Moiz Ali’s $100M Exit Playbook & What’s Next For Him

Moiz Ali built Native and sold it to P&G for $100M in just two and a half years.

Today, he spends his time investing in, advising, and studying e-commerce businesses, giving him a unique view into what separates long lasting brands from businesses that are simply growing fast.

In this conversation, Moiz shares what he is seeing across the space in 2026, including why most founders should focus on building a strong product before trying to manufacture a brand, why repeat purchase rate is one of the most important numbers in e-commerce, how to stay lean while scaling, and what makes a business genuinely investable.

We also talk about Meta volatility, healthy profit margins, testing products before committing too much time or capital, hiring exceptional people, and what life looks like after a major exit.

Download the free Moiz Ali playbook here, the entire episode distilled into one PDF: https://www.elevatorgoods.com/talks/moiz-ali

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X: https://x.com/moizali

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What we cover in this episode:

00:05:30 — Life After the Exit
00:11:00 — The Power of Having a Chip on Your Shoulder
00:18:45 — Inside Meta and Why It's So Volatile
00:22:10 — What Makes a Brand Truly Investable?
00:26:45 — What Is a Healthy Profit Margin?
00:30:00 — Brand vs. Product: What Matters More?
00:38:30 — How to Test Products Before Scaling
00:51:00 — What's the End Game?
01:00:30 — Hiring Exceptional People
01:05:30 — What Keeps You Up at Night?
01:11:30 — Rapid-Fire Questions

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Today I'm sitting down with Moyes Ali. Moyes built and sold native to a hundred million dollar deodorant brand to one of the biggest consumer conglomerates in just two and a half years. Moyes is a legend. We'll talk about why you should build a profitable product, not a brand, how to stay lean, even as you scale to $100 million, and why chasing repeat customers is way more valuable than any vanity growth. Let's jump into it. All right. Moyes, first of all, thank you so much. My pleasure. Genuinely big fan of you and your work. Been following you a long time, limited supply, natives. Yeah. And I do want to say thank you. Special shout out to Ramon who brought you here. So thank you, Ramon. So first of all, I just am excited to chop it up with you. And I think we don't have to go too much into the native story because that's probably very well documented.

SPEAKER_01 0:49

Yeah, yeah, I think so.

SPEAKER_00 0:51

I've heard it many times. So I guess we'll just start with like, where are you right now? What are you up to?

SPEAKER_01 0:56

Great question. Um I think I'm up to a l uh a bunch of random things. Uh one is I'm trying to spend a lot more time with my family. And so um Good for you. You know, I'm organizing uh family vacations on a monthly basis now. And I've like I've got to do all of the legwork of being like, okay, what flights do you what time do you want to leave? What time do you want to leave? Where would you like to go? And then plan an itinerary for like 10 days for someone who's one year old and someone who's 89 years old. Amazing.

SPEAKER_00 1:25

Uh how many bunch pages in the family?

SPEAKER_01 1:26

I think like 11 of us now are traveling. And so um, it's been a lot of fun, actually. And I don't think it seems like a silly thing, but it seems like um a small thing. And then I'm like the amount of time it takes to like find a place that everyone's gonna love, an itinerary that people are gonna really enjoy. It takes so much time, actually. And so I'd say I spend more time than I'd readily like to admit on planning vacations for other people. But then I'm still involved in e-commerce in random ways. Like I sit on the board of a company called Thracio, which is an e-commerce aggregator. You know, uh, it went bankrupt, I want to say in like 2014, or I'm sorry, 2024, maybe 2023. I joined the board right after it came out of bankruptcy, and we've just had to rationalize that business.

SPEAKER_00 2:05

Yeah, Thorazio Amazon Aggregator.

SPEAKER_01 2:07

Yeah, Amazon Aggregator that had brands from um this mouth hates like uh which was a stain removal company, which just sold to Arminhammer for $325 million, maybe two weeks ago, to a nail clipper company.

SPEAKER_00 2:20

And this is in the thrazzio portfolio. This is in the thorazio portfolio right now.

SPEAKER_01 2:23

Well, the uh you know, this mouth isn't any longer because we sold the piece of us, but yeah. Uh but um you know that that was a really interesting experience because I'd never been part of an organization that had such formal management, like you know, genuine CEOs, genuine CFOs who had a lot of work experience, and a business that sort of wasn't headed in the right direction where we needed to turn the ship. And so I spent a bunch of time doing that as well over the past, I'd say 24 months.

SPEAKER_00 2:46

Huge. So what percent of your time is at the Razi on board?

SPEAKER_01 2:48

It varies a lot. Like uh sometimes it's as little as like four hours a week, and sometimes it's as much as 20 hours a week. Wow. Uh based on like what we're doing and what we're, you know, are there any brands that are on fire like in a good way? Are there any brands that are on fire in a bad way? Or is there anything happening at the company? Like, you know, we were negotiating this transaction and that took a lot of board time. And so all over the place. But I'd say like post-transaction being closed, it's been quiet for two weeks because we were all busy for, you know, the last few months making sure this uh this transaction got through.

SPEAKER_00 3:19

And I know you're still investing in your own capacity as well. Yeah, that's right. So what have you been up to in that's in that space? Whatever you're allowed to share, obviously.

SPEAKER_01 3:26

I'm allowed to share everything because it's all my own money. So I'll like, you know, I don't know, I have no preconceptions of that. Um my last invest, I I probably I would say that like uh post-native. I think everyone who runs a business wants to start being an investor. And the way they start being an investor is by writing really small checks and trying to figure out what happens. And so I wrote, you know, anywhere between $25,000 and $100,000 checks or maybe $250,000 checks in either three or four dozen companies uh right after native. And a lot of those businesses are coming to fruition or will be coming to fruition soon. Some of those businesses have disappeared and some are doing well and will continue to do well. I'd say probably in the last three or four years, I've got uh like I'm no longer interested in writing small checks that generate good outcomes, but good outcomes that aren't necessarily meaningful for me. Like if a $25,000 investment becomes $200,000, that's an amazing outcome. Like this is almost 10X. That's really spectacular. But at the same time, like I'm less interested in that type of outcome. And as a result, I'm probably less interested when they send out when they send out investor updates. I'm less interested in the track trajectory of the company. And so now I'm trying to write much larger checks, but far fewer of them. And so my last check was into Mercury, which was a crazy. That was hilarious, by the way. I like, um I just tweeted at the CEO and I was like, I use this product and it's amazing. I want to I want to invest five million dollars. And I recorded no diligence.

SPEAKER_00 4:47

No diligence. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 4:48

And he gave me no diligence. He's like, Are you serious? I was like, Yeah. And probably like two, two months later, he's like, Okay, we're uh raising from Sequoia. Or maybe I read something that they were raising from Sequoia and I was like, what's going on? Are you guys raising? And he's like, if you're interested, I will send you the I'll connect you with someone on our team and send you the docs. And all of that happened. I had no diligence. I got the documents, I signed the documents and made the investment. And it seems to be going well so far.

SPEAKER_00 5:12

I would think so. Yeah. Yeah. Do you use Mercury at all? Yeah, we do. Mercury and Ramp, by the way. Gotcha. Um so okay, so you're in you're you've got Thrazioboard and you're making investments. Is there a third bucket or are those really the two pillars?

SPEAKER_01 5:25

Those are probably the two pillars. I'd say I'm trying to figure out what I want to do with my other time. Like I got slightly excited about the uh mayorial race in New York City, I'd say last year. I got I shouldn't say slightly, I got very excited about it.

SPEAKER_00 5:37

Everyone was pretty excited.

SPEAKER_01 5:38

And um, so I did a bunch of. Yeah, that's right. Especially if you're a brown dude. And so I'd say that um it's almost been six months, or it's been six months since So Ron was uh sworn in. And I'm trying to figure out what role, if any, do I want uh politics to play in my future.

SPEAKER_00 5:53

Okay. Interesting. So I guess like you did what a lot of people want to do, which is have a headline exit.

SPEAKER_02 6:01

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 6:02

And you know, we already said, you know, the story itself is documented. Yeah. What was the feeling that you had when you made that exit? Yeah. And I've read somewhere that the money doesn't motivate you anymore. What motivates you as building?

SPEAKER_01 6:17

Yeah, that's um I would say that the moment that I had that exit, um, there was somebody else in the room and they took a bunch of photos when like the, you know, when we were got on the closing call and the person and like everyone went around the room and said, Yeah, we're closed. And that was a really amazing feeling because I was like, wow, okay, this business that we were building has now had an exit, an exit that we can be proud of, and that like, you know, is the exit that I in in many ways wanted. Like I would say that in my uh during my tenure in e-commerce, which was 20, you know, you said you were an e-commerce for about 10 years. We were at the cusp of people still raising a ton of money, yep, but entering a phase where people were raising a lot less money and potentially no money, and people realized that, hey, I don't need VC investment uh to generate a great outcome if I don't want to build like, you know, Michael Dubin got that with a billion dollar exit with Unilever and Dollar Shave Cup. Like, you know, he raised a lot of money and he had this amazing exit. I would say that that happens far less today than it did 15 years ago because there's a lot less VC dollars coming into the business. But also I felt like I was paving my own way in e-commerce because I was like, we're not gonna raise a lot of money because I don't understand why we would need this money. We are we're a profitable business.

SPEAKER_00 7:24

Exactly what do you mean it for?

SPEAKER_01 7:25

We don't have a ton of people. Like, you know, I talked to other people in e-commerce and they were like, our team is 45. And I'm like, we have four people here. What are you guys doing? 45 people? Like, are you packing your own stuff? And they're like, no, I'm like, you have a an operations department with this many people and you're selling three products. Like, what is what is so complicated about this? And so I would say we were like early on in the e-commerce, if that's e-commerce 2.0, that e-commerce 2.0 curve. Yeah. There were other brands with us, like Tuft and Needle was doing something like that. Yep. So was this guy named Jake at Movement Watches. And I remember all of us would chat and we'd like is that cohort. Yeah, is that cohort? Where we're all like, what's going on with like, you know, everyone else raised a ton of money. Honest code's raising a ton of money. We're not doing any of this. What are we doing here? Yeah, exactly. Are we doing the right thing or are they doing the right thing? We have no idea. Exactly. And you know, I would say that it was harder for us because, you know, everyone else was raising a lot of money and had a lot of, you know, big offices and, you know, everything looked fancy. And if you came to our office, when we b sold our business, PNG came over to the office and they're like, I'd written the word native with a sharpie pen and just taped it to the front of the door. Because the office building was like, it costs $800 to make your name really nice on the office door. And I was like, I'm not gonna pay $800. Yeah. Like, what do I care what it looks like? A Sharpie pen is perfectly fine. Totally. And I was like, we're doing this. Honest Code's raising a ton of money. Who's right and who's wrong? And so I would say that when that happened, it was really an incredible moment because I was like, okay, I feel like I was right in all the decisions I've made in the last two and a half years of not raising money and building a more frugal business.

