Vince Nijhof's $100M+ Ecom Playbook

Vince Nijhof co-founded OOAK Brands. In this episode he sits down with Monish at Elevator Talks and breaks down every system behind it.

If you sell online - whether you're just starting out or already scaling - this is the most practical conversation on ecom we've ever recorded.

Download the free Vince Nijhof operator playbook here: https://links.elevatorgoods.com/episodes/vince-nijhof

Connect with Vince:
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/vincevn/
X: https://x.com/VinceNijhof

Monish Sabnani (Host):
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/msabnani93/
X: https://x.com/msabnani93

Elevator Talks:
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/elevatorgoods/
X: https://x.com/elevatorgoods
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Work with the founders of OOAK Brands: https://ooakbrands.com/advisory

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What we cover:

00:02:52 - Intro
00:03:32 - Who is Vince Nijhof and OOAK Brands
00:07:59 - The $20M/month reveal
00:11:01 - How to pick a product
00:14:48 - The 9-figure product filter
00:16:00 - Unit economics and ROAS targets
00:23:45 - Creative strategy and awareness stages
00:28:54 - The 7-pod creative team and leaderboard
00:32:37 - Intent over volume: the one-shot-kill doctrine
00:35:04 - Ad channel breakdown: Meta, Google/YouTube, TikTok
00:37:21 - The Amazon effect: how channels feed each other
00:41:13 - Funnel strategy: pre-landers and listicles
00:47:00 - Upsells and AOV
00:50:36 - Brand building vs performance marketing
00:54:07 - Long-term brand building and R&D
00:55:59 - Cash flow and scaling infrastructure
00:59:07 - Where ecom is heading
01:01:00 - Emotional marketing: angles as emotions
01:04:45 - The AI stack
01:10:57 - Omnichannel strategy
01:17:33 - Building a brand holding: the long-term vision
01:23:49 - The real moat in ecom
01:28:34 - The foundation for scale

Transcript

SPEAKER_02 0:00

We are on pace for 20 million this month. Everyone is openly talking about pushing volume, creative output. The more you do, the better. We basically scrape that. We are in e-commerce for eight years. We really launched everything as a one-shot killing. We want to make sure that if we shoot, we shoot right.

SPEAKER_03 0:13

You have the best ability to pick product categories. How do you pick these products? How are you researching everything?

SPEAKER_02 0:20

We've been launching more than a thousand products. We went from product to product to product to product and we learned what categorizes a great product.

SPEAKER_03 0:27

Knowing what you know now, how much would you budget to test immune brand? Uh first of all, I want to welcome you to the studio. Thanks for having me. I've been super excited to show you this space. Yeah. You've got an audience also. These guys all know about you, know the work you're doing. Uh this my man over here uh heard that you were coming to town and in particular. I mean, he's from you're from uh Netherlands, right? Say guys. So you guys appreciate it, I appreciate it for sure. Um, all right, brother, we got so much to catch up on.

SPEAKER_02 1:15

Yeah, a great way to do so. Thanks for having us for sure.

SPEAKER_04 1:18

For sure.

SPEAKER_02 1:19

Maybe I'll just start like with a quick intro. Of course, I have a few people know me, but for the ones who don't, please. So I'm uh a founder of Oak Brand Group. Um, we started in e-commerce like seven, eight years ago, more with like with the drop shipping, but we quickly like knew okay, we want to like build real assets, want to build real products. So um, yeah, so we we own hairs and door and rows, and that's the brands that we are publicly about, but we also own a few that we on purposely don't share because yeah, we don't really see the benefit of doing so, right? As like hairs and door and rows are, I would say true assets that if you will just look at them, it's very hard to copy or basically do what we do. Yeah, and yeah, more of like go go try it to copy it. It's really hard, especially here is with like a patented product, like two years of RD, the barrier to entry is super high. But I would say nowadays with AI and how easy it is to copy stuff, I purposely don't share, yeah, of course, some of the other brands that we are more of like um yeah, if you if you would want to, you can like rip it overnight. And I don't think it's great for the brand that we want to achieve because also even with with Door and Rose, we got so many, like we you have these tools right now, like DMCA takedown tools, like thousands of copies, and it's more of like it's really hard to sell that product. So I know it's not affecting it too much, but yeah, it's really easy to rip now. So purposely don't share it, but we will share it once the time is right for sure. Yeah. And how many are you not sharing right now? Three. So we we have two, we have three founded brands, and one we don't share, the one that you do know, and then we have two brands that we have acquired equity in, um, which we also not share right now, not necessarily for us, but also for the yeah, like what say the business partners that we have, right? Because of course, also because of our audience, just like extra eyeballs on a brand that's just more of like in the scale-up phase. Um, both of them are now just just reached seven figures, still pretty fragile. At one point, I would say if you really have everything dialed from like omni-channel, multiple presents, multiple channels, it's mostly only meta right now. And I think if you would just publish it, especially with so many, yeah, like people like looking also at like what our brands are doing, especially in e-commerce, it goes so quickly. I don't really see the benefit of sharing those. Also, because we already, of course, have the benefit of well-known brands as Here's and Doan Rose, um, which is more of like assets, and then this one is more of like, I would say, cash flow, uh profit-first brand building. Let's just knock out some basics real quick. So you're managing about five brands. Well, not necessarily managing, it's more of like ownership in a way. How many are you directly operating? Yeah, of course, like I've I've helped build the internal playbooks, right? I've helped build the strategy. It's my own strategy that we apply on all the brands. But I would say getting great operators with you, of course, also great business partners, it makes things easier. And at one point, it's more of like, hey, helping with the strategy is what I love to do. I have a very strong background in performance marketing, it's what I love to do. That's my bread and butter. I implement that, I look at all the brands that add libraries, but beyond that, I'm not really trying to bother too much, you know. Yeah, also, not for example, on small stuff. Oh, this headline is wrong on the static. You see what I mean? Like, I'm not bothering that, more of like overall strategy, implementing new things, for example, AI, big thing. Very excited of all of that. So I like doing that. I like being involved, but like really running the brands at like a level that I've been doing before. I don't even want to be that extent anymore involved because it's just yeah, it's exhausting. Oh, conversion rate, 1% down. Like stress. Yeah, now I look at a weekly, I don't I don't manage people by people, I just look at numbers, metrics, and now I would say with company command centers, with AI insights, you can get so much information without being too much obsessed in terms of time, right? You can get really easy uh feedback on how things are going. So more of managing metrics than people in a way. How big is the team right now? Yeah, so overall brands, we are 100 plus people. Wow. But the brand that we are really scaling, we purposely keep it as lean as humanly possible, just because we know it is possible to do so. So I would say we have human sign-offs like video editors and inputs, but I would say the rest is like 80, 90% is AI driven right now.

SPEAKER_03 5:26

So are you disclosing how much revenue that you're doing? Or I know you've sent me some numbers, but are you disclosing that or you guys keep it later?

SPEAKER_02 5:32

Yeah, we can we can share it openly as well. Like we are on pace for 20 million this month, and it's been scaling really, really quickly. 20 million this month. Yes. So previous month was 10 million, just to put in perspective. It's because the new unlock, and basically the unlock is more of like just doing much more with much higher intent and less just trying to push on on volume. So I would say that's already like a really thing that was a huge unlock for us. Everyone is openly talking about pushing volume, creative output, the more you do, the better. We basically scraped that and we said, I'd rather launch five, a hundred out of a hundred, perfect as much as we can, than trying to put like a thousand video ads out just because we want to hit a volume or KPI. And now we found the sweet spot, we've got so many winners, and that's also what we do right now. That's like since months that we have built our internal data bank, and we are in e-commerce for eight years, and I'm questioning how come we've never done that before? There is so much free value out there on the internet that your customers are telling you through support tickets, trust pilot, forms, Amazon reviews, competitor reviews, even like emails, like there is so much info, and I would feel like it was always already there, but now it's much easier to extract that info and do something with it, turn it into marketing angles, but also product development, product launches. What do people actually need? And then you come back to like the messaging market fit, right? You know you have a product, you know you have the product market fit because you're already doing numbers, people are buying it. But where you make the real unlock is by understanding the messaging market fit. How do I speak to my ICP, my IDU customer profile, right? And I would say when we really started to understand that, um, we are not making assumptions anymore. Basically, our customers is telling us what they do like about a product, what they strongly don't like about the product. And with the brand that we are scaling aggressively, it's also we're scaling so hard now because our repeat purchase are coming in. Our goal was this year to do 100 million, but we are pacing harder than we than we thought we would.

SPEAKER_03 7:34

The thing I admire most about you from like a business dork perspective is you have literally the best ability, in my opinion, in the game to pick product categories. So here's I think is an incredible category. Yeah. And then Dorn Rose also. But it's not that you're just making, I know you're not just making guesses. No, it's impossible. Yeah. So I want to hear from you how do you pick these products? How are you researching? How do you the margins that you're designing, the size of the product, everything?

SPEAKER_02 8:10

Yeah, I think what's really one benefit that also allowed me to do multiple brands is my back, my background was in general drop shipping, but not just the normal how most people know it. What we did is we've been using funnel pages for the longest. We were running like a special theme on Shopify, which allowed us to create sort of like OPS, which is like stands for one product stores. So we've been running funnels before I even know what the funnel was. Yeah, right? It was because we just thought, hey, that's the best way to position our product. So we went on Shopify slash pages. We advertise only through that page. So the customer would land and would see a dedicated funnel with then four sections about the product where we were basically not necessarily listicles and tutorials, but more of like a glorified product page with explanations on the product, how it works, a little give, seven reasons why you should buy it, but then much different. But we've been doing this for the longest time. The it's funny, the the team is called e-com tricks. It was from two Dutch boys like way back. They just launched the team, never touched it again. I believe they are not even in e-commer anymore, but like a special shout out to that team because they teach me furnals already way back. Um, started to learn more about awareness stages way back. But to get back to the point, because of that, we've been launching more than a thousand products because that was the thing we've done. We went from product to product to product to product, and we learned what categorizes a great product. We were selling like cleaning towels, kitchen tools, um, everything, literally like gadgets, right? I can I can name up many things, even like special toilet brushes, like everything that you can sort of give like a magical twist that people not have seen before. So through ads, they see, hey, this is a special product, oh, it's nice, oh, it's only this cheap for a great offer. That's how we're always like been optimizing stuff. And also know, this was always been shipping from China. So we do have to have in our mind we cannot ship fridges, we cannot ship bricks, we need to optimize based on the economics, on the units. And that's where you like sort of get a hang of it, right? It started to make sense. So we started to selling jewelry, emotional jewelry, special best friend, motor bracelets. So we started like automatically, and I was really young. I was like, that's already six, seven years ago, you know, that we were doing that. How old are you now? Uh 27, just turned 27. So I I moved to Dubai six years ago, and the only thing I did was like building funnels, also together with Rai, who's here with me. He's been with me already working for six years. We were doing this together. So I now he's also I don't think you realize this, but you're an e-com machine, bro. Yeah, and I think definitely that that dropship background, it just teached me so much stuff to how to run a real business because I had to do everything, like from custom support. And then, of course, I brought Nick, my brother, with it with me because I was not good with the back-end stuff, the finances, the support. I just wanted to do one thing, and that's make ads and scale ads. You know, I have a gaming background. My ads manager was like a video game to me, you know. Yeah, I want the only thing that I wanted to do is be my ad manager, and I wanted to do that all day. Yeah, and I was like, Nick, yo, I need your help on this and that and that because I don't like to answer emails, support tickets, and finance, and please get me out of this, help me. And then we became business partners in the dropship business. Then, of course, we made a lot of money with this, and we invested basically I invested in Nick and Bob, helped them build Doran Rose. So I haven't been as much involved as an operator, but also as more of like a board partners, and we've been doing that, of course, for already four years right now.

SPEAKER_03 11:25

Hey, I'm Anish, and I just want to quickly give you more context on the world of Elevator. I'm one of the managing partners. Elevator is broken out into several groups. We've got Elevator Goods, our very own in-house brands and agencies that we're currently building every single day. Brands like Fluffco and Jiggies. Elevator Capital is where we invest in other brands, young founders who we believe are on the come up. If you're one of those people and you're looking for either capital or mentorship or strategic connections, please get in touch with us. The studio is our physical space. Our first location is in Hong Kong, and there are many more coming soon. This is a D2C membership club. If you're in Hong Kong anytime soon, please come check us out. Think founders, amazing conversations, and just learnings left, right, and center. Lastly, Elevator Talks, our newest show where we'll be interviewing the biggest and brightest names in e-commer. This is not a show for service level. This is a show for tactics and systems where we get super, super detailed. So last but not least, thank you so much. Please subscribe because that will help us a ton in getting you better guess and more wisdom and more value. We really appreciate it. And back to the show. So going back to the product though, like again, what what is the X factor? Like if you had to pick a new product today, if you had to start a new brand, yeah, 100%. What is the X factor? Is it TAM?

