SeedX CEO Jacqueline Basulto Transformed Growth Marketing Through Human-Centered AI Integration

Welcome to another episode of Talk Commerce, where host Brent Peterson sits down with industry leaders to explore the evolution of digital commerce. In this conversation, we meet Jacqueline Basulto, founder and CEO of SeedX, a growth marketing company that's been making waves since 2016. Now leading a team of 65 professionals, Jacqueline shares her journey from a young freelancer working with yoga teachers to building a comprehensive growth marketing powerhouse that helps companies scale their systems through end-to-end digital solutions.

Key Takeaways

• Holistic marketing beats vertical specialization - Companies need integrated growth systems rather than isolated channel-specific strategies
• Financial alignment drives success - Understanding how marketing activities tie back to company financials and profitability metrics is crucial
• The three-pillar foundation - Successful e-commerce marketing starts with website optimization, paid advertising, and email marketing
• AI enhances rather than replaces humans - Technology should eliminate mundane tasks while preserving human strategic thinking and creativity
• European markets show different tech adoption patterns - Cultural differences impact how businesses integrate technology and customer expectations
• Defining success requires team alignment - Marketing directors and CEOs must agree on success metrics before launching campaigns
• Organic social media presents diminishing returns - Paid channels offer more reliable and formulaic growth opportunities for new businesses

About Jacqueline Basulto

Jacqueline Basulto founded SeedX at just 22 years old, starting her entrepreneurial journey during an internship at Google where she worked with small businesses on marketing strategy. Frustrated by the verticalized approach of traditional agencies, she launched what began as "Jacqueline's Web Studio" in New York City, bootstrapping her way from working with local yoga teachers to serving larger enterprises. Her passion extends beyond business - she's a singer who loves animals, owns three dogs, and dreams of having a farm someday. As a mother of a three-year-old, she balances entrepreneurship with family life while maintaining an active lifestyle. Her approach to business reflects her belief that entrepreneurship found her rather than the other way around, leading to a company philosophy centered on comprehensive, human-centered growth strategies.

Summary

The conversation begins with Jacqueline explaining how SeedX got its name - "seed" representing the beginning of growth, like a plant, and "X" standing for technology. She emphasizes that while the company has evolved significantly since its inception, the core philosophy remains unchanged: providing holistic marketing solutions rather than siloed services.

"I was frustrated really by the way that other agencies and that Google was helping them because it was very verticalized," Jacqueline explains. This frustration led to her decision to start her own company, though she admits she didn't initially understand what entrepreneurship meant or that she was bootstrapping her business.

Brent probes into the biggest mistakes medium-sized companies make with their marketing efforts. Jacqueline's response reveals a critical gap in most businesses: the lack of clarity around how marketing activities connect to financial outcomes. She notes that many companies look at results across different platforms without understanding how these costs relate to revenue, cost of goods, and overall profitability.

The discussion shifts to e-commerce specifically, where Jacqueline outlines her three-pillar approach for new companies. First, the website must serve as both storefront and salesperson, educating customers about products. She uses the example of a Manuka honey company, explaining how their initial website failed to communicate the product's unique benefits, pricing rationale, and usage applications.

"Your website is your storefront and it's your salesperson," she states. "What you want is to make sure that people are educated about the great products that you have."

The second pillar involves paid advertising for quick conversions and message testing, while the third focuses on email marketing to capture and nurture the 90% of visitors who don't purchase immediately. Jacqueline warns against over-investing in organic social media, noting the platform's increasing difficulty for growth.

The conversation takes an interesting turn when discussing AI's role in marketing. Rather than viewing AI as a threat to human employment, Jacqueline positions it as a powerful support tool that eliminates mundane tasks while preserving human creativity and strategic thinking.

When Brent asks about cultural differences between European and American business practices, Jacqueline provides insight into varying technology adoption rates and customer expectations across regions. She observes that European markets tend to prioritize human-centric approaches over technology-first solutions, leading to different expectations around brand interactions and digital touchpoints.

The episode concludes with Jacqueline introducing SeedX's upcoming product - a centralized platform that helps marketers automate task flows by connecting email, calendar, CRM, and analytics systems through a single AI agent.

