A 5-step UGC process for $700m revenue

How did Comfrt, a bootstrapped hoodie business, go from zero to nearly $700m in revenue in three years? 

In short: infinite creative.

Nobody wants to hear this right now, especially with the recent Hormozi kerfuffle about creative volume. 

But I’m here to share business advice. Just like in the gym, the thing you need to do to grow is probably the thing you’re worst at. And most marketers I talk to struggle at making creative at scale.

Our data demonstrates that the top 25% best performing businesses using Northbeam launch 189 ads per week, on average. The rest launch only 83 per week. 

Launching lots of creative is the way to scale. But it’s more than that: how did Comfrt bootstrap so effectively? 

Today we’re breaking down what Sean Frank calls “The Hudson Method,” named after Comfrt founder Hudson Leogrande.

In simplest terms, The Hudson Method is a growth marketing strategy that relies on extreme creative volume to influence both paid and organic algorithms in order to drive discovery of your product. 

You partner with thousands of creators for both organic and paid reach via content creation. They are posting to their personal pages, and you’re boosting their content and running it as ads at the same time.

Because of the volume of content featuring your product, to TikTok’s algorithm, it appears like a trend is starting.

My theory is that this volume influences TikTok’s feed, creating a "community node” of the algorithm that ensures content featuring your product spreads organically.

This feels similar to Clavicular’s strategy with “clippers.”

The polarizing streamer has 950 people who just clip his social content and post to separate accounts. 

This gives Clavicular millions of opportunities to influence new viewers who stumble upon these clips in the feed. 

If they engage, eventually they’ll be shown his primary page, given that he’s the top creator in the little sub-genre of algorithm he’s carving out for himself. 

This is what political strategists call “astroturfing.”

But you can use it to kickstart real, genuine love for your own product – and the scale that follows. 

Let’s break it down. 

This is a given. Your product must have a strong visual hook, while also fitting the natural interests, demands, and price point of the reigning culture of whatever platform you’re trying this on.

Think about the “sunset lamps” - one of the first businesses I ever saw pull off The Hudson Method. 

Cheap price point, easily accessible to Gen Z and low AOV means conversion lag is super short. You get better 1-day click data. 

And the visual “style” of the product, the soaring purples and oranges, created a super clear visual hook for the algorithm to build around. The lighting became a recognizable brand for viewers to see. 

Comfrt has these amazing high quality products in recognizable colors and cuts. Scroll down their TikTok page and you’ll feel the brand pop from the screen, even though it’s full of content from different creators. 

Not influencers, creators. This strategy hinges on volume. Lots of creators with small audiences, not one influencer with a huge audience. 

Big creators have passive, unengaged audiences. It’s much better to focus on creators with less than 10,000 followers.

54% of Comfrt’s “partner” creators have less than 1,000 followers. 

They have more engaged fans, they’re more excited to work with you, and they have more freedom to innovate with their content. They’re just faster.

Seed these creators with specific products all together in one campaign. Like a product drop that they all got at the same time. 

In total, Comfrt has 600,000 affiliates and 250,000 content partners.

These creators will be the core of your marketing machine. Build those relationships.

The key is motivation: these microinfluencers should be paid on the volume of video they create, their views, and their commissions. You can adjust the structure that feels right. 

But the goal is reach, and lots of it. Sean Frank says to give them bonuses if they post more than 100 videos a month.

Whatever it is, paying them for both reach and volume ensures a specific type of behavior.

The creators are gonna work hard, take risks, try new angles, and are incentivized to actually “farm” content for you, rather than crank out a crappy video one time and call it a day. 

Clavicular’s clippers get paid $30 for every 1000 views they collect.

The key: get yourself the rights and ownership over the creative. 

Congrats, you just unlocked infinite creative while also solving your organic social problem. Now you need to create converting ad campaigns to ride the wave.

If these creators have true freedom, they’ll be testing hundreds of new angles for you on pure instinct. Take some or all of their content and run it as ads. 