SPEAKER_02 12:42

Is it like if you've ever had a brand before or starting fresh is a for me a big difference. Because if I would pick a brand with all the experience I have, I would look at it different than a starting brand. Because a starting brand, you're not started to necessarily aim for nine figures. So what we look first, huge TAM, non-negotiable. Then also like knowing, of course, the product market fit is something that we can create. Messaging market fit is something that we also create. Because even if you would want to, like, you know, like basically the quote that we said, like we can sell send in the Sahara, depends on how you position it, right? So the only first thing that you really look is a TAM, and also then, of course, the unit economics to scale hard on paid because we are paid ads driven. If we cannot few a lot of money back into our ads, we're also probably not gonna hit nine figures because that's where we mostly see our revenue coming from in the beginning. What ROAS do you guys operate at? So now with the brand that we're really pacing, we unlock the US, which the breakeven rows in general is lower than I would say 1.3, 1.3.5, um, but also lower order, and we focus really hard on the lifetime value as well. So we we if people won't come back, we won't be profitable.

SPEAKER_03 13:49

So, okay, you just said something that I really want to get into. So your your breakeven row ass is 1.3.

SPEAKER_02 13:56

Yeah, 3.5. But we we got it down, we started at 1.6, but we buy an insane amount of volume. We literally just I came back from Guangzhou this morning, placed a PO of 2 million items. That changes the conversation. If you play 10, 10, 10,000 or 2 million units, the cash flow benefits, but also like the unit costs because the factory is buying ground materials and I learned factory must think you're insane. Yeah, he thinks we had so much fun. We had so much fun, bro. I haven't been out for like like I don't even remember last time I went out, probably last summer, and I went out with the guy yesterday or the day before Guangzhou. It's so funny.

SPEAKER_03 14:30

So you're hung over today.

SPEAKER_02 14:31

No, no, it was the day before, and I don't I don't drink too much, but it was still like going out. Like I don't really go out, I have my hairs in, I do I do it easy. But it was more it was more for the fun, not really to go for full send or something, you know.

SPEAKER_03 14:42

Okay, so 1.3 is a break in. What's your scaling target? 1.6? Yeah, we we scale 1.6, 1.7.

SPEAKER_02 14:48

And wow. And that's global. Yeah, but mostly US driven. UK is even cheaper because UK shipping is much cheaper than US.

SPEAKER_03 14:57

So going back now to the question of how do you pick products? You're basically thinking to yourself, unless you can scale it at a 1.5, 1.6, you're probably not getting into that category, right? Yeah, true.

SPEAKER_02 15:10

That's also learning from Dorn Rose. Doran Rose is scaling break-even rose too. But we still still scale it, but we have to hit 2.8 for good habitat. Yeah. And it makes it harder to scale. Like Dorne Rose is doing great numbers, but like we always thought we are doing the best and the most insane numbers until you see what's possible with the brand like this. See what I mean? Of course. And even like that, also when I was discussing with Nick, like we like it sounds maybe weird, but we don't appreciate the numbers of Dorne Rose anymore because of this. As in, like, are you comfortable at least sharing the category? Yeah, so we are mostly focused on health. We have launched for the longest, we I wasn't uh body sculpting devices as well. And then we saw, okay, we can also launch like a health-related products. Also, like I already knew, of course, the numbers that the supplements brands were doing. I have a dropship background where I connect with a lot of performance marketing, direct response, people that also transition into becoming a brand. First thing they reach is or supplements or more of like a very outcome-driven brand, right? Product solution, not necessarily a brand like let's say Doan Rose, where it's more of like aesthetic sleepwear, also, of course, also a little bit problem solution with the deep sleep mask and the pillowcases, anti-agne. But I really knew like supplements teach me a lot as well, on like hey, lifetime value subscriptions. I was very interested into this because we've never really been doing this. So now also we have dedicated funnels more on subscriptions and like a lot of A-B tests. And I think that's that's really funny to look into as well because yeah, like the lifetime value, um, actually making people come back. That of course also, yeah, what I said, like my dropship background, really realized that if you really want to like build something, you you make sure people come back.

SPEAKER_03 16:44

Huge TAM. 1.5 scale Rowass. Which by the way, I think is insane. Like Yeah, yeah, yeah. I would say that's it so impressive.

SPEAKER_02 16:55

I I would say if we hit 1.5 now, I wouldn't necessarily be happy. Okay. It it would have been a sort of like a bad day. So let's say targets 1.7? Yeah, once one set 1.7 for us is great. For example, the numbers we are doing now on 1.7 would be really good.

SPEAKER_03 17:08

And at that, at 1.7, what is like the profitability of the company? What are you what are you aiming for? So so from a percentage perspective.

SPEAKER_02 17:16

Like if you just only look at okay, what are we looking to acquire on Meta, then I would say, yeah, 1.6, 1.7. But the reason why we scale now as well is because our blended RAWAs is being helped by the recurring customers, right? Okay. Like we do emails, like some really great email campaigns that bring in so much revenue that even on rows we could like on Meta that day we could have hit like 1.2, 1.3, still be crazy profitable because there were so many people coming back it. And of course, profitability?

SPEAKER_03 17:39

15, 20.

SPEAKER_02 17:40

Yeah, yeah, 15 because we are very lean. There's there like OPEX, we don't even have to calculate with it. Also, that's funny because we look at contribution margin, right? And almost the OPEX, that for example, if we would do 100k a day or the OPEX on 800k a day, it's shrinked. It's almost not visible anymore. Yeah. And that that makes it funny as well. Exactly. So if we would do 100k a day, the break even rows would all would also have been different than um than now on 800k days. And that's also the reason why I would advise don't blindly stare on break-even rows, but really look at your contribution margin as well. Because your contribution margin can be really good, but if your OPEX is really high, you might end up with a loss. So I can also explain that in a bit. Let's say you will do 10k a day, and I think HIRS is a great example. With HIRS, we have a very high OPEX because we have a lot of great team members that deserve a great pay. We have to hit a much higher target on our paid ads because we are on like 150k, 200k OPEX. But if you would put that in perspective, our other brand has less OPEX and we do many times more the revenue, right? Yeah. So um if you would like make the calculations on that, uh, let's say if you let's hit 200k OPEX, that means almost like this is per month, right? Yeah, 200k per month, then 6k a day already on OPEX that you need to catch up with. Like if you would like six times 30, almost 180. Your brands are all individual teams? Mostly, yes. Okay, so I've made that mistake before. What's the mistake? Like if you if you have a great hire in one one brand, you immediately want to deploy and use them everywhere, and then it's not the great hire anymore. It's too much, you you break him, or so you want to keep people focused on their one brand. And I'm not saying that the teams should not work collaborative in a way that when we unlock angles or frameworks or new tactics that we share, we are we are in each other's atria, so we can look all all the time. We we understand each other's like uh output and performance, but yeah, of course, that's the that's something we've learned. Okay. But I would say back to the profitability and the break-even roles. The reason why you should definitely focus on the contribution margin is then because you understand how is the business really performing on like performance, right? Because or you just need to shrink your OPEX, or you know, okay, my contribution margin is healthy, and now I'm doing like only 50k a day. But if I will do 100k a day, I turn profitable without necessarily changing the costs or the target. You see what I mean? Of course. Because the contribution margin is already good, but because your OPEX is so high, for example, in here, 6k a day, the first 6k profit we make basically on the contribution margin goes to the goes to the OPEX, right? So by unlocking that and understanding that is sometimes also already a big unlock that you just know I can just do more revenue on the same ROAS on exactly the same metrics, but because my my OPEX is then just in person that show instead of like it just shrinks the more you grow revenue.

SPEAKER_03 20:28

Okay, so we covered picking products. Now I want to get into either creative strategy or funnel strategy.

SPEAKER_02 20:38

Yeah, I think for us it's like sort of like similar right now, as we feel like if I would look at the creative strategy right now, where we have seen crazy unlock, is by understanding awareness stages and what 99% of brands are doing too much is launching middle funnel ads and thinking that they're the top of funnel ads. And also want to explain our our unlock is the more you get consistent, fresh new eyeballs into the into the funnel, into the awareness stages, top of funnel, net new eyeballs, they haven't seen your brand before. You will see your middle funnel is going to perform so much better as well. Because what others are doing, they launch middle funnel ads consistently. The first three, four, five days, they see great performance, performance goes down, they say, hey, I have creative fatigue, or hey, my creatives are not working anymore. But I'm telling you, we've had this before. It's not that the creatives are fatigued, there are simply no new people to show it to. Because you can make the craziest like middle funnel awareness stages, ad, but if there are no new people entering the funnel, you're just showing the same ad over and over again to the same people. I'm sorry, not the same ad, but like the same bucket of people you're just showcasing in the new same type of ads. So really building top of funnel ads, and then really, really building top of funnel ads is for us a big unlock, and I would say thing storytelling formats, like really long storytelling formats, like not necessarily introducing the product, just we're more. Of like getting into your ICP again to the messaging market fit. So we really focus on like three, four, five-minute VSLs, taking them through a whole storyline, especially also would say like sending to a bit older audience. They they they spend time on their phone, they watch it. And I also feel that Meta is rewarding this. Meta is rewarding this so much. We are launching the same type of messaging into like shorter and let's say 30-second clips and now into long VSLs, three to five minutes, and then to a dedicated advertising or pre-lender saying the same message. This is top of funnel, top-notch, top of funnel. And if you even do it right, you can convert them from top of funnel to middle funnel into the same sequence because they spend so much time on the brand first with the VSL, then they read like a long format landing page as well. They're already in their mind spending so much time with you and they get convinced and they understand and they go from like totally unaware to problem aware, solution aware, product aware.

SPEAKER_03 22:56

So you really do believe in like because what you're describing is I would say OG marketing 101, like looking at people in the problem aware, solution aware, top of funnel, middle funnel, above. A lot of people these days, I feel like they just bulk launch ads without considering that.

SPEAKER_02 23:14

Yep. I think that's that's uh for many people a big unluck because I've been like that as well. Do you need to be at a specific scale to because again, you're spending, you know, you're spending yeah, pretty significant, you know, yeah, like three, four hundred K a day at spend a day, and also like more omnichannel now. That's also what I wanted to talk about to you later because I know you're big on Omni as well. But yeah, first back to this, I I definitely feel that is gonna be a crazier unlock because of course if you don't spend a lot a day, you would less see creative fatigue, right? Yeah, I would say if you really scale your ad spent, obviously you're gonna see much quicker creative fatigue. So the problem that I just explained, where you think that it's your creatives, it's not your creatives, it's your audience that's fatigued. So that's why I'm saying if you really focus on the top of funnel, make sure that you get consistently new people entering the funnel, your all your other ads are gonna work better. And even like what uh we can touch base later on the channel, also gonna perform much better because everything just helps to the whole ecosystem to convert. And like really focusing on the top of funnel will make everything flow much better. And uh what based on your question, like I think many people are just indeed launching random ads based on what they see, not necessarily labeling and classifying it. And that also brings me to the point what's great creative strategy. Great creative strategy is being very intentional about what you launch, why you launch it, and make sure that you track it. And especially the last, because if you track everything you do, so we would have our like creative brief. We have the use case, the angle, awareness stage, the bucket, and the bucket is like is it the video, aesthetic, a VSL, or a creator? So that's the bucket. But also in this bucket, you can put it in a different framework. So what type of static? Is it the split screen? Is it the etc, etc. etc.? And then you can diversify this as well. So for example, a split screen static is working really great where you see a problem solution outcome. You can turn that static into a video. You can turn that static into a creator doing the same message. You can turn that creator with the same message into a long format VSL as long as the messaging stays clean. So a great ad is tracked, but also intentional, one clear objective. So one hook, one mechanism, one storyline, one outcome, one offer, one product. Everything needs to stay very all aligned, even to the extent where do you send them after? So after the click, also very important for creative strategy.

SPEAKER_03 25:29

Yeah, we'll get to funnel in a second or landing page in a second, but uh, can you walk me through your creative team? How do you structure the physical people? Yes, goals, all that.

SPEAKER_02 25:39

I've really seen the collaborative, gamifying leaderboard type of style where we before had a huge team, everyone was doing this, this, and that. Now we have a huge team in very small pods. So for the specific brand, we have seven pods, one strategist lead, two editors, and then one creative coordinator that manage all the pods.

SPEAKER_03 26:00

So seven pods in that structure. Yes. Creative strategist, editor, coordinator. Yeah. So the So you've got seven pods of that. And then you have a leaderboard which shows which pods crushing.

SPEAKER_02 26:12

Exactly. And then every pod has two V is our editors. We are only crushing it mostly on videos because we feel like statics is a piece of cake right now with all the tools that we have, and also we can repurpose it so easily. So our say we will divide it into splits. Um, I always said, like, yeah, we do 70, 30% statics, but since we are pushing so much heavier, we are leaning more to 90% video, 10% statics, 80% top of funnel, yeah, 20% middle funnel, and then our retargeting and retention campaigns is a dedicated pot on its own because it's not really utilized that much. So seven creative strategists. Yeah, so we we have seven pods, and then we have, for example, strategists like also assigning multiple pods to it. Where the most effort is being spent now is in the editing itself. So that's why we have like the dedicated editors that like basically control their own pod. Um, but we we we we we're trying to push for seven uh strategists, but right now we do seven pods with with with five strategists, but we are hiring. Like we we want like we are hiring, we are we have so many open job positions.

SPEAKER_03 27:16

So you said 80 to 90 percent video. Yeah. What percentage of that is AI versus real footage? On the real footage, how are you acquiring that footage?

SPEAKER_02 27:25

Yeah, it's a it's a it's a mix. Um I would say we definitely try to use AI as much as we can where it makes sense. For example, even to the extent like creating really great-looking B role or talking heads, um, but also repurposing, of course, like our existing pool of content with real creators. And I think still even with AI voiceovers, it's it's absolutely um a no-brainer to use it because you can make the message so much more intentional and direct and like real and authentic, and that's what you want. Like it's funny, like AI sounds more authentic than the real stuff, if you get what I mean. Of course. Because you can tweak it, like a small mistake, you can publish it, and it's not the one-prompt thing. It's still human, uh, human efforts, human sign-offs, human final pushes. But I would say like you can really make so much nicer, great messages because you can just like do it based on what's working so well, right? So you come up with the best possible scripts, but if the execution is weak, the whole script also doesn't work. And that's something that we have like seen for the longest with some creators. It was always the question: hey, how do you work with so many creators? How can you make sure they make like real authentic content? Because the best ads, of course, look native and they are like true and authentic. Um, so yeah, we definitely use a lot of AI, but that also like again help helps uh it goes back a little bit to the creative strategy. Top of funnel, mostly storytelling is AI, but middle of funnel, where you want to have real creators with real experiences, with real inboxes, with real comparisons. So it really labels it on the way and the type of ad that we want to push and bring the message because we really focus on the message, and then we're gonna look, hey, how are we gonna distribute this message as diverse as possible in as many ways as possible, but keeping it really tied to the same message because the message, the messaging fit on a specific use case and audience and an angle is something that we want to like guard that it like really clear on the thing that we solve. But you can say it in a thousand different ways.

SPEAKER_03 29:16

Let's talk about the messaging uh and how you test. Yeah. I mean, you must be testing thousands of hooks, right?

SPEAKER_02 29:22

Yeah, yeah. So also that goes a little bit back into that we prefer to I say a funny thing, like we really launch everything as a one-shot kill intent. We want to make sure that if we shoot, we shoot right. So we we started like that, and now because we have so much valuable data, we can do more. But also, I would really always advise don't necessarily think I have to launch a thousand ads to be really scale, like really scaling, because the for the longest, our ad account was only scaling on two, three videos. And now we crack in it more, we feed it back into the data bank, the data bank is coming up with better IDs, those IDs turn into much better VSLs, and you unlock this crazy amount of skill. But I believe it really starts by intent first, always, not volume. Really intent first, launch just one really good video instead of trying to do a 10 or 100.

SPEAKER_03 30:06

Like you will you will really see that because also I think this is a big mistake that 90% of e-commerce people are making right now. I think the more I launch the better because Meta is so smart. Without thinking about what you're even launching. 100%. Frankly, I make that mistake. You know, sometimes you just put whatever, just throw it out there, yeah. Meta will figure it out. Yeah. And then you kind of lose sight of what you're doing. Yeah, I'm guilty on that.

SPEAKER_02 30:27

I've been guilty on that for a long time as well. And I I think like the the best meta ed accounts, the main impact is not made inside meta but outside meta. Like, what do you feed? And then meta is just like a vehicle on how can you like launch and scale as much as possible while still keeping the best overview and read the best signals and get the most information back on what you need to put back into the ad account again. And that's yeah also what I mean with the intention, because if you get a few really great videos, that is already so worth it because you with that great video, she can make so many more videos, right? We're using existing winning data, repurpose it into more new creative IDs, come up with new creative uh like concepts and um brief it into multiple formats, but it needs to start somewhere, and that's where you have the messaging market fit for the first time. You really start to get a hang of it and you start to understand, okay, this is what my audience likes to see. This is the type of messaging, that is the type of pain points and audience, and that is really how they resonate. And then you have like product market fit, messaging market fit. If you have those two, you just really focus on creative output, but still keep it very intentional. What percent are you spending on meta right now? Is it 80% like would you say 80% on meta? It was always been for the longest um on like that. Uh, we are spending a lot on Google right now as well, mostly on YouTube. So that's also funny. So, what's the breakdown percentage? I would say, for example, yesterday, I think 300k on meta, 50-60k on uh on Google. 50k on Google. Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 31:51

50-60k. And that includes YouTube.

SPEAKER_02 31:53

Yeah, and then we have like 15, 20k on App Love In, which we are trying to unlock. It's not we we've been scaling it for before. Um people make app love-in sound so easy, yeah. Honestly. I heard the same. Like I know I know brands crushing it. Um, I do definitely think we have to like crack it, but we just recently started like hiring a dedicated pot for it as well because I know that's just a true unlock. It's again new audiences and new way of showing them. And we just want to be everywhere with our brand right now.

SPEAKER_03 32:19

TikTok shop.

SPEAKER_02 32:20

Yeah, we we're trying, we're trying. But I I know like TikTok, it's always for the longest because we didn't have like a US presence, it was like very hard, and we were shipping from China. So for the longest time, we were like, okay, TikTok shop, we just focus on Meta first because that's also what I advise to everyone who's asking me, Oh, I heard this, what did what should I do? TikTok, Amazon, uh, this and that. I always advise just make sure you crack meta first because the scale on meta alone is already enough to set yourself up to a crazy business. Exactly. So once you hit, let's say, indeed, already eight figures, you should be looking into how can I diversify, how can I be more omnipresent, how can I like uh activate TikTok shop. So yeah, we are we are on TikTok shop as well, uh, but it's not scaling as hard as hard.

SPEAKER_03 33:03

But the bread and butter is meta 100%.

SPEAKER_02 33:06

100%. Yeah, but what I do definitely see the impact on Amazon right now.

SPEAKER_03 33:10

That's crazy. Yeah, this is a whole other thing to discuss.

SPEAKER_02 33:13

I was I was surprised because I was always like, yeah, you know, like their international brand, they they will just order. But since we are focused so much on the US, because of course for the other brands, we were international, you don't feel the impact as much as how we do now, where we are 80% US. And if we are out of stoke on Amazon, our blended rowers is like tanking. And I didn't expect the correlation to be so big, but I also realized the correlation from YouTube to Amazon is even crazier. Yeah, so that's where we really know this now because we are spending like so much on Google or YouTube, um, that if we are out of stock, which we are right now on Amazon, you feel it.

SPEAKER_01 33:47

You say you have five creative strategies across seven pods. So what defines a pot? A pod is more of like a team, but we call it a podcast because we don't want to call team team team team in our big team. Yeah, so it's more of like a pot, it's like a system. It's if you see the org child, it makes sort of more sense. Yeah, but a pod is more of like creative pod one is one creative lead, two uh two video editors and then graphic designers. But graphic designer we uh allocate across multiple pods because we don't need seven graphic designers, right?

SPEAKER_00 34:12

So there's no different responsibilities for different pods, it's just like your pot, you have a creative strategy, just two video editors.

SPEAKER_01 34:17

So like a pod can have multiple responsibilities. For example, a product launch, we assign two pods only to work on the new product launch. So you do necessarily have like specific skill sets within pods. For example, in our case, pod one and two, we know they're correct on VSLs and really great with AI. So, of course, we would like to make them only do that, right? We I'm not gonna ask them to work on a new product launch because I just want them to do what we get the most revenue out.

SPEAKER_03 34:44

How are you paying your video editors?

SPEAKER_02 34:46

Do you pay them upside? Very, very transparent, very clear, 2k flat,$500 bonus per winning ad.

SPEAKER_03 34:52

Sounds like a lot, but you earn it back. So you're not giving them necessarily like an incentive on the percent of spend in that sense. I know some people do that, but obviously at the volume.

SPEAKER_02 35:01

I mean, no, but what we do is we basically see a winning concept at after 50k spent, and then it's just like a one-time bonus. So we can like we have an ad that's spending like two, three million, and like it doesn't make sense to then give an ad spent share. So, like for them, let's say 50k spent on our target brows, which in this case then is 1.7. Like there's editors making six, seven K right now. They're cracking VSLs. Um where are they mostly based? Yeah, uh like I have a hidden jam, which is like Malaysia editors and uh Filipinos, and also a few from Latin America. Okay.

SPEAKER_03 35:34

So yeah, that's my go-to for the editors, and I I like So 2K flat and then$500 if they hit fifty if one of the ads hits 50k in spend. Yes. Per ad. If you have multiple winners, it's multiple$500.

SPEAKER_02 35:46

Definitely, yeah. Like we we had one editor that launched five winners in one week at 2.5k. Okay. Just extra on top of it. And for them, it's like the world, yeah. Yeah. And I like that as well because everyone can see it. No, we don't hide anything, they can see their performance, they can see how their ads are performing at all times, and they can also learn from each other. Um, and yeah, like who who creates the best ads earns the most.

SPEAKER_03 36:08

Let's talk funnels, yeah, landing pages. How are you thinking about that? How are you building? How are you testing?

SPEAKER_02 36:15

Yeah, good question. I think it really um resonates as well with what I just mentioned about the top of funnel, because I feel like if you do the top of funnel really well, you convert you can convert them to a new awareness stage in the same funnel, in the same sequence, from seeing the ad, going through that tutorial listicle, and like getting really familiar with the product, getting more trust, authority, and eventually even convert them in the same funnel. And before I felt like people had to see like six, seven, eight times our ad to convert. But now by applying like these listicles at tutorials, people are already spending so much time that they feel the buying intent already, they feel the desire, they feel the trust, they understand the real pain point, and they actually believe, I think that's the biggest part what the listicle can do. They believe that this product can finally work for them. Because obviously they've tried already. There have countless times, look, oh, this is the perfect product that does and promises this. But for listicles, you can actually show them, and we call it then like the belief mechanism, where you make them sort of like realize, oh, that makes sense. Just for example, an example on a pillowcase, um, silver ion infuse that pushes bacteria out with like a really nice GIF that shows how it works. People then believe, oh, I actually believe that because of silver ions in a silver pillowcase, probably I can get a more clear skin. They have to see it, they need to like understand it, and if they do so, they probably buy. And you can do that through a list already. Um, honestly, like 90 cent 90% of our traffic is being sent to pre-landers. Wow.

SPEAKER_03 37:42

Yeah. How many are you like when you find a lander that works? Are you kind of just going heavy and really pushing traffic there or are you constantly iterating?

SPEAKER_02 37:53

No. I think it is a thing that we've learned as well. We don't try to launch as much funnels as humanly possible. Yeah. We scale in three, four funnels max. Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 38:02

I again, I think this is another big misconception of it.

SPEAKER_02 38:04

You know, it's really true because you don't want to break something that's working perfectly fine.

SPEAKER_03 38:08

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 38:08

And of course, it it comes with a lot of research again. Like we launch our funnels not by a random guessing ID. We launch our funnels by exactly knowing what the pain points are and then reverse engineering them with the solution. This is why you think it's not gonna work, this is the reason why it's gonna work, and showing that with visuals, explanations, testimonials, results. Like it, I I I really like like that whole part, taking them through their all of their buying objections, and they're just showing them so much that at one point they especially combined with a great offer, great product, yeah, they're too good to refuse anyway, right? For sure. It's straight to product page, could have never done that. And also, especially also, like also, I uh I know we've talked this about this before. Like, people try to choose between performance marketing or brand, either either one of the two, right? I feel like with this, you can do definitely do both. There's many ways to still protect your normal, clean, aesthetic brand page, still go heavy on direct response, whitelisting pages, authority pages, third-party pages, backed by true um yeah, authority figures. I would say don't fake it. That's something that you should definitely not do because it's easier than ever and can might feel that might feel like uh attracting. Oh, I just launched a doctor with fake this and that. But that's definitely not something that I advise. That's also not something that we do. But if you have a real authority figure, you can advertise through that authority figure, send them through an authority uh landing page. Yeah, that's not necessarily a brand, but still have a direct response, but still it's a blend in between because like thought if someone highly talking about your brand, he's making the claims. The brand is not making the claims, right? So by doing more of like those third-party pages, you can make claims that you won't necessarily make on your main brand page. That's also why we call it like the perfect blend between. You can do both, and you just need to be careful and like, yeah, don't make claims that are not true or work with authority figures that are not really backing you or in a way. Your best performing funnel, what's the conversion rate on that? Five, five percent. But that's I would say it's it's a pre-lender and from pre-lander the product page. Um, but it's funny, we've recently built this totally ourselves. So we've before the longest been using those tools for it, but now we've built an internal tool where we make also the landing pages with, where we can also spot the metrics with, which makes it a lot easier. What is that tool? Uh we've built it ourselves. So we hosted on a real wave versus all, I believe. So I did it with my team. So we we we've built it completely ourselves. All the data points we collected in our own data center now. Um, we are rolling this out. We started with the one brand that we're talking about now. We've doing this, we get all of the info. That's also, for example, the creative boards, everything comes there.

SPEAKER_03 40:41

I saw you created this like brain. I I actually screenshotted that post of yours because I wanted to make it for us too. It's like I call it we call it elevator brain. So it's connected to Bizarre voice, it's connected to Trustpilots, connected to Amazon reviews, it's connected to uh Facebook comments, Instagram comments, it's connected to our press trackers, like input feed feeds like the brain, and then it spits out.

SPEAKER_02 41:07

Yeah. So we have we also use that to build our own landing pages where we can also measure our metrics because also we, for example, want to watch click-through rate, which is a very big metric that before we haven't even looked at because we didn't get that info. But now we can actually see okay, we get 100 visitors, 15 people press on add to cart, meaning 15% click-through rate, and then the data is getting interesting because we want to optimize for the smaller metrics that makes the higher uh the outcome in one point. And then, yeah, we've been doing, we still do 8B tests, but we don't really see the benefit of like launching so many different funnels if one funnel is just working really well. Um so yeah, 5% conversion rate is then on the Shopify. Um, but you cannot necessarily spot the conversion rate on the pre-lender because they go to product page and then they mix together with the Shopify, right? So and what about upsells? Yeah, big, big, really big. So it can be the unlock for massive scale if you can just like have a little bit extra room for paid. It can be the difference between non-profit or profitable and very profitable.

SPEAKER_03 42:10

I think for us, speaking about fluff now, the only like our the most recent level of scale we've achieved is because of upsells. Our AOV is like 2.5x a single unit. Holy shit. Yeah. And that has allowed us to be competitive on meta. Absolutely because the natural CPA is actually much higher than I than it used to be. And so I'm curious, like, how do you guys test upsells? And also, how do you smoke test upsells? Because that's also another thing I'm trying to do more of, is like we have a product idea, okay, instead of going straight and putting a purchase order in, like, you really want to get a little bit of data, but that involves selling something that you might not actually have in inventory and then going back and canceling that order.

SPEAKER_02 42:55

How do you do you I think the first thing brands really need to do is looking at a product that actually really complements the main product as well. So if you can find a product that can make the main product better, um, then it's for example, let's say a deep sleep mask, a travel case for the deep sleep mask. Okay. Those types of upsells, if we put it on a discount, it will be 30, 40% take rate, which is huge on our volume for for Dorn Rose. So that's where you start by looking. And for some products, it's a little bit harder to match, but you can always find stuff. Again, example here's we have just the Here's Airplugs, we find a bumper protection case,$9, take rate 20%, or cleaning kit for your earplugs. Like it doesn't necessarily think about it first. That's good. Yeah, so because it's like a really nice um loop, the Hair's AOV went from 42, non profitable, to now 64, very profitable. Not only because of upsells, also because we changed the offer. So you will see one, two, three sets, which before we just had one, and then they can buy multiple. We made the huge A B tests on the product page, the offers, bringing all products together, bundling them, um. Giving discount on the second and a third, all of those things is also first way optimize, and then like upsell is definitely important. But how you come up with upsells, I think it's really the really dependent on the brand, of course. It needs to make sort of sense to buy together. It's not like, oh, I'm going to like a random product on discount. So yeah, how you come up with those is of course also there's a lot out there in the internet again. I think right now as well, with all the tools we have, doing proper research, that's where you start first. So even if it's like an upsell, is it a product launch, is it the marketing ID, is the concept, start with proper research, understanding your brand, your competitors, your market, the products, the the what all what is already out there. You see what I mean? Because there's so many good stuff already that's out there for free. If it's not from your customer telling it to you, it's from competitors doing it or from reviews.

SPEAKER_03 44:51

Yeah, the fact that it exists, the fact that someone's doing it, someone's thought through that. It's not random. 100%. Um okay, so that's funnel. I want to talk about brand as well. Yeah. So again, something just that I love about you guys and what you do is you really invest in brand. Like yours is dropping St. Laurent collabs. Crazy, yeah. You know, which like, look, if I had to guess, it's probably not a huge revenue driver, but as and I could be wrong, but the positioning is incredible. Actually, uh, someone on our team asked me to ask you about like how are you thinking about brand? By the way, I actually interviewed Bob. The podcast hasn't come out, so I think that's a good idea.

SPEAKER_02 45:27

Yeah, shout out to Bob. He's been crazy on the YZL post uh collab.

SPEAKER_03 45:31

So I'm just thinking, like, how much do you guys shoot in like you know, photo shoot in real life? How often are you creating content? Yeah, because you're creating these brands, but you're again what separates I think good brands from excellent brands is literally the brand. 100%, right? Not just like a URL on a website that does well, but like actually a brand.

SPEAKER_02 45:51

Yeah, yeah, brands are also people that really people want to buy it, not only because of the product, also because of the brand, right? They really feel like, oh, if I buy there, I'm 100% gonna have a great experience. That and that's also what I um said in the beginning of the podcast as well. Like if you really want to build a very profitable big brand, you need to make sure people come back because everyone can sell them once. Yeah, you know, and that's also where we of course focus on creating a great experience, trying to be very smart with most cost efficient, the highest perceived value, trying to find like the perfect brands. Where do we where do we invest? Where do we try to uh um take an advantage? Because yeah, that's I would say really important. We still really try to find, uh, especially for for here, we really find ways to like um optimize the profitability because we started not profitable, but like it was not our first brand. How long was that phase, the unprofitable phase? Yeah, too long. I know by how long. Yeah, um, I would say the first six months, but we just like like the brand. Like if it would have taken five years, we still would be down because obviously here's for us is also like something we really like. We find it really really really cool. It's a patented filter, it took two years to design. Uh like the RD process took forever. Nick and Bob has had like countless back and forth driving to Spain to like the design studios in the Netherlands. Like, this has not been an Alibaba off-the-shelf thing, and that's also why if it would have taken five years to be profitable, we would be good. But of course, with our experience that we bring from the other brands and just in general, great with performance marketing, we know how to sell stuff. So we've we we knew eventually it would work.

SPEAKER_03 47:27

It's funny because six months to get profitable is a good thing. Yeah, but if you come from it's best in class, yeah, yeah. It's best in class. I mean, yeah, it's still. You're just again, and what I love about you is you're you're very harsh on yourself in that sense. Like you expect excellence, like you shoot to kill, like you said. Yeah, and so you're upset with six months, like I mean Yeah, okay.

SPEAKER_02 47:49

Yeah, I mean, like it's funny, like from the dropship times. If my ads were not profitable on the first day, kill done, I'd never look again again. Yeah, so no, for sure. Like, uh, but the other brands, like yeah, product to market, you want to be profitable on the on the on a new customer acquisition for the longest time. We really struggle to get profitable, and now even also because our OPEX is extremely high, because we want to best of the best quality, we invest a lot back in the brand. We have custom molds, huge cash flow into stock because multiple warehouses for for here, our production is not done in China for here's with no, it's custom modes, and uh Nick and Bob was like, hey, we have a patented filter, we have patented protected product. Chinese manufacturers don't really care about that, they would just replicate it if they would get it, and yeah, we were more of like cautious with like doing it there, and also the costs were not that crazy different. It's more of like the complexity and much more cash flow needed to make it happen, to produce in Spain, assembly in Romania, ship it to China, ship to the US. It's so complex. But again, like we invest so much in it. We're going to launch a sleep airplug in a month. Extremely cool. Wow, extremely cool, works really bad, really great. So, even that, like, we not just go product to market. The first prototype was one year ago. We've sent it more like 30, 40 people just to test them, feedback, improve, and back to the market. So, we really build this for the long term, for the longevity. We don't really look for profitability in HIRS. Also, of course, that we have the favor of running really profitable brands on in our brand holding already. We cannot be copied, we use it ourselves, I put that one on the shelf. You know what I mean? Like, yeah, HIRS is just a really cool brand. We can talk about it because like people try to copy, but it's really hard. Even for us, like selling this online, you need to be really good. Of course, there's you there's a huge competitor doing crazy numbers. I think loop is doing 300 million a year, so we know it's possible, but they are in the game for a very long time, and they also are in more multiple categories. So I'm really excited for sleep because I know for a thousand percent that we're gonna crack that. Doran Rose has been scaling sleep niche for five, six years, uh, five years, I must say. Um, and we know everything already. We have we have the data from the sleep niche, we know what works, we know the angles, we know what what what sticks, and we now turn it into a sleeping earplug. We're gonna launch a collapse, sleep mask earplug between the two brands.

SPEAKER_03 50:07

How do you think about because you're generating a lot of cash profitably, yeah, and you're investing a lot right now into new products. But how do your investment layers grow? I guess is what I'm asking. Like, how do you think about keeping cash, preserving it, just laying yourself out, whatever, like enjoying your life versus aggressively, maybe through acquisitions or uh patents or more RD? Like how aggressive is your investment approach?

SPEAKER_02 50:34

It's also like we really structure this per brand. Like the one brand is fitting dividend out like there is no tomorrow, and and the other ones are everything in the company. For example, here's we don't take anything out. I haven't got one year out. In fact, I just keep putting money back in to grow it. Okay. Right? So it's really per brand. And then uh in terms of like the cash flow, of course, you you know, like three years ago we started Econflow, which for us was a huge enabling and getting much more, freeing up cash flow much more. Instead of like four complex warehouses overseas with multiple millions into inventory, we now have it straight uh next to the manufacturer shipping one or two days post-production. Much less capital needed to really scale, easier access to the whole market. We can ship worldwide from one location. Um does of course also come back to the unit economics where we really focus on building the brand, um being able to ship from China as well, with like the weights we don't ship, as I said, like no fridges, no bricks, no heavy stuff, or like pillows of four kilos. Tell me about it, bro.

SPEAKER_04 51:32

Yeah, tell me about it.

SPEAKER_02 51:33

I know that's what I'm saying. Like, I know the heavy pillows there are a bitch on shipping them from China. Yeah, um, but that brings so much free cash flow because we simply don't need that much gas in the business anymore, besides now as well, like really great payment terms with factories, it's just getting better and better at this point. We build trust, we have track record to show for other brands, our conversations are getting easier, we're getting much much stronger payment terms, a lot of fuels back into marketing as well. As well for like for the new brand. Like in the beginning, you are making profit, but if you scale so much month on month, the profit straight goes back into marketing. For example, the being able to do ad spend, our Shopify payments are like 10 days still because um the USLC, if you switch your bank account once, it's it resets back to 10 days. We were like, oh my god, and doing these revenues on 10-day payouts in Shopify, it's like eating cash flow as well. So we have to, of course, be cautious, but we can like puzzle a bit from left and right. But yeah, really good finance understanding. I would say it goes hand in hand with really big scale as well. So a good scale starts by understanding cash flow, understanding maintaining inventory, um, not too much complex uh supply chain setup, and those three really that having that dialed uh allowed us to go full on creative and just making sure that we deliver the best of the best ads. Um we have the best marketing ads. Um, really blessed with our team. Um, definitely not want to take credit here for all of that. We have such incredible people, really smart people. Uh I learned from them. They come with the newest of the newest AI stuff that I'm like, man, this is crazy. You know, like I'm not like they I see it all and I'm just getting really excited. I said it the the other day as well. Like, right now, I haven't been so excited to just work because things are just you you see what I mean, right? Like I could not agree. What's happening now? Like it's insane. We are this is the golden era, this is the moment. This is it. And I feel it like that as well. Like, we already like I feel like every day that we're not Sunday, the office is full. I I love it, man. I love it. Yeah, I love this game, and I really uh again also like so excited in this e-comm game again because just things are I I said this um I posted two days ago on Twitter. Like, we are entering an era that the top 1% is taking the whole market and 99% is starting to fight for the crumbs because the real operators last and the copycats fight for the crumbs, you know.

SPEAKER_03 53:51

So you told me that the last six, seven months have really been uniquely on a big unlock for you. Yes, is there anything that you've in the last six months experienced or learned that we haven't touched on that you want to share?

SPEAKER_02 54:03

I would say it is definitely part of like the real understanding of creative strategy because for the longest we've been running creative strategy and like okay, marketing, marketing, marketing. But by really like you you you said it yourself, actually, the my my unlock. Like going back to the OG marketing, understanding the real awareness stages, like your real messaging, like how do you speak to your ICP? Like, even like the data bank, for example, for the longest, we were just looking at competitors. Oh, they do this ad swiping, let's make something similar, iteration, iteration, iteration, iteration. I feel like many brands are doing that, right? They over-iterate, over-iterate, but where the real skill is for us, net new concepts. And also, I'm saying the past six or seven months have been so great for me because I've been in my creative zone again. I've been for the longest working in a rushed state of mind. I think I've told you about this. Yeah, I've I've sort of, I will not say struggled, but I've always been into like the next thing, the next thing, the next thing. Working very rushed. And the past six, seven months have been the best months of my life because I have so much control on my life, on the business, on where I want to spend time on, not being uh putting down fires all the time. I'm enjoying it so much now, and that's why I'm also seeing so much better results because I actually, yeah, I'm just enjoying it so much, and then you just do more of what you like and you have automatically better output instead of I force myself to come up with a new ID. You know what I mean?

SPEAKER_03 55:22

One thing that I think you just touched on, which I want to double click on, is like the big mistake that a lot of e-com people are making right now is it there it's just a bunch of numbers on a screen, but not actually thinking about the fact that there are on the other side of that screen human beings that are like physically looking, reading, purchasing a product. You know, like I'll give you an example. We've got friends um that launched a custom pet product business and weren't seeing conversion. And Andrew went on the website and he physically like tried to drag a picture of his dog, and the drag wasn't working. And it's like until you physically understand what the human beings on the other side are doing, you're actually like it it's all it's I guess what I'm trying to say, it's it's too digital. Yeah. Like we've lost sight of the fact that this is actually like we're selling the products to real human beings. It's not just a human that you just dish out thousands of ads and then you're row as in conversion. It's it's funny, yeah. You know, like that. Interacting. I completely get that. So I think what you're saying, what I'm hearing is you've like really stepped back and you've like dialed in the marketing, the messaging, actually reading, actually thinking, having intention. Yes. Putting yourself in the shoe of your customers. Exactly. Not just sort of like spraying and praying.

SPEAKER_02 56:46

And I think a good way to put it is that we started to apply emotional marketing. And with emotional marketing, I mean indeed what you say. There is a human on the other side of the screen. They have emotions. An angle in an ad, people think, oh, I need to come with a new ad. Oh, I need to come up with a new angle. But you can also see it, hey, I need to come up with a new emotion. And the angle is an emotion that's being triggered by your ad. And that's also how we, for example, call an angle in our case. It's multiple emotions. It can be a good emotion, or it can be fear, it can be loss, it can be confidence, it can be convenience. All of that are really great angles. And that's something that you need to trigger by the one watching the ad. And you can do that through a mechanism that I've just explained, like showing them in a way that's not necessarily selling, but make them feel attracted to the ad. And when they realize that it is an ad, they are already attracted and triggered by the ad, if you see what I mean. Yeah. I'd say they just watch something and they resonate with what they see. In their head, there's something like a that's me moment existing. They see something and they live that pain without knowing that what they're watching is there to sell them something. So they're sort of like a guard down. If people are scrolling ads, they see aesthetic with a huge headline, oh, this is what I want you to sell. They're sort of like a fence, right? Because we see so many ads on our screen. You want to catch them sort of like with their guard down attention to the ad, attention to the story, and they feel so resonated with what they see, and that's that emotional, like like that emotional desire that they get from the ad, then take them through a pre-lander listicle, and they're so hooked to what you are telling them because the fun thing is you they are the the ICP, and what you're showing them comes from themselves, like your audience is telling that through the data bank, what I was explaining. Winning ads go back, competitor winning ads go back, but reviews, like emails, like all of the things I just mentioned you, there's so much value, and like a funny thing there as well, like do start looking at the 150 characters plus. Not like, oh, excellent product, love it. That doesn't tell you anything. You want to filter that, set the filter 150 characters plus, you would get stuff like this. Hey, I'm a busy mom, I have two babies, and I only can sleep like five hours at night. And since I've been using the deep sleep mask, I don't hear the birds chirping, and I wake up fully blacked out, and you see three angles why they buy a product from a review. Turn that into new scripts, new copywriting, and you have a great angle that's actually coming not from us guessing, no, it's come from your customer telling you why they buy it. And then you create emotional depth to your ads, you create more intention. And this is just a simple example, but you're surprised with what they write. Let's talk about AI.

SPEAKER_03 59:17

What are the tools? And like how are you, what are the different categories of the business that you're applying AI?

SPEAKER_02 59:22

Yeah, so of course, I would say the the first one, uh like uh Claude, multiple projects, like low-hanging, everyone is doing it. Yesterday they shipped 4.7, absolutely crazy. Yeah. Um, diving into that deep. Four models at the same time. Yeah, I would say like the very deep research, the data bank that I was just described yesterday got handed to you. Just literally, yesterday they launched an update that everything that we've put so many manual effort is being done for you right now. It happened yesterday, even, and they're shipping every day something new. Yeah, if you look what they've been shipping over the past two weeks, it's like a list of this. No, the last two weeks in particular have been out of yeah. So, like even like when this is out, probably they have like 10 new things already. So definitely like Cloud and then divide it per project. So we, for example, can have multiple projects specifically or script writing, funnel pages, store optimalization, all of those things you want to like. We have it in different projects, into team projects, and copywriting happens there. It's getting better and better. Um, also, of course, quick side note don't just start tomorrow and think, okay, Cloud is my go-to. You really need to train the model, and you want to go to an extent that you want him to make them think like you. And to make them think like you, you need to give as much feedback as you can in the start, feed him back with valuable data, really try to train the model as if it is like a human in your team and trying to become together and see the cooperative brainstorm session, and then um yeah, feedback what's good, feedback what you don't like, and it goes pretty quickly. Of course, Cloud is really good with this. That's where we like get ideation, then sends data back in there. And then, for example, purely VSL video editing, you would have Higgs fields, arcades. Don't just blindly use that. Really, uh you need you need proper creative humans to make it like workable, right? It's not just okay, I'm gonna make a simple prompt. Because it if you want to make hyper-realistic ads, you need hyper-realistic prompts and just like a feedback loop. It's not as easy as it sounds, and oh, we use AI, now we're done. But we have really strong uh blueprints as well that allow our team to work much more efficient. We have then one database with a lot of B-roll as well. Um, for example, uh software's called ARC where you have like upload all your B-roll. You can like say, hey, I want someone wearing brown shoes, and you see all the content that you have with someone wearing brown shoes, making the video editors much more efficient. This is all backed by AI, showing the right footage for the right moment, because that also helps with by creating really great ads. And uh we've been recently also using a lot for custom support. So we've built our internal tool for that as well, just like integrated with Georgia's, with Zenda. So like we we upload like everything in there. Um, it's still a work in progress, though, but we've been seeing great progress.

SPEAKER_03 1:01:57

How are you incentivizing or ensuring that your team is on top of all the AI stuff? And it's not even just using AI, but it's like, yeah, are you up to speed? Do you know that as of today, you can run multiple models at once on top of the AI? That's just really interesting. There you need to not everyone is like us on X reading the latest claw drops, like a dork, like people have real lives and unlike you know they're not obsessively working the way we do. Yeah, it's funny. That's like a big pain point for me, is I don't think my team is using it to their maximum, and I'm trying to figure out how to get that.

SPEAKER_02 1:02:31

I I hear you. I've been thinking about this a lot, even to an extent like my uh my executive assistant, it's funny. I had a call with her two weeks ago, and there's like I'm working with her on like in a promotion program, and part of the promotion program, there's uh courses of Anthropic that they've put out. There's like four starting courses. They in total have 12. Yeah, but like all 12 makes no sense for an executive assistant. But the first four, if your executive assistant understands those four and they get the certificate from Anthropic, like my ex there's like they put a certificate out if you pass for it. So if my assistant had that, she out automatically overnight becomes a beast. So that was my first step. I think, especially at one point, you can have video editors, um, strategists finish those things. Like, not necessarily having your team go get that certificate. Like my assistant, like I'm really really good with her, so I was like, hey, I know that this is gonna help you so much, not only me. I'm not forcing you to do so, but I just think it would be really nice. And she was like, Wow, this is so cool. I'm going to go all in on this. Thank you for the opportunity. Also, salary increase, all of that comes with it because I know she's gonna work 10 times better if she finished all of that and she's actually gonna use it. We've built our executive hub where all of our different companies come together. She can uh oversee that, she can input that, she can monitor that. Wow, my life is gonna be great. So obviously it's gonna be worth more because she's worth more, right? So that starts with the executive set, but then looking to the team members, I definitely think this is something that even on resumes, on like for us, we are AI driven. Our output of the team, if you are gonna be delivering much better results, if you're gonna be much more efficient, you can get a better pay because you are bringing more value. So at one point, I would even like say, hey, if everyone finished the course, there was just a higher pay because you work much better. But at one point, I would say there's a mix, and I'm also lucky to have like really smart people in the team already that basically teach me stuff about it as well. He's here also here with us today. Yeah, we're gonna have a chat with him later as well. Yeah, like he he knows everything inside out, but he already, like three, four years was on top of this, right? So like he's helping as well, the team members, like few editors, how to again better b-roll, how to create better scripts, how to he's like uh our strategist lead as well, right? So head of strategy CEO of the of the creatives. You wanted to talk omnichannel? Yeah, because I know you're crushing crushed it crazy on Amazon as well, like overnight, insane scale. Um, and I I also slightly already mentioned this omnichannel for us. I didn't realize how important it was, but now I realize that in general, the whole funnel ecosystem marketing, it all helps each other at one point by being present everywhere. Because of course we have like a huge meta background. Um again, I feel like from zero to ten million, don't necessarily think about it, focus meta, my my my story. Um, after 10 million, omnichannel is going to be more and more important. Um, also because, for example, for us blended, now we're out of stock on Amazon, we immediately feel it. So, yeah, we like omnichannel is very important. I just was curious on you, like your biggest unlock on uh on Amazon as well.

SPEAKER_03 1:05:31

Our strategy is honestly been omnichannel since the very beginning. It's obviously our Shopify, Amazon, but then it's like Walmart.com, Target.com, Macy's, you know, and so forth. Like anywhere we can put the product, literally anywhere.

SPEAKER_04 1:05:45

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 1:05:46

Also retail. Always sign up. Always we actually were not in physical stores, so it's 100% e-commerce. I see, yeah, yeah, yeah. Um, and honestly, that's intentional. Retail is so different. You know this. I launched a product in Apple. And it Is such a different business. That's like a that's a that's a different team. Yeah. Like you cannot run an e-commerce business with the same team as a retail business. That makes sense, yeah. Like groons, for example. I guarantee you those are two different, as you would say, pods. Yeah, I understand.

SPEAKER_02 1:06:17

Yeah, he made a post about it. On LinkedIn, like he was talking about like all the different layers and hats and this and that. Like he was basically having multiple teams with their own CEOs of their teams. That was crazy, actually. Is that also not mainly on protecting your own search? So, for example, they would Google on Walmart go look for Fluffco and someone else would pop up with their pillow because they advertise more. That's why you protect your own brand.

SPEAKER_03 1:06:40

Yes. But I guess what I was gonna say is like the attribution. We we're not super focused on in-platform attribution in every place. We're focused on the blended. I see. Because I don't care where a customer buys the product so long as they buy it. And we also advertise uh on TV. Do you do TV? No. So that's a bit another big unlock for us. So you didn't have the QR code on the screen? It it doesn't even matter, to be honest with you. Because it it's again, it's the same thing.

SPEAKER_02 1:07:08

I think that's also going to be interesting, like that you advertise, but you can measure it. Because for me, I want to see a return on my ads.

SPEAKER_03 1:07:13

So we use Titari and they have AI that will tell you what your CPA is for TV ads specifically, but it's all bullshit, right?

SPEAKER_02 1:07:22

Yeah, that's like how?

SPEAKER_03 1:07:23

It's impossible.

SPEAKER_02 1:07:24

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 1:07:24

So again, it's all about the blended, right? So blended, yeah, for sure. I think the craziest thing about e-commerce right now is, I mean, you already said it, but it's just the trends, right? When meta ad spend comes down, all platforms come down.

SPEAKER_04 1:07:37

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 1:07:37

And so actually the most important thing is just getting your ad spent up on Meta. And then everything goes up. Walmart goes up, Target goes up, you know, crazy attribution. Amazon goes up. It's it's a rising tide floats all ships. And so we're not focused on in-platform attribution right now. I'm just saying it's not perfect. Yeah. You just want to make the full ecosystem flow. The full ecosystem, because I I I read a stat that says people don't purchase until they see your product or ad 13 times. I see. Now that's a made-up number, but that's the point is that you have to see it in multiple places. You gotta see the billboard, you gotta see the TV ad, you gotta see the meta-ad, you gotta hear a friend talk about it, and then you go buy it. And in that moment, whoever gets the credit is that's not fair credit. Yeah, right. In theory, it should have been the first person. They all claim it. They all claim it. Um But the I guess the point is that so long as the blended works. And TV to me has been it's been a hard pill to swallow. I read that the MyPillow guy, he's a big competitor for Fluff, was spending a hundred million US dollars a year on TV on TV alone. And so I think TV is another layer.

SPEAKER_02 1:08:41

But then that's probably also his main thing, no?

SPEAKER_03 1:08:44

Yeah, he's a TV brand.

SPEAKER_02 1:08:46

But then nonetheless. His whole company is optimized for that type of spend on that type of channel, I believe so. Because 100 million on TV, you must be like seeing returns in ways.

SPEAKER_03 1:08:56

Yeah, that's another channel that's a good thing. Yeah, and how's native uh doing for you? Not that not that well. And we've not been able to crack App Lovin, to be honest with you.

SPEAKER_04 1:09:04

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 1:09:05

That's another thing. Like we we have friends that talk about App Lovin' like it's so easy. Yeah. And then, you know, I've we've gotten burnt and so we turn it off. But it's like it's just tough because you know, some people make it sound so easy, but it's really actually a bit difficult.

