Meet Vasa Martinez of Growthbuster in South Bay

Today we’d like to introduce you to Vasa Martinez.

Vasa, please share your story with us. How did you get to where you are today?
After college (UCLA c/o 2007) the job market wasn’t so friendly and after a few odd jobs, I swallowed my pride and began a career in the service industry. I moved up pretty fast at a local bar/nightclub that is a perennial TOP 100 in the United States. Oddly enough, I learned so much there about work ethic and attention to detail, which has helped me throughout my career. I’m still very close to my old boss who was truly more of a mentor and a life coach. Fast-forward six years to 2013. I chose to start all over as an unpaid intern at my favorite company at the time –– Quest Nutrition. It was one of the proudest moments of my life. I teared up walking back to my car after hearing the words, “Go back home, grab your laptop and let’s get started.” It was then that I learned as much as I could as fast as I could for nearly four years. It’s 2017 now and I test the job market along with the skills I’ve picked up along the way. I learned very quickly that being an employee wasn’t quite my thing anymore so I began consulting for different brands in the CPG world.

Over the balance of 2017, I realized there was something there, so I incorporated GROWTHBUSTER in January of 2018. Things went well again so I decided to make 2019 the year of hiring. In February, we brought on my close friend Danny who I met at Quest and who later served at another unicorn CPG company, Halo Top, as our VP of Growth. We then brought on two Social Media Managers (Quest and Halo Top backgrounds) who also oversee influencer and community — known internally as Growth Managers. Our next hire was a hybrid role of operations, retail marketing and community (Food Network and Enlightened background). Why retail marketing at a marketing agency? Our style of growth marketing requires it. Both Danny and myself have a passion for building online communities that are champions of the brand. From there, we create multiple ways of winning– online and in-store are just two of those ways…and having a retail marketer complements myself and Danny very well. Moving into 2020, we are excited to bring on several new roles in the creative and community departments to help thoughtfully scale our growth.

Great, so let’s dig a little deeper into the story – has it been an easy path overall and if not, what were the challenges you’ve had to overcome?
It definitely has not.

PERSONAL
• My mom was diagnosed with a very terrible disease just before I started GB in 2017. The second I left my other job, I got my dog, Zoe, and she basically became my co-founder. It was Zoe and GB that helped me through it.
• My brother, Ralph, had a very bad stroke in October of 2017 which left him in a coma for weeks. He’s still paralyzed on the right side of his body from it. That was another blow, but GB is where I found peace. So I dove in day-in and day-out to help cope with the pain.
• My best friend passed away of an accidental overdose from a counterfeit painkiller laced with fentanyl in November of 2018. That is something I haven’t been able to fully turn the page on, but it is through GB that I’m able to escape and find my flow.

BUSINESS
• In 2018, one company took us for $40k which I’m reluctant to divulge. We took that in stride and learned from the experience and it has helped make us stronger today.
• Earlier this year we lost one of our new hires to his dream job, which is a totally acceptable reason for moving on (and his dream job is rad), but for a small company with finite time it proved very difficult. Again, we learned a lot in that experience and it made us stronger in the end.
• We lost our lead photographer right around that same time. I really enjoyed collaborating with him and we worked closely in GB’s early days. So that was more of a personal heartbreak, but I also understood the business side of it.
• I think it’s called Founder’s Anxiety or maybe just normal anxiety, but early on I struggled to accept that I was running a growing business with no loans, debt or liabilities. Literally just six years ago, I was an unpaid intern. So I learned that sometimes I have to just sit back and be appreciative of how far I’ve come and where GB is going.

Please tell us about GROWTHBUSTER.
GROWTHBUSTER is a human first, business second “anti-agency.” What that means is we want a very fair and meaningful relationship with our brand partners. We know that the brands we work with share a very similar vision and their product solves a fundamental problem in the categories that they are in, so we try to make it fun, efficient and impactful…but most importantly…we attempt to make it not feel like work.

WHAT DO WE DO? We work in varying capacities from a consultant to an outsourced marketing and creative department.

WHAT DO WE SPECIALIZE IN? GROWTHBUSTER’s formula is this — Community + Creative + Innovation. We build online communities that are called to action to support the brand online and in store. We acquire and retain them through progressive creative and digital tactics. Innovation is twofold; first, on the brand side, the greater the innovation the greater the growth. For this reason, we are very selective with who we work with. On the other side, innovation is how we button everything up in a cohesive, integrated package. We’ve launched three brands, one rebrand, eight products and seven retail rollouts in 2019. How those campaigns are put together is the secret (space) sauce.

WHAT ARE WE KNOWN FOR? Creative and community building.

WHAT ARE WE MOST PROUD OF? We’re extremely proud and fortunate to be working with some of the leaders in CPG right now. Brands like Outer Aisle, Magic Spoon, RightRice, everyone for every body, Disco and more.

WHAT SETS US APART? We want to stay small. Our goal isn’t to scale to a hundred employees and dozens of brand partners. I want GB to remain a boutique anti-agency where our brand partners have a direct connection to us ALWAYS — and not an account manager.

Do you look back particularly fondly on any memories from childhood?
My favorite memory from childhood is the togetherness that I felt with my mom and older siblings. I was brought up in a low-income household where my dad wasn’t always present, so my mom worked double duty and empowered us with the strength to push through life’s hardships and the humility to appreciate its priceless treasures. For me, that treasure was the bond that we forged and the commitment to something greater than myself. In some ways, I feel it’s precisely that feeling of togetherness that we try to replicate in the communities we build for our brand partners and the culture we build at GB.

Contact Info:

• Website: www.growthbuster.com
• Email: grow@growthbuster.com
• Instagram: instagram.com/growthbuster

Image Credit:
All photos and 3d by GROWTHBUSTER

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