SPEAKER_00 8:51

Do you still have that mentality?

SPEAKER_01 8:53

I definitely have that mentality. I would say that like um you were you were asking about the money. Um I would say that the that elation lasts about 30 seconds. Like, I still remember the moment I was outside the ferry building and I was looking at my phone constantly to see when the wire would hit. And it hit and it like looked amazing because you know, there was some uh there was maybe like 20 million or 10 million dollars in escrow. I don't remember how much, it's probably 10 million dollars in escrow. And the rest of the money like hit my bank account, and I was like, oh my God, this is the largest sum of money I've ever seen on a bank account. And then I was like, okay, well, um, I yeah, exactly. Like this doesn't matter anymore. We're still gonna go eat dinner at the exact same spot. My family had flown in and we all celebrated and got like Thai food that day, and that was really great. And, you know, afterwards, you're just like, okay, I'm gonna still live my life like the way that I liked living it, which is doing things that I like to do and not doing things that I did, you know, I was like, I didn't want to raise a bunch of money and I didn't, you know, I was like, I'm gonna continue doing what I think is right for me. And so it wasn't that like, um, it wasn't that defining, I would say, which is disappointing because I I really thought it would be such a change in my life. And you know, Robin Williams has this great quote where he's like, I I want everyone to get rich and famous so they can see how like disappointing it is or how pedestrian it is. And I certainly am not famous, but like I I was wealthy or I felt like well, I was wealthy, and I was like, this is he was right about that. But yeah, I think I continue to live my life that way. Like, you know, when I make in value, you know, I'm still very frugal when it comes to things.

SPEAKER_00 10:14

You probably know a lot of people that have exited their businesses, right? Yeah. Is that the common feeling?

SPEAKER_01 10:19

I would say it really depends on how you grew up and the chip on your shoulder. And there are people who are like, fuck this. I want that private jet. I want to go, like they become Dan Bilzarian overnight. And honestly, I have no like judgment towards that. If that's the lifestyle you want, you should live it. You've worked really hard and earned something, like accomplish something that's really difficult to do. If you want that private jet and all those girls on the plane and uh, you know, a filla and a visa, more power to you. That's amazing. I would say it's fewer people that want that than I've realized. Like, you know, I would have expected more people, including myself, frankly. I was like, that's what I want too.

SPEAKER_00 10:57

Yeah, you're gonna get the yacht.

SPEAKER_01 10:58

Like, I used to watch uh when we were selling the business, I'd watch like a clip of Wolf of Wall Street every day on the walk to work. And I'm like, this is gonna motivate me.

SPEAKER_02 11:05

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 11:05

Like uh, you know, Leonardo DiCabrio talking about money. He's like, I want you to solve your problems by becoming rich. And I was like, this is me. But like, you know, I would say that didn't happen post-exit. And I'd say, oh, there's far more people that I've realized post-exit are like, okay, life is pretty ordinary than people who are like, I want that, you know, I want the yacht and the private jet and the women.

SPEAKER_00 11:25

First of all, amazing. I was gonna get into this later, but you brought it up, so I'm gonna do it now. Yeah. You brought up how you grew up and the chip on your shoulder. I was talking to one of my friends yesterday who who he runs a venture fund. He just raised, you know, tens of millions of dollars and they invest in early stage companies. Yeah. And I asked him, you know, what do you look for? Like what do you, you know, everyone's got a startup.

SPEAKER_02 11:47

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 11:47

Right. And he basically said that the only questions I asked now are about the founder. And he told me, you know, I go straight for how did you grow up? Yeah. Like what was the environment you grew up? Yeah. And what's the chip on your shoulder? Yeah. Meaning, like, why are you built this way? Sure. Or how are you built rather? And so I want to ask you that. Because clearly you're built differently. So what is the chip on your shoulder?

SPEAKER_01 12:08

I think it must be really interesting to be like to be pitching someone for money and they're like, How did you grow up? I'd be like, wait a second, this is the business I'm running. What are you talking about? How did I grow up?

SPEAKER_02 12:17

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 12:18

But I I I totally understand that uh like I understand why he's asking that. You know, I grew up, uh, my parents, I was born in Pakistan. We moved to the United States when I was three. And um, you know, we grew up certainly not dirt poor, but certainly not wealthy. My dad had his textile, he he was an entrepreneur entrepreneur in many ways. Uh originally he owned like a tea garden in Bangladesh. Then he started importing textiles to the United States. And somewhere in like the 80s or early 90s, you know, I I get what the way he tells it, I I I can I never verified any of these facts. The Chinese uh industry, like the Chinese textile industry was opened up to the United States or like, you know, started selling them to the United States and it made it so that he could no longer be price competitive and his business basically went out of business. And then he bought a gas station. And so we all worked at this gas station growing up, like my brother did, I did, my parents did all the time. You know, if you put me in front of a gas station, if you put me in front of a Ruby register today, you know, by far the longest career I've ever had as gas station attendant. I'm 41 right now. And, you know, I could run the cash register without looking at it today. Like that is how good. Like I remember the entire gas, like, you know, I remember that layout and I could run it right now. You know, I'd say that working at a gas station and seeing your parents work at a gas station and really try and give you a better life makes you realize how valuable hard work is and also how much you want to get out of the cycle of like working really hard to be able to provide for your family and not being able to enjoy time with your family. Like I'd say one of the hard like you know, one of the things that I feel so guilty about today is my mom has a bad knee. And I think the reason that she has a bad knee is she stood at the counter every day for 20 years working at a gas station. And, you know, I was probably too young to be able to do anything about it back then, uh, but that's not the case, Julie.

SPEAKER_00 13:58

Yeah. 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. Okay, so looking ahead now, you're obviously so active. Again, I follow you in multiple channels. I see what you tweet about. Like you're clearly in the game. Yeah. You know, you're asking questions. Facebook was down the other day. I saw you post about that.

SPEAKER_01 15:15

Yeah, that's right. Yeah. Yeah. You'll still get charged, is what I said. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 15:20

The impressions won't appear, but you'll be charged. And by the way, that was true. Yeah. So what are you seeing right now? You know, let's and just for comparison, right? You started. I wouldn't say it was like you like you said, ecom 2.0 was your cohort. I would certainly say it's kind of like 3.0. Yeah. Potentially even 4.0. Like the way I the way I I describe it in my head is like 3.0 is kind of post-COVID. But then certainly another inflection is kind of post-AI, right? What are you seeing right now?

SPEAKER_01 15:44

I think um one is certainly more competition and less nice guys. And the way I say nice the reason I say nice guys is Facebook used to do this thing where back in the day there would be an outage and they were like, we're issuing you a refund or something. And then the other thing they would do, you started in 2015, you mentioned the next day your ads would be incredible. You're like, you had an outage yesterday. Today, I don't know what it was. They're like, we're gonna be super kind and maybe not make money because we messed you up yesterday.

SPEAKER_00 16:10

Did you notice that? I did, and by the way, something's so funny. A couple days ago before the Facebook outage, I don't know if you also you probably do, but Shopify went down.

SPEAKER_01 16:18

Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 16:18

And what happened after that, like literally was the most unprecedented, mind-blowing experience I've ever experienced myself in this industry, which was our Facebook ad account, all of our winners became losers. And I don't know if this was universal, but I I did speak to a lot of people who had the same experience. And it truly shocked me. And we, you know, messaged our Facebook reps, and they we just couldn't help in any sense. But yeah, to your point, they don't really care anymore.

SPEAKER_01 16:46

Yeah, there used to be a business where I felt like they were in it with you, and like, yes, they were charging you, like, you know, there was the toll that you paid Facebook, but uh, they were in it with you, and then like, you know, when something happened, they were like, how do we make this right to the community? Those days are definitely behind us. Yes. I'm not sure, like, I I don't know what version of e-commerce we're on. Like certainly 2.0, like, you know, was the era of Shopify and Shopify growth. I think that might have existed in, you know, COVID was a lot of ups and downs and really cheap Facebook ads. And it made and broke businesses, but it also like all evened out a few years later. You know, you were if you did really like, you know, you did well or you didn't do well, sort of the business became uh went to BAU as Facebook would say, uh business as usual.

SPEAKER_02 17:27

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 17:27

I think that like so one, I've seen Facebook become a lot less reliable. And I've had conversations with pretty senior level uh level people at Facebook where I'm like, the number one complaint everybody has in my industry, and I see like, you know, I still look at ad accounts from a bunch of people that I have invested in, I'm like, is the volatility. Like there's crazy evol going on in Facebook, and it makes no sense, especially this year and probably since April. Like the volatility has been bananas.

SPEAKER_00 17:53

It's the craziest thing I've ever experienced.

SPEAKER_01 17:54

Like, uh, it's a roller you're like, this is a great day, and um, tomorrow could be my worst day.

SPEAKER_00 18:00

My business partner, who's sitting right there here late, literally tells me before he meets me in person, he checks our role as to know if I'm gonna be in a good mood or a bad mood. That's out of control.

SPEAKER_01 18:11

That is so funny. I was dating this one girl a long time ago who was a trader at um at Credit Suisse, and I was like, is your mood reflected on how you're doing that day? And she's like, it's a hundred percent correlated. Like it has to be. And no matter how old I get, I find it I feel the same way where I'm like, okay, things are going the market's up, I'm making a lot of money today, I'm having a great day. The market's down, I feel terrible. I'm like, and I don't even like, you know, I'm not selling, I'm not actively trading anything, and I still am tied to the market in that way.

SPEAKER_00 18:37

So you're not operating a brand yourself right now. Correct. How many ad accounts do you have access to?

SPEAKER_01 18:42

Maybe 10 or 15? I don't know.

SPEAKER_00 18:44

Is that I look through like five ones that spend a lot. Are you in every day though, checking, or is it like periodically?

SPEAKER_01 18:50

Every day.

SPEAKER_00 18:51

Okay.

SPEAKER_01 18:51

So you're clearly interested in Yeah, it's Saturday and I've spent time already. Like, you know, I did it this morning.

SPEAKER_00 18:56

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 18:57

And I will tomorrow. Like every morning I probably wake up at 6 a.m. and it's the first thing I look at, which is what does the VAL look like today?

SPEAKER_00 19:03

So what do you say to businesses that are reliant on meta?

SPEAKER_01 19:08

I would say that you should just continue to be reliant on meta, is actually what I'd say. And for a few reasons. Uh that's a great question, though. One is uh one of the other trends I've noticed is how much Facebook has almost come full circle. When I was running ads back at native, I would do like a campaign, but I'd do one ad set one ad and I'd be able to control my spend on every single ad that way. And it's like, you know, people would be like, no, you have to do multiple ads in one ad set. And I was like, this doesn't make any sense. I've tried this. This is you know, Facebook is optimizing the wrong ad and spending a ton of money on it. This makes no sense. Then there was a period in like 2023 and maybe 2024, and possibly 2025, too, or like you know, early 2025, where you put a bunch of ads in one ad set and you let Facebook uh make the decision. And now I feel like we've gone back to a phase of again, one can where you're running a campaign, one ad in one ad set. Do you feel that way or not?

SPEAKER_00 19:59

Or do you have like a yeah? Sorry, tell me how you feel. The the problem is, as we've just kind of discussed, it's changed so much. I don't know how I feel. Yeah. So, you know, I'm like you, I'm in the ad account every day, but I'm not the media buyer. Yeah. And frankly, I've never done media buying. Yeah. But I sit on the marketing side of the business and I'm in the ad account and talk to our media buyers. Yeah. And what freaks me out is the volatility and the changes. And then, like I said, winners become losers all of a sudden because something broke. And I don't know if you remember this, but also last Q4, like, you know, six months ago, AWS went down one day. Yeah. Cloudflare went down one day. Yes. And I'm in this like constant state of like anxiety and panic. And the reason I'm asking you of the Facebook reliance question is because you know, you've exited a business before. Now, obviously your business had a tremendous retail footprint, which is a huge differentiator. But I always hear today people say, you know, ditch the Facebook reliance, or if you want to exit one day, you can't be reliant on Facebook. First of all, I don't know if I agree with that. But second, I can't really imagine a world where I'm not reliant on Facebook because of how powerful it is. Like I've truly never seen a platform where you can scale from $10,000 a day to $100,000 a day to a million dollars a day in ad spend, the way they can do that.

SPEAKER_01 21:19

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 21:20

So yes, you're reliant, but all at the same time, it works.

SPEAKER_01 21:23

Yeah, I think um you're absolutely right. Like, you know, people would say this, it's not a new thing that people say. In 2015, people would say that to me. They'd say, You're only good at this one thing, and when it breaks, um, your business will be over. And that wasn't the case, but uh, you know, it certainly was a fear of mine. And part of the reason that we pushed to sell, because we're like, okay, if this ever breaks, what will we do for this business? But you know, those were early days with Facebook ads. And like the the benefit was they were cheaper probably and there was less competition. But the other thing was you didn't know where it was gonna go. Like, was it gonna continue to be as strong and as monopolistic towards people's eyes as it has been? Like you didn't know that. In 2015 and 2016. In 2025, the amount of time people spend on Instagram, like, you know, of course it's so it's the it's the dominant platform. And, you know, they're really good at now we've realized at mimicking other platforms such that other platforms have a really tough time like uh surviving. Like Instagram was gonna die if not uh for copying stories that uh, you know, that Snapchat had. Coming out with reels and, you know, um, you know, a very TikTok experience was something that they adapted after TikTok uh was created. But yeah, I I think that you're right. There's nowhere else that you can go to create something uh to create a brand as valuable as you can with Facebook. And so your greatest strength is also your greatest weakness because that's what you're relying on. But there's literally not like, you know, yes, I would love for if someone came to me and said, I think you should be less reliant on Facebook, my first question would be, where should I go? And no matter what that person said, I'd be like, You're a fucking idiot. You know, like I'd be like, no, that's not uh like that is not possible. There's nothing like it.

SPEAKER_00 22:58

So you would invest in a company that's 100% Facebook, maybe not 100%, but it's their dominant channel by far.

SPEAKER_01 23:05

Yes, yes. Okay. I would say the hard part about e-commerce is the businesses that I would invest in are almost certainly the businesses that will never need investment. They figured out how to make it profitable. They have a repeat purchase rate so their customers come back, and this the founder is earning money hand over fist and doesn't know what to do with it. Or not even earning money hand over fist, but it's like, look, I can make $50,000 a month right now. If you give me all this money, what am I gonna do with it? Like, you know, give me a million dollars or five million dollars. What am I gonna do with that? Like the only thing I can think of is secondary. Like, take some secondary so that you can take a bigger swing at the business. And you know, I would do that, but otherwise, generally, e-commerce businesses that are profitable often don't need any cash.

SPEAKER_00 23:42

Yeah. It it's actually so true. And it's a big, I think, myth that e-commerce businesses need cash because there's no reason that they shouldn't be profitable like within a year, in my opinion. That's right. Yeah. I'm seeing a lot of e-commerce businesses now. The strategy is just get their target lowest as low as humanly possible. And sometimes that means their marketing spend is above 50% like of revenue, sometimes 60%, maybe even more. Is that an investable business?

SPEAKER_01 24:08

That is a very, very scary business. I would say that there are businesses that I know of that spend that's still profitable. That have like um, you know, ROAS is a 0.5 and are still making money because they've got brick and mortar diversification. Look, you know, the honest answer to what should you do uh to diversify off Facebook, the only good answer to that actually is be in brick and mortar stores. And that's not really a diversification. You still need Facebook in order to drive that brick and mortar sale growth. But I think that if there was a business that uh spending 50 or 60 percent of their top line on when you say 50, 60 percent, do you mean overall business or uh 50, 60 percent of their overall revenue or their D2C revenue?

SPEAKER_00 24:45

Overall. One dollar comes in, 50 cents goes to Facebook, maybe 60 cents.

SPEAKER_01 24:49

You know, there's a great line in uh Star Wars where they say only a Sith speaks in absolutes. So I'm not crazy enough to say I would never invest in that business, but it'd have to be a really compelling business for me to like, you know, if you're Casper Mattress or Nectar, like if you're running one of these furniture stores or mattress companies, it totally makes sense that you'd spend 50% of your revenue on uh marketing because your goods are probably 10% of the cost. And, you know, that margin that you're gonna earn is such a big dollar, it's such a big N right there. And so I can understand, I I can see them doing that. But in in general, if you're like a CPG company, I think you're you should be anywhere between 25 and 33, maybe 25 and 40 these days, but not more than 40. And like even today, when people are above 40 in CPG, I'm like, this is a lot of gross you're quite right.

SPEAKER_00 25:34

Yeah. But just again, just to clarify, like they're still profitable. Yeah. Right. They can like, and you had asked me who is my favorite episode I've done so far. Yeah. I won't say it again on camera, but like the person I mentioned is a 60% row at or 60% marketing person, but he's making a ton of money.

SPEAKER_01 25:51

You know, there's a lot of businesses that'll make a ton of money. Like, like, I don't know if that's a good that's that's great for him, but I don't think it's a great investment for you, which is he will make a ton of money, but it's some someday that money will, you know, fall off of a cliff because people won't like that brand anymore. Or like that that is not a brand that has sustainable value. And I feel like there have been a lot of those actually in D2C, where you know, there's big CPG brands that grow. And I'm like, this is a vitamin supplement business. And you can see, like, you know, the vitamin supplement businesses often go like this. And I feel like um, whenever I see them, I'm really cautious because I'm like, I've seen a lot of vitamins be the hot trend and then sort of disappear right out of it, like disappear like we never we ne we we completely forgot about that brand. And you know, I don't think athletic greens is one, but what happened to athletic greens? Like, you know, they were huge three or four years ago. They were everywhere, everyone was talking about them. You don't really hear, you don't see uh them on billboards in New York City any longer.

SPEAKER_00 26:46

No, IM8 kind of came in and dominated.

SPEAKER_01 26:49

That's right. Yeah. And so I think there are like, you know, if you're spending 50 to 60 percent of your top line on marketing, you can earn a ton of money. I just don't know if you have a sustainable brand because you should have enough repeat customers in even a VMS business like that, where your top line is growing exponentially as a result of your repeat customers coming in. The 50 to 60 percent is an insane number to spend on marketing.

SPEAKER_00 27:10

What is a healthy profit margin for an e-commerce business in 2026?

SPEAKER_01 27:15

I would say uh somewhere between I'd say 20% is very healthy, 15% is good, you know, 10% is okay, 25% is exceptional.

SPEAKER_00 27:23

Okay.

SPEAKER_01 27:24

What do you think? Are those right are those numbers right or wrong?

SPEAKER_00 27:27

It's a well, first of all, 20%, 25%, of course, sounds exceptional, but realistically, what I see more and more today, because we also get a lot of pitch decks and people send us, send it our way. The average these days to me is like in between 10 to 15 percent.

SPEAKER_02 27:44

Okay. That's what I see.

SPEAKER_00 27:45

Yeah, that seems good. I'm just asking from your POB as someone who's writing five million dollar checks. I know uh Mercury's obviously a e-commerce business, different business, but you know, someone sends you, you know, a PL or pitch deck and they have a meta-reliant business that does 10% net income. Are you investing in that business if you like it?

SPEAKER_01 28:05

Aaron Powell I'd see the uh the one number I'd also want to see is what well, I'd like to see growth, like what is uh your growth look like? And then um what does your repeat purchase rate look like? Like that that number is the X factor that almost determines the decision of whether or not I'll invest right.

SPEAKER_00 28:19

And what's the healthy number for you in that for repeat purchase?

SPEAKER_01 28:22

It really depends on category. Like, you know, I think if you're a Casper mattresses, like if you're Casper mattresses, I'm not gonna invest already. But I think theirs was like 14% or something like that.

