Austin Brawner
426 episodes listed below
Austin Brawner and Lily Ackerley break down ecommerce acquisition, retention, and DTC operator playbooks.
The Ecommerce Influence Podcast treats e-commerce growth as both a numbers problem and a life design problem. Episodes move from Black Friday SMS strategy and live shopping to parenting, burnout, house stress, and what changes when a business stops fitting the founder’s life.
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The show mixes several formats: one-on-one interviews with ecommerce operators, co-hosted panel discussions between Austin Brawner and Lily Ackerley, solo narrative episodes, and 'best of' compilation episodes that pull clips from a prior year. Austin Brawner, founder of Brand Growth Experts, is the primary host; Lily Ackerley appears as a recurring co-host on panel-style episodes, particularly year-end recaps and holiday marketing breakdowns. Guests are typically DTC and ecommerce founders or operators speaking about tactics used inside their own companies, such as Drew Sanocki of Postpilot (previously Karma Loop and Auto Anything) and Chris Meade of Crossnet. Recurring themes include choosing and mastering a single acquisition channel before diversifying, email and SMS retention strategy, BFCM and holiday planning, subscription and direct-mail retargeting, live and video commerce, and buy-versus-build approaches to later-stage business acquisition. A secondary thread running through several episodes is personal and reflective: Brawner discusses burnout, sleep deprivation as a new parent, renegotiating responsibilities with his spouse, and his decision to step down as CEO of his own company. Sponsor mentions for Klaviyo and Recharge recur across episodes. One sampled episode departs from the show's usual ecommerce focus into broader tech and geopolitical news, apparently tied to Brawner's separate project The Adventure Capitalist, but this is not representative of the show's typical content. The show is aimed at people actively running or marketing a DTC or ecommerce business rather than general business listeners. Production style is conversational and tactical, often citing specific revenue, ROAS, or growth figures from guests' businesses. Listeners can expect a combination of channel-specific marketing tactics and firsthand operator accounts rather than high-level business theory.
Made for: Ecommerce and DTC brand founders, marketers, and operators seeking channel-specific tactics and firsthand growth accounts from other operators.
What sets it apart: Pairs tactical DTC marketing breakdowns—email, SMS, direct mail, live commerce—with candid solo episodes about the host's own business setbacks and parenting, rather than sticking to a pure interview format.
My name is Austin Brawner, and my purpose is to help eCommerce entrepreneurs build wealth and live more fulfilled lives. You can expect weekly interviews with world-class eCommerce operators, deep dives into what's working right now, and a refreshing break from the "crush-it culture" plaguing our industry. This podcast will change your perspective on building a business, and, hopefully, change your life.
Based on 6 episodes we listened to · September 2026
Operator interviews and firsthand marketing analysis turn ecommerce growth into clear decisions about customers, channels, retention, and execution.
The Ecommerce Influence Podcast keeps its attention on the decisions behind growing an ecommerce brand. Austin Brawner and Lily Ackerley alternate between operator interviews and conversations drawn from direct marketing work, moving from customer acquisition and Facebook ads to…
This is where your marketing hunch meets 20% click-throughs and seven-cent email reality.
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Short reviews from the PlayNext desk, based on the episodes we processed.
A casual but useful handoff from ecommerce into Tesla, autonomy, transit economics, and changing attitudes toward car ownership.
Austin Brawner uses this Ecommerce Influence appearance as a handoff to The Adventure Capitalist, a new show pitched around overlooked business, investing, and geopolitics stories.
Drew Sanocki turns Postpilot's growth into a practical lesson on LTV, reinvestment, and founder discipline.
Drew Sanocki's return to The Ecommerce Influence Podcast is a clear founder-operator look at the move from ecommerce turnarounds to running Postpilot as a fast-growing software company.
A candid founder return about business strain, layoffs, fatherhood, and a delayed house build forcing a hard capacity reset.
Austin Brawner returns after 10 months with a candid founder update that is more personal reset than ecommerce playbook. He frames the lost stretch as a collision of business pressure, new fatherhood, a house build that kept slipping, and the hard choice to lay off his team to…
A practical ecommerce planning episode on launches, automation, loyalty, and giving one-time buyers a reason to come back.
Lily Ackerley turns this year-end episode into a practical planning prompt for ecommerce teams heading into 2023. The selected clips focus on product launches, SMS and email waitlists, loyalty, and the bigger shift toward buying experiences that feel simple enough for customers…
A practical BFCM recap for ecommerce teams weighing email discipline, SMS fatigue, and what to repeat next year.
Austin Brawner and Lily Ackerley use a Black Friday Cyber Monday recap to sort through what seemed to work, what felt overdone, and what merchants can still adjust before year end. The most useful section is their SMS discussion.
A grounded CMO field note on quick retention wins, Q4 readiness, and sharpening customer voice.
The Ecommerce Influence Podcast frames Lily Ackerley's first 60 days as CMO at Sweetflex as a practical look at joining an early-stage ecommerce brand during Q4.
A grounded business-owner check-in on parenthood, compressed workdays, childcare tradeoffs, and staying productive on less sleep.
Austin Bronner's new role as a dad turns into a practical conversation about what happens when work time gets compressed. Lily Ackerley keeps the questions close to the operating reality: mornings that now belong to a baby, a shorter work window, and the surprise that old…
A practical look at bringing live shopping and shoppable video onto a brand's own site for more control, better product education, and potentially stronger conversion.
Live shopping comes across here as a concrete ecommerce tactic, not a shiny channel experiment. Lily Ackerley sets up the main tension: brands are already making video content for social platforms, but that work leaves them with less control over the customer experience and less…
Changelog hosts Adam and Jerod talk open source governance, git tooling, and AI coding with engineers.
Stephen Dubner tests bourbon economics, Alzheimer's research, and money advice against hard data.
Daily business news with Kai Ryssdal, tracking Fed policy, oil shocks, and private credit.
Galloway rotates Office Hours Q&A, Raging Moderates politics, and China Decode geopolitics weekly.
Joel and Matt answer listener money questions weekly in the show's Ask HTM segments.
A familiar voice is back with a new show.
Austin Brawner talks with Drew Sanocki about moving from turnaround e-commerce at Karma Loop and Auto Anything into Postpilot, an app Drew bought, backed, and helped grow into a company with more than 100 employees.
Ten months gone, Austin is back.
2023 planning starts with a notepad.
Black Friday, Cyber Monday left inboxes stuffed.
Lily Ackerley stepped into Q4 with a new CMO title.
Austin is four and a half months into dad mode, and the glow has met the calendar.
Live shopping still feels early.
Predictable revenue starts narrow.
Growth starts above the ad account.