How Nick Shackelford Picks Products After $200M on Meta Ads

Nick Shackelford has spent over $200M on Meta ads and runs paid for 7 DTC brands that all share one thing: a subscription engine underneath them. His agency, Structured, spends north of $15M a month. He flew to Hong Kong and sat down with us to break down how he actually picks products and runs brands in 2026.

We’ve consolidated everything from this episode, into one playbook. Download it for free: https://www.elevatorgoods.com/talks/nick-shackelford

In this episode you will learn:

- How to know if a product is worth backing before you spend a dollar, and the five traits that make scaling easy
- Why the best products sell themselves on repeat, and the simple math that tells you if your business will ever flow
- How to run ad tests that teach you something even when they fail, and why patience is what most founders run out of first
- Why anyone can copy your entire brand overnight now, and the only two things that still protect you
- How to decide what to keep and what to walk away from, using the framework Nick runs across 7 brands
- Why equity is usually the wrong trade early in your career, and what actually keeps great people around

Follow Elevator:
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Website: https://www.elevatorgoods.com

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

Follow Nick Shackelford:
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/iamnickshackelford
X: https://x.com/iamshackelford
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/nickshackelford

Chapters:
00:00 Intro

01:00 From soccer coach to $100M on Facebook ads

04:00 Hong Kong, Guangzhou, and getting close to the manufacturer

08:30 The state of e-commerce in 2026

13:00 Smoke testing and the bath bomb that flipped overnight

23:00 The Easy-Win product filter

24:00 The seasons of subscription

30:00 The real moat in e-commerce

40:00 Reasons, seasons, lifetimes

44:00 Hire the young gun, Batman and Robin teams

52:00 Why equity is a trap

58:00 Telehealth, GLP-1, and the next wave

1:18:00 Recession-proof DTC

#ecommerce #dtc #paidmedia #subscription #shackelford

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

When you are really, really good at acquisition, you can pretty much do everything to start and generate revenue. But what you aren't great at is like you're not good at keeping it. Manufacturing negotiation, website optimization, like if I didn't have the community, the resources, or the people or the access to any of these things, I would not be sitting with you on this family trip to talk about this. We have structured, constant, lucid breeze, brands, events. That's like a part of the things that I've been involved in for 13 years. Like you have to think about it, like I have buckets of money I'm willing to spend that should allude to learnings. Hopefully that bucket of money resorts in a bigger bucket of money, but it's not always that case. It doesn't always happen that way. If I'm able to launch something with an intention to get learning and use the learning to then inform the next thing which I'm doing, that is that that's a win.

SPEAKER_01 0:47

What advice would you give to people getting started?

SPEAKER_00 0:50

Be incredible at like one really, really good thing and then be good enough at everything else. And that one really, really good thing needs to be customer acquisition and creative.

SPEAKER_01 0:59

Do you think now's a good time to enter e comment? Nick, super happy to have you on. First of all, really appreciate it. Let the record state we confirmed this yesterday. Um so I guess let me first hand it to you to introduce yourself. Sure. For those who don't know you. I mean, I've been following you, but you also seem like someone who does a lot of things. So we'd love to hear what you're up to in 2026.

SPEAKER_00 1:39

2026. 2026 is a lot of 2025. But I I was telling you this right before we jumped on. I was like, I don't pretend to be a founder of anything, but like I'm really, really in all of e-commerce. I think this space to me has given me everything. Like, I won't go too deep into why, but I was a high school soccer coach. Uh, I cared about sports more than anything. And then when you realize that you're not going to be pro for a very long time, you have to quickly figure out what's going on. And so I was early in Facebook ads. And so, like, you I'm I'm literally playing with my fidget right now, and this is kind of where things things started off for me. But it was meta-ads, it was branding, it was website optimization, and it was all things that like you don't know what is going to turn into from a legitimate brand building standpoint. Like, I come here and I see um the the incredible products and businesses that you guys have in this office. Uh, and it's crazy to say that those guys were probably learning from things that I was talking about uh in early, early forums and chat rooms and and different types of Facebook groups.

SPEAKER_01 2:40

100%. I mean, I've been following you for quite a while now, and then we briefly met in Greek Out or Geek Out last summer. Um so what brings you to Hong Kong? Like, why are you here right now?

SPEAKER_00 2:54

So the there's a there's two teams. There's one team called the Best Fulfill Team, and they were they were like a f uh fulfillment company that uh reached out to me on LinkedIn, and I actually didn't know that they were legit or not because I never heard of this community. And so I actually had to ask Jason Wong, who is a Hong Kong native, he does uh packaging and and manufacturing stuff over here. And he I was basically like, is this a real company? Because I'm about to fly me and my entire family over to China for the first time to see if it's legit or not. Oh, it's your first time here. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Amazing. We try to do an agent trip every once in a while. We did Japan last year, China this year, and maybe next year we'll go Cambodia or something. Amazing. Um, but this we we came here because hey, the Canton Fair pulls a very unique group of people that I had I I don't play with products. I don't I don't pretend to be a product guy. You're a marketing guy. I'm a marketing growth revenue. That's all I want to play in. This is kind of why like we have Breeze. We have I can list like seven or eight high growth brands that I'm a part of that like Serene Herbs, Bliss, uh Barnacle, Breeze. There's the list goes on. All these are just high growth, direct to consumer, first subscription, back end, like the the shit that you need to actually be successful in 2026. That's what I've basically been able to pivot myself into. Because before, like, and I think this is you probably probably know this from the beginning. I was only in meta ads.

SPEAKER_02 4:07

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 4:07

Facebook ads, Facebook ads, Facebook ads, and then founder, those guys put me on. Incredible. Nathan from founding, he's like, Hey, I want you to teach this course. I was like, I'm never gonna make content. I don't ever want to have a community or content myself. And all of a sudden he's like, Well, just do it for me. Just make it for my community, my course. And it went wild. It put me in a new international situation, which I did not plan to do or do. And this was years and years ago, pr uh prior to the iOS update. Yeah. Like when things were like still good, I guess you would say.

SPEAKER_01 4:35

The glory days.

SPEAKER_00 4:36

Yeah, the the best days. Yeah. And that that put me into a place where I'm like, I just needed every single year to continue to reinvent what it is that was happening on these levels, and now I get to have access to as many different types of product or brand founders that I've ever been able to find.

SPEAKER_01 4:49

So let's come back to Guangzhou, Hong Kong. So you come, you spoke at an event. Correct. And then now you're in Hong Kong. Did you go to Canton?

SPEAKER_00 4:57

We I was supposed to go to Canton. I didn't want to walk it. My son, I we traveled with my son. So every time I do a trip, uh, I don't try to get paid, I don't try to ask for any cash. I basically say uh flight from my wife and my son.

SPEAKER_01 5:08

Yeah. And so I hope you flew cafe, bro.

SPEAKER_00 5:10

We did, we did it. We have to. Okay, good. We have to. On the way home, I think we're going to United, so we'll see how it goes.

SPEAKER_01 5:15

Okay. So what do you think? It's funny because um, you know, as you know, we've got a big community here in the studio. There's not a ton of Americans. Um there, it's very international, but mostly Middle East, Europe, Asia. And I think recently, what I wanted to get into you with you is like as an American founder, I know you're not super involved in product, yeah. But how do you look at the US-China like beef? Like when you're here in Hong Kong, what are your what are your thoughts? I know it's your first time. So I'm actually genuinely curious.

SPEAKER_00 5:48

So I I've known about this, I've known about the Canton Fair since I got into e-commerce because of the fidget spinners. Like we were directly communicating with the factories around bearings and plastic. Like those are the two things that we sold on fidget spinners was bearings and plastic. And this was seven, eight years ago at this point. And we we knew that you had to have the relationships with them. At that time, you could game meta or any of these channels and have like really good CPAs and like margins made sense. Okay. Now you're in a situation where you don't have a choice that a lever to pull is better relationship with the manufacturer. You have to negotiate rates, you have to negotiate product cost down with them because you can't like optimize the account as much as you possibly were able to in the beginning. So I think that the relationship being here. Now, if I was a product founder and I've met with a lot of the guys that are here for the specific Canton Fair, and they might not be going to it because I feel this is what people told me like if you're going to the Canton Fair for the first time, you're probably just starting out. You probably already should have been going and meeting with your manufacturer a long, long time ago. Yeah. And they you go to the Canton Fair because there's a reason to get all the other founders and partners around you. But in this case specifically, I was new and I wanted to see what the energy and the vibe was about. And so I was in Guangzhou for and it was, it was electric. It was so cool.

SPEAKER_01 6:59

Yeah. Guangzhou's come up a lot.

SPEAKER_00 7:01

Well, so they did what they explained to me was like they designed uh China designated as like uh like an uh economic opportunity zone. Yeah. And they basically said, like, we want they China chose a handful of people to say, like, you guys are gonna have economic success.

SPEAKER_01 7:14

How much do you know about GBA, Greater Bay Area? I don't, I don't okay. So we'll get back to e-com in a second, but I think it's really cool. And people don't know this. So in the south of China, there's something called GBA, which is the Greater Bay Area. So it's Hong Kong, Macau, Shenzhen, and Guangzhou. Okay. And the five next five-year mission of China is to really unify these four territories. Obviously, Hong Kong is a special administrative region, and so is Macau. So there's a border, we have our own currency, our own legislation, and same with Macau. But basically, the four city combined is what's now being called GBA. Hong Kong as the international finance hub. Interesting. Macau as lifestyle, gaming, and entertainment, Shenzhen as tech, Silicon Valley, basically, and Guangzhou as manufacturing. Yes. And so combined, you've got finance, gaming entertainment, tech manufacturing, and it's essentially like the new powerhouse of Asia. And that's like the master plan is to really integrate all of this. And Hong Kong, obviously, is like still the international hub. So that's where you get all these expats here. And we're trying to build as as part of that the e-commerce epicenter of Asia.

SPEAKER_00 8:22

Well, it has to. I think it's a matter of time because the closer, like I said, the closer you get to your manufacturers and the closer you get to the people that are making your product that you're selling it everywhere else. Like it's just it's it's the the the last frontier of optimization of margin.

SPEAKER_01 8:36

Yeah, so the people in this office they go to China for the day regularly, they go meet their supplier. I mean, we're building a uh a new concept that we're launching on Monday. Interesting. It took us two weeks, 100% AI, to from concept all the way to what will be launched on Monday. 100% AI. And in that two weeks, not only did we build the brand, build the site, build essentially like the whole thing top down, we've also gone to China, nominated our suppliers, and have pretty much finished product development.

