich noch gewöhnen muss:

👉 Das alles passiert in meiner Rolle als Ex-CEO und Gesellschafter komplett ohne mein Involvement.

Ein Beweis, dass Glow25 von und mit einem fantastischen Team geführt wird.

Vielen Dank an das gesamte Team für euren Einsatz.

Let’s grow & glow together ✨

🌍 Scaling news: Glow25 almost quit international markets, now we are exploding. What changed? 

Ok ... let’s talk about failures.

At Glow25, while the DACH market was booming, we struggled to repeat our growth story in international markets for some time. 

And honestly, we were disappointed. And asked ourselves:

How can this be?

We had a strong international team under Lea Wagner, Marcele Guimarães, and Clarisse Pieter. 

We even installed a special task force, the: 

🥷 "ISU - International Scaling Unit" 

... that was working tirelessly to create powerful marketing funnels in markets outside of DACH.

The result? We grew nicely.

But Glow25 does not like "nice".
We love BAM. 

So what was the issue? 

Not the people. They are highly talented, dedicated, and great.

The issue was our "company mindset" that was driven by us founders, and especially by me as the former CEO. 

I personally had a huge blind spot in creating our organization. 

Yes, we were speaking English. 
Yes, we hired international talent. 

But the company identity was "German", 99% of everything we were doing was for the DACH market, with international being an afterthought.
 
The consequence:

No alignment on international product launches.
No alignment on marketing ops.
No alignment on messaging.
No alignment on reporting.

We treated internationalization as sort of an external project.

No wonder we failed.

And even though some team members pointed this out to me in the past, I was so focused on Germany that I did not really "get it". 

It took our new CEO Steven Mattwig and CFO Arnd Mückenberger to point this problem out earlier this year. 

They did, and together with the team, they are solving it fast. 

👉 Now, internationalization is at the very core of our organization.

As a result, we can identify behaviors and patterns from customers across all countries.

This enables us to combine country-specific measures with global best practices to create maximum impact within a certain market.

The results speak for themselves:

🔥 Now, we’re already No.1 in the Netherlands on Bol & Amazon.
🔥 Now, we just secured our first retail listing in the Netherlands.
🔥 Now, we are hitting 8-figure-level, while growth is accelerating.

As you can see in the pic, the search volume for our brand is going up all over Europe.

I LOVE the fact that we turned a weakness into a strength.

We could have just said:

Ok, let's keep Glow25 a DACH company for now. 

But this felt strange. We felt that this company is meant to have a global impact in the pro-aging field. 

We just needed some more time to crack the code.

In the end, it comes down to a simple question:

"Are you building a local or an international company?"

If it's an international one, you have to massage this identity into every goal, process, and project you are thinking about. 

Sounds easier than it is. 

But it’s worth it. 🔥

Thx Glow25-Team!

P.S.: Are you scaling internationally? How is it working?

Jan-Lütje Thoden

Start To Finish - Recruiting für E-Commerce & FBA Brands

Does your startup have a great product, but you're missing the right people to grow and move forward?

Do you think you could grow faster, but you don't just want to hire anybody for your key positions?

Most startups recognize a-players once they have joined the team. But it's much more difficult to find and identify them beforehand.

At the same time you don't want to pay a 20.000€ headhunter fee or are just not ready yet to hire somebody for HR?

And because that's not necessary and old recruiting processes don't work anymore, I support startups in finding a-players for their team.

For me as an "outsourced Head of Recruiting" the topic of talent is one of the most important ones:

- According to Earlybird Ventures, 80% of startups failures are due to the team
- BCG says that high performers create 8x more results than average people (whole team 2000x more)
- And last Jim Collins (author of "Good To Great): "Great vision without great people is irrelevant."

Just write me a message if you want to attract a-players in the future.

Founder & Recruiter

STF Recruiting Academy für Startups

Was ich mache?
- Beratung von Startups und Scaleups zu allen strategischen Recruiting Themen von JobAds bis Offboarding
- Community Building, Eventplanung und Moderation von Veranstaltungen für unsere Startups

Founder & Dozent

Euro London Appointments

- Headhunting candidates from Grads to Management
- Industries: Banking, Asset Management, Family Office, Fintech, Proptech, Startup
- Positions: Sales, Legal, Compliance, Accounting, Controlling, Customer Service
- Training of new consultants and leading of company training sessions

Senior Recruitment Consultant - Banking & Financial Markets

Recruitment Consultant - Banking & Financial Markets

HanseGrand Klimabaustoffe

Sales & Marketing

Recruiting for Tech, E-Commerce & FBA Startups | Founder @Start To Finish | Do you want to hire A-Players?

➡️ Finding A-players is a struggle for many eCommerce brands.

Your product is performing well, customers are flocking to you, and the revenue is solid.

You're even getting applications – but no true A-players who can make an impact from day one.

→ We’re here to eliminate that problem for you.


Over the last five years, we've worked with 100+ eCommerce companies.

Our clients include brands like Snocks, SellerX, Naturtreu, Störtebekker, and Paul Valentine.


Most of the time, we help with:

Marketing roles (Performance Marketers, Content Strategists, SEA, SEO, Email, CRM, Social Media, Influencers, etc.)

Everything for your online shops (Amazon Managers, Ecom Managers, Marketplace Specialists, CRO Pros)

Business-side roles (HR, Finance, Supply Chain, Product, Ops)

And leadership positions (Team Leads / Heads / VPs / C-level for: Finance, Ecom, Marketing, Supply Chain, Ops)


We also consult on building or improving your in-house recruiting teams (goal: 50 hires per recruiter per year!).

We've successfully done this for companies like Ehrenkind, Doonails, and Health Routine.


Feel free to reach out if any of this sounds interesting to you.

I personally handle all inquiries, and we’ll find a solution to your hiring challenges.

Best regards,

Jan-Lütje, Founder of Start To Finish

Das wird jetzt vielleicht einige triggern, aber….

Bevor du dir einen Head of Marketing, einen Senior Sales Lead oder einen teuren Experten ins Team holst, brauchst du etwas anderes:

-> Umsatz und zwar wiederkehrend und planbar.

Denn in der frühen Phase ist nicht die richtige Frage:
„Wer kann mir Arbeit abnehmen?“

Sondern:
„Welche Rolle bringt sofort Umsatz oder Zeit zurück, damit ich weiter wachsen kann?“

Die meisten Gründer verbrennen Geld, weil sie zu früh zu große Rollen einstellen, anstatt zuerst die Basis zu schaffen:

- Proof of Concept
- Cashflow
- Rollen, die Umsatz oder Kapazität direkt erhöhen

Erst dann macht es Sinn, Spezialisten zu holen, die das Wachstum beschleunigen nicht einleiten.

Unsere COO Mina Golesorkhi und Laura Hoffmann, Gründerin von Pinkypact, besprechen in einem Beratungsgespräch genau das.

Wenn du gerade skalierst oder dein erstes echtes Team aufbaust, solltest du dir das ansehen.

Hier zum Video: https://lnkd.in/esYJwPGx

Headhunting for Startups & Scaleups 🚀 | Portfolio: Snocks, Mellow Noir, Upway | Are you looking for A-Players?

taplio

The Battle

Rafael Frenk

Jan-Lütje Thoden

Followers

Posts

Engagements

Likes

Performance ScoreRafael Frenk's LinkedIn Performance

Performance ScoreJan-Lütje Thoden's LinkedIn Performance

Ready to grow your LinkedIn presence?

taplio

The Battle

Rafael Frenk

Jan-Lütje Thoden

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);}Rafael Frenk's LinkedIn Performance

Performance ScoreJan-Lütje Thoden's LinkedIn Performance

Ready to grow your LinkedIn presence?

Performance ScoreRafael Frenk's LinkedIn Performance