A Craigslist ad. Zero experience. No resume.
Just a cover letter written at 9pm. And showing up cold the next morning for an interview he wasn’t invited to.
That’s how today’s “Operators Titan” got his start.
Fast-forward seven years and …
Well, I don’t want to spoil the ending.
But it has something to do with being CMO at the largest leather manufacturer in North America and generating over $500 million in lifetime sales.
Operators Masterclass
This email is part of a new series we’ve launched.
Alongside Operators Titans, we’ve also put together the ultimate expansion pack to help you grow during Q4.
- Online event on October 29th
- Step-by-step channel playbook
- Spend $5k, get $5k ad credits
- 100 AppLovin invites available
- Plus more than a few surprises
Our first invites went out yesterday.
If you want one + everything else, here’s where to get started with the Operators Masterclass on Expansion.
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Aaron Orendorff
Chief Content Officer
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How a Wedding Photographer With No Experience Became CMO of a Half-Billion-Dollar Enterprise: 5 Lessons
MacCoy Merkley didn’t know what a “digital media specialist” was when he answered a Craigslist ad in 2018.
He had no marketing resume, no formal education.
His best qualification was that he’d run Facebook ads aimed at local brides looking for a photographer.
Fish, meet barrel.
Less than a decade later, he’s the CMO of an omni-channel juggernaut — managing a full marketing department built from scratch and overseeing massive retail expansion.
The company, Portland Leather Goods (PLG), has now generated over $500M in lifetime sales.
This isn’t a story about pedigree or connections.
It’s about weaponizing ignorance, elevating simplicity over complexity, and knowing when to say no.
Here are five lessons from MacCoy “Maverick” Merkley, the CMO of Portland Leather Goods.
1. Ignorance is a competitive advantage
Most people see gaps in their knowledge as disqualifications.
MacCoy saw them as permission to try anything.
In his first year at PLG, its Etsy store was pacing at $3.5M. The dormant Shopify site? Less than a million.
He had zero ecommerce experience, didn’t really understand media buying, and couldn’t read a line of code.
I remember coming home and my wife asking, “What’d you do today?” And I’m like, “I don’t know.” She’d ask, “Did you do a good job at it?” I’d say, “I don’t know.” We were just figuring this thing out, right? It was like the wild west.
That ignorance meant he wasn’t constrained by how things were supposed to work.
MacCoy claimed the Shopify site as his territory, refused to even log into Etsy, and spent every available dollar on Meta because that’s what worked from the jump.
Looking back now, I think I had a decent marketing foundation more than I realized at the time.
Of course, my skills were so small and undersized that they just wouldn’t translate. I wouldn’t hire me if I came in and was like, “I’m a wedding photographer, let me run your nine-figure company.”
That’s not what we were doing. Still, I wasted way too many years believing I was not smart enough.
In the next two years, the company went from $5M to $15M. All while MacCoy was learning from YouTube videos and copying tactics from Facebook groups.
I literally ripped static ads 100% of the time all the way up to nine figures. People ask me why. The answer is because I didn’t have a problem.
It was working. So I just kept going.
The lesson isn’t to stay ignorant.
It’s that not knowing the “right” way to do something can be liberating when you’re willing to figure it out as you go.
2. Problems are simpler than you think
MacCoy calls his operating framework “accelerated common sense.” It came straight out of the years he spent thinking he wasn’t smart enough.
The breakthrough was simple …
Everything is knowable. Every problem basically looks the same. I don’t know. I need to figure out how to know. Maybe someone else knows. We get that knowledge, we overcome it. What’s the next problem?
The framework works at every level.
When he couldn’t figure out Google Ads, he recruited someone who could. When he needed to manage a software development team despite not being able to write code, he focused on alignment instead of technical knowledge.
The whole world is built by people no smarter than you.
If you’re somebody who’s willing to attack problems and get your hands dirty and learn, I think you’re capable of managing just about anyone.
The surface area of knowledge in the world is far greater than you can possibly hope to contain in your own brain.
You’re not that smart. You don’t need to be.
This isn’t about dumbing things down.
It’s about refusing to be intimidated by complexity when the path forward is usually straightforward.
Find the answer or find someone who can find the answer. Implement it. Move on.
Solve the maximum number of problems in the shortest amount of time. The output of that input is typically growth.
3. Say no to everything, then say no again
Whether you’re big or small, the temptation is to be everywhere.
- Test every channel
- Try every tactic
- Chase every opportunity
MacCoy did the opposite.
He picked Meta and spent every available dollar there until Portland Leather Goods crossed nine figures. No TikTok. No influencer marketing. No UGC ads.
Meta, a few years “arbitraging” Pinterest + a little Google.
People told him he was leaving money on the table. That he should diversify. That he needed to test new channels.
He ignored all of it because the core channel was still working.
Focus on one thing and do it really, really well.
Whatever you choose as your primary channel, make sure you’re pushing that to its extreme because it will likely yield better results than fragmenting yourself out into a million different things at a slow or poor rate.
His vetting criteria for new channels starts with a default no.
Then he asks his community of other operators if anyone’s seeing success. Then he considers the potential reach and quality of the opportunity.
Most things still get rejected.