SPEAKER_02 28:29

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 28:29

Natives was north of 40%. Yep. And so I'd say that was hot, that's the high end and the low end. You know, there's a bunch of businesses in the middle. The one other thing that I'd like to mention about this is it's really easy to game that number, which is you opt people into subscriptions, you don't remind them that that subscription is about to renew, and all of a sudden you look like you have a really healthy flywheel. You require a customer, and um, you know, that customer becomes a repeat customer because they don't even know that they were subscribed. And then you didn't send them a reminder email and they got a second package, and now that it looks like your repeat purchase rate has been juiced. So I'd say the other thing is the other thing I look for is I don't mind you opting people into subscriptions, but I want to see that it's really clear and I want to see that you're sending out a reminder email so that I know you're not operating one of these like I don't want to say it's scammy businesses, but one of these businesses that's really juiced your uh repeat purchase rate so that I can identify whether this is gonna be a good investment or not.

SPEAKER_00 29:20

I know exactly that you know what you're doing because that's so apt. Like the amount of people I know that run subscription businesses and the rule of thumb that I've heard is like once you get the subscription, don't email that customer ever again.

SPEAKER_01 29:33

Yeah. Sure.

SPEAKER_00 29:34

Not automated flows, not manual campaigns, just no more nothing. And that's that's the strategy. Just have them forget. Like that's insane to me.

SPEAKER_01 29:43

It's not only that, it's like a um you don't even want to send them the reminder email that your subscription is gonna renew in three days.

SPEAKER_02 29:49

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 29:49

And that is like where I think you like cross the line. I always thought, like, I I've never run this business, and I think it's really interesting idea, which is imagine you got people to subscribe. Like, let's say native um got people instead of subscribing to Deodorant, got them to subscribe to a gift card. So I'm like, you know, you're gonna get a gift every to every month, you pay me $20 and you get a $40 gift card. And, you know, you won't get anything in the mail to remind you to cancel that subscription. So you really have to be checking your credit card statement. You know, obviously we never did anything like that, but I wondered what would that business look like if I turned this physical product into a digital subscription for a gift card that you could come and redeem on our site. And if you canceled your subscription, you'd get the value of the gift card if you could continue to use it, but you wouldn't get your cash back, for instance.

SPEAKER_00 30:34

How do you see brands versus offers or brands versus products? I'll give you an example. A brand is, you know, like you said, maybe they raise money. Yeah. This is e-com 2.0. But my point is they've got social media, they've got a PR team, they've got community, they've got all the the messaging of, you know, out of home. And you know, when a a big cultural moment happens, they post like Nixon 5, whatever, right? Very outward. A product is just very sniper. They sell a product, there's nothing else on top of that. Yeah. My POV on this is that a lot of people think they're building brands when they should just focus on their one product, whatever it might be, and just scale that and not worry about forcing a social media strategy. Yeah. Like not all products need a social media strategy. Some things are just products.

SPEAKER_01 31:27

Definitely. Um, let me ask you one question on that. Do you think native was a brand or a product?

SPEAKER_00 31:31

That's an insanely good question. I think for native, it was a brand. Again, because you were not just an e-commerce, like one skew product, especially now. When I look at Native, yeah, retail, yeah, shampoo, yeah, deodorant, yeah, so many skews, flavors. I think native even does like seasonal, you know, uh pumpkin spice, whatever. That's a brand. Yeah. Right?

SPEAKER_01 31:55

Okay. Well, I've got uh, you know, I've got multi many things to say to that. But um, the first one will be when we sold the business, we only sold D to C. We didn't sell on Amazon, and we only had one skew, which was deodorant. We didn't have anything else. I'm talking about native today. Today, yeah. I guess the uh, you know, what I'd say is products morph into brands. But I think you're right in that a lot of people would be better served and make a lot more money for themselves and their families if they were just like, we're this product company, I don't care about Instagram followers. I'm gonna build this product and I'm gonna sell it and I'm gonna make a bunch of money, and that's a perfectly great life for and income. But I think what a lot of people want is the same thing that governors want, which is to become president. And these people are like, I've got this uh product. You know what I can do more of? You know what will make this business better is if it's a brand. And they try and push that product into a brand, like you're talking about, and it goes in the other direction. They're spending a ton of money and time trying to build something that, like, you know, you're trying to fit a square peg into a round hole. And I'll give you an example of that. Like Thracio had these nail clippers. I think I was mentioned, I said this to you. We had we had a brand that was uh nail clippers. And when I joined the board, I was like, what are we gonna do with this brand? And um, you know, there was we we didn't have this, like this was uh the one of the first meetings I joined, and everyone sort of had a different POV and I was like, you know, what like we're competing with Chinese manufacturers for nail clippers. And uh we can be honest with ourselves and say, okay, this is the revenue it's doing and this is the IBITA it's doing, and that's a good business, and we're gonna keep that. But like we're not gonna build a brand around a nail clipper, like you know, other people may be able to, and like, but it'd have to start from a very different genesis than us selling this brand of nail clippers on Amazon, people typing in nail clippers. Like, no one, you know, when you search for nail clippers, you're generally not typing in a brand on Amazon. And so I was like, we have to be honest with ourselves. This isn't a brand and this isn't scalable. And, you know, everyone got to that conclusion at some point, but I'd say that it was a little bit, you know, uh I for me it was very clear that this was a product and not a brand. And I think there are often things, uh I think often it's black and white. This is a product and not a brand. And sometimes this is a brand and not a product, like this a brand with a gray product. I think there is still a lot of gray there. And in that gray, sometimes people falter and they say, I'm building a brand when they should be building products. But I'd say that in many cases, you could have told me that I was building a product in native, and I would have been like, I think the first year, if you had asked me, I would have said this is a product right now.

SPEAKER_00 34:15

So you're saying, would you would you say that when you sold native, it was a product?

SPEAKER_01 34:19

I would say that um we knew we were gonna be a brand, is what I'd say. We we weren't a brand yet, probably, but we knew we were gonna be what?

SPEAKER_00 34:25

You were a governor about to be a president.

SPEAKER_01 34:27

Yeah, we came out, uh like I did the pumpkin spice one, and I was like, you know, I remember this team meeting, and I was like, look, Tide uh launched in like 1946, Tide Laundry Detergent, and became the number one laundry detergent in 1948 and has never lost that mantle. And when you think about Tide, you think about your mom washing your clothes when you're a kid. You went out and played in the grass and they got dirty and she washed your clothes and they smell great, and she folded them and put them in your drawer. And when you put them on, you know, you're reminded of your mother and your family. And I was like, that is what native is gonna be in personal care. When you use this, you're gonna be reminded that your mother wants you to make good choices and your family wants you to make good, healthy choices in the same way that you go to Whole Foods and the same way that you use Tide, you're gonna use Native. And um, you know, I knew that we had this uh ability and I I wanted us to become that brand. But the hard part is when you're running a business with such few people and such little money, you know, you're blocking and tackling all of the daily problems. Do you have enough inventory? All of a sudden there you don't have enough customer service people because the brand is going well. Um, you know, one of your trucks broke down and your inventory is lost. Your your contract manufacturer wants to quit or has some sort of you know problem with stability. You know, there's so many problems you're dealing with. It's hard to focus on the brand sometimes. But you know, I would tell if I were if I were counseling entrepreneurs who are young, I'd say, focus on the product first and the brand will come. If you try and focus on the brand, you're just gonna spend all of your money the wrong way.

SPEAKER_00 35:53

So good. The my whole strategy, because I I mentioned this to you, but we're you know, kind of testing new concepts quite a lot. And a year ago, not even that long ago, my strategy was build a brand or attempt to build a brand, should say, which means have a social media strategy, all that stuff. Now I'm like product all the way. Yeah. And I actually I'm curious, do you think that there's a cap on scale for a product only?

SPEAKER_01 36:20

No. Uh I I I'm sure there is, but it's it's very large in a way where it's uh it's like, you know, generally uncast. Like, yes, of course, you're not gonna build you're not gonna sell two a billion dollars of a good, but you know, you can sell a couple hundred million dollars, no problem. But let me ask you one question. What is the like you you know, you shifted from um building brands to products, or that's how you think about it? What does that entail from a day-to-day perspective?

SPEAKER_00 36:44

Yeah, so excellent question. It's cutting out a lot of noise. It's just focusing on one thing, which coming back to our earlier conversation, is getting it right on meta.

SPEAKER_01 36:55

And does that mean that you make much faster choice? Like, you know, you're coming out with a brand name or like a product name and a product logo and you know, font color and all that stuff. How long does it take you to make those when you're building products as opposed to is it a different time for products versus brands?

SPEAKER_00 37:09

Oh, I mean uh 30 minutes? Yeah. Okay. 30 minutes. Yeah. Yeah, like for you. I love it. Like, I'll give you an example. So we had a a concept, an apparel concept, which I'll tell you offline, but it's still in testing right now. Yeah. Thesis, all the way up to functioning website completely built off AI, 100% testing on meta two weeks. And the only reason it took two weeks, not two days, is because we had to form a company.

SPEAKER_02 37:36

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 37:37

Because we didn't want to use one of our existing entities. So truly the bottleneck, the bottleneck was a state. And then getting a credit card. Yeah. Which by the way, to this day, we've not gotten a credit card from Chase or MX. Did it just take too long? Yeah. So we went with one of the fintech products that we referenced earlier. Yeah. But yeah, I mean, two weeks.

SPEAKER_01 37:54

And then what is the c uh how much money will you put behind something before you like is it successful or not?

SPEAKER_00 37:59

So our framework is one month of testing, $500 a day.

SPEAKER_01 38:03

So $15,000 in ads.

SPEAKER_00 38:05

Yes. And then we put $25 into the bank account for buffer. Yeah. Um, you know, for sub subscriptions, you know, whatever. But yeah, basically $25K one month. And then at the end of that period, you look at how close were you? Like, because I don't think you're gonna get it right right off the bat. Yeah. But you look like, how close? Are are we in striking distance here with some CRO, some AOV optimization, yeah, conversion rate? Can we get it there? Yeah. If not, and if yes, keep going, put another 25 in. Yeah. If no, kill it, move on. And that's my new strategy.

SPEAKER_01 38:38

How often are like how many kills have you had?

SPEAKER_00 38:41

Uh how many brands have you killed? So this is a new thing, but uh so far one we've killed. Or paused. I should say paused. Yeah, sure. Because we paused because we are far off. Yeah. Like the CPM was like four times what I wanted. Yeah. It was like a $200 CPM. I was like, what the fuck is this?

SPEAKER_01 38:54

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 38:55

You know?