SPEAKER_02 1:09:21

I think what's funny about uh OmniChannel and how the best way else to prescribe is you you catch people on different different stages. For example, people on Google are on a different mental stage than that they are scrolling on on TikTok or on Instagram or on Facebook. Then same, for example, for Abdulovin, they're on a different stage. They are on the platform to read a lot, or for example, Abdulov and play a game, right? Yeah, also unscapable ads. Yeah, like there are so many different stages, and that's why I think omnipresence is so interesting because you catch people in a different at a different time, at a different moment, at a different mental stage. And that's also why I think using then all because my main expertise is on meta, the same thing, for example, with like multiple buckets, diversification of the ad account, it's just a different type of matches in the same way and catch them on a different moment, and just one point at one point the aesthetic works better, at one point the video works better, right? It just are there in a words, they see one headline, and the same with omnichannel presence, like you're just catching them on multiple methods and multiple ways, and like uh I think that that makes it really interesting.

SPEAKER_03 1:10:23

Uh so I'm curious, just to change subjects a little bit, but you know, you've been in the game now a long time. The scale you've cracked is insane. Yes. Where like what are you building towards right now? Like, where is this all going? Are you building to sell? Are you building just to run it for cash? I'm just curious, like, where where are you taking this?

SPEAKER_02 1:10:43

Yeah, it's it's funny because of course you would say, why another brand? Why another journey? Why another this? And I for the longest always believed in I want to build all of my businesses with a competitive advantage. And that's even like, for example, we also spend like time on like building a personal brand, connecting with others. We learn a lot from other operators as well. Also, of course, to at one point, we are getting a lot of cash, liquidity that we can deploy on others and enabling them to grow even quicker. Yeah, that's a competitive advantage. If I have 500k ready for you for cash flow for 20% of your of your business, with not only bringing the 500k, also our knowledge, our expertise, and everything that we do within our brands, you will happily give me the 20%. I'm not gonna run the business. We both are very happy. That's again like sort of like an advantage that we can create. And in all the businesses, I prefer to like create like a competitive advantage that, yeah, because I would feel that's the way to win in business nowadays, right? There is like the the barrier to entry is so low. Shop, if I made it easy, I can start the store tonight, I can go to market. You need somehow a competitive advantage, even to the extent that we we've built uh, of course, also infrastructure, right? Think about the packaging factory that we are business partners with, think about Ecoflow that we've invested in our business partners with. We've like built a full ecosystem as well to build like sort of in a competitive advantage. And now that we are at a stage that we can connect with other founders, we are opening an advisory layer that we can even like look at other their brands, then you create like a sort of like advantage, right? Because you have so much data that you can use, enabling them to grow, building the brand holding. Because I've always inspired to build the brand holding, it comes like it's so it's a very long story, but can keep it short. I was in Tokyo and I met like this guy, he's called Jamie Salter, the owner of Authentic Brand Group, right? I met him really short in the elevator, looked up what he was doing, and from there onwards, I feel like all the brands right now they can elevate each other. And the more data we get from all the brands, the better one brand goes. So I also have conversations. Why you just not put all your ex in one basket and go for a grunt story and you sell one brand for one billion? And I feel like I love building so much, and I love as much building like a health brand as like an earplug brand, and I'm super creative and I just want to build multiple things. And I also feel sort of like if they can elevate each other, if you can get great team members, if you own the infrastructure, and it also brings you cash that you can then deploy again on others, where, for example, yeah, if we would get equity just freeing up cash and knowledge, it's not that I would say you can do a lot of this, of course, but you want to be very careful by just like doing that. So, like let's say uh writing a check, of course, that goes like a thought process and a big process for us in advance. So it's sort of like a as a blind date, right? You're not just writing a check just because it looks there, it looks great. So, what we, for example, have been doing first start like sort of like in a consulting way. We just come into the brand, look at the brand, also understand how they operate this because I feel like it's not just the brand that's important, it's very important the operators, the founders behind the brand. Because you can give them the systems, you can give them the strategies, you can give them the playbooks, but they need to execute it. Yeah, so that's something that we look at, and then we already have the cash, and then yeah, we are building. And so far, it's going really well. The two brands that we acquired, this is a similar story. We first consulted them. There was like, Well, this working with you guys is crazy. Um, take my equity, you know what I mean? Uh, and then also there's like a mutual already synergy, energy, and we've also had consultants that we're like, you know, this is not a match for a marriage in a way, because like a three-month consulting, I can do with everyone. Like, you help them, you you bring them up, and you give them advice, and it's fun to connect with other operators, but yeah, getting equity, getting skin in the game, it's start like a long-term commitment to both parties, right? You want to make them grow, and like I don't want to be in the business with everyone. For me, it's really important to also understand who I'm doing business with.

SPEAKER_03 1:14:28

And it's just funny to me because you're running brands at like a couple hundred million dollars in revenue. And this is not an insult, it's just like slightly objective. Like, people don't know your brands in that sense. Like, it's not a let's keep it like that. That but that's what's crazy to me. It's like you're running these hundred million dollar businesses that like if I asked a normal person outside, they probably would not have heard of it. And and I'm not trying to give you a dig. It's just I find it funny because like there are some brands that everyone knows and talks about, but you're actually at a look, obviously Grooms is gigantic, but you're not that far off in scale. Like you're equally big.

SPEAKER_02 1:15:04

Yeah, I'll say so. I feel like our brands, especially where, of course, we are Dutch in the Netherlands. I think there is not one person in the Netherlands in e-com that doesn't know our brands, and also, of course, like the people that buy our products, we are pretty known, I would say, also there uh in the US. We're of course entering the market, and probably our brands they they they see in us in the ad library. Yeah, probably if the most if they will see him, they're like, oh, that's the rent. Because there are like those few brands in the ad library that everyone looks to for ads and aesthetic. And I feel like one of our brands is definitely a bookmarked at everyone's uh like spying tools and everyone because you can see actually how many spiders and stuff you have on your ad library. I was looking at yours yesterday. I mean, like there's so much eyeballs on our ad library, which I think is a compliment for sure. And I also feel like the real way to scale aggressively is not copy but come up with new net net new stuff yourself. Of course, like and we are inspired by other brands, great ads, and we we look at other frameworks, formats, how other stuff are doing. But the real scale is when you come up with something new, like a new format or doing something that really accelerates the ad account.

SPEAKER_03 1:16:06

So that's exactly what Grunes did, like the eight gummies in a packet. 100%. So meaning that's where the real skill is at all the time. Like everyone was doing gummies one at a time. Who the hell wants to have one gummy?

SPEAKER_04 1:16:17

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 1:16:17

Right? I think the best thing he did is he he makes it enjoyable to use and LTV is is is is great. But the eight in a packet, like it sounds so simple, but that's like actual innovation. Like he couldn't, it was reinless. He couldn't find a supplier that could do it for him in the beginning. And that's how he knew that there was a real moat in this. Because the simple notion of eight in a packet is like a new format, like you said. So you've kind of alluded to this of how anyone can copy anyone now. And these days in e-commerce, like you don't even sometimes want to say the brand that because you know, you don't it's just unnecessary attention.

SPEAKER_04 1:16:53

Yeah, 100%.

SPEAKER_03 1:16:55

I would argue actually that look, everyone's got Claud, everyone's got all the tools, everyone's got RCADs and Atrian, Higgs field, everyone knows all of that now. Yeah. But actually, what they don't have is just like the fundamental knowledge and experience that you have. Yeah. Like, I I would say the m biggest moat right now in e-commerce is just the operator. Like the person behind the fested execution. Just the quality of the operator. That's the moat.

SPEAKER_04 1:17:20

Yeah, 100%.

SPEAKER_03 1:17:21

And so I'm curious what you think. Because yeah, like, okay, even if you have a patent, there's copycats. Even if you have innovation and you launch a new format, there's copycats. But like the quality of the operator is, in my opinion, the final moat. Would you agree with that?

SPEAKER_02 1:17:35

I think that I explained it as well. Like the operator is the most important. I'm not necessarily afraid that someone is going to build a bigger brand or do more revenue. It's more, I don't really want to see overnight 100 or 200 new stores copying exactly our angles, exactly our listicles, exactly our copy, exactly our product in a way that they pretend like they are selling exactly the same because that's where my pain point is in. We've built and spent so much money in getting a great product, but people cannot see on a Shopify screenshot, uh, Shopify product image if it's a great product. They need to buy, receive, try and see and feel themselves how great the product is. Yeah, copying it just on a picture, making it look amazing with AI, everyone can do that. And my pain point is this, they will use our our messaging, our positioning, yeah, sell their cheap thing about that. Yeah, sell their cheap version of ours where they're also take the credibility and the trust in our angles and our positioning where we we do deliver what we promise. And I'm afraid that if people would know, because it's not easy, it's not hard to say the same stuff as what we are saying. It's hard to deliver with the same quality and the execution that we've accomplished. And same, for example, like it's uh I I just really don't like I will definitely show the brand later because um I think from one and a half years from now, we have if we can maintain this skill, we are doing to going to do a crazy milestone and potentially also an exit. And then, of course, I'm gonna make a full case study because we've been documenting everything. Um, but I know this is not the time right now, with also a lot of eyeballs on us. Of course, we're growing the brand. We have a yeah, I wouldn't say huge following, but we have definitely e-com following, right? People that can that are looking basically what are we doing? So we're gonna copy them. That's but that's that's sort of like our own, not in not in a not in a bad way. They look at, for example, hey, when Finzi's posting something, I'm going to see if it's something valuable. So let's say if I will.

SPEAKER_03 1:19:36

So I read your posts. I learned like you were, it's just funny because you know we're we're me, me and Andrew are looking at a category right now for a new brand. And actually there's one incumbent, but that incumbent filed for bankruptcy because it was so poorly managed. Yeah. And HM bought them. But it's just funny because when we heard when we saw that, we were like so pumped because HM doesn't know anything about e-commerce. Yeah, right? They're a retailer. So the people that bought this business, a retailer bought them. So like I guess what I'm trying to say is real e-commerce in 2026, like you are the epitome of e-commerce in 2026. Like the game has changed so much. Like everything we just spoke about for an hour and a half, like, dude, your mastery and knowledge of e-commerce in 2026, winning in 2026, yeah. It's actually quite rare. Like you are the epitome of e-commerce knowledge in 2026. Thanks, man.

SPEAKER_02 1:20:42

Yeah, I think also what uh I really realized from the start, if you just first make sure that you are able to scale, like you have the foundation for scale. So I said cash flow, inventory, supply chain setup, those three is the first thing you look at, put it well and not necessarily look at it too much again. Just make sure it works, of course, it works. Then there's all the effort goes, we are paid ads driven brands. Our attention, our efforts, our outcomes, everything should be around getting our product in front of as humanly, as much possible eyes as possible through our ads because like it's it's funny if you think about like everyone holds their phone every single day. There's so much attention, there's so much eyeballs. And I've been interested in ads since the longest. I started this not just with e-commerce, I started as like running ads. I've been always obsessed with ads, always obsessed with with this because I just knew it. It's actually crazy. And I just like went deeper and deeper and deeper into it. And now, even now, with like more like the awareness unlocks and all of that. But yeah, to answer that, I think right now, indeed, if you just mainly purely talk e-commerce, your 90% of effort should indeed should be unlocking the sickest marketing. Of course, like brand is part of it, definitely, but that's of course also my main expertise, and where we see main skill is definitely just making sure you create the best possible ads with the best possible messaging.

SPEAKER_03 1:22:01

It's funny because the way you put it makes it sound so simple. Yeah, yeah. He's dying to ask.

SPEAKER_00 1:22:07

Yeah, so I don't understand um how your you and your business partners' roles have evolved since the very beginning until now through the milestones. How have you gone from like your day-to-day of what you do, how has that changed and evolved, and what sort of like key hires have you done to move through these through these areas?

SPEAKER_02 1:22:26

Great question. Yeah, it's a really good one. So, of course, like uh the Oak brand holding, we are with three business partners. It's me, my brother, and both. So, how this started was uh I mentioned it shortly. I've like invested in all the stock that we needed for Dorn Rose in the start. So I more came in like a strategic and investor because I was still running the other stores on the site as well. Like that was my main focus, and I just helped uh build the performance marketing departments always. And basically, once it's sort of like ready, I'm sort of like going out again. So if you would see it into like roles into the brand group, I'm more of like the I would say the CEO of the brand holding where I also really focus on like the strategy, the strategic, what are the next moves for even like let's say acquiring equity in other brands or infrastructure plays, um, top-level hires, um, but also implementing new things, internal blueprint frameworks, speaking with the most important people within all the brands, and of course, also uh mainly focusing on the performance marketing side. Nick has been since the start also a lot of like really a beast in in operations. He's he's he's he's capable of doing anything basically, so he's going more of like the the back-end, uh product management, uh team building, hiring. Uh he's for the longest been also always the chief of staff, always our go-to person for team members and like really managing the team and this and the and the back end and this and like the the foundation, so to say. So it's been we started always like I do performance marketing, marketing, he does uh supply chain and uh and and support, so back end basically, but now we feel like there's so much like there is like it it really feels sort of like naturally and starts to go per brand, but um we we we quickly understood like where we can like for example if we would make a priority list, we understand okay, I'll take these, you take this, um, because we just know that's more of like uh um yeah.

