Inside the Modern CRO Role with Carve Designs’ Megan Porteous

[00:00:00] Roy Notowitz: Hello, and welcome to How I Hire, the podcast where today's top executives share stories of their leadership journey, including defining moments that tested their values, sharpened their judgment, and shaped how they build teams and lead with purpose. I'm Roy Notowitz, founder and CEO of Noto Group Executive Search.

You can learn more about us at notogroup.com. As a trusted partner to mission and values-driven consumer brands, we've had the privilege of working alongside some of the world's most inspiring operators as they've tackled the challenge of building high-performance leadership teams. In this podcast, we spark a conversation about how to achieve success in hiring and create purposeful leadership for the next generation of companies.

Megan Porteous joins me on the podcast today. Megan is the Chief Revenue Officer at Carve Designs, which is a beach lifestyle brand creating surf-inspired apparel for women. Megan is a former D1 volleyball player whose career as a collegiate athlete led her to work at Oakley as a global sports marketing manager.

Oakley served as Megan's launchpad into digital marketing. She cultivated nearly twenty years of experience in brand and digital leadership, leading growth and implementing strategy across e-commerce, wholesale, and marketplace channels. Megan and I talk about how teamwork and passion are at the core of both her leadership journey and her experience as an athlete.

We discuss her philosophy around empowering her teams, the importance of clarity and alignment in achieving their goals, and the challenges of staying on top of emerging consumer trends and technology.

Megan, thanks for joining us on the podcast today. It's great to have you here.

[00:01:49] Megan Porteous: I'm so happy to be here, Roy. Thank you for having me.

[00:01:51] Roy Notowitz: I've been looking forward to this conversation. So let's start with taking us back to the beginning of your career. What was the first spark of interest in the industry, and how did that evolve into the career that you've built?

[00:02:04] Megan Porteous: I was a D1 volleyball player in college, and so my first job out of college as a sports marketing manager at Oakley really was the dream job.

I got to work directly with pro athletes, mostly pro beach volleyball and golf athletes, and that world totally made sense to me. And it was a really interesting moment. It was back in 2007, and Twitter and early Facebook pages were just starting to show up, and most brands at the time were kind of treating them like a side project.

And people, like, regular consumers, weren't really posting very much. They were just following their favorite athletes, their favorite sports teams, celebrities. And getting this direct, unfiltered window into someone's world that didn't exist before was something new and really exciting. I was working in sports marketing, and I really saw, like, wow, the athletes had become the channel, and a fan could now follow a beach volleyball star like Kerri Walsh Jennings and feel like they actually knew her, not just through, like, you know, a magazine spread or a polished interview, but what she posted on a random Tuesday afternoon.

And this was so interesting to me, and it just felt exciting, and it felt like I was on the verge of something really transformative. And so instead of thinking about how Oakley just showed up in an ad, I started thinking about how we could help the athletes build their own platform. And it was really counterintuitive to them at the time because back then, athletes did extensive media training, and the media training was really about like, "No, don't talk about your personal life. Like, stick to the script."

And so this was counterintuitive thing even for the athletes. And so I was really interested in how we could actually encourage our athletes to build their presence, but then also how we could integrate Oakley into their storytelling in a really authentic way. And after six amazing years at Oakley, I had an opportunity to join an agency that really focused entirely on this whole concept of how do we encourage sports teams, leagues, athletes, and even brands themselves to help build their presence online.

And now it seems obvious that this is, like, a key component, but back then it required coaching. And so I decided to leave the dream job at Oakley, and I walked away, and I wanted to go deeper on that thing-- evolving consumer behavior. And it's so dynamic how they are engaging with brands. And from there, I kind of just kept following the consumer, like how do they discover something? What builds trust? What gets them to buy?

And that pulled me into broader digital marketing and then e-commerce and eventually full revenue of ownership, which is what I'm doing now. And as chief revenue officer at Carve Designs, I get to obsess over every single touch point and every channel and really have that close view to the consumer

[00:04:57] Roy Notowitz: So was there any one thing that sort of sparked this "aha moment" around the rise of social media or the power of digital and e-commerce coming together? Or was it just an evolution of you kind of learning and exploring and working within those channels?

