Nick
Dombroski

Growth marketer in Austin. I plan campaigns, launch them, and write down what the numbers taught me.

A little about me What I've run Lessons I've learned What's on my mind

About

I've been selling things since before I could buy a car.

Before college, a friend and I started DFW Luxury Vault, reselling luxury products around the Dallas–Fort Worth area. Some weekends it was a meetup in a parking lot. Some nights it was online, answering messages and posting listings. And sometimes it was a vendor spot at an event, trying to get a stranger to stop walking and pick something up.

Nobody hands you a playbook for that, so we made one up as we went. We figured out quickly that a meetup, an online listing, and an event booth were really three different businesses wearing the same logo. Meetups told us within minutes whether our price was right. Online reached people I'd never meet, but they could disappear with one click. Events were slow and tiring, and they taught me how to talk to a customer face to face. We started tracking where the money really came from, because the busiest channel and the best channel were rarely the same.

After college, I got pulled back into selling, only louder. Two partners and I started Chasin-Hits Livestream, an online trading card business built on livestreams. The idea was simple: open card packs on camera, let people watch, and let the excitement do the rest. Every time we went live, our audience averaged over 150 viewers. On the best nights, more than 2,000 people were watching at once. In our first year, it brought in over $1 million in revenue, at margins of roughly 15 to 20%.

It was thrilling, and it was also a trap. Our revenue had a single switch: whether we were live. When we were on camera, money came in. When we weren't, it didn't. Someone still had to build the backend of the business, and the people who needed to be on stream were the same people who needed to be behind the scenes. Every hour we spent building the business was an hour it wasn't earning. Every hour on camera was an hour the backend waited. The stream that made the business had become its bottleneck.

That lesson has shaped how I work. I like growth that keeps going when I step away: an email flow still recovering abandoned carts at 2 a.m., a landing page that converts without anyone babysitting it, a campaign process the whole team can run. It's why I fell for lifecycle marketing, and why I care about systems as much as ideas.

Today I'm Sr. Growth Manager at HMP Global, managing a large portfolio of behavioral health events all across the US. Before that I led event marketing at Inman, ran growth at Fyrstarter, and learned the craft at Avantera. The stages are bigger now, but the questions are the same ones I started with: who is the customer, where are they, and what makes them act?

Reading

Hacking Growth by Sean Ellis and Morgan Brown, and Building a StoryBrand by Donald Miller. Both are on the shelf for the same reason: clear messaging plus disciplined testing beats clever campaigns.

Outside of work

Health and wellness take up most of my free time: jiu jitsu, running, and training for longer races. I read a lot, and I still follow sports cards, a hobby that once turned into a business.

Work

I turn strategy into launched campaigns, and I care about the customer's whole lifecycle.

I've left specific numbers off this page out of respect for my past employers. The exact results are on my resume.

Roles

HMP Global

Sr. Growth ManagerRemote · Feb 2026 → Present

Events · Behavioral health · B2B

A large portfolio of behavioral health events across the US.

I manage marketing for a large portfolio of behavioral health events across the US and keep every launch moving.

I own the plan across email, SMS, paid media, web, SEO, and social, with timelines, deliverables, and launch dates for several events running at once.
I connect analytics, creative, paid media, and project management so problems surface before they threaten a deadline.
I build lifecycle campaigns and audience segments that move people from interested, to registered, to returning.
I track KPIs across the portfolio, find the conversion gaps, and report priorities and results to senior leadership.

Inman

Event Marketing LeadRemote · Feb 2025 → Feb 2026

Events · Real estate · B2B

Nationwide real estate events and conferences.

I owned go-to-market for the national events, from first campaign plan to launch day.

I grew event webpage traffic year over year with UX work, SEO, sharper messaging, and constant landing page tests.
I owned paid media across Meta, Google, YouTube, and Instagram and kept returns strong by testing creative and audiences.
I ran the nationwide ambassador and partner program, including all the content, assets, and timelines.
I looked at the whole customer journey, found gaps in messaging, landing pages, and acquisition, and worked with other teams to fix them.
I led a full launch across paid media, video, a new website, on-site signage, and partners.
I reported revenue, attribution, customer behavior, and creative results straight to the C-suite.

Fyrstarter

Growth Marketing ManagerRemote · Nov 2023 → Feb 2025

Consumer · DTC · Crowdfunding

A direct-to-consumer brand that launched through crowdfunding.

I ran growth across the whole funnel, from crowdfunding launch to online store to inbox.

I ran the Kickstarter and WeFunder crowdfunding campaigns, combining acquisition, creative, and performance marketing.
I managed paid budgets across Meta, TikTok, YouTube, and Google and tied spend back to attributed revenue.
Store traffic, sales, and orders all grew sharply through experiments, funnel fixes, and creative tests.
I built email and SMS flows for abandoned carts, win-backs, and promotions that became a significant share of company revenue.
I grew Instagram organically with UGC, creators, and community engagement.

