In an industry obsessed with paid media, GR0 co-founders Jon Zacharias, President, and Kevin Miller, CEO, identified a massive blind spot: iconic brands were spending millions on Meta ads without capturing the downstream organic searches they generated. As Jon points out, Theragun was spending $5 million in a month for half a million people to google “Is Theragun legit” or “percussive massage gun,” but they weren't even looking at what was happening after that. This insight became the foundation for an agency that revolutionized how ecommerce brands approach organic search.
Starting with a laser focus on SEO, they rapidly scaled to $20 million in revenue within their first year, employing 50 people by the 12-month mark. Their approach was fundamentally different: turning SEO into a performance marketing channel with clear revenue attribution. When iOS 14 privacy changes hit and acquisition costs soared, their model proved prescient. As Kevin explains, "It was a healthy correction because the products that didn't need to exist ceased to exist."
The changing landscape forced GR0 to evolve as well, strategically acquiring complementary agencies to become what Zacharias calls "the phone bill" of marketing services — the last expense a brand would cut when cash got tight. Their candid conversation in this latest episode of Brilliant Commerce highlights both the spectacular growth and painful lessons of scaling an agency during turbulent times, offering a masterclass in adaptability for commerce leaders.
Topics Discussed:
- Transforming SEO into a measurable performance marketing channel by shifting from general visibility metrics to direct revenue attribution.
- Strategic agency expansion during economic downturns by identifying which marketing functions are considered "essential utilities" to clients.
- iOS 14's impact as a market correction mechanism that eliminated brands with poor product-market fit while strengthening companies with genuine customer value.
- Building an agency team around "A players" by prioritizing attitude and hunger over pure technical expertise.
- Using therapy as a business partnership tool to maintain founder alignment and have formalized communication processes during hypergrowth.
- Leveraging AI to enhance agency margins through strategic implementation that makes humans more efficient rather than replacing them.
- Creating ads that become "the last thing someone thinks about before bed" as the benchmark for creative effectiveness.
- Using founder stories as the primary brand differentiator in crowded markets.
- Implementing "delegation visualization" techniques from sports psychology to empower second-level management.
- Leading AI adoption through demonstration rather than mandate by having executives use tools first and share results with teams.
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