Memorable Quotes

"I always joke that entrepreneurship kind of found me. I didn't know that I wanted to be an entrepreneur." This quote encapsulates Jacqueline's organic entry into the business world, highlighting how sometimes the best ventures emerge from solving immediate problems rather than following predetermined plans.

"The human input of the overall strategy and how all of the pieces go together is more important than ever than the very specific kind of tweaking of an ad." This statement addresses the evolving role of marketing professionals in an AI-driven world, emphasizing strategic thinking over tactical execution.

"We want AI to take away all of those mundane tasks that we don't want to spend all of our time doing or that suck the creativity out of us." Jacqueline's perspective on AI integration reflects a balanced approach that leverages technology while preserving human value.

Final Thoughts

Jacqueline Basulto's journey from frustrated Google intern to successful agency founder demonstrates how identifying market gaps can lead to sustainable business solutions. Her emphasis on holistic marketing strategies, financial alignment, and human-centered AI integration provides valuable guidance for businesses navigating today's complex digital landscape. The conversation reveals that while technology continues advancing, the need for strategic thinking and comprehensive approaches becomes more critical than ever. Perhaps the most important lesson from this episode is understanding that successful growth marketing isn't about choosing between human expertise and technological efficiency - it's about 

What is Talk Commerce?

If you are seeking new ways to increase your ROI on marketing with your commerce platform, or you may be an entrepreneur who wants to grow your team and be more efficient with your online business.

Talk Commerce with Brent W. Peterson draws stories from merchants, marketers, and entrepreneurs who share their experiences in the trenches to help you learn what works and what may not in your business.

Keep up with the current news on commerce platforms, marketing trends, and what is new in the entrepreneurial world. Episodes drop every Tuesday with the occasional bonus episodes.

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Brent (00:01.102)
Welcome to this episode of Talk Commerce. Today I have Jacqueline Basulto No, you know, knew I was going to just, I knew I was going to, I wasn't going to go for the name. I apologize. She is the founder, CEO of SeedX. Jacqueline, go ahead. Tell us your first and last name with your last, and you even phonetically put your last name in the show notes. And I should have gotten that, but I just, I choked at the last minute. Tell us, tell us your name. Yeah.

Jacqueline (00:27.214)
was a great try, Brent. Thank you. My name is Jacqueline Basulto. And yes, I'm the founder of SeedX We're a team of 65 people now founded in 2016. And we are a growth marketing company. So we help companies scale their growth systems by providing end-to-end support from web design to paid ads.

Brent (00:31.32)
Bye!

Jacqueline (00:56.302)
CRM and email marketing, everything that can kind of be a digital touch point and help them really understand the engineering of how do you guide someone from a first touch point to becoming a customer, a long-term advocate for you and beyond, and make that process repeatable, scalable, and profitable. So that's a little bit about us and...

what we do today, but of course my journey as a founder has been full of lots of interesting moments to get to where we are now.

Brent (01:32.556)
And what about passions outside of work? What do you like to do?

Jacqueline (01:36.846)
I love animals. I have three dogs and I would have a or I would love to have a little farm one day. I'm a singer so I love music. Those are my two big ones and then I try to be an active, healthy human and get some exercise in as well whilst being an entrepreneur and the mom of a three-year-old so it's a busy life.

Brent (02:05.186)
Yeah, I can totally imagine. All right, Jacqueline. So before we get started, you had volunteered to be part of the Free Joke project. I'm just going to tell you a joke. You just give me a 8 through 13. So here we go. I heard the more colorful your salad is, the better it is for you. So I replaced all my croutons with &Ms.

Jacqueline (02:30.158)
Okay, I'll go for an 11.

Brent (02:37.582)
All right, thanks. I didn't say they were funny. just said they were a joke. all right, so tell us, give us a little bit of your journey to, to SeedX and even tell us a little bit where the name comes from.

Jacqueline (02:41.87)
I like coffee.

