What a Profit Engineer Does Every Day at CTC

[00:00:00] Jar: So when it comes to forecasting there's three primary models that we have within Statlas and, like, the-- that the data team puts together. Number one is our spending power model. This essentially is the new customer revenue function of the forecast, essentially grading, you know, the s-spend and efficiency curve saying like how much-- if we push this much in spend this is like the efficiency that we can expect to get just based off the historical data that we have.

[00:00:26] And then we also have our retention models, which look at our cohorts and how they mature over time, which gives us the returning customer revenue function of the forecast. And then finally, we have our event effect model, which essentially ingests the marketing calendar from the brand. And essentially the way that it works is we tag all the historical marketing events, whether that be email, SMS promotions, product launches, et cetera.

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[00:01:33] Randall: Well, Jar profit engineer at CTC and best, best hair at CTC. Is there any other,

[00:01:42] Jar: yeah?

[00:01:43] Randall: a-any other accolades that you, that you carry at CTC that we need to know about?

[00:01:48] Jar: I guess, I guess just those. Yeah. That was, that was the first time I heard that one

[00:01:53] Randall: Oh, the best hair. Yeah. Well, yeah, it's hard to... Anybody that's watching the video form, it's hard, it's hard to miss. It's, it's a great head of hair. Unfortunately I'm in my mid-30s at this point and my hair's going the wrong way. But anyways, this is this is the podcast I'm hosting. Fir- first time host, Randall Thompson, here with Jar, a profit engineer at CTC. And today we're gonna kind of try to demystify the profit engineer a little bit and kind of, open up your, your bra- to your brain a little bit, get through that nice hair and get into that brain and and, and try to get an idea of what your day-to-day looks like as a profit engineer, and kind of what the secret sauce is w- while you sit in that seat.

[00:02:34] So, first off, me and you, we're both Central Florida natives, so we got, we got that connection

[00:02:40] Jar: Yeah

[00:02:42] Randall: And your background, you, you pr- give us a little bit of just just a little bit on your background so, so everybody kind of understands where you're coming from and, and where, where your knowledge comes from and what your, where your experience comes from

[00:02:55] Jar: Yeah. Yeah, for sure. Yeah, so this is, like, from my past life as a apparel owner. So I had, like, my own apparel brand for about six years. So that little stretch and period of time, that's kind of how I came to know CTC and the overall, like, direct-to-consumer space as a whole just following along there.

[00:03:14] So, I grew that to, like, multiple seven figures in revenue, learned a lot of things along the way. You know, it was a good learning experience. You know, I was the owner of, you know, pretty much all the departments, you know, marketing, fulfillment, things like that. So really encompassing, you know, all aspects of business, but now strictly focusing on, you know, the kinda paid media side of things, the, the digital enterprise of direct-to-consumer.

[00:03:41] But yeah, that's, that's kind of what this all comes from, kinda that past life.

[00:03:46] Randall: Yeah. That's cool. So, being a profit engineer, having the context of owning your own business and understanding the relationships between COGS and OpEx and how it relates to, to marketing even though you don't necessarily put on the hat of, of ownership, but you still are owning the accounts that you're working with and having all that context from the, from the past probably helps a whole bunch having, having having owned your own business

[00:04:14] Jar: Yeah. Yeah, 100%. I think context matters a lot, especially, you know, when you're dealing with clients you know, who are having and experiencing like real problems in their business outside of, you know, just the marketing and finance function, and being able to tie those pieces together and have the experience and context is, is really helpful

[00:04:34] Randall: Yeah. That, that's sa- same with me. Grew a business for eight or nine years, sold that business. Now I'm on the agency side, and it's kind of interesting to see it from this side. And y- y- it kind of gives you a perspective that people otherwise would not have. So, I can, I can resonate with that.

[00:04:54] So, so talk me through, You know, to me I've been at CTC for about five months, and I, I continue to just kind of, like, look into different corners of CTC, and I start seeing different things. The, the, the further I dig into it, the, the more I learn. And to me, there's still kind of like this, this just a mystic, like there's a profit engineer, but what does that actually mean?

[00:05:19] So, to me when you, when you wake up in the morning, you-- I- I'm assuming you have some sort of accounts that are assigned to you that you, you oversee their growth or like what are you, what are you actually overseeing?

