5 Reflections on 5 Years at ANCORE
Five years of building marketing from scratch taught me some fundamental truths—like why fancy tools are overrated and metrics can be dangerous distractions.
You can read last year's reflections here.
Five years ago, I was eating sandwiches in a garage on the north shore of Boston, taking breaks between building a website for the first time and hand-assembling ANCORE units. Our "shipping department" consisted of daily trips to UPS, and our "headquarters" was a basement workspace that was also a product testing space and also a workout space. We were the definition of scrappy—a small team with big dreams and a panini press.
Today, we have a proper HQ in Salem. There's a production floor where our incredible team crafts each unit by hand with precision. We've grown from that basement operation into something real and tangible. But the most valuable things I've learned aren't about scaling operations or improving processes. They're about the fundamental truths that only reveal themselves when you spend enough time in the trenches.
Here are five reflections from five years of building ANCORE's marketing from the ground up.
1. It's Not the Tool, It's the Person Wielding It
Early in my time at ANCORE, I fell into a common trap: the allure of fancy tools and complex systems. I thought having access to the latest design software, analytics platforms, and marketing tools would automatically translate to better results and look cool as hell, too. I was wrong on both accounts.
The truth is, tools are only as good as the person using them. You might be better off with fewer tools than you think. I learned this lesson the hard way, spending many hours researching elaborate systems when simpler solutions would have worked better.
Simplicity is criminally underrated in business. While there's certainly a time and place for sophisticated tools, if you're questioning whether that time is now, it's probably not. Some of our best early work came from basic tools wielded with clarity and purpose, and some of our best work today flows from nothing more than a Figma subscription and a dream.
2. Master the Numbers That Matter (And Ignore the Rest)
As a marketer, you'll drown in metrics if you let yourself. Click-through rates, conversion rates, ROAS, CPMs – the alphabet soup of marketing metrics is endless. But here's what I've learned: just because you can measure something doesn't mean you should.
Sometimes you need to fire certain metrics, just like you occasionally need to fire customers. Pick your North Star measurements and build your philosophy around them. The rest is just noise.
When it comes to those North Star metrics, focus on two key buckets: actions and revenue. Are customers taking meaningful steps—signing up, engaging, sharing? Are they converting and generating sales? If your metrics track behavioral actions and dollar amounts, you're on the right path. Everything else—open rates, impressions, vanity metrics—is secondary.
Our job as marketers is to drive action and sales; if your measurements align with those goals, you're focusing on what truly matters.
And one last thing to remember on this subject: metrics can be manipulated to support almost any narrative. What matters is choosing the metrics that align with your core business objectives and building your strategy around those. Everything else is a distraction.
3. Build Marketing That Can Take a Punch
If your marketing strategy is a house of cards—if it can collapse from a single algorithm change or depends too heavily on one social platform—it's not a strategy, it's a liability. Over these five years, I've learned the importance of building marketing systems that can weather storms by maintaining control of our own channels: email lists, customer databases, and direct relationships that aren't at the mercy of third-party platforms.
At ANCORE, we've built durability through diversification. We collaborate with coaches, seed products with creators, and yes, we use paid advertising. But here's the crucial part: if any of those went away tomorrow, we’d be okay. Yes, it would hurt and give me a few extra gray hairs trying to solve the problem, but that would likely be the extent of it.
The key is to never let any single channel or tactic become your Achilles' heel. Marketing needs to be as tough as the brand it represents.
4. Don't Define Yourself By Your Role
"I'm just a marketer" is a phrase that limits your potential. In five years at ANCORE, I've designed packaging (thanks, YouTube tutorials!), dived deep into product development, and recently spent three months experimenting with AI integration across our marketing stack.
Your real job isn't to be a marketer—it's to be a problem solver. The moment you start defining yourself strictly by your role is the moment you start limiting your impact.
Some of our biggest breakthroughs came when we stepped outside our comfort zones and into unknown territory. That willingness to learn and adapt isn't just helpful – it's essential.
5. You Can Do More With Less Than You Think
Our marketing operation started with zero budget. No fancy tools, no massive ad spends—just please and thank you, a genuine product, and the willingness to get creative within our constraints. We weren't competing with big brands' marketing budgets (we still aren't), but those initial limitations forced us to think differently.
When you strip away all the fancy tools and big budgets, you're left with what really matters: clear communication, genuine relationships, and the ability to solve problems creatively. Those constraints didn't limit us—they focused us. They forced us to find sustainable, creative solutions instead of throwing money at problems.
Five years later, this lesson still holds true. You can do more than you think, and you can do it with less than you imagine. Sometimes the greatest marketing breakthroughs come not from having more resources, but from being forced to think creatively with what you have.
The Next Five Years
Looking back at that garage where we started, eating sandwiches and making daily UPS runs, I'm grateful for every lesson learned. But what excites me most isn't just where we've been—it's where we're heading. The marketing landscape keeps shifting: AI is reshaping how we work, social platforms rise and fall, and consumer behavior evolves at lightning speed.
Yet these five lessons remain timeless. Because when you strip away all the complexity and fancy tools, marketing is still about connecting real people with products that can help them. That won't change, whether we're working from a garage or a gleaming office tower.
Sometimes the best way forward isn't about having more—it's about doing more with what you have. That's the kind of work that lasts. And that's the kind of work we'll keep doing for the next five years and beyond.