Taylor Holiday Says You MUST Grow Your Business transcript

at CTC right now I am the best CEO I've ever been because I suffered extreme failure in 2022 in a way that I was ready to quit but I would if you gave me the choice make it never happen to me the hardest year of my marriage I say the exact same thing about people have since well don't you learn so much didn't you grow so much closer and my answer is no I would if I could go back I would not have done that yes you are right it builds resilience yeah it made me more conscious more capable have to survive and if I could go back I would make it not happen today on the Andrew Ferris podcast I've got Taylor holiday my very good friend and the CEO of Common Thread Collective for a wide ranging episode recorded in my backyard on the show today we're talking about how to generate negative CAC in your ads so that uh you actually get paid to acquire customers we discussed the question do you have an obligation to grow your business we talk about whether or not it's a good to suffer in business and we hit you with each of our favorite meta ads tactics really specifically right now a small note on this because we recorded this live in my backyard we had some problems with the audio my voice is a little louder than Taylor we will fix that next time we do an episode like this hang in there it's a really good conversation you're GNA love it me and Taylor at my house in my backyard enjoy it all right Taylor what's up it does feel funny to sit this close to you restaurant yeah I I feel how do you feel most comfortable do you feel most comfortable looking at the screen I mean looking at the computer look at each other look a little back and forth yeah I think we'll turn into more conversational I think maybe the maybe it's the drinks yeah yeah happen a little bit you've got a Manhattan that I made you so two things about this first of all this Ry I I might have made it it might be a faux PA for me to like not just drink it straight I don't know but it was sent to me by your friend of mine Edward Wimer of Legend Road ID dog ID he's been in e-commerce maybe for longer than anybody that I know yeah and also the inspiration for my hair tonight it's it's super delicious Edward's in Cincinnati which is of course across the border from Kentucky where they have on the Kentucky side oh is he well but but the company's in Cincinnati right yeah Cincinnati Ohio but he's on the Kentucky side of the bridge oh okay well anyway the point is they're very close to each other and so he has access to legit Kentucky bourbon and Ry and so he sent me this very nicely it was very kind of him to do he sent me a bottle of bourbon and then I just took a call at some point we talked because he's just great and I think we did a coaching call and then afterwards part of his he just sent it to me because we were I don't know talking about a little bit and then he said oh the Ry is even better I said that's awesome I love Ry and then boom the Ry showed up after he'd already sent me the bourbon well thank you Mr Wimer we love you i' appreciate you made with angaara bids and there's a reason I put this out here too I think this is some of the all-time great packaging in the history of the world the two big label yes I think it's a work of Genius because the story I've heard about this have you ever heard about this no it feels very Purple Cow though I don't know what purple cow is Seth goten's idea that you drive along you don't look at any of the black and white cows but if there was a purple one you would I could just m it on a shelf like every label fits right exactly so like if you go into a grocery store at a liquor aisle you will immediately know onar biders and I don't even know another biders company yeah like they just are the biders of record yeah and I what I've heard is like it was like early in the company somebody printed labels that were too big yep and they didn't have enough money until they put them on there and then they realized wait a minute this is like kind of genius and so anyway I was that's a good start to what we're trying to do yeah that was a good did you plan that did you was inside I thought it'll got to get the conversation going yeah so this the inspiration here is the random show if you ever listen to I'm a really experienced podcast or trailer I know how to do Tim Ferris and Kevin Rose good friends that kind of get together and chat over a bottle of wine and Andrew and I have been meaning to do a podcast together recently and it was sort of like hey let's just do it in person let's just get together and talk and think about some things that we would want to talk about that are not totally all e-commerce related but we live like 40 minutes away from each other yeah which be 7,000 miles yeah at the stage of especially with small kids stuff you drove thank you we're at my house thank you for that yeah so we sort of pregamed a little bit we did built an outline of hey if we could talk about a bunch of stuff what are you thinking about what's interesting to you and normally these are Marco polos that Andrew and I trade and now we're just going to try this every so often maybe once a quarter or so just get together and do our own version of the random show so we'd love to hear we're g to cross publish this on both his podcast and ours uh The ecomerce Playbook podcast and the Andrew Ferris podcast so it's like my one last claim on the e-commerce Playbook podcast which which used to be my podcast that's right so the uh the goal will be that once a quarter we cross both these so we'd love to hear it what other topics is this interesting to you to hear us chat Beyond just the Tactical e-commerce stuff we'll get there to some of it I'm sure but we're gonna I think little bit broader well we had talk about this I was thinking we kind of start Tactical for like the matabs of the world on that showed up and were like I'm leaving if we spend 40 minutes on family and fitness people are going to like turn it off but I think can we can start because because our Mar poos are like it's very like what's top of mind for you right now kind of stuff like you see something happen in account and you go like dude what about this you know you have a call with someone you learn something interesting have you seen this brand they're doing this crazy thing you know whatever and so I think we can start there and then okay so I think we both have a list and we could just sort of trade punches here go with what we think uh is the most interesting okay why don't you start why don't you start so if we're going to start with tactical then yeah or business observation business could be tactical so my the biggest thing that is driving my obsession is so Kevin I think I'm gonna say his last name WR but spiritu do you know who I'm talking about runs the garden plant daddy plant Daddy on Twitter yeah I all I know is that he seems good on Twitter and Strikes me as very smart yes okay so he put out this tweet the other day and I'm gonna I'm gonna read it this is your business Obsession right this is my current business Obsession so he writes number three negative CAC is the secret sauce of most of the Creator businesses that you see these days but it's a double-edged sword so CAC equals customer acquisition cost in a normal e-commerce business this is a positive number AKA you pay to acquire customers via ads in a Content first business not only do you tend to not rely on paid acquisition at the start of the business you actually get paid for the media you create okay so that's the idea of a negative T and he gave me language for something that not only have we done at CTC and I think it's referential to what we're doing right here which is to create content that you get sponsors for that you end up getting paid to create your marketing material yes and then I had a follow on conversation last week with Alan Don it's one of my episodes on podcast you know Allan have you met Allan so he's one of the founders of the Missouri Star quote Co oh then I have I think or so yes one of one of the most outrageous e-commerce businesses in the world like incredible I believe I sent them to you okay yeah you did you did me yes through ECF right or somewhere maybe through here maybe through the podcast or Twitter I think he just DM me on Twitter and he sent me what his business was and I was like you need to go to CTC because they had a very good business but with very little paid from what I no paid basically but a nine figure e-commerce business and I say that because he said it on my podcast I'm not unveiling I shouldn't but and boatloads of content already made oh and spend one and a half percent of their revenue marketing like one of the best businesses you'll ever see in your life and quilting stuff quilting stuff and you should listen to he he's a genius thinker in the way he goes about this but on the idea of okay they have a magazine subscription so the core of their business is they generate quilting content they have a million followers on YouTube and they produce this you know a ton of content for YouTube for Instagram and it's all about how to quilt and his whole heart like Allan's an amazing dude and he genuinely is trying to create value for these women his people they have a city they built quilt toown USA he has this whole opinion on using capex as a way to build marketing it's like the whole thing is genius but on the idea of negative CAC that the content that they create he down sells so they pay a bunch of money to produce great video content and then they transcribe it into a magazine and they charge $8 a month for a magazine subscription and so I said a nine figure business the magazine is the number three skew so far this year so you can imagine how much money they're making off of this magazine yeah as a downsell off the content that they produce for marketing material and so it's like how is he able to produce a business where you get that big at 1% marketing as a percentage of Revenue well it's tactics like that and there there's something in this that is just really brilliant about the idea that you could get paid to create the material that drives the growth of your business I mean I think if you ask me right now what is the next thing after meta I think it probably is some version of The Organic customer acquisition strategy by leveraging content creation on something like YouTube or who knows about Tik Tok right if it gets banned but like something like that and then finding things like that to do I I think in the early days of hearing about people doing this like I'll go back to beard brand when I first hear about beard brand doing it it felt like it was an almost impossible task for most people to do and I don't know what it was about that era that felt like banol is like you uniquely creative and so it makes a lot of sense to me that he can go create a bunch of content that drove growth in beard Brand's business via YouTube but now it feels like people are kind of learning the tactics to make the um recommendation engines work for them really really well and then they are doing exactly what you said which is like the content then becomes an additional source of value you know because like one word version of that is just like you get paid AdSense dollars right on YouTube and that's that that can get you really really far Isaac m talked about this like a little bit as well but yeah that extra layer of turning that stuff into a magazine by making the content really really good and then getting people to subscribe especially in the world of like substack creators where it's like I you know I subscribe to my favorite baseball writer I pay $120 a year for Sam Miller's substack and I'm happy to because the content is really really good and so you could sort of Imagine like if if the content was good enough there's a world where you can do this and I I about Drive Line too like I mean well so book and what they I bought their you know the most recent youth sports book so I've had this conversation with them Drive Line baseball clan of mine again I can I can say that because Mike's been on the show CEO I mean people who aren't baseball people don't realize that drive Line's kind of one of the most interesting companies in the world like they are doing crazy stuff in sports and I helped them on this like silly little e-commerce part of their business which is part of it but they're actually like this genius group of people software engineering firm half baseball coaches and they've talked about the same thing that like basically maybe they need to move to a really content first strategy because they have a lot of good stuff to talk about they have a different layer which that working with professional athletes in particular basically creates cost on the talent you know agents are going to get in the way of that in certain ways so they would have to maybe do it at the college level which is a little less compelling to the broader market so there's like some challenges I think for them but they've but believe me when I say like they have listened to the Isaac mad's episode in my show to talk to think about this idea of content driven stuff and I think what you're saying to take that to another level where there's actually a subscription product on the back end right that's not just the YouTube recommendation engine I think that's really really interesting when you say you're obsessed with it like what else so I think are you seeing other businesses do this have you seen other or are you recommending it I know you're doing it so so what I've discovered in for years at CDC B2B marketing is