[00:05:31] Jar: Yeah. Yeah, so I'm accountable for a couple of clients and a couple of accounts. I think the idea of a prof-profit engineer is just to, you know, engineer profit for brands. So just, you know, being the growth partner for predictable and profitable growth at the end of the day. And, you know, work with a handful of clients across many different categories, industries things like that.

[00:05:54] But yeah, just really being their partner in terms of, you know, bridging the gap between marketing and finance and really leading with that profit in mind first

[00:06:04] Randall: So you, so you wake up and you, you know that there's some sort of daily goal that needs to be, be hit from a contribution margin standpoint. Th- that's the high level

[00:06:14] Jar: Yeah. Yeah, exactly. So within Statlas, there's like a hierarchy of metrics. So it's visually presented in a way where the top metrics at the top of the dashboard is like the most important. So at the top, we have contribution margin, and then we also have order revenue. We have orders, MBR, things of that nature.

[00:06:33] But really just making sure that we're aligned. And then to your point on the daily targets, I think that's a unique aspect for us to not only forecast, you know, the quarterly goals, monthly goals, but also on the daily levels. And that granularity actually allows us to be on target more often than not just because we have that feedback loop on, hey, we need to push or pull ad spend here, or we need to, you know, create some moments in the calendar to kind of bridge the gaps that we're experiencing in the forecast.

[00:06:59] So those daily expectations in the forecast is actually very, very, very helpful for us.

[00:07:05] Randall: Yes. It, it seems as if that Statlas is just a good thing to lean up against, not only from a profit engineer standpoint, but also a good place for there to be common ground between you and brand owners. I-- for, for me, like when I owned my business I'm such a dinosaur that like when I first started, I would say like, "Hey, go, go out and get me a three of return on ad spend."

[00:07:28] And,

[00:07:28] Jar: Yeah

[00:07:29] Randall: gone are those days. And what, what I, what I love about the, the whole idea of opening up Statlas and there being this, this daily goal of contribution margin and then everything kind of laddering down from there it just aligns... Let's just say I'm the brand owner, and you're the profit engineer.

[00:07:47] It aligns us on a daily basis, and it doesn't allow too many days to get away from us. So if we miss one day, we're, we're gonna figure out a way to get the second day rolling or the third day rolling and bring everything back. So let me ask you this. I-- for me, for me like when I'm staring into Q4 as a br- as a brand owner, I'm saying to myself, "Okay, to op- to optimize this, I want to I wanna land at 35% of of marketing to revenue for the quarter."

[00:08:18] Just because that's what I want the goal to be at the end of the quarter doesn't necessarily mean that's what I'm waking up tomorrow and I'm doing 35% of, of marketing to revenue tomorrow in order to hit that, that 30... Well, let's just pretend that it's October 1st tomorrow. So does-- wh-when you get the plan that's handed over to you, i-i-is it laddered up?

[00:08:36] I-is it the-- Is it like you know that target for that particular day that e-eventually feeds that bigger plan? Or how, how does that actually play itself out?

[00:08:47] Jar: Yeah. Yeah, that's a good question. So when it comes to forecasting there's three primary models that we have within Statlas and, like, the-- that the data team puts together. Number one is our spending power model. This essentially is the new customer revenue function of the forecast, essentially grading, you know, the s-spend and efficiency curve saying like how much-- if we push this much in spend this is like the efficiency that we can expect to get just based off the historical data that we have.

[00:09:15] And then we also have our retention models, which look at our cohorts and how they mature over time, which gives us the returning customer revenue function of the forecast. And then finally, we have our event effect model, which essentially ingests the marketing calendar from the brand. And essentially the way that it works is we tag all the historical marketing events, whether that be email, SMS promotions, product launches, et cetera.

[00:09:38] And then whenever we, you know, tag those future-looking events in the calendar, it has an expectation on those specific dailies that we can have. And kind of like those three kinda ladder up to the individual granular expectations that we have on a daily basis.

[00:09:55] Randall: Okay, so what I guess what you're saying is, is that there's gonna be some sort of returning customer base, there's gonna be some, some sort of new, new customers, and then the, the third one is there's gonna be some sort of events that drive m- returning and new? Is that, is that right?