This is like hiring thousands of micro-agencies at the same time. They’ll be inventing new creative strategies, shooting content, and editing it all for you. 

If you hire creators across channels, congrats: you just got content native to that channel (YouTube, TikTok, Pinterest) without you having to understand that channel at all. Just take their ads and run them.

This creative will slot nicely into that small slice of the algorithm you’ve created with the organic content.

Your audiences will be warmer and your ad messaging will match what’s being organically said about your brand.

This step is where you throw fuel on the fire. But it’s not a one-off approach: it’s a process. A farm, if you will.

Perhaps you edit some of the videos into superposts, sure. Or you take best performers and polish them into full-funnel videos. 

Maybe you hire a dozen agencies to process all the top performing content into omnichannel ad campaigns.

Or maybe you just download the best performing organic post and spend a million running it on CTV unedited. The world is yours.

The point is that you’re launching your creative process via mass experimentation and organic social reach while simultaneously avoiding creative bottlenecks that tank most performance marketing teams. 

Most marketers get stuck for angles and creative output. What angles do you try? Who shoots it? Who edits? This process removes all those questions without using AI. You’re using real people who probably like you a lot.

The key is to keep this farm alive. Always pay out creators and keep scaling your spend. This keeps your quality high. 

Infinite creative. Infinite angles. Live, real-time product feedback. Free CPMs on all your channels. The list goes on.

This strategy is compelling to me because while it feels manufactured, this creator seeding is deeply predicated on the quality of your product and the organic reach that follows. 

It’s authenticity, at scale.

Posers can’t really succeed with this approach, as it relies on earnest relationship building. 

This also requires you to be more free with your brand guidelines. Give up your control over “brand” of this content and just let the creators figure out what works.

Plus this isn’t limited to startups. Iconic brands can (and have) been doing this for a long time. 

Prada’s “fragile ornament” strategy was doing The Hudson Method forever ago. 

Perhaps the real secret of The Hudson Method is how it drives us to think about performance marketing.

Your ads aren’t in a vacuum, and they aren’t a simple money machine. Your success is predicated on the entire gestalt of your marketing motion. 

There are no shortcuts, no infinite money machines. Success lies at the intersection of organic, paid, product, and reach. 

Comfrt is one of many legendary businesses that recognized this and leveraged their opportunity. Will you do the same?

You may have heard: we’re partnering with the team at Common Thread to bring enterprise-grade attribution to seven-figure businesses. If you’ve always wanted to try Northbeam and grow from seven to eight or nine figures revenue, this is your chance.

Read more about our partnership here.

🗂️ Google Ads is slashing granular data retention to 37 months starting June 1. Back up that BigQuery before your weekly history vanishes.

📈 AppLovin posted 59% Q1 revenue growth to $1.84B, smoking estimates. Is this the next big ad platform?

📉 Meta's family daily active people dropped for the first time ever, from 3.58B to 3.56B in Q1. Blame Iran outages and Russia's WhatsApp ban.

🧠 Jon Loomer dropped the full setup guide for piping Meta Ads into Claude via MCP. 29 tools, natural language, zero spreadsheets.

🚨 JOB: VP of Growth / WaterBoy / Austin + Remote: sick blend of storytelling and growth marketing.

🚨 JOB: Associate Director, Growth Marketing / REEF / Carlsbad CA: You’ll use Northbeam in this one. Don’t miss the opportunity of a lifetime.

🚨 JOB: Senior Designer, Marketing Brand and Creative / Northbeam / remote: join me in making amazing content for social and this newsletter!

🚨 JOB: Partnership Marketing Specialist / Qualia / remote: a travel-focused affiliate role that seems exciting. 

🚨 JOB: Senior Amazon Growth Manager / Qualia / remote: Amazon-focused role at this excellent supplement business. 

🚨 JOB: Head of Growth / Javvy Coffee / Remote: join the best marketers in the game, $5m budget, and freedom to make infinite scale happen.

Love this newsletter? Please forward it to your friends, coworkers, or Justin Theroux. Subscribe here to get this data in your inbox every week.