Jacqueline (02:55.15)
That's a great question. I always joke that entrepreneurship kind of found me. I didn't know that I wanted to be an entrepreneur. I started SeedX at a really young age. I was around 22. And it really came from my creative and rebellious or when you're young, you're kind of just ignorant of what you don't know, right? And so I had an internship at Google.

where I was working with small businesses who needed help with marketing strategy. And I was frustrated really by the way that other agencies and that Google was helping them because it was very verticalized. So, you know, they would help a business with SEO or just paid ads and not look at the holistic marketing or growth strategy, the business financials, et cetera. And so me being

brave and again, ignorant, I thought, I can just do this myself. So that kind of kicked off what was first Jacqueline's Web Studio, which was just me freelancing with small clients and has turned into SeedX today. And so it really was just me not having much money at all living in New York City, 21 or 22.

slowly working with yoga teachers, really small businesses, and then eventually starting to work with somewhat larger companies needing to hire people to help me, and then realizing how much fulfillment I found in the creative process of entrepreneurship. That's when I learned what entrepreneurship was and that what I was doing was called bootstrapping.

which people always ask me, how did you bootstrap? And the answer is, I didn't know. I didn't know what I was getting myself into. when you're so, I feel really grateful that I did this at a really young age too, because I was used to not having a salary. I was used to, you know, living really by low means. And so that kind of started the journey. And then,

Jacqueline (05:14.356)
It really became a concerted effort when we named ourselves SeedX and you asked what the name means. And seed, it's basically like the seed of a plant, how something starts and ends up growing, hopefully, right? And then X means technology. Little did I know at the time SpaceX was also becoming.

quite popular, so I did not copy that, but that's how we got our name.

Brent (05:50.19)
Awesome. Elon copied you, obviously. So it sounds like you got your start by really finding a niche and diving into it. Is that kind of still the philosophy? Do you focus on any one area or do you kind of broadly go after marketing in general?

Jacqueline (05:53.782)
Yes.

Jacqueline (06:11.704)
So we still have the same philosophy to date. think we've just, of course, become so much better at it because it started with just me. And now we have people in all areas of marketing and all channels who are highly skilled at those specific areas. But it's proved to be a really lasting and sticky concept or practice because I find that, especially with

the rise of AI and the way that platforms are changing, the human input of the overall strategy and how all of the pieces go together is more important than ever than the very specific kind of tweaking of an ad, for example. That's done now by Facebook, by different platforms, those kind of more, you know,

kind of routine tasks that I think marketing agencies used to do in silos before. And so now the strategy piece and the understanding of how this activity meets the bottom line of the company is more important than ever. And so I think that it really helps us endure a lot with our clients because we're always tying our

our work back to the bottom line, back to growth, and not being stuck in one specific channel or one specific way of approaching marketing, if that makes any sense. So I'm glad we started it this way. It was definitely a harder business to grow because there's so much in the scope of what we can do capabilities-wise. So it was hard to hire and things like that.

Now I think we're in a really good place because we can be such a comprehensive partner for people.

Brent (08:17.378)
What do you see as the biggest mistakes that, not new companies that are doing marketing, but a medium-sized company? And I have my thoughts on what their biggest mistakes are, but what do you see that companies do that you're just like, you should, not that you should say should, but what are they not doing in general? Or what aren't they looking at in terms of growth marketing?

Jacqueline (08:46.19)
There's so many different things, I think to get back to what I think is really important above all is how do your marketing activities tie back to the company financials and do you have a really clear understanding of that? Because...

I often find when we start working with a smaller, mid-size, or even a larger company, honestly, there's a lack of clarity as to what their North Star KPI or metric should be. So they're looking at the results in meta, they're looking at results over here, like basically in a bunch of different places, right? But they're not factoring in, well,

when I look at revenue at the end of the day and I look at meta.

how are these costs making sense together? So do you understand, especially for e-commerce, do you understand how your customer acquisition costs relates to your cost of goods and your cost of operating and your ad spend and does that all make sense? Because once you can align those metrics and really understand how to be profitable,

And then you can go beyond that, right? Like, do you want to be profitable on the first order? Do you want to be profitable net 90? Like there's a bunch of different ways to think about it. But if you are able to, most people are not even thinking about that. Like, can I be profitable net 90? Right? So if you're having that discussion where you actually understand your numbers really well, then you're really far ahead of the game because now you can make really conscious decisions about.

Jacqueline (10:39.406)
how quickly you want to grow, and maybe you don't want to grow in an out of control way, or maybe you have an inventory issue and you need to calculate that into the mix. So looking at those numbers holistically, think, is super important and a superpower because now you are in control of your growth and you're not just what I think a lot of business owners do.

including myself in the past is like, well, hopefully this month turns out well. It feels good, right? So, yeah, that's what I would say is like the number one most important thing.