[00:10:16] Jar: Yeah. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, you pretty much summed it up there. The returning aspect is from the retention models that we have. The new customer revenue is from the, you know, the spending power model that we have. And then in terms of like the overall efficiencies and expectations within the month for those specific days, it all stems from, you know, the emails SMS, product launches, sales, promotions, things like that, that we are launching throughout the month

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[00:11:12] Randall: Okay. And so as the profit engineer, are you the person that's going in and running these models or is this something that it's done by the d- data science team or the data team and they're, they're going and they're drumming up these models and they're saying, "Hey, here's the optimal plan. Jar, go execute the plan."

[00:11:27] Or like what's your involvement in, in the creation of the plan and then the execution of the plan?

[00:11:32] Jar: Yeah. Yeah, that's a good question. It's definitely an exercise. We have, you know, a, a great team of data specialists and, and data you know, engineers who, who put together these models. First things first is just ingesting the data and getting real clarity on everything and making sure that everything's, you know, ingested correctly and that we have clarity and parity there.

[00:11:53] And then from there, once we build out the models, it's essentially now we have the tools, you know, to build out the forecast and it's the profit engineer's job to align with the, the team there on the client side to see, you know, what actual goals we want to, you know, ladder up to, whether that's, you know, max revenue, max lifetime contribution margin.

[00:12:12] Maybe we wanna, you know, spend a certain amount within a specific month. You know, there's specific nuances there. But essentially it's, you know, getting the tools from the data team itself and then kind of artfully putting together a forecast based off, you know, alignment with the client.

[00:12:28] Randall: Okay, so data in. Data in kind of gives us some sort of baseline of understanding of what might be possible, but it doesn't necessarily end there. It also, it also is a conversation in which what is y- what is your goal? What are, what is it that you're trying to accomplish? And then that gets, that could put, that gets put into the equation, and the combination of those two things then gets delivered to Jar or somebody like Jar, and it's your job then to know what the daily expectation is in order to ladder up to whatever their goal is.

[00:13:03] And every single day you go out and you execute towards that thing

[00:13:07] Jar: Yep, completely. 100%.

[00:13:10] Randall: Okay. Seems, seems simple enough. If I'm, if I'm sitting in the, in the brand seat, I'm going, "Okay, great. This sounds, this sounds amazing." The, the thing that I do know is that, like, when I was working with an agency when I was running my brand, it's like midnight and it's like Q4 and I'm sweating and I'm like, "Uh-oh," like the past four days, like our, our spend to revenue has been like 45% when the target's 35%.

[00:13:40] I'm sure like you're, you're just kind of, you know, watching some Netflix at 10:00 at night and then all of a sudden somebody Slacks you and goes, "Hey, Jar, we're, we're missing the target for the day. What's, what's going on?" So I'm assuming that those things happen all the time, but I'm guessing just like my son the other day had a fire drill, I'm assuming that you have some sort of technique or some sort of like plan whenever things don't go to plan.

[00:14:07] Is that, is that fair? Yeah. Okay. So what-- So if I'm the-- If I'm on the brand side and I'm saying, "Hey, Jar, what's going on, dude? We've, we've missed like two days, three days, four days in a row. You, you told me that like day to day we're gonna, we're gonna crush this." What, like what are you checking? What, what levers are you pulling?

[00:14:22] What dials are you turning? What are you-- What is it that you're trying to figure out?

[00:14:26] Jar: Yeah. Yeah, I think you know, when a problem arises, number one is just diagnosing the issue. So Statlas has a nice visual like I said, of like the hierarchy of metrics. So whether we're off in, you know, contribution margin whether we're off in, you know, overall volume you ca-- you can kind of bucket up like two problems either in like volume problem or like an efficiency problem.

[00:14:46] And like the worst case is kind of like both. But just through that, looking at Statlas, you can see, you know, where you're off on the plan itself. 'Cause within Statlas they have, you know, the, the actual forecasted numbers that we are supposed to hit versus the actuals. So we can see like the deltas and the percentages on a daily level as well as like from, you know, weekly and, and monthly level as well.

[00:15:07] And there's, there's a bunch of tools and, and techniques that we pull out, you know, in the channel specifically or outside of the channel to kind of ladder up and kind of bridge those gaps. You know, whether that be, you know, adjusting buds with-- adjusting bids within Meta adjusting budgets launching new creatives.

