The Ecommerce Alley Podcast: Meta Ads, AI Frameworks, and Business Strategy
Trying to scale your ecommerce business is tough. Not only that, but staying profitable in the process is even tougher. Hosted by Josh Coffy every Monday, The Ecommerce Alley podcast provides strategic insights on how to grow your people, profits, and impact. From marketing to leadership & operations, you’ll get inspiration and insights that can’t be found anywhere else – but in The Alley.
The Ecommerce Alley Podcast: Meta Ads, AI Frameworks, and Business Strategy
TEA 255: This Product Launch Strategy Cleared $100k+ in 60 Days
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Johnny Cox launched a brand new ecommerce brand and hit $70,000 in its first full month on Meta ads, and he validated the whole idea with a $2,000 test before the product physically existed. On top of that, his first brand, Gold Spartan, climbed from $840,000 to $2.3 million in a single year, with $3–4 million on track for this one.
In this episode, Josh sits down with MPM client Johnny Cox, founder of Gold Spartan and Cross & Helm, to break down the exact pre-launch playbook he used to build demand, validate the product, and sell it out before making a single unit.
Inside this episode:
- The $2,000 Meta ads test that pulled in around 2,000 leads at under $1 each, and how he knew the product would sell before he ever made one
- Why "seasoning your pixel" is a myth, and what actually makes a cold pixel convert from day one
- The 3-day "Founders Edition" presale that did $12,000 before anything shipped (planned with Alex Hormozi's offer framework)
- How he used AI to design the pendant, generate photorealistic mockups, and build the entire offer stack
- The website "sleeper" most stores skip: pop-ups, A/B tested offers, a slide-out cart, and the free-pendant hook that pushed AOV to around $200
- The Klaviyo email flows quietly turning non-buyers into repeat customers
- Why Cross & Helm sells "a reminder, not jewelry," and how selling identity instead of product changes everything
- The messaging shift that made his second brand easier to scale than his first, and why product choice matters more than most founders admit
If you've been grinding for years and you're stuck at $20K–$30K a month, this is the episode that shows why someone can walk in and hit six figures in 60 days. It's not luck, it's a stack of skills you can copy.
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In today's episode, I have one of my clients, Johnny Cox, here with Gold Spartan and another brand called Cross and Helm. And I'm so excited that Johnny's here for a couple of reasons. I mean, first of all, he just told me this was his first podcast. So I'm honored. But second of all, Johnny is wildly intelligent and knows how to really really build demand for product and then execute marketing in a way that's just bizarre. So like you launched a second brand, Johnny, and and it the speed of growth and you're on track, I think, to your six-figure month in like month two or three or something like that, from zero. And it's amazing. And so I say that because I'm just gonna give a little bit of like, I'm trying to get anybody who's listening or watching right now to realize that you have some good stuff and your strategy for pre-launch is really good that I wanna dive into. But first of all, man, you've been here for like three or four days with us. We just hosted an event, Mastermind here. We had uh 21 or 22 clients all fly in for it. This is the Friday after the event. How do you feel being down in the dungeon on the podcast studio?
SPEAKER_01I feel great. Awesome event, great talking with everybody. And you know, I've been listening to your podcast for a while, and so it's it's wild to be on it now. So uh yeah, I just feel honored.
SPEAKER_02I man, I feel grateful that you're here. We started last night we did this, we did it was really cool. We did this 1920s themed, we rented this restaurant called the Luna, that's like it's a 1920s themed restaurant, and so we did a Gatsby theme, and everyone's dressed up, and Johnny looks so dapper. He's like the whole suspenders, and like it was just really cool. And I was giving out all these awards, and and you had just crossed like one year this month with us. So it's pretty crazy. Like one year ago, yeah, met you, and here we are one year later, sitting in the studio recording this because you've grown like crazy, and that's what I want to talk about. So, how about we do this? Can you just let everybody know, let's talk about Gold Spartan because that's the first business, and then it's it's now morphed to your secondary that has grown like crazy. Tell us a little bit about a little bit about Gold Spartan and what it is that you guys sell.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, for sure. So, yeah, that was the business that I came in, you know, to your program with. And uh Gold Spartan, we do mainly silver, but also a lot of bronze statues, so little collectible statues. So we've got our gorillas, our bestseller, we've got Spartans and Dragons, and you know, we do custom and you know, just about just about anything we can we can make. And it it started off as just a hobby for me. I I had an insurance background before this sales background, and just did it to not burn out from that, and started off just doing silver bars and just stamping them myself, and then it it turned into more creative things, and then I got into you know what we do now, which is the full-on statues. And yeah, so started off just again as a hobby, and then as it started getting into some more serious money, I said, you know, I I think I could I can do this as a business, and you know, here we are.