SPEAKER_00 9:08

Oh my god. Two weeks. Two weeks. Because you're here.

SPEAKER_01 9:11

Because we're here. Yeah. So that's what I want to get into because like I mentioned earlier, I saw your open residency. I thought that was insane. I thought that was amazing. And I thought that was like truly a master class in e-com in 2025. But since then, a whole year has passed and the world has like flipped over ten times over. And uh, I'm curious, like, what are your thoughts on the whole game right now? You've been in it for so long. So let's start from like a high level.

SPEAKER_00 9:37

Dude, I'll I'll even speak about this even deeper for you because I I've been wrestling through this this being here. There's actually reset a lot of my expectations and my where my future was going. So let me I let me establish we have structured, constant, lucid breeze, brands, events. That's like a part of the things that I've been involved in for 13 years. Every element that I think is necessary to have an insulated. I don't want to call it empire is like it's a weird thing to say. Like, I'm not trying to build empire or whatever. I'm trying to build flexible access and I'm trying to build access to resources so that my I am insulated from all things. That's that's essentially what I'm trying to build. It's not an empire. I'm trying to build access and insulation so that anything were to go wrong, I'm protected. This year at Breeze, we we ran into a situation where like when you're building, and I'll I'll land this plan, I promise. We got into a capital crunch that I was having to I had to wire in more money than anticipated and planned for. And that that could have put myself and my family in a situation that was not planned for and unaccessed, uh unacceptable. But that's what they needed at the brand. That's what the brand needed. Okay. If I didn't have the community, the resources, or the people or the access to any of these things, this situation would have been much. I would not be sitting with you on this family trip to talk about this because we had this community already built and insulated. And so I think when you, when you when what what built that was like the last five plus years of knowing ads, emails, acquisition, conversion rate. But that was with the heavy people. Like I needed people to do all those things. And so what I was able to do is I was able to understand and acquire like a generalist level B plus skill at every single thing, except I'm A plus in acquisition. So when you are really, really good at acquisition, you could pretty much do everything to start and generate revenue. But what you aren't great at is like you're not good at keeping it. You're not good in building a customer service, you're not good at building all these other things that you if you didn't have access to people, if you didn't have people that already knew how to do customer support builds, manufacturing negotiation, website optimization. Like if you weren't, if you the founder yourself weren't skilled in that one specific thing, you're not gonna get that shit done. But now all of a sudden, you have the amount of content people are pumping on YouTube, the amount of content people are pumping on Twitter, these AI tools.

SPEAKER_01 11:51

That's freed sauce.

SPEAKER_00 11:53

And it's real sauce.

SPEAKER_01 11:54

It's not it's not bullshit. It's not, it's real. You do have to feed like filter through, but there is insane amount of gems.

SPEAKER_00 11:59

So when you filter through, you're like, you're like filtering through, you're using the tool, and you get like it's like a weird educate and discover as you go situation. So you're like, oh, like I'm gonna use this AI ad, this thing that is on everybody's Twitter. Uh it's gonna make AI ads for you in two clicks, right? So you do it, you go through, you're like, well, it's actually kind of shit, but in the process of me learning this, yeah, now I can make something.

SPEAKER_02 12:18

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 12:18

So so this this is the thing that's blown me away. And I'm sitting here on the I'm I'm we have a what 14-hour flight home tomorrow.

SPEAKER_02 12:24

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 12:25

And I go, structured is 55 employees, paid media, email, and CRO. Okay. Lucid's 20 plus, paid media, you know, it's a restricted space. Okay. Breeze is uh sales, retail, but the digital team's like five, six people now, okay. And then these the other brands that are involved in like high growth and retention and and subscription, those, those, those teams fluctuate anywhere between like three to six people. Why would it ever be bigger? It shouldn't. It shouldn't, yeah. It really shouldn't, but it but what what's hard for people to understand, and I think Alex, uh Alex Becker, uh not Alex Becker, Alex, um he's an ad he's the ad guy. Alex uh he's got incredible accent blanking on it. Um he he was like the prompts and the tools in which everybody's using are good enough to get you close, but they're not good enough to get you perfect. And so the the the final piece, the human, the human in the loop, is needed for you to be like, okay, that's when taste comes into it. Like the level that people cannot teach, that AI cannot give you is taste and perspective of how humans are going to interact with the thing in which you're creating. And I think that's like the value that after being in it for 10 plus years, like that final little like flavor that you can put on it is where I think what 2026 is going to show.

SPEAKER_01 13:37

Hey, I'm Anish. And I just want to quickly give you more context on the world of elevator. Elevator goods is where we build our brands from the ground up, owning the product, operations, and growth. Elevator Capital is where we invest in brands worth betting on. Backing founders with capital, mentorship, and connections. Elevator Talks is where we document it all, sitting down with operators who've actually done it, going deep on their frameworks, their numbers, and the decisions they made to move the needle. Elevator Creators is where we help creators build brands, leveraging their audience and turning them into a real business. The studio is our private members' club with its first location in Hong Kong. Built for founders and operators who want to be around people building at the same level. If you're building a brand and you want the systems and the playbooks to do so, you're in the right place. Check the link in bio to learn more. 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. The first 95% is getting easier, but the last 5% is like proper uh skill set.

SPEAKER_00 14:46

Well, you talked about you had two, it took took you two weeks, but you had to have the idea, the concept, you knew where you needed to go.

SPEAKER_01 14:51

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 14:52

But the speed at which you shipped it was crazy. Correct. So we we what these guys are talking about like what is the new MCP Clawed to I know the Clavia one just came out, but I was we were playing with this one in the city.

SPEAKER_01 15:02

Spotify one just came out too.

SPEAKER_00 15:03

Okay, so the this one just came out, right? It was like Claude MCP to meta no, it was meta allowed it, Claude also. So now they're now they're like, oh, we didn't want to use this before because you're I'm gonna lose my account unless you register it as an official app.

SPEAKER_01 15:16

Yeah, correct. You have to go through Manaus.

SPEAKER_00 15:17

Correct. So now that was a huge problem. People didn't want to, or like we started to use MANIS because I wanted to do the optimization there. Yeah. I have an $8,000 media buyer that I don't necessarily need to pay anymore.

SPEAKER_02 15:27

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 15:27

That's wild. That's wild to even have the confidence of someone to say, like, I'm gonna fire an incredible media buyer that I needed to have the lifeline of my business.

SPEAKER_01 15:35

Well, two things. One, the chef of or the the Clodge Meta MCP, they've like kind of gatekeeped it. Yeah, which one? They've slow rolled it. So I spoke to our rep and he said that within three weeks I'll open up to everyone. Um they have to roll it out. That's just a side note. I guess going back, like I'm I'm curious because you started as a media buyer.

SPEAKER_00 15:55

Bro, I was this, I was arguing with my former boss, Andrew Farrell, on Twitter the other day because I was like, dude, I used to get shit for because I used to call this thing called a PPP rapper, PPE wrapper. Did you hear about this before? No. All right, here we go. This is for for any of the like OGs in the space that you guys know the space. Okay. So when you when you launch a brand new ad, I still think today that this is valuable. I still think this is valuable. You have a brand new ad that you launch, you have no engagement, you have no nothing on it, but you're like, I'm convinced that this is an absolute banger of an ad. Well, what you would do is like you would take the post ID, you would launch it as a conversion ad, and then you'd uh copy it and duplicate it over into an engagement or a video view ad specifically and run up the engagement. So you'd basically supercharge this one ad to have a bunch of engagement comments and like people talking about it. And then that ad would also get out of learning much quicker. Back in the day, there's no learning phase.

SPEAKER_02 16:45

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 16:45

There's just it just was on. Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 16:47

Right.

SPEAKER_00 16:48

And so this this this shit to me of like you would have to make up these different things. And I still believe some of the sauce because in there's a founder community that we were just building around like how to run better, better, better new meta ads. There's still media buying sauce that I would, I believe, like what we call like I call this smoke test. Yeah. We talked about this on I still believe the way in which you We'll get to smoke testing in detail.

SPEAKER_01 17:10

I really want to pick your brain on this.

SPEAKER_00 17:11

I think it's a I still think it's a viable way to test what you need from a systematic point of view because where people get wrong is like if you're new to ads, you don't necessarily understand just like how to start and what structure is there for me to get real learning of what goes on. You you've been in the game for quite a while. Eight years. When you when you launch a test, you already come with an idea of like, I'm I'm hoping that I learn this from this thing. When I want to talk to somebody about like they're if they're new to a uh a CRO test, if they're new to an offer test, if they're new to an ad test, if they're new to an email test, like you have to think about like I have buckets of money I'm willing to spend, tranches of cash, that should allude to learnings. Hopefully that bucket of money resorts in a bigger bucket of money, but it's not always that case. It doesn't always happen that way. If I'm able to launch something with learning, launch something with an intention to get learning and use the learning to then inform the next thing in which I'm doing, that that that's a win. Even if it didn't quote unquote generate me a bunch of uh conversion or of rows was the high. And I think that's that's a perspective that I think some of the newer ones come out there.

SPEAKER_01 18:16

Well, I think the younger, the new wave of founders. We were talking about this, but you know, younger 20-year-olds these days, I think just literally as a sign of the time, there's instant gratification expectations, right? Like, think about it. I mean, nowadays, Amazon Prime, you get your delivery same day. I know Netflix is within five seconds. So with e-commerce, it's like, well, let me launch it. And if I don't see return within a week, turn it off. So this is what I wanted to ask you because is one of the motes in 2026 patience, is one of the moats capital, like specifically when it gets when it gets to smoke smoke testing, like how much pain should you be willing to endure in terms of capital loss as far as testing? It's still testing, like you're getting data, but you're still burning cash. 100%. It you know, is that a moat? The difference between Or is that like just a sad way to say that's a product that you should probably just kill, but you think it's you're enduring pain so that you can develop a moat later on? Is that just an excuse?

SPEAKER_00 19:17

It's such a good question. Okay. I'm gonna I'm gonna go both, I'm gonna play with you. I'm gonna play with you both ways. Okay. Okay. So I've seen products launched. This is a bath bomb for cleaning hockey pads. Okay, it's still gonna be on this niche. It's a bath bomb that a dude made to clean hockey pads as a normal regular bath bomb that like dissolves in a bath.