[00:05:14] Megan Porteous: I think it was just following my curiosity and really tapping into the consumer. And my first manager at Oakley, shout out Al Janc, he's amazing. He had me read the book, Let My People Surf. That was even before I started, and that really set the tone of just how I wanted to show up and what type of brands I wanted to work for.

And I think that this point I was talking about with working with athletes and humanizing brands is really aligned with that book. And so I think that was really a pivotal moment, even before I started, was having that set the tone.

[00:05:53] Roy Notowitz: That's awesome, and that's a great segue into my next question. As you reflect on your leadership journey and the work that you've done developing leaders around you, what kind of core beliefs or values or guiding truths have become part of your playbook, and how did that leadership philosophy evolve?

[00:06:10] Megan Porteous: When I think about my journey from collegiate volleyball world to professional world, you know, volleyball really did teach me something I've never forgotten. In volleyball, there's really no such thing as one star player. You literally cannot score without multiple touches.

[00:06:28] Roy Notowitz: Right.

[00:06:28] Megan Porteous: It is a team effort, and that is how every single team I've been a part of or I've led, I've had that philosophy.

So what does that mean in practice? Well, one of the things is I don't present my team's work for them. They do it. If someone builds it, then they stand up in front of leadership, and they own it. And I think that does more for their confidence than anything I could say to them behind closed doors. One thing I'm really big on: clarity upfront.

So I run my teams on an OGSM framework: objectives, goals, strategies, and measures. It's similar to OKR framework. But I love setting big, huge, scary, ambitious objectives. I really do demand a lot from my team. I expect a lot from my team, but I will be with them on building a plan to achieve that objective.

And so I feel like if we align on goals at the start, then they're really crystal clear on where we're going and what work needs to be done. It helps them prioritize through an effort versus impact lens on where to put their effort in. And so then it also allows them to make those calls themselves, and then there's real ownership with the members of the team.

[00:07:44] Roy Notowitz: So where did you first get exposed to or learn about this management by objective leadership?

[00:07:51] Megan Porteous: That was during my time at Amer Sports. Amer Sports is the parent company of many great brands like Salomon, Arc'teryx, Wilson Sporting Goods, and that's where I learned that framework. I had an opportunity to work under several great leaders and felt that when I was really bought into the overall objective, and in my function, I was able to create goals that laddered up to that objective and then built tactics to actually achieve those goals and then had clear measures.

It allowed me to run quicker. It allowed me to make decisions, and of course, there's checkpoints of, "okay, are we pacing towards what we said we were going to do? How are we doing on our KPIs or our measures?" So that's really where I learned that, and I've been able to take that other places that I've been, and it seems to really set the team up for success early on.

I really love to give people stretch opportunities, so projects that are a little bit outside of their lane, outside of their area of expertise. It gives them room to build into weak spots, and sometimes innovation means that some things don't work, but I'd rather have a team that tries and fails than one that plays it safe all the time.

And in a company like Carve Designs, where we are an emerging and growing brand, and we have a smaller overall team, this is something that I've done several times, and it's been great.

[00:09:20] Roy Notowitz: How do you translate the team first mindset into inspired performance? You know, you talked about setting these big goals, but how do you get people really engaged behind that in addition to giving them opportunities to really learn and grow?

[00:09:34] Megan Porteous: One thing I'm big on is pausing, learning, and then celebrating. I think that it can be demotivating to a team if you're just constantly running full speed ahead. So I think it's twofold. After a big project, you know, for example, after we relaunched our website-- massive project, basically everyone in the company touched it in some way.

We paused. We discussed the whole process. We learned from it, what would we do differently. And then we had a celebration. We took time away from the office, and we celebrated, and I think that really goes a long way with the team. Then when we got back, we were ready to work on the next project, and we had that break and that sense of pause.

[00:10:18] Roy Notowitz: Yeah. So when you're hiring for your own team, what do you look for in a leader?

[00:10:24] Megan Porteous: The main thing, and this is we're really sticking to this theme of athletics. But I like to hire, quote-unquote, "athletes," and not just literally. I mean people who are competitive, very coachable and flexible, people who can learn that new skill mid-season and then just never miss a beat.