[00:15:24] I have a lot of experience, you know, being scrappy as a founder myself, you know, launching different offers marketing marketing events, emails promotions, things like that. Anything to kind of bridge that gap that we're seeing in the plan. And, you know, that's very important that we have the daily expectations so we can identify and quickly, you know, solve those gaps before, you know, the month closes

[00:15:46] Randall: Okay, awesome. So w-- I guess what I'm hearing you say is like, you're like flying a plane and then like you got a bunch of like dials and stuff in front of you, and you're able to just kind of see like, uh-oh, like we're low on gas here. Let's put some gas in this bad boy to, to, to keep this going. Obviously it's a lot more technical than gas, but like for example, if you're missing a target on Google spend by, by 30% and then your revenue on Google's down by 40%, you kind of go, "Okay, what's going on here?"

[00:16:14] And you know to go fix that particular part of the business.

[00:16:18] Jar: Yeah. Yeah, exactly

[00:16:20] Randall: Okay, cool. Yeah, it, it's it's interesting because you, you know, you walk into a doctor and you say, "Hey, I'm sick," and they don't, they don't just go, "Okay, here's a, h-here's a, a s- prescription." They ask qualifying questions, and they kind of get down to the root cause of, like, what's making you sick.

[00:16:37] And so they kind of... This, the same thing could be applied here to a business of, like, you can't just stare at top-line numbers, or you can't just stare at an ad, ad account and how much you're spending and just say, "Well, that, that's the problem." You gotta get down to the root cause of what's, what's actually going on and then go actually fix that, that thing.

[00:16:58] Yeah. Well, interesting. Okay, so, let's say theoretically you go, "Oh, there's, there's an issue here with the return customer. We gotta, we gotta figure out a way to kind of bring in more returning customers within this next week to make up for the ground that we missed in the past three days." Do y- do you go and execute, like, in the Klaviyo account or is there a team that supports you to be able to execute within that Klaviyo or yeah, within the Klaviyo account?

[00:17:28] Jar: Yeah. Yeah, that's a great question. Usually teams and clients, they have their own, you know, email and SMS functions within their team. But us as a profit engineers just to provide that strategic guidance. And I think the unique perspective that we have as well is we have a collective of knowledge meaning that we essentially have, you know, this collective of knowledge where we have case studies of, you know, things that have worked in the past and things that haven't worked in the past, and we can kinda pass that on, you know, as a strategic recommendation, you know, as kind of like a remedy towards, you know, this unique situation.

[00:18:01] But even outside of, you know, the email and SMS programs, there's, there's things that we can do, you know, promotion or, or sales-wise on the site, you know, just launching out different offers to kind of bridge that gap or even just spending more into retention audiences on Meta itself. But yeah, those are kinda like the, the few things that we like to go through just off the top of my head

[00:18:21] Randall: Yeah. Is ideation of offers, is this, is this something that profit engineers do? Y- you guys aren't just pressing buttons in the ad account, you're not just launching ads, you're not just monitoring the metrics, you're not diagnosing the-- where the issue lies. Y- you're also saying, "Well, it, it could be interesting that if you offered an upsell here, or if you bundled this together, or if you price positioned it this way."

[00:18:49] You guys are also doing stuff like that?

[00:18:52] Jar: Yeah. Yeah, definitely. When it comes to like paid media performance in general, there's really only a few big like levers that actually impact performance. Just put it simply like creative, obviously, you know, everyone understands the idea of having, you know, that creative volume and that diversity within the ad account.

[00:19:08] Number two being, you know, the offers. This is essentially like the, the needle mover within the account, 'cause once someone actually finds out that they like their product or your product that you're offering, it all is essentially comes down to, you know, the value exchange there. And really like if they're getting, you know, at an optimal price point or optimal offer.

[00:19:26] Three being like landing pages and CRO. So how are you, you know, optimizing your pages and, and your website for overall conversion rates? And then the last thing just being like marketing moments that you can align yourself to. And those really like, those four like levers and rocks really make the biggest impact when you actually wanna move the needle in terms of, you know, your overall paid media performance.