SPEAKER_01 19:38

You put the the bath bomb in a tub and you put your hockey gear.

SPEAKER_00 19:41

And it cleans it, right? Like dissolves and starts cleaning. Okay, it's like makes sense. Very niche, very niche. Super niche, yeah. Super niche.

SPEAKER_02 19:46

Yeah, exactly.

SPEAKER_00 19:46

Real product. Yeah, basically it's like the the the up north and like the hockey states.

SPEAKER_02 19:52

Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 19:52

Okay, okay. So he he he's he's running ads, he's like, dude, none of this is working, none of this is working. I was like, dude, this offer makes no sense, it's too expensive, blah, blah, blah. He's like, Oh, I'll change the offer, change the offer, change the offer, didn't work. Oh, I was like, okay, like maybe it's not working. Like, I don't know, like, okay, we need we need like one like an attractive, easy to understand mom explaining the product. And he was like, Can you just give me like uh any of your moms that you have in the hockey community, just make an ad talking about it? One girl, one ad, this one thing changed his entire fucking business. Because all he all he did, he's like, I need a semi-attractive woman talking about the product, that's what it's going to do, and fix and it went to the ad account and changed it overnight. It was not working for months. And he's like, I know there's something there. Some conversions are too expensive.

SPEAKER_01 20:33

Do you believe that you can make anything work?

SPEAKER_00 20:35

I I I do believe because there's so many levers, right? We have, I do believe, now this might be, I don't, I hope this isn't like an ego thing, but I believe that there's not too many things that I've come across that I don't think I could sell. That issue is sell it for what the founder wants to be selling it at price point, pure discount play. Okay, here I'll I'll put this back to you. How do you think basics should be ran?

SPEAKER_01 20:58

Amazon basics.

SPEAKER_00 20:59

How how do you think basics should be ran?

SPEAKER_01 21:01

Oh, like that. Well, that I mean, that's a great question because distribution is a huge moat, right? And so when you look at Amazon Prime, there's no customer acquisition cost for them. So they can price it to pretty much zero. Correct. So if I was trying to acquire customers for a basic line, I don't think I would actually get into that business, to be honest with you.

SPEAKER_00 21:22

So difficult.

SPEAKER_01 21:22

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 21:22

How how how how how would I how would I be different? You have built, which is like high quality shirts and products like this is GU, this is Levi, these are Adidas, these are uh Yeah, GU's phenomenal, by the way. Incredible T's, incredible T's. Yeah. But so think about it so there's a there's this woman, she's like, you know, I really don't want to be a discount brand, I really don't want to be a discount brand. And I go, that's cool. She won't do you want to have a do you want to have a business? Like she sells women's undies and she sells uh intimates, and it's not name brand, but it's her brand.

SPEAKER_01 21:50

You're saying you can make it work, but it just has to be on it on the discount side.

SPEAKER_00 21:53

You gotta be real, you gotta be understandable. Like what this part, what are you trying to run this?

SPEAKER_01 21:55

Yeah, or if you're not comfortable with that, then just change products.

SPEAKER_00 21:58

Correct. Yeah, or be innovative. On some of the products in which you're trying to sell it on, like this is this is like even tied to breeze, right? Like we we get demolished on this front end because we our product is arguably one of the most expensive products in the space. And you can buy T C beverage in America for a four pack for 10 bucks. Our four pack is like 26 bucks. How could you do that? What is it? You have to understand that there's some people that are willing to pay for the brand in which it's been created, but other people want this product because they want to get high.

SPEAKER_01 22:26

Dude, 10 bucks sounds way too cheap. That to me, I'd be like, that must be made of crab.

SPEAKER_00 22:30

Correct, correct. That's and that's that's our bet. That's our that's our positioning and stance on this. Like, do you want to pay for cheap? You want to get a cheap high? But guess what? A lot of people want a cheap high. Yeah. Because you comp you comp it to alcohol. Do you want to a 30 rack is? 30 rack is like less than 16 bucks sometimes for for something that's not that great.

SPEAKER_02 22:46

Yeah, and Lights.

SPEAKER_00 22:47

Yeah. Or even worse. Like once Amazon gets into alcohol, could you imagine Amazon basic beer?

SPEAKER_01 22:53

That'd be wild. Okay, so going back to smoke testing, because I'm about to do this on Monday, we've done this several times, this trap in e-commerce, where you can get stuck in a seven, even eight-figure brand for years trying to make it work because of pure emotion, emotional attachment to this concept that you had, this idea that you had, it's your brain child, it's your vision, it's your baby, you had this idea, your family supported, whatever. Yeah. But in reality, it's a garbage idea. But somehow you turn it into a seven, eight-figure business. But to me, that's a trap. I'm I'm speaking that speaking about this with eight years of experience kind of doing this. Okay. So now what I'm looking for are easier wins. You know, instead of spending years of your life trying to make something average work, find the perfect framework product. We call it the Mona Lisa internally. We're looking for a Mona Lisa. What are your thoughts on this? Because you're involved in so many businesses, and it you you have this like third, uh you have this like bird's eye view of like what's a good business. Oh god. The ones that are easier, right? Not everything in life needs to be so difficult. But e-commerce businesses can be difficult. Like I've got a I've got a bedding business. They're big products, pillows, comforters. Like it's not easy to make it work. You know, we've made it work, but it wasn't easy. So my business partner, he always says, like, we've spent the last several years swimming against the tide. Tide's going this way, we're swimming this way. We're strong swimmers, we'll figure it out. But now we're like, fuck that. A little easier. I'm making a U-turn. I'm going with the tide. What are your thoughts?

SPEAKER_00 24:29

I think about this. Oh my God, this is all I would ever do. Like, um, I was I was this going the opposite direction. I was baby clothes, um, gadgets, all the things that like you are high enough AOB that you could feel confident, like you can get a CPA under 60 bucks and be like, yeah, I can make some margin on this. And I let's see how many people I can convert uh one time. As soon as I got deep in the subscription side, or as soon as I started seeing like what Breeze would actually was was actually doing, this is like three and a half or four years ago. I felt I could all I felt like media buying, like you mentioned, you could solve, I truly think you could solve anything if it's priced correctly or if the offer is an alignment of the consumption behavior of the overall product. So from a Breeze standpoint, from a consumable standpoint, from an application into daily life standpoint, there's a reason why these hydration packets are not so like element is one area, instant hydration is another area, IM8 is another area. Like those consumption behaviors and packets are built in a way like the IM8 story of their AOV in like the first two, three months shatters my perception of what is possible. What what what people are willing to spend on to have this type of thing when like are the results like 130, right? I think it's like 260, dude.

SPEAKER_01 25:44

I think they do they do three months.

SPEAKER_00 25:46

They do crazy. It's something ridiculous. It's something like the price at the beginning is like so so aggressive.

SPEAKER_01 25:51

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 25:51

And I think I'll go back, apolog, apologize on this. The I think the product has to be a consumable product on a 27 to 45 day cadence where there's a natural habit that's being formed.

SPEAKER_01 26:03

This is your framework. This is my framework. This is the Nick framework, what you're looking for to go with the tide.

SPEAKER_00 26:07

Correct. In the business, I'm involved in seven right now, and all seven of them have a subscription back end, and all seven of them I call like the seasons of subscription. Like there's very different, there's very different quo uh quadrants that they live in. One's like hard, hard growth, one is soft growth, one is like hard decline, one is like steady increase. Like there's like four different ones that I would believe in. You have an AOV of a product that sits below $35. Very difficult to acquire a ton of new customers on this. You're definitely buying into an L LTV three, four months, but this product cleans your daily life in your home. It cleans the air, goes on top of a fan. So it turns your fan into a filtration device. And it's a a better for you way of having uh cleaner air inside your home. This is an AOV that sits underneath $35. And it's it's a rebuild style on a monthly or quarterly basis. What's the CPA on a product like that? Probably $30. Oh, wow. $30 to $32. So it's a one-to-one. It's a it's a no-brainer decision making that I can dig.

SPEAKER_01 27:06

So that's for me with the tide.

SPEAKER_00 27:08

That yeah, correct. That's I'm at home post-COVID. I'm not spending a ton of time. I have a bunch of pets. There's a bunch of dander in my home. I might have a new newborn in my house. I want to clean the air, but I don't want to buy a Dyson that's super expensive.

SPEAKER_02 27:20

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 27:20

I have I have five fans in my house. I'm going to put this on my fan.

SPEAKER_01 27:24

So that's that's one that's So is this something that you came up with, or you saw someone doing you teamed up with them?

SPEAKER_00 27:28

Correct. I I will, and I'll put hand handle the Lord on this one. I'm not a product person, but I'll figure out exactly how to sell that and I know exactly how long people are gonna stay with this.

SPEAKER_01 27:37

So what's your setup right now? Is it because you said you're involved with seven brands? Yeah. You've got structured, you've got the agencies. How do you cut, like, are you just kind of inserting yourself as like the head of retention or subscription and then kind of cutting up your time brand by brand and sort of being like a, I don't know, like nomadic and how you kind of give them your your effort or what's your setup?

SPEAKER_00 27:58

I think that's a great way of putting it. I think structured, lucid, and breeze have CEOs. Okay. So all of them, all the all of them have great leaders and people in place that it was not needed for me to run any day-to-day for them specifically. And so I think the this is why I think we bet on 20-year-olds or want to bet on 20-year-olds because they have the the crazy amount of energy and the right amount of delusion that they can get everything done. It's a perfect combination. Yes. But when you get older, 35, pushing 35 in the area, like the the area of importance is best to like navigate the intensity or navigate the delusion into the correct path forward. My my my play here is um every every there's all the CEOs on the core teams, and the area that I've what's really difficult to do is when you do too much context switching from what you need to do from an execution standpoint. So as long as I'm not context switching out of retention, subscription or acquisition, then the workflow is just a matter of what we've been doing for the last 10 years of agency, which is like the same thing.

SPEAKER_01 28:57

That you're kind of just going and optimizing in each brand.

SPEAKER_00 29:01

Correct. And there's a flavor, right? There's a flavor to each of the brand because they're in different seasons of subscription. Yeah, of course. But like this is the thing that I this is why my bet is even deeper in this, like into I'll I'll tell you where I think 2025, 2026, 2027, 2028 is gonna go. This is gonna go into the telemedicine space 100%.

