How I Stay Sane in Growth Marketing: Ruthless Routines

I’ve been in marketing and growth for over 25 years. From launching global campaigns to helping startups find product-market fit, I’ve seen the entire playbook—and rewritten parts of it along the way.

These days, I advise founders, CMOs, and growth teams on how to scale without spinning their wheels. And if there’s one truth I’ve learned (and keep relearning), it’s this:

Growth marketing will eat you alive if you don’t build a system to tame it.

We are surrounded by noise—too many tools, dashboards, ideas, and tabs. I’ve seen innovative teams stall out, not because they lacked talent or insight but because they had no rhythm, focus, or shared way of working.

That’s where ruthless routines come in.

This post is a look under the hood: how I run my day, how I help teams structure their week, and why workflow discipline — not some secret hack — is the key to staying sane, sharp, and scaling.

1. The Chaos Myth: Growth Isn’t About Hustling Harder

When people think of growth marketers, they imagine some caffeinated genius frantically running 42 experiments, A/B testing ad copy at midnight, and automating workflows in their sleep.

In reality? That kind of chaos kills consistency.

The best growth teams I’ve worked with—those that scale sustainably—run like kitchens: clear roles, tight prep, and a rhythm that allows for creativity without chaos.

Ruthless routines are not about being robotic. They’re about creating space to focus, learn, and improve — every single day.

2. My Morning Flow: 30 Minutes to Set the Tone

Most teams I advise don’t have a morning routine — they have a morning reaction.

They start their day in Slack, respond to fire drills, and scroll through dashboards without clarity, and by 10 a.m., they’ve already lost focus.

So, I built a morning workflow that saves me hours of noise later in the day. It’s simple but powerful:

• Check core metrics (traffic, conversion, CAC)
• Review my experiment tracker (what’s running, what needs action)
• Set my one meaningful task for the day

It’s 30 minutes of ruthless clarity. And without it, I’ve learned that the rest of the day tends to drift.

This routine is so powerful that I now recommend every growth hire build their version during onboarding.

3. Experiment Tracking: How I Turn Chaos Into Learning

Here’s the uncomfortable truth: If your team isn’t tracking experiments with discipline, you’re not growing — you’re guessing.

Early in my career, I ran dozens of campaigns and relied on gut feeling. We’d try different copy, a new landing page, a different offer — all at once. The results? Unclear. Was it the headline that made it work? The new CTA? The different pricing?

Honestly, we had no idea.

That’s when I learned a critical rule of growth: Always isolate one variable.

If you're testing five things simultaneously, you're not running an experiment — you're rolling the dice. You need clean inputs to get clear learnings. If you want to improve a landing page, start with the headline. Leave the rest alone. Want to test a new audience? Don’t change your creative at the same time.

So here’s how I track every test:

• Hypothesis: "We believe changing X will improve Y because..."
• Primary variable — What's the one thing we're changing?
• Target metric — What are we watching (CTR, signup rate, CAC, etc.)?
• Status — Planned, live, or complete
• Owner — Who’s accountable
• Outcome — Win, lose, inconclusive
• Learning — What did we learn? What’s the next iteration?

I keep all of this in Notion (some teams prefer Airtable, and that’s fine, too). The key is to log every test, not just the successful ones. Over time, this builds a library of what actually works—and what doesn’t—specific to your product, audience, and funnel.

4. The Growth Stack: What’s Always Open — and Why I Ignore the Rest

One of the first things I ask growth teams I advise is this: “What’s always open in your browser?”

It’s a dead-simple way to see what’s actually helping versus what’s just clutter. The truth is that most teams have way too many tools and no real workflow connecting them.

Here’s my core stack — the tools I use daily, across projects, and recommend when building lean, effective growth systems:

My golden rule is that if a tool isn’t part of a daily or weekly workflow, it’s out.

There’s no prize for having the most enormous stack — only for having one that gets results without slowing you down.

5. Focus Blocks: The Best Growth Hack No One Talks About

Forget "hacks." Do you want more leads? More revenue? Start with calendar discipline.

I run every day like a two-act play:

• Act 1 (8:30 am–10:00 am): Deep work — experiments, writing, creative
• Act 2 (1:00 pm–3:00 pm): Analysis, updates, team comms, async

No Slack before deep work. No meetings during creative.

This isn’t about being rigid. It’s about creating a container for focus — without one, the internet will eat your day.

6. A Day in My Workflow: What It Looks Like

When my routine is working, here’s what a typical day looks like:

• 8:00am: Coffee + metrics review
• 8:30 am: Launch new campaign, write creative, or review test results
• 10:00 am: Break, walk, reset
• 1:00 pm: Analyze what’s working, clean up CRM or tools
• 2:00 pm: Slack updates or Loom recaps
• 4:00 pm: Prep for tomorrow — review backlog, prioritize

This is the rhythm I aim for — and the one I help founders and CMOs implement in their organizations.

Because growth isn’t about speed, it’s about repeatable momentum.

7. If You’re Starting From Scratch — Start Here

Most teams I advise don’t need more tools — they need a way to work.

Here’s the starter kit I recommend:

1. Daily deep work block (even if just 60 mins)
2. Weekly growth retro (what shipped, what worked, what flopped)
3. One shared experiment tracker (keep it simple)
4. Limit tool stack to 6–8 essentials
5. Commit to 1 new test every week (log it, learn from it)

Run this playbook for 30 days and tell me your team isn’t calmer, sharper, and getting more done.

Final Thought: Ruthless Routines Make Room for Genius

I’ve built growth systems inside companies worth millions. And here’s what I’ve learned:

The best growth marketers I know aren’t the most creative. They’re not the loudest.

They’re the ones who built a system — and stuck to it.

They created rituals that protect their focus, tools that work, and workflows that turn experiments into outcomes.

Ruthless routines allow you to think, build, and own — without the chaos.

So if your calendar’s a mess, your tools are running you, or your team feels stuck...

Reset your rhythm. Protect your energy. And remember: Boring routines build brilliant growth.