Crunching Your Growth w Phil Masiello

Crunching Your Growth w Phil Masiello Phil Masiello is a visionary leader with over two decades of experience in e-commerce, marketing, and startups.

Veteran Founder Focused on the Mechanics of Scale | 4 Exits over 30 Years | Sharing Lessons on Profitable Growth & Operational Truths | CEO @ CrunchGrowth Agency As the founder of CrunchGrowth, he has significantly impacted business strategy and digital commerce through innovation and strategic insight. Phil's entrepreneurial journey began at age 27, driven by an MBA in Marketing and Finance, whic

h continues to underpin his successful ventures. From pioneering e-commerce solutions in the meal industry with The Daily Market to co-founding Raw Essentials Skin Care alongside Carol Alt, Phil has consistently showcased his ability to innovate strategically. His expertise extends across brand strategy and digital marketing within multiple consumer product sectors, including food, fashion, beauty, and personal care. As founder and CEO, Phil has created disruptive business models that merge emerging technologies with evolving consumer lifestyles. He excels at crafting digital and social strategies that significantly elevate brand visibility and accelerate revenue growth. Notable ventures such as 800razors.com exemplify his creative approach to utilizing public relations to scale rapidly. Meanwhile, CrunchGrowth has earned recognition for its cost-effective and groundbreaking methodologies that drive sales and growth for consumer brands. Phil’s deep expertise in multi-channel customer acquisition empowers brands to scale efficiently while maintaining cost-effectiveness. He specializes in direct-to-consumer sales methods and plays a pivotal role in financial planning, sales, marketing, and operational strategy for multi-platform brand development. In addition to his extensive entrepreneurial endeavors, Phil is the best-selling author of four influential books, including "The Why Behind The Buy: Connect With Your Customers Before You Sell" and "Think Engage Thrive: How to Skyrocket Your Brand," both celebrated for providing actionable insights into consumer engagement and brand growth. Phil also shares his wealth of knowledge as the host of the show Crunching Growth on e360tv, where he engages with industry experts, entrepreneurs, and innovators to inspire and educate the next generation of business leaders. His core competencies include e-commerce, brand development, digital marketing, social media marketing, branding and identity creation, retail strategies, infomercials, television shopping channels, and direct-response TV marketing. Phil’s career exemplifies transformative thinking and highlights his adaptability within the continually evolving digital marketplace.

08/25/2026

What happens when the problem you’re trying to solve is one you’ve experienced repeatedly yourself?

Tony Verutti’s journey from All-American athlete—through chronic ankle injuries and four ACL tears—to CEO of Betterguards Technology is a powerful example of turning personal adversity into purposeful innovation.

In this episode, Tony shares how his experience leading teams across four continents, advising major Silicon Valley technology companies, and working in licensing, deep tech, product innovation, and corporate development prepared him to lead a company focused on protecting athletes.

We’ll explore the realities of bringing advanced technology to market, the challenges of building within the sports-tech industry, and Tony’s mission to help athletes move better, recover faster, and remain protected longer.

This is a conversation about resilience, global leadership, meaningful innovation, and what it takes to build a company around a problem worth solving.

Scaling isn’t magic, it’s systems. Crunching Your Growth brings you inside the playbooks of founders, operators, and marketers who turned good products into durable businesses. Hosted by Phil Masiello, 4x exit founder, agency CEO, and author, the show unpacks real numbers, real bottlenecks, and the decisions that move needles: sharpening positioning, building demand beyond one channel, turning ops into an advantage, and evolving from founder-doing to team-owning. Expect crisp segments (What Worked, The Stall, The Fix, The System), on-screen frameworks, and case-specific metrics (CAC/LTV, retention, contribution margin) you can copy. If you’re building a consumer brand on DTC, Amazon, or omnichannel retail, Crunching Your Growth is your weekly working session.

08/25/2026

Have you ever been at the gym and thought, "Man, I really wish this weight plate had hinges, latches, and six extra parts that could break?"

Me neither. But that’s what happens when you build a product in search of a problem.

In business, over-engineering is usually a sign of falling in love with your own solution instead of the customer’s actual friction point. A standard iron plate costs less, lasts forever, and slides on in one second.

Check out this textbook example of creating a product looking for a market—and let me know in the comments: what’s the most over-engineered product you’ve ever seen?

08/24/2026

How to cook up total founder burnout in 6 months

Even legends hit the wall when scale breaks the human:

Arianna Huffington collapsed from 18-hour days while building The Huffington Post, breaking her cheekbone on her desk.
Steve Jobs burned out himself and his team in the '80s, leading to his exit from Apple.
Matt Mullenweg and countless tech founders have been forced into sabbaticals to save their companies, and their sanity.
The recipe for burnout is simple: take every decision, mix in relentless micro-management, subtract sleep, and refuse to delegate.

