😎 Cody Plofker shares how he finds, pays + coaches creators

🤑 Matt Bertulli breaks down subscription offers and retention

📈 Jason Panzer reveals seven ways to drive traffic to Amazon

BONUS Grab our free Creative Supply Chain Resources:

6-Step Framework
Creator Brief Template
Hook Training Guide

Matt Bertulli

CEO, Pela + Lomi

What Thousands of Subscription Brands Taught Us

Most brands launch subscriptions the same way: a fat first-order discount in the buy box, a confirmation email, and a prayer.

Then radio silence.

Or the same email and SMS blasts everyone else sends. Either way, you miss the chance to turn a skeptical new subscriber into someone who loves your product and sticks around.

When we founded Winks, there was never a question it had to be subscription. We built it on Skio. In fact, Cody and I brought on Aidan Thibodeaux, President of Recharge and CEO of Skio, to break down our launch on Operators Build.

In between some light roasting of our buy box, he shared:

Why gifts beat discounts (but never a shaker bottle)
How a quarterly offer could be your starting point
When to send subscribers a message versus shut up

The Skio team packed everything Adian dropped on us during his episode and layer on what they’ve learned from 1,000+ of the fastest-growing CPG brands on Shopify … into one deck.

It includes industry-wide benchmarks dissected into specific categories like powder supplements.

Hitting those numbers doesn’t come down to one clever trick. Aidan’s advice boils down to three rules:

No silver bullet. Test everything: you don’t know what will stick. Keep it simple: nail the offer, then refine messaging. Don’t get lazy: easy doesn’t always mean worth doing.

Is there a silver bullet for building a subscription brand? No.

But this deck comes pretty close.

It’s a labor of love born from our partnership, extended to any brand that wants to drive more repeat revenue.

The offers, the post-purchase playbook, and the benchmarks to grade yourself against, all in one place.

Steal the Playbook

Cody Plofker

Jones Road, Advisor

How I Find, Pay, + Coach Creators

At Jones Road, my team spent $100k–$200k a month on influencer partnerships.

At Winks, I’m building the program myself.

Finding creators
Negotiating pay
Briefing + coaching

Partnership ads are getting the most spend and delivering our best efficiency right now.

We run them through a creator’s account. Customers see the creator’s name and face instead of just our brand.

Here’s an overview of how I find, pay + coach creators.

Find Creators

With Trybe, we put a few creators on retainer. They produce around 60 videos per month.

Outside Trybe, I’m building a roster of UGC creators through direct recruitment. To start, I posted on X about it.

I’m also reaching out directly over email to influencers who I think would be a good fit.

How do I find them?

Doomscrolling

This is actually for two reasons.

Understand our customer
Find awesome creators

The problem is, my Instagram feed looks nothing like our target market’s.

To solve that, I created a separate account and I’m using it as if I were the customer. Intentionally trying to follow the same influencers, watch videos they find interesting, etc.

The goal is for the Instagram algo to start feeding me the same content that it feeds our shoppers.

I save what catches my attention. Those examples go into our briefs so creators can see what we’re trying to achieve.

I use this to spot potential partners too.

Who’s making content your customer would watch? Who gets the audience talking? Save their profiles and reach out.

Pay Creators

How we pay depends on the relationship.

Trybe: Commission

Creators earn 15% of sales attributed to their content through Trybe. No upfront fee. Some programs pay a percentage of ad spend. We chose sales.

Trybe: Retainer

Selected creators get a monthly fee for agreed content deliverables. That gives them guaranteed income while we work on improving the content together.

Commission-only is great for us. But we’re a new brand with limited spend. Their earning opportunity is small.

Partnerships

We negotiate a fee for content + permission to run ads through their accounts for a defined period.

I ask for a three-frame Instagram Story plus 30 days of usage rights. Sometimes that package costs the same as asking for whitelisting alone.

Before asking for rates, I request screenshots of their last 30 days of performance:

Views
Engagement
Link clicks

At Jones Road, our influencer agency helped us use those numbers to determine a fair rate for each partner.

I’m using that same method at Winks.

If the numbers suggest $5k is reasonable, but they quote $10k … now I have a basis for a counteroffer.

If we land at $7,500, I might ask them to include another deliverable. They get a higher fee, and our cost per piece of content comes down.

I used to worry about offending influencers by negotiating. Just be respectful. Explain the numbers behind your offer. Most importantly, know what you’re willing to pay.