SPEAKER_01 29:17

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 29:17

And I care about that. This is this is my future when you're ready to talk about that.

SPEAKER_01 29:22

Yeah, yeah. We have a lot of mutual friends who I know are betting big on that right now.

SPEAKER_00 29:25

Oh, yeah. Yeah. For but why? It does what it says it's gonna do.

SPEAKER_01 29:29

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 29:29

The CPAs are allowable, are are through the roof, and it's really difficult to build. It's fucking really hard to get into the space. Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 29:36

Tons of red tape.

SPEAKER_00 29:37

So on on where the time allocation goes, is like we have I have two core assistants that allow me to just do what I need to do on a daily basis. I can show up and execute on any of the calls or any of the deliverables that are that are on on Nick's plate. And then I have two team members that uh get me the analysis and the reporting that I need with the amount of AI tools that are have uh are at our readily available needs.

SPEAKER_01 29:59

This is just out of like sheer curiosity. Are you so you you you know you've you go, you get on these calls, you talk to all these businesses, CEOs, marketing teams. Do you then come away from that, those calls with work to do? Or is it mostly like how are you spending your time working, or are you spending your time learning, consulting? I mean, you have to spend hours consuming knowledge on X to also like iron sharpens iron, right? You also have to be on top of what's happening in the industry.

SPEAKER_00 30:26

You'd be shocked that I I try my best. So I we produce you guys understand content, you guys do a great job of content. I don't consume anything outside of an hour and a half a day. Um, I have 45 minutes in the morning. Uh because PST si uh six to seven, six to seven is my my morning consumption of like my channels. And then right before I wrap up, four to five is when I do a second channel uh second channel review. And then in between, Kiana manages all my channels of where the content distribution needs to be. You've probably seen some of this stuff, is like posts, all my content is pre-planned and pre-uh discussed and written. I have two copywriters that plan all what I want to discuss or play with, and it's a lot of my mental exploration. So like I don't I spend a lot of my time not consuming.

SPEAKER_01 31:11

This is like Nick LLC.

SPEAKER_00 31:13

Yeah, yeah, yeah. This is a lot of time not consuming, it's a lot of time of production because every day I talk to more people than I want to talk to. Yeah. If I'm being completely honest with you, but it's it's of course active practice. Like I'm actively practicing and in more more brands I want to be in, unfortunately. But this is the current season I'm in.

SPEAKER_01 31:31

So going back to smoke testing, because I'm super curious on this. We were talking about the the fan filtration, and we were talking about what like what are the modes in e-commerce, right? Because it was funny. Yesterday we had a sharing session here. There's about 30 people in this room.

SPEAKER_00 31:45

Crazy.

SPEAKER_01 31:46

And people were getting up and showing what they're working on. I was actually so, so shocked at the level of like raw, like dashboards open, accounts, everything out.

SPEAKER_00 31:55

No filters.

SPEAKER_01 31:55

Yeah. You know, AI tools, everything. So someone on our team was showing what we were working on. And one guy made a joke. And it was actually funny, like he was like, ha ha, like I can take a picture of that and rip it. Like my AI could rip that in a second. And in my head, I was like, oh wait. Like my gut reaction was like defensive. But then I realized like, no, like you literally could, like, yes, you could, but I don't care anymore because that's not the moat. Yeah. The moat, in my opinion, is a the founder, like your ability to drive the ship. But to me, that's still a big moat, because like you and I could sell anything, right? If we really wanted to. If you really wanted to, correct. With AI, you could figure it out, you could build it, you could stand it up, you could test it. So what's the moat in e-commerce today?

SPEAKER_00 32:39

I I think this the the if you really wanted to sell the thing, if you wanted to like the the moat is like the commitment to doing it all the time, every day. Very well. All the time, every day. The willingness to like, you're gonna create three offers for this one product, and because this one, maybe the LTB is not as high. Okay, well, what offer do I need to do? This thing, we we've been able to scale this across one demographic, one angle, but why not two or three different angles? To go back in and rebuild over and over and over for the same product for the same things you're selling on, that's the moat to overall crack it. Like there's there's these guys that do and effort is the moat. It has to be because the speed, this is the this is what I'm nervous about when you when the younger crew are making bets on and making short-term decisions because they haven't seen like a down, like they haven't like really lost. Right? There's like the delusion that these people have in a good way, like not negative, but they haven't lost yet.

SPEAKER_01 33:29

So another thing I was excited to talk to you about is um again, because you're from the states, we've only had a couple guests, but none of them have been from the states. And something that I find really interesting is that the e-commerce community in the states. I lived in New York almost 10 years. Jeez. And so I'm super familiar. It the states community of e-commerce young 20-year-old founders is very different than the rest of the world. And I know you know this because you go to Geek Out, you know, you're in, you know, Mikano's and you see the Dubai crowd, you see the Australia crowd, you see the China crowd, like their tactics and their knowledge and goals as far as like international shipping and testing. It's very different than the US, where I at least I personally find that it's very like test in the US, sell in the US, very focused on obviously it's the biggest market. Like that's a no-brainer.

SPEAKER_00 34:20

But it's the most expensive market.

SPEAKER_01 34:21

Most expensive, but also nonetheless it's limited, right? And so I'm curious, like, how do you guys approach US versus non-US?

SPEAKER_00 34:28

Well, I think the I've never needed to approach non-US because I our market is big enough to I don't have to think about international just yet. Like I feel like the difference between the Chinese crowd, the Chinese crowd, the European crowd, is that they're like there's one there's one brand founder, he's he does Italian and Swiss supplements in the Italian market. Italian market's cashed on delivery. Like they don't, they don't they don't do subscription as much as like the UK or uh other parts of Europe are more familiar to do subscription or they're like more open to do subscription. So like running a subscription supplement brand there makes no sense. Whereas you have Mars Men and you have subscription front-end funnels in America that pump crazy revenue because the American public is understanding and okay to subscriptions. So there's just like business models that you can create that just will not work at any sort of crazy scale in a localized Italian market or in a localized uh European market. And by the way, like our navigation of fulfillment and shipping and processing and taxes is like very, very easy to navigate, relative speaking, to what happens in Europe. So I think when when you find out these European brands or these Chinese brands that are building their first, the scale is nowhere near what scale is in is in America. So that's why we we don't need to think anything outside of American expansion. Yeah. Because it's already expansion.

SPEAKER_02 35:45

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 35:45

And so I I think the the biggest difference I would say is you you try to scale like intra avatar and persona from just like a world, like from an American standpoint. Whereas from the international crowd, they're like trying to do like personas in niches in countries, in countries, in language, which is crazy. Like that to me, like I would say the international crowd is hardened more because their GDPR, their compliance, their their uh goes both ways, right? So like their ability to have to jump through the hurdles earlier is not what we on the states have to deal with because we're able to literally scale with what we currently have. And now it's uh up to us to dude, even even language, like think about creators. If I'm trying to scale into like uh I have to get like the proper dialect to go into just English speaking UK or or or European markets. That's not something I had to deal with. I might want to get a Texas accent if I really, really wanted to. But do you do that? You don't have to, you can you don't have to, but you can. And actually, international accents sometimes work better in America because that's exotic. Yeah, that's different.

SPEAKER_02 36:50

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 36:50

So that that shit, I think, I think American, I would actually I'll I'm hopefully I don't get a shit for this, but like I would say we're softer because we don't have to deal with the hoops in which you guys all have to deal with over here.

SPEAKER_01 37:01

Well, it's funny because I spent the first, I mean, still US is uh is also for us majority of the sales. But I don't know, now I'm just kind of thinking to myself, again, finding this like Mona Lisa product that you could ship globally without thinking about too many hoops. Like it couldn't be a supplement, for example. It couldn't be an electronic product because of the plugs, the voltage. But if you do find that Mona Lisa that can ship to 50 plus countries, then it actually could be a little bit more seamless than maybe either of us are thinking. Even if you do it English only.

SPEAKER_00 37:31

Yeah, true. Are you familiar with the crew that do essence vault? No. It's basically off-brand cologne. Nice.

SPEAKER_01 37:37

Yeah, perfect. Perfection.

SPEAKER_00 37:39

Car sense, things that like that's a that's a sleeve. Yeah. It's a nice cool small box.

SPEAKER_01 37:44

Small, yeah. That's that's like high margin.

SPEAKER_00 37:46

We were shipping like beverage high cases, high cans.

SPEAKER_01 37:50

Some of the brands are like Yeah, Breeze, you wouldn't be able to No, no, no. Yeah, that's of course its own thing with the THC.

SPEAKER_00 37:56

Dude, I think actually Breeze is like I people like if I like I have like a subscription decline over time and like it doesn't scare me because I'm like, well, this is a retail product. The normal shop, like, how many, how many beverages are you subscribed to? Right now, none.

unknown 38:08

None.

SPEAKER_01 38:08

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 38:08

Most people you ask that question, they're like, you know why? Because I'm gonna find this beverage, I'm gonna buy it in bulk on Amazon.

SPEAKER_01 38:13

Well, dude, the culture of consumption outside of the US is radically different.

SPEAKER_00 38:18

Tell me about it.

SPEAKER_01 38:18

Well, it it it's just the US is the consumer capital of the world. Like the way Americans, and again, I I lived in the US 15 years, if you include like college and all that stuff, like the way Americans consume is like crazy.

SPEAKER_02 38:29

Out of control. Crazy.

SPEAKER_01 38:30

Yeah, I mean, to the point where I mean I was reading it was that there's like two trillion of credit card debt. Outstanding.

SPEAKER_00 38:37

That's not a big deal.

unknown 38:37

It's not a big deal.

SPEAKER_01 38:38

I mean, yeah, if you compare that to the I I actually don't know the national debt goes up by like a trillion a like a month ago.

SPEAKER_00 38:44

It literally just hit another record while we were here.

