Zach Schieffer

My personal "I feel amazing all the time" starter pack • In bed by 8pm, up at 5am... 9 hours sleep, no alarm • Electrolytes + chug water as soon as I wake up • Morning sunlight and stretch • List 3 things I'm grateful for • List 3 wins from yesterday • Prayer (2-3x daily) • 4 hrs deep work before opening socials/email/slack • Brain-dead simple todo list for the day • Paper/pencil open for all random thoughts/tasks NOT to do • Daily team call (start with sharing wins) • Moving locations 2-3x/day (laptop > desktop > phone > coffeeshop, etc) • Cold plunge or sauna + workout • Phone locked away + Opal blocking app on all devices • Coffee shop run + journal + walk • Optional mid-day nap • Good playlists / Brain FM while working • Not too many dopamine sources / stimulants (max 1 at a time) • One in-person social event, at least every 48 hrs, in evening (hike, pickleball, basketball, gym with friend, boxing, drinks, etc) • Tracking all calories to a T - staying lean, perfect macros daily • Read before bed, even if it's just a few pages • Almost zero podcasts, YouTube videos, or social media consumption - would rather get the chatgpt summary & focus on taking ACTION • No commitments/obligations to anything unless it's a "hell YES" • 6 month of personal/ biz expenses saved up, extreme attention to detail with finances, no lifestyle inflation • Investing in experiences > materialism • literally don't do anything that's not contributing to health/wealth/relationships/overall wellbeing

@dsmilansky @iamtyfrankel Yesss can confirm it does work

@iamtyfrankel @ZachSchieff @ZachSchieff I’m asking lol

RUN THE NUMBERS BEHIND MY PRIVATE LINKEDIN STRATEGIES BOOKING 100s OF CALLS A MONTH: 1) Send 20 DMs/hour 2) Book 1 call every 10 DMs sent 3) Close 20% Let's say you have a $20K client lifetime value You just spent 5 hours making $40K Is $8K/hour good? 😂 this is why LinkedIn is an absolute CHEAT CODE

@Chloe_Takahashi Sorry to hear that! Just shot you an email

@ZachSchieff hi Zack, will you take 1h consulting to check why my Klaviyo email goes to spam? I'm having hard time fixing this issue and I'm so lost:( chloe@sunrise.club

I’ll never forget the first time I made money online. It wasn’t sexy. It wasn’t a “launch.” It wasn’t a business. It was me reselling random clothes on eBay in high school. I’d find some cool clothes locally from one of those "last chance clearance" warehaouse sales... then pack it up, ship it out. And I remember thinking: “Wait… I can actually make money doing this?” It wasn’t much, but it truly changed my outlook on making money. I proved to myslef didn't need a job to make cash That "little eBay hustle" was actually massive since It eventually led to: – Filming videos thinking I was the next Graham Stephan – Starting a YouTube channel – Doing freelance work (literally everythig you can imagine - graphic design, copy, building websites, you nameit) – Writing – Building an agency off a $4k course guru from YouTube – Closing deals – Helping brands scale – Running a business I ACTUALLY love It all started with selling second-hand clothes and getting that tiny dopamine hit every time an item sold. Funny how tiny little things set you on a COMPLETELY differnet path than you ever expected. all part of your STORY

My freshman year at Carnegie Mellon was the first time in my life I felt 110% absolutely positively burned out across all dimensions. Classes hit me like a truck. Everyone felt smarter. Every class felt like a competition. I went from straight-A student, 4.0 GPA... to pulling all-nighters weekly & praying I’d pass. Even had to drop a class - “Concepts of Mathematics” - just to protect my sanity. Took that class 3 times no joke. On top of that: – Football practices and 6am film sessions – Lifting – Travel – Attempting to have a social life – Moving across the country – Late-night cafeteria food – No sleep – A new culture that didn’t feel like "me" – Trying to fit in with people I couldn’t relate to I remember thinking (daily): “Damn… did I make the wrong decision coming here?” It was the most humbling four (4) years of my life. looking back now... It made me resilient. It made me resourceful. It made me understand pressure in a way I didn’t before. It forced me to rebuild my identity from scratch. Those years taught me something I carry in business, fitness, and life: Hard environment make you tougher. No choice but to grow. Extremely thankful for those tough times.