Coach Creators

First, scour Reddit. Why? To find winning ad angles.

Everything is downstream of great messaging. If we understand what customers are struggling with and how they describe it, then we can give creators specific problems, language, and desired outcomes to build their content around.

I use AI to help and do a lot of manual research.

Specifically looking for women struggling with their sleep because that’s our target market.

What have they tried before?
How does it affect daily life?
What do they blame for it?

The obvious place to look is a sleep subreddit. But my worry is that leads us to biohackers. We are not targeting biohackers.

Instead I’m looking for sleep conversations in communities about parenting, motherhood, and perimenopause.

At the same time, I’m reading Amazon reviews, competitors’ reviews, and social comments. I save screenshots and quotes into Claude, then have it organize them into a research document.

Before that research becomes a creator brief, we need to decide:

What’s the primary message?
How should they tell the story?
What does the ad need to do?

On Build, we shared a six-step creative supply chain framework detailing everything.

“Better sleep” is broad. “Waking up at 3 a.m.” gives a creator a specific problem to build around.

The framework helps us plan the message, source, format, creative approach, and funnel role. The production checklist oversees the ad for launch.

Those decisions give us the starting point for the brief.

Briefs

Our creator brief gives them a structure to work with:

Hook → Problem → Teach → Winks → CTA

They can adapt the order and use what fits their story. We want them speaking in their own words about experiences they’ve actually had, not just following a script — i.e. yapping.

We also include hook ideas, example videos, filming instructions, and ingredient information. Including which claims they can and can’t make.

Want a starting point for your own briefs?

We’ve included a free Creator Brief Template with the resources below. Use it to give creators clear direction on what to cover, what they can claim, and how to film.

The education piece is important.

If someone opens with trouble winding down, we want them to explain why a relevant ingredient caught their attention. Give the viewer a reason to believe beyond “I love this product.”

One practical instruction we give in our briefs: film three different hooks for the same video.

Same body. Different opening line + on-screen headline.

That gives us three chances to get someone watching without asking for three entirely new videos.

Coaching Calls

A brief alone leaves room for interpretation. So we get on weekly calls, review examples, and give specific feedback.

The creators who participate are making better content.

One recent call focused on hooks.

We broke it into three parts:

What the viewer sees
What the creator says
What the text adds

And compared good, okay, versus bad examples.

We showed creators how to find their own references. Search the problem on TikTok. Save what stops you. Figure out why it works, then rewrite it a few different ways.

The goal is for them to understand what makes an opening stronger and bring that judgment to their next video.

Our Hook Training Guide has frameworks, examples, and a checklist you can use to coach creators yourself.

Runneth Gives Feedback

60 videos per month is too much for me to review manually.

So we use Runneth. It QAs stuff like captions inside the safe zones, strong or weak hooks, and any claims that need a second look. Then it drafts feedback for us to send to the creator.

With partnership ads, we get raw footage and do all the editing. I’ve built AI skills for that workflow. The agent looks at the creator’s Instagram, checks their usual fonts and style, and uses those as references for the edit.

For both Trybe and partnerships, Runneth applies our naming conventions and uploads to Meta directly.

Start With The Message

If you saw my recent tweet …

You already know where I stand on this.

We can automate the editing, naming, and uploading every week. But we still have to figure out:

What to say
Who will say it

That starts with understanding the customer. Their frustrations. What they’ve tried. The words they use to describe it.

After that, we just have to find the right people to deliver that message. Plus, give them guidance to make it land.

Want the tools to put this into practice? Get our free Creative Supply Chain Resources:

★ 6-Step Framework
★ Creator Brief Template
★ Hook Training Guide

Hit reply and tell Aaron …

Send me the Creative Supply Chain bundle!

Jason Panzer

President & CFO, HexClad

7 Proven Traffic Strategies

We spend in a lot of places at HexClad.

Wrong channels, fuzzy attribution, and wasted budget. Those problems make it hard to know where the next dollar should go.

The brands getting it right aren’t always spending more. They’ve stopped guessing.

They know which channels drive sales versus which ones look good in a dashboard but bleed budget. They also understand how affiliate and creator traffic can deliver strong returns when set up correctly.

For brands selling on Amazon, that includes reaching shoppers outside the marketplace and bringing them to your listings.

Levanta put together a free playbook covering seven traffic strategies for growing Amazon sales: