Inside Serenity Kids’ Affiliate Podcast Strategy: Driving Evergreen Sales With Joe Carr

Joe Carr is the Co-founder and President of Serenity Kids, an Austin-based baby food company dedicated to providing nutrient-dense, ethically sourced products for children. Alongside his wife and co-founder, Serenity Carr, Joe launched Serenity Kids in 2018 to revolutionize children's nutrition and empower future generations. With a background in youth services, nonprofit leadership, and life coaching, Joe brings a passion for child development and social impact to his role. He is also an autism advocate serving on the Advisory Board for the Autism Hope Alliance and is active in men's personal development through the ManKind Project.

Here’s a glimpse of what you’ll learn:

• [2:53] Joe Carr explains how guest podcasting — rather than hosting — helped fuel Serenity Kids’ growth
• [4:11] The role of affiliate marketing and evergreen podcast episodes in lowering customer acquisition costs
• [6:57] Strategic selection of podcast topics and identifying white space in influencer content
• [9:19] How Serenity Kids uses product pages and affiliate links to drive conversions from podcast traffic
• [12:07] Core messaging themes Joe emphasizes on podcasts, including meat-based nutrition and regenerative agriculture
• [15:26] Joe shares the vision behind launching his podcast Dadicated Joe to support new dads and build brand affinity

In this episode…

Many DTC brands struggle to stand out in crowded markets while keeping customer acquisition costs under control. Traditional paid ads are expensive and short-lived, while organic strategies often take too long to show results. How can founders create authentic connections with customers and drive scalable growth without burning through the budget?

Joe Carr, a founder with deep expertise in e-commerce and early childhood nutrition, shares how leveraging guest podcast appearances can create evergreen traffic and boost conversions. Joe explains how being a subject matter expert, identifying niche white space in podcast content, and offering compelling affiliate incentives helped lower CAC and build lasting credibility. He also highlights the importance of understanding the customer journey and offers tips for crafting messaging that educates and connects, not just sells.

In this episode of Minds of Ecommerce podcast, Raphael Paulin-Daigle interviews Joe Carr, Co-founder and President of Serenity Kids, about how guest podcasting fuels long-term DTC growth. Joe discusses why unpaid promotions outperform traditional ads, how his team crafts affiliate offers, and how authenticity builds trust with parents. He also shares insights on launching his podcast, identifying topic white space, and positioning non-founder voices as brand advocates.

Resources mentioned in this episode:

• Raphael Paulin-Daigle: LinkedIn | X
• SplitBase
• Joe Carr on LinkedIn
• Serenity Kids: Website | Amazon
• Dadicated Joe
• The 4-Hour Workweek: Escape 9-5, Live Anywhere, and Join the New Rich by Tim Ferriss
• Boundless Life Podcast
• “Why Organic Social Still Works (And How Brevitē Uses It To Drive Sales) With Dylan Kim” on Minds of Ecommerce

Quotable Moments:

• “We basically became the baby episode for a lot of these health and wellness podcasters.”
• “Our lowest CAC are unpaid promotions; affiliates are amazing because they promote us and only get paid.”
• “We notice you don’t have a baby episode. We think your audience would really like it.”
• “You get this instant feedback with performance marketing that you don’t get with larger brand marketing.”
• “I want to change the world for kids, change the way we teach kids, treat kids.”

Action Steps:

1. Leverage guest podcast appearances to build brand credibility: Featuring founders or experts on relevant shows creates lasting trust and organic discoverability.
2. Identify niche topics that align with your product: Targeting podcast white space ensures your message stands out and reaches the right audience.
3. Use affiliate links with discounts to track conversions: This drives measurable ROI while incentivizing both the audience and the podcast host.
4. Speak authentically about real problems your product solves: Genuine storytelling builds an emotional connection and makes your brand more memorable to listeners.
5. Focus messaging on customer education rather than hard selling: Informative content earns trust and encourages long-term loyalty over one-time purchases.

Sponsor for this episode…

This episode is brought to you by SplitBase.

At SplitBase, we design, test, and manage high-converting landing pages and on-site experiences for fashion, luxury, and lifestyle ecommerce brands. Our optimization program pinpoints exactly where your store is losing money most, and then we help you fix that.

The result? Increased conversions and profits for our clients.

