Meet Zach Garrett, the forward-thinking Founder & CEO of Liftify! With a solid background in marketing and technology, Zach takes on the role of a visionary within the team, constantly seeking new ideas and directions to drive Liftify's success.
Zach grew up in the Indianapolis area and was the oldest of 5 kids. His dad ran a small local business and sports were a big part of his life. He and his brothers grew up playing baseball and were huge Atlanta Braves fans during their prime years in the 1990's. Zach had a strong work ethic from a young age and spent his teenage years umpiring baseball and mowing lawns. He also developed an interest in entrepreneurship and digital in his early teen years and started to learn how to build websites and sell products online.
Going into college Zach knew that he wanted to study marketing and entrepreneurship and decided to attend the Daniels School of Business at Purdue University. After his freshman year of college he started his first business building websites for local businesses and also started helping them do SEO, PPC, and other online marketing. During his next 3 years at Purdue, Zach became very involved on campus. He was a leader in the business schools Management Council and also won President of the Year in the fraternity system for the work he did leading his fraternity.
During his senior year he met his now wife Kate when they were paired up for a barn dance by mutual friends. Zach and Kate now have three young kids and reside in the greater Indianapolis area. They heavily prioritize family time, love to travel and be outdoors, are invested in their local church, and are always rooting for Purdue sports!
Zach's work in marketing and digital started his freshman year in college when he started working with local businesses building websites and helping them with their search engine optimization and PPC campaigns. He got his first taste of a high growth SASS company when he worked at ExactTarget (now Salesforce Marketing Cloud) on the mobile team launching their mobile communications to leading brands like Delta, Panera, and Dick's Sporting Goods.
Zach then went on to join Belden (BDC) as they built out a marketing team to transform the company's marketing and digital experience. During his time at this publicly traded company, Zach was tapped as the project lead on building and launching a new Belden.com and later promoted to a team that spearheaded digital transformation across the company. During those years, Zach was highlighted by industry experts as a 'Rising Millennial Leading Digital Transformation' and finished his time at Belden managing the partner programs and channel marketing for North America and Europe.
In every professional role I have held, even in large corporations, I have always brought an entrepreneurial mind and approach and I think that helped set me apart and provided many of the opportunities I have been blessed to have. I have always had a reputation for being a hard charger, pushing for innovation, and taking calculated risks. I believe you only have one shot at life so you should make it count and always wanted to apply that to my work as well.
-Zach Garrett | Founder & CEO, Liftify
One of the roles Zach held at Belden was to lead the Customer Experience and Digital Transformation process. Included in that role was the responsibility to execute the annual customer and partner survey process and report out to the senior leadership team. During that season working with the external consultants the company hired to analyze the data Zach grew in his understanding of the way companies analyze their customer data with metric systems like NPS®. At the same time, in his personal life Zach did a few things on his home and researched companies using his phone and reading online reviews on places like Google. As time went on, he noticed a consistent pattern that companies didn't have many or recent online reviews. Many of these companies were collecting feedback from their customers someway but they were ineffective in getting those customers to leave reviews online - in the place prospective customers are looking and making decisions.
Zach saw that consumers were more and more relying on online reviews to make their buying decisions and find companies and saw an opportunity to help companies close this gap. He started meeting in his free time with local business owners, understanding their processes, and strategizing how to help them get customers to leave reviews online. In short order the strategies and process started to work and that was the beginning of the Liftify 'secret sauce' that is Liftify today. Businesses Zach was helping started not only getting reviews, but also started to see their search engine rankings increase, more leads, and a faster conversion rate. Through word of mouth Liftify quickly grew as more and more companies had success.
Fast forward to today, Liftify serves over 1,000 business locations across North America - helping them prioritize driving online reviews while also collecting internal feedback when needed. Our team works with major franchise brands such as California Closets, CertaPro Painters, and more. In 2023, we were nominated as a Startup of the Year Finalist for the MIRA Best of Tech Awards and also won Supplier of the Year at the SWAG franchise conference. Zach is consistently asked to speak at industry conferences and join podcasts as a thought leader in the reputation space.