Everything you need to get started — who we are, how we work, the tools we use, and what your first week looks like.
Welcome to the CMG team!
Glad you're here. This deck is the fastest path to getting up to speed — who CMG is, how we work, the tools we use, and what your first week looks like. Scroll through at your own pace.
CMG is an AI-Native, end-to-end growth partner for ambitious businesses — from emerging brands to established operators. Strategy, AI engineering, performance media, creative, digital experience, and retention, run by one integrated team.
Our operating stack is composable. We orchestrate the platforms our clients run on — commerce, lifecycle, paid media, and frontier AI — and sit a proprietary layer of agents and models above them that automates the work, captures every learning, and compounds leverage across the engagement.
One group, three specialist teams. Each CMG division owns a discipline end-to-end. Clients engage one or many — they share tooling, data, and standards under a single operating system.
Right now we're running 36+ custom AI agents across our clients' CRM, creative, reporting, support, and lifecycle stacks. Limitless capacity, 10M+ customers reached, deep integrations with Shopify, Klaviyo, Postscript, Meta, Google, TikTok Shop, OpenAI, and Anthropic.
The six disciplines we run end-to-end for every client engagement. One integrated team, weekly cadence, shared dashboards — plug-and-play inside your stack.
Brand positioning, category strategy, and structured launch programs. Partnership and collab systems that compound brand gravity over time.
Custom agents and automations running across our clients' stacks — CRM, creative, media, support, and lifecycle.
Paid media across Meta, Google, TikTok, and emerging channels. Campaign strategy, creative briefing, budget pacing, and weekly performance reporting.
On-brand creative for owned, paid, and lifecycle channels. Storytelling and the cadence that keeps audiences leaning in.
Web, app, and commerce builds plus day-to-day management. Design systems, IA, conversion optimization, and platform configuration.
Email, SMS, loyalty, and lifecycle automation. CRO and funnel work that lifts LTV and compounds repeat engagement.
Twelve principles that shape how we run engagements, ship work, and treat each other. Read once, internalize, hold each other to them.
If something breaks: own it fast, fix it faster, share what you learned. Ownership beats perfection every time.
Speed unlocks clarity. The faster we act, the faster we learn. Fast doesn't mean reckless — it means focused.
Use AI agents to amplify clarity, speed, and output. Humans hold the brand bar and the strategic call.
If a process slows us down, question it. If a rule limits creativity, rethink it. Innovation lives at the edge of discomfort.
Titles and ladders slow momentum. If you've got something worth saying, say it. Straight talk, no theater.
Most decisions won't wait for perfect information. Act with intent, adjust with insight. A quick wrong call teaches more than endless debate.
Creating something new should spark energy and curiosity. Take the mission seriously, never the journey.
Every challenge is a design brief for progress. Bring ideas, bring options, bring energy.
If we're not making mistakes, we're not pushing hard enough. Fix them fast, share what you learned, move.
Whether the “customer” is a user, partner, or teammate — design the experience first. Great tech fades; the experience stays.
Internally we run on Slack — no internal emails. With clients, meet them where they live: email, Slack, meetings, text, whatever channel they actually use. Speed of response is respect; pick the channel that gets the answer there fastest.
The world doesn't slow down. Experiment, learn, adapt. Innovation isn't occasional — it's constant.
The rhythm that keeps the team aligned. Async-first, predictable, low-friction — the kind of cadence you can plan your day around.
Post in #cmg-team-daily-standup by 9:00 AM PST. Three lines, no fluff:
1. What I shipped yesterday · 2. What I'm shipping today · 3. Anything blocking me
Async by design — no live call, no meeting. Everyone posts on their own schedule before the deadline. The thread becomes the day's status board. React with 👀 if you read it, 🤝 if you can help unblock.
All-hands sync every Tuesday at 10:00 AM PST. The one live meeting we never skip — the whole team in the same room (virtually) once a week.
Agenda: wins from last week, focus for this week, cross-team callouts, client wins/losses, and anything else that benefits from the whole team hearing it at once. Time-boxed to 30–45 minutes.
Agenda lives in the calendar invite. Notes captured in Notion. Recorded for anyone who can't make it live — but show up if you can.
Weekly department reviews within each discipline (Strategy, AI Engineering, Media & Performance, Content & Creative, Digital Experience, Retention & Growth) — pipeline, priorities, and unblocking calls.
Cross-team reviews as needed when initiatives cut across disciplines — launches, client onboarding, new programs, or anything that requires multiple owners aligned in real time.
Live, calendar-blocked, time-boxed. Agendas in the meeting invite; notes captured in Notion. Skip the meeting if there's no agenda — reclaim the hour.
Protected time, every month. Career growth, feedback, and the stuff that doesn't fit anywhere else — what's working, what isn't, where you want to go next.
You drive the agenda. Bring topics ahead of time so your lead can prep. We treat 1:1s as the most important meeting on the calendar — we don't cancel them; we reschedule.
Notes captured in a shared Notion page so the history stays with you across the engagement, not buried in an inbox.
Our day-to-day stack. Some are obvious, some are CMG-specific. You'll get access to each during your first week.
A simple roadmap for your first five days. Move at your own pace, but don't skip the basics — everything compounds from here.
Five specific tasks to ramp you onto the team. Work through them in order — each one sets up the next.
Start here. Your intro card — who you are, what you're great at, how you like to work, and how teammates should ping you. Make a copy of the template, fill it out, and share it back to the team.
Free 10-minute Myers-Briggs assessment at 16personalities.com. Drop your type into the team Slack — helps everyone calibrate on how to work with you.
Walk-through of your three starter accounts: Happy Caps, Train Collective, and VitaClay. Brand, audience, current programs, where each one is in its lifecycle. Schedule the session via Van's calendar.
For each of the three brands, draft an ads plan with 3 ad sets per brand. Audience, creative angle, budget, and KPI. Review with Van before launching.
Once the plan is approved, ship it. 9 ad sets total live across Happy Caps, Train Collective, and VitaClay. Set up daily monitoring — first numbers in 72 hours.
Two sets of credentials get you everywhere. Bookmark this page — the email below is also where every other tool invite will land.
Can't find an invite? Check spam first, then post in #mariana-bryant-van and we'll re-send.
Questions about anything in this deck? Ask in #mariana-bryant-van on Slack — someone is always around.