really hard it's it's hard to get tight feedback loop so you can't sort of run the standard like Facebook playbook for your own growth right yeah so we've had to constantly and and you know when when AO was with us um aorf yeah Aon oror is who by all accounts is one of the best B2B Market in the world and creates world class content but when it was only our own written material right that was pure expense and you had to generate an Roi relative to the expense and eron's not cheap and the team was big and it was like a lot of work and what we've sort of unlocked now is that when I make a Bridges Series yeah and can get sponsors for the content that actually creates positive revenue and those Publishers actually help me with distribution because they have a bunch of audience built in too now all of a sudden the thing that created actually as a profit Center and a marketing dollar at the same time so yeah and we we it's just I think that's a similar idea to what the guys at Missouri quilt are doing or what you know if you're running a YouTube channel you can generate ad dollars on it it with offset cost I I sent somebody one of your Bridges episodes today yeah that I thought you should make sure you watch this probably you should hire them and and and so you're getting the sponsor dollars on them watching it basically and I just know for a fact that it's I mean it's so compelling as an explanation for what you guys do that it was like if you told me like somebody could do that for me and it's like a reasonable price relative to yeah other agency offerings in the same space it's just night and day so like but see I think what that highlights and I think the mistake that's possible here it actually reminds me a little bit of like when you remember you you were public about when you had this idea of creating the um Real Madrid Academy yeah yeah right at CTC where you were going to get like you're were going to train up young D to see people instead of higher experienced strategists or whatever bad idea well so what you said the reason ended up being a bad idea was because what Real Madrid's Academy does is it already attracts the best young players in the world and so you hadn't factored that in that the talent you were getting at even at the Academy level wasn't good enough there's a similar principle here which is like the reason Bridges works is not because of the content strategy it's because of the content agre it's because you when I watch that Bridges episode I was actually talking to one of my clients about it who had also watched it yeah and I said what I've been with t I've worked with you for 10 years yeah it's almost exactly 10 years at this point that piece of content is 10 years of work well it's funny I saw Alex ban as who I don't know who you know he's awesome used to be work for Trek and he's one of my favorite people in e-commerce I always see at ECF and Alex who Bess no I don't know he's amazing he used to run all of global eom for track and now his wife runs a competitor to pigs like and he and his wife are just running it together and he's just the greatest dude and he like we were out that night he like stopped me he's like you were on your hero's journey like you have found your thing right this is your thing and so but but to me it's no different than Isaac who is uniquely gifted or even Allan when you meet him so it doesn't negate the need for talent or like it's the business model is not magic but well but what you said about Allen or Al from Missouri quilt right is like the content's actually really good it's providing a ton of value to people now he weirdly uniquely cares about these women like he's a he's a you know older dude like us but he cares about these 50-year-old quilting women because it's you know M like he cares about this town in Missouri like there's actual real genuine authentic care for quilting Community like so don't get me wronging that that's still present but you so you have to combine it's sort of like BK Beauty like Paul like I don't know how how well you know him but um do you know Paul at bkb no okay so he's blowing up on Tik Tok shops they sell the makeup brush and so everybody's like oh Tik Tok shops is valid because of Paul right so I sat with him at ECF the other night we were talking and his story if you listen to it is his wife was an influencer he went to film school for five years they seated product into the Tik Tok community so that when the affiliate feature came out they knew and were uniquely positioned to take it everybody yeah in a way that like no one can replicate today yes and so people look at it and they go oh Tik Tok shops is the magic thing but false right right and so I think that that can be where these things get conflated but the reality is is that margin innovation this idea that the present construct of just paying meta as the tax on everything has to be offset somewhere to create disproportionate growth and that's why creators with an audience are able to do it so I think there is something to this idea that businesses are going to find ways to offset CAC well with Revenue in a that's the point that's right which is that you have to if you want to grow a really big business you have to find a way to generate Revenue that's not tied to ad spend you need leverage some yeah and a really big business you can goow a pretty good business yeah but this is right like all these Tactics come down to these other elements of the business like I think you know for for supplement Brands the answer to that is LTV exactly that's it's the Leverage is that you the customers are drastically more valuable than they are in other agencies for Isaac mados it's it's organic content creation and part of the reason for that is he's talented part of the reason for that is that his product lends to visual content really really well for the Tik Tok shops people it's that for what was I going to say I think for for other brands the growth lever this is why omn Channel retail is the growth lover essentially at some simple modern is a great example well simple modern for them it's a it's actually like Amazon driven that's the thing people need to understand about that business is that like what it really started with was like brilliant product strategy on Amazon is the thing that propelled them at first but then you're right like what eventually propelled them to the larger numbers was mass retail and some of that and all these leverage points exactly D to is the back end for simple modern it was like they didn't care about it for a long time and so Omni Channel retail that I think is a good way to think about what's compelling about it for some Brands which you know is like a question that comes up a lot which is like should we go more on channel and to me it's like yeah if you can do meaningful value capture where it really is part value creation at large things and part of the thing you get there is this additional value capture on the spend you're already spending on your DC it can be really really powerful because all of these clicks and video views and stuff like that right now if it's just DC don't work so I think maybe that's the principle that I would think about there is like what is what is the actual pathway in your business to generating uh Revenue that is not tied directly to ad spend essentially to make your ad spend more valuable by being able to capture broader demand yeah so Shireen you you were joking about having her come on to do the anti-c cost caps she always like the number one internet troll about this idea yeah and also one of the best people on a podcast so do it because I think she has this really compy point of view you know where our good friend Vince is running their ad account and I mess with them all the time because if you look at the sort of that on the surface it's like you guys are trashing money here but the contention which I think is a fair one to engage in is they're the number one product on Sephora they have they're crushing in all these alternative channels and the demand so their demand creation the add on meta has a broader impact than people who are exclusively attempting to capture all that Demand on their website that's right and that's a leverage again that's that's leverage right yeah in that opportunity yeah okay what what should my business strategy be I mean are you just going to keep beating the long form explainer horse that's my tactic that's a tactic but I might beat that because people need to hear that people are so wrong about so much creative it's crazy should I do a Taylor was right or should I do I I don't think I have a problem many when you're right I feel like I'm I'm willing to do that I love arguing I love no come on I feel like I love to argue with you but it's the fifth major sport is arguing with Taylor in the US let's do you want to talk talk about let's do I'm going to say fix the next thing next okay so this is this is something I think about a lot so you and I have very different businesses yeah are you like I mean sort of well so we are trying to do really different things with our businesses there's a reason though that you and I are not competitors right now but we're going to cross publish this we both serve Ecommerce clients we both offer meta ad spend as like sort of the ostensibly the thing you pay for is at least part of it you know creative development Services look pretty similar I forecast businesses you forecast businesses you do it better than I do that's okay but you have an agency with a bunch of people working for you doing this I am capped on my client role and you and I were just talking about that before we started recording this and so as I think about my business here's something I've realize I tell every entrepreneur that I deal with like at some point I asked in this question and you asked them this question I think may even gotten this question from you which is like what is your what are your goals because I want to know that if like they're going to tell me their goals that I can serve their goals in some way that I that I actually think I can accomplish what they're trying to do and and the conversation will kind of end if they're trying to do a goal that I just think is impossible if somebody comes to me and says we want to do $100 million next year and we're doing 10 now then I might just be like great find somebody hacker than me you know like I don't know maybe it can be done I but like yeah so you I think I even when I think about like the bridges episode that I was referring to earlier which goes through your forecasting method which makes a lot of sense for a larger business where it is your forecasting daily campaign budgets in meta ads right for clients I am not doing that for my clients and I'm not doing anything close to that in my business for AJF growth Y and so what I have continued to think about is I have almost no long-term goal for my brand or for for agf growth I I have I sort of put a goal out there because I have a small team now and I thought it was probably a good idea for them to have some idea of what success was but to be totally honest with you I don't really care that much about it as long as the business works and they get paid and I can pay my family and stuff like that I don't have a number that it just it doesn't actually motivate me very much to do that instead and this is this is probably the thing that I'm thinking about from a broader business perspective I feel very comfortable with a strategy that just says fix the thing next and I'm not really trying to build a pathway and again like I seriously tell Brands all the time in e-commerce they need to plot out their course for multiple years and everything you know now I actually think in e-commerce this probably doesn't really work that well because in e-commerce you actually do need to think about the value of a customer in a way that directly dictates the dollars you're going to spend on ads and I think that's pretty different than my business but yeah that's this is the thing that I'm thinking about a lot and I think what it reflects is the question of essentially like business goals like I do I just don't think that every business needs to have very clear mid to longterm goals unless they want to get really big if they want to get really big you probably have if you if you're GNA get 20 40 100 people involved in your business you probably have to have some idea of where you're going because at some point you just have to plan like it's just it's just a reality of the details but for me what I'm thinking about is even this even in the sort of if I was the CEO even of that business I think I would probably spend I would be pretty comfortable with the idea that my main job is to is to just fix the next thing next okay so that's like a Half Baked thought so tell me what you think about that do you remember we used to do at CTC remember the first thing song yeah Richard Richard Gaff Richard GFF podcast write a song and this is the best guitar player I personally know Josh who runs bamb Co bamb used to introduce this thing at CTC there was first thing and the idea was what's the most important thing to do this week and do that before you do anything else and so we used to stand up at company meetings and everybody would declare their first thing and the idea was you're going to leave this meeting right now and you're gonna go do that nothing else until that thing is there my question is what's the framework for answering the question what's next so I think about like well I I can tell you the answer well let's take the conversation that we had I'm gonna push back on that I