SPEAKER_01 38:46

Yeah, literally. So I think that's crazy because um uh even in Europe, like they don't really use credit cards, they use debit cards. Yeah. But I will say on the international subject, one thing that's a pain in the ass is payment processing. Like if you want to be successful in Korea, you gotta get payment processing with cacao. And if you want to be successful in Hong Kong, you gotta get payment processing with like FPS. It's total nightmare. It's it's but um of course that's that's a moat, right? Correct. I guess just to like come full circle in some ways, like what I've been struggling with, what our team's been talking about like relentlessly, and I always like bring it back to these conversations because I want to pick your brain, is like, what's the real moat? If we're gonna spend the next two years building something, how can we make it the biggest outcome possible? Because as we discussed, we can s you can sell anything. You could probably turn that into a seven, eight-figure business, but is that worth it or is that just a time suck? And how do you do something that people don't just rip? But what I've what I think I've realized is there is no moat. You just gotta do it. And the founder and the time and the effort and the infrastructure effectively is the moat. And at the same time, the other thing that I've realized, again, this is just me, people will totally disagree with this, is I'm no longer like building brands for long-term enterprise value so that they can sell one day to Procter and Gamble and Unilever, like uh Groons, or like even like a breeze, total brand will sell one day, I'm so sure. Whereas like the international crowd now, run it for cash, make money. If it, if the offer declines in two years, whatever, at least you made you know your boat along the way and you're good.

SPEAKER_02 40:25

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 40:25

It's it's in the beginning for me, it was like, let's build brands long term. And I still enjoy that, but to me, it's also kind of exhausting now.

SPEAKER_00 40:33

Dude, I am I hope we're not unique in both dealing this way. Because I've I've I've felt this way for many, many years. This is why so much is like, why don't you just focus and do like one thing? I'm like, why? Why why would I do that? Like there's so much to do. There's so many things that I'm interested in.

SPEAKER_01 40:47

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 40:47

And why would I just do one thing over and over and over?

SPEAKER_01 40:49

Like, like commit yourself to one brand for 10 years. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 40:52

I believe that I believe there's people out there, like Chad, Chad and Green's is a great example. Like that man was that man built that thing from the beginning with the intentionality of doing what he just did. That man was so relentless.

SPEAKER_01 41:05

That's he didn't like two under two years.

SPEAKER_00 41:08

Yeah, yeah, but it but like the like his background that led him to that was like he th he knew the people, he knew the team, he knew the structure, he like knew what he was going into, he why he was doing it, what the product was, what the retail rollout was. Like he like goes like relentless and he executed, like he he he asked him like uh on the on his that wasn't a he wasn't like being facetious, he was like, we actually like we hit we hit our target. Like when they when when on when they asked him like, were you above revenue target? He was like, No, we we hit our pace. That's crazy. Yeah, it's insane. Like he set the he set the pace, he knew what he was doing. And so I I seen and I go, I think, I hope, I hope in my time. And Breeze was I I thought Breeze was because it was all agency, he was all growth, all brand. And then when Aaron, Aaron, he's an incredible visionary, he's an incredible salesman. He was like, like, be a part of this, be a part of sport. I was like, absolutely, like, how do I help? How do I how do I jump into it? But like that's not like that's not my Mona Lisa. Like that is a product that I Are you looking for a Mona Lisa? I think there's one out there that I can go, like, I hope, let me let me reiterate this. I hope that there is one out there that makes me go, this is all the things that I I hoped it was. Let's turn down and move everything out of the way and go build. I hope that is.

SPEAKER_01 42:16

So I was gonna ask you this question because if you found a Mona Lisa, let's say one of your seven was that, wouldn't you in theory want to just say, hey, to the other six, I'm gonna go all in on this one because you would.

SPEAKER_00 42:28

You would, you I would, but I I haven't found it. I haven't found it yet.

SPEAKER_01 42:31

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 42:31

And and I think the you talked about this earlier. It's like I think the optimization as you grow is a little bit different. And this is why you we in our area of our like see like there's like reasons, seasons, and lifetimes. Like this is like something that I learned very early on.

SPEAKER_01 42:44

It's like reasons, seasons, and lifetimes. And lifetimes. Okay.

SPEAKER_00 42:47

So someone or something like a person or product or business enters your life for a reason. Our job as men, it's our job as entrepreneurs, it's our job as contributing people into the society to make a determination. What is the reason that this thing is in my life? And if that reason is important enough to us or big enough to us or impactful enough to us, that reason turns into a season. Seasons can last years, seasons could last months, seasons could last however we deem it to be. And then if the if that season for us is that impactful to us or that important to us, that thing turns into a lifetime. So that's people, our wives, our family, our partners. Or if it's not, that's okay. That season comes to an end, and then we move on to the next thing. But like that's our job is like we make the determination, what happens down the reason, into the season, and then if they're with us forever, then it turns into our overall lifetime.

SPEAKER_01 43:39

I love it.

SPEAKER_00 43:39

That's that's how I make the decision-making factors on this. Because then I hope and I hope to God that I have a lot more products that give me seasons and the one that I'll be able to spend a lifetime on.

SPEAKER_01 43:49

But you haven't found it yet.

SPEAKER_00 43:50

Not yet.

SPEAKER_01 43:51

And so are you looking? Like, are you actively or is it always but no? I guess what I'm saying is like, is it something that you think will just come to you, or are you like actively thinking? Through what that could be. And then are you gonna go at it from a founder perspective? Because I know you said you're not acting in that role right now. Or are you thinking to yourself, when I see it, I'll build that founding team and then obviously lead marketing retention and so forth?

SPEAKER_00 44:13

I'm incredible at team and I'm incredible at culture and I'm incredible at revenue. Very, very, very, very good at this. But the CEO role is like a very difficult, very difficult role. It's not a it's not a fun role. No, it's weird. The CEO is a very terrible role. So I would love to have someone be that role. That's not so I don't have to deal with that. So I'm curious when you think about CEO. I really everything, sorry, everything I've done has been in a partnership. There's never been something that I'm like, I need a hundred percent ownership of this thing. Yeah. My entire life.

SPEAKER_01 44:43

Lonely and boring, in my opinion.

SPEAKER_00 44:44

Why would I do that? Yes. Why would I well I I I like this person? I want I want you to do that.

SPEAKER_01 44:48

I like struggling with people.

SPEAKER_00 44:50

100%. It's way easier to struggle. Misery does enjoy a little bit of comfort. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 44:54

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 44:54

But but the the the if I I I hope, again, I hope I find a product that is worth spending the rest of whatever the lifetime is going to be, but I want it to be with an incredible amount of people. Maybe, maybe you grew up, you were in you were been here and been in the States. People used to aspire to have like this giant mansion, this big, giant homes. And I feel like the more people you meet, more people are in uh this community, you realize like they really want to live where they want and do what they want on their time with their people. Much different than just building a massive, massive home and never leaving the home. That was that was a different thing for me that I grew up in.

SPEAKER_01 45:28

Yeah, interesting. When you think about CEO, because I'm also thinking about this right now. Like we were talking about this before we started. I don't want to run the brands necessarily. I want to hire someone to run them. Do you, in your head, if there's two pathways, one is like hire someone super experienced, maybe older, more expensive. The other path is hire a 20-year-old, maybe a little bit seasoned, let's say they're 28, I don't know, but they're like clearly so energized. They've got enough road under their belt, enough miles under their belt where they get it. You know, they're not super old, but they they've done enough. Yeah. Obviously a little bit cheaper. Maybe you can incentivize them with more equity or KPI incentive. Which of those two paths are more interesting to you?

SPEAKER_00 46:10

Very interesting question. So I think over my time at all the companies, we've I've hired or fired at least 100 to 200 people. Men or women, like as soon as there's two phases that they entered into this. And this is not pure CEO, but this is like a really CEO is a very important role, but you can say the same thing across like every major C level decision in their area of ownership. Is that fair to say? When hiring someone in this area, like if they are about to have a child, their their energy right before they're about to have a child, you have to have really, really honest and real conversations with them because as soon as they finish, as soon as they're like had the baby and man or women, they come back from paternity and maternity leave, uh, their their incentive and their energy is very different. Of course. But their intentionality and their execution is usually incredible. So I actually might make a bigger bet on somebody that's about to enter into a different phase of life of family. That's one. Two, I think they're if they're the young hustler that they have great integrity and they're willing to take feedback and be coachable, that is also incredible. But it depends on the type of business in which you're running. If you're trying to grow a high growth, aggressive, I want them online at 2 a.m. kind of thing, you're not getting a mom and dad. You're not getting mom and dad that's doing this.

SPEAKER_01 47:23

Yeah, I worry with the older CEO path, they're just like the world is changing every day six times over. That they might be too slow? Yeah, that they're just not on, they're just not on the tides, the changing tides enough.

SPEAKER_00 47:37

Well, so this is why having a community and commerce round table and geek out and Twitter or Slack telegram groups is so important for us nowadays is because you if someone's like, hey, I'm trying this or I'm interviewing this thing, I'm using these apps. Like that that's this is our job now. It's to provide the access to resources and the access to individuals that can get our young guns to be an incredible and act as like an old head because they have access to the exactly right. So I I think nine out of 10 times we want to make a bet on the young gun, but it's it depends on the type of business in which you're trying to build.

SPEAKER_01 48:10

So the young guns still need some form of mentorship. They still need guardrails, they still need a lot of times motivation, yeah, capital, infrastructure. I think for me, it's clear. Like I get very motivated by these like young 20-year-olds that are just like so fucking deep in the internet that they learn something new every day and then they run at it. The problem is their focus breaks and they don't have real business experience. Like the problem that me and one of my business partners talk about all the time is young people make it sound so easy and it's not like, dude, throw a real lawsuit at a 22-year-old. They will crumble.

SPEAKER_00 48:49

Beautiful delusion.

SPEAKER_01 48:50

They will crumble, like a real lawsuit or some real existential crisis. Like they didn't think through the trademark, and now they're getting sued. And I I knew a guy who was based in Dubai. He had this like, dude, it was crazy, this underwear business that was going bananas. And then he got hit with a trademark uh violation and he had to rebrand and he just crumbled. Crumbled. Did not know how to handle it. Rebranded and then it boom, like completely lost all multi-million dollar. Yeah, and I think there is something to be said about older C um older experience because I mean there's a reason that you know the CEO of Apple is in their 60s or whatever, right? I I don't know how the old and the new CEO is John. He's worked at Apple for like 25 years.

SPEAKER_00 49:36

Yeah, the longest tenured person in product.

SPEAKER_01 49:38

Exactly. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 49:39

Yeah. I I this is why.

SPEAKER_01 49:41

But he's not on Twitter 24-7.

