"Be aggressive when others are fearful and being conservative or pulling back."
Mason Dorner helps startup and rapid-growth stage digital businesses to quickly scale and achieve 8,9, and 10 figure exits through aggressive marketing and sales strategy and execution.
Mason has worked in digital performance marketing for 10+ years during which time he hsamanaged over $100M in ad spend and generated over $1B in online sales for major brands such as Comcast and Disney. After getting bored of the corporate rat race, he joined a local Orlando tech startup, Stax, as their head of marketing and was one of the first full-time employees. During his time with Stax, they profitably scaled their marketing spend by over 1,000%, acquired 25,000+ customers, and grew to a valuation of over $1B under his leadership.
He is now the Chief Ads Officer and cofounder of Ascenditt, a rapid-growth e-commerce and SAAS consulting firm, where he has consulted for, invested in, and helped to scale 50+ digital SMBs and ecommerce brands, several of which have reached 8-9 figure valuations.
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Table of Contents
We are thrilled to have you join us today, welcome to ValiantCEO Magazine’s exclusive interview! Let’s start off with a little introduction. Tell our readers a bit about yourself and your company.
Mason Dorner: I help startup and rapid-growth stage digital businesses to quickly scale and achieve 8,9, and 10 figure exits through aggressive marketing and sales strategy and execution.
I have worked in digital performance marketing for 10+ years during which time I have managed over $100M in ad spend and generated over $1B in online sales for major brands such as Comcast and Disney. After getting bored of the corporate rat race I joined a local Orlando tech startup, Stax, as their head of marketing and was one of the first full-time employees. During my time with Stax, we profitably scaled their marketing spend by over 1,000%, acquired 25,000+ customers, and grew to a valuation of over $1B under my leadership.
I am now the Chief Ads Officer and cofounder of Ascenditt, a rapid-growth e-commerce and SAAS consulting firm, where I have consulted for, invested in, and helped to scale 50+ digital SMBs and ecommerce brands, several of which have reached 8-9 figure valuations.
2020 and 2021 threw a lot of curve balls into business on a global scale. Based on the experience gleaned in the past couple years, how can businesses thrive in 2022? What lessons have you learned?
Mason Dorner: Be aggressive when others are fearful and being conservative or pulling back. In 2020 I was leading marketing at Stax as well as consulting for several small ecommerce brands. In each of these categories the large incumbents pulled back on advertising customer acquisition due to the uncertainty brought on by the pandemic. This meant that there was less competition and the cost to acquire customers actually went down. So I advised each of the brands we were working with to increase their ad spend as much as possible. Every single one of those up and coming brands ended up having a record year in 2020 and grew hundreds of percentile year over year as a result.
The pandemic seems to keep on disrupting the economy, what should businesses focus on in 2022? What advice would you share?
Mason Dorner: Businesses need to remain both flexible and vigilant. In the digital advertising, ecommerce, and saas spaces we’re used to large changes happening every 6 to 12 months as technology evolves, data privacy regulations increase and consumer trends continue to change, however this is not the norm for many industries. There are many business models that have been able to thrive over long periods of time without much change or updates to their model.
Those businesses are most at risk now. Every business owner and founder needs to get themselves to place looking at their business with fresh eyes and evaluating if their current model and way of operating makes the most sense for the current market conditions and if it does not they need to be willing to pivot, even if it’s the first pivot that they’ve ever made in their business. Now is a time when business owners must rapidly evolve with the changing world or be left behind.
How has the pandemic changed your industry and how have you adapted?
Mason Dorner: All the major brand players that sat on the sidelines at the beginning of the pandemic have re-entered the marketplace and many of them are spending their typical large ad budgets plus the dollars that they decided to keep in reserve early in the pandemic. This is causing ad costs and the cost to acquire customers to skyrocket. Additionally, as brick and mortar stores are opening back up and inflation is hammering the economy, ecommerce sales are slowing down.
Given that the current climate has made it so much tougher and more expensive to acquire new customers it is all the more important to make sure that ecommerce brands delight, retain, and extract maximum value from their current customers.
This means not only mitigating and quickly correcting for bad experiences, but also looking for opportunities to go above and beyond when it comes to a brand’s best customers. Warby Parker and Zappos used to be considered outliers for having such a customer-centric approach, but now it must become the standard for brands that want to continue to thrive in the current environment.
What advice do you wish you received when the pandemic started and what do you intend on improving in 2022?
Mason Dorner: I wish I had been told to just relax and not operate out of fear. All the brands I was working with had massive success in 2020 because we chose to be aggressive and prioritize growth when others were fearful and playing defense. I think I figured that out much faster than most (some never did), but I definitely had some fear and doubt right at the beginning of the pandemic. 45 days into lockdown when I realized the world wasn’t going to end, we sprung into action and started seeing massive growth across all of our brands, but we probably could have squeezed even more out of that year had we made the flip to growth mode more quickly.