don't actually think you know because you don't have a framework to use against which is what the long-term objective is well the funny thing is I do but go ahead go ahead well but my experience of the the conversation we were having just between before about this client that client is entirely predicated on understanding what the long-term goal is and what I think is that right now you are trying to discover what the actual maximum potential is of the present day yes and so which is exactly what fixing the next thing next is but what do you mean well I mean like part of the thing that keeps happening is like I I have a a new understanding of what the maximum potential is based off of what happens next and I don't think that that could have happened in the same way six months ago as it happens today but I think that you could actually get to the answer non-experiential but what what I watch people do is they have to live it to actually accept it is that there actually is an answer that you could probably accept and that you could logically get to but until you've actually lived it well and experience the emotion of what it would cost you to to live into like then it it's not actually you so I think I think part of the thing that's happening here is like I don't really want to hold myself accountable to it I think that's part of the idea to some goal that I create because I don't care that much about the goal so then just why would you create a goal you don't care that so I don't I don't do that right exactly this this is exactly the point I go to the gym in the morning and you just like yeah I don't I don't really I don't really have serious fitness goals what do you mean I want to work out three to four days a week because it's good for me I like doing it feels like playing sports I love playing sports because I do crossfits it feels like there's like a time goal in a given workout or a weight goal or whatever it is right so it's like it's got like a it's got like a gamified kind of element to it and so but I'm not I have no I mean I weigh myself when I get to somebody's house that has a scale because it's kind of fun yeah I don't have any body I don't have any muscle goal or anything like it's fun to hit a new number when I get on the bench and bench press but I don't really care I just know I feel good when I do it I want to do that what I believe is is that if I can stay consistent with Crossfit for a long period of time I'll feel I'll feel good I'll be as healthy as I can reasonably be without building my whole life around fitness and health and so the solving the next thing next it's like why my push-ups are terrible so when they come up I try to work at them but why because it's fun to get better things so so I think that it sounds to me like in many of these cases you're optimizing for an experience which is what I did I think for the first probably seven years of my business at CDC was entirely about an experience yeah and it was entirely predicated on the idea of like the highest value is like I love this thing uhuh and as long as that remains true then persist yeah in that action yeah so I don't but I I think that in some ways what it is is you're rejecting examining your behavior for the actual source of the motiv yeah I I mean I think the biggest so the biggest question for me is is the bigest the most Live question in my business is like how hard should I push to build a big bigger thing and there's one thing out external to me and I can just tell you this is definitely not the thing I it does not get me out of bed in the morning except in the sense that it feels like a game to win and I like winning games yeah I but it feels that arbitrary to me there's one thing that says like you should go build the biggest business you can and make the most money you can and that's the point of business and that's like the thing you should go do and I think that's true so I think that's like an there's a there's very few things that I find to be objective truth reject that premise but I think that's what business is no matter what anybody pretends it is yeah and I I mean I I actually appreciate that perspective I think I think more people should be honest about that I think actually that's what a lot of is driving a lot of people who won't say that with Clarity you know I always think about this when I see the mission statement of companies where I'm like no your mission statement is to make the most money possible that's what the mission statement is in fact when I see people sort of hip presenters at conferences or whatever talk about so important to have a mission that people can rally behind it's like what the mission is for the equity holders to maximize their Enterprise Value Capital Society I think is it's an externality that you don't actually get to decide and that's part of my thing is that like we exist inside of a system that moves in a very specific way where the employees and things are motivated in ways that you don't actually get to control that's right so sort of be it would be like uh joining a basketball league and starting the game and saying I'm playing for some other reason than to score more points than the other team and everybody could go like okay you're allowed to say whatever you want yeah but the entire premise of this thing is all predicated on whoever scores the most points wins so no matter what you say in the context of that there's a bigger truth than you but in business there's not another team you're not trying to beat a team there is well maybe so I don't think so I think but I I think if you define winning as beating all the other teams it creates so I mean this is this is this is exactly the thing for me is like I feel really comfortable on the one hand saying this is like a game and this is actually the thing that motivates me I look at I kind of look at my forecast for AJF growth and I go how do I make the number go up and that's because it's inherent to the activity and at the same time there are some things I'm not willing to sacrifice to do that okay so okay now I agree with this now I think very similarly which is I'm willing to lose the game but that doesn't change what the game is so I'm willing to accept that I don't that some people beat me yeah I've been beat by my competitors in my space I've been beat yeah and I I'm willing to actually accept it because for me there's a level that I'm not the consequence of which I'm not willing to accept from familio thing for a bunch of reasons but that doesn't change the game that I'm in it just means I lose yeah I so I just I mean the thing is like basketball actually is a constrained thing for one thing it is necessarily the case that one team wins another team loses there's no world in which both teams win whereas I think you and I are both winning right now I don't think the fact that you have a a bigger Eva than me means that you're beating me even though we're ostensibly in the same case I just think it means that we're after really different things and I I don't have a problem with that I I'm team Taylor man I want you to have the biggest EV that you can get that's great I refer you clients like I'm happy to do it right like but I that's that's where I think that that breaks down and there is a constraint here so and so so the point is like for me I'm always trying to play this back and forth which is like like well because like if the point of the game is to win Taylor why don't you work 80 hours a week maybe you do because I'm willing to lose the game because I'm playing multiple games at once I'm playing the marriage game I'm playing the father game I'm playing a bunch of games at the same I'm playing my personal health yeah but then then your whole thing breaks apart because because what you're saying is that like I mean then it is just for fun for you right it's a game that you're willing to lose then you're not playing to win I'm playing to win to a certain level no you're not because no you said there's another team that's beating you they are beating me so in that case the analogy breaks down why I can accept that there is somebody better than me there's a real cost that somebody's willing to pay that I'm not yeah I listened to it was uh Have you listened to you're probably not a basketball guy but LeBron and JJ reck have had started the podcast again I've just heard about it two episodes yeah on the first episode LeBron says that to be at his level it comes at the personal expense of the people closest to it and he goes I acknowledge I am selfish for the pursuit of this thing yeah that's great he's willing to pay the price and therefore he is the greatest of all time yeah you don't get to be LeBron and not pay the price that's right I I agree I don't get to be LeBron yeah but then you're not then it doesn't mean that there's not a game going on that somebody's LeBron somebody's better than me yeah they're bigger than me they have more money than me they have everything industry I mean you're asserting this yeah yeah you're asserting this idea that that is an objective waiting of who is winning and who's not and I I'm suggesting and well the game of business yeah so maybe there's Game of Life there's a separate I think that's Subs that business is subsumed by this game right so exactly inside of an capitalist Society everything will move towards this direction inevitably and I watch people like this is a thing another podcast guest of yours Jess from high fire team I think hates me because he has this no I don't mean that Jess you're you're awesome you're great he's a great dude yeah but like he has this deep entrenched motivation to say I will not be big and I am happy I am and I just go okay that's a thing that won exist years yeah well so what I think is definitely right and I think point this out is that the reason it's really hard for businesses to stay in stasis and maybe you point this out maybe somebody else is that employees want to grow exactly because that's again the system that you're in is not to find them well yeah I mean the thing is it's possible though you can you could theoretically say that's fine we will take somebody at a lower level and replace them and it will come at the cost of our thing or you can try to grow with them if you want to keep them but at that point the the reason I'm trying to grow is not necessarily to grow my eepa per se the reason I'm trying to grow is because I like the way this is set up with this person I need to provide them more value right but again and because you're inside but that's a different game entirely no but because you're inside of a capitalist system you only have one choice which is to grow yeah unless they unless the people who you attract feel the same way which is like they're actually willing to take less because they don't because they would rather exist in a workplace I mean there many people all over the place are willing to trade money for other benefits tell me about I'd like to meet them they they probably don't exist in our space that much I don't know yeah I don't think they do I mean I think the very behave very totally the very the very yeah I mean people's people's uh stated preferences and revealed preferences on this are quite different but the I mean the classic sure the classic example of this is that I I'm sort of on a societal level is younger mothers very often are willing to trade more flexibility in a job for pay and this is like a observed thing from a woman who's run Nobel in economics right this is like part of the reason for gender gap so or gender pay Gap so in that respect they value something differently than they value pay now that's in that case it's flexibility but I also think that that's actually consistent with Western American capitalism in terms of how gender roles proceed so I think probably like again that's actually probably built into the premise of the game that we're playing yeah in the difference between gender but I mean that person is still doing the thing for whatever reason right they're they're doing the thing that you're saying that people don't do which is like they're not necessarily in always intensely money driven but I agree with you in in a highly entrepreneurial space like ours it's just like it attracts people who are like trying to grow and do more things all the time you know yeah it's just like who's celebrated what is it like yeah who have you chosen to have on your podcast why did you have J Ryu on the podcast why because she sold her company for 500 million she won and she should be celebrated and asked questions and wondered about and yeah why are the operators so popular because they all run nine figure businesses and it's like The Operators n it's just it's so deeply ingrained yeah into the premise that it's like I I don't I think resistance is futile yeah even like I watch you and and there's this question too which is like which is one of the things I put and this is actually what Edward and I talked about which is that do you have some sort of underlying obligation to maximizing your potential in this game um is there like a are you letting down the gift that you have in some capacity to play a small I mean it's funny like I I think this is actually the much more compelling question to me than an eidle per se or like a revenue goal per se which is a stewardship goal or or like a stewardship sense right so I mean you know like I'm a Christian I'm a person of faith I think sometimes about I I view the world through the lens of there's element where like God has made me in certain ways and and given me certain respons posibilities I think about my family or something like that right this is sort of the obvious ones I have kids and part of my role is to Steward my relationship with my boys in a way that is they're my responsibility uniquely in a way there're nobody else's besides my wife's and even that there's like some different ways in which that happens in our relationship so like so I think about that same kind of thought with business which is like should I should I push myself harder to do something larger precisely because I think I have the capacity to right well it' be like going to the gym and deciding that you're only going to lift 135 pounds on bench and you're never going to do that I think a better analogy is what if you are 6'8 right if you're born like LeBron exactly so because I couldn't be LeBron right like it even no matter how hard I work I'm not gonna be Lebron and uh in fact I probably can't I couldn't have made it to the NBA if all I worked on my whole life I don't think I just am not athletic enough so yeah I think there I think that's a more interesting question to me and that actually is the thing that pushes me much more than a goal for the sake of winning a capitalist game because I don't really value like I said I like making more money because it feels the same as like when I was a very small child and I got pretty good at Chinese checkers at like a seven as like a seven-year-old and I was like I want to play Chinese checkers because I can beat people at it you know it's fun that's what it feels like to me it doesn't you know we I got into this world because of a fantasy baseball league you and I were in right like and so like it is exactly that thing to me that's what it feels like it's a game to win it's a game to play it's not not otherwise I don't care very much about the rest of it but yeah the the question of yeah is there an obligation so what was your answer to Edward or what what do you think do you have how about you you're you're you are uniquely talented I'm getting I would say the number one thing I get from mentors in my life is criticism of the business I'm choosing to participate in everything yeah as if it's not a big enough opportunity right yeah so I people tell me this all the time and I kind of reflect on it like why do I keep getting why do they keep saying this to me and in some ways it's like intended to be a compliment but it feels belittling like it's a weird interaction and even talking about it feels like some sort of lame thing like should deserve to be doing something more like yeah part of it's I'm 10 years into the journey and so I feel like entrenched in this way that that is about finishing a story that matters to me but um I think that right now I've created this framework for what I value in life around these three goals and the reason for that is that I think that marriage is the hardest game that you can play in human relationship and so I think it's the highest achievement of human relationship to have a sustained 50e marri that's that's my Frank two is be best friends with my adult children I didn't choose to bring them into the world I feel a unique obligation to their wellbe you didn't choose I mean I sorry they didn't choose to be brought into I chose to bring them into the world I feel a unique obligation to their care and to me the idea that they would choose me in relationship at the end of that a signal that I did something that they valued yeah and then post economic by the time I'm 40 is just a way to say that like I hate being beholden to people for money I'd like to not yeah but I recognize that there's like there's nothing objectively good about any of those things in my mind do you don't think there's something objectively good about dying married to your wife I really don't I I don't know that that's the case I don't know that marriage is a really like it's a weird construct that's like really hard and requires a lot of like yeah sacrifice of life experiences that you could have that I don't I don't know what's good I don't I'm choosing it right now I think it's the best option yeah but I don't know I don't know like sometimes I think about like what what would it be like to be Ryan Gosling would I choose the same thing like would it would that actually be the best choice if I was rich and famous and the most beautiful person on Earth I don't know yeah like I don't know what those why don't you approach a data- driven answer to that what it is what how many people get to married people are meaningfully happier than non-married people what is happiness well there's a lot of different ways is the point I mean I think you could interrogate the data about that about the point of life you could I mean that's a I think that's not going to be a data question the point of life but I think I think to the question of the point I mean the point of life and what's going to give you the most Joy are two question two different things but I think maybe I actually think they're one thing but but to the point of of what you said about Ryan Gosling I one way you could answer that question would be to take a data driven approach to it and that would that would well I don't know how many people get that you can't create counterfactual experiences for Ryan Gosling relative to the choices that he makes yeah right like where he's like celent married to one woman for 60 years and then one where he's not take yeah you can't but you could take the average that you see across things and see how sociologist measure this kind of thing right this is there is a field called sociology where people try to exactly get at this kind of thing and you could attempt a DAT and you would do all the things you would do if I presented to you a spreadsheet about um whether or not I don't know for example comments on on ads matter um and you would you would interrogate that data and you would try to answer and you say where's it a good study where is it a bad study right I'm saying you could approach this question that same way and bring all of your same concerns about it so and I think you could get to an aggregate view of an average answer for Humanity that would be like broadly true specifically false um and I think that's that's part of the challenge of it and then you get to definitions of words of like like happiness or joy experience of these things and like so that brings to one of the other points which is we let's let's just let me just pause there and note yes I'm speaking in terms of averages I recognize that many people who are listening or watching may have different experiences than this and I'm not trying to you know condescend to anybody's experience I'm speaking in terms of Aver so with averages and data which is like again this and this is problemistic thinking or anything else where when you say even the Comon thing is such a good example where what everyone's provocation or response to that often is but this one time this thing happened where the comments made a difference and that's totally possible yes right I could totally concede that that is true and what I'm saying is true you know just a couple weeks ago I reached out to my friends at more Staffing and told them I would like to add a fifth team member from the Philippines to my business and uh quickly they responded to me to get the search started very very quickly understood exactly what I was looking for and and who they should be helping me to find and hopefully in the next couple weeks I will have another team member who will be as great as the rest of my team from the Philippines I have had four for a while I've worked with them for a while not only have I had no problems with them but they've been a core reason my business has thrived in the last year I love working with more Staffing the entire team that I have in the Philippines is from them they recruit onboard coach train give all kinds of support to the incredible talent that is available to your business in the Philippines and so the the value proposition is really really simple here and it makes all the sense in the world if you already have a remote team go look for incredible Talent from the Philippines where you will find people who you can pay a great rate in the Philippines which means you'll attract good quality talent and yet it will still be less than domestic rates in the US everybody wins in that scenario including your business at the end of the day uh it's that simple and honestly honestly I mean this when I say I simply don't know why at this point you would not go look in the Philippines for incredible Talent with my friends at more Staffing wherever for whatever part of your business you are trying to add talent to go to more more now.co that's more now.co and they will help you find those people in your business go to more now.co ask them about who is available for the position that you need see if they can help you find it I think you will be absolutely thrilled with the talent that you get and the price that you pay but this is a good this is actually a good like Facebook tactic thing or whatever which is that like people I think do this a lot with a lot of Facebook tactics which is they go like the one I hear a lot is creative testing you know people people get so mad at me about the idea that I'm saying you should not build creative testing campaigns I mean your way of say framing is slightly different than mine but I think we basically agree um like and my point just that like let the machine decide which ones and the response I get all the time is yeah but this one time I ran this ad that was getting no spend when I ran it on the machine learning but then I forced spend to it and it worked great and then it spent a bunch more it became my best odd and my answer to that is that that's totally possible but I'm interested in probabilistic forecasting and I have to play I'm not trying to generally create outlier outcomes in terms of like those sorts of things for for something like the distribution of my ad spend I want probabilistic forecasting that yes will be wrong because all forecasting is inherently flawed and all probabilistic forecasting is flawed in the classic example this is 538 prediction of Hillary Clinton versus Donald Trump right and they said what what was it Hillary Clinton could win 25% of or uh Trump would win 25% of the time and everybody said oh 538 got it totally wrong it's like 25% is a lot that's a lot of that's a lot of times it's it's not the most times but it's a real chance you know so anyway like I I think this is something people do all the time with that though which is that they they misunderstand the relationship between the individual outlier Thing versus what you should expect in the Aggregate and yeah and and I also think that what's hard is that when you're dealing with one account and you're you're making decisions about what is working there versus the seat that you and I sit in which is trying to make a recommendation of what is most likely to occur yeah is that those are very different things it may be true that in your account this specific tactic is working and therefore you should continue to deploy that tactic while also being true that is right that I don't recommend it and on the average that you should have principles of what to do and what not to do because the other thing I despise most this actually could have been my business strategy my business observation my Obsession right now which is like people just love to say every account is different things are always changing all the time and I think that's just the biggest Fool's erand like I I I'm going to the extreme other end of that I am like no no no I want a d Toc doctrinal statement I I've actually thought about putting actually to bring back Edward Wimer I told him I was thinking about putting together a documents of like the Ten Commandments of DDC media buying and people would be annoyed a lots of them because they be able to break them all the time you know but like to frame it that like I think people need to have I just about this like you need to have point of view and perspective and yes change it when the data changes yes there may be times when it will not apply to your specific account but stop going back and interrogating the the fundamentals like instead stick your feet into the fundamentals and then go do things that are actually unique to your business like the way your product interacts with your customer which is unique to your business you know yeah so I think that's a that's a hard principle but I think it underlies though this back to this question of like the business is like what is the the fundamentals of business and then what are the reasons that you would deviate from it yeah it gets to this the one of the points I'll go back to my next thing which is is it so I I wrote down an R sheet here is it important to maximize your okay this is good and so the there was this big viral thread that uh was a video right who was the yeah he was giving us talk just stand I'm gonna pour you bit of whiskey and he was giving a speech about suffering or about his experience building in yeah and he was speaking to Stanford students and he was basically like I'm a tldr this and you should watch it because it is good misrepresent the context and some we'll uh we'll put the link in the show notes I'm gonna J that down says I wish you suffering because suffering is the only way to build resilience and resilience is the key to success and so my question in listening to that was like is this a worthwhile trade is resilience a worthwhile trade for suffering and should you pursue suffering for the sake of developing more resilience so that you can maximize your sucess and I was like you know what I might be willing to have less success for Less suff um and I I think that I would never wish that on somebody I actually think about this a lot with my kids right y it's like would I would I offer them suffering for the sake of their resilience yeah and I do you do that in your parenting so first of all I think we'd have to agree on the term suffering I don't think hardship or like I don't think the gym and running hard on the Tren Hood suffering you know you say that but think about how hard it is for some people I I think especially for my friends who I mean you were a professional athlete right so you I think there's an element I know that I ever suffered in my training exactly that word is so dramatic exactly I think that there are some people for whom going to the gym is suffering I think at the very least it's emotionally suffering I think about some of my friends here's the closest experience I can do to this and and I think again this is probably not quite there I graduated high school 6'2 probably 150 PBS I I'm just built incredibly stringy and I didn't do anything to select being skinny I just have been a skinny skinny dude my whole life I am currently yes right we were friends with Junior High yes yeah yeah I just it's part of the reason I didn't play baseball for longer I just couldn't hit the ball or throw the ball far enough or hard enough right because I just wasn't big enough and I didn't work out I didn't know how to do it in high school whatever so right I was reasonably skilled I just wasn't strong enough so I remember going to the CrossFit gy been in the Cross gym a lot of times with women who are stronger than me and as a dude this gets at your dudeness a little bit you know like it is it it's like the thing to be strong right or whatever and I had to accept the fact that I was going to really suck at the workouts in the beginning okay and I was gonna lift a lot less weight than other people including than some of the women in the gym now I think that's not that much suffering still yeah I was gonna say where does the suffering right but I mean it was emotionally taxing on me at first and I had to work through that and I think that's not that extremely example of some people's relationship to the gym I think of some of my friends who have struggled with their weight at different times and going to the gym for them is a brutal experience at first that's what I think yeah and this is a spectrum and so I think it's hard to draw lines of where these words begin between like I have you know and we could all pick some extreme example yeah I have you know some close family friends that have had to like decide to give up on their daughter because of her heroin and I watch them suffer yes right that's fair I think Fair want that for no one and whatever resilience they develop in the name of that I would want for nobody but go going in the cold plunge like okay yeah learning to control your body in a moment of like where you're vassel neral this is a good point you're making I just I I just want to draw a line of what what we're offering to people in this statement of I wish you suffering and you're maybe but I I think whatever and I don't age that that could build resilience yeah like that that kind of extreme suffering would make you resilient but I'm like I don't want to be that resilient yeah like I'll be less I think about this all the time I mean like I think you should choose your suffering as part of it right as much as as much as you're able to right is that you should decide which things you're willing to suffer for and this goes back to the like business game thing like I think part of the reason I'm not trying to grow a bigger thing is because when I think about the re what it would take to get there it requires a bunch of challenges and stress that maybe I could accomplish but that right now I think I'm stewarding things fine and I I'm not willing to do that now that may that may change when I don't have a two-year-old and a four-year-old well he says in an interview the CEO of Nvidia one of three most valuable companies in the world it's an interview that said like if you could go back to yourself when you were starting what would you say and his answer was don't do it yes so he's sitting in the reward of it and he's saying looking back to himself what would he say and his answer is don't do you think he believes that I I can only take him at his word I don't know him this what part of I was going to say is like I think you're strawmanning him a little bit you're sort of just taking him his no no no on the suffering thing like on the suffering thing I think like I think if you interpret what he's saying there in the context of talking to a room full of Sandford people I think what he's what he's probably saying I would have to go back and watch the clip is that the obstacle is the way essentially and and that that would be a more fair interpretation of what he's saying and that probably what he's saying is that like the challenge are the thing that create value and I think knowing you you would say the same thing so I again I both agree with the premise and I which is to say that and I I'll say this at CTC right now I am the best CEO I've ever been there's no question because I suffered extreme failure in 2022 in a way that I was ready to quit but I would if you gave me the choice make it never happen to me and and so what what I the hardest year of my marriage I say the exact same thing about yes I people have S well didn't you learn so much didn't you grow so much closer and my answer is no I would if I could go back I would not have done that yes and and so I look at that and go you are right it builds resilience yeah it made me more conscious more capable have to survive and if I could go back I would make it not happen and I think that I hear from him too because it was miserable and I don't even know that I like the person I am on the other side of it that's interesting what if you could suff so that's the one difference between what you're saying about the marriage example I just gave a new example I do like the person I am a lot more than I liked the person before would you like the person that never did that thing better it's really hard counterfactual it's a good question I think it's a really fair question I mean you know have talked about this was there another way to learn it well the question is did you have to learn it not everybody does yeah so I get that like again am I sitting on the other side of it going I probably need but to learn it to become what in order to build a profitable business yeah I needed to do that but is that a necessity in life I don't know like it's it's the game I've chosen and I'm winning it more than I ever have before but I find myself to be less hopeful more na like less joyful naite like yeah like so this is this is exactly the point so I mean doesn't this exactly go back to the conversation we were just having like but it's the game I'm in and I recognize that I'm consciously why why don't we go back to a world why why don't you try to go back to the world where there's six or eight people playing office Mini Hoop basketball in a tiny office the thing you talk about in Cayla all the time what if you could get paid enough but what if there's enough money can't undo the idea that I should have a 13we cash flow forecast and to think about like all the thing like you but couldn't you have a 13 cash flow for in that business and still be okay I mean maybe but it would be a simplified business do is highlight how dumb so many of the decisions are like right like that's the thing about what it does is it stupid you are but I I don't think I don't think the dumb decisions are the important part of that experience I think the important part of that experience is the being in it with friends you care about and I think there like like say like building a glass whiteboard that has an electronic on and off switch that makes it frosted and unfrosted because you think it's cool and spending like eight grand on it when you have like a hundred grand in Revenue total you know like that's so dumb and I don't okay so then cut that out but the glass part of it it's like play ping pong for four hours a day yeah idea yeah and you still never beat me the entire time I've ever played yeah something about this like thing that you're in that's not true Taylor's beat me not that often though it's probably 5050 the yeah I I think it's interesting I mean this is really the most interesting thing to me because like like this actually gets to like you have one life you like what is what are you going to spend all of your time on actually for those of in this world have this unique ability and this is the ultimate privilege here like to actually make some decisions around that like a lot of people just have no ability to decide that right and so given that opportunity what is the actual best use of that time I think is a is is an important and and pretty hard question because I think there is a world like if you think you're less joyful if you think there's less of that like I don't know man I think there's a there's a world where you I so I don't know like I look at my kids and one of the things my wife and I reflect on is like the frequency of how often kids laugh relative to adults and it's just their day is frivolous and stupid and funny and yeah all day long they laugh but at some point in your life like farts aren't quite as funny yeah I don't know I've been making that joke for 40 years it's still pretty funny to me like it just Fades a know and so I don't know that there's a way to to to maintain the novelty of it all as you go but there's a richness to it and that I think is different kind of appreciation that I have and I feel proud of my capacity uh and that I didn't break or quit yeah so different than maybe joy and laughter there's a different sensation yeah they're both I think in some ways valuable or experientially good that I like so I don't know yeah you you you try you try and sort it I just don't know in this idea like we hold up Jens and yang and we look at it and I've heard I've heard Elon Musk say this too it's like you don't want to be me I don't want to be Elon Musk right I don't want to be Elon Musk like societal vision is but this is this is part of the point is to me is like this is the reason why my mentality is fix the next thing next it's like I I don't want to be Elon Musk I don't want to be Jens and yang I don't care about it at all now I think the thing that's really interesting stepped on a tadal that takes you in that direction and you're just not why why don't I just keep doing the thing I mean I don't know business is growing sure but at some point I do think the point of life is to maximize your joy I think that's the I think that's the whole point of all of life and so I think if you are actively doing things that are not going to maximize your joy and I think this there's a short-term long-term thing here this is the in some ways the you know the hedonistic Paradox or whatever right where it's like a lot of things people think will maximize their Joy actually maximize their suffering right heroin for example would be an example right so and that's the concentrate off for almost everything in life actually so I I do think that and this is where I think the broader Game of Life subsuming subsuming the small game of business is challenging but I think I mean you got this in our prep for this but and it made me think about it like one of the reasons I think that is that I think I'm very good at selling e-commerce products on the internet Elon Musk is creating brain chips that make it so that people whose brains don't work whose buys don't work I don't have that intellectual capacity and so maybe what Elon Musk has to Steward in his mental capacity and his company building capacity is different than me could you run a $100 million e commer could I run it probably could you be the CEO probably but how important is that in the world I mean I guess the the way you would make the the way you would make the argument for the importance of that is if the product was really meaningfully helping people's lives or if the culture and the people and the jobs that it created and some of those things really were going to make a meaningful impact on the world I think those things could could all could all be arguments in favor of some of that and and that those things in some way would lad up to a sense of joy that I got by making creating impact the world because because one of the things I'm assuming here is that like impact on the world generates Joy yeah but I yeah and one of the other things I think I'm trying to be conscious of too is that one of the things I've learned along the way and I've heard this from a lot of people is that it's not harder to do something big something small you're just aware ofes that's interesting that's really interesting actually that's actually really interesting back when we were at Quail you remember Nema uhhuh just an amazing human and and I have stayed close and so I didn't know that we we look at deals together sometimes and we're looking at a deal right now and we were on the call and it's you know 50 million Revenue 4 million in EA and he's just like this is just not worth our time he's like it it is no harder to solve this problem than it would be to solve a business at 15 million and Evena let's let's just stop and I was like whoa like that's really interesting I would never have that conscious awareness of that reality and so I would persist in the