The end result? An exhausted founder wondering why everything falls on their shoulders.

If your business can’t run without you, you haven't built a scalable company, you've built a high-stress trap.

Follow me for practical frameworks on delegation, systemizing, and scaling your business without breaking yourself.

08/21/2026

One of the most expensive phrases in business: "The customer is using it wrong."
I once coached a personal care startup with massive industry interest. But after a lead developer swap, the innovation got scrapped for a generic product that simply didn't work.

When real users tested it and hated it, the internal response wasn't to fix the flaw, it was to blame the audience:
"They used it incorrectly."
"We chose the wrong users."
"They weren't holding it right."

They pushed forward with a crowdfunding campaign anyway.

Result? Over half the buyers disliked it, and the rest were indifferent. The company refused to adapt, building a solution to a problem nobody had.

If your market consistently tells you the product isn't working, stop trying to re-educate the customer.

Correct the product.

Follow for more actionable frameworks on scaling your business the right way.

08/19/2026

Recipe for Burning Cash (And How Not to Do It)

Raising millions, or even scaling fast with your own revenue, doesn't make you bulletproof. Just ask Quibi, Jawbone, or Pets.com.

Most founders don't fail from a lack of growth. They fail from a lack of cash management mechanics.

Here is the exact recipe for zeroing out your runway:

Over-hiring before your processes are repeatable

Pouring ad spend into leaky conversion funnels

Unmonitored SaaS drag quietly draining monthly margin

Optimistic forecasting disguised as strategic planning

The ultimate trap: "We'll make it up on volume."

Growth is wonderful.......until payroll hits.

Want to scale profitability alongside revenue?

I coach founders on the operational and financial mechanics of scaling a sustainable business.

Follow for daily strategies on scaling the right way.

08/18/2026

What happens when you build a business around travel—and then the world stops traveling?

Michael “Hutch” Hutchison, Co-Founder and CEO of inCruises, faced that question when the global cruise industry shut down during the COVID-19 pandemic. But that was only one of the obstacles his company would encounter. From a failed launch partnership to the loss of major international markets and continuing economic and geopolitical disruption, Hutch and his team repeatedly had to adapt without abandoning their vision.

Today, inCruises has grown into a global travel membership community reaching people in 196 countries. In this episode of Crunching Your Growth, Hutch joins Phil Masiello to share how the company built trust, created value for travelers, expanded into underserved markets, and continued growing through circumstances no business plan could have anticipated.

They discuss leadership during uncertainty, building a community rather than simply acquiring customers, making difficult decisions under pressure, and why resilience is not about waiting for the storm to pass—it is about learning how to build while the storm is still raging.

If you are leading a growing company through uncertainty, this conversation will give you practical lessons from a founder who has already sailed through some very rough waters.

Scaling isn’t magic, it’s systems. Crunching Your Growth brings you inside the playbooks of founders, operators, and marketers who turned good products into durable businesses. Hosted by Phil Masiello, 4x exit founder, agency CEO, and author. the show unpacks real numbers, real bottlenecks, and the decisions that move needles: sharpening positioning, building demand beyond one channel, turning ops into an advantage, and evolving from founder-doing to team-owning. Expect crisp segments (What Worked, The Stall, The Fix, The System), on-screen frameworks, and case-specific metrics (CAC/LTV, retention, contribution margin) you can copy. If you’re building a consumer brand on DTC, Amazon, or omnichannel retail, Crunching Your Growth is your weekly working session.

08/17/2026

Recovering From Burnout Saved This CEO Millions of Dollars

Every business growth coach will tell you that ex*****on, strategy, and systems are what scale a company. Early on, I tell my founders that if they are already in the seat, they have the grit so we don't need to waste time tinkering with mindset when we have revenue models to build.

Until the final mile.

A few years ago, a CEO came to me under the worst possible circumstances. His father, the company’s founder, had passed away unexpectedly, forcing him to step into a business he didn't found and didn't even love.

He was drowning, trying to tackle every fire at once, stressed to the breaking point, and carrying the weight of his family’s future. His mandate was to stabilize it, scale it, and position it for an eventual exit.

Over the ensuing months, we got to work. We built the architecture, optimized operations, and watched sales and profits climb.

His competitors began to take notice and another company has stepped up with an acquisition offer.

Mission accomplished, right? Not quite.

After years of carrying a torch that wasn’t his, he is suffering from profound burnout. He just wants out. On our most recent coaching call, he admitted he was ready to accept almost any terms they put forth just to make it stop.