With our team of conversion optimization specialists, performance marketers, and conversion-focused designers, we've got your back when it comes to testing and optimization.

Request a proposal on SplitBase.com today, and learn how we can help you get the most out of your marketing spend.

Episode Transcript

Intro: 00:06

Welcome to the Minds of Ecommerce podcast, where you'll learn one key strategy that made leading ecommerce companies grow exponentially. We cut the bullshit and keep the meat. In a 15-minute episode, founders and executives take us through a deep dive of a strategy so you get to learn and grow your online sales. In the last episode, you heard from Dylan Kim, co-founder and head of marketing at Brevitē. Today on episode number 55, get ready.

We're talking to Joe Carr, who's the co-founder and president of kid food brand Serenity Kids, which is Listen Up, the fastest growing and fastest selling kid food brand in the United States. Today, we'll be discussing how to utilize a podcast as a growth lever for the brand. I'm your host, Raphael Daigle, and I'm the founder of SplitBase. Now, this episode is also brought to you by SplitBase.

At SplitBase, we help leading eight and nine-figure brands such as Dr. Squatch, Hyperice, Amika, and Once Upon a Farm grow through customer-focused conversion optimization programs. Our programs pinpoint exactly where your store is losing money most, and then, well, we help you fix it. The result? Well, you get increased conversions, higher AOV, and of course more money, which then in return allow you to scale advertising profitably. From customer research, conversion, design strategy, and copywriting development, we focus on growing your e-commerce sales so you can focus on what you do best.

So you can go to splitbase.com today to learn about how we can help you get the most out of your marketing spend. All right, Joe, welcome to the show. Thank you so much for being here for sure.

Joe Carr: 01:55

Great to be here.

Raphael Paulin-Daigle: 01:56

Now we've been talking before starting the recording, and you've told me a couple of interesting things, which is, one, you're the fastest-growing and fastest-selling baby food brand in the States. Obviously, that's due to a couple of things that you guys are doing really well. And as you know, this podcast is all about going deep and dissecting one key growth strategy for our listeners so they can understand, you know, what works and what doesn't. And they can make changes to their business right away. Now, in your case, the podcast is one of the things that I want to talk about because one, well, I also love podcasts, as I'm sure you can guess.

But tell us a bit more. I think it's a it's a bit less frequent to see a direct to consumer brand have a podcast that's customer facing, that's used as an acquisition channel. It's not super common. And I think in 56 episodes, it's the first time we're talking about it. So can you just maybe give us an overview about how it works?

Joe Carr: 02:53

Yeah. So to be clear, it's other people's podcasts that we've been on that have driven brands growth. for the brand itself does not have its own podcast. I've just launched my personal podcast that the brand is supporting and will feed into the brand, and that's brand new and we'll see what that does. But we have been my wife, Serenity co-founder, and I have been on 60 or so podcasts of other people's podcast.

We just say yes to anybody who asks. We also would solicit it from any kind of major influencer that either had kids or maybe at some point talked about kids or baby food. And we basically became the baby episode for a lot of these health and wellness podcasters. And because our as baby food, our customer has a short lifespan, as you know, they only buy baby food six months to 18 months old. We have to consistently reacquire that customer.

So essentially being available when a mom or a dad goes to search for baby food and they find us that that's been critical for us to be able to be found early on. So being on really prominent health and wellness podcasts, their listeners would often go say, hey, I wonder if my favorite influencer, Ben Greenfield's a great example. Ben Greenfield's one of our most top performing permanent advertisements on the internet. Basically, we didn't pay anything for it. We were guests on his podcast.

People search him or they search his podcast. They find us, they listen to it, and then they become customers. They click through his link and they get, you know, the discount and he gets affiliate revenue from that. And so he's just consistently getting affiliate revenue for years since we've been on that podcast and continues to grow. And Ben Greenfield, you wouldn't think of him as like a mom.

A lot of moms listen to him, but apparently you do. I guess, you know, he takes his shirt off and, you know, women love that.

Raphael Paulin-Daigle: 04:41

I was with him at a mastermind just last month, and I can confirm that all he talks about is actually family. And also he's always just shirt off. So yes.

Joe Carr: 04:51

Yes. So moms love that.