SPEAKER_00 49:43

No, he doesn't, but the the this is something that I'll be able to think about a lot on because this is something that the next on my team, if I think about who's on my team right now that are moving, like I have four different people much younger, under 25, spending the time, effort, energy, and they they don't have first off, they don't have wandering eye of opportunity, right? They they're like, I'm here for this specific thing. Very important. Yeah, this you and I very important have access and wandering eye on many things, which is not good for focus. Yeah, horrible. Uh or or like, because in our head, we're like, I can probably do something over here. This is interesting, right? Their their ability to just like be in the thing more than anybody else is also very valuable, which is why if the old and also the old head could be paired up with a very cracked AI youth lead that is then enabling their ability to execute. So like you can choose either way. You either are gonna bring the young gun that's gonna come in through and give them like genuine uh coaching around how to be an executive, still, still this one's executing, but this is giving the coaching, or it's the other way around where it's like you have the old head that's doing the executing, and then you're needing to pull them coaching from a younger person that's teaching them AI.

SPEAKER_01 50:52

So there's like there's I don't think there's a wrong decision. Batman Robin setup. 100%. That's interesting.

SPEAKER_00 50:57

And I believe in Batman and Robin. There's times where you need to lead and there's times where you need to not lead.

SPEAKER_01 51:01

That is super interesting. My biggest fear as a founder, you know, who's in their 30s is like you train someone and you give them all the tools, you turn them into a super monster. Yeah. And then they I mean, they're so smart. I mean, then they say, hey, you know what? I'm gonna go do this on my own.

SPEAKER_02 51:20

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 51:21

Which entrepreneur to entrepreneur, I would I would give I would give you your flowers for that. Like, I respect that. You should do that. Yep. But what's that's a double-edged sword, right? So how do you how do you train people to be with you for the long run? Because you want to hire the smartest people, and sometimes they're too smart.

SPEAKER_00 51:40

I left Comment Thread and Taylor and I had this exact conversation. I was like, make me a partner um and I will not go anywhere. And he was like, I can't do this because of XYZ cap table y. Um and I was like, okay, well, I'm gonna build structure and go do something else. And he was like, No problem. Because at some point, like it's our job, it's not our job to keep them, it's our job to do everything we can to want them to stay. Like they they they themselves have to want to stay, but this is part of the it's just it's just like it's like that is the the double ed story. Like you will train somebody that you pour a lot of time, effort, energy, money, resources, emotional capital, relational capital, actual capital into, and you hope that they they care enough about you as a mentor, they move into, which is why like there's no business, there's no business in personal life. The same exact thing. I think people try to separate the shit and they try to say, like, well, that's my work life, and like this is my personal life. It's separate. It's not no, no, no, no. Your wife was here earlier. My wife and my son are in the hotel. Like, this is what we do, this is this is what we live.

SPEAKER_01 52:39

Yeah, this is our life.

SPEAKER_00 52:39

Yeah, and so the young, I think the younger that they won't see it until they like actually see it, and they're like, Wow, like this is home, this is safety, this is community. And like, I don't want to say we're family, because like I think that that's the weird vibe people say as an as an as a tactic to keep, but they're they will have to want to stay with you because they'll see emotional opportunity, they'll see relational opportunity, and they'll see financial opportunity. Those are the three things if you can hit, they should be with you.

SPEAKER_02 53:02

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 53:03

I I don't think you could fight to keep anybody longer than they want to be here, and it's probably detrimental if you do fight to keep them past their time.

SPEAKER_01 53:09

I think it's really interesting too, because this like concept of equity really throws people off. Like when you're younger, you're like, I want equity in that. And I'm trying to be intellectually honest. I really am. I find that equity is a bit of a trap because like, what's it worth unless you sell it?

SPEAKER_00 53:24

And and it can't will they have enough money to afford to buy it at their shares, to buy shares when it's time for them to buy it.

SPEAKER_01 53:29

Exactly. I I just like that's another trap that I find um gets younger founders into younger people or employees, so to speak, into trouble because they think that they want something which is not really that valuable.

SPEAKER_00 53:42

Correct.

SPEAKER_01 53:43

Like, I would rather just take the cash.

SPEAKER_00 53:45

Correct.

SPEAKER_01 53:45

Like, forget the equity, just pay me more.

SPEAKER_00 53:47

Yeah, I don't think But that's in hindsight. I think that this message gets out to the right person is like you you don't want to have to fight if you're a if you're a young, cracked 20-something year old that's getting courted by a 30-year-old that's a veteran that's played in the space and understands what this is, equity is not as important as upside of earning potential in your earliest years. Like you you have to get rich before you can really do anything else with your life. Yeah. Like you, you have to focus as much as you possibly can on like financial stability and security. And then after that, you can start playing with like cool equity here, uh, ownership over there. Like, just because you have equity or ownership doesn't mean you you you're gonna stay. Like you could have ownership and equity as soon as you invest, so you can get the fuck out and you're still you're still able to be paid.

SPEAKER_01 54:30

Yeah, I just think people overcomplicate it.

SPEAKER_00 54:32

I agree. They think they do too. And and and I think people abuse it. Like they say, like, well, do you're you're you invest in three years, like you I'd stay for three years.

SPEAKER_01 54:40

Yeah, that's the other thing.

SPEAKER_00 54:41

That's wild. Like, yeah, that's a tactic. We were so we were debating, people used to ask, like, hey, why why would I just do one thing for a very long period of time?

SPEAKER_02 54:49

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 54:49

And I think the the the ability that what happens now is that you have a lot of tools at our at our disposal from ads to emails to pages. The hardest part, I'd say, like, you said you you were talking about there is really no moat. And I go, I think the only moat, the only moat potentially at the beginning could be the the quality of the product, right? Like you, you as a founder, you as a product person spend a lot of time in creating an incredible product and the distribution of that or the selling of it is actually the easiest thing for people to do. And the more that we have like some of the younger founders or just anybody that's been in the game of e-commerce for quite some time that understands how to use some of the tools, do they have to build something that goes into a massive exit, or can they build it to a place where it's an incredible level of cash flow and then take the same exact team that they've been using, use the same exact processes that they're using with the same exact team that they're using and launch an adjacent brand. Instead, for a perfect example, we'll use hydration packets, hydration package for expecting mothers, hydration package for business male entrepreneurs. Like it's the same thing, it's the same product, but the positioning all the wrapper is just a little bit different. Like that, that to me is where I think this is where the next wave of individuals are going to be. Because the speed at which you can spin an idea up or packaging, like the hardest part would be to convince the manufacturers to like put new branding on the packaging, potentially.

SPEAKER_01 56:07

Yeah, but that's so easy.

SPEAKER_00 56:08

Now it is. I see I wouldn't even be able to speak to that because I don't know how fast I can go. But now we're already going fast over here of like how many offers or pages or or creative that in which I can launch.

SPEAKER_01 56:17

But to you, that's different brands, right? It's not the same.

SPEAKER_00 56:20

To me, that's different brands because you the clarity of message is so important. And I've learned this the hard way with Breeze because we were selling the THC and non-THC. And so many people were finding us and looking for us on TikTok or Amazon and going, like, I bought this, but there's no THC in this. And I felt like there was a mismatch of clarity of like what we were selling. And it's been a huge pain point in my mind.

SPEAKER_01 56:41

Now I didn't even know Breeze had non-THC.

SPEAKER_00 56:44

Yeah, we're we're this is how we're in retail stores. Like this is how we're on Target and Sprouts and all these ones because I I was ignorant.

SPEAKER_01 56:50

I thought it was all I thought I thought you just figured it out with like the states that were compliant in THC.

SPEAKER_00 56:54

Oh, we did we did that, and we did that also. But the the the the point was like for brand, for beverages specifically for it to get real crazy mass distribution. You look at Bloom, right? Look at what Greg's doing on this side. He was supplement first. Then he made that he had an incredible deal partnership uh at the parent company of C4, which is massive distribution of energy drinks. He's like, I'm gonna double down for energy drink for women. Beautiful can. There's like a Lani New kind of vibe, but it's obviously blue. I've seen it. Like they spoke to a consumer. The liquid inside is the same shit I'm drinking in a monster or anything else.

SPEAKER_01 57:25

Part of your like Mona Lisa framework is a product that you can then spin up in other directions. This is actually so interesting. I've never thought about this.

SPEAKER_00 57:31

I think I think it is, dude, because if you think about it, if you have the manufacturing and you have the team to do the distribution, do the branding, do the the content, do all the all the necessary work to sell it, and you just wrap the different type of perspective of brand around it, why wouldn't it have the correct level or similar level of success of the same exact teams executing on it, unless it's like widely, widely different from the consumer which you're selling to, or the TAM is anywhere smaller than the original TAM.

SPEAKER_01 57:57

Do you care about seasonality? Like, would you ever do a product that's winter only or summer only or something?

SPEAKER_00 58:03

We did early on when we were doing a very heavy giftable product, which was like we'd get Christmas Pop socks uh or or like dogs on prints. Like that's a very heavy gifting product. That's a Christmas, that's a birthday, that's a Mother's Day, that's a Father's Day, that's a graduation day, but yeah, it's really difficult to win on. You you uh so part of the framework, I think you need a product that's like for me and for you. What does this mean? Why baby products and uh children's clothing do so well is because I can buy it for myself, for my family, or I can buy it as a gift for you or for your family. So I'm constantly able to sell it to different types of perspectives for people. I can sell it to grandma and grandpa, I can sell it to the girlfriend, boyfriend, uh, husband, father. I I can play in so many different spaces and areas around this. I think that goes part of the framework, is like it has to be shippable. It has to do nothing to do with plugs, outlets, or or electronics, has to be uh instantly felt, which I think this is why like scent, and I think this is why the the like impact it could have on your life on a daily basis, a part of your routine and ritual is also incredibly important too.

SPEAKER_01 59:05

Some industries should be left untouched. Like when I when you look at Sense, for example, I mean, to me, that's like the conglomerate business, right? Estee Lauder, you know, all those big companies, they just dominate. Do you look at that as opportunity? Like I'm I guess the reference I'm thinking is also Warby Parker.

unknown 59:22

Okay.

SPEAKER_01 59:22

Like how they came in, conglomerate, Luxotica, complete disruption.

SPEAKER_00 59:27

I think the sense, I think it there's open for a couple of the hits. Like Marsman's a perfect Marsman's immense testosterone replacement, and the one in America that's compared to is like nugenics. Nugenics is like the TV commercial men's testosterone replacement that runs on like ESPN around golf channels. Whereas like Marsman is like the new rebirth rebrand of a men's testosterone replacement supplement that is our our generation any younger. I think that's the same way of like rogain hair growth.