smaller problem and and that's where I go oh that's somebody Awakening me to a different reality that I'm just not aware of that's very helpful so that and that's where I go like well am I playing this game because it's just the only one I'm in and know yeah or am I playing it because of some like deeper truth and I think it's mainly because just don't know that's I think that's the best challenge to my Approach that I've heard from you tonight I think that's really helpful yeah I think I think it's really good because if I could actually maintain a level of work not eating up my entire life right and 10x you're earning yeah but even that's not even really the main sure yeah yeah right like just yeah I think that's a pretty interesting idea and actually I mean I've hung out with the simple modern guys a lot I've been to Oklahoma City a few times like they're a good example of that like they live super normal working people lives you know not crazy work obsessed and they're building they just have a huge thing making a you know I mean they are really serious they shut down their whole company for a week every year and have a generosity Summit where they bring in all their giving partners and I mean they they're really serious about their generosity goals and yet at the same time it's not their whole lives I've talked to their people about parenting as much as I have about anything else you know so CLI clickfun Sky I forget what his name Russell Brunson Russ Brunson has the metaphor of the car that you get in right it's like we all push down on the gas and it's like it takes the same amount of effort to push the gas that's really good some of them go way faster than the other that was his comment to Alex for moi too right like you're playing the wrong game yeah so I think I think a lot about that it's like we all got in a car and you got in the agency car because you knew me and but like yeah it was just Network and it was it easy that's the one you got in and same thing for me I was like oh I went to Lucid Fusion because zuban invited me into it or I got into Power Balance because I knew Josh it was like so we walked into these cars and it was like oh but it wasn't because we thought it was the best OPP no no no we didn't no there was no cold analysis okay so let's do let's do something quicker okay quick and then we'll go into some of the fun things okay okay quick one tactic tactic that you're interested in right now what's like a what's a tactic that you are excited about on a pure tactical level like just like give some people something that's just fun so uh good not excluding oh yeah this is a good one yeah so not excluding your entire customer list from meta ads okay go yeah yeah good okay so especially for a more mature business like let's say you get to the 20 million plus range where you have hundreds of thousands of customers or tens of thousands of customers but a lot of them have lapsed like this one of the things I think that is really true is that people assume that their customer file like grows up and to the right forever and like numerically the number of customers you have does but the ones that are likely to purchase again do not yeah actually the vast majority of them are never coming back and if you only try to communicate to them via email they haven't opened an email in years and they are not communicating with you and you're actually actively excluding them from your app yeah now I'm as big a proponent as new customer Revenue as anybody but a thing that I have seen so we we had a customer that that came to us saying my existing customer revenue is down and I think part of it is because you are not speaking to my customers in that and I'm mad about it I want you to speak to my customers and that and I said fair I like here's what I think the steps are and so we deployed two things one was to narrow the exclusions down to only active customers and then to even with the active customers on key moments after after the email has gone and has gotten through 36 hours we deploy ads to the active customer and it's made a meaningful difference it's and it did two interesting things one it improved the overall efficiency of the ad T which is obvious because now you're including longing fruit but but it also improved the new customer acquisition efficiency so this is the interesting part to me which is that the it seems and again for week five weeks into this test that the increased signal that you're getting from the conversion on a lot of these campaigns are getting more volume to both new and existing customers at greater efficiency yeah interesting and this is a contention I've heard Tom who runs your friend on MySpace founders of Chubbies he and I would argue about this a lot I've had people tell me that they believe that the inclusion of existing customers is U actually an important signal for meta for the sake of optimization for new customers super interesting and the early evidence in this case is like it has improved both am R and existing and new customer R in the process uh I have a client where before I was working with I don't think she mind me saying this nazin mix by nasin I'm gonna have on the show very soon update I did my first opening the books with her very small business at the time when she was running things herself she was running ASC didn't even have an existing customer list exclus she didn't even know what it was she's just entrepreneur figuring it out yep amazing building business so I forecasted I did a cohort based forecast on her customers and we just kept missing her returning customers the only customer I have only client I have we were way low like her returning customers were coming in my forecast sorry let me just possible I was over forecasting her return customer Revenue yeah so I kept saying that and so and of course one of the first things I did when I got the account was I set up her customer exclusions yeah and at some point I realized wait a minute she was not excluding her existing customers before and it's an apparel business she was launching new products all the time that right like and so we went back and started including existing customers and it immediately made a tangible incremental impact on her existing customer Revenue immediately and in this case in this okay and I think this is one of the the one of the categories where this makes the most sense because you're releasing new products all the time and the reality is people are going to not pay attention to your emails they're not and and they're just going to forget about you they just don't care there's too many things to do so I think it makes all sense in the world for these businesses that are releasing new product all the time to go and and do this so yeah and and it it now it didn't get all the way back to her forecast I think there were some seasonality things in that too but it got it definitely made a meaningful difference and it and it showed me really clearly that that existing customer spend was meaningfully incremental yeah now I think the thing for me that's really clear is that where I wouldn't do this is like bamb worth skincare right where it's like it's probably something where like if they've churned they just aren't using the product anymore I don't know maybe if they've maybe maybe at the turn level I would still include them you have to be it's different I'd be careful about supplements yeah if you're always releasing new products like customers need to know about that and keeping them aware of it is really really Valu do you hold them to a different row ass so Target so the problem is like inside of an ASC it it becomes harder to draw those distinctions so we we're playing with a lot of different ideas and of what what should the we're playing with the idea of are do you know about yeah totally do you know about uh manual bids have you ever heard of those multipliers that a lot of people are talking days um but yeah we're exploring right now but what I found right now is that the ASC efficiency on new and returning customer Revenue went up at the same time so it wasn't actually one was the expense of the other and that's really the key is that you still have to keep an eye on the efficiency of your new customer acquisition that's a good argument for AFC too yeah and AFC is really interesting right because you can set the exclus like when you say existing customer cap what it references as your existing customers is whatever you put exactly right so you can really make that whatever you want that's right exactly so you could make that only active customers you want to exclude 100% of active customers and then you're still getting so that's going to call those new in as rep I like the idea that that's gonna increase the signal to both yeah that's very interesting right especially if you're a newer brand I I think is another place where I would just like probably not be that concerned with there's this idea that like meta is going to overd deliver only to your existing customers but the reality is at some point the next incremental purchase that meta can get is not your existing customers that's right right so so actually for this for for nazarin like that we've actually the way we're doing our existing customer bidding now is we have an ASC it's the only thing I auto bid and I just keep it at a low budget yeah and because I because I I want meta to create to have essentially a different value for existing and new customers and by keeping it a low budget I get a little bump on new customers but meta also can give the next deliverable or delivery add delivery to the best place which sometimes is not an existing customer and so what ends up happening is like we get you know a two to one or 3 to one or whatever it is for new customers like a five to one for existing customers and I just kind of maintain the budget there I'm not really trying to maximize squeeze the perfect efficiency with a clear bidc cap Target or whatever I don't have that Target in that case I'm just sort of monitoring basically to make sure it's the case that still may be under optimized I think it's would be reasonable to say that but I it's it's fine for now I think you know okay here's mine long form explainer uh let's let let me tell you about it that's like that should be your bio in your Twitter account by the way Andrew Ferris iser I to be honest with you I've thought about the possibility that the best upside for AJF growth come back the other thing is for me to become an long form explainer Factory yeah because people suck at it Y and I think my my One Core talent in Creative is Clarity essentially that's an interesting that conflicts with the idea of long form explainer to me no it doesn't it's because all I do when I write long form explainer ads is attempt to explain as clearly as possible everything that a customer needs to know about buying this product and here's here's the thing that people miss about this idea it's not about how long it is it's not I call it long for because it's longer than most ads second but I don't care if it's a minute or if it's 30 minutes I don't care if it requires 30 minutes to explain the product then you should take 30 minutes yeah you like gave that hook opener on Twitter the other day the idea that like we are Brand X and we make product y so this is literally my my number one ad hook right now this is bracket's product yeah from Brand yeah this is what it does yeah it is the exact same muscle that I exercise when I do this podcast and explain a concept it is literally there's no difference when I go on this podcast and I say here's why bidc caps are better than auto bidding and I S and I try to tell somebody convince them of that position and I try to answer their objections as objectively as possible and I try to give them clear validation for that and then tell them what to do next it's the exact same thing yeah and I think now I do think and I tweeted this the other day too but like I do think there's somebody who probably has a different skill set than I do to be more creative and do the same thing so the point to me is not even really that like you can't be creative I think you can I think people could probably come up with better hooks that would be more engaging than what I can write I'm just not a cre I'm just not a creative guy I'm not but I I think the thing that here's the real core principle I think the thing that people really forget is that in your meta ads what you're trying to do is take somebody who has never heard of your brand or product and move them from there to getting their wallet out and that's actually a pretty significant journey and the thing they need to do that is information and Trust what people really underrate is how much like the thing that's standing between a customer and purchasing your product is they just don't know what it is they just don't know enough about it they don't understand what it does why it's different why it's good anything like that and so so for me like the idea of the long form explainer it it actually isn't even the only mechanism for doing this but like basically taking that mentality and saying how do I convince some or how do I tell somebody everything they would need to know to buy the product that's right so in the earlier days you I mean you I feel like I never hear this term anymore but people used to talk about vsls a lot video salesletter and that idea was like to take the direct response marketing style of like a sales letter and apply it to video right and those were often like the sort of Mashable style text on screen video sales land so no no video video sales letter is what I