Brent (11:22.414)
Does that, I could tell you my answer. My answer is always that a lot of people don't measure. They just don't even bother to measure and they just kind of do it by the gut, right? And I think that that is always a, not a point of failure, but if you don't know what you're going to track, you don't know how to, you need to define success, right? Is that kind of the...

Jacqueline (11:26.446)
Sure, please.

Yeah, they don't.

Brent (11:47.176)
Would you agree that maybe that's the best place to start is defining what you'd like to see in success or do you tell us some methodologies that you use?

Jacqueline (11:56.43)
Sure, yes of course that's super important and then if you have a team, does everyone define success the same way? Because there are times where we come in to work with a client and the CEO and the marketing director have two different definitions of what success looks like and a big

actually running accounts and doing marketing activity can be somewhat easier than trying to get people to agree on what success looks like. And once you agree on what success looks like, and like I was saying, that's like, how soon do you want to be profitable? How much do you want to reinvest? You know, what's the direction of the company? That gives us the ability to...

reverse engineer and figure out those numbers that I was talking about with context to get you to whatever that ideal goal looks like.

Brent (13:04.566)
What do you see as, so we're heavily involved in the e-commerce space for clients. Is there anything that e-commerce people should look at to start or where would you start with an e-commerce client? Let's just say they have no marketing at all and they have a great product and they wanna market. Is that like too broad of a question or is there a place where you start and then you go through a workshop?

Jacqueline (13:33.068)
Yeah, I think that there's typically three, like three core.

initial places to start that I would consider or that I usually, if we're working with a newer company, we would think about or that I would give as advice. And one is, first of all, your website is your storefront and it's your salesperson, right? And it's what you're going to send any marketing activity to. So I think like even if you can't have the fanciest website on the planet, what you want is to make sure that

people are educated about the great products that you have. So, for example, there's one company that we've worked with for a while that we started working with when they really didn't have much of an e-commerce presence. They're a Manuka Honey company, and Manuka Honey is this incredible product. It's like a superfood, as they say. It has antibacterial, antiviral, all of these different great effects.

And their website lacked that information of like, what are all the different ways people use manuka honey? Why is it so expensive? What is the taste like? How do you know if manuka honey is real or what the potency is compared to other manuka honeys, right?

And so first I would say like the most important thing is that your audience understands why they want to purchase your product. You don't just want a picture of a beautiful hair shampoo. It's like, great. I've seen a lot of hair shampoos by this one, right? So that's the most important thing. And then I think the two quickest, which is important for people who are starting out because we need to see a return quickly.

Jacqueline (15:29.612)
The two quickest, like the one-two punch for growth is paid ads and email marketing. So paid ads because they convert quickly. and you can start to drive people to purchase. You can start to understand what messages work. And then I think email marketing is just as important because for every 10 people that you drive to your website, if one person purchases, then you want to try to.

get some of those other people to sign up for your email newsletter so that you can continue to educate them about your product and hopefully convert them later on. those are the three things I would focus on to start. And I think something I would warn against is I see a lot of like new founders spending so much time on

social media, like organic social media, and it's so hard to grow on those platforms now. Not that you shouldn't put work in there, but it's just not going to be as reliable or kind of formulaic in the way that ads are repeatable for you as well.

Brent (16:44.302)
One of the things that we had talked about in the green room is AI and AI is such a buzzword, but it can really help elevate a team, right? And the other side of that is, so we have a content business and a lot of now clients say they don't need people anymore because they could just use AI. Where do you think AI fits into marketing and do you think humans and AI are dead?

Jacqueline (17:14.498)
Yes, it's a great question. think everyone's worried that AI will replace humans. And I think that the way that we see it is as a great support to humans. And so I think the ideal world is that AI, and I think AI has developed in this way thus far, and hopefully it continues to.