[00:19:47] Randall: Okay, so you you take those four levers. Obviously, you're leaning into your, into your past where you ran your own brand. O-obviously, you have your own strategic mind. You know, you're like I got, you know, I got this idea for this," or, "This, this could fit like this." But you're also saying that there's just institutional and also just people-- We have a team of people that have very similar problems all over the place.

[00:20:10] So I'm assuming that there's a Slack channel somewhere in the CTC universe. I've heard there's like 1,000 of them, but I'm sure you're part of one that you go, "Hey, guys, I'm running into this," or, "Here's this. What have you guys done in the past?"

[00:20:25] Jar: Yeah. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, I think, yeah, li- like I was saying earlier is that the unique idea here is that we have a collective of information. And when we run into, like, any problems or situations, you know, we have, you know, dedicated Slack channels. You know, we even have weekly standups that, you know, we just walk through s- sort of like the challenges that we're all experiencing and just all bouncing off, you know, all, all of our ideas and knowledge to solving those problems.

[00:20:50] And even just like the ideal case studies you know, that people have done in the past, you know, to kind of bridge those gaps. You know, whether that's like different offers that have worked in the past or different, you know, promotions or, or sales that have worked best for certain brands or categories.

[00:21:05] You know, there's all this information and a collective of knowledge that we can pull from

[00:21:10] Randall: Yeah, I, I when I first started working for CTC, I got pulled into-- I don't know if that's the best way of putting it, but I got... I joined in on some live Statlas jams. I don't know if you've been part of a live Statlas jam. But the what happens with a live Statlas jam is there's something specific that a profit engineer is trying to solve for a particular brand, and a bunch of different people just kind of show up on this call.

[00:21:37] Everybody pulls up Statlas. There's like 10 or 15 minutes of silence to kind of just really analyze what's going on, and then all these people kind of just jump in and feast on the the Statlas like a, like a bunch of hyenas. But the first one I was part of Taylor was present, and I was just like, "Everybody's just ripping right now."

[00:21:56] I thought I knew stuff, but I was like, "Eh, maybe I don't, I don't..." After watching it, I was like, "I don't know if I really know anything." Yeah, so that's a, that's a pretty cool thing. Something, something I pitched here for, for content is we do a live, live Statlas jam. I think it would be a really cool thing that people would wanna be part of.

[00:22:12] Jar: Yeah, let's do it.

[00:22:14] Randall: yeah, let's do it. I'll, I'll just sit in the back row and just watch everybody flex their muscles. Okay, so cool. So, you open up Statlas, you see you're behind. Well, let's take the opposite stance of that. You, you open up Statlas and you go, "Okay, we're crushing it. We're hitting, we're hitting the goal."

[00:22:31] Are you still looking for opportunities to, to grow the revenue, to grow the contribution margin, to like... What, what does the scenario look like where-- Like, I'm so used to I put on my hat in the morning, I wake up, I'm running a business, I put on my hat, everything's gonna suck. And, and I'm gonna have to like say, "Hey, why does this suck?"

[00:22:50] But there might be a s-scenario, circumstance that Jar wakes up and he's crushing it for like two months straight. Are you actively bringing new stuff to, to brands saying, "Hey, this might help you grow your revenue. This might help you grow your contribution margin. This might help you open up subscriptions.

[00:23:07] This might help you get more new customers. You might wanna think about diversifying into, into this traffic source." Like, are, are you bringing ne-new things as well whenever things are going correct?

[00:23:20] Jar: Yeah. Yeah, 100%. Yeah, that's a great question. Typically we start with like our base, you know, plan, base forecast, and then we also have like our stretch goals. But ideally, you know, if you can push overall ad spend and continue to crush, that's the goal there. Obviously there's some like real world business implications there.

[00:23:37] You know, whether you have enough, you know, cash flow to float, you know, some of that ad spend as well as like the inventory. So kinda like balancing those as well and not being in that silo of just, you know, increasing overall spend. But yeah, that's the ideal situation to have, and obviously we, we, you know, conversate with our clients on that.

[00:23:54] But yeah, there's continue like a, a value add there in terms of trying to keep, you know, growing up and to the right

[00:24:01] Randall: Yeah, I remember in 2020 completely under-forecasted what my inventory should have been. And if I, if I would've had my stretch goal... So what I, I think what I'm hearing you say is essentially you get the plan, but then you, you also have a plan that says like, "Hey, if things start crushing, this is actually possible.