Helped my clients do >$40,000,000 in the last 365 days with all-image emails. Here’s why they didn’t go to spam (and how yours won’t either): ↳Segmentation on lock: 14, 30, 60, and 90-day engaged lists used religiously ↳3-4 emails per week only to engaged profiles (90-day max) ↳Compressed images every time (imagecompressor .com m is your best friend) ↳Alt text added to all images ↳Footer includes live HTML (brand info, unsubscribe, + invisible text trick) ↳Mobile-optimized layouts (designed in Figma) ↳Dark-mode friendly designs (easy with image-based emails) ↳10-25% of emails sent were pure plain-text (from the founder) ↳"Gradual Send Over Several Hours" used on new or cold accounts ↳Smart Sending turned off in flows ↳Deliverability warmup strategy followed to the T: start with 14-day, then expand At the end of the day... Gymshark, Kylie Cosmetics, Skims, MVMT, Dr. Squatch, Brooklinen, Hydro Flask, Ridge, Casper, and thousands more wouldn’t be sending image-based emails if they went straight to spam.

Email 1: Opened, no click Email 2: Ignored Email 3: Read on mobile Email 4: Clicked Email 5: Ignored Email 6: Urgency introduced Email 7: Replied Email 8: Clicked → “Placed First Order” That’s the welcome flow. Play the long game. It works.

When a brand finally rebuilds their lifecycle system, here’s what actually changes:

Zero excuse to be upset by your email revenue if you're sending less than 2-4 campaigns per week. It's a frequency problem. Competitors are sending... 2-5 email per week retargeting your traffic with ads 24/7 posting 3+ times a day across TikTok/IG/YouTube/ X running influencer campaigns sending direct mail ranking in SEO flooding Google Shopping And wayyy more.

Summer 2018… My buddy Cole and I decided it would be hilarious to take a jet ski through a drive-thru. But not just pull up to the drive-thru. Cole ordered from the truck while towing me, and I placed my order from the back of the jet ski being pulled behind him - just casually shouting my combo from a jet ski in motion. Yes, we actually did it. Yes, the employees were confused. Yes, it made zero sense. And that little moment has stuck with me for years. Because around that same time, life felt heavy: – Senior year pressure – College decisions – Six AP classes – Football playoffs – Debate tournaments – Preparing to move across the country – A relationship ending – Trying to figure out who the hell I was Life was serious. Everything was intense. Everything felt like a “next step” moment. And then… a stupid jet ski drive-thru run reminded me that not everything has to be serious. You need dumb fun to survive big chapters. That day didn’t change my life. But it made the hard parts feel lighter.

Pop-Up: Email captured Welcome Email 1: Skipped Campaign 1: Opened Browse Abandon Email: Triggered Retargeting Ad: Viewed Welcome Email 4: Clicked Site Visit: No purchase Abandon Cart Email: Triggered Campaign 3: Clicked → “Bought with discount” That’s the ecosystem. Email. Ads. Website. It’s all connected.

These are the 30 fastest backend fixes I implement when working with 7–9 figure brands.

Split test 1: New subject line Split test 2: CTA variation Promo Campaigns Sent: Applied learnings, click rate up 25% Flow Email: Timing updated Engagement Segment: Narrowed by product category Pop-up: Offer A/B tested Split test 3: Plain-text vs. designed Split test 4: Emotional vs. Feature-driven Flows Built: Applied learnings, click rate up 25% Revenue: ↑ 43% over 90 days That’s our process. Testing relentlessly so you don’t have to.