SPEAKER_02So you guys like so you pour all your own stuff and you do bronze, silver, and gold. Yes, you can do all three. I remember one time we're like on this, you had just told me you sold like a four you had a forty thousand dollar order order for like a statue or something crazy. Was it something like that?
SPEAKER_01Yeah, so it was like a 20-ounce statue of 24 karat gold. Oh my goodness. And I think it was I think it was closer to like 80 or $100,000 or something like that at that time. And then I've had some big orders like that where someone bought 20 ounces worth of gold, but it was a bunch of one ounce and three ounce statues and things like that. So yeah, we we had a few big ones like that. That's that's just crazy.
SPEAKER_02Just anyone listening in like $100,000 AOV with just bizarre. Now, obviously, you know, gold has less margin and it's a high cost of goods, and I totally understand that. So you guys pour the bronze or the silver or the gold. You have these custom statues. The gorilla has been you they you guys make like a ton of I mean, how many total different statues do you make? Because they're all made to order, right?
SPEAKER_01All made to order, just because we have we have 400-ish different designs, five to six different sizes, and you know, two to three different metals. So if we were to have inventory, that'd be expensive inventory. So, you know, starting out, I had just a few, and then we just started adding more. And at the time, one of my strategies was I wanted anyone who hopped on my website to be able to find something that spoke to them. I didn't know anything about e-commerce or the pain that having so many SKUs creates, you know, it was just uh that that strategy at that time. But yes, we have a lot of a lot of different options.
SPEAKER_02And you learned that Gorilla was your hero product for the most part, and although people would buy other things, you came in, we started working together and you went crazy on meta-ads. Like you just went all in on meta-ads. Is that right? Is that the thing that really made the most momentum for you in that business?
SPEAKER_01Yeah, so in the past, in my sales background, I did a lot of shows and things like that for sales, and that was not my thing. So, and and that's that's kind of the only way that a lot of people in the silver industry sell their product. You know, e-commerce is not really a thing there, and then shows is is the other part of it, and I didn't want to do that. So it's like, okay, what's what's the other option? And and it was website, and then website led me to you know marketing. And when you do the research, meta-ads is the you know, kind of the top dog for that. So that's what had me start getting into that before I had met y'all, and then in that journey, you know, found y'all.
SPEAKER_02So you go in on med-ads, and basically you attended every medads coaching session ever since then. You were like really hardcore in it, and when you which I love by the way, you obsessed over it. And I think it's a good thing to obsess over because obviously you you're here now with on a whole different side, and you're not going to trade shows, you're you're not going to these shows and things like that. Thank goodness, man. I feel tired just thinking about that. Especially because we are Johnny and I were having this conversation about being like introverts versus extroverts. And even as an extrovert, I don't know if I could be doing shows either. I feel like I'd be so tired from that, just sitting there talking to people the whole time. Yeah. And so you go on, you're aiming to crack this online. And tell me about you you come in mid-year. By end of year, where did you end revenue last year, this 2025, versus the previous year before that?
SPEAKER_01So the the year before I got with y'all, and we did 840,000. Okay. And that was, you know, basically all organic. So a lot of that was me posting on Facebook and the different communities that that buy and sell silver. It was very uh self-driven. And then after switching to y'all and switching a lot of that to meta ads and and uh you know using the the website part of your training, which is I think the sleeper, you know. Oh, the sleeper, the the website aspect that that's obviously conversion rate, yeah, and and the pop-ups and the all of those things that you don't really think about being that important. They're huge. So it that that was actually the first thing when I did your training, I was like, oh, this is this is awesome. And I hadn't even gotten to the meta part yet. Uh oh, so you started with website stuff. I so I started with your ad labs training two years before I actually joined the MPM. Really? That's what got the case. Speaking of sleepers. Yeah, yeah. And then when you when y'all updated to Andromeda, y'all came back on my meta ads radar. So I'm also a product of your training because I'm a I'm a Facebook ad, you know, customer. Customer, yeah. And and then that's where I you know talked with your your brothers and and got in. And so yeah.
SPEAKER_02So you implement that last year, if I recall, there was some point, I don't remember if it was the end of the year or it was like in the beginning of this year, you crossed two million in sales.
SPEAKER_01So 2.3 million last year. So we went from 840 the year before to 2.3 million last year.
SPEAKER_02What are you tracking this year?
SPEAKER_01We are already over that 2.3 million mark now. And so just depending on how the rest of the year goes with Gold Spartan, you know, somewhere between three to four. Four is my goal. Okay. So that we can kind of double again. So we'll just have to see how the end of the year brings. But yeah, three to four million is what we'll finish at.
SPEAKER_02Dude, that's amazing. And on top of that, I want to get to the the meat of what I really want to talk about. So, first of all, Johnny is really talented, very successful, very focused, able to take that 840k, 2.3 million. That's amazing by all standards. And then this year you're already tracking almost double that. That's really great. And then somewhere along the line, there is something that stood out to you that you wanted to get into, and that was cross and helm. And this is a completely different business. I'm actually wearing right now, I don't know if anybody on camera can see this. I'm wearing cross and helm. Johnny has his own cross and helm as well, right here. We're repping, actually, our whole team pretty much all of our team, the guys on our team have these necklaces, which are amazing. And if if you're listening, I just want to describe it as like like a Spartan, like a like a warrior helmet here, and then there's a cross in the middle of it. And it's really, really incredible. What prompted you to start this? Because you you had the idea for this, and from idea, or maybe you've been sitting on sleeping on that for a while, but from like deciding to go to launch, it was like two weeks or something, wasn't it?
SPEAKER_01Yep. So a year or more ago, my church did a a series on finding, you know, God's given gifts. Well, what are your God-given gifts? And then and then the end part of it was are you using those for the kingdom of God? And and and so at the time I thought, well, gold Spartan, not not really. So I'd had this kind of desire in the back of my head of like, I want to do something, right, that that fulfills that part of that. And so, so that was that was as much as the idea had ever gotten. I had a few other ideas prior that just never really clicked. I didn't I didn't get motivated by it. And then one day, I so the the necklace I wore prior to the one before this, so two necklaces ago, was a cross. Then I switched it to a Spartan helmet because of Gold Spartan. And I always felt a little weird about that. So I wanted to kind of combine them. And and the whole thing for me, my my past, you know, six months to a year, is just relying on him more. I've always relied on me, right? So if I need something done, I do it. It's my strength, it's my grit. You know, here's my idea, I'm gonna go chase it. And instead, I just need to take a step back and and just ask for guidance. Even though I know I know which way I need to go. So that was what the the whole point of the cross was is that we're still we're still going through the struggles. We're still, we still have the grit, we still have the strength, but it's his strength, we're relying on him. So that was that was the point of creating the pendant. And when I saw the pendant, and and I I used AI, I said, here's kind of what I want, and and it threw a bunch of like little logo images out, and I saw this one and I was like, that's it. Not as a business, but that's the one that I wanted. But after looking at it, and then and then I had that idea connecting back to God-given gift, I thought, you know, I I think I can make a business out of this. And and and that's kind of where where it went from there. So yeah.