That is the exact moment millions of enterprise value evaporate.

This wasn't a time for a standard weekly review or a pivot in our strategy. This called for a complete tactical mindshift.

John Sculley, the former Apple CEO once told me that training for a CEO is like training for a marathon. You have to be mentally and physically fit to go the distance.

I told my guy what I would tell an athlete staring down the final stretch of a marathon. You have spent years working to get to this point. You cannot quit in the last mile. You have to push through.

I gave him a pragmatic, non-negotiable operational directive.

Hit the gym tomorrow morning. Get into a high-intensity, structured class like a heavy cycling class or Orange Theory.

Remind your body and mind what it feels like to push when you are completely depleted. Because leadership isn't just about steering the ship in calm waters or scaling during hyper-growth. True perseverance is required right at the finish line. When the difference between maintaining your footing and capitulating out of pure exhaustion can literally cost you millions of dollars.

Have you ever been in this position? How did you protect your stamina and maintain when burnout sets in?

We offered a Major League pitcher $1 million to shave his beard.We had not lost our minds, but we needed people to notic...
08/13/2026

We offered a Major League pitcher $1 million to shave his beard.

We had not lost our minds, but we needed people to notice our brand.

When we launched The Ultimate Shave at 800razors.com, we entered into one of the most competitive consumer categories. We were going up against established brands with enormous advertising budgets, decades of recognition, and plenty of shelf space.

We couldn’t outspend them, so we had to outthink them.

At the time, Major League pitcher Brian Wilson was almost as famous for his massive beard as he was for his pitching. His beard had become part of his identity and part of the cultural conversation.

That gave me an idea.
We publicly offered Brian $1 million to shave his famous beard using our shaving products.

It was bold, relevant, and visual. Most important, it was incredibly easy for people to repeat.

“A razor company just offered Brian Wilson a million dollars to shave his beard.”

That one sentence contained everything great earned media idea needs. A recognizable personality. A surprising amount of money. A dramatic visual. A direct connection to the product. And a question people wanted answered.

Would he actually do it?

He declined, but that didn’t mean the campaign failed.

Quite the opposite.

The offer generated international media attention and introduced our brand to millions of people who had never heard of us before. Sports media talked about it, business media picked it up. Consumers shared it. The story traveled beyond anything we could have accomplished with traditional announcements or ads.

Most brands approach public relations by asking, “How do we get the media to talk about our product?” That is the wrong question.

The better question is “What can we do that gives the media, and their audience, a story worth talking about?”

The media doesn’t exist to promote your company. Reporters are looking for stories that are timely, surprising, relevant, visual, and easy for their audiences to understand.

“New razor company launches ” is boring. “Pitcher offered $1 million to shave his legendary beard” is a story.

The product was still at the center of the idea, but we gave the media a much more interesting story.

Paid advertising rents attention.

Earned media gives people a reason to pay attention.

Jim James can give you a ton of examples about how he used great earned-media campaigns to launch a new brand, expand an existing brand , or reposition a company that has become invisible in a crowded market.

But a stunt just for the sake of making noise rarely works.

Founders often believe they need a massive advertising budget to compete with established brands.

Sometimes what they really need is one idea the larger competitors would never think of, or would be too cautious to try.

And sometimes, the fastest way to grow a brand isn’t to buy more attention.

It’s to do something worthy of earning it.

08/12/2026

The business didn't hit a ceiling. You did.

If every decision, hire, piece of copy, and emotional swing has to go through you, you aren't running a scaling company anymore. You're just a bottleneck with a LinkedIn profile.

Here’s the brutal truth: A lot of founders say they want freedom, but they build systems that keep them locked right in the center. Every process needs their stamp of approval. Every move waits on their mood.

That’s not a business. That’s dependence with nicer branding.

A real company can move, pivot, and survive a bad Tuesday without you. If it can't, it's not scaling—it's just orbiting.

💬 Be honest: Are you building an asset or a prison?

📩 DM me for growth coaching to help you build a self-sustaining engine, and follow for more scaling truths.

08/12/2026

From the outside, the business looks fine. From the inside? It feels like running through water. 🌊

If your team is bigger but somehow slower, and simple decisions now require a slide deck and four opinions, you aren't failing—you've just hit the invisible wall of growth.

Nobody warned you that the trust and communication holding you together at 5 people wouldn't survive at 15.

This isn't a revenue problem. It's a structure problem. And working harder won't fix it. You need new rules for your new size before the friction becomes your permanent culture.

💬 Founders: Have you hit the "weird phase" yet?

📩 DM me to talk about growth coaching for your business, and hit follow for more raw truths on scaling.

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