SPEAKER_02 59:53

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 59:53

Hymns did another rebrand or or how you can go around this too. So it's sort of like a rebirth of what has been classical and proven to work with a modern millennial and Gen Z spin to it.

SPEAKER_01 1:00:05

Okay, so let's talk telehealth, because I know that this has become a big thing.

SPEAKER_00 1:00:09

Why why do you think it's become a big thing?

SPEAKER_01 1:00:11

Yeah, okay. So let's let's let me give you the disclaimer that I'm really not very well versed in this. No problem. So these might come off as very entry-level questions, which actually I think uh so obviously anyone with half a brain has seen GLP1s skyrocket beyond belief. To your point, the product actually works. Like it actually works. You know, I've seen people who take OZEMPIG and I'm like, holy shit.

SPEAKER_00 1:00:35

New person.

SPEAKER_01 1:00:36

Totally new person. Now, on the flip side, I I don't know how much like real long-term testing has been established. It's so new, and no one could tell you what's gonna happen in 20 years. Correct. I think all at the end of the day, if you look at the core of e-commerce, it's direct response problem solution. You're fat, take a pill, you're skinny, right? And that's why I think it works. Because it's it's this perfect um combination of TAM trend impact and direct response impact problem solution. So marketers are all over this. Now I'm curious because you seem like you're super in-depth in the space, or you will be, or you want to be, like, where do you see this going? And how do you how how do we make this so it's not super? I don't know, like when I when I see sometimes these like health ads where it's like side effects might include this is like the most American thing ever, by the way. Like this would never exist outside of America. It's like side effects include lung cancer, like brain damage, like, and it's just like blah blah blah. I'm just like, what the fuck? Yeah. So how do you avoid not you but the industry, how does it avoid that? Because like something like HIMS has just made it so branded and approachable. Anyone with ED could go on and buy something, get a cute package in the mail, it's branded with insert cards. It's like, oh, cool and trendy, but like it's still erectile dysfunction. Like it's not, you know, buying colognes.

SPEAKER_00 1:02:05

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 1:02:05

But they kind of make it feel that way.

SPEAKER_00 1:02:08

They think I think this is these questions are very real. These questions are the questions that everybody's asking themselves as you're sitting on the sideline wondering, like, is this real or not? And I'll tell you, like, it is very, very real. Very, very real. And this has been running for much longer than any of us have been uh uh aware of. Blue Chew has been around for a very long time, HIMS has been around for a very long time, um, keeps has been around for a very long time. Uh Remedy Meds has been around, and I'm talking five plus years, but I consider that a long time in the space of growth of uh D2C, specifically around like where trends move and change. GOPs have been around from a diabetic standpoint for for 20 plus years. Yeah. So it's been it's been a it's been a drug for those that are really, really needing it on that spectrum. Only recently was it a trend from LA movie stars to lose the weight that they needed to get to where they want to be. Like that that's where like this like super miracle drug came from. Like people were dropping weight very, very quickly. The the the crazy thing about this, the reason why I think this is going to be uh an impress an incredible space moving forward is because what COVID did for us was accelerate the adoption of feeling okay with putting credit card onto a website that I've never heard of before now.

SPEAKER_01 1:03:27

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:03:28

To an older demographic, an older generation.

SPEAKER_01 1:03:30

100%. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:03:31

That was a generation that we wanted to be online because that's the generation that has the money. They've been able to buy, they've been able to shop, they've been able to purchase. And a lot of the times, like they weren't just not doing it because they were not comfortable or not safe. They actually really had no need. When they were forced to do it this specific way, now it brought an entire generation of confusion, uh confused consumers onto a platform in which we were all accustomed to because we're very digital savvy. And now they're making purchases on. I had people that were donating to their church watching live streams on their phone for the very first time. My mom was one of them. She was like, I was having to make donations uh through my church's platform that they set up. Like that was like the first time that she was I would have to do this. So you think about this. You have the older generation that had to jump on the internet to start meeting with their doctors or have conversations. Our generation, who are now like I when's the last time you've been to a doctor? You're young and healthy.

SPEAKER_02 1:04:20

Yeah, it's been a while. It's been a while, right?

SPEAKER_00 1:04:22

If you had the opportunity to not go to the doctor but get what you needed from a pharmacy that's down by you and just by doing a uh tel excuse me, teleconference, probably do it.

SPEAKER_02 1:04:31

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:04:32

So all it means is like our generation is gonna do this, which means our children are gonna start doing this. So this whole area is just gonna continue to evolve and move into.

SPEAKER_03 1:04:40

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:04:41

So I think from the wave of opportunity and from a wave of adoption, we're in that wave currently. So that's one. So like TAM or adjustable market, yeah. Check.

SPEAKER_01 1:04:49

Yeah, huge tailwind.

SPEAKER_00 1:04:51

Two, the the efficacy of the drugs and the improvement they're having. Like these studies are gonna continue to come out. People are gonna continue to have crazy, crazy uh drops of weight and or improvement of health markers. And that's like it's gonna be undeniable of what's happening. I'm I'm I'm two years in on GOPs and various amounts of peptides on this stuff. This is not why I'm in China to find it, but I have that.

SPEAKER_01 1:05:13

Peptides, but we have not even spoken about peptides. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:05:16

So it's all in the same category. GOP is a peptide.

SPEAKER_01 1:05:18

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:05:19

So it all falls in the same category. Yeah. But why what what makes it more important to me is like you have to talk to a real doctor. There's real medical intake questions, 68 questions that they have to go through. They get prescribed to this, they talk to somebody ongoing. And so, like, there's a very, very real experience portal, community, and like change that's happening for these people because people forget, like, when you're we don't, we're not losing our hair. I have a gift of growing this hair, but when you're on finesteride or monoxidol from a hair regrowth time, that's for life. You don't get off that. And and people, and this is like an industry joke is like just because people are on GL, like people don't stop GLP, they just stop paying you for GLP. They're go find it cheaper elsewhere somehow, some way. Because as soon as they realize that they can like feel some type of way or act some type of way, they're never gonna they're never gonna stop doing that. You can stop at a certain place and go towards microdosing or go towards another thing. But the biggest barrier to entry that I think they're gonna solve is like not many people want to give themselves a shot. That's a huge barrier to entry.

SPEAKER_01 1:06:18

Yeah, that's tough. It's tough, right? Sometimes it's shot only, right?

SPEAKER_00 1:06:21

Correct. Because most for now. Most of like NAD pills and supplements and sublinguals and dissolvables, they'll that'll start hitting the market. There's incredible, incredible NAD supplements right now or M and N, which is like the precursor to NAD. These are all being sold on Amazon left and right. Check the rankings on these things.

SPEAKER_01 1:06:37

Yeah. What all over the place. And again this might come across as like a basic question which in some ways is like good because I think other people would feel this is like I I often feel that when I see a trend it's quote unquote too late. And I'll give you examples like creatine. By the time I kind of came onto creatine it was exploded. NADs, GLPs. The list goes on and on, right? Even even Forum Factor gummy bears, right? Do you care about that? Do you care about being early or does it not matter because it's just so big? Like would you recommend to someone today to launch gummy bear brand?

SPEAKER_00 1:07:13

I probably not the from the gummy side of things if you've looked at the the efficacy of like a gummy being as impactful as like a normal supplement is pretty low.

SPEAKER_01 1:07:22

Like the way that they like have to like make the gummy is like this That's why you have to put like eight in a packet or something.

SPEAKER_00 1:07:26

Yeah you you're eating like I think the benefit is for the older demographic where like they can't choose two pills. Yeah you know like kids aren't gonna take so this is like the best of the best of the evil. If I can give this to my child because they're not gonna eat their nutritional things but like yes it's a gummy bear and yes it's this type of thing it's better than them not taking it. That's one or two like the older the where gummies really came about was like older people couldn't eat pills or like swallow pills. Like they needed to get still get these nutrients but they couldn't swallow their pills. So like they went to the gummy factor. So the the form factor was important for the demographic but like the efficacy of this is probably not as high as a powder form or something else for them to consume. I wouldn't necessarily recommend into GOP because there's regulations that are coming into the space sp specifically and there's like going to be a a crazy price push. But these are like things that are so deep to discuss right now that'd be too hard to like for me to even go into because I don't I don't know it on this legality rabbit.

SPEAKER_01 1:08:22

There's a guy in our in our office who's working on a GOP brand for India. Wow yeah that was the exact word I used is there a the patent just expired and so now the prices are just dropping and obviously India's 1.5 whatever billion people um I I'd for sure do it.

SPEAKER_00 1:08:41

I would for sure go into it.

SPEAKER_01 1:08:42

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:08:42

You just it's but it's um it's that that goes back to the earlier question which is like are you willing to sell it at the price in which you can sell it at to have the distribution at which you want it to be too worth it. I don't think price like if you this is why I think having the relationship and having communities and relationships here in Hong Kong, China, Guangzhou, wherever you want to be at is so important because like you have to go to the manufacturer so that you get the terms so that you can go scale or that you can get the terms so you can have better quality of product that it's more efficacy like the efficacy is like higher than the other doses.

SPEAKER_01 1:09:12

Last question and then I want to get into like a rapid fire segment. We just coming back to marketing channels Meta versus TikTok shop versus app lemon versus yada yada yada yada like at what point do you recommend people to break focus at what scale? Because or or or or from the get go are you kind of omnichannel I'm just curious your philosophy because people have so many different schools of thoughts like oh don't leave meta until you hit you know 100K a day in spend or even more maybe where do you fall into that?

SPEAKER_00 1:09:44

So we think Meta is still line share of all of our spend at one point App1 was like our number two spender. It took so much budget we could scale it so aggressively against it right now. We though we owe them a bag of money so like we can't get back on that platform just yet. But if you the the question is in my opinion I think it's a different type of question to ask this is if you have a skill set of of creative for a platform, do as much as you can for that platform. For instance, like we were not good enough at TikTok. I believe TikTok in itself takes like a full team to to to manage and get this platform correct from the out from the the product sending from the the type of content from the management of the store from inventory all everything. It's a lot like so like you can't just like start doing TikTok I think before people would assume like oh just like run TikTok ads. I think people don't get that game. I would say meta from the ease of content needed to get up and running on the platform is probably the fastest, easiest and has the most longevity into it. But then like I would graduate into the TikTok seeding programs and take advantage of the GMV playbook that Hudson and all these other guys are uh preaching about because that that is a collection of consumers that are willing to spend money on and kind of trained to to buy on that platform. And TikTok's been so incredible for uh affiliates or or just like brands that know that type of content. Like it's not easy to know that type of content but once you do what a moat what a moat yeah TikTok is a moat.