SPEAKER_02So you started this, it was like two weeks, you used a lot of AI, you built the website, you built the mock-ups, and I remember you were like, hey, I don't know if it's gonna sell. We have you know now, obviously, new business means like new email account or new email marketing account, Clavy or whatever you use in, right? New ad account, everything is new. So you're like, do how do you season a pixel? Which by the way, I I don't know if I told you this or you've heard me say this. I use you as a great example of like the to def defeat the idea that you have to quote unquote season a pixel. Have you heard you heard of people saying, like, you gotta season a pixel? And I'm just like, nah, you don't got season a pixel. You just gotta literally get the right product or offer with the right ads to the right audience, and that's it. And you're a testament to that because you you had a great strategy for launching. And you did a pre- not a pre-order, you did do a pre-order, but before that, you did a lead gen strategy to basically gauge interest, right? And then you made you you went into the pre-order and all the sales. Walk us through your thinking and what you did to kind of build that demand. Because it was it was brilliant and it was executed pretty flawlessly, in my opinion.
SPEAKER_01Thank you, thank you. So there's a book, and and I I forget the name of it exactly, but it's basically how to build a million dollar business over the weekend. And and one of the concepts he talks about is you know, he creates a uh just a cheap website with a with a sign-up list that goes over whatever product, and he spends just a little bit of money on on meta ads to push people to it. And if it does well, he uses that business and he he goes and gets the product and and starts the actual product side of it. If it doesn't do well, he shuts it down and and does it again. And so that was kind of part of the strategy in the beginning was you know, let me throw some some money at it in meta ads and see if people sign up for the list at all. And at this point, I hadn't even actually cast one of these yet. Well, they're just the mock-ups. I had the 3D model for it, and in and from Gold Spartan, I had some AI thing set up where I could take a 3D model and it would turn it into what my silver statues look like. And they were I I I asked my general manager to pick out which one was real and which one wasn't, and he couldn't tell. So I knew so I I had I had some images of what it would look like, but in the very, very beginning, I didn't even have the actual pendant yet. And so I I threw the website up. I think I started with $50 a day, just sent them to my homepage, and the the hero image was you know basically sign up for the launch. And we were getting about a dollar, and actually for a lot of it, we were under a dollar per lead. And then you know, it fluctuated over overall, but we ended up getting about 2,000 leads in like a two-week window, and I spent maybe you know anywhere between $1,500 to $2,000 to acquire those. Okay.
SPEAKER_02Um you're just under just under a dollar lead. You said I'm gonna spend like two grand, basically testing a theory, right? Which by the way, I think it's a good way to almost think about something like this. Because this applies for anyone listening. I don't believe this applies at brand new business launch. This is like, do I want to prove that this product has potential? Because you could totally take this and say, hey, I'm gonna get some samples of product that that like order a sample of the product that you want to do, or even in your case, you just did a straight mock-up of the stuff and you didn't even make the real thing. Uh I mean, that's even next level. Now you have the control to make it, I guess, if someone else I knew I could make it.
SPEAKER_01So it wasn't like, I hope I can do it. Like, you know, we've been doing this for seven or eight years, so I knew I could make it. It was just, do I want to en masse before it's proven?
SPEAKER_02Yeah, that makes a lot of sense to me. So some of you, some of you listen in, like, maybe don't mock it up if you don't know if you can make it. Um Johnny had the privilege of knowing he could make it. But the idea of taking that, and you're like, let's validate this. Like, let's make a $2,000 bet. Because if this $2,000 bet is right, it could be worth millions or tens of millions of dollars. And to me, that's a worthwhile potential bet. You take a take some of those bets. I I would I would take one of those bets every single month or multiple times a month to find the thing, and you invested two grand, it sounds like you get several well, 2,000-ish leads, and then you went to validate it. And I want to hear about this because obviously, if you're anyone's listening, spoiler alert, it worked. But this is a great way to validate because then from there you still need to say, are these people willing to pull out their credit card and actually give me money? So talk me through how you did that.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, so once I had the list and I was ready to actually start getting sales, I'm actually what I what I ended up creating was what I called a founder's edition. And so this was the pre-sale basically, where you know, people because they're buying early before we're actually ready to ship, we're gonna throw in some bonuses. And this was uh 100% from Alex Ramosi. I actually used his AI little thing and like helped plan the whole thing out and went over all the bonuses and everything that should be included. And so the founders edition was you know the pendant that had a special engraving on the back, a special certificate of authenticity. We made bronze little add-on piece that was uh armor of God, had all these extra bonuses included. And so I did a basically a three-day pre-launch for that, and in those three days, we sold $12,000. So that was the last three days of May, and we did $12,000 in sales in those three days, and then and so that that paid for the marketing, that paid for everything and and you know, a good amount of profit already. Then we jumped to the the actual sale. So I had a basically it was a drop-down from the founders edition. So it was, you know, I don't I don't remember what I called it, but basically just your launch edition, you know, type of thing. Okay, and so you got you know, free shipping, you got another add-on, you just didn't get the founders edition part of it. And yeah, so from that point, you know, we we ended up doing $70,000 our first full month, and that's not including the $12,000 from three days prior. Yeah, and so that was our that was our kind of our first month, 70 70k.