And I think especially with where my sweet spot is, I love building brands, I love growing brands, and that skill is really important. Larger organizations, maybe you want to really hire someone who's specific and they're staying in their lane and they're experts. But I love to hire people who do have strong expertise, but show me that they could be good at other things, and they're flexible and they want to learn and grow.

That's the number one thing I look for. I need people who can look at a shared goal and figure out their way to get there, and if they need constant direction, they're probably really not a great fit. And another thing aligned with that is, and I think this is so important with the rise of AI, I really look for a critical thinker.

Do they ask good questions or do they just answer mine? Do they push back thoughtfully? Because I want people around me and around the organization who challenge the status quo and push us to think better.

[00:11:44] Roy Notowitz: So how do you support those individuals who are working on stretch assignments? What happens if they fail or something doesn't work the way you had thought it would?

[00:11:53] Megan Porteous: Supporting them would mean giving them the resources, and I think the other component is a clearly defined scope of what do we mean? What's the timeline? What are the measures for success? And I think just establishing that clarity on the front end sets that team member up for success. And afterwards, talking to that person and say, "Hey, how did that feel?

Did that fire you up? Is that something you'd be interested in?" And sometimes they could be like, "Actually, no, I, I'd rather be over here on this side." And that's just as valuable as a success.

[00:12:29] Roy Notowitz: That's great. And so how do you create a healthy team culture? It seems like you have this great teamwork and a lot of communication. You're building relationships between people, so there's trust. Is there any kind of other magic that you think about as you're creating or fostering the culture?

[00:12:47] Megan Porteous: When I look and I think about my team org right now, over half of our employees are remote. I'm actually a remote employee. Our headquarters is in the Bay Area, and I'm down in San Diego.

And I have to hand it to our CEO. When I was hired, we agreed that I am a remote employee, but I would be in the office once a month. It was great to see that that was established on the front end. And so I've also taken that same approach with my own team. Maybe they're not in the office as frequently, but we do ensure that we have regular touch bases and in-person points of contact--

[00:13:21] Roy Notowitz: Right.

[00:13:21] Megan Porteous: Because I really believe the fastest way to build an effective team is to build trust. And one afternoon together outside, away from screens, can be the absolute shortcut to building that trust. I'm a big proponent of that. I think that remote work is great. It's great for execution, but it's really not where trust gets built, so that time together is important.

[00:13:45] Roy Notowitz: How do you make the best use of those times together with the team?

[00:13:50] Megan Porteous: So Carve Designs is based in Sausalito, so we'll do like beautiful sunrise hikes in Marin. And there's something about movement, talking, and connection that that's where we have really big "aha moments." And I'll kind of have like a little bit of like maybe a tiny agenda of, okay, let's touch on this, this, this.

But really there's nothing formal. It's just let's see how the conversation happens. Movement does unlock something in your brain, and we're in a world where even when we are in person, we're on our screens, but I think when you remove all that and you're walking, it's just the most present you can be with a team, and it's a shortcut to the most efficient work when you go back to that remote lifestyle.

Some of my best ideas come to me when I'm out for a run or I'm swimming in the pool where I'm just focused and there's no distractions. I'm doing deep thinking, and I'll immediately get back to the car and like scribble something down. But I'm a big believer in movement.

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[00:14:55] Roy Notowitz: A lot of people ask me, "What exactly do you do at Noto Group?" We partner with entrepreneurs, founders, executives, investors, and boards to help them build high-performance leadership teams that excel and endure. We've had the privilege of working with more than 250 leading brands, from early-stage innovators to global icons, and we've placed hundreds of executives along the way.

As a Certified B Corp since 2013 and proud 1% for the Planet member, it always starts with your mission and values and finding leaders who can bring those to life. If you're curious, you can find out more by visiting our website, notogroup.com. Thanks, and now let's get back to our episode.

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[00:15:40] Roy Notowitz: So you've risen up through the ranks of digital marketing and e-commerce, and you're currently serving as the CRO of Carve Designs, where you've been for about four years. How is the CRO role different than the VP of E-commerce and performance marketing roles that you've held previously?