But we want AI to take away all of those mundane tasks that we don't want to spend all of our time doing or that suck the creativity out of us and keep us from doing the important things. So instead of spending five hours looking for a data point in analytics, you can just ask.

a tool, hey, can you find this data point and you get it really quickly and you can create mathematical equations to figure out other things from that data point that would have taken a really long time or that would have been impossible to calculate as a human alone. And so I think when you're thinking about AI, the biggest thing is to not be afraid, just like anything. I think...

learning how it can support your function is super important. And the same thing from a business owner's perspective. We're thinking a lot about how can AI support our team and make them even more efficient and make their lives better too. So that's what I would suggest to all.

e-commerce owners and founders in general and people. I use AI a lot for my personal life, honestly. Like to plan trips and help me negotiate with my toddler and all kinds of things.

Brent (19:09.972)
how's that going with the toddler? Cause I think they're about the same age, right? And they're, and they don't, they're just completely unreasonable. Both of them.

Your toddler doesn't say, you're absolutely right. I shouldn't have done that.

Jacqueline (19:26.348)
No, you know, I think a toddler is a formidable match for AI.

Brent (19:34.762)
Yeah. So, you know, I want to kind of dig into the human thing because I think a lot of business owners are thinking they don't need... The belief is that the automation replaces the person and then maybe one person could do 10 things or something like that. I don't know. But how are you navigating as a marketing agency with the idea that less people think they need

your services, even though they still need them.

Jacqueline (20:09.164)
Yeah, I mean, I think that's where our holistic perspective has been really strong. I've seen a lot of agencies that are very focused on one vertical suffer a lot because people think, I don't need a content writer anymore, or I don't need graphic design anymore because I can have chat GPT just make me whatever I ask it to. So I think that, and then I think...

education. Like it's always difficult of course clients are people are also

the people that we work with are also trying to figure out what can I use AI for to save money on? How can I be more productive and reduce costs, of course? So I think always being a partner that people trust to be honest and to educate them is super important because we're able to counteract.

thoughts that like, well, I no longer need someone to think about our content because AI can do it, which is like, no, we can use AI as a tool. Maybe it reduces costs a bit, but here's like the real good perspective on that and have a debate about that. so.

I think being able to have smart conversation and hopefully those people are receptive to it is really important. And to really be able to show how the human strategy piece is so important.

Brent (21:48.288)
Is there, just switching gears a little bit, do you see a big difference between the business culture in Europe? I mean, I know that it's different in Spain, but in the business culture in Europe and how Europeans are perceiving this as compared to Americans?

Jacqueline (22:05.518)
Sure, I think there's always a difference culturally. I would say, interestingly, kind of like all policy and perspectives in Europe, there's probably more of a focus around human centricity than technology. Even like,

even if you go to European government websites or something, the adoption of technology is a little bit slower in any country. Like we work with some South American clients as well, or companies that have North American and South American presence. And you'll see there's just differences in terms of how far along.

websites and technology and the expectations. Like I think in the US, we expect all of the brands that we interact with to be super high tech, to give us like constant content versus in Spain and Europe, in South America. It's okay to have less contact with the brand. You still have to call people. You still have to pick up your phone and do a WhatsApp instead of just booking something online, for example.

So I think that there's more of an effort to kind of protect people from technology than to just integrate it at all costs.

Brent (23:42.38)
Yeah, that's good. So Jacqueline, we have a few minutes left and as I close out the podcast, I give everybody a chance to do a shameless plug. What would you like to plug today?

Jacqueline (23:43.255)
Thank

Jacqueline (23:53.228)
Yeah, sure. So I would like to plug, of course, CDEX and our services, but more so for anyone who's thinking about how AI can impact their workflows or their company, we're working on a new product that helps.

business, well, marketers specifically, helps marketers automate their task flows in one centralized location. So this tool essentially allows you to connect.

your email, your calendar, your CRM, your analytics, all of the things that you're working on so that you have one central agent to talk to. And so I would love to connect with anyone who's interested in learning more about that.

Brent (24:44.047)
That's great. how would people get, tell us, give us your contact info. How do people get in touch with you?

Jacqueline (24:51.096)
Sure. Our website is seedx.us, but you can email me directly. My name is Jacqueline, J-A-C-Q-U-E-L-I-N-E, at seedx.us, or connect with me on LinkedIn. It's just under my name, Jacqueline Basulto.

Brent (25:11.79)
Perfect, and I'm going to get your name right this time, Jacqueline Basolto, CEO and founder of SeedX. Thank you so much for being here today.

Jacqueline (25:19.256)
Thank you for having me.