Raphael Paulin-Daigle: 04:53

So Joe, I'd love to know what kind of impact that's had on the business, because obviously this is something that requires a lot of effort. And then I want to talk about maybe the strategies and how you guys approach it. But just to really nail down the value of it. Can you tell us a bit more about what type of impact it's had on the business?

Joe Carr: 05:12

You know, having launched online and continued to grow an e-commerce business alongside the retail business? Customer acquisition cost is the name of the game all the time. How do you lower CAC all day long? And, you know, ads have a certain cack. We get a we always get a 2.5 lifetime to revenue to CAC ratio.

So we're always going at least that Amazon. We've now switched to a six-month payback. So we'll advertise as long as we make that money back within six months. And that's actually really grown the business. But how we lower that cost is always key.

And so one of those our lowest are CAC unpaid promotions. So affiliates are amazing because they promote us. They only get paid if they make a sale. The amount they get is so much they only get paid on the first sale. And so that little discount and the discount to the customer plus them.

And we have a really high return rates as long as you have a good return rate. Return purchase rate, which any successful product or brand must have. You can't go only off a first purchase anyway. Then it's worth it to invest in this. And affiliates have been huge.

And things like being on a podcast that's like it's evergreen, you know, it's out there forever. And whenever a mom goes and searches for baby food, they'll find us there and buy.

Raphael Paulin-Daigle: 06:29

I'd love to know, is there a strategy? Right? Like, I think a lot of people probably just think, oh, you know, we get invited on podcasts, we show up and that's it. But, you know, I'm thinking like, what about the topics that you will go and talk about on those podcasts and even on your podcast, the, the topics that you choose. Right.

How do you find and select those? And is there a strategy or you're just really trying to talk about anything that's relevant to your audience?

Joe Carr: 06:57

I'd say there's sort of three major strategies.

Joe Carr: 06:59

I mean, one of those, one of the key one is you have to be an expert. You have to present yourself and actually be very, very, very well educated on the topic that is super relevant to your product. So my wife became very much a baby food and infant nutrition expert. She read everything there was to read, really, really educated herself. And so she was an expert on that topic.

And then that niche topic of babies and baby food was something that a lot of health and wellness influencers hadn't covered in any direct way, and maybe had come in different ways. But we found that way. It's like, hey, we'll be your baby episode. So kind of find that that in that, that white space, if you will, in a podcaster's regimen. And for us that was mostly babies.

So, you know, you could do it one at a time if you wanted. Look through that podcaster's episodes and say, what are you missing? And pitch them that. And but then it's a lot of asking. It's just asking an offering.

You know, it's just being very assertive about saying, we're available. We'd like to do this. We notice you don't have a baby episode. We think your audience would really like it. You know, send them free product.

They say not now. You ask them again later. You know, like, if they don't answer at all, you just keep asking until they answer. So just like essentially not being shy about writing very big influencers, you know, who maybe sometimes require you to pay or whatever, sometimes they ask us to pay money. We just say, no, we can't afford that.

But we're happy to give you affiliate revenue. And sometimes they they hold to their guns and say, no, we're only paid. But like others would be like, okay, you know, it's cool. I don't have a baby episode. You guys are new.

I want to help you out. And they make exceptions.

Raphael Paulin-Daigle: 08:32

Love it. Now we're talking about affiliate commissions for those podcasters. I'm curious of what happens in between. Right. So where do you send people to or where does those podcasts host send people to?

Do you have we actually talked about entry offers with Shereen Aubert, who was I think former I could be wrong here, but VP of e-commerce of Bobby, the baby formula brand. I think a couple episodes ago, and she talked about entry offers been key for them and they usually would package things. I'm curious here, in your case, have you found a set of products that it's best to send people to from podcasts? What's the strategy for the actual conversion?

Joe Carr: 09:19

We have not gotten that sophisticated on what specific product offering to send them to. You know, our meat baby food are our top-selling. So those tend to be what people go for. But there's depends on what stage and how old their baby is and what they're eating already. And so we've not really dialed in that.

Like this is what you should buy first time ever. I think as we get more sophisticated, that is a better strategy to say what to direct to the customer very clearly to a certain checkout. We have like 35 products, so it's very hard to know what to send them to. And they all sell well. So like we haven't figured that out, but otherwise we just send them to the main product page.