SPEAKER_01 38:55

I love that. And like, you know, I I feel like not enough people realize that with that type of testing. When I'm testing like, you know, when I used to test stuff and when I'm advising people on how to test stuff, I'm like, look, run some Facebook ads and do it for a month. And if your CPM's, if your CPA starts at $400 and it comes down to $100, but you need it to be at 40, you've made a bunch of progress. And there's probably a lot of things you can still optimize to get to 40 or close to 40. Like you're not out of the ball game. But if you went from 400 to 375, you're probably out of the ball game. This isn't the right product for you. Yeah, kill it. Yeah. And there's a great like I went to this dinner with um one of the guys who started who was like incubating hymns. And he was uh the one who was like being interviewed during the dinner and said something really interesting, which is he's like, I think people don't understand how much product matters, and in e-commerce at least. And so when I'm invest when we're thinking about incubating brand or um investing in somebody, the first the first thing we want to understand is is what's this product and how is it gonna be different from the rest of the market? And um, I do think that there is an element of like I I'm all for let's hire like um the poor, broke people who grew up and have a real chip on their shoulder. There's some guy, Bear Stearns, who's like, we want to hire that guy. But I I'm also curious on like what you're gonna sell. Uh and like, you know, products are worth yeah, I don't mean you in particular, but I also mean just in general, like, you know, products are worth testing the way that you're testing them. That's a great way to do it. And I feel like not enough people do that. Like they're like, I've uh committed, I spent the last two years building this product, and I'm like, you are gonna set yourself up for failure. You've invested so much time behind you that you're gonna put this, you're gonna try and build this business for the next eight months, even if it's not working, and you know it's not working six months into it. Like um before native, I was trying to launch um like a cot basically expedia for home mortgages. And um, you know, I probably spent 45 days building it and then 15 days testing it. And I was like, this sucks. It's hard, it's annoying, nobody's giving us any information. Um I and I stopped it 60 days into it. And I was like, what I was really proud of was I was just like, I've not invested so much time or dollars that I feel like I cannot shut this idea down. But if you've invested two years developing a product that you haven't brought to market yet, you're gonna feel like that idea is such a big you've invested so much, it's gonna be hard for you to turn the keys off when you show up.

SPEAKER_00 41:12

It's the emotional baggage. That's right. You're gonna make mistakes because it's taking you so long. That's right. Yeah, right now we're in the like test fast, fail fast, move on, no emotions. Yeah. Just keep going. And then don't worry about brand. Just worry about product. The product hits, you'll know it. It'll be super clear. Yeah. And then, like you said, the governor, if he or she is successful, will become president naturally. Yes. Like Barack Obama became president. It was a force for you know a foregone conclusion. Could have seen it happen, right? Dude just swam with the tide.

SPEAKER_01 41:40

Yes. That's exact that's right. Yes.

SPEAKER_00 41:42

Right? Like and so that's that's kind of our mentality right now. That's amazing. I the reason I asked you about the Facebook reliance is because that's something I'm personally nervous about, just like how healthy or unhealthy, or how investable or uninvestable. Not that you need investment, because it's like you said, it's a profitable business, but at the same time, you don't want to build trash.

SPEAKER_01 41:59

Definitely. Um nobody wants to build trash. I think that it's everyone's been nervous about that since the beginning of time. Like no one's built a big D2C business without having a b big reliance on Facebook. Like even if you go to Gruns or Athletic Greens or like, you know, Casper or native, you know, when we were doing $100 million in revenue, you know, it's still primarily a Facebook ad business. And I think that like that's just the way life is. I think there are better, you know, I I think the world is caught up a little bit. And uh that's been great for D2C businesses. Like Target is way like is much more likely to take an early business, like to take a swing on an early business today than they were 10 years ago. Like in 2015, I tried to get into Target and they're like, don't ever call this number again. They're like, don't come to Minnesota again. Don't even come to Minnesota. The state is off limits for you. Um, you know, Walmart uh like now takes bets on new businesses in a way that they didn't do 10 years ago. They were like, if something succeeds at Target, we'll bring it into Walmart. Now they're taking bets on new businesses. And products are in Walmart before they're in Target. And that's amazing. And so I think the world is caught up and provided a little bit of diversification when it comes to those brick and mortar stores. Certainly depends on what you're selling, right? Like you can't be selling very high-end beauty products at Walmart, like that probably isn't the right fit. But you know, the world is caught up on taking those bets. And that's the diversification that we should be leaning into.

SPEAKER_00 43:19

Slightly different question, but I just genuine curiosity. Feel free to ignore. But are you long meta?

SPEAKER_01 43:24

Yes. Meta is my largest stock. You know, like if I had to guess, because I I don't know it on a dollar by dollar basis, I'd say I'd probably own $10 or $12 million about a stock.

SPEAKER_00 43:34

Well. And to this day, no foreseeable real challenger.

SPEAKER_01 43:39

Uh no. Um I think it's like, you know, that's right. I don't I don't know. Well, you know, uh, we were talking about how our friend uh I was just gonna bring this up. Yeah, was uh saying that Shopify has a real competitor when it comes to AI. Yeah, Facebook has network effects that are so impenetrable that it's really hard to that said. Everyone like you know, there's this network you know, consistently there. There's been competitors that have sort of shot themselves in the foot. You know, Pinterest did that, Snapchat did that. I don't know where TikTok is going, but it feels like, you know, two years ago everyone was like, oh my God, uh invest everything in TikTok, it's going to give you a really good Q4. I didn't hear that much in 2025 of Q you know, TikTok can give you Q great Q4. What percentages of your business are TikTok versus Facebook?

SPEAKER_00 44:20

So y it's funny because yesterday I was interviewing um a founder whose business is majority TikTok.

SPEAKER_02 44:27

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 44:27

And she's crushed it.

SPEAKER_02 44:28

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 44:29

Much younger uh skincare business, TikTok first.

SPEAKER_02 44:33

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 44:33

And she was like super confident in TikTok, being the channel, which was basically her her whole thing was like, I asked her, and I was literally about to ask you the same question. It's like, if you had to do it all over again, what's your first move? And her answer was, my first move is TikTok.

SPEAKER_02 44:49

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 44:49

You know, pick up the phone, I don't care how cringe it is, film yourself, talk about a product, go from there. Just like build up the algo.

SPEAKER_01 44:56

That's great. Uh you know, I think that everyone look, you know, everyone wants to say, hey, this is what I do again, because it's working from them. And so that's a perfectly reasonable answer.

SPEAKER_00 45:03

Of course. So if you had to do it all over again, I know you might not be in the mindset to redo it all over again, but let's wind back the clock or let's say you were starting fresh. Yeah. 2026, you know, anthropic, the date, like the the age of anthropic and AI, Mois Ali. Yeah. You know, you've got a limited cash in the bank. Sure. Let's say you've got, I don't know, uh under $100,000. Okay. What are you doing?

SPEAKER_01 45:31

I'm almost certainly starting CPG. Uh like I really like CPG because there's repeat purchase rate and um people are looking for new brands all the time. I'd say the difference here is um I would probably go into brick and mortar stores almost as soon as I humanly could. The first thing I would do after getting any sales on my D2C store is I'd go to I'd hire a Target broker and a Walmart broker.

SPEAKER_00 45:52

So just to clarify, because I got sidetracked, just being mind-blown for a second, you would start the business, you would go way into immediately go to Target and Walmart. First e-comm. Yes. And then after validation, you'd call up Target, bang on the work.

SPEAKER_01 46:05

Yeah, really what I'd do is I'd say, okay, do I have a good product? Why? Do I have a good product? Like what is you know, how many of my customers are coming back? And do I need to change the product in any way? The only way I can do that is by talking to my consumers. And so after I've done this for six months or eight months and sold a million dollars of diapers and emailed every single customer being like, Hey, what do you think of this um product? Do you like it or do you not like it? What what what could we do to make it better? And then if those things I can do, I'm gonna start doing. Then I'd go into Walmart and Target and be like, I've got this brand. Uh we're gonna make it big together.

SPEAKER_00 46:36

Do Walmart? And Target reps generally reply to like my perception these days is like they get so many inbounds. Yeah. They don't even reply to you these days.

SPEAKER_01 46:46

I think sometimes they do, but I also think that there's a lot of brokers now that you can go to and you're gonna be like, hey, look, I've got this product. It's got, we're already selling on D2C, it's doing well. We've got this type of repeat purchase rate, we've solved all of these consumer issues. Here's the reason that depends if target doesn't work well, or here's why we think it can do better. How do I get this and how do I pitch this to Target?

SPEAKER_02 47:06

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 47:06

And so I think that like there's still opportunities to do that.

SPEAKER_02 47:09

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 47:09

Like there are plenty of brokers that are like someone is going to try and get your business, or at least bring up the idea to a target buyer and then call you and be like, I brought it up, they're not interested, or I brought it up and they are.

SPEAKER_00 47:19

Are you in the phase of life would you where you would consider doing that all over again?

SPEAKER_01 47:22

Or I absolutely would. Not with adult diapers. Um, but uh you know, adult diapers is a great look, uh is a fantastic, fantastic you know, it is in general.

SPEAKER_00 47:30

Are you in the phase of life where you would be like fuck it, I'm all in. Yes. Hands on keys. Yes, definitely. But why? Because you just we started the conversation, you're you're traveling with your family every month. That sounds way better.

SPEAKER_01 47:42

Yeah, that is way better.

SPEAKER_00 47:44

And you obviously don't need the money.