For instance, when Portland Leather Goods tested AppLovin, it was one of the first five brands in the beta. Not because MacCoy was chasing new channels, but because the math made sense:
- Massive user base
- Unskippable ads
- Dedicated attention
After a year of advertising, AppLovin represents 10%–12% of PLG’s total media spend.
I’d like to grow it. Anytime you get close to that percent — especially 10% — it represents a pretty substantial amount of dollars, right? And usually, the best something’s gonna get is start to steal from Meta.
It’s not taking money from Meta today. It’s incremental dollars, which I think is one of the benefits of the channel.
Nonetheless, his advice is clear.
MacCoy describes himself as “experimental phobic.” He watches other operators chase shiny objects while he focuses on making what’s already working work better.
First and foremost, I recommend you say no.
The safest sorting mechanism is just to say no over and over and over again. Almost nothing gets through except for the best because that criteria is so tight.
If it’s not something we’re actively looking for, we say no. You can go the wrong way with that sometimes. Maybe we could have gone further, faster. Who knows?
But I’m happy with the outcome.
The lesson? Constraints are a blessing. Pick one thing. Master it completely. Say no to everything else until you’ve exhausted what’s possible with relentless execution.
4. Math reveals when tactics stop working
In late 2023, MacCoy looked at PLG’s Meta and saw a problem that creative testing couldn’t solve.
They’d reached 60 million women in the United States and shown them ads an average of 20 times each. There are only 108 million women over 18 in the US. Translation? They’d saturated more than half their addressable market.
The question became uncomfortable …
How do you plan for growth when you’ve already hit most of your audience 20 times?
We looked at that, and I said, “As a CMO, I have to justify why I think I’m going to do better next year.”
Is it that I’m gonna spend way more money and get it to 70 million reached? Or am I gonna spend way more money and my frequency goes to 30 or 40?
What’s the correct number?
This is where most brands continue to optimize their tactics. Especially direct response.
More offers. Better hooks. Faster iteration cycles. MacCoy realized the math was telling him something different.
The problem wasn’t the ads. It was the strategy.
Instead of reaching more people or showing more ads, they decided to make each of those 20 impressions count.
A fundamental shift …
This year, we’ve spent a lot more time and effort on things that we’ve historically neglected.
We want to make each of those 20 impressions more impactful. We want to show up for each of them in a way that resonates more locally.
That means influencers talking about PLG in their native language to their native audience. Affiliates on the media channels their followers actually care about.
Making each paid impression land harder because the person has already seen the brand somewhere they trust.
Our behavior used to be that we were the center point of the brand. Now we’re trying to radiate energy outwards.
We are shifting to a strategy where we create a constellation of people and platforms and channels. They’re pushing that energy inward so we get a nice circular exchange.
5. Growth is not optional ... it is survival
MacCoy has a thought experiment he uses with founders.
If you had to build a business whose sole objective was to survive 100 years, how would you describe it?
Take a $20 million company that profits ~$2 million annually. Comfortable. Profitable. Sustainable.
Now freeze it exactly as it is for 100 years. Would that business survive or go extinct?
The answer is obvious. It would die.
Maybe not in one year or five years, but eventually the market shifts, competitors evolve, customer preferences change, and standing still becomes falling behind.
The business itself has to grow.
Its natural state is dying. There’s no standing still on the treadmill. You gotta move, you gotta grow.
This isn’t just about revenue.
It’s about the business, the team, the leader.
Given a long enough period of time, I won’t be the CMO of Portland Leather Goods.
That’s gonna be true for all of us in our positions. I’m trying to make sure when that happens, it’s ’cause I die of old age, not because the business grows to a point where I can’t support it.
In other words, growth doesn’t center on ambition or ego. It centers on reality: You’re either growing or you’re dying.
There is no third option, no matter how comfortable you feel.
Who does the future version of me need to be? What skills do I need to develop now so the business doesn’t pass me by?
You do not get to stand still.
This thing is a treadmill. You need to be growing.
Whether that’s as the leaders or the people running the business or the business itself.
The path from $13-per-hour to CMO wasn’t about knowing the right people or the right answers. It hinged on accepting that problems are knowable, “no” should be our default response, and standing still is just dying slowly.
If you wait until you’re qualified …
You’ve already lost time you can’t get back.
Perhaps my favorite line from MacCoy is this one: “The whole world is built by people no smarter than you.”
So, let’s build.
Operators Titans E002: Portland Leather Goods With CMO MacCoy Merkely
One Last Thing
If you’d like access to Axon, AppLovin’s self-service ad manager, without signing up for the Operators Masterclass …
First off, I’m offended. But second, I understand. You’re busy. Might as well cut to the chase.
Here’s the link and our code to get $5k in ad credits when you spend $5k (terms apply).
As a reminder, AppLovin is the S&P 500 mobile-gaming ad platform (e.g., Candy Crush, Words With Friends, etc).
The Operators have been advertising on it since 2024.
Ridge spent ~$3M during last year’s Q4 alone (performance on par with Meta). HexClad has a soon-to-be-released case study on generating +$1M in incremental revenue during one of its three-week holdout tests.
Plus, they’re all scaling up this holiday season.
With thanks and anticipation,
Aaron Orendorff 🤓
Chief Content Officer
Disclaimer: Special thanks to AppLovin for sponsoring today’s newsletter + masterclass.