We played around with the home page versus product page and have landed on product page. So they go to the the just the main product page, and then they can search by category or they can see everything. Best sellers are at the top. So we rank that product page by best sellers. And that works really well.

So kind of the best sellers are sort of the and there's like 3 or 4 different groupings of that, the best-selling meat and the best-selling veggies and the best-selling snacks. And so they can self-select by category there. But mostly, yeah, they have their affiliate link. It gives them 15%. That gives the customer 15% discount, and then it gives the affiliate 25% commission off the first order.

Raphael Paulin-Daigle: 10:32

Are there things that you've noticed that when showing up on these podcasts? Are there things or is there a strategy in what you say? Is there anything that you will make sure to say on every single episode that will, you know, lead or correlate with an increase in sales? Yeah.

Joe Carr: 10:54

Yeah, I think, you know, there's the there's the how and the what. You know, obviously being very authentic, being very genuine, being very honest. You know, we are parents. We made these for our daughter. You know, my wife did personally did the research.

So there's this kind of like you can there's a trust factor that being on a podcast. And the podcaster also validates that you're valuable because you're, you know, you're they had you on so that that shows some, some amount of trust. And people really want to trust their, their brand, especially for babies. And then the what you know, we always talk about meat because it's such an important food for babies. And it's still a lot of confusion around when you can feed meat and and how important is it.

And and so like talking about how meat is key as a key first food for babies is huge. We love talking about regenerative agriculture. I'll shout about regenerative agriculture every chance I get, because it's just one of the major solutions to climate change the meat superior. It's a growing movement. We've got to support those farmers.

There's a lot of anti-meat sentiment in the environmental movement that needs to be counteracted with the regenerative focus of it's not no meat, it's the right meat actually improves the The planet. So those are two pieces that we always try to cover. But otherwise, yeah, just being real.

Raphael Paulin-Daigle: 12:07

Yeah. I think for our listeners, a couple takeaways here is one. The point of going on a podcast is really not to think about selling or trying to sell through the podcast. What I'm getting here is really about being an expert, having a conversation around educating. You know, when we think of marketing, let's say you build a landing page, you build a marketing campaign.

You're always going to think about what's the problem that we're solving and how are we solving it. What I'm getting, I think, Joe, from what you're saying as well, is you're almost doing this without necessarily talking too much about your product. You're just really highlighting and making people aware of the the problem at the end of the day. And ultimately, you guys are a solution to it. Yeah.

So I think that's very smart. Now I'm also curious like now obviously there's a network effect. You've been on a lot of podcasts, you and your wife and now you're getting invited. But how did you first start that strategy? G.

Obviously the business has been running for many years, so there's credibility there. But how do you go from. Yeah, not doing any podcasts to being an invited guest on podcasts like Ben Greenfield podcast?

Joe Carr: 13:15

Yeah. You know, our product was formed from me reading the Four Hour Workweek, Tim Ferriss four Hour workweek. And one of the key things there was you pick a niche community to launch a product in. You pick a niche that you're a member of that has a gap. You fill the gap, you market that gap to that niche community, and then you outsource the reproduction.

And in his model, you just sell to that niche community forever. Yeah. So we you know, for us it was paleo. We were big in the paleo movement, which was 2016. Paleo was really peaking.

And we were going to paleo conferences and there were all these paleo influencers, and that was the thing. So we were going to be like the paleo baby food. And essentially we were the paleo baby food. We just ended up not calling it that or tying ourselves too closely to that niche, fortunately, because it kind of went down, you know, but that but we were springboard. We were, you know, we were able to springboard into the online and e-commerce communities via that very strong payload, which had a lot of e-commerce businesses, had a lot of influencers, had a lot of podcasts.

So we were the first paleo baby food. So that really got us on some very big podcasts early on, because we were the only paleo baby food. We were the first paleo baby food. The paleo movement was very supportive of each other, like it wasn't that big. And so if you were doing something really cool, they were inclined to give you a spot without charging you a lot of money.

And so we we really had that opportunity. So a lot of affiliates, a lot of influencers, a lot of podcasters brought us on really early on because they had no baby food to, to promote. They were promoting all this other stuff. And everybody loves babies. And anybody who's remotely educated on nutrition knows how important those first that first year of life is.