SPEAKER_01 47:45

That's right. Um, you know, I really like building. And I would say that like, look, you know, I I I really enjoy making things that people love and then running into those products in uh in the world. And I'd say that I don't feel like you know, I don't feel that sense, or like uh I'm ready to feel that sense of ownership again and that sense of excitement again and seeing people love a product that I'm building. And, you know, it's a real outlet for creativity. You know, what you you were talking about that pumpkin spice thing. Like that was something that we did and we um, or something that I uh, you know, I did and I went and I like made these insert cards that looked like the side of a Starbucks cup. Because back in 2015 and 2016, it was all about Starbucks and pumpkin spice. And so, um, you know, we put those insert cards anytime you bought a pumpkin spice uh deodorant. We made like there was this girl on our team who was going to Napa, and she once brought this big hat to the office. And I was like, why do you have this big hat? She's like, I'm going on a date with this guy to Napa. And I was like, this is so basic, like, you know, big hats at Napa. We're gonna create a rose scented deodorant. And um, we ran out of, we like our manufacturer wasn't able to make it on time, so it got delayed, and we ended up launching it June 21st, which was like the first day of summer. We we didn't even realize it was the first day of summer. We just launched it because it was like Monday, and we finally got it in stock. And we put sent an email about it, and all of a sudden, like Vogue and the Today Show and you know, 400 other publications, all of which we'd been knocking on the door for the last two years. Yeah, being like, hey, will you write about us? They all wrote about us in 24 hours. And um, it was so much fun. And, you know, it was just like kismet that that happened. We didn't think that we we didn't realize we were even launching on the first day of summer. We were trying to launch it in May and it just got delayed. And um, all of a sudden we were having this like mini viral moment. And it was such a moment of joy and pride for my for my team and for me to like come up with something from scratch, something as silly as a rose scent and have it go somewhere. And so I really enjoyed that. Like that's a real it gives me a lot of sense of purpose and satisfaction.

SPEAKER_00 49:42

I mean, a lot of people would say that operating businesses is just enduring a lot of pain. But for you, it sounds actually like you really enjoy it.

SPEAKER_01 49:48

I think um that the you know, for everyone, it's pa there's gonna be some pain. Like, you know, there's no highs without lows. And like, you know, when I talk to my, I'll talk to my, I remember talking to my mother about native and I'll be like, we're having a terrible day today. And she's like, you know, you you're gonna have terrible days. This isn't a W-2 job where you have a steady salary. You know, your your income's gonna go up and down. And if you're not ready for that, you're not ready to be an entrepreneur. So you gotta be ready for that pain.

SPEAKER_00 50:12

So let's just play this out. Yeah. Let's just hypothetically you're 41. Yeah, you throw yourself off the deep end again and you you you start. Start a business. Yeah. Start a business. Okay. Boom. Now you're in it. Yeah. As you know, all of a sudden years go by. Well, and your native was like pretty quickly, but definitely. Let's just assume for a conversation that that kind of was an anomaly. Yeah, absolutely. Okay. What's the end game? Because all of a sudden, let's just say another five, 10 years pass and now you're 51. Yeah. Like what like what are you? Do you have an end game or are you just going with the flow?

SPEAKER_01 50:41

Um, I think my end game would be let me find somebody who I really love and who's going to be a great operator to run this business and make it the business that it can be and should be, with me helping to the extent that I can. Okay.

SPEAKER_00 50:55

So you're starting it, but you're hiring a CEO.

SPEAKER_01 50:58

Yeah, but probably not in the first five years of the business, uh, but probably in the next within the first 10 years of the business, where I'm like, this business has hit a scale and a velocity that it's legitimate. And uh we I've de-risked a lot, but you're also gonna come in with a lot of care and um understanding and opportunity. And you're gonna be, you know, uh, let's say I'm 51, I'm gonna be like, okay, I probably don't want to work 18 hours a day. You don't want to work 18 hours a day either, but you're ready to come in and say, I'm gonna bring a lot of energy to this project and I'm gonna make this really successful. And so I'd probably try and find somebody like that that I can be like, you're gonna run this and I can be your mentor and help you grow this. And that'd be really personally satisfying too.

SPEAKER_00 51:36

Is the person you hire a seasoned executive that you pay a lot of money? Or is it a young 20-year-old that's got incredible amounts of energy willing to run through walls and maybe not that much experience, but they'll figure it out?

SPEAKER_01 51:51

Yeah, it's probably the latter, it's more the latter than the former, but I think there's a happy middle, which is it's probably someone who has some experience wherever they work. It doesn't have to be in e-commerce. It could be like, you know, they're in finance or they're in consulting, and you know, they're ready to learn and tackle problems, and they come at those problems with like an earnest uh desire to ta to solve them and not hubris. Like a seasoned executive is gonna come in and be like, this is how we did it over here, and this is how we're I'm gonna, this is the only thing. That's right. And you know, I would say that the other thing I would structure in that compensation is heavy incentives, which is you should be making a million dollars a year when you grow this place. Let's earn it. Yeah. Like I'm not here to be like, you're gonna get paid $300,000 to $150,000 bonus. You're not incentivized to cut staff when they should be cut because you're like, it doesn't matter. Like the PL, like, you know, that staff's in that person's uh wages don't affect my bonus as much if I've hit my number.

SPEAKER_00 52:43

And how would you structure it? Is it the incentive? Is it yeah, probably percentage of EBITA? Oh, percent.

SPEAKER_01 52:47

Yeah, I'd be like, this is your, you know, this is the EBIT you're coming in with. And so you're gonna get paid this amount, which is gonna make you which is gonna make it feel like it's a full-time job and you're getting paid a good sal, a good but not great salary. And then every dollar of EBITDA you earn above the dollar you came in with, you're gonna get an X percentage with, or you're gonna get X percentage for, and then you're gonna be really incentivized to increase that EBITDA and keep expenses low because you're like, for every dollar I pay out, I lose 20 cents and I don't want I want to keep that 20 cents.

SPEAKER_00 53:16

Is 10% of EBITDA fair?

SPEAKER_01 53:18

Yeah. I I I think it depends on the scale of the business. Like, you know, if I was doing if it was doing a million dollars in EBITDA, uh you're you're not gonna be happy getting paid 100K and working all day, working really hard. But if it was doing 10 million in uh top uh 10 million in Ibadah, I'd say 10% walking in is more than like is i is too much. So it really depends on where the business is at.

SPEAKER_00 53:37

Okay, so you're structured based on current EBITDA and future IBDA. And like also what you think that person should earn in total dollars, kind of relatively speaking.

SPEAKER_01 53:45

Yeah, at least uh today, not necessarily like um you know, two years from now, the business is yours. You might have tripled the business. Yeah. You should be incentivized as fuck to triple the business and get paid handsomely if you do. Yeah, yeah. What do you think of that? Like how would you do it?

SPEAKER_00 53:58

I literally what I always tell people that we're hiring is I want to pay you a fuckload of money. Yeah. I always tell people this on like their hiring goal. I want to pay you an exorbitant amount of money. Yeah. Because if you if I'm paying you an exorbitant amount of money, chances are I'm also getting paid an exorbitant amount of money.

SPEAKER_01 54:14

Yeah, that's right.

SPEAKER_00 54:15

So our whole philosophy right now is bringing in young talent, sort of like giving introducing to them to the world of e-commerce, CBG, showing them what works, and then giving them two pathways. Pathway one is you take one of our businesses, grow it. Pathway two is go launch your own and let me invest in it.

SPEAKER_01 54:33

Yeah. Where do you find that young talent?

SPEAKER_00 54:35

Oh, that's such a good question. I don't think there's we don't have like a so far it's been happenstance. Yeah. Just through life. Yeah. You know, you just meet people on the way.

SPEAKER_01 54:43

You find good talent in that person does something to get.

SPEAKER_00 54:45

But as I was telling you before, we start rolling, like a big reason we started this podcast is to grow top of funnel awareness for anyone who's listening right now that is remotely interested in this, like reach out. Yeah. You know, like we want to talk to the best people. Yeah. And we will find a place for you in our organization. And if we don't have a place for you, we will tell you to start something and I will I will give you money. Yeah. Right? Like I will find money to give you to invest into you. Yeah. Like I'm 33, so we're in slightly different phases of life. But like my whole philosophy is money should never be the issue. If you're doing something good, you will find it. Like there's a plethora, right? I mean, Nick's game four or game three tickets where $10,000 just enter the frickin' building. Yeah. Right. So, like clearly there's a plethora. People are spending that much on Nix games, they'll invest in a young entrepreneur.

SPEAKER_01 55:31

Yeah. Yeah, that's a great point. Um, and yeah, I think the hard part is finding those good young entrepreneurs. I'd say in my entire career, you know, the number of people that I've uh worked with where I'm like, you are gonna be able to run a business is probably a number I can count on one hand and still pick my nose. Like it's not that many people, like, you know, and and it's amazing to identify that talent and see that talent and nurture it because you're just like, this person is gonna become a successful. Like, you know, you can see it 10 years or in advance. You're like, you know, you're you come at problems. Uh, like one of my worst traits is we we raise $500,000 in native, and people would be like, hey, Moys, I've got a suggestion for you. And I'd be like, who the fuck are you to give me a suggestion? I'm in this business day after day. And in general, I found their suggestions to be a little bit silly because they were like, Have you thought about influencer marketing? And I'm like, You think I'm not thinking about influencer marketing? Like, but you know, I came at it with a level of hubris that I really regret and wish I didn't have, especially 10 years ago. And I'm, you know, I'd say that's a consistent fight or something that I'm fighting even today. But like seeing young entrepreneurs or people who are young working with me who come at problems and don't have that level of hubris. I'm like, you know, here's this thing. Have you thought about it this way? And they're like, I haven't. Let me go think about it that way and come back to you. And then they do that work. It's so rare and such an amazing thing to see. And then also people who really understand business. Like, you know, there are people, there are CEOs that I talk to where I'm like, I want to, uh, you know, we're talking about investing in the business. I'm like, how much revenue did you do yesterday? They're like, I don't know. And I'm like, you should know yesterday's numbers.

SPEAKER_00 56:59

Oh my God. Like, you know, you should know that flag of all time.

SPEAKER_01 57:01

You don't know last month's numbers, like, you know, you don't know last quarter's numbers. How are you operating this business? Like, you know, you're not thinking about the dot the like the revenue uh enough. And, you know, you can just identify good talent when your people understand their numbers really well and they're like, here are the problems in my business, and here are the problems that I think I can solve, and here are the problems I want to solve, but I don't have the time to, and here are problems I probably don't know how to solve, like getting off of Facebook. Like, you know, if someone says, I never need to get off Facebook, we're gonna be great forever. I'm like, you're not even being honest with yourself. But you know, you when you see those entrepreneurs are honest about like their problems and want to solve them and come at it with a level of humility, it's so exciting to see them succeed.

SPEAKER_00 57:40

How many times a day at your peak in native, or even today, yeah, but I'm assuming native more relevant, did you as the owner check the bank account?

SPEAKER_01 57:49

Not that often bank account, but I'd say revenue, probably like every two hours, every two hours of my waking hours. You know, like um so like it yeah, and maybe even more, maybe a little bit more. Yeah. Because we, you know, we've been running a sale and I'm like, all right, let's see how it then it'd be, you know, maybe every 30 minutes.