[00:15:59] Megan Porteous: The last year, as I've stepped into this role and learned this role, has been so transformative for me because it is really looking at the consumer in such a holistic way, not looking at the different channels and the silos that naturally can occur.

It's been really amazing, and it's been a big unlock for me because at the end of the day, the consumer doesn't see a brand in these silos or these categories. They don't see us as, okay, that's Carve direct to consumer, and that's Carve marketplace, and that's Carve in wholesale. They just see one Carve.

And so I've really loved taking a step back and looking at Carve from the consumer's perspective and then applying that to our various sales channels. When I was just leading e-commerce and performance, I was really focused on optimizing a specific part of the business. It was all about conversion, customer acquisition costs, AOV.

And then as I've stepped into the CRO role, like, of course, those are very important, but those metrics are downstream of everything else. So I think that just looking at it as a system instead of these different channels has been-- it's been a learning curve, but it's also, I think, helped me be a better leader for the specific channels because I'm able to take something from one to the other.

Carve was built on wholesale. We launched the company twenty years ago, and we launched an outdoor specialty in the wholesale channel. And as I've gotten closer to the wholesale business, it's clear that these strong wholesale partnerships are the foundation of the rest of the business. And so where we see the strongest brand awareness and the strongest D2C penetration is where we have those wholesale partnerships.

And so it's really a symbiotic relationship. And same thing with on the D2C side. Like, as we're continuing to grow and go after new consumers, we're investing in top of the funnel, in connected TV, and in influencer always on strategies. That also goes over and helps the wholesale channel.

[00:18:04] Roy Notowitz: So what roles typically report into a CRO, or at least at Carve, how do you structure your team?

[00:18:12] Megan Porteous: Yeah. So I look at it within our various sales channels, and so we have our direct to consumer universe, we have our wholesale universe, and then we have marketplace. And within those different sales channels, I have leaders that report into me. So on the D2C side, I have our performance marketing director.

That person is in charge of everything to do with paid media, our email strategy, loyalty, affiliate, direct mail, so all of our various performance marketing channels. And then I also have an e-commerce director. And this person I really see as a kind of miniature GM of e-commerce. So this person is running the site experience.

They're working on our promo planning, and they're really running this as a business. So like I said before, it's so important for me to have a team that is self-sufficient and that is clear on their goals and objectives because it's a strong and very fast-growing part of the company. So that's D2C. On wholesale, I have a wholesale director that reports into me, and we have a group of independent reps.

So we have about 15 reps across the US and Canada. And then on the other side of the business, we have our marketplace, and that would be Amazon and some of our other marketplace accounts. And on that side we actually engage with a couple of agencies to support that business.

[00:19:44] Roy Notowitz: That makes sense.

[00:19:45] Megan Porteous: Mm-hmm.

[00:19:46] Roy Notowitz: That's cool. So what unique challenges and opportunities do you think CROs are facing right now? You talked a little bit about creating that common experience for the consumer across the different platforms, but what other things do you think are opportunities or challenges that a CRO might face right now?

[00:20:05] Megan Porteous: What I've learned in my experience in the last year is it's not all about revenue, even though the word revenue is part of the title. Certainly an important part, but it's not all about just incremental revenue. It's actually a lot about trade-offs. It's making sometimes decisions that might actually decrease short-term revenue, but are better for the long-term health of the business.

And I'll give you an example. We have sold on Amazon for years, and we have sold to them as a 1P account. This was great from a revenue perspective. We had POs from them that were fairly predictable, and we were growing. But the problem with the 1P business for us was that Amazon was price matching even fraudulent sites. And we, as we talked about before, we have a very trusted wholesale network.

[00:20:59] Roy Notowitz: Yeah. That, that could upset them.

[00:21:01] Megan Porteous: Oh, ooh. It was, it was-

[00:21:04] Roy Notowitz: Yeah...

[00:21:04] Megan Porteous: Definitely tough times there. And so what we had to do was we had to shut down the 1P business, and we switched to 3P. This had revenue implications, big revenue implications, but ultimately, we had to do this for brand integrity, and we had to do this to strengthen our overall presence in the marketplace.