So these very smart influencers were like, whoa, this is a huge gap. I already noticed it. You're finally filling it. Let's have you on and talk about that, because I've been wanting something to do this for years.

Raphael Paulin-Daigle: 14:59

Amazing. We're already heading almost our time, but I still want to talk a little bit about the podcast you recently started. Sure, it is not a podcast that is owned by the brand necessarily, as you said, but it's still, I'm guessing there is still a purpose to that podcast, which is attached to your personal brand, and the goal is for it to feed into the brand. So can you tell us a bit more about the strategy and maybe what are some of the learnings that's been that you've had so far?

Joe Carr: 15:26

Yeah, I have a lot to say. I've always had a lot to say. I drove my marketing department crazy trying to be the my personal voice, and they're like, we got to be the voice of the brand. And some of this stuff you say is good, but some is like a little not on Brand Enough. So I want to change the world for kids.

I had a really tough childhood, so I really want to. I've always wanted to change the world for kids, change the way we teach kids, treat kids. When I became a parent, I realized I want to change the world for parents. So like, I can only do so much of that through a through a baby food brand, social media and advertising and blogs and so forth. And so as soon as I was able, we were able I was able to step back from the brand a little bit.

That was what I wanted to do. And so the brand has has funded the launch of DadicatedJoe. And we did a research. We hired a PR firm to research. Where is the white space in the dad influencer space.

And determined that there was a big white space in this kind of 0 to 1 year old. This first time. Dads, I just had a baby. What the hell do I do? There's, you know, a lot of dads talk very broadly about being a dad, and even moms don't really talk that much about that, that postpartum time.

There's just so much else to talk about. So I'm going to go real hard on first time dads. Right at the beginning of you have a baby, you're your life's transformed, your wife's transformed, your body's changing. The you know, the everything's happening. It's very disruptive.

And how what are the really just concrete tips and tricks to get through that. Very difficult what they call a postpartum era or the fourth trimester, but also like how the emotional spiritual transformation of becoming, the identity of becoming a dad, that really you start to set into in that first year, and that kind of sets the tone for the rest of your dadhood. So that's DadicatedJoe Podcast launched just last week. So we've got an episode a week coming. We've got social posts, three social posts a week coming.

A lot of amazing guests lined up that are all very successful men who are also dads, talking about that postpartum experience.

Raphael Paulin-Daigle: 17:24

I'm curious, Joe, like, obviously you guys have been able to do all the this podcasting stuff because you are the founders and the faces of the brand. Do you think it's doable with a brand that doesn't have a founder that wants to be, you know, at the at the forefront of the brand? Do you think it's doable? Maybe with an employee, with someone doing it?

Joe Carr: 17:44

A good question. There's a lot of credibility being the founder, the creator. I think it's worth a try to, you know, in terms of if they're genuinely an expert, you could say, well, I'm the senior science advisor or I'm the, you know, product development. You know, like, you could probably position oneself as an expert on that niche topic if you go really hard on the topic, and if there's a big enough white space, there's not a lot of experts on that topic. You could probably get away with it.

You know, we were fortunate to be able to speak, and my wife is actually quite introverted, but she's done a lot of speaking, training, and so forth, and was able to learn how to do it. So I've heard a lot of PR people work on just teaching founders how to do that better, because the founder, just even if they're not naturally charismatic, they are very smart. You know, they know their product. They know their brand really well. And so that authenticity on a podcast, you know, is a lot it's a lot easier to draw that out in a podcast format than it is in like, say, like a stage speech or a short video.

And so I'd say, yeah, like try to work with your founder, teach them how to do it. It's kind of like you sort of what you signed up for.

Raphael Paulin-Daigle: 18:48

Yeah. I do think it's probably worth noting, though, that that person needs to want it. Right. Like, I think it's going to be very hard to, like, show up on a podcast and talk about this and talk with other people if that person is really just doesn't want to do that. So that's probably step number one.

Joe Carr: 19:04

Yeah, yeah. Maybe bring on a co-founder. Maybe call them a co-founder. Find a co-founder that is the spokesperson. And just call him a co-founder.

That'd be a good little trick. What is a founder? Co-Founder? What does that even mean? You know, a lot of people call themselves co-founders, so that would be a way around that.