SPEAKER_00 58:05

Yeah. Um I'm the same way. Yeah. Is that normal behavior?

SPEAKER_01 58:08

I think so. You know, my bank account I would check once in a while, but like, you know, the the bank account is it just tells a story of your past and not a story of your future. And you're like, you know, how your business is doing today and the revenue is telling the story of like what where is this business heading? And I remember when we were trying to sell native, we did this deck and we're like, every month we grew the business between the day we launched and the day we sold it. And that was a really, you know, I I was looking at that. I was like, I need to, I need to beat last month's numbers. And frankly, I was like so uh naive. I was like, this is what investors are gonna require, this is what an outcome is gonna require, is only top up and to the right. And that's not the case. Like people are smart and realize that businesses go through ups and downs. And I wish I'd been more aware of that, but I'd say that, you know, multiple times an hour, probably during sales or something, I'd be checking uh top line. But every you're the banking out maybe once or twice a day.

SPEAKER_00 58:55

Just come back to the hypothetical business, and then I want to ask you a totally different question. Hypothetically, again, you're starting a new business. Is that because like would you do that because you want to start another business? Like you come, you know, you wake up one day, you say, Hey, all right, I want to get back in the game.

SPEAKER_02 59:11

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 59:11

Or it's because you just happen to see a, you know, have it this aha moment of a brilliant idea. And you're like, holy shit, that's so good. I have to do that.

SPEAKER_01 59:19

I think it's probably more the second, and it's really just a, hey, the market is not serving these consumers and in a way that's terri like terrible. Like, you know, these people are being underserved in a way that they're not like, you know, with native, the reason that we launched is because I couldn't find a natural deodorant that I wanted to use. And I was like, this is terrible, like, you know, there's stuff where I've got to put dip my finger into something and rub it under my armpits. Nothing at like Dwayne Reed or CVS or uh, you know, Walmart or Target is natural, except Tom's and it's really bad. Like, you know, sort of like I don't look at any of these options and I want this thing to exist in a way that would make me proud. And that was the genesis of it. And I think if I found something that was like that, I'd be back at it.

SPEAKER_00 59:57

How do you look at hiring overseas? And I asked you, I feel that you've got a great perspective. Obviously, you're from Pakistan, you live in New York.

SPEAKER_02 1:00:04

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:00:05

Do you look at, okay, especially if you're an American, founder, living in EST or whatever, yeah. Hire domestically and pay it's ungodly amounts these days to hire people in the US? Yeah. Or hire overseas. You know, we're Hong Kong-based, so I've structured now my side of the business to be like very Asia-based, like killers in India, Sri Lanka, Philippines, wherever. I love that. Does the time zone affect you at all, or no? Well, I'm Hong Kong-based.

SPEAKER_01 1:00:30

But look, you know, is India where what's the time zone difference between India and Hong Kong?

SPEAKER_00 1:00:34

Two hours, two and half hours.

SPEAKER_01 1:00:35

Okay, gotcha. It's not so bad.

SPEAKER_00 1:00:36

Yeah, yeah. How do you look at it?

SPEAKER_01 1:00:37

Yeah. That's a great question. There was a time where at Native, uh, my CS team was like, we want to work from home. And I was like, I have uh, you know, no problem working from home, you working from home, but I I need to pay you Nevada salaries because I can't pay you San Francisco salaries when I don't care where you work. Well, like, you know, if you're working from Nevada, you know, you probably wouldn't be getting paid as much as you are working in SF where things are so expensive. And you know, I had to have that like, you know, conversation multiple times because everyone's just like, we want to work from home. This is CS. And I was like, no, you're part of the team and we want you here, and you're the front line of helping us succeed. When we have problems with our website or product or anything, oftentimes you guys are aware of it before I am because customers have emailed about it. And so I need you next. And uh, you know, that like everyone understood that. That was pre-COVID. I think post-COVID, it's been much, much tougher. You know, there's a lot of people who are like, I'm not gonna come, you know, there's a lot of good talent that's like, I'm not gonna come to an office. And I think also, you know, if you ask me, I would be like, I'm not sure I want to go to an office. I'd like to spend time with traveling with my family. Like, you know, I'm in New York now, but I'm not, you know, I'm leaving New York in a couple days and I won't be back for some time. And so I think that I like the idea of being able to hire abroad. I worry about the time zone and culture and communication requirements. Like you have to over-communicate when you're um not in a single building in a single office space, but maybe that's okay. How how's your experience been?

SPEAKER_00 1:02:03

I have had majority positive experience so far. I think that the bang for buck you get is hiring abroad and being able to find talent that's not exclusively in your city. Yeah, it's just more opportunity. Yeah. Like for the same price of an American salary, you could probably hire three people. And the way I see it is like, what's the ROI of that like one really good American person or three people? And okay, fine, maybe one of them suck, but two hit it, or even one of the three deliver. It's kind of like playing roulette, right? Yeah. Like if you place more numbers.

SPEAKER_01 1:02:39

How do you like um filter out for people who care versus people who are just like, this is a job?

SPEAKER_00 1:02:44

Yeah, so new strategy is hire fast, fire fast. Like genuinely, if I see that you don't care, like just leave. Yeah. Just leave.

SPEAKER_01 1:02:54

Do you try and filter for that before you hire?

SPEAKER_00 1:02:56

Of course, but then at the end of the day, you'll never know until you really know. And so my strategy is just be super upfront, direct. Yeah. People don't like your working style. They're gonna tell you and they're they're either you're gonna see friction or and they'll get fired or go quit.

SPEAKER_02 1:03:08

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:03:08

I'm like extremely blunt. Yeah. I'm the most blunt I've ever been in my life. Yeah. Because I don't have time to waste. Yeah. Like just if you're not doing the job, it frustrates the hell out of me. Yeah. And that's wasting time.

SPEAKER_01 1:03:19

Yeah. I think that like um we would uh, you know, I would just uh I would be very similar. I'd be like, look, this is a place where people want to win and work hard. And if like, you know, you're gonna Yeah, I was like, there's a lot of places where you can work and hide. You know, if that's what you're looking for, you should do that. Like there's so many places you can do that where you know you have a nine to five job and you probably work half those hours and that's perfectly fine because you can hide and you have to prepare one report and your boss doesn't know you can use AI to do it. Like, go ahead and do like you should do that. Here you will not be able to hide. Like I was like, I will slack you at any time. And if you're not responding, like you know, if you're uh if you're working from home one day and I huddle you, you better pick up that huddle really fast. Instantly. Yeah. Like if you're like, oh, I'm just in the bathroom, I'm like, no. You weren't in the bathroom the one moment I called you.

SPEAKER_00 1:04:06

Could not agree more.

SPEAKER_01 1:04:06

Um look, I I I would just go to people and be like, look, if you want to hide, don't take this job. You're not gonna enjoy it, I'm not gonna enjoy it. We're both not gonna have a great experience. No one ever was like, yeah, that's what that was my goal. I wanted to hide it. But um, you know, I I wanted to do this, I wanted to be up front. One of the great things Nick Sharma told me about when Nick Sharma said is he's like, before I hire anybody, I'm there a final interview and I say, Here are all the reasons you should not take this job. So you know, going in, and like you and I have had this conversation where you're like, I I told you why this was gonna be why you might not like this shop. You have to work hard, you have to be available on a weekend, you have to work on Friday night. And if you were not comfortable with that, this is an opportunity for you not to accept that offer.

SPEAKER_00 1:04:46

Yeah. My last question, and then I want to go into like a rapid fire segment is what keeps you up at night?

SPEAKER_01 1:04:52

What keeps me up at night from an e-commerce perspective?

SPEAKER_00 1:04:55

Yeah, I was gonna say either personal or business, but let's start with business just so it's relevant.

SPEAKER_01 1:04:59

I would say um uh businesses that I've invested in and their reliance on Facebook. You know, one of the uh amazing things is I invested in this um these two girls who started this business called Pepper, which is like a women's underwear company. And I invested in them maybe 10 years ago. And I remember the first meeting we had, I was like, you know, what's your repeat purchase rate? Or like what's your like clicking a cohort retention? They're like, we don't, I don't know what that means. And uh, you know, they had like such, they were so green, but they were also like running as fast as they could, hitting walls and being like, we're gonna just try and run through these. So I invested anyway, and like, you know, I've had so many calls with them since then. And now like they outclass me in so many different ways. Where I was like five years ago, we used to have these calls, and you know, you'd be right, you'd be taking notes. And now you ask me questions, and I'm like, I've never heard of any of these things that you're talking about. And it's really amazing to see them be so successful and so intelligent now. And so that that that trajectory has been really great to see. I'd say what keeps me up is what from an e commerce perspective is the volatility in the market right now. Like, You know, especially these days, you know, Facebook.

SPEAKER_00 1:06:02

The Facebook market?

SPEAKER_01 1:06:03

Yeah. Yeah. Like it would not just the Facebook market, but e-commerce. Like, you know, Facebook is the backbone of e-commerce. You know, the volatility is going to destroy businesses that could be great businesses. I'd say the other things that keep me up from like an e-commerce perspective are are is Shopify the solution for the next 15 years, or is it on its way out? Because I think that's a larger position of mine as well. And I think, you know, why would uh like Shopify exist because it has some network effects of all of these apps that are being written? But can't those apps be done for a mut like, you know, through AI much faster? Like is AI gonna kill that software? And the other thing that like the the one thing I hate in e-commerce is all of these um companies that are charging based on your revenue. You know, they're like, how many reviews do you have? I'm gonna charge you based on the number of like review, like you know, your revenue, uh, I'm gonna charge you. And I'm like, what do you care what my revenue is? You're providing the same software, it doesn't matter how much my revenue is. Fuck you.

SPEAKER_00 1:06:55

Triple Will does that, and it drives me out of my mind.

SPEAKER_01 1:06:59

Everyone does that. And I think that like, you know, except judge me. You know, judge me. Yeah, we use judge me. You use judge me.

SPEAKER_00 1:07:04

Yeah. And so I'm like, Judge me is the only people that have the TikTok review integration.

SPEAKER_01 1:07:08

Is that right? They're the only people who have the TikTok review integrated.