Avantera

Digital Marketing SpecialistAustin, TX · Feb 2022 → Nov 2023

E-commerce · FDA-regulated

An e-commerce brand where every claim had to be compliant.

I learned the craft here: lifecycle, paid social, and testing, inside real compliance guardrails.

I led the email and SMS programs behind our revenue growth and better customer retention.
I supported media buying on Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, and TikTok to improve acquisition efficiency.
I A/B tested across the site, email, and SMS to lift conversion and engagement.
I helped launch our affiliate and ambassador programs, which grew referral traffic, reach, and social proof.

Businesses I started

Chasin-Hits Livestream

Co-founderOnline · After college · with two partners

Consumer · Collectibles

A trading card business, built with two partners, that opened packs live for an audience.

We built an audience from nothing, then learned what happens when income depends on being on camera.

We generated over $1M in revenue in our first year, at margins of roughly 15 to 20%.
Our streams averaged 150+ viewers and peaked above 2,000.
We learned that revenue which only exists while you're live becomes a bottleneck, and that systems have to carry the business when people can't.

DFW Luxury Vault

Co-founderDallas–Fort Worth · Before college · with a friend

Consumer · Resale

Luxury products, sold with a friend at meetups, online, and at events.

My first business, run with a friend, and our first lesson in channel economics.

We sold through local meetups, online, and by vending at events.
We tracked which channel actually made money, not which one felt busiest.

The thread: the customer lifecycle

Across all of these roles, the same idea runs through my work. I think of a customer as a relationship, not a click. I've worked on every stage of it, and I focus on how each stage hands off to the next inside the brand's ecosystem.

DiscoverPaid media, SEO, and organic social growth.

ConvertLanding pages, CRO, and funnel testing.

RetainSegmented email and SMS flows.

Win backAbandoned cart and win-back flows.

AdvocateAmbassadors, affiliates, and UGC.

Lessons

Lessons from the businesses I've run and the campaigns I've launched, written down so I don't forget them. Tap a lesson to read it.

When revenue only exists while you're live

The stream that built our business also capped it.

Business

In my card livestream business, we opened card packs on camera for an audience that averaged more than 150 people and peaked above 2,000. We made over $1M in our first year, and almost none of it happened when the camera was off.

That's the trap. A business that only earns while you're active is a job with extra steps. The backend needed attention, but every hour we spent on it was an hour we weren't live, and every hour live was an hour the backend waited.

Now I ask one question of any growth plan: what keeps earning if the people running it step away? Email flows, content that ranks, a store that converts at 2 a.m. The answer shapes almost everything I build.

A meetup, a listing, and a booth are three businesses

Why I track where the money comes from, not where the activity is.

Business

When a friend and I resold luxury goods around Dallas, we sold at meetups, online, and at event booths. It felt like one business. It wasn't.

Meetups gave instant feedback on price. Online reached far more people, and they could leave with one click. Events were slow and tiring, but they taught me to read a customer in person.

The busiest channel and the most profitable channel were rarely the same. So We started tracking where the money really came from, and I still do it in every ad account. Activity is easy to see. Profit takes a spreadsheet.

Crowdfunding is marketing with a deadline

Kickstarter and WeFunder look alike from the outside. The people on the other side of the page don't.

Crowdfunding

I ran campaigns on both Kickstarter and WeFunder. From the outside they look alike: a page, a goal, and a clock counting down. But the people on the other side of the page want different things.

Kickstarter backers are buying something that doesn't exist yet. They want to know what it is, when it ships, and whether they can trust the team to deliver. WeFunder investors are buying a stake in the company, so they want the bigger story: where this is going, why it can win, and why now. Same brand, but the message has two different jobs.

The deadline is both the gift and the curse. A clock focuses attention in a way an always-on store never does, because people have a reason to decide today. It also means the work that matters most happens before launch. By the time a campaign goes live, the momentum should already be sitting in a list of people who said "tell me when it opens." Launch day is mostly collecting on trust you built earlier.

That's where an integrated approach paid off. Paid media found strangers, creative gave them a reason to care, email and SMS kept warm people warm, and the campaign page had to carry all of it. If one piece was weak, the others had to make up for it.

What I took from it: when the product doesn't exist yet, trust is the real product. Show the work, answer questions in public, and give people small proof along the way. And plan the final stretch as carefully as the first day, because that's when the people who've been "thinking about it" finally act.

A customer is a lifecycle, not a click

The best marketing hands someone from one moment to the next.

Lifecycle

Most marketing reports are organized by channel: paid, email, social, SEO. Customers don't experience channels. They experience a relationship. They see an ad, land on a page, hesitate, leave, get a message, come back, buy, and ideally buy again. The lifecycle is what ties it all together.

I think about five moments: discovering the brand, deciding to act, sticking around, coming back after drifting away, and telling someone else. Each one needs something different. A first-time visitor needs a reason to care. Someone who left a cart needs a nudge and an easy way back. A longtime customer needs to feel remembered, not just marketed to.