SPEAKER_03 1:24:19

What about org chart? Like, how do you you know, for example, we've got you know, head of growth, you know, brand marketing, social media person. Like, what is what are the key titles in your org chart?

SPEAKER_02 1:24:29

Yeah, it depends again per brand. Um in general, yeah. Three orc layer, uh three-layer org chart, I would say really important, especially running multiple things. You don't want to have communication layers with everyone. Um, and I moved out like pretty quickly, I would say, especially looking at like let's say the ops in Doran Rose. The only person I speak to is head of growth and Nick and Bob. I don't speak to anyone else basically. Um, and then yeah, for the new brand, I'm I'm more deeply involved in in creatives. Um also work like closely together uh with our head of strategy, head of growth. Um, and then yeah, it's more of like uh we have those uh implementations, then org chart. Um key titles, yeah. Like creative strategist. Yeah, so like what what our big unlock was, especially in the in the performance marketing team, is like building internal pods, um, and then creative coordinator, really important. Creative coordinator then manage, for example, our our notion, naming conventions, formats, just the style, making sure that what we upload is correct, see every ad, feedback data, uh come up with like like just like a second filter for everything that goes live. Yeah, um, really important for us. Also, like uh following up on like editors, meeting uh KPIs, deliverables, and uh big on look. Like just that that person is basically just not not necessarily creating themselves, but just make sure the whole creative engine flows, and that's a really good one, especially if the team grows. There's just consistent con uh accountability throughout the teams. So, my ideal um performance marketing team is um head of growth, uh lead strategists, pots, creative coordinator.

SPEAKER_03 1:26:07

Okay, so there's a lead strategist above the creative strategist in each pod.

SPEAKER_02 1:26:11

Um I would say the lead strategists they all have their own own pots in a way, but if you grow to a size of seven pots, yes. But it's it's start, let's say you only have two, there's just one lead strategist that that yeah, that then there's no head of growth, you see what I mean. Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 1:26:27

And so the pods, like, are you just gonna keep going seven, eight, nine? Are you no?

SPEAKER_02 1:26:31

I I think as well, like um with with seven, we should be able to do 300 mil a year. Okay. At one point, because then then you would go to an extent that you just launched the launch. Yeah. And the output right now is really strong. And uh we can like go harder on output, then also we are going into the reason why we're hiring now more pods. So we started with five. I don't think we need more than five, honestly. We just launched two new, which are still also in hiring yet. I we are having trial cases and a lot of like uh exciting uh team members coming on. Uh, the two pods would be allocating, let's say, batches for product launches, batches for specific promo marketing moments, um, where the main pods focus on the main revenue driving. You know what I mean? Yeah, so I think as well, like allocating at one point, if you have multiple pods, you allocate 70% of where you see the I would say the proven angles, the proven products, the proven outcomes, like what makes the business thrive. And then at one point, depends on the volume, you will have more space to like also trying to see product launches if they also scale on on ads as well, because now all our retention products or our product drops are mostly uh retention products. They're not necessarily scaling as hard as our position. No, we have two heroes that we are scaling, yeah, and we have we're selling 20 to 30 products and we all sell them, but we don't get the new customers, we don't acquire new customers with those products. But I do think that at one point we do can we we can do that. For example, you had him from I'm 8, the founder, CEO. Very interesting as well, because he sort of like creates different products with one product. He's targeting a tennis player and at the same time he's targeting a busy mom. And he's selling the sort of like the same product. So I think that's really interesting. He goes so deep into like the use case and the persona and creates like all of these mini mini funnels inside one big funnel. That's really interesting. But I also think that you can definitely do that with multiple products then too.

SPEAKER_03 1:28:33

By the way, I don't know if I've told you this, but the CMO of IM8 works out of the studio. It works right there. Yeah, really cool. He's out of time.

SPEAKER_02 1:28:39

What they're doing is a beast. They're also like very performance marketing driven. They just have that true unlock of like getting new eyeballs into the funnel consistently on many different ways. So the messaging market fit, they understood, okay, we can do this multiple times again and again. We can sell to professional athletes, we can send to older what older audience, we can sell to busy moms, we can send to students. Yeah, they've mastered the personas. Absolutely insane. Exactly. And I also think at one point, like I do definitely believe you should not try to scale 10 products at the same time if you're starting. Just focus on one, two max heroes, make sure you crack those first before you try to launch everything. But now we are so dialed, and I feel like also the question: why would you need seven pods? Not to go all in only on this product, because we are, I don't I don't think we need a higher output right now. It's already really, really great. It's good, yeah. But we want to expand. Um, yeah.

SPEAKER_03 1:29:32

Leaf had a question.

SPEAKER_08 1:29:33

When you're setting up these pods, um you know, and you're using your account that's offshore. Yeah, you know, for for us, you know, we have we look at like a lot of people and find ones like, oh wow, that guy does exactly what to do, and like we're we're holding on to that pod for forever. Like to make these like five high performing pods, how how many do you have to like look at how many teams or how many pods do you have to find go through before finding these? Or are you like were you able to just be like, nope, these are for the guys?

SPEAKER_02 1:30:04

Yeah, and they they crutch the yeah, I think it's also how complex the the thing is that you want them to execute, right? So, for example, for us, we have such a strong internal blueprint and the how basically the video editing for us, if they are a little bit creative, we can just make them really great video editors by allowing them the tools that we allow them to use, that we give them the handouts to use. So we the first two pods were extremely difficult uh until we've cracked it, and then you can scale aggressively. For example, you say, okay, I'm just trialing 10 editors, survival of the fittest, the two best editors stay, and you have a pot, right? Uh we we just went crazy on a hybrid spree. I think we did this like like in the coming the past two months, we've been through that. So we started two pots, three pots, and then we went from three to five. Oh, and this is just past two months. Yes, we we we we we unlocked the scale on only one and two pods because I also believe then is where you really get the the proof of concept, the engine, and then when you find something that's is scaling so aggressively, the only thing you think of like, okay, we need to do this, like we need to feed more winners consistently, and then we can do these numbers. And that actually also happened. So I was thinking like we just need much more of this, and then it will automatically spread, and then also okay, we just want to have a high output, but don't uh come like don't compromise on the quality. So we can ask our video uh video editors to do more, but I don't want them to compromise on the quality. So our solution was like, hey, they don't need to be distracted about everything else, they just need to be stay doing what they do, and for example, not bringing more team members with them, they just stay in their own lane, and that's how I came up with the pot system in a way, where I was just sitting with uh with Herb Shreddy. Like, we just have to have everyone in their own lane and just every sort of like an individual extra income of creative, like extra source of creative, um, and then not necessarily distract the other pots that are already crushing it, right? And then also, and then we came up with like the the leaderboard gamifying performance, and now it works really well, but we we've been always scaling on two to three pots. So, yeah, to answer your question, I definitely think it's the first two to three pods, they should of sort of like show the incoming pots how it's done because then it's easier, and then also at one point we have great video editors that uh get compensation for training new video editors, and I think that's always a great thing to do. We've done the same in customer support. Um, if there's a new customer support agent coming, the best of the best agent is training the agent, and that's the same thing with the editors, same thing with the graphic designers. They get sort of like a like a like a trial month where they just we we make them really great by just showing them how it's done, and that's how you can scale up the team really quickly. Yeah, so like really like uh enabling each other within the creative team, enabling them with the best systems, enabling them with like how we're already doing it, SOPs, blueprints. This is we have really great blueprints on Notion. I can show you those as well. Like, this is how you do this, this is how you do that. And then if there's questions, like we are very collaborative teams as well. I really try to like build that more in teams as well. There's of course team performance bonuses, but also like in general, it's just cool to that. There's like a big opportunity for them as well. Like, it's also what during the HR process we tell them like, hey, we are sitting on a rocket ship, you can be you can be part of it. Um, you get spent incentive, and this is we are spending so much. And like we're also recruiting with that mindset. All the editors they start on the 2K base, they work in agencies for one, one to four, one to five, and then they all feel like holy shit, this is my time to to to step up, and that's also our we are not looking for starting editors. That's part of the hire process for us for sure.

SPEAKER_08 1:33:37

Yeah, no, that's great. It's funny because we're we we experience the same thing. It's like we set up the process, there's always like you gotta figure it out, and then once it's set up, then it's like you go, they train other people. Yes. So in setting up these first two pods, you said it was like you know a little bit difficult. Like what were the difficulties you saw in actually getting them set up, and then you know, and then now you're kind of off the races.

SPEAKER_02 1:33:58

Yeah, yeah, that that's that's that's definitely what happened for us. So the first uh team was just like very small. It was basically still still me also with my business partner, just like trying to get it off the ground, trying to work, testing a lot. Um, like also trying playing around with AI, to be honest. Like, we we for the longest, like AI was not looking as good as how it's looking now. So it was always a trial and error, trying a little bit of this, a little bit of that, still okay, maybe we should just choose more creators. So it was not necessarily the pot that was an issue. It was more of like, what is the direction that we are gonna double down on? Because I don't really think it's logical to open five pots if you don't have true uh hit, if you see what I mean. Now we know we have such a strong proof of concept, such a strong messaging market fit, such a strong product market fit, the more we push now on the same angles, on the same message, the better. But before you get there, of course, you first need to crack it. And then I'll say you don't need five pots. You just first make sure that you have that angle unlock, that audience unlock, the pain point, the listing call that takes off. And now when we had that takeoff, then we say, okay, now it's double down to really go aggressive on hiring uh and making sure that we can get our output up as well. But that again starts first with the intention as well with the within the team. Uh, you can definitely just start with with two pots, and then you can just like uh focus for like I would say 80% on already what's working, 20% trying to find something new that takes up really well. Um, but yeah, I would say really that the team building setup, uh yeah, five pots is not necessarily needed for for yeah if you don't uh see the return on a short term right away, if you see what I mean.

SPEAKER_03 1:35:32

Who else had a question, Brian?

SPEAKER_06 1:35:34

Yeah, I just wanted to learn more about what is your core process behind launching new brands, and how do you build them with your brands specifically? So what are you testing and what are your signals you're looking for?

SPEAKER_02 1:35:48

Yeah, so I think uh for launching a new brand is for us the same uh thought process that we go through then launching a new product. Um I say right now you have so much uh data. Um so for example, the data bank that I explained right now, you can already build something like that before you even go live because there's like potentially competitors, um people that are in the same sort of niche or huge audience for specific outcomes. So you really want to understand, okay, you want to focus on like the total market, you want to see if there is a product market fit, and it doesn't necessarily need to be the product, but you can also look at it like, hey, I'm not selling a product, I'm selling an outcome to someone, and you can definitely do research if there is an interest on an outcome. For example, like uh becoming more uh let's say more fit, right? There's you can find many products that should make the outcome, if you see what I mean, and then you're just trying to find a huge TAM, and then you just look a product that fits that use case that you want to sell, or the the pain point of the emotion that you want to sell, and then you just find a product that really matches with that because I would definitely reverse engineer it, not necessarily looking for a product, but look for a market, look for a problem, and then stick a product on that. And you can definitely right now do that with a lot of research already. Uh we're going even like, for example, on Amazon, big sellers or European market, bring to the US or vice versa, what's going in the US, bring to Europe. Um, but yeah, like how to find a new product, of course, is it's it's very it's very hard to like say, okay, do this and you find something. It really comes with research, and then also when you have that feeling, hey, this actually makes sense, then also my advice is really go for it. Because if you launch it, then you also really need to go double down and not not just test one ad and three creators, but just make sure that if you pick a product, and I also said that just now, you can you should be able to tell yourself, like, hey, if I want, I can sell sand in the Sahara. The product only is just gonna make it easier for me, and I'm just gonna find the right messaging market fit to make this product sellable, right? So you can sell anything, and then you just need to make sure that the economics are in your favor, that the audience is in your favor, and that you can build a nice storytelling around it, and then the product just checks the boxes. So instead of finding a product, you find the audience to put the product in, and then I believe that you can make everything work.

SPEAKER_06 1:38:08

Are you focusing also on top of funnel straight on the battle or are you trying to prevent for the middle level funnel funnels?

SPEAKER_03 1:38:15

Well, well, I'm like in the very beginning. Yeah, like imagine you're at zero.