SPEAKER_02Man, that's pretty crazy.
SPEAKER_01Yeah.
SPEAKER_02Most people would say it's gonna take for a certain amount of time to get there, and you're gonna have to you're gonna have to figure out ads and season your pixel, and you're just like you, you defied the odds or the the common knowledge or beliefs that everybody has around that. And I think that's what's so cool. And that's why when obviously I knew you're coming here, and as soon as you started doing that, I'm like, dude, when you're here in July, we're gonna record this podcast and talk about this because this is a great launch strategy, I believe, if you're new product or you're just launching. I think this works across the board. Now, if you're just launching, the only thing you generally don't have is money to invest in that. Right. So sometimes like it might be hard if you're just launching and I had if you were starting from scratch and you had no backing on anything, it's sometimes it's hard to be like, I'm gonna take a $2,000 bet. But you have Gold Spartan over here doing several million dollars a year. You're able to say, hey, I'm gonna take a bet on this. And I think that this is a good lesson for anybody, for anybody that has an existing business and you want to test new ideas and concepts on things, and you're like, hey, maybe I want to take a bet on this different category of product within it, even if it's in the same website. I believe this is a strategy you can copy paste into like way other products, including inside of Cross and Helm. And I think that that's really neat. So to recap, so that you're like 2,000 in spend, you get 2,000 people. From the 2,000 people, you produce $12,000 in launch sales or uh founder sales. And then how much was it in the launch? Uh do you know how much was in the launch, like in the first week of launch?
SPEAKER_01I I don't remember exactly, but I mean we were doing anywhere between five to ten thousand dollars a day those first few days. Okay. Um and then it you know, then it averaged out to like three to four K, you know, beyond that. That's kind of where we're at now is is three to four or three to five K a day. Okay. Wow.
SPEAKER_02Pretty fast. Yeah. So month one of actually being live, 70k. This month, what are you tracking? This is month two.
SPEAKER_01I believe we just broke 80 for the month, like as of yesterday. So we're tracking anywhere between 100 to 110k for this month. Okay. Depending on how the rest of the thing goes.
SPEAKER_02That's awesome. Now, I want to just so that's the launch strategy, fantastic. And I think the thing we can't discount is the fact that like obviously you came with a set of dangerous skills to the new thing. And this is one of those, like, speaking of Alex Ramosi, I'll go back to that because he had something that he said, I forget, I I'm gonna botch it, but there was something of like you can invest instead of investing in the S P 500, invest in the S and me. Right. Yeah. Where it's like, invest in my skills, because those will just translate. And you're just like a you're just living proof of that. And I know many others that we work with, they can just copy and paste if they really wanted to, and you you did that, and it just panned out for you. So I want to just there's probably someone listening that's like, dude, I've been grinding forever and I'm stuck at $20,000 a month or $30,000 a month in revenue, and it feels like this guy just comes in from nothing, goes to six figures in 60 days. That's crazy. Obviously, it's not crazy because we know that there's a level of skill that goes into that. So what would you say? What were the if you were to just look at like obviously meta ads was a big the core driving component in this, right? But if you're to look at like your sub-skills of meta, if you were to look at like your ability to build creative or creative messaging or maybe it's offer on the website, what are some of the skills that you've acquired that you think would be the most helpful to somebody that is stuck? That you're like, hey, if you're stuck, go just get really good at like maybe some of these things. What would you tell somebody?
