Startup: Head of Marketing (Client Growth)

Head of Marketing (Consumer Client Growth)

Reports to: CEO

Compensation: Equity + base salary + performance-based bonuses tied to client growth + additional salary increase after your first successful quarter

Location: Louisville, KY (in-person, we’re in Butchertown/Nulu)

Minimum Years Of Experience: 0

TL;DR:

Swell is hiring a scrappy, high-agency Head of Marketing to own and accelerate client growth.

Your only job: Double Swell’s monthly client growth within your first 5 weeks — then double it again. You’ll run the playbook, execute fast, and get paid to grow something meaningful.

If that target scares you, this isn’t your role. If it excites you — keep reading.

About Swell

Swell is a mental health startup building an AI-supported therapy platform to solve the mental health crisis. Today, we provide access to video therapy for people who can’t afford to pay out of pocket. Tomorrow, we’re building a fully self-guided therapy product for the millions who can’t find a therapist. While we started with military families and first responders (they have the least access to care), our mission is bigger: bring proactive, personalized, and affordable mental health care to everyone who needs it.

Swell is fast, scrappy, values-driven, and growing quickly. We’re venture-backed, have contracts with top insurers, and are ready to 10X our impact this year. This role is for someone who wants to own growth — not just contribute to it.

The Role

This is not a traditional big company role. There is no marketing team (yet). There will only be you. No passive waiting for leads. No glossy brand campaigns (unless you write them yourself). You’ll be the marketing engine — the strategist, experimenter, copywriter, field marketer, and growth hacker.

We’ve doubled client growth in the last 3 months on our own with no marketing expertise and divided attentions. We’re hiring you to outperform all of us.

By bringing you on, we’re taking a bet that you’ll relentlessly drive us to 10X client growth over the next 6-8 months. You’ll set ambitious goals starting week 1. Every day you’ll identify what’s working, what’s not, and go all-in on what moves the needle. You’ll talk to users, rapidly implement and test ideas in the wild, and use every tool at your disposal to accelerate and scale word of mouth spread.

The Existing Systems You’re Inheriting

We have one marketing flywheel that’s already working: our advocate program. Advocates leave comments recommending Swell on relevant posts in high-visibility facebook groups. People who are looking for a therapist sans-waitlist see them and reach out.

We’ve also had some success with workshops/booths at military and other community events but haven’t had the staff to keep it up. This would be an area you could immediately lead the charge in.

What You’ll Do

• Create and launch scrappy marketing experiments every week. Referral programs, field marketing, partnerships — you’ll decide, plan, and execute very fast.
• Get in the field. Talk to potential clients, military spouses, community orgs, drop brochures off at yoga studios, create an advertising program for rideshare drivers, etc.
• Own our client (consumer) acquisition strategy and funnel end-to-end. From awareness to downloading our app to completing the first session.
• Execute at a run, not a walk. Planning a new program that you’ll roll out in 3 weeks? What would it take to do it in one week instead?
• Build repeatable growth playbooks that we can hand off or scale up. You’ll become an expert at your own efficiency and use tools to make yourself faster and more efficient every day.
• Track and analyze growth metrics like your bonus depends on it (because it does)

About You

• You don’t wait to be called on or tasked. You make your own assignments. You get an idea and you try it.
• You’re a problem-solver who moves fast and learns faster.
• You’re allergic to slow. You learn by doing, and you do a lot.
• You’re a confident communicator who can walk into a room (or message board) full of strangers and leave with leads.
• You’ve probably marketed or grown something without a budget — a product, a movement, an idea — and made it work anyway.
• You’re obsessed with growth — and you’re not shy about chasing it.
• You have the tenacity of Leslie Knope.

Bonus points if you:

• Have experience with field marketing or door-to-door sales.
• Have built user acquisition campaigns targeting hard-to-reach populations
• Love people, psychology, memes, and Parks & Rec.

Compensation & Incentives

• $44K base salary to start. We’ll increase this after your first successful quarter.
• Performance bonuses: If you hit your client growth goals, you earn $50,000 in annual bonus cash, paid out quarterly. If you crush them, you earn double.
• Equity ownership in Swell (so you win when we all do)
• Benefits: Medical, dental, vision, 3 weeks PTO, 11+ holidays, and more
• Path to leadership: If you prove you can grow Swell, you’ll be running an entire sales and marketing org in 6–12 months.

Our Culture

Agency is the most important core behavior we index on at Swell. We each show up in our own driver’s seats, making life happen because of us – not to us.

We’re biased toward action. We take responsibility. We lean into the things that are hard and necessary. We care deeply about people and the work we do together. We believe that every thing has a path to working – that every thing can be figured out.

We don’t do busywork. We don’t micromanage. We work like it’s ours — because it is.

If you’ve ever felt like you could do more, make more, and be more if someone would just get out of your way — you’ll probably thrive here.

Next Steps - Apply If:

You don’t just want to be the Head of Marketing at a startup — you want to be the reason it took off.

Apply here: https://www.notion.so/1c20898eb6f78074b04edd28678ca5aa?pvs=106