And so that was an example. That was a tough call, and it actually was detrimental to our immediate revenue, but ultimately, it was the right move for the business. And I think that those challenges will be omnipresent. I love the role because now I understand we could chase revenue in the D2C side of the business.

We could run continuous promotions and chase that revenue, but what would that do to the other channels? And so I think that's the biggest challenge is how are you balancing it all for the whole business to grow.

[00:21:58] Roy Notowitz: Yeah. How do you stay on top of everything across all the different sort of functional areas or opportunities or things that other companies are doing in the digital marketing or brand or e-commerce space with all these emerging tools and things that are happening out there?

[00:22:17] Megan Porteous: It can certainly be overwhelming. My LinkedIn algorithm, my discover page is all various Claude and ChatGPT hacks. LinkedIn is just a sea of sameness in a lot of ways, just like AI-generated content. But I do think there's some really amazing things happening within the community of e-commerce operators, executives, all of us, our learning curve is just accelerating, and it's this very exciting time, and if you lean in and you're curious, magical things are happening.

People are sharing what's working. And so it can be certainly overwhelming, though I think that the main thing is being curious, trying things. And at Carve, if we look at it through crawl, walk, run. The crawl phase was getting involved using AI, maybe using AI to help streamline some of your processes.

That would be crawl. We're kind of in the walk phase now. We're looking at the org, and we're really looking to say, like, where can we actually use AI agents to not replace humans, but to augment our existing org structure? And we're doing this right now on the e-commerce side. We're looking at some of the processes of the team and some of the really repetitive tasks, and we're looking to see, okay, how can we automate this and actually make it better?

And this is really exciting work. We're diving headfirst in, and it is certainly a learning for everyone.

[00:23:44] Roy Notowitz: Yeah, I think it's cool that there's that community of people that have an abundance philosophy around sharing information.

[00:23:50] Megan Porteous: That's right.

[00:23:52] Roy Notowitz: So you are often labeled as a performance marketer or growth marketer, but you also really understand brand, and that's something that we've talked about in the past.

How do you think about balancing growth marketing and brand building?

[00:24:07] Megan Porteous: So I don't really think of brand and performance as opposing forces. I really think brand is what makes the performance marketing work, and when the brand is strong, everything gets easier. Things like the cost to acquire a customer goes down, conversion rate improves, and people come back more.

So it's, like, definitely a connected relationship. And I think when the teams can sometimes get in trouble is over-optimizing the short term. So you can drive revenue really quickly, but if you're doing it in a way that chips away at the brand, you're going to pay for it later. It's really similar to what we talked about even with the Amazon example.

The hard thing sometimes can be when we look at brand and we look at attribution. And at Carve, we're having a very strong year. We are seeing high double-digit growth, which is excellent, but one of the things when we look back and we say, "What happened? What caused this acceleration in growth?" Well, there's a lot of things, but one of them is our investment in top-of-the-funnel brand work.

Our always-on connected TV, our influencer program, and those tactics will have some short-term benefits, but they're really more long-term plays. And by investing in those tactics and putting money behind those channels, we have just a larger pool of people who know about Carve. And then our performance marketing really gets to work.

We really get to take this group that has a little bit of exposure, and we get to slowly bring them down into purchase. And so it's really connected. I've always had very strong partners on the brand side, and I think that the two are infinitely connected.

[00:26:00] Roy Notowitz: Do you feel like because the brand's been around for a while and because you started really strong in the wholesale channel, it gives you a little bit of an advantage over maybe a brand that's just started as a direct-to-consumer brand?

[00:26:13] Megan Porteous: I think it does give us an advantage in especially in the areas where we have these long-standing relationships. I had the opportunity to meet with two business owners from some of our wholesale partners in Montana, and the way these women spoke about Carve and the way they articulated how their community engages with Carve was really powerful, and it's simple things like the fact that we're a female-founded brand.

Some of our trusted wholesale partners are doing amazing events, and they're bringing together groups of women. And when we're able to inject our company stories and our points of differentiation at that level, it certainly has built a strong foundation for us. The other side of it is when we're trying to grow and expand into different channels and different regions, there's not as much brand awareness or trust.