SPEAKER_01Yeah, for sure. Well, first, I know you you said kind of other than, but meta-ads right now, if you can learn that skill set, you can apply that to any business. And that has been kind of the big unlock in my head is that you know the the only limiting factor now is product, right? And so if I know how to market it, which is something that I learned from y'all, if I know how to market the product, then then it's just finding the product, you know, which is that's always a problem, right? Finding the product that that you want to sell. But when you don't know how to market it either, it it's it's much more difficult. So that that was kind of the starting point. But in in creating Cross and Helm, I basically went back through y'all's training, especially the website part, which is why I said it's kind of the sleeper, because you know, the the pop up was is is currently kind of one of the things that has been an unlock for us because I've been able to do, you know, it's a free bronze pendant with your first order. And when you look at the math behind that, it makes total sense for me. And it also makes a lot of sense for the customer. So it's, it's, you know, when another Alex Hormosy is make an offer so good that they can't say no, right? Or it'd be stupid for them to say no. And I feel like that's that's what I was able to do with that pop-up. So being able to get the pop-up, but I've also tested the pop-up with A-B testing, which again I got from y'all's training. Being able to have the slide-out cart drawer and then the different offers for that, the different upsells, focusing on like increasing AOV. I was already doing that day one, trying to think about what are those things that I could help increase my AOV. And I didn't even know what my AOV was yet.
unknownYeah.
SPEAKER_01But I knew it was going to be important.
SPEAKER_02We were I remember that conversation. We're in a coaching call, and you're like, what can I expect for AOV? Because your your bronze was $99.
SPEAKER_01In the very beginning, it was $99. Okay. Uh for this for the the large size, and then silver was $220. $220.
SPEAKER_02So it's like, how do we estimate it? And you're just literally fork, just guessing at that point. It's brand new. What's your AOV right now? Right about $200. Around $200. Okay. So you you go in with all these skills, you turn this around from like nothing to existence in two weeks. You do an entire list build, pre-sale, you sell, and then you've maintained $3,000 to $4,000 whatever per day in sales. How much of that is coming from meta right now? Like just brand new, they click, they buy versus like email or other sources.
SPEAKER_01So I I'm gonna say 100% with an asterisk because we are getting a little bit of repeat business for getting stuff like that. Yeah, not percentage-wise, it's super low, but but they're there. We are, you know, we are getting some email sales, but even all of those came from Meta to begin with. So they sign up for my pop-up, they don't buy. Yeah. And so, you know, I have my clavio flow set up, which I learned from y'all's training. I promise, but guys, he's not a plant.
SPEAKER_02I didn't plant him just to talk about all this. This is off the cuff. Absolutely, yeah.
SPEAKER_01No, honestly, I mean, I've I've referred so many people to this training. When anybody says, hey, how do I, you know, how do I do e-commerce or how do I do meta-ads? It's like, start here, you know. And but yeah, so I I I have all of those things set up so that I could capitalize on that. I didn't have any of that set up with Gold Spartan, you know, before coming in with y'all. And and that was such a big game changer. So being able to start a business with all of that in place, I think was was another unlock just just because being more efficient. I'm not leaking sales from day one. I was able to capitalize on on a lot of that.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, I I another thing that I think about too is like, I guess maybe I'm gonna ask you your opinion on this. If I look at Cross and Helm and I look at the messaging you always had at Gold Spartan for the Gorilla and you know other products you've done in this, something that I see is that this means something to you. Like this has like heart behind it. And when I think of like your messaging, how would you say your how strong do you believe your messaging is around this versus stuff in Gold Spartan? And what I mean is, like, from a product standpoint, now obviously you have the the helmet and the cross, that is unique. Cross necklaces are nothing unique by any means. But you've managed to sell a boatload of these and you continue to. How do you feel like how big of a role has messaging played in this for you?
