Ever feel like influencer marketing is all hype, no ROI?

On Beyond the Cart, we’re sitting down with Calvin Waddy III, CEO & Co-Founder of Buzzbassador, a platform that’s helped brands drive over $30M in DTC sales by actually treating influencer marketing like a revenue channel.

We’ll get into:

→ Micro vs macro influencers in today’s landscape

→ How to contract, brief, and track creator performance

→ Trends: Affiliate links, paid collabs, ambassador pods

If your current “strategy” is sending out freebies and praying for a post… this episode’s for you.

Come talk about how to do it right. Join the conversation from the chat.

Ad dollars are moving.

CPMs are rising in some places, collapsing in others.

Attribution has gotten harder, not easier.

Platforms are doing more to control the narrative, while reporting less of what actually matters.

In this episode of Beyond the Cart, we’re taking a clear look at where paid media budgets are going in 2025.

We’re not working with predictions. This is actual account data, real questions from brand founders, and the decisions that are shaping performance right now.

Here’s what we’re getting into:

1.⁠ ⁠The current landscape of paid traffic

2.⁠ ⁠⁠The most common question brands ask about paid media

3.⁠ ⁠Frequently asked questions around advertising and media buying strategy

We’ll dig into how media budgets are performing inside real accounts, what’s shifting in the platforms themselves, and the adjustments teams are making to stay efficient and profitable.

Join us August 5th, 3:45PM PST

ou can pour more money into ads. You can hire another agency. You can swap out your landing page again.

But if you haven’t nailed the real problem, none of it’s going to matter.

This episode of Beyond the Cart is about the thing most founders overlook, the actual breakdown that stalls growth.

The stuff behind the dashboards. The decisions that quietly eat your margins while everything looks “fine” on the surface.

We’re getting into that.

The reason OmniRocket exists in the first place. The real problem we aim to solve

Not theory. Not tactics in a vacuum.

Just a straight look at what needs fixing if you actually want to scale.

Why start a podcast?

To sell more widgets?

Nope.

To talk about real founder stuff.

The kind you won’t hear from the gurus with Lambos and loud hooks.

I’m going live with my buddy David Goecke ☀️ to kick off Beyond the Cart, a podcast for Shopify and Amazon brand founders who are done chasing trends and ready to build systems that scale.

We’ll cover:

•⁠ ⁠My founder backstory (Spoiler: it includes a failed lawn care business and a lot of coffee)

•⁠ ⁠The real problem OmniRocket solves (Hint: it’s not “get more likes”)

•⁠ ⁠Why I’m launching this show now (because TikTok trends aren’t gonna fix your margins)

This one’s not for everyone.

But if you're tired of hype and hungry for clarity, you’ll probably want to tune in.