Online business surged higher than ever, B2B, B2C, online shopping, virtual meetings, remote work, Zoom medical consultations, what are your expectations for 2022?
Mason Dorner: I expect that we are going to see some regression in online business in 2022. During the pandemic consumers only had 1 choice, online or nothing. Now the world is open and consumers have choices again so I do expect online businesses to take hit year over year because a lot of that growth over the past 2 years was accelerated/inflated by the pandemic. However, I do think that even after we get through the correction, online businesses, platforms, solutions etc. will still have greater adoption, revenue, usage, etc. than they did before the pandemic.
How many hours a day do you spend in front of a screen?
Mason Dorner: It really varies depending on the day. I spend 1-2 days a week doing business development, meeting new prospective partners, giving pitches, networking etc. A lot of these meetings and presentations could be done over zoom, but I’ve found that there is no substitute for the increased impact that an interaction carries when it is face to face in-person.
On days that I’m head down and executing I spend 6-10 hours in front of a screen, so if you average that out with the 2 day of in person meetings it comes out to around 4-5 hours per day in front of a screen over the course of a week.
The majority of executives use stories to persuade and communicate in the workplace. Can you share with our readers examples of how you implement that in your business to communicate effectively with your team?
Mason Dorner: I’ve spent an extensive amount of time studying successful startups and reading about their founders and what made them successful. When working with founders I’ve been able to draw upon those stories when they are faced with similar decisions in their own business. It’s much easier to convince someone to make a certain decision with a real world example of someone who went before them versus just debating our own personal opinions on the matter.
Business is all about overcoming obstacles and creating opportunities for growth. What do you see as the real challenge right now?
Mason Dorner: I think the biggest obstacle right now is the lack of predictability and constant upheaval of the post-covid world. Between supply chain issues, inflation, a slowing economy, energy prices, and the global economic consequences foreign conflicts business owners have a lot to deal with. Founders and business owners have to be more nimble and creative than ever in order to be successful in this enviroment.
In 2022, what are you most interested in learning about? Crypto, NFTs, online marketing, or any other skill sets? Please share your motivations.
Mason Dorner: I’m a huge believer in crypto and have been involved in the space since 2016. I find it fascinating how the space continues to evolve and the new applications and uses that continue to present themselves. Having spent time in the payments industry (which hasn’t changed much in the last 40 years) and currently working with so many ecommerce founders, I’m a huge proponent of anything that makes it easier and cheaper to move money and transact online and across borders.
A record 4.4 million Americans left their jobs in September in 2021, accelerating a trend that has become known as the Great Resignation. 47% of people plan to leave their job during 2022. Most are leaving because of their boss or their company culture. 82% of people feel unheard, undervalued and misunderstood in the workplace. Do you think leaders see the data and think “that’s not me – I’m not that boss they don’t want to work for? What changes do you think need to happen?
Mason Dorner: Founders, leaders and executives need to humble themselves and take a good hard look in the mirror. Many startups glorify the grind and overworking under the guise of “we’re all a family and we’re building something great together” and that’s not necessarily wrong in the early stages of a company. I think what founders and leaders lose sight of as a company scales, is that those intangibles don’t carry the same weight as they did when the company was smaller. They are no longer enough to keep people happy on their own. Your company may have an amazing mission, but people are still people. They still have lives and other things that matter to them outside of your company and that’s ok.
I think time is starting to expire on startup cult culture as we’re seeing more and more stories like WeWork and Uber come to light where the culture was toxic at a very large scale and the founders were completely disillusioned and believing too much of their own hype. As a founder your company might be your baby or even your god, but it’s not for your employees and that needs to be kept in focus.
On a lighter note, if you had the ability to pick any business superpower, what would it be and how would you put it into practice?
Mason Dorner: My business superpower would be to instantly understand what someone wants and what matters to them because if you can figure out what someone wants and what makes them tick you can close any deal you want.
What does “success” in 2022 mean to you? It could be on a personal or business level, please share your vision.
Mason Dorner: 2022 will be the first full year that I am not working for someone else and am solely building my own company alongside my business partner. Our collective goal is help saas and ecom founders achieve massive growth for their businesses while also being able to lead fulfilling personal lives.
Both of us have held full-time leadership positions with multiple successful startups and while there were a lot of great experiences and a lot of knowledge gained in those settings, there was also a huge amount of personal sacrifice. What we came away asking ourselves was “is there a way that we can use our knowledge and skills to help other startup founders achieve success and growth without killing ourselves and sacrificing time with our families?” From that idea, the concept of Ascenditt took shape, a business where we and our team function as a plug and play fractional Chief Growth Officer for startup and hyper-growth stage saas and ecom startups.
Jed Morley, VIP Contributor to ValiantCEO and the host of this interview would like to thank Mason Dorner for taking the time to do this interview and share his knowledge and experience with our readers.
If you would like to get in touch with Mason Dorner or his company, you can do it through his – Linkedin Page
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