SPEAKER_01Yeah, it's it's been huge. And and I'll preface this too with saying that one of the the cool things about starting a second business is that I was able to do things, so I was able to identify weaknesses in Gold Spartan, things that I really couldn't change. My costs on Gold Spartan are super high, and so that limits me on how much I can spend on marketing and things like that. So I wanted to to you know do something different with that. So there were some things that I learned, you know, from that. And then on Gold Spartan, from a marketing standpoint or a messaging standpoint, it's it's hard because my market with Gold Spartan is silver collectors, but only a subset of silver collectors, because a lot of silver collectors want the cheapest silver possible, yeah. And mine is not, right? We are very we are the on the high side of premium silver. So so that that was it's it's it was it's been hard for me. We've had I don't know how many coaching calls on what creatives should I be making and what hooks and and angles, and it's still today, it's still a guessing game for me, versus coming into Cross and Helm, you know, it's targeting Christian men that are husbands and that are fathers. I'm that, I'm all of those things, and so I know exactly how to talk to my customers, you know, in the advertising that that I did. And it's it's cast such a shadow on Gold Spartan because it's so much easier when you have that that fit, the the messaging and product fit. It's not a guessing game. I'm actually able to do the bread crumbing that you teach and and actually get results from that versus with Gold Spartan. I still feel like I haven't found that that messaging thing. And and part of that, I I don't I just think it's a product issue. And and it's really uh made me realize how important product choice is. We have a choice of what products we sell. I didn't think I did, you know, when when I started Gold Spartan, that was just the thing. But but now as I'm as I'm thinking of other brands, I'm looking at it completely different, and I have all these different views of what makes a good product, you know, to be able to market. So so from a messaging standpoint, it's night and day. And and I'm able to really single out who my customer is in in my my advertising messaging, and and that's why my results have just been you know so much better than than even with Gold Spartan.
SPEAKER_02I would, I mean, I would echo that. In fact, I I've done a set we've done plenty of coaching sessions and training, and I've made many social posts and and I think we've done a podcast recently on the ad types that we see crushing. I've sent this in my newsletters a lot, and it's just like calling out your ideal customer. But even though that works right now in ads, like if you were calling out like Christian husbands or Christian men, right, that's gonna it works right now. Andromeda does love that. But I also think, even outside of that, let's say that stopped working, there's something beautiful about saying, I'm talking to this specific group of people, because what happens is if I just said, hey, I sell this to like everyone, it just it the messaging is so broad that it speaks to nobody. Like if I said, hey, I work with business owners, it's like, okay, great, awesome. You you work with everybody. Right. I'm like, we work with e-commerce founders, it gets a lot more narrow. Now, if I said I work with e-commerce founders in the jewelry space, it gets more narrow. Now we're not that narrow, but it's way different when you can narrow it down. And so I kind of look at it as you've defined this this new product is great for a couple of reasons. First, it's like more gross profit margin, which was really a solve that you were going for. Because we had a good there was a session we were on and we were talking about like what would have to prove true for you to have exponential levels of scale. And this is one of those solves for you. It's like, oh yeah, if I double my gross profit margin, and then suddenly I could have this exponential level of scale because it would allow me to spend way more on advertising and marketing. And so, dude, you went and solved that by starting a new business with this product line. So, first of all, I believe number one, you solve with great product and thinking about the margin of it. That's a huge unlock. The second thing is I think you're really speaking to a single person. This is just my approach, my my perspective, I mean. Because Gold Spartan, you have there's so much you could buy that you could say you have gifters and collectors as like the high-level ICPs, but that's still not speaking to someone like if you said, Hey, I sell to gifters, people who buy gifts from people, it's like, okay, that's pretty much everybody in some capacity. But this is so specific. So I think that's a tech reason that's great. And the third and the most important reason I think that this is such a valuable move is that, dude, you just care. Like this is when you're the ICP, doesn't it feel it feels so different? Doesn't it? Absolutely. Yeah.