always heard video sales Lander no I heard it as an ad concept I mean maybe we heard of two different things so so this I think is the principle which is what is everything the customer needs to know in order to make a purchase okay and that might be how it fits what the return policy is the price it may be a long list of things and the question is between the ad and the landing P I don't care you have to cover all of exactly I don't care which one you do it on as long as you can do it that's right so if you go long form ad then you should drop them directly into the cart and you should make as frictionless as possible if you go clickbait ad you better go long form land so there has to actually be a relationship and what you're saying is I need all this information to get to the customer before they make a purchase and so you're going to just take the responsibility of doing that in the ad yeah and the point is the point to me really is that like I think this ad type is better than other AD types this is one thing I say like question is what is the brand require so if we go back to one of your favorite examples the silicone buing ring from the active for the active life product on white that that's all the information you needed I think that's exactly right that but same thing with apparel photos work so I am smashing an ad account right now an apparel ad account with long form explainers because it turns out there are all kinds of questions people have about their clothes they have all kinds of questions about like how does it fit and why is it now this probably depends a little bit on the kind of apparel so again I'll just reference because I don't think she'll mind at all mixed by Naz the thing that has unlocked that is explainers now she's selling jumpsuits so there are all of these questions about how jumpsuits fit and about how the buttons are versus the zippers and how much you can how stretchy they are and there are these questions that customers have and we have massively unlocked that account literally we don't make any other ads besides long form explainers for her right now she now knows the thing and she just goes in and just like every day it's just like another product and she takes her denim this and her her spring collection that and just goes boom and it's massive unlock and I I think this for some things I think if you were fresh clean threads and you were selling a gray t-shirt which is I'm currently wearing or this sweatshirt right probably not right there's just not enough long format but might still say something I might try it still um I might try something that still got there and it might be only 45 seconds you're right it might be it might be shorter but even in that case what I might do is try to make the explainer about the unique mechanism that makes which is a concept that I had Cody pler and I talked about on a podcast that he he referenced I still think the thing that makes fresh clean threads good is that it fits really good every time and it's solid color that fits right like that might be the thing that I say in that case it's not really a the feature of fresh clean te's or fresh clean threads is that I'm a dude who doesn't really like shopping that much and if I have a shirt that fits right every time I'm just gonna buy 50 of them right and so that's probably what I would sell in that case is is it wouldn't be about like exactly the fit you know whatever I it would it would be about that kind of thing where it's the value proposition is that I don't have to shop so but I think and and so it can be whatever relative to the value provide but I what I think is that like Brands just consistently underestimate how much information people need about their product so one of the things I'd be interested in and I don't know if you could pull it up right now is that what how many people actually watch this thing for I have no idea and I don't care for as long as you think they do I oh I don't think they necessarily do well well so completely actually no so so the problem is the reason this won't work is because you don't know about how long purchasers watch for because what's possible is that only a small subset of people watch them but this is but this is another thing that's really important you're not talking to everybody you're only talking to a tiny little subgroup of people but it's all relative to other ads so if there were some subset of people that make it through 10 minutes of the video and those are the purchasers then the average time would go up this still the average watch time would be higher and maybe it is and in a long form video you're gonna have higher average watch time than a short one anyway just on the nature the possible sure sure sure but I I I do think one of the things that I constantly find and this is actually my is with the idea that comments matter all the time is that we substantially overestimate how often people actually engage for more than a fraction of a second more broadly you get a clickthrough rate of 2% you're over the moon that's that's really really good that is two out of a hundred people who will see your ad and then of that group if you get a if you get a conversion rate of 4% for many businesses exactly which means you are simply not talking to everybody and this is part of the thing about long explainer what people will say is that like come on nobody's going to watch that and the answer is no you're not going to watch that but neither are 98 out of 100 people and that's fine with me what I care about is that one subset of that one subset now we're talking about now we're talking about what like I don't know I'm having trouble walking back to math but like four out of a thousand people or something like that who are going to actually purchase off of this I just what's happening is that like you remember the what's happening is that all my ads work Taylor shut up remember the adamb Earth video yeah okay so Adrian who works at cgc she created a piece of ugc yeah and it's like a her talking for two and a half minutes dude the best bamboo Earth video ever is a woman talking for six minutes okay right but going through the whole routine question is is it that is it what happens from second five through six minutes that matter or is it what happens in the first five seconds so both so here's what I so you do have to hook people still and so part of the strategy here is you build every time you launch an ad you launch it with five to 10 variations on the hook and I think now the reason I know that's not the only thing that's the mechanism for it is that I do that with every kind of AD type I make and long form explainers ultimately work so I always launch various a bunch of variations of one ad type here's my challenge to you and I I wonder if na you can't possibly think that long form spers don't work I just don't think the long form part matters as much as you think it does I don't think anybody watches it I think that what happens I think it's better than you think I'm pull took 5 Seconds of all of those long form explainers and ran them as ads for 5 seconds you might get some that would be my hypothesis that's wrong that's wrong you're stupid them for five seconds and like so I'll give you an example one of the things I think about my bridges content is I don't actually think anybody watches the whole thing no I think that nobody watches my videos like a cultural signal that like the video starts to matter and you turn it on for a few minutes enough to say that you understand the content and then you like you're like oh I'm supposed to like this I like it and I know it now and that's how like the idea that people consume long form content I think is uh it's really really small numbers okay so I've got on this video 50% is out of how many impressions well let's just3 let's do it as a cost per let's do it as a cost per 50% view on like a three minute video right 11,185 so we're looking right now for great podcasting yeah so I've got video plays at 20 40,000 video plays right and I see 2,000 people I'm paying $545 to get people to watch 50% of that video yeah that feels pretty cheap so that you would have to convert what's your CPA on this one it I don't know like you'd have to convert like what 10% of those people in order to make that worth it well I don't know I mean let's see how long this video is if I'm paying I mean I'm willing to generally pay a couple bucks for a click 540 for this is a three minute and a half video this is 3 minute 20 pay5 for minute for a minute and 45 seconds there is no way that you would if I gave you dude what's the average what's the average what's the average amount of time somebody spends on a website it's like it's less than yeah so I'm getting a minute 45 before they even get to the webite you're paying them $5 to do it that's like minimum wage in the United States you could get to work in an hour for an hour in Subway for that much money I don't understand what you're saying I mean I'm just saying like is that really a good value $5 for a minute yes it is you know how I know it's a good value because this ad is smashing the universe you're assigning it to the idea that the long form V value matters I just think that you I don't care I don't care all that length you have less than 1% of people that watch it for 50% time and your conversion rate is higher than I don't care at all about length length is not what matters to me what matters to me is that it explain the name of it is literally long I know it's actually not named very well I need another I need another name for how about just clar clear explainer clear explainer is fine that's fine the point we just in this case it the point is not that long the point is definitely not long I should be crystal clear about that I don't care about it being long I care that it gets the information across that you need to make because I think that your your bad 3 second play video might be your best Rass well who cares about Rass matters to spend Taylor this manual bids bro what are you talking about the highest spend is on so this one was yesterday yesterday this one SP yesterday well because it launched three days ago bro yeah what do you want this month okay and I want to see most spend oh right sorry did you want to see that my gosh one of them is way better than all the other ones it's a it's a because I run super Consolidated campaign to shops and that's how you win in this game it's because I run to campaigns no look all of them are the right scroll the right scoll what do you want I want to see the cosper 3 second View for the best act no it's not going to do that on I don't you think I have that in your columns like your whole thesis is predicated on wrong form video I could literally put the only thing in my column being amount spent and that would be fine with but you don't no it's because aob matters because I'm running cost of bid caps and so yeah come on my cost where did you just got rid of it no it's right here cost per 3 second view nine cents okay on the top spending one for the last month this the the one I just showed you like go launch two days ago so it is a new product 37 cents 10 cents across the board through play that's three 15 seconds or the full length of the video that's really good 50 cents for a 15c view you're wrong that's not bad Taylor you're wrong the point is no no you're wrong customers need to so I think the thing is I'm dealing with brands that are often sub 10 million right they they're trying to create their space in the world I actually I don't know if I think this is the thing that matters for brands that you're dealing with which are all plus 10 million right I don't think people give I think you you assume humans are this like logical thoughtful group of people they're not at all logical are idiots like we're all idiots like I got a text from Drive Line about bought a baseball bat and I've just accepted that they're the truth and so I just bought it without even reading what it was yeah it's cuz brand matters that's not news to me well exactly so it's just sort of like oh I'm in yeah I don't know what they said just because Drive Line's one of the most trustworthy brands in the world well and all these surrounding things that they literally run everything they do through a scientific test exactly so I'm like I'm in whatever you sell are you trying to convince me right now that brand is important of course brand is important I'm saying that the influence on puras decisions is not this like inform people people people all of these questions about the product they have all of these they they're not that thoughtful no yes they do you're totally wrong about this they when they when they some people have questions a lot of people buy them without them being answered you know who has questions real customers think about the checkout aisle of Target do you know what they do nothing they just put it in front of you because you're standing in line and you go like oh yeah but give me that candy how much they charge for the candy like four bucks four Ababa I don't know bro your Char is ripping you off a bottle of prime at the local BL Le snack bars world yeah that's because everybody knows the snack bar BL it's F I'm just saying like whatever it is know this is a $200 jumpsuit I was listening to Jordan Peterson and Destiny argu yeah I heard about that I didn't watch it but I heard the things well I like Destiny and I just don't really like Jordan I I don't even know who Destiny is yeah but one of the things he was talking about is this idea that he doesn't accept any he doesn't trust any third party entity and he was