[00:24:21] Let's, let's go for this." It-- Is that, is that what a stretch goal is? And that's something that's provided to you through the modeling? Or what, what is, what is that actually?

[00:24:31] Jar: Yeah. Yeah. So we have like the baseline expectations from the models. But the models are just a model of the past, right? So if you can actually improve your spending power and, and beat the models and beat how historically you've been in terms of like efficiency and overall spending power whether that's if you unlock a new offer, you, you know, unlock a new channel or, you know, if you have better creatives and, and creative volume you know, this is all things that can beat the model in a lot more scale than you initially forecasted, right?

[00:24:59] So that's kind of where like the idea of the stretch plan comes into play, where you can actually, you know, beat the baseline expectation that you came into the initial modeling with

[00:25:10] Randall: Yeah, and you might, you might just be handcuffed by no inventory. They, they might be-- say, "Hey, we can't keep up with the inventory." And for, and for me, if it's a, if it's efficient ad spend going out and, and you're realizing cash, just keep putting, keep, keep putting the, that ad spend on, on the Amex and just live in like a big boy with those points.

[00:25:29] That's-- I guess that's not a... But, but supposedly supposedly s- Meta took away the ability to pay with a credit card recently for, for like these big accounts, and you're not getting the points now, which is, which is criminal. You know? It's... But anyways, that's not part of the topic. All right, Jar, listen to me on, on this one.

[00:25:50] Y-you were a brand, you were a brand owner. You now sit in the seat in which you're helping other people realize profit on the brand owner side. If you were sitting on the other side still, let's just say you were on the brand owner side and CTC approached you And you're like, "Eh." What hesitations would you have?

[00:26:17] 'Cause y- 'cause obviously you've, you, you've most likely lived it on the agent, hiring agency side.

[00:26:22] Jar: Yeah

[00:26:23] Randall: What hesitations would you have? Or what he- what hesitations did you have, and what does CTC do that those other agent, you know, the, the quote unquote bad agencies, what do they not do? And I don't wanna turn this too much into a pitch, but I just kind of, obviously you've sat on both sides.

[00:26:38] So I, I know the ugly on one side, and you know the ugly on, on, on that side. What does CTC do at a world c- class level?

[00:26:48] Jar: Yeah. I guess from like a brand owner perspective when I was like looking for agencies, you know, to, to help grow my brand, I guess, you know, everyone likes to throw out numbers and everyone likes to throw out, you know, what they could do for your brand specifically. But to actually, you know, execute on that actual, you know, plan and the, I guess, ideal state that they promise you, that's, you know, that's where the, the s-- the gap lies.

[00:27:14] And I think, you know, with CTC just with the available like team and, and modeling and just overall infrastructure, that the forecasting versus like the actuals like the plans versus the actuals is, is very tight. I think there's like a stat that, you know, we're within three percent of overall forecast off like a couple billion dollars in GMV.

[00:27:34] So that's something that we take pride in over here. And, you know, just from my, you know, retrospective, you know, looking back as a brand owner, that was like the biggest barrier for me, just hiring like different agencies as they all promised the same thing

[00:27:48] Randall: Yeah. When, when I-- like the first week of starting here at CTC, Taylor said, "Hey, etch this into your memory, and it's $3 billion of GMV, 3% to target, 40%-plus in contribution margin growth, and 30-plus percent in revenue growth." And that was in 2025 from CTC. And I, a-and I'm gonna agree with you that knowing, knowing what to do, having the models to kind of set everything up, wake up and actually have a plan in front of you of what you're executing against, and then the people that are in place to actually do that, like Jar I think is what makes CTC different than the rest.

[00:28:28] And I don't want to turn this into a into a pitch, but I guess that's my pi-- that's my pitch. So Jar, thank you. I've never hosted a podcast before, so first, first time here. I feel, I feel like we did a good job.

[00:28:42] Jar: It was great, yeah

[00:28:44] Randall: I don't really know, like, the proper way to sign this off. But first off, Jar, thank you for the time.

[00:28:49] Second off, I'm hoping that a couple more podcasts this month we can get you on. And yeah, just keep giving it, I g- g- Can I say hell? I don't know. Keep giving it hell, Jar.

[00:29:00] Jar: Appreciate you. Yep. Good talk