Raphael Paulin-Daigle: 19:16

Yeah, like I know, I know Ben Greenfield's brand. Kian. Right. I actually saw a lot of videos recently where Angelo Keely, who might also be co-founder, but I've always known him as a CEO, and he's been talking about amino acids and ads and all over the place and in podcasts. I thought that was pretty interesting.

I didn't initially associate it as a co as co-founder, but.

Joe Carr: 19:37

A lot of brands do that. They bring on a already prominent influencer and they call them a co-founder. The images. As if this person created this from scratch. Very rarely did that happen.

Some other very sciencey or entrepreneurial person created it. But then obviously the influencer has to fully be behind it. You can't just pay them to do it, they have to believe in it. But like if they believe in it enough and then you cut them in with equity or some way from the very beginning, and beginning, and then they start being the voice. That's a really I've seen a lot of really successful products piggyback off successful influencers.

Raphael Paulin-Daigle: 20:11

Very true. Now, there is one thing we're unfortunately already out of time, but there is one thing I want to call out to our audience, which has, you know, this is episode number 55. I think I said 56 earlier. 55. And there's a common pattern.

There's a trend across every single interview. And it's definitely seen here, which is understanding your audience is what allows you to have success with these methodologies. Yes. Truly understanding their pains, their needs, what they want to hear afterwards, how you communicate is up to you. Whether that's a podcast, it's through ads, it's a blog.

But every brand that's scaled fast, that's scaled profitably, are those that understand their customers the best. Yes.

Joe Carr: 20:58

And that starts at the product development stage. Brandon and I both had failed businesses previously, and they failed because we started businesses doing what we wanted to do. We then we tried to find people to buy it or pay for that, and it's much harder with baby food. We didn't want to make a baby food. We just wanted baby food that was good and healthy.

And we discovered there was a huge lack of it. And everybody we asked was like, yeah, we want that too. So it started from this consumer need that we then filled and we were very humble around like, well, we kind of know what we would want. But there's a there's a wide variety within that that would meet our needs. So what meets the widest needs of the customer.

So we did that and then we we'd be able to through performance marketing. They tell you very quickly whether it's they want it or not. They either click on it or they don't. They buy or they don't. So you get this instant feedback with performance marketing that you don't get with kind of larger awareness or brand marketing.

We did a lot of trade shows as well, so that we really got to talk to people. A lot of other food brands do demos and stores, which you can't do for baby food, but we did it at trade shows. We just spent the extra money and it didn't really make sense for our brand to do trade shows because we're reaching hundreds of people. We need to reach thousands. But it was great for that.

Like getting to know the customer, understanding the questions they ask. That was one of the ways we learned that meat wasn't as ubiquitous as we thought. And the paleo movement meat was everything. But like we, the more we talk to people, they're like meat for babies. Can they even have meat?

Like, what age can they have meat? Or like, okay, now we know we need to educate on meat, which has worked like people really understand that babies need meat now. But yeah, everything should be for the customer, not for you.

Raphael Paulin-Daigle: 22:29

We've been talking to Joe Carr, who's co-founder and president at Serenity Kids. Now, Joe, if people want to learn more about you, the brand, your podcast, where should they go?

Joe Carr: 22:40

Yeah. You can check out our website, myserenitykids.com. We're also on Amazon so you can search our products on Amazon and almost every retail store you can find our products. And then for me, dedicated Jio.com or Dadicated Joe on all podcast platforms as well as as at Dadicated Joe on all socials.

Raphael Paulin-Daigle: 22:59

Amazing. Joe, thank you so much for being here.

Joe Carr: 23:01

Great to be here. Thanks.

Outro: 23:07

All right. Well, that's it for today's episode. And thank you so much for tuning in. Now, if you like what you've heard, and you don't want to miss any of the new episodes that are about to come out, make sure you subscribe to the podcast and well, bonus points if you also leave a review in the iTunes store or wherever you're listening to this. Now, if you're working on an e-commerce store that does over $1 million in revenue and you need help with conversion optimization or landing pages, well, I've got some good news because there's a pretty good chance we can help with that.

Go to splitbase.com to learn more or even to request a proposal. If you have any guest requests, questions, or comments, tweet me at @Rpaulindaigle and I'll be super happy to hear from you. And again, thanks again for listening. This is Minds of Ecommerce.

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