SPEAKER_00 1:07:10

Based on my research, if someone knows another one, tell me. But basically, yeah, you your stupidest thing. So your bizarre voice reviews become your TikTok reviews that sync. Wow. So you need these two softwares that have hold you by the balls. Wow. And there's like the remotes. But yeah, judge me is the only one that I saw could integrate with TikTok shop.

SPEAKER_01 1:07:29

Trevor Burrus, Jr.: You know, I I like despise those uh the businesses that are like every dollar you do, we need to take a penny of it. And I'm like, for what? You're powering my reviews, you're powering nothing. Like, you know. And so I think a lot of those businesses are going to be disrupted in the next 24 months. And I think they should be disrupted because their business models are archaic.

SPEAKER_00 1:07:47

Yeah. For me, what keeps me up at night is actually a little bit different. It's more macro. Yeah. It's more like AI bubble, stock market bubble, you know, black swan event of some macro geopolitics, like consumer recession.

SPEAKER_01 1:07:59

You know, I think that that would keep me up, except I think Donald Trump cares as much as we do to prevent that. And he will do anything to pump the US economy. And like him or hate him, like I think that he, you know, I think that he like, you know, if gasoline was uh double what it is today, he'd be he would have said, what does Iran need? Let's do it right now. And I think already he's become to the negotiating table because he's like, Americans don't have an appetite for $4 a gallon gasoline going into November elections. Like I think he's a pragmatist, at least. And so whether you like him or hate him, I think that will like I'm less concerned about that right now. I'm concerned about inflation. I'm concerned about macroeconomic events really. Um I I think that we're trying to pump the US economy. Like, you know, 10 years ago, people were like, we're due for a recession. Or five years ago, people said we're still has not hit. And I don't know, I don't know how it's all gonna shake out. And it's also things I can't control. So I'm like, uh whatever. So yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:08:49

Yeah. All right. So last question before we go to rapid fire. Yeah. Actually, a great question that I was told to ask. Because of meta volatility, like what's your backstop? What are you doing differently to buffer around that?

SPEAKER_01 1:09:02

Well, I'm not doing anything, but I'll tell you what other brands are doing.

SPEAKER_00 1:09:06

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 1:09:06

Yeah. I think that they're trying to find more marketing channels to work. Like, I think it's a boon to TikTok shop. Like to people are like, people have heard your friend's story. That's like I would start in TikTok shop first and saying, and like Hudson at Comfort story, being like, TikTok shop is amazing, it has gotten me so much in revenue. And so I would try, you know, like uh people have been doing since the dawn of social media, which or dawn of social media advertising, I would try and diversify from t uh from Facebook ads as well. I think my primary goal would be how do I get into brick and mortar stores? And that's why when you asked me, yeah, what would I do when I launch a business, the first thing I'd try and do is say, let me diversify my revenue channel from Facebook by getting into brick and mortar stores. And I'd do that, you know, almost as uh right out of the gate, uh right out of the gate or as early as I humanly could to bring in that revenue. Like one of the things that I realized at Native was we were capped to D to C revenue, and we were gonna hit that cap pretty soon before we expand into brick and mortar stores. Like we were selling more deodorant on our website than Amazon was selling on their website. And we weren't gonna be able to double that on our website. Like there just weren't enough people interested in purchasing that purchasing that product on the internet, waiting four to seven days to get their product, you know, not being able to smell it until they got it, or r they ran out and they're like, I need this today. I'm gonna go to the CBS and I'm gonna forget this brand. It's not available there. And so I think I would try and diversify channels right out of the gate or as early as possible into brick and mortar stories if I could, and if not, into other social media platforms. But you know, it's it's really a function of like what are you good at? Like I've met people who are really good at Google ads or YouTube ads. I've met really people who are really good at Facebook ads. I've never met one person who's good at both of them. Like it is really hard to be good at multiple channels, and TikTok is a very different channel than Facebook is.

SPEAKER_00 1:10:42

Yeah, if someone pitches me on both, then I Yeah. You're just you don't know, you know, you're just trying to do too much at once. It's like when once our Amazon agency started upselling me on TikTok, I was like, Yeah, that's a disaster. Yes. Don't do that.

SPEAKER_01 1:10:54

Yeah. And you're already spending, you're probably sending a lot of your good guys to figure out something else. Yeah. Just focus on that one product.

SPEAKER_00 1:11:01

Rapid fire questions. Let's say, let's go. Favorite brand right now?

SPEAKER_01 1:11:05

Favorite brand right now? Uh great question. Uh, I like Track Smith. Do you know Track Smith? I really like them. I'm not as big of a fan as Viore as everyone else's, because these are all apparel brands. I like Aloe. Who else is doing a really good job? There's a company that I've recently seen that sells banana water called banana agua. Uh, you can buy it online. It's like coconut water, but it's made only from bananas and it's fantastic. And I think they'll do really well. And I look, I always uh these are smaller companies that I consume, but like glow nuts, which are like low calorie donuts with like high protein that are uh in the refrigerator. I like that brand too.

SPEAKER_00 1:11:44

Favorite operator to learn from, regardless of if you know them and you should.

SPEAKER_01 1:11:48

Yeah. Great question. I really like listening to Hudson from Comfort because he's talking about a platform I don't understand. I really like talking to Roman, who we both know, uh, because he's just sees so much sitting, like, you know, he's also Hong Kong-based and he's just like, you know, he was the first person who said it's a sh is Shopify gonna die five to ten years from now. That I like that he might not have been the first person to say it, but the first person who said it that I listened to, and I was like, you know what? He this guy understands this game as well as I do. He and I like uh shared a co-working space 10 years ago. I know him well and I know he knows what he's talking about. And so is there some truth to that? I really like uh talking to Ryan at Joe Lee. I don't talk to him often enough, but like he's interviewed him. Did you really maybe he's really built an amazing brand out of a category that didn't exist and like created this amazing category that now exists, and uh that's amazing to see. So I guess those three guys.

SPEAKER_00 1:12:38

Favorite software tool that you can't live without.

SPEAKER_01 1:12:42

Favorite software tool that I can't live without. Okay, this is a good one. It's called Alfred, which is something no one's ever used. It's a like um, it replaces the searchlight or whatever it's called, uh, the finder uh on um Apple. And so I have a hotkey set and I just open it up and you can like type in something, and it'll be a Google search. You can type in math and it'll do the Google math. You hit enter and it'll save the number. You can set up all of these favorites to make your to basically never have to use a mouse. And, you know, I saw it a long time ago as like a productivity tool on like your desktop. And I saw this pro and they have this uh one feature that says, How many times do you use Alfred every day? I think it's like a $3.99 download from the Mac App Store. And the person who was like pitching it was like, I use this like 40 times a day. And I was like, all right, let me try it. I'd probably use mine a hundred times a day now. Wow. If I ever buy a new Mac, the first thing I do is download Alfred and set up my hotkeys.

SPEAKER_00 1:13:35

Wow. Really amazing $3.99 thing. Downloading that immediately. Um, okay. Most overrated and most underrated founder habits.

SPEAKER_01 1:13:44

Most overrated is this like, I don't know, this silly grind culture where people are like, oh my God, look at me. I'm working at like three in the morning and I'm like, you're not gonna be doing good work at that time. Like, you gotta stop doing this. And I don't think, you know, I work-life balance is like a tricky thing to say because I'm I I expect you to work longer than nine to five starting a new business. But if you're working until 3 a.m. every single day, you're not gonna be able to produce quality thinking at that level. So it's best and worst most overrated, most underrated. Most underrated is having really great mentors. In fact, one of the other guys that I really like learning from is this guy who invested in native. His name's Nick Green. He was one of the co-founders of Thrive Market. And um, on some, like, you know, once a month on a Sunday, I would call him and we'd both be at work because we work like half day Sundays. And it was so great seeing someone who was, you know, five years, maybe three years younger than me, but five years more advanced in terms of his e-commerce career or his e-commerce business at least, and trying to understand what he is seeing and what like what corners I need to start seeing around. In fact, he gave me this great advice once where he's like, everyone is pitching you on starting launching influencer marketing or launching new chain, like new products. You have a diamond that has been unvar like uh untouched. Like you haven't launched other products that haven't sold, you haven't started selling other channels where you haven't had velocity. This is an incredible brand, and like you should appreciate that because we have a brand that sells thousands of products, and we never see somebody with this type of velocity on a single one. And so um that mentorship was really helpful for me. I'd say that I had a few mentors when I was running um native, and he was like he was a great one to have.

SPEAKER_00 1:15:19

It's amazing. Um, last one. What is one thing you know now that you wish you knew 10 years ago?

SPEAKER_01 1:15:27

You know, this is a very corny thing to say. Um, but I'd say the outcome matters so much less than the journey. Like I still remember all of the people that I worked with, and like a bunch of them are my close friends and native. Um, like we still get together a bunch and it's so much fun to hang out with them. I still remember a bunch of inside jokes that we told. Um, like all of these things were so amazing. And you know, people ask me all the time, do I regret exiting? Not a day goes by where I regret it, but I do regret not like having that sense of community that I had at work. And uh, one of the amazing things when you've started your own business is you can work with people that you like to be around. You can be like, this person is great at working here, this person does great work, but I fucking hate them. And I can't live I can't work here if they're gonna work here. And I get to make the decision that I've I'm gonna stay. And so all of the people that were working there by the end of it were just people that I really, really liked. And, you know, I I miss that every day that I wake up. I miss that sense of community every day that I wake up.

SPEAKER_00 1:16:24

Could not agree more. I mean, I for me, like my wife always is like, why are you working so much? Whatever, not in an annoying way, but just genuinely. Yeah. And I always tell, I'm not working. Like I I like this. Yeah. I like getting on the phone with Leaf. I like this. Yeah, yeah. I'm actually just hanging out with friends at work. I genuinely don't know what else I would be doing. Yes, it's stressful, yes, it's volatile, yes, it's all those things, but I don't know what else I would want to do with my time.

SPEAKER_01 1:16:46

Yeah, I I hear you. Every day that I look, I used to say that um when I was working at native, if a bus hit me, I would not go to the hospital, I'd go to work because it was so much fun. Enough look, we were unstoppable. Like together, this team of us run, like, you know, we were sitting in a conference room working out of like people's uh like conference rooms. We were unstoppable together when we were in that room together and all our all of our heads were down working. And, you know, and this like sense of community every day.

SPEAKER_00 1:17:11

Appreciate your time.

SPEAKER_01 1:17:11

Thank you so much. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:17:13

Loved it.