SPEAKER_02 1:38:18

Yeah, I would say as well. Like top of funnel for us was the huge unlock to go from let's say 10 to 100. But in the beginning, storytelling is also what makes people engaged right away. Because also, if you're just starting, you still want to get people entering the funnel. Um, so yeah, definitely launch everything. But might your your split maybe is different. So top of funnel, middle funnel, bottle funnel, uh maybe you should like set up a different split. Um, because for us right now, the main importance to get new people in. But in the beginning, that's sort of like similar, right? So top of funnel is just also a way to stand out and build authority and trust. And launching a new brand, the first thing that you actually want to do is try to get as quick as possible, trust, authority, and uh proof of concept for your brand that people actually believe in what you sell and that you feel like hey, there is like a proof of concept, there's a product market fit, and then you can then you can go uh all in any way. But my thought process behind that, even like if we would launch a new product, we don't just randomly think, oh, we want to launch a new product, we really take our time for it, and then we just better make sure that we make it a winning product because we have that you have that in your own hands. You have in your own hands to make a product winning. It's just depending on how you position it, the offer you you have for, and of course, yeah, really you can actually make everything winning because you're on paid ads, you're not selling the product, you're selling the outcome for someone that's watching the ad. You're selling a better outcome, a better scenario, better life. Um, and that's just like a product is the way on uh on doing so.

SPEAKER_07 1:39:49

So if I were to build out like one part fully, like say today, one let's say the cell editor, one corporate editor, create coordinate according to uh design as well.

SPEAKER_04 1:40:02

Yeah.

SPEAKER_07 1:40:02

What is like U of R or the KPIs? Like take quality, all this stuff into acceleration, quality, and attention, but is there still volume after that? Yeah, you expect it from that T.

SPEAKER_02 1:40:15

Yeah, look, for example, fees L's three to five minutes takes a lot longer. Um we focus now a lot on V ZLs, so obviously the net new concepts in terms of like quantity goes lower. Um, but we always had like 60 concepts per strategist a month, so it's like 15 a week. Right. So that's also yeah, like but if you would also include like our split is then a bit different because we uh push a lot more on top of funnel, but if you also have middle funnel, bottom funnel, automatically you create more statics, you can also push for 80 KPIs. I don't think there's the best answer. It's more of like the best use case for your brand, for your product, for your team. Because you really just need to set it as a starting point. You say, okay, 60 is a great starting point. Like deliver 60 concepts, you see the quality of the concepts, and then you will also feel like okay, I think we can push for more. I think we can do 70. Let's try 70 this week, see how the strategist and the team responds on it, and then you can just set the pace. We started always at 80 concepts, but I also understand like 80 concepts on statics and 30-second videos is different than three to five minute VSLs where every single piece of B rule is highly important for the outcome of the video. So I'd rather have them spend all day on one VSL and deliver me the most exceptional VSL I've ever seen than they push out three, and they're all three are not really worth looking at.

SPEAKER_03 1:41:38

If you could put a firm budget on testing a new brand, what would it be? Like in order to again assume you're at zero.

SPEAKER_04 1:41:49

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 1:41:50

Knowing what you know now, how much would you budget to test a new brand? All in? Just to validate it before you decide whether it's worth it to keep going or kill it. It depends a little bit on how fast in the pace.

SPEAKER_02 1:42:03

Um but yeah, I do like it's it's really tough. I would say right now, if after like for me, if I would have put like 20k in, I still want to try it after I've done all my research. You see what I mean? Yeah. I'm very stubborn on giving up after I've put so much time. I was gonna say 50k is like a little bit. Yeah, but like for starters, like saying this, I would make um I don't want to make them scared to start because you can definitely do it on a lower budget than oh, if I don't have 50k, I cannot validate the brand. But I'd say for you and me, I would put like if I'm confident, I've done my research, I've known them, I've like I would have given even if I'm like 500k down. Yeah, I'm like, I'm I'm better gonna make this sellable. I just find a new angle, I'm just gonna find a new pain point, I'm gonna find a new audience, I'm gonna find a new funnel, I'm going to create even better ads. I'm not giving up. There is an unlook because for us also for longs, we've been trying, and then at one point that unlooked is there, and then it's just like 10x, 100x, and yeah, the unlook is is it like I've I've had this post as well. Like it can change over like this, and it's true. It is true, it really is true with ads. One small unlock can accelerate the whole funnel.

SPEAKER_03 1:43:10

One ad can literally change everything, and the scalability, I don't think like until you see those numbers, yeah. I don't think people realize the scalability of e-commerce. Like it's absolutely increasing.

SPEAKER_02 1:43:22

Yeah, like because also this happened for us. The the ad that break was the our breakthrough has now to date spent four million, and that was the ad that made the rest work better as well. So that comes again back to the full ecosystem. That ad made all the ads, we've even launched those ads before those that winning crazy like home run shot went live. Our other the static started performing better, the UGC started performing better because they they just like entered the funnel and that just helps the main funnel. And that that video just brought so much new audience in. We got so many great comments, impressions, and just like we were just being pushed by Meta, and our ads started performing better, and that was our unlock, that was our breakthrough, and now everything just like goes like on on the back of it, and we just like diversificate and the same message. But yeah, testing a new brand is like really also on how aggressive you you go, what tools you use. Um, but I also know like yeah, like also you you can with five or ten K already see hey, this is going to be something, if you see what I mean. Yeah, of course. Um, but yeah, maybe I I said this as well. Um, I get this question often. Hey, I I'm new in e-commerce, I want to start a brand. I said you should not start by having your own brand, you should start by working, working for a brand as a strategist. Make sure that you deserve to run your own brand by like getting winning concepts, because that's where you can test for free if you're smart enough to do this. Yeah, or not necessarily smart enough, but understand like you can learn the game, you can understand how the brand is doing it, and you can validate yourself as like a real uh because that's where the real e-com starts. Like it starts with the paid ads. Of course, all the other aspects and fundaments of running a brand is important. Build on top of that. But if you start in the brand and you see your own concepts picking up, at one point you feel, hey, I think I can also do this on my own. You learn a little bit, you basically play with the ad budget of uh of the brand. Um, so yeah, start as a strategist, start as a video editor, start as a graphic designer. Yeah, um, actually, we had I had a I had a guy on here, he DM'd me so many times to like, hey, I would love to work for you. He's already working there now for one and a half year. He just like a month ago launched his own brand as well. And you backed it. Yeah, like of course, like uh he he he was always uh looking up to it. No, I did not back it, but more of like supported him. Yeah, sure, go for it. Yeah, right. Not necessarily like uh together with us, but he just worked for us, he learned a lot from us. Um, he he delivered great work for us. So also that's why I uh yeah, he deserves to uh to do that because that was always his goal. But he also knew, like, hey, I'm not there yet. So he had a great salary, great bonuses, and with that he started building his own brand. Um, and then you also feel more secure, I would say. So completely starting out of the blank. Um, it's not worth it to go down 10k in depth to start your own brand, buy stock. That's the worst thing that that I could that you can advise someone. Really get practice um starting the learn the e-commerce game, but because it's a really cool thing, and um yeah, building brands is is the future for sure.

SPEAKER_00 1:46:17

I want to double up on the creative pod because we we have a very similar setup, but we are much lower than you. We have one creative strategist and one media editor, and we have three parts of those. Uh and when you said uh you go for low volume, high quality, we're focusing also on like very high quality, one volume, and volume thing. Then he said 60 concepts per create per part. Yeah, we just craft 20. Yes, we just craft 20 by implementing a lot of AI, we do a little thing. So I'd love to understand like what is what is it that your creative strategist does in their day exactly that and and what are they not like? What are they specifically going to shoot?

SPEAKER_02 1:47:01

Yes, a good one. I also think, of course, your uh pod has only one editor, which also automatically makes the output is half as much. Um, but at the same time, our strategist, um with the tools that we have now, with already so much data that we have, he can come up with a sort of like a few uh low-hanging fruit concepts that are sort of like net new iterations based on what's winning already. Like if I if I want myself, I can sit down with my laptop and I create 20 very high-intent concepts tonight myself. The ideation. The execution is the most important part. The the ideation is also very important, but the bridge from ideation to execution with the video editor, that's where like the real because the ID is started. Now making sure that the ID is getting alive as how you intended it to get alive, is where the magic happens. And that's of course also why we have two editors. And the strategist just makes sure to put the concept as much detailed as possible. So his ID, which is also backed by our data bank, is getting alive with as much intent as possible in the most uh high um potential method, right? So the strategist is coming, is doing the ideation, is doing the research, and but the video editors is actually doing the heavy lifting because they make the concept come to life by looking for the matching B-roll, looking for the great content, and that's also where like the that's why it's also really like a team commitment, like you they're really doing it together.

SPEAKER_00 1:48:25

So they create the creator brief, they change the content, well the content manager creates the content of the code.

SPEAKER_02 1:48:29

Yeah, creative coordinator.

SPEAKER_00 1:48:32

Yeah, so so the creator strategist doesn't touch the the create the creator communication at all?

SPEAKER_02 1:48:39

No, our our strategist doesn't talk to creators, they only talk like, hey, this is the briefs we need. We have a dedicated pod. So I didn't mention this, but one of the pods is purely creator pod. So one of our pods is only uh created pod. So strategists, the only thing that they do is come up with new ideation, net new concepts on VSLs. So what I'm saying, like our our 80, 80, 90% of our output is going to top of funnel VSLs. They don't even bother talking to creators, they just come up with the IDs, they come up with the ideation, and then where the real magic is is making sure that ideation comes to life within the same intent that they how they had it envisioned. And the power of the strategist is trying to make it as easy as possible to follow that same briefing in the best possible way. That, as I said, like the idea comes to life as how it was intended from the strategist in that way. Um, but yeah, of course, like creative management is in our brand uh a department on its own. Strategists should be doing what they're good at, and that's coming up with strategy ideations and making sure we have great concepts. Talking with creators can be really exhausting. Oh no, I want 200 for a batch. No, 300. No, we don't want to waste their time. We want to make sure that their time is being used in the most returning way for the brand, and that's just come up with great new concepts. And of course, they come like hey, I'm looking for matchure uh creators, and our creator team takes care. Of that, we have a huge database to choose, and also we use a huge um yeah internal databank where we have already all the B-roll and the concepts. And but within that, creative briefs, you can create a lot of uh intention behind it by requesting, for example, 20 B-roll shots, not just the UGC itself, requesting for a lot of B-roll, repurpose it across the whole fan, all the VSL editors can use it, and that's just uh yeah, like something that you should always do. It uh helps the rest. But I think that's also the big difference. Like that if your strategist is dealing with craters all the time, it moves a lot of the output.

SPEAKER_03 1:50:34

By the way, um, I think we'll just wrap this up in a second, but we didn't even talk about this, bro. Comfort? Oh yeah. Have you been studying Hudson's playbook?

SPEAKER_02 1:50:44

Yeah, I've met him like one and a half years ago.

SPEAKER_03 1:50:46

Um because like, okay, there's Grunes, of course. Yeah. Dude, the other standout brand right now, in my opinion, is Comfort. Yeah, it's insane what he's built. Yeah, 100%.

SPEAKER_02 1:50:56

Respect for that. I think it's a complete, it's it's sort of like an opposite thing of our marketing. They just do creator army, um new field, really interesting. I think he unlocked something insane. He he tapped into the yeah, trying to make it as native as possible, not looking like ads, trying to really make people resonate with something, feel part of something, and do that on mass volume. So, major respect to him. I uh I've had some back and forth with him before. We've talked about it.

SPEAKER_03 1:51:21

Uh one thing he said he was on his operators podcast, he was like, I am the best at e-commerce. And he wasn't saying it in a definitive way, it was just like that's his mentality. Yeah, which I think is so important. Like he actually has the confidence and he he thinks to himself, and he obviously has a brand approve. He has a revenue to back that confidence, yeah. But he literally is like, I am the best. Yeah, but I feel like you have that saying, like, I am the best. When I shoot, I kill.

SPEAKER_02 1:51:49

Yeah, with what I do, I believe that there's not many brands doing it with the same thought process, same structure, same intent. Because I said, like, e-commerce is a broad thing. Like, there is brands on Amazon that are doing crazy that are also doing it amazing, but I could have never. Amazon is a small part of it, but there's someone else completely managing that. I haven't opened Amazon once in my life, and we're doing 50-60k a day. But I don't know anything about it. I'm not great in Amazon, but I know it's important, and that's basically all I know. And I just focus where I'm really good at, and that's performance marketing, making sure I have new customers acquired every single day, as much as possible, because that's where we see the real scale. And yeah, what what Hudson is doing is of course also great, but completely different as what we are doing with ads. Yeah, it's totally different. Yes, so he's the best in that creator army. He basically invented it, I would say so. Yeah, but it's like his playbook, right? And I feel I, with our brand holding, we have our own playbook as well. Like no one is doing it like us. Yeah, and how we are doing it is arguably also one of the best possible ways on acquiring new customers, building true assets. Because um you you asked me this before. Why do we need to choose between brand or performance marketing? And we've created something that you can do both at the same time. Yeah, which I think you are the yeah.

SPEAKER_03 1:53:05

I think you might be the best at that. Sick. I really do think that. Yeah. Oh man, thank you so much for having me. Too good. It's just too good. Yeah. Vince, guys. Fucking beast, though. No, I'm so glad you got to come check out the studio too at e-comm. This is the e-com factory. Yeah, it is.

SPEAKER_02 1:53:24

What's up, guys? Thank you so much for all showing up here. It was a nice chat.