SPEAKER_01 1:11:10

What a moat. That's dude that's see this is where I get like almost jealous of brands that are early adopters on platforms. Like when I look at these businesses on Amazon that were just there and they've got like 2000 reviews and they're just like goaded in Amazon's algorithm like it's actually pretty easy at that point. Like you don't have to do anything. Like there's so many brands that are just like 10 years plus on Amazon. It's just automatic.

SPEAKER_00 1:11:33

It is automatic. Yes it's this is why I think like TikTok I think if you have a good enough product or different but you're really good and you spend the time to learn that type of content needed, TikTok could be your perfect place.

SPEAKER_01 1:11:43

That's what I was getting at. It's like TikTok stat if you put in it still might be early enough where you could be sort of like anchored into TikTok long term. I mean TikTok shops under two years old, right? 100% yeah all right I got a list of rapid fire questions let's go. First one is favorite brand that's not yours.

SPEAKER_00 1:11:58

Favorite brand that's not mine. Jeez Cadence. Yeah Ross's brand cadence Ross Mark um George George I think they I think they cadence has the right understanding I would say cadence and then new tonic because they're like RTD beverage for consumption and then sachets and pills and gels for D2C distribution.

SPEAKER_01 1:12:20

Yeah it's brilliant.

SPEAKER_00 1:12:21

So I I love that what's your favorite founder or operator to learn from I I was not a big consumer of Hudson for quite some time just from like the like his outside persona and his delivery that was never like I never spent a lot of time consuming from him specifically only recently have I consumed some of his content. I've really enjoyed the way he talks and speaks about it. And then the the guys at Javi Coffee this guy is Brandon Monnihan. He's kind of a sleeper but like the Javi Coffee guys have been in this game for quite some time.

SPEAKER_01 1:12:51

Yeah that business is insane. Yeah. What's the one tool Sass software that you would never give up on I would say foreplay.

SPEAKER_00 1:12:59

I would say foreplay.

SPEAKER_01 1:13:00

Tell me more.

SPEAKER_00 1:13:00

Foreplay has been I was with Zach early on in that tool and I think the way that it's like it's just the searchability the the amount of products I can find on this uh the navigation of it I think the the saving of the boards from ad standpoint I know people talk about Atria but I've been early foreplay for quite some time from an ad standpoint.

SPEAKER_01 1:13:18

What's the best investment you've ever made in your business?

SPEAKER_00 1:13:20

In my business we did we had an executive coach um his name was Ryan earlier on with Jake and I when I was transitioning out of CEO into a a non like advisor role into structured Jake and Ryan spent a lot of time in like becoming a better executive and like how to speak and lead teams was like the best investment I think I've ever made.

SPEAKER_01 1:13:41

That's a great answer. I've not heard that ever.

SPEAKER_00 1:13:43

If you're a first time CEO you don't really know how to communicate to people or like manage people or stress and I think that's been the biggest unlock.

SPEAKER_01 1:13:50

And last two what are the most overrated and underrated founder habits?

SPEAKER_00 1:13:55

Founder habit overrated founder habit is like raw raw vision setting like over like this is where we have to go like we like we're all working towards this direction because especially the the more organizations become flat especially if like in talking about direct to consumer I'm not talking like SaaS or anything where you have like different levels of things but in direct to consumer e-com or brand building your customer support lead doesn't really need to know like rah rah where the companies are leading and going to like they just want to like do their job.

SPEAKER_02 1:14:23

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:14:24

And so I think jumping onto every single company wide or team wide and selling crazy vision I think is like pretty unnecessary. Could not agree um I I think it's more so that's that's most overrated just like be a great place for people to want to be at and like have a uh a cool enough community and culture around it's one I think underrated is uh having like text conversations or random calls like there do people do one-on-ones um but when you do one-on-one from like a a a telecall conference I think that really makes it feel extremely unfortunate and and uh too official I think no longer needing to see someone's face to have a conversation is important like you should probably call people people forget like we just used to call people yeah for for for me it's um most underrated so our team's become very global yeah and now what we do is we just bring we just fly people here one two weeks at a time oh my god just just the two week see that's vision that I'd rather do that versus vision like come see like come see like this is real like this is this is what we believe in.

SPEAKER_01 1:15:25

Yeah. What do you know now that you didn't know when you were first getting started that you wish you knew I would say there's a there's a shit ton of problems that happen all like all the time.

SPEAKER_00 1:15:33

Like I think every single all week it's just like problems that are happening at all times but like none of them are are crazily as urgent as you believe them to be they there's some you rebuild someone too much or like you charge someone's credit card way too much or you the product is a completely faulty like there's some real there's real shit.

SPEAKER_01 1:15:53

You got hacked like your website's down.

SPEAKER_00 1:15:55

Correct yeah it's server something's not working like customer support can't get hold it's there's real shit that's meta ad account got banned whatever yeah correct but there's like a very short list of things that's like oh my God everybody needs to deal with this and like everything else really really is it gonna be okay like you you can get that to that tomorrow.

SPEAKER_01 1:16:12

So this is my biggest pet peeve with e-commerce. Like if you ask me I I I love the game I love the industry I have a ton of fun learn a lot I l I love I love it. What pisses me off about e-commerce is a the volatility sometimes and b the amount of notifications and urgency like especially for us our business is super global like I mentioned there's people all around the world it doesn't matter what time of day there's notifications coming left right and center and it's cross channel it's Slack it's WhatsApp it's WeChat it's email it's everywhere notion notifications like and it really drives me at the wall because I'm never off in that sense and everything feels urgent because you want to get back to people and when you're moving at a pace that you want to move at which is fast you feel the need to get back to people but it totally tarnishes like your mental sanity. Oh yeah. And so to your point like it's I I I I've lost I think a filter on what's truly urgent versus like I'll just do that in three days like don't worry about it. And I think the notifications also create founder like analysis paralysis where you're just checking boxes and doing things that people ask you or you reply you need to reply to to clear your Slack or whatever. You're not actually thinking about the one thing you need to do that will actually drive the business to the next level of revenue or whatever. And your mind is just so there's just so much coming at you. And that's why I think that for a brand rushing to get to that like CEO level where you can hire a CEO is a huge step because then you can, you know it's like what Tim Cook's doing now, right? Going back to Apple, he's now the executive chairman. That dude's just gonna think about like what's the one thing Apple needs to do next year. What's the one thing? That's my biggest peak pet beef. I think that's the best place to end on what advice would you give to people getting started today in 2026 thinking about all the new factors at play?

SPEAKER_00 1:18:21

If you've been on the outside like you like I'm you're kind of e-comm, you're kind of not e-com, but you're like no I'm I'm I'm like gonna do this thing I think you have to I would call I would give you the 8020 rule specifically because 8020 be incredible at like one really really good thing and then be good enough at everything else and that one really really good thing needs to be customer acquisition and creative. These two things will get like people sales solves all this is like even a common thing people talk about in the industry. If you can be good enough at getting customers and it's a very loaded statement like getting customers to your your your product spend all your time energy and effort on that part of understanding content and understanding how you can convert a customer or a not customer into a customer and you'll solve majority of your overall problems. But if you're just getting started on this, spend your time, energy and effort there.

SPEAKER_01 1:19:17

Do you think now's a good time to enter e-commerce?

SPEAKER_00 1:19:19

Oh my God, yeah. I think I I used to think no because now is a good time to enter into e-commerce because the speed at which the tools are being updated and like the good enoughness of everything can get you in motion. And like once it's in motion like there's just shit that just happens. Like there's just things that happen in your benefit when it's moving forward. But when you're just kind of just sitting and waiting and not doing much, it's really difficult to get the momentum.

SPEAKER_01 1:19:44

I I was going to ask you this earlier you just reminded me going back to like US only versus international do you not fear like economic slowdown would totally impact a business that's let let's say the US had a a recession hypothetically and you're all in on the US versus like the international crowd like we said was like quite diversify diversified. Now of course a recession in the US would bleed into the whole world obviously but does that not worry you?

SPEAKER_00 1:20:12

No, it doesn't because so I was in it pre-COVID I was in it during COVID and I was in it post COVID and then now we're obviously still in it you've seen so much right because there's been a couple like the American mindset is like we will we spend with what we don't even have.

unknown 1:20:28

Yes.

SPEAKER_00 1:20:29

So like if we don't even have it yeah never had it to begin with we never had it to begin with like the and and the the fact that the dopamine like the very small things of like enjoyment that we have is unfortunately based upon the dopamine that we get of the things that we bought that is arriving to our door.

SPEAKER_02 1:20:45

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:20:46

So when I'm buying something like that's my happiness like you take away someone going and buy fast food that's you know really really hurt. Well if they're on Zempic or all the GLPs and food doesn't give me the same result and and reaction that I once had like all I really have is my Amazon orders, my brand my product orders, my like splurging on things that I don't need to see the scrolling of social like the ads are just going to get more cost effective and people are going to buy more things because they're just more sad. So I'm not I'm not nervous about this. I guess to your point you've seen so much right like COVID pre-COVID well I mean before COVID would have been like oh eight oh nine yeah and I don't know if there's anything in between well you had you had the you had the financial crisis you had like homes pricing you had COVID post COVID you had uh stimulus checks like we had we went through all those things and even I would say arguably well right now like there's like there's a war going on there's still still war going on like gas prices are the most expensive ever been shut up like crazy. Which means freight goes up which means prices go up which means all these things like there's only been one business that I've seen that was impacted like firsthand and it was a van company in Australia that her company she's like had like a three three to four week sprint of like no one buying anything because it was too expensive for them to power or for for her customers to buy products for their vans because she won they weren't taking vans out.

SPEAKER_01 1:22:10

Yeah. That's crazy. So long term very bullish. Very very if the economy holds up which I think it will yeah I would say e commerce is like the best industry to be in.

SPEAKER_00 1:22:18

If if America crumbles the whole world will crumble from an e commerce standpoint.