like what those jeans you're wearing are they leaking Le into your legs do you know it's like no of course you don't know because you don't actually answer the questions to all the things that you presume you think you want to know about the things you do that's because they're not ask because customers are not asking if jeans leak lead into them they assume that's not the case what they want to know is if they are walking in their jumpsuit does it make their legs feel funny when they because this the denim stretch is weird or whatever that's that's the question I know does their butt look good and you answer that that that too and so the image solved that problem and they so they're aspirational and they click on it well so images and apparel also often work for this exact reason yeah they smash right that that's the case but I can tell you I've run a lot of images in this account and they have drastically underperformed explainers and I've tried all kinds of different products all things so you know and I I do think some products are different than others respect how much how much EXP this this is this is where I think probably our core fundamental divide between one another is you think that there's a categorical kind of ad that works and I just go nonsense it's a magic random eightball no I so I think in MO in many cases well I'm actually coming around this I think there are some there are some things that are consistently true and creative and I don't think it's totally random yeah I think I think there are things that are consistently right and consist wrong and do you know why I think that it's because I have a very simple creative Playbook that I run with all of my clients and it's because I don't know how to do anything else and every time I try to go outside of those things it doesn't work so that's what I do I just do those things whole time it's true so such a small sample size 100% I I completely so one of my one of the things I'm considering right now is creating creative as a service I was just gonna say becom if this is true then you have like if if this is true you have an endlessly valuable business I couldn't agree more it's a very simple rub I'm actively exploring this right now so I have a client who I've done some coaching for where they're deciding should we invest more ad dollars in this business or an aggregator should we invest more dollars in this business or not yeah and with one of their brands and I said I don't think you've seriously tested creative let me try something we'll scratch you other back here there's one instance that I've seen of this in my whole life actually I take it back there's two there's a group right now one of the one of founders of athletic greens is running a video agency in the supplement space yeah okay and I think what they do is uh that's a good example narrow framework very narrow and the rule is you have to let me say whatever the hell I want yes right and so it's all Dr brands that are like yeah you hit it you scale it say whatever you want and they they hack the psychology of social in a way that provokes people and angers them and repeatedly solves the problem of getting people to watch this content and engage with it at a massive level and sell the crap out of yeah and they're really really good at it and I actually think that they have a mechanism but see that works completely against what you're saying which is that like it's a magic no no but in a in a narrow band there is a specific type of social content that when someone is allowed to behave that way they can pull on human psychology in a way that allows you to generate consistent result for for more people than not sorry I know I'm yelling it it keeps typing quieter onto the spring yeah I don't want to tell you to shut up my neighbors are and I've actually had long arguments with them on the phone about how they think that they have some framework for for this because you're probably wrong you this is so funny Taylor what's so funny about this is that you are the king of there's no objective truth there's none except that you are claiming objective truth here what which is that there is no which is that there say there's no objective truth is not objective truth yes it is no it's not of course it is it's a claim about it's the absence of real no what you are say what you are saying is there's no consistent way to make ads work and that is a strong Claim about how reality actually is so okay so then so then for the sake of debunking this like stupid counter inui or counterfactual thing that you're doing I'll just say that I have never experienced it and I've experienced that's fine and so it may exist and but in the event that it does it's such a small percentage of the realities that you shouldn't try and find it so I think it's possibly right so this this is how same thing to me it's the same thing if the likelihood of success is one % I can acknowledge that the 1% exists and also say let me tell you about my experiment I'm running right now because I'm I'm not ready to go all the way in on this because I think what you look I'm not an idiot like I think I've been around to the block a long time too and seen a lot of people make a lot of claims about creative just do this for bamb worth just solve my both exploring it this this is easy we both have a massive Financial incentive to solve this if you can do this I told Dave the other day do this for bamboo Earth right now and everybody listen Andrew has a claim about his capacity to guarantee creative success and so it's very simple he owns a brand he has a massive Financial incentive to solve this problem I own less than 1% of a brand and if it sells for hundred million do you make a million bucks so solve it and I'll go great I'll tip my cap and go Andrew is right in this instance but it hasn't happened why because because as you know as the owner of business it takes time to scale up processes and operations processes I don't need a process I need one do you know what no you need a process fors everybody know I need a bunch of tries oh so it's a random game and you're playing multiple Hooks and you need one core app okay great make it I'm doing it right now okay so listen I have come get Dave is next after this I have I have so this client has an aggregator they're deciding what what to do with this business I've told them let me take a crack I don't know if this will work that's not what you're saying it is what I'm saying what I'm saying is I think think it will probably work I think it's probably the best ad type I think if you give me a crack at this I'm going to I I think it has a better chance than anything you've done so far that's what I think that's what you say everything since I met you that's what makes Andrew special is that he delusionally believes that about everything he's doing yeah and you keep promoting me and giving me better jobs well I don't have a chance to do that anymore I know that's because I quit Okay but look um so this is easy this is easy you do this for bth and I will come back on this Broad so literally Dave is next Dave can tell you I can show you the slack receipts I told him I'm he he is next on my list after this project that I'm doing right now because I want test it because Ian Dave and are getting their ass kicked and if not getting in the short term short term they're solv it but right now so here's the thing if I actually can solve this what I have begun to build is a roster of creators who can create the ads for me I'm I will add editing talents to my team if I if I need to get the video editing happen and I will begin to create a cast business creative as a service have you seen my outliers episode have you ever watched no I don't watch your CL come on the last person's content I need to watch is yours I talk to you all the time I know everything you think so here's what the claim you're making I just want to put it in cont so bamboo Earth so my alls episode is what I do is I pull every ad that's ever run and the average spend per ad and then I look at the one that is the highest spending out of all time so um so we look at the mean median mode and Max of all your ads ever scatter plot show it and the point is that the outlier ad is one in 10,000 yeah so bamboo Earth has an ad that's spent 600,000 yes yeah it's a version of but it's oh yes but the point is just that like Dave is by all accounts really smart I think so STI by all accounts great fantastic Ian by all accounts smart dude great making and they have all made over the course of the last five years and and including a time period where you were there and running the ad account yeah but I wasn't good at it then oh he was bad then okay I was he's good now bad bro we've talked about this a lot I gave myself an F for running but as a CEO not as a Facebook Creator I think I was pretty bad at Facebook then that's the actual you sucked whatever um I'll conceed your point so there was you've made 10,000 apps 10,000 yeah that's like an insane number of and you're here saying yeah I'll do the one in 10,000 thing I'll do the thing that I don't neily no one else could do but but like at what level do you think you'll perform and what does it mean to be like the best ad type or a really good ad is I just go like you know what you're gonna be another dot on the scatter block that's the much more likely scenario this is actually the best argument against this techic which is that the reason my thing works is that I'm doing it for brands that are have very immature out account they dots right exactly and so it's moving the things forward for brands that are that are pretty small but what I'll say is those brands are getting meaningfully more spend than Borth and then other brands that have been doing it for a long time and so I think there's a good argument that it is actually working pretty well now I think the question where I where I'm not as confident is for like the mid eight figure Brands been out of for five years that has like a bajillion ads inin already I think it's possible that they've already kind of found that because I also do believe that like it's not the only ad type that works and so like I mean I certainly don't believe that and so but I think it's something that more people should try earlier on that's what I think I don't I don't even have a problem with like it's like it's a frame sort of bury around like ugly ads like but this is a good example but it's it's a helpful framework for people I think but it's the idea that post it ads are going to in some way disproportionately outperform every other AD is just not true now what happens is the story you hear because that's the only thing worth sharing is everyone that works and so every time it works it's survivorship bias every time it works someone tells Barry how awesome it is that it works and 10,000 other times it's tried and failed just like every other yeah I I what I think is about that is that the reason people should run that kind of bad is cost impact ratio it's very very cheap to produce so and and that you should and you can produce at meaningful scale so I have added to my team member to my team a person in the in the value in that equation is how cheap it is not it's like the hit of so it's it's actually it's both because the cost impact both matter because I also no no no they do they do because I've run a lot of different kinds of this kind of AD and they pretty consistently get some level of spend so they're not always the big super winner in the ad account but they almost always get some spend certainly relative that so lower cost and it is higher impact it's not higher impact it's the same cost makes it no I'm telling you're wrong so let's let's just let's listen to me you're wrong with this you're absolutely wrong there's one let's say that every ad you ever launch has a one in 10,000 chance of being that hand Reapers you could create sorry that could be that bamboo Worth ad that makes it really awesome okay that means that there's an expected value calculation that you can assign to that ad if it's wor 600 if it spent 600,000 and let's say bamb worth tries to run it one and a half to one then it's worth like9 a million dollar easy math that adds worth a million dollars so you have a one in 10,000 let's do some quick math here okay so one divided by 10,000 equals 01 time a million means that that add is worth $100 that means if you can produce it for 50 you can produce ads for $50 you have a very high expected and you should make 10,000 of yeah right so this is actually what I believe about Facebook is that that's the game and so I think it's not to assume that your ad has a higher likelihood of success that's huous I think it's both them I I think then do math and validate it because otherwise it's pure huous no I think I think I think that there is a difference in quality from some than others and look I just walked through this with another client yeah I I think I think there is a difference in quality I I think the idea that there's no skill here is incred it's entirely random no is that what you believe it's I yes that you could grab any human and that their likelihood of success of generating that ad that one in 10,000 is basically the same across every single human and when it's not it's unknowable that it is and so the best bet the right bet to actually make is to make $10,000 10,000 ads at $50 a piece I think you should make multiple bets so I think you should do that to be clear I think you should do that I think you should find I think you should find a way to scale up production really cheaply for some ad and then I think you should also