And so I think in some ways, we're almost starting from scratch in those new areas. But if we can take the playbooks that have worked over on the outdoor specialty mostly through the Mountain West region, we can apply that. I think that's a shortcut for us for faster growth.

[00:27:26] Roy Notowitz: How much influence or input do you have into product in the assortments and things like that in the role that you have?

[00:27:34] Megan Porteous: Ooh, this is a great question. I love this part of the business, and it's actually one of the reasons why I-- when I was at Amer Sports, like I said earlier, the parent company of these amazing brands, Salomon, Arc'teryx, Wilson Sporting Goods, I was in a portfolio role, a shared service role, and I was so far removed from the product.

Even though I loved the product, I wore the product, I did not work with the product teams. Moving from there, going to Reef first and then on to Carve Designs, that's where I really was able to get close to the product and assortment planning, merchandising. It's something that is absolutely tied so closely with the success, especially with Carve and our growth.

We're looking at what assortment makes the most sense for this specific type of consumer, and we're not really looking at it as channel right assortment. We're looking at it as consumer right assortment. We're trying to remain obsessed with the consumer at all places, even our internal dialogue.

[00:28:38] Roy Notowitz: So what advice do you have for emerging leaders or people coming up through the ranks right now if they aspire to be in the kind of role that you're in?

[00:28:46] Megan Porteous: Really take moments for reflection. Go for those walks, move, and think about in your day what fires you up, what gets you excited, where-- what are the moments in your day where you're locked in and you feel that passion? If you can identify that, that's the first step. And then double down on that. Listen to that curiosity.

Ask your manager for stretch projects to lean into that curiosity. And I feel like if you can have that intuition on really what drives you, what motivates you, it's going to be natural. You're going to go the direction to ultimately have a job or a career that is aligned with what really fires you up. I think the other component is with the rise of AI, we have to think critically.

We have to be critical thinkers. We cannot just rely on this technology to do everything for us. Yes, it can speed everything up, it can make us more efficient, but garbage in is garbage out, so we absolutely have to be critical thinkers more than ever before.

[00:29:52] Roy Notowitz: Right. That's awesome. That's such great advice across the board.

So what are you most excited about as you ponder the future, and what's next for you?

[00:30:03] Megan Porteous: I've always been very energized by moments where the business is right on the edge of something bigger. And when I first joined Carve, there was so much opportunity. I was the first real dedicated e-commerce performance marketing hire, and I was able to come in and implement some processes and turn a few things on, and bring things that I had learned from other organizations, and really feel that strong momentum.

And we're at that phase again at Carve with our recent acquisition. The brand is strong. The product is there. We have a amazing VP of Merchandising who was hired about a year and a half ago, and because they work so far in the future, what she started working on when she was hired is now is-

[00:30:50] Roy Notowitz: Just coming to market, yeah.

[00:30:51] Megan Porteous: Yes. It's amazing. I can't stop talking about Carve. If you follow me on social media, I'm just always... I truly love what we produce. We also have an incredible VP of Marketing who has joined the team about a year ago, and we worked together at Reef. And our product marketing stories and cadence of how we're talking about hero products is tighter than ever before, and so everything's clicking.

And now we're acquired. We have a new parent, and this new platform is really exciting for us. I think we're at another tipping point of the business, and this is where I love to be.

[00:31:29] Roy Notowitz: That's exciting. Thank you so much for joining us on the podcast today. It's been really great listening to your insights and your trajectory and your career.

I just really appreciate you being here.

[00:31:42] Megan Porteous: Awesome. Thank you so much for having me, Roy.

[00:31:45] Roy Notowitz: Thanks for tuning in to How I Hire. Visit howihire.com for details about the show. How I Hire is created by Noto Group Executive Search. To find out more about us, visit notogroup.com. You can also sign up for our monthly email job alert newsletter there and find additional job search strategy resources as well as more content on hiring.

This podcast was produced by Anna McClain. To learn more about her and her team's work, visit aomcclain.com.

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