Ian Smith

Who Is Ian Smith?

I'm Ian — founder of Evolve Media Agency, an Amazon-focused content and marketing agency based in Colorado. I've been building ecommerce businesses since 2015, have built and sold 3 companies, and now help $1M–$5M+ Amazon and Shopify brands grow through content, paid ads, AI search visibility, and email marketing.

I started EMA in 2017 because I kept seeing the same pattern: brands with genuinely great products getting crushed by competitors with better listings, better images, and a smarter marketing stack. I built the agency to fix that gap. In 2018 I hired Megan full-time and we've run it together ever since — managing ad campaigns, building sales funnels, scaling Amazon and Shopify stores, and generating over $25 million in client revenue through email marketing alone. Today we do everything from Amazon listing optimization and PPC to Shopify development, AI chatbot buildouts, and the GEO strategies that get brands cited by ChatGPT and Gemini. I recently published our 15-guide AI search content series — a deep-dive on how ecommerce brands earn citations from ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, and Perplexity in 2026.

Outside of work, I'm a husband to Megan and dad to Ayla (born 2019) and Emily (born 2021) — two daughters who are the whole reason the long game matters. We're a Colorado family through and through: camping, dirt bikes, ATVs, Polaris RZR, and a Tesla that somehow fits in between all of it. I trade stocks, own rental properties, and I'm genuinely obsessed with where AI is taking ecommerce over the next 5 years.

My Ecommerce Journey: 2015 to Today

I got into ecommerce in 2015 when Amazon FBA was still relatively wide open. The playbook was simpler then — find a product, source it, run some PPC, iterate. But even in those early days what separated the winners was the same thing it is today: better content, better brand storytelling, and a smarter customer acquisition system.

Areas of Expertise

11+ years in ecommerce means deep, battle-tested knowledge across the full stack — from the technical (listing optimization, schema markup, schema, PPC) to the strategic (multi-channel launch systems, AI search visibility, topical authority). Here's where I go deepest:

My Obsession With AI and What It Means for Ecommerce

I've been deep in AI tools since early 2023 — not as a buzzword, but as a genuine productivity multiplier and a new customer acquisition channel I could see forming in real time. The moment I saw customers using ChatGPT to ask "what's the best protein powder brand" or "top Shopify agencies for Amazon brands," I knew the rules of ecommerce visibility had fundamentally changed.

I've spent the last two years building out what I call the GEO stack — the technical and content infrastructure that gets ecommerce brands recommended by ChatGPT, Perplexity, Claude, and Gemini. Schema markup, llms.txt, E-E-A-T signals, third-party mention building, product data quality — all of it working together to make brands visible in the AI conversation happening before the customer ever visits a website.

This is now a core EMA service — and everything we're publishing in the Ecom Growth Guides hub is the playbook I wish existed when I started figuring this out. It's also why I love building with AI tools: WordPress with AI, guide pages like this one, automation workflows, and chatbot buildouts that genuinely move the needle for clients.

Watch on YouTube

I document a lot of this — ecommerce strategy, AI search tactics, Amazon tips, and behind-the-scenes of running a real agency — on the Evolve Media Agency YouTube channel. If you want to see how I think about this stuff in practice rather than just theory, that's the best place to start.

Life Outside of Ecommerce

I live in Colorado with my wife Megan and our two daughters. The Rocky Mountain lifestyle isn't incidental — it's the fuel. When I'm not building or strategizing, I'm usually outside.

My Investment Philosophy: Assets Over Income

The three exits taught me something no business school teaches: income is a treadmill, assets are a ladder. Every dollar I earn gets evaluated for whether it can become a cash-flowing asset — rental properties, stocks, the agency itself. The goal is compound growth, not a bigger salary.

• Real estate: 2 rental properties and counting. Colorado's market isn't cheap, but long-term appreciation and cash flow make it worth the patience.
• Stock trading: Active stock trading alongside a core long-term portfolio. I find the research enjoyable — same pattern recognition as finding the right ecommerce niche.
• Business equity: The agency is itself an asset. Every system we build, every process we document, every client relationship we deepen compounds its value over time.
• Knowledge arbitrage: The brands that understand AI search first will have an 18-month head start. That's an asset I'm actively building into every client relationship right now.

I operate from a place of genuine gratitude — three exits, a growing agency, a great family, and Colorado. The goals are big, but the baseline is already pretty good. That headspace makes better decisions.

Why I Built Evolve Media Agency

The pattern I kept seeing: great products losing to inferior competitors because of better marketing infrastructure. A brand doing $500k/year could realistically be doing $2M with better listing content, a smarter PPC structure, and an email flow that actually converted repeat buyers. The gap wasn't the product — it was the system.

EMA exists to close that gap. We build the content, creative, and marketing infrastructure that turns good ecommerce brands into dominant ones. The full service stack — Amazon content and PPC, product photography, Shopify development, email marketing, AI chatbots, SEO, and now GEO — is designed to cover every layer of that system.

One thing that makes EMA different: we've kept it personal. Megan and I have managed campaigns side by side for years. We've hired family — our kids and mom have modeled in client product shoots. It's a real operation built by real people who care about results, not a faceless agency. The brands we work with best are doing $1M–$5M+ and know their ceiling is a marketing problem, not a product problem. If that's you, the free strategy call is the fastest way to figure out the gap.