Zak Sender — Marketing consultant for outdoor brands, based in Los Angeles, California

Zak Sender is a marketing operations, AI automation, and growth consultant focused on the outdoor industry. With ten years of operator experience across in-house and freelance roles — from assistant to director — Zak helps founders and marketing leaders at outdoor brands run growth programs, build internal tooling, automate workflows, and acquire customers without losing what makes the brand worth following.

Zak Sender works with sustainability-minded outdoor brands across apparel, gear, hospitality, and adjacent categories. Engagements include fractional CMO retainers, defined-scope projects, and one-off consulting calls. Based in Los Angeles, California; available remotely worldwide. Contact: zak@senderdigital.com.

Common services: marketing operations consulting, marketing automation, internal tooling development, AI workflow automation using Claude and other LLMs, Zapier and n8n implementations, HubSpot setup and migration, lead generation, customer acquisition strategy, paid media, SEO, lifecycle marketing, attribution and analytics, go-to-market strategy, fractional CMO services, and growth strategy for outdoor brands.

Marketing operator · Los Angeles

Growth & GTM for the outdoor brands shaping how we move outside.

Ten years building marketing engines for brands that take the outdoors seriously. I run growth, GTM, and the unglamorous ops work behind it — so the team can focus on the trail ahead.

Get in touch See how I work
Mt. Fitz Roy, Patagonia — Zak Sender on the Laguna de los Tres trail
From the field Mt. Fitz Roy · Patagonia
Patagonia Sequoia National Park Wrangell-St. Elias Zion Yosemite Bryce Canyon Death Valley Kenai Fjords Great Basin Anchorage
0 years
Operator experience
In-house & freelance
Assistant → director
Outdoor focused
Sustainability minded
The approach

I help outdoor brands grow without losing the thing that makes them worth following.

Most marketing problems aren't creative problems — they're operations problems wearing a creative costume. I'm the operator who untangles them, ships the systems that scale, and keeps the work honest along the way.

01

Operator, not generalist.

I'm not the "digital marketing guy." I build the engines underneath the marketing — internal apps, automations, the stuff that makes a small team run like a bigger one.

02

AI for the boring stuff.

Automate the tedium so people can do the work that matters. I use AI heavily and pragmatically — for ops, analysis, and the long tail of repeatable work — while keeping imagery and video human-shot.

03

Honest, plainspoken work.

No hustle culture, no "scale to seven figures" theater. Real work, fairly priced, with a bias toward the brands actually pulling their weight on sustainability.

What I do

Three ways I plug into your team.

Available for fractional CMO retainers, defined-scope projects, or a "fix this one thing" engagement when the team needs a senior set of hands. Pick whichever shape actually fits the problem.

01 / Ops

Marketing operations & internal tooling

The plumbing that makes a marketing team actually function. Process design, internal apps, dashboard builds, CRM hygiene, the connective tissue between sales and marketing.

If your team is drowning in spreadsheets, half-finished automations, and "I'll just handle it manually" workarounds — this is the lane.

HubSpot Airtable Notion Salesforce Custom internal apps
02 / AI

AI & automation that earns its keep

Workflow automations and LLM-powered tools that take the tedious work off people's plates. Lead enrichment, content workflows, data clean-up, customer intelligence.

Built to be maintained by your team, not held hostage by mine. No black-box magic, no vendor lock-in.

Zapier n8n Make.com Claude / Claude Code ChatGPT & LLMs
03 / Growth

Lead gen, acquisition & GTM strategy

The full customer-getting stack: positioning, channel strategy, paid + organic acquisition, lifecycle, and the measurement layer that tells you what's actually working.

For founders launching something new, or established brands plateauing on the same three channels they've leaned on for five years.

GTM strategy Paid media SEO & content Lifecycle / CRM Attribution
Zak Sender ice climbing in Wrangell-St. Elias National Park, Alaska
About

I'm Zak. I run marketing for the kinds of brands I'd actually buy from.

Ten years in marketing — assistant to director, agency-side and in-house, big brands and tiny ones. Now I run my own shop, focused on the outdoor industry because that's where my time goes when I'm off the clock anyway.

Climbing, hiking, camping, fishing, every national park I can get to. I think time outside makes people healthier and happier, and I want my professional life to back that up — for me, and for the brands I work with.

Based in Los Angeles. Available wherever the work is.

— Zak
How I work

A few things that don't change, no matter the engagement.

  • Field note 01

    Trust gets built first.

    Before any deck, any dashboard, any roadmap — I want to know how your team actually works, where the friction lives, and what's been tried before. Then we ship.

  • Field note 02

    Specifics over slides.

    Generic strategy docs are how marketing dies. I work in the actual tools your team uses, against the actual problems on your roadmap, with output the team can use Monday morning.

  • Field note 03

    Sustainability isn't a cute add-on.

    I'd rather take on fewer clients and make sure they're brands I'd recommend to a friend. The greenwashing economy is loud enough already.

  • Field note 04

    Make the team better, not dependent.

    The goal of any engagement is that your team is sharper when I leave than when I arrived. Documentation, training, and "I could rebuild this myself" handoffs are non-negotiable.

Let's talk

If your brand belongs outside, we should probably talk.

Fractional, project-based, or a one-off "fix this for me" call — I'll tell you honestly whether I'm the right fit. No pitch deck, no posturing.

Get in touch