SPEAKER_01It's like there's mission. You love it. There's there's emotion behind it, you know. And in creating Gold Spartan, you know, uh you you always talk about like what problem are you solving? Right? And what problem is is Gold Spartan solving? Like your desk looks cooler, you know, you are collecting something with value, you know, to some degree, but you're spending a good amount on it. And so that that was always hard for me to to digest in in how does that translate to my marketing, right? Because there's not it's a it's a completely luxury product, you know. And then versus with with cross and helm, you know, one of the things that sets it apart too from from jewelry, we even say this isn't jewelry, it's a reminder. You know, it's heavy for a reason. Oh, that's so good. You've mentioned it, your brothers have mentioned it, that like you feel it when you're wearing it, and that was the point, is that it's a it's a daily, all day reminder to rely on him. And and that changes what it is. Because there's a like you said, there's a ton of crosses out there, there's a ton of jewelry out there that is is outward, right? It's to make you look good, right? Make you feel good. But this is different. This is this is inward, you know. This is this is a reminder for you to be better and and focus on the things that matter.
SPEAKER_02I think that that is that is so good because it's like you could sell the identical same product as somebody else, but the way you position it matters so much. Like the you're selling truly what you're selling, you're selling identity. That's that's really what you're selling. And now you're selling identity to Christian men who find their identity in Christ, right? So you even have like the 30-day man challenge, I forget what the name is the ordered man. The ordered man, and you have a Facebook group, and it's like, hey, God, wife, kids, everything else. Yeah, right. So like you you create this order, and men who align with that order be are are just like, yes, you're preaching to the right people. You're speaking to my heart, you're speaking to me. And so I love that you're not just selling, you're not just selling a necklace, you're selling identity within this, which by the way, is I want everyone to think for a moment why do people buy Prada? Why do people buy Gucci? Why do people buy Chanel? You know what I mean? Like, why do they buy those? Because they find identity in that in some capacity. And you're selling identity. That's really what you're selling. You're not selling crosses in necklaces like this that are epic, by the way. And I just want to give a grateful shout-out, dude. You literally brought me a silver one. I bought the uh the bronze one. I'm like, I don't wear necklaces a whole lot. I don't know if I'm gonna spend a couple hundred dollars on literal silver necklaces. And this guy comes in and he gives me silver necklace and gives me like all these other bronze ones, which are amazing. And you're selling identity, and I think that ever anyone listening needs to think about that. If you're just selling a product and features, it's just a matter of, okay, how do you compare on price and specs? And that's pretty much it. And now you're selling to like probably collectors, right? Because a collector is going to be like, okay, how much do I pay per ounce and what's the greatest value? But if you sell on something deeper than that, and in your case, identity of this, it's like, well, you're it doesn't matter how much this cost because the cross was heavy. And the cross was heavy on Jesus, then this is a daily reminder of who I am as a man and a man of God. And I I kind of look at this when I wear it, I think like I love the helmet because it's like it reminds me that I'm like a warrior. Like I'm like a warrior for Christ, but I'm also a warrior for my family, I'm a warrior for my kids, I'm a warrior for my team. Like for me, it goes even beyond that too. And now I'm like a subcategory of ICP of entrepreneur, Christian entrepreneur, faith-driven entrepreneur. But I I love that, man. So you inspire me with the degree of messaging that you created. And I think that anybody listening or watching right now needs to ask themselves, what am I selling? Am I just selling jewelry or am I selling the meaning or the identity or the thing behind it that is much deeper than that? And I man, I think you do a great job of that, truly.
SPEAKER_01Thank you. Thank you. Well, learned a lot of that from y'all. And I couldn't be more happy to be on this podcast, couldn't be more happy to be in your program. It's been it's been an awesome experience. Cool.
SPEAKER_02Thanks for being here, Johnny. Everybody, I hope you got something from this. If you did, please do us a favor, rate this podcast on whatever app you're listening to. If you're on YouTube, give us a thumbs up, drop a little comment. What was a really big takeaway for you? And maybe uh if you have a question about how to maybe position yourself, go ahead and drop that in the comments. We'll respond to that, help you out as well. And Johnny, thanks for being here, man. Appreciate it. Appreciate it. See you guys.