The part that gets overlooked is the handoffs. A great ad and a great welcome flow don't help if the landing page feels like a different company. Many of the improvements I'm proudest of came from fixing the seam between two steps: the promise in the ad versus the words on the page, or the thank-you page versus the first email.

The question I keep asking is: what does this person know right now, and what do they need next? If I can't answer it for a message, it probably shouldn't send. It's also why I segment before I schedule. Sending to everyone is the fastest way to be ignored by someone.

Lifecycle thinking also connects to my livestream lesson. A customer relationship shouldn't depend on me being on camera. Good lifecycle flows keep the relationship going, even when I'm not there.

What managing ad budgets taught me about creative

Bidding helps. Creative decides.

Paid media

I managed paid budgets across Meta, TikTok, YouTube, and Google. The biggest lever wasn't bidding. It was creative.

Audiences tire of an ad faster than most teams plan for, so I treat creative like inventory: always testing the next batch, cutting losers early, and writing down why the winners won.

Targeting tweaks help. A better first three seconds helps more.

Email and SMS are the quiet half of growth

The messages after the purchase do more work than they get credit for.

Lifecycle

Abandoned cart, win-back, and promotional flows became a significant share of the company's revenue. Nobody screenshots a welcome flow, but it keeps working long after a campaign ends.

My rule is to earn the next message. Segment first, send less than you could, and look at what people do after the click, not only at the open rate. A customer is a relationship that keeps going after the sale.

Run an event like a product

A conference is a product people buy once a year, and the website is the product page.

Events

Event page traffic grew year over year after we tightened messaging, improved SEO, and tested landing pages.

The lesson was to fix the page before buying more traffic. Paid media pays off when the destination converts, and it just gets expensive when it doesn't.

Ambassador programs run on logistics

Enthusiasm is the easy part.

Community

Managing a nationwide network of ambassadors and promotional partners was less about big ideas and more about clear briefs, shared timelines, and making it easy to post.

When the assets are ready and the dates are obvious, people show up. When they aren't, even your most enthusiastic partners go quiet.

October 2026 · Personal

What's been on my mind

On the long middle of big goals, being a beginner, and protecting my attention.

These are a few unfinished thoughts from this stretch of life. None of them are advice. They're the things I keep coming back to on runs, on the mats, and in between campaigns. I'd love to hear what you think, or what's been on your mind lately.

1. Most big goals are won in the boring middle.

Starting is exciting, and finishing is memorable, but the middle is where it gets decided. A marathon, a black belt, and an Ironman all come down to long, unremarkable stretches of showing up when nobody is watching. Business is the same. A launch gets the attention, but the quiet weeks after it are where growth really happens. I'm trying to get better at loving that part instead of waiting for the next big moment.

2. Being a beginner on purpose keeps me honest.

In jiu jitsu you can't talk your way out of a bad position. Someone taps you, you learn something, and you go again. It's humbling in a useful way. I try to bring that feeling to work, because it's easy to stop asking basic questions once you've been doing something for a few years. New platforms, new channels, and new tools deserve the same curiosity I'd give them on day one.

3. I'm trying to protect my attention.

I work in marketing, so I spend my days studying the things that compete for people's attention: feeds, notifications, inboxes. That makes me more aware of how much they compete for mine. I'm being more deliberate about it: books over scrolling, my phone out of reach during training, and long stretches of focused work with nothing else open. I notice that my best ideas show up when I give them room.

4. Health is the base layer for everything else.

My best work comes in the weeks when I'm training consistently and sleeping well. That's not a coincidence, so I've stopped treating sleep, food, and exercise as a break from the job. They're part of it. If I want to do hard things for a long time, whether that's a race or a career, the base layer has to hold.

That's what's on my mind. I'd rather be wrong out loud than stay quiet and never learn.

END
— ND, October 2026

Stock picks

I follow markets the way I follow customers: I look for the constraint.

Right now, one of the tightest constraints in AI hardware looks like memory. These are the two ideas I'm most excited about, with my thesis and what would change my mind.

My personal views as of October 2026. This isn't investment advice, and I could be wrong. Buy-in prices show where I entered, not where anyone else should.

MicronMU

The largest US-listed memory maker. My buy-in: $720 per share

Why I like it

AI data centers need far more memory than traditional servers, especially high-bandwidth memory (HBM) that sits right next to the chips.
Only a few companies can make advanced memory at scale, which gives the leaders pricing power when demand outruns supply.
Customers have been locking in capacity well ahead of delivery, which gives me more confidence in near-term demand.
It's the cleanest way to own the memory theme in a US-listed stock.

What would change my mind

Memory has always been cyclical. If the industry builds too much capacity, prices can fall quickly.
A handful of very large customers drive much of the demand, so a pullback in AI spending would hurt.
After a big run, high expectations may already be priced in.
Geopolitics or supply chain disruptions could interrupt production or sales.

Roundhill Memory ETFDRAM

A single fund holding the memory and storage supply chain. My buy-in: $45 per share