Here’s what operators experience once their lifecycle system is rebuilt the right way: First-time conversions jump Better onboarding → more people actually buy. Repeat purchase rate climbs (Education builds habit, habit builds LTV) Paid traffic finally works You stop setting your Meta budget on fire. You’re already spending it… might as well monetize it Revenue becomes predictable Not spikes… consistency. Deliverability stabilizes Your inbox stops playing roulette every quarter. Cross-sells finally convert Because timing actually matches customer behavior. Campaigns start hitting again (They weren’t the problem to begin with) Your ad dependency drops The backend finally starts pulling its weight. And yeah… a lot more sales start rolling in from email. This is what a real lifecycle system does

to write good emails you need to consistently read good emails

After hundreds of audits, the patterns are obvious. These are the 8 biggest lifecycle mistakes I keep seeing inside 7 - 9 figure brands: 1) Welcome flows under 6 emails and you ask NO questions on your popup to help you segment everyone coming in. Everyone gets the SAME message. Huge miss. 2) No conditional logic Everyone gets the same discount like it’s Oprah: “You get 10%… you get 10%… EVERYONE gets 10%!” This kills margin AND personalization. 3) Weak/no popup segmentation Generic popups = generic results. Don’t copy 20-year-old legacy brands - need to have better list capture than them. 4) Campaign frequency too low If you don’t show up, they forget you exist. I can guarantee your competitors aren’t “playing it safe”… they’re playing to WIN. 5) No SMS to backup your emails Some buyers only convert there - typically adds an extra 10-15% on top. 6) Post-purchase doesn’t educate Repeat purchase get killed Subscription brands… your 2nd/3rd order rates are embarrassingly low because of this. 7) Deliverability ignored until it’s too late 8) No winback/sunset flow Your list massively overinflates, your Klaviyo bill is wayyy too high, and inbox placement gets destroyed without you knowing Good thing is, fixing these doesn’t take a year. Typically takes about 60 days to get everything right

Most people talk about the wins.
No one tells you the real shit you run into with DTC Here are 25 brutal truths every ecom operator ends up learning:

I was always the "quiet kid" growing up. building Legos, reading encyclopedias, playing with RC cars - for hours… since the rest of the world felt too loud. I didn’t have confidence. I wasn’t super social. Not antisocial - just extremely selective with a group of close friends. I was just… living in my OWN world. and I loved I that way... at that time. Fast forward to high school, and somehow I ended up joining the debate team. Not because I thought I’d be good at it. But because I wanted to fix the part of me that felt too small. Debate forced me to speak. Forced me to lead. Forced me to grow into someone I didn’t recognize yet. Eventually, I became the captain of the debate team. A varsity football starter. Taking so many AP classes I had to get special permission. Leader of two school clubs. Someone people actually listened to. Someone who could communicate clearly, confidently, intentionally. If you told 10-year-old me that my job one day would literally revolve around communication, clarity, and being a leader… I would’ve laughed. But here we are. Funny how you’re never stuck being who you used to be. Identity is a choice you make daily

Most operators don’t fail because their product is 💩 They fail because ecommerce is BRUTAL Here’s the stuff nobody told me early on… and the things I see every operator eventually learn the hard way: 1 - Ads stop working the SECOND you start relying on them (slow, consistent quarterly growth > one good week on Meta) 2 - Cash flow swings 30–40% month to month. Absolutely need to have a solid stockpile to weather the storm 3 - Your team slows you down before they speed you up. Hiring isn’t a magic pill. Sometimes you’re just paying extra to babysit for a while. 4 - Inventory runs your entire emotional state. Don’t even get me started on tariffs / COGs rising. 5 - Your “best month ever” is usually a fluke… Until you build actual systems that can do it again on command. 6 - Email revenue isn’t “low” Your backend just isn’t built properly. Most retention systems look like they were slapped together between meetings. 7 - Scaling exposes EVERY single weakness in your business. You’re not failing. You’re not behind. You’re just going thru what every operator goes through. Some just clean it up sooner than others.

Campaign 1: Opened Flow Email 1: Ignored Campaign 2: Skimmed Retargeting Ad: Seen Flow Email 2: Opened Campaign 3: Clicked Viewed product: No action Cart Abandon Email: Triggered Final Campaign: Clicked → Added to Cart → Checkout Started "Placed Order" That’s the email marketing game.

Retention is not a role. It’s an engine. And most brands haven’t built it.

Myth #7: “Someone on the team is handling email.” → Questions: What else are they also “handing”? Who actually owns retention? Crickets.

Most operators think their email is “fine.” Until I audit it. Here are the 7 questions that instantly break the myth: