He Quit His Job After Watching 200 Of My Podcast Episodes (And Now He Makes More Money) transcript

Henry Bulazar quit his job because of listening to my podcast, watching my content, something like that. He's going to tell you the story about it in a second. He did that because he's able to go allin on the app that he has been building and looking to grow. I don't even talk about selling app subscriptions or things like that. And yet, apparently there was enough information there for him to do that. I thought that was incredible.

He DM'd me on Axe and said, [music] "I've engaged with a ton of your content. I've watched a lot of it and it was enough to help me quit my job to work on my app." I thought that was so cool. I was so encouraged by it. I thought, well, then come on the podcast, talk about it, and let's see. And in the midst of that, because Henry has listened to a lot of my content and heard me say a lot of things. He had a couple questions for me.

So, we're going to talk a little bit about his story on his app, but then we're going to turn the tables and do something I never do on this show, which is that Henry will interview me a little bit with a couple questions that are outstanding for him. This is a really, really fun episode that you're going to like. Really different than a lot of what I do. Little bit of coaching mixed in there as well. So, if you're growing a brand and you're all in on it, hopefully there'll be some translatable input from what I talk about with Henry right now.

So, let's get into it with Henry Bulazar. Hello, Henry. >> Hey, how's it going? >> Great. Um, so let's just let's do this right now. Uh, you you don't want to tell people what your app is quite yet. Is that right? >> Yeah. >> You're you're you're you're going to keep that a little bit under wraps. So, um, so yeah. So, we can't even promote and get and get more signups for it yet, right? >> It's a baby hatchling. It's enough to, you know, maintain my lifestyle, but it's still kind of an infant.

So, you know, the barriers to entry are lowering and lowering. So, got to got to get a head start first. >> Yeah. No, I think that's perfectly reasonable, actually. And c can you tell me a little bit about uh just like anything you could tell me to give a sense of what the app is, the economics of it, things that will just like give people a sense of kind of what we're talking about, the category, any anything to kind of get some context for it, and then and then I want to talk more about your story and and all that.

Yeah, it's a health and fitness app. Sort of if you've heard of Calai, it's kind of Calai for a particular health niche. >> Okay, cool. Great. And so you are trying to get signups, subs that >> Yeah, subscriptions. >> Subscriptions. Yeah. >> Yeah. Great. And I assume that that is uh extremely high margin app subscriptions. >> Yes. Yeah, very high margin. I mean the in terms of month zero it's kind of closer to break even but with the LTV it being a subscription pretty good and the costs of running the business fairly low and um you know there's no forecasting and complex things that it sounds like you all need to deal with >> in e-commerce.

Yes. You're not managing any inventory. Yeah. This is fun. This is fun for me to think about immediately. I want to talk more about it, what you're doing, all that stuff, but but you said to me that you quit your job, were able to go all in on your app in part because of things you learned from me. So, what were you doing before? >> Yeah, I was a software engineer at a tech startup. It was, you know, venturebacked. So, we were shooting for the moon for most of my life working at different apps just out of, you know, calm was an app, Monkey, another app, just kind of out of convenience because that's what I naturally started doing coding and then people hired me to do that.

So that's what I ended up doing. >> So the coding side of things was like in your wheelhouse, but then at some point you started coding something on the side and decided like wait a minute I can build my own thing here. Is that right? >> Yeah, exactly. So I was working on this app on the side for probably eight months before leaving. And so the truth is the business that I was working for ran out of funding, ran out of money and shut down.

So then the clock was ticking and that's when the binging of Andrew Ferrris podcast began. >> How did you find it? How did So I'm curious about this because you're not in e-commerce and and I really don't I mean even when I've had people approach me at times to talk about like you know managing ads for apps or something like that, I'm always like I don't I don't I don't do that. So, I I have some I I have some immediate thoughts about the economics and maybe I should do that, but I'm curious like first of all, how you Yeah.

How did you how did you find my content? >> I think the lens that I was looking at it through that ultimately led to discovering your content was sort of an MMA sort of inspired by MMA. I don't know any mixed martial art, but from my understanding, uh, if they want to get good at, you know, the striking element of MMA, you study boxing because people who are the best at striking are boxers. You don't study so much other people in MMA.

And I I felt the same way with meta ads. the probably top of the game. You know, there I'm sure that there's really skilled people in apps, but it seemed more competitive. I wanted to look at what is the most kind of competitive arena where that skill is taking place and it seemed like e-commerce was that arena, but also just came across the idea of bidcaps and that okay, what's the first thing that pops up? [laughter] Wow.

So, I've won I've won the search engine game. There is what you're telling me apparently. >> I think so. >> Yeah. I mean, it is funny. Some of my older bid caps episodes definitely are like some of my most consistent view count growers. Not in huge numbers. Like, it's not like that, you know, I think there's probably only so much search volume for VidCaps out there, but definitely, you know, the kind of thing where it's like five to 10 views on some of those old episodes every couple days, which piles up over, you know, again, it's a small community, so piles up piles up over time.

But I think a lot of people have discovered some of my stuff through that. So that that makes sense as the sort of inroad. I'm also curious though how you determined what made you believe that e-commerce people were the boxers of the space. Yeah. >> That's that's actually its own interesting insight. And I'm Yeah. Partly, by the way, what you're making me think is that I should probably start trying to sell my services to app people because if what you're saying is that all the meta ads people are worse in that space, there's >> I don't want to [laughter] Yeah.

You know, I think in apps there's a lot of different ways that people grow their apps. So, you know, meta ads might be one of maybe the top five most common ways to grow an app. A lot of people do kind of the app sort of SEO equivalent ASO, Apple search optimization. A lot of people grow with that. They'll make a bunch of apps and try to rank for a lot of keywords. Other people are trying to gain some sort of virality.

Oh, you know, and then other people are trying to do or successfully doing, you know, organic content marketing as well. So, I I think it's just that the space has other probably more dominant growth channels as far as what's in the discourse. where for e-commerce I I'm sure that there are many ways to grow, but it does seem like for a lot of at least um you know brands that don't already have distribution in retail that meta ads is is a very significant portion of people's attention and much more so than I've seen in the app space. >> That's certainly true.

I mean, because a lot of, you know, the the original promise of e-commerce, right, was that you'd eliminate the brick-and-mortar retailer and you'd go DTOC, direct to consumer. It's right there in the name. But that actually did not happen. What happened instead is that the middleman moved from being Target to Zuck and it's just you just pay for the space differently and this pricing is dynamic and it's auction based and not priced on some buyer and and so yeah, so it's just a different uh different kind of space.

So I think I think you're for sure right about that. Um, is there uh uh you know when I when I hear you say you coded it yourself, you are able to make your living off of off of the app now off of growing things. So you I mean the economics of your business then must be like extremely low cogs. Opex is you basically right. I mean I don't know much about app economics. So now you've got like and and and you're close to break even on first purchase you said earlier.

I I'm assuming that means that like you don't have to get that many subscribers before the MR becomes pretty viable in the business as long as you can keep some people going. Can you talk me through that a little bit? >> Yeah, I mean the the costs are very low and I think initially there there were some challenges because Apple pays you about two months after the purchase. So it was even if I'm around break even on first purchase, it didn't start off that way.

And then Apple would pay out two months later. Now that that was that became that became a challenge. So I started, you know, reorienting the subs the subscriptions to be yearly plans to try to get more of that money up front. And then when I was looking at the numbers, okay, here's this goal that I want to do in profit per month, how easy is it going to be to get there, you know, if I can maybe lower the CAC by lowering how much that first purchase entry price is.

So, it was kind of swerving between yearly subscriptions and monthly subscriptions based on kind of what the cash flow situation was. >> Yeah, that's interesting. the two-month timeline to getting your money on somebody's subscription is like a real problem. Like imagine you have an ad take off and you're like, "Oh, awesome. I can scale it." Except that I now have to front tens of thousands of dollars potentially to actually ever Yeah.

Yeah. That's that's that's a real challenge. Um Okay. So, what principles from my podcast helped you? You said you said this was this was like critical. Let talk me through the the big the big things that made it so that you could do this. >> I think you know cost caps were a tool in that tool belt making more ads and kind of having this mentality of you know trying a bunch of different things. I think also seeing I feel like a lot of your podcast episodes are almost like being in a meeting like a fly in the wall and seeing some of the other brands especially some of the brands that were earlier on in their you know life as a brand was inspiring to see.

So, you know, I I think also the belief that, okay, maybe this doesn't work right now, but if I keep trying at this, I could see, oh, okay, my CAC could get cut in half if I actually make an ad that resonates with people. >> And did it work? Did you make an ad that resonated with people and cut your CAC in half? >> Yes. [laughter] >> That's awesome. What So, talk to me about the ad. Was there something? Is it one ad in particular that's winning?

There was one ad, maybe two ads at the same time made a big difference. They were meme ads, you know, just something funny and relatable and very cheap to make. >> Yeah. And you you made them yourself. >> Yeah. >> Ran them through manual bids. >> Yeah. >> Amazing. And so they just started picking up spend you don't get asked to be on my podcast if you're out of [laughter] No. Uh no. Okay. Okay. And then are did you go make a bunch more ads like that afterwards? >> Yeah.

Yeah, there's definitely more ads like that and then I was, you know, trying to also get some variety in there. See, you know, if this is working, maybe I can take maybe what I think is funny and relatable from this ad, but try to package it in different ways. But I also felt like if there was a map of ads that work, I kind of hit land on one little portion and either I can ex explore that area of the land or I could send out more ships and try to see where I hit land in different areas.

So it's kind of both. I don't think >> so. Did you did you do both? Did you end up making so right at age of growth right what we do is we talk about explore and expand and the idea is like there's some exploring which is like send out more ships find new places use your analogy expand would be like take the land that you've already found and go try and do a bunch more of it there you know that's the way we would think about this I think it's the right exact way to think about it which is you have to make some delineation between where should my efforts go next what's the most likely highest upside you know use of my time creatively And so did so did you go do that? >> Yeah, I think it was more exploring.

I was oh let me get some more UGC style ads. Let me try different kind of pain points that might be addressed from the product. In my point of view was okay well this style of ad. I've already got maybe 20 different ads that are kind of the same style. So at that point I felt like okay let me try to change up the format, change up the message more. >> Yep. Awesome. And did that yield any good results for you just doing that process? >> Yeah, I think through doing that process, what I found that there was a through line in kind of the emotional resonance of the message, but the way that that resonance kind of hit people was different. >> Yeah, I think that's I think that makes sense.

Um, awesome. And and so you now got to a point where are do you feel like the business is comfortable right now? Is it growing? Is it like taking off and totally completely ripping? Like talk to me about sort of like where it is relative to your goals. Is it It's enough for you to have gone all in on it, which is awesome. How allin are you? How comfortable are you? And how much do you need to like Yeah, >> better. I'm doing better than when I had a job.

So, I think that is >> that's awesome. Yeah. >> Good. >> That's amazing. That's amazing. Gosh, I love that. That's so cool. So I think there's in terms of what my goals were, I think a lot of that has been fulfilled in some way because a lot of it was about autonomy and kind of yeah, just being able to make my own decisions around the business rather than okay, I'm going to work on this one component of a business and not really have a lot of say in the overall strategy.

So in terms of what I'm doing on a day-to-day basis, I think my goals have been almost completely fulfilled. I was, you know, talking to Chachi PT. Okay, here's here's Henry's ideal life as far as I can imagine it, you know, kind of naively. How what is what is the kind of financial place that I would need to be in to fulfill that? And maybe I would say I'm a quarter of the way of where I want to go from that. >> Do you think the app can get you there?

Is there enough is there enough meat on that bone? Yeah, >> I think so. >> Yeah. Yeah. That's awesome. So, okay. So, this is like you're gonna keep pushing in on this then you now now it's like you're making more money than you were before. You were writing code for a ventureback startup. So, you're probably doing fine before. I mean, that's amazing. That's awesome to hear. I'm like so encouraged to hear that that my podcast was some help in that process.

Incredible. Um, have you hired anybody? >> I've got a few people part-time. Nobody else full-time besides me right now. If you've got an e-commerce brand [music] that is growing, make this the year that you get serious about making your opex lower as a percentage of revenue. And one of the tools in your toolkit for doing that should be Rich Panel. Rich Panel, if you switch from Gorgeous or from Zenesk over to Rich Panel for your customer service help desk software, [music] they guarantee you at least 30% savings and on average you see a 30% ticket reduction when you make that switch as well, which also means that you can make your team a little bit leaner.

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And granting that I don't know anything about apps, so I don't even have an iPhone. So, how about that? I have a Google phone. Well, I I'm curious about, you know, you've seen a lot of different businesses and when I look at mine, I'm thinking, okay, here are all of the levers that might take it to some sort of new level or just, you know, increase the growth rate. And I think, okay, this ad lever I've been pulling on now, it's I feels like to me it's getting harder to get any sort of new ad that moves the needle. initially was, "Wow, I could cut the CAC on half because all of my other ads were terrible." [laughter] >> Yeah. >> And they still are terrible. >> Super Yeah. super normal experience.

I think that almost everything about the business grows in larger chunks as a percentage more earlier, but but if you think about it, right, like every time you go sort of clear the bar in your ad account, right, and you you make a new ad, that's your winning ad. Now, you've set the the bar higher to go clear it again. This is what Meta is amazing at. Matt is amazing at like getting the right ad delivering the bulk of your budget.

And so you you know it's going to be almost by definition every time you have a win now the next win at that scale is going to be harder. It's going to be hard to you can't keep doubling for forever you know or cutting it in half as case may be for forever. It is going to now be like okay the next 20% is going to be a little harder to squeeze out for sure and it takes a bunch more challenges. Now, some people are so good at that, I think, that they that they're able to keep pushing on that and squeezing it out and keep pushing on it pretty fast for a long time.

But yeah, I think um Yeah. Yeah. >> Yeah. And then so definitely experiencing that and I feel like I'm in such the early stages still of the ad account and of the ad library where there must be a ton left that's probably not that difficult. But it's more difficult for me because I've only got to that place so far. But then looking at other levers like oh the pricing and I know you know using intelligence I don't think that's available for apps but whatever the app equivalent is using that to optimize the pricing and to optimize the quizunnel and finding kind of you know lowerhanging fruit there.

How influential do you think these other components are besides the ads and where did you kind of go to first after you feel like okay this the ad account is pretty mature. I think there's a a real challenge and a real question for almost everybody at some stage, which is are my next efforts, do they need to be tactics or what I would consider more like true strategies and true like bigger picture swings? Which one is likely to to make my make a bigger impact faster on my business?

And I think the question you have to assess for yourself is something like sort of demo flow type stuff like that stuff I think is or or just like op like CRO basically right that stuff I think is is an important question for you to figure out where it fits and I really know nothing about that world in the app side of things. Um, I'm sure there are tools that you can use for this. I'm sure you know, but if that's the best use of your time versus thinking about like do you need to go get influencers in your space?

Do you need to think about overhauling the brand or the visual design or something, you know, like do you need to add features that are really important to people and is that where your brain needs to go? Sort of more true product level type things. I think these are the kinds of questions. Maybe there's a way for you to add a membership tier that makes every customer more valuable to you, but you know, I don't know.

Those are the as far as where to put your effort next. You're in a challenging spot. And you also need to sort of assess what would happen if you sort of began to spin up an ops team whose job it was to treat your ad account the same way that an ecom business would, which is like put a huge amount of time and effort and production quality. You know, again, product seeding, like all of these different things, like you know, how much of that stuff do you need to go do next as the actual next way to do it?

And I don't it's hard for me to answer that question without looking really carefully and closely at your business. You think about where I would go put things next. And I would also discount my own input there because again I think in the app space it just is a little different than e-commerce. But I think that's the question you got to ask yourself is like judging as best as you can tell what bet do you want to make next with the recognition that there are some things that are going to be uniquely beneficial about your category that I think are worth thinking about.

One of them is you can give the app for free to anybody anytime. And so the product seeding costs for influencers or something like that is just almost nothing, right? Like it's like it's like extremely beneficial. So that's and and you don't even have to mail it. You just so much less work to do. So that's like a thing that I would think about is are there a way for is there a way for you to generate sort of more awareness, more buzz, and then also more content from influencers by by essentially doing product seating?

That feels like a possibility to me particular if you're like in a more niche health and wellness space. Are there people who can like represent that kind of thing? Same thing with like creators. Can you get people to make that kind of content for you? This is certainly the way an e-commerce business would think about this, which is like, how do I go, you know, if I hear you saying you've got a few part-time people, but mostly you're doing the ads yourself.

It's like, well, what happens if you put like a larger investment into the production side and start doing this? You know, a lot of people in again in ecom would go get a creative agency and like go really hammer away at this. Like now I again I just don't know how much meat is on that bone in the app world relative to e-commerce like you know I I don't know are there are there ways that your your product applies to different kinds of customers that is unique or is it like really like there's just one main thing it does for one subset of customers and you just got to find clever ways to say that in that case I probably wouldn't spend all my time there and then instead I would think more about like all right is there channel expansion to be done at the media channel level like should I be trying that advertise on AppLin or Axon or whatever like is there a Google ads approach that it could be really valuable as there's search data around this you know so yeah it just depends a little bit like how how broad is it how versus how narrow the niche is how much is the message really just one thing all the time how much did you think about trying to save cost in there versus really like build up a production machine it's going to blow it out and then yeah things like CRO tactics and stuff like that like I think that's the sort of his own its own question I'm sure it matters I just don't know in app in apps If you were to generalize, do you see different sort of phases?

I know that it depends on okay, how many sorts of different sort of sub niches or sub audiences of a product that it might have. But do you notice, okay, here's maybe phase one of an ad account is it's got no real ad that's remotely working in any way. And then phase two is maybe you've got a few winners but it's not really explored. It's just kind of in one area. Do you do you notice any sort of patterns in the level of maturity of I don't know if maturity is >> that's right.

I mean I what certainly what we do as an agency when somebody comes reaches out to me and says we want to work with you and I audit their ad account. I do a bunch of like technical media buying stuff and I think about forecasting the business and and thinking in those ways like and that's another question I would ask you is like I mean it would be interesting to do some financial forecasting like you know what is the turn rate over what time period it's almost like actually one question I have for you is do you just need to ramp your spend because if you're break even or or better on first purchase but you've got material MR like if you've got if you've got a budget LTV with that's extremely high margin LTV you just might be being too conservative like the brands that you need to go get advice from are like the supplement brands basically which is which is the closest thing that we have in e-commerce to to app um economics high margin extreme LTV and but you know I don't know exactly how extreme the LTV is for you like is it a three-month churn or is it a or you know who knows so so that's another thing I would think about in this process but at the actual ad account level yeah I think for sure we start looking at the economics look at the media buying use of manual bids leveraging machine learning all the kind of stuff that you hear me talk about all the time and many people who come to me are just like bad on all that stuff, right?

So that's that's like a quick thing. But but then there's this question of like creative output and it's really hard for me to tell from looking at ad account like how much creative has been put in. But if it looks to me like the creative that's working is like one or two angles and it's just not obvious that like somebody has taken that message and really hammered out a bunch of different variations of ways of saying that message or a bunch of different like new messages that I see right away is like oh everything is one message but I think there's messages three four and five as well that could work you know like then one of the things I will certainly say to people is you just need to expand your creative output you need to get more aggressive on that and that might not double your business again, but it might be a 20% growth or 50% growth even and maybe it will double it and that kind of thing.

So, for sure there's phases in an ad account where you kind of continue to pile these things up, but it really does depend a little bit on yeah question about subniches versus not and and all that and and I definitely want to see lots of ads spending so you're not overleveraging one ad too much and that kind of thing. I don't know if that answers your question, but yeah. >> No, I I think it does. And so one piece that you mentioned there was you want to see multiple ads spending and in the in the app space I think a conversation around bidcaps is oh if you use bid caps then all of your spend is going to go to one ad.

Now, I don't maybe there's, you know, one or two ads that are more dominant, but I do feel, okay, there's that. It's not doesn't feel like the case to me that it's just one ad. It's spread off a, you know, maybe there's 10 ads for me or more that are getting spend. I'm think, well, this is confusing. Maybe they only have one good ad, >> right? I think that's probably more likely. People generalize from their experience about manual bids all the time.

But one of the things I've come to the conclusion of recently is that manual bids are actually harder than people think. And so like it's it's just not that easy. And so okay, if that's the case then like people will say that oh it's all lower funnel and your spend dries up. Well like or you just set your cap on the wrong thing because it takes some economic thinking about it. It's just not at all obvious to me that a lot of those things people are saying about why manual bids won't work for X are actually true.

I just I think it's mostly because people are doing them badly and it's because it's hard. So yeah, whereas auto bids like are a lot more forgiving in this respect. who you just, you know, just put the budget there and a bunch of different stuff spends and and all that, you know, >> and there's some sort of predictableish level of growth where if profit isn't a main motivator and it's just okay, topline is able to if if it's an app and it has investors, maybe the, you know, profit isn't a huge concern. >> Um, >> so you know, you could manufacture that growth rate to be whatever you can spend for. >> Yeah, I I would think especially in that world if you've got like you said investors and different valuation components for the enterprise value and and growth goals and MR go, you know, they're just going to value that so differently than an e-commerce business for sure.

So, yeah. What? Why >> is is that is sorry is that why you think people are I'm trying to think because in my mind I think okay it should be cost controls and end of story and you could add you know a couple more techniques on top or you can you know have flexible ads on top or you could have the target rorowaz as part of that mix to enhance it. But at the end of the day, this is in my mind, okay, this is the correct answer, and now I just want to move on and figure out how to make better ad creative. >> Why?

So, I'm trying to think, what is a good reason to do, you know, highest volume or lowest cost? >> Maybe it is, you know, here's some sort of business the pressure due to how it's financed or how much cash flow it needs. As Andrew Ferris, do you think okay in this instance I would actually go lowest cost? >> I would in some instances the instances would be any businesses where I actually had a more like a really particular fixed budget.

If I think the future's going to be highly unlike the past, it's possible that I would want to run auto bids. I mean, in both those cases, I would actually it's it's hard for me to come up with cases where they make a lot of sense to me. Oh, because at the end of the day, almost everybody has some CAC target at which they would rather pocket the money than spend it. Like there's some tra there's some drop off. And to me, that's like, well, that's where your manual bid goes.

Setting your manual bid to ladder at least to that number. And so, in some ways, I think the whole debate that is actually all around one question, which is, do manual bids work? Do they do the thing that they purport to do? And almost, this might almost sound dismissive of some other people, but I think in my view, the entire disagreement that people have about this is that people think they don't really that like essentially they they kill spend when they shouldn't.

They don't ever get you to the top of the funnel, like they won't actually deliver the CAC that you want and those kinds of things. And that my experience, that's where I'm I'm really willing to say like I actually think it's just because they're sort of hard to use. They require some financial sophistication. They require some understanding of how probabilistic forecasting works for you to understand why your spend varies. so much.

You have to have some willingness to put your thumb on the scale of the of the manual bids sometimes so that you deploy a more even budget, particularly when there's inventory. You you actually can't just like let them spend however much or little you want. You do have to keep some spend going even if you don't have the ads to support it. Sometimes you have to reduce spend sometimes if you have an ad take off and then you're going to burn through your inventory.

Like so there are real like tradeoffs in all of that stuff that make them trickier to use than people think. But at the end of the day, if they actually do the thing that they purport to do, then they are the most efficient way to distribute your ad dollars, bar none. They're going to distribute your dollars the most efficiently, which is also the path of the most scale because the way you make the way you spend the most dollars is by spending the next best dollar, the next dollar in the best place possible.

If you do that over and over and over again, you'll spend the most total dollars. If you get those out of sequence, you won't. So, yeah. So, I I think there are a couple cases. I'll also use them sometimes, by the way, when there's like little things where I actually just think like the audience isn't very large or something like we'll use them for retention spends or something where it's just like I actually don't really care about the manual bid per se.

I just kind of want to cover the audience and that's it, you know? So, a few things like that. But, but yeah, in my view, I think the thing people don't like is that they shove in your face how bad your creative sometimes is. That's a hard pill to swallow because when they don't spend, it's really feels like somebody's working against you when it actually might just be meta saying, >> "Hey, you're not going to get the target that you want.

So, do you still want to spend it?" And that's a hard pill to swallow. us up. >> One challenge that I've experienced or, you know, have been a little bit surprised about is I'd put up I'd upload an ad to the ad account and then maybe a month later >> it's it starts picking up and then, you know, as I'm hiring a few people part-time, some creators, video editor, and I we have a bi-weekly meeting of kind of checking up on what's going on and say okay well has none of these ads have any spend and but they might eventually >> how many conversions per day are you >> get >> I don't know exactly what probably like 50 around 50 conversions >> okay all right >> something like that >> okay that's a decent amount I wondered if it was because your schedule was lower and that's the reason that that happens um yeah >> yeah I don't know I'd have to look probably at the specific case that's all right you know >> let me let me pull up and see Exactly.

How many? I don't want to. >> Yeah. Yeah. Well, the only reason I bring it up, Henry, is that like if you're getting too low of a number, then it's possible. >> Four. >> Yeah. What's up? >> 48. >> Okay. Yeah. Great. >> 48. >> Yeah. In that case, in that case, that should be enough to get like conversions going to new ads. But I I think I think sometimes what's happening there for people is that an ad is not getting enough conversions fast enough. and and as it gets more conversions, meta will get more confident in it and will deploy it more aggressively, which is which is because meta is regressing the forecast all the time.

So it's it's just going to assume most ads. And so anyway, so yeah, that would be one argument for forcing suspend ads is like if you just like are confident that it's working, then you you want to just speed up the learning process, that it's reasonable to me. So yeah. >> Yeah. I mean the the learning the okay, I've got an idea. I've got a hypothesis why this ad is going to work and then I put it up and now what is the the feedback loop is kind of challenging because is there nothing about this that's working? >> Yeah.

Right. >> Is there some >> or do I just add more things? I think that this has been >> you know I know that you talk about >> operationalizing knowledge. How do you kind of operationalize this feedback loop of okay, we're gonna teach the team what's working, what's not working, even though you might find out, it might be a couple weeks from now when you find out. >> Uh yeah, I mean I I think you have to decide in advance, make a hypothesis about what is working and what's not.

And so for me, like the prior that I have is the message is the thing that works. And that more than anything else, the message is the most important. And that means that anytime an ad is working, my first guess about why, again, guess is even the wrong word, my hypothesis, my based on my priors is that it's because of the message and that that's the most important factor in it. And then secondarily, it's things like the hook or the format or something like that.

So, so those may be factors in which there and often those are actually the easiest things to test. But yeah, if you start from there, then you try to replicate the message in different formats and different styles and different hooks and different whatever, then you could find out really fast like, okay, if this is replicable, then it should show up and it should work in other formats. If not, then it won't, you know.

So that's that's the way I think about it is you sort of predetermine a hypothesis about why something is working based off of your understanding of the total space and then you test the hypothesis by launching more ads like that. Will will you dedicate a certain amount of sprints or weeks to here we're focusing on this hypothesis for two weeks? >> Absolutely. Yeah. >> And that just to make sure you've got enough. >> That's right.

Yeah. That's why we do the expand and explore thing is like is we'll sometimes say like we think this ad is really working at AF growth. What our growth strategists do is they that's a core of their job is they go look through the ad account and say what ads are spending. Let's make a hypothesis about why. What's the message of those ads? And let's think, do I need to explore mostly and find new messages that work? Okay, if so, what does that process look like?

And then if I've got an ad that's working where I really have never tried to expand it and put in different formats, then maybe expand is sort of the instinct there. But and then certainly working depending on the brand, we'll say like this brand really wants to focus on product A and it's seasonal moment B, you know, so it's like Father's Day gift. Uh, and it's like here's the product, here's Father's Day, so now go and take that and like for two weeks we're just going to make a bunch of ads about that, you know, like you said, maybe built around a message that we've tested in an evergreen capacity as well.

Or it's broader than that and it's just like an evergreen kind of approach. But yeah, for sure that's we definitely do that. We definitely purposefully do that. And I think a great growth strategist actually in an ad account is somebody who is really good at seeing those trends and trying to determine next essentially where to allocate your next capital to which is really what all your resources are. How do I allocate capital towards the next best return?

You know, whether that's humans time or creator dollars or whatever. How do I move that to the next best bet? >> Interesting. And I I I know that you you mentioned the message as okay, here's the key thing that is going to make an ad successful. I'll say from my less informed I've not really the only ad account I've seen is my own ad account. And what I've been noticing is kind of the emotional level of how >> frankly how emotional is the ad.

H >> has been the biggest and I look at you know on ad spy and sort on ad spy by number of shares and I look at the ads there >> and I'm kind of taken back a little bit by how kind of sentimental a lot of the ads are or if it's playing into some sort of deep human fear I think I saw when I was looking for you know at the most liked ads in some time frame I I think it was called Bark Phone or something like that. This phone for kids and it was, >> you know, had this whole story and it was very kind of fearinducing.

Saw like a seat belt cutter device and it's like my goodness. How much is it? Would you consider that as part of the message and how much does that ingredient do you see influencing the performance? Yeah, this is where I I think I need to put more language around this because sometimes I can sound coldly rational or like I'm advising people to be coldly rational and I I really don't mean to do that. There's a question about how humans make decisions here that I think is important.

Um, and I would say, and I think Plato agrees with me, that something in our desires and our emotions the is the like core driver of our will, like essentially our actual actions. And that you can only manage your actions through your desires. And so now I think Plato would say also that the virtuous person governs their desires via their rational mind as well. And that the way you so the real way you get your actions in order.

I haven't read Plato for a long time but this is what I this >> there's a there's like a there's a ch is it the chariot uh analogy. Is that Plato or is that >> I don't remember >> Aristotle. Yeah, but I've never read Aristotle. >> There's like the two horses. >> Uh >> well, yeah. I mean, in the Republic, the idea is that like the Republic, which is like I think a metaphor for your the human self, is like governed by the philosopher kings and then but the auxiliaries are like the you know sort of go between police or or whatever that sort of then govern the actions of the sort of broad people or something.

And and I think the people are the actions, the auxiliaries are the emotions and the and the philosopher kings your brain. Somebody has is serious about Plato and is just just screaming at me on on their phone right now. I [laughter] just blew that. But >> may make sure that this doesn't appear in the philosophy. >> podcastfgrowth.com if you want to tell me how I just absolutely blew Plato, please. Or just put it in the comment.

Feel free to blow me up. I'm sure I got it wrong. It's been a while. Uh but but I think I think that actually the point though is that like is that the the that humans are governed by their emotions and their desires and so the most effective message is going to appeal to that in a really powerful and compelling way and in the most effective message on social media is going to do that while being highly engaging and therefore capturing your attention because it's an attention machine.

So, so when I say the message is the thing that matters the most, I don't mean that every point needs to be made via three arguments in favor of why you should download this app. You know, it's not what I'm saying. What I'm saying is even having said all of that, at the end of the day, somebody has to exchange their dollars for a thing or for something. And that means they have to understand what the thing is and what it's supposed to do for them. and your ability to communicate that in a clear and compelling way and in a focused way has outsized impact on the total thing and if you can also position that in their lives which is part of the message right so it's like here's how it'll be part of your I I mean I don't even know what your app is but like part of how you'll you'll have a faster mile time or something like that you know like whatever it is then you know or maybe a faster mile time is not really what they want maybe they want to look better in a bathing suit and so you have to figure out a way so finding finding ways to position the app and the or the product in their lives is is all part of the message.

So, so for sure there's this emotional appeal. But I think what people get wrong about this a lot is that they they think it's all emotions and hooks and that's it. But actually they are just not clear enough because meta is so good at matching the audience to to the product that actually like you can get extremely far just by first and foremost being clear about what you are selling and what it is. And if you just do like a a semidecent job of conveying that, then you will you will be good.

If you want to make the best ad in the history of the world, you need to have that in emotionally compelling ways in a way that probably induces something that gets a hook, that is highly engaging, that has tight editing. There are totally levels to this. And the one of the things I also want to say is I'm actually not the best person in the world at this. Like I I don't I think there's a limit to my skill set, but what I think is that my skill set and the things that I'm saying can get you 80% of the way there on a lot of it.

And if you really focus there, then that'll really work. And the truth is most of us are not in the 95th percentile of skill set on this. And that you shouldn't try to necessarily build be the 95th percentile. You should instead say like, well, what can I generalize? >> Why not try? >> Because by definition, uh you might you might try, but uh but by definition, you're very unlikely to be that person. And you'll probably discover it if you are.

That's what it means to be the 95th percentile. That's the whole idea, right? So um yeah. >> So yeah. So but listen, if you are like go do it. No, I'm not saying no. No, but I I think it's I don't think it's something that you are born as. It's definitely a skill and I would say from at least how I want to try to approach the skill for myself since you know kind of doing most of the uh work on this is organic content. is like okay what is the boxing of ads >> going back to that I think it's organic and then the the people who are making content for content creators how to make a hook >> trying to study that >> but um no I I think I think that makes a lot of sense it does the the calling it the message I think I misinterpreted that as being kind of >> very >> I need better yeah I need better language for that I don't think that's your fault I think I I've I've always felt this when I've talked about it, but I don't have a great way of explaining what I mean by this because I don't I don't mean it as just that.

But I do think I do think it is a lot easier to start with a lot of clarity about what that message is and then to add other things on top of that in smart and creative ways than to go the other direction. I do think a lot of people's ads fail because they're just not very clear and they just don't they don't know what people really like about their product. They don't think about it and they just they just lose people in the communication.

There's just a lot of bad writing out there. David Oggovie like you know his whole thing was like you should start with the copyriter the copyriter is the most important person before you get to any designers any artists anything like that and it's getting at that same idea like finding it starts with words which because because words are how you express ideas and concepts and then you add to that so it does sound a little mechanistic and a little bit whatever but I actually really don't mean that's the thing that does it at some point you got to appeal to something deeper in people if you are looking for creative support for your meta ads account you should be considering using the team that I use at AJF growth with my clients and that is the team at Behindthescenes Studio. btsstudio.co is the place to go and learn more about them.

Behind the Scenes Studio is uh a design and edit agency that is built and based in the Philippines and really has people kind of all over the world, but based in the Philippines that does really great quality work. That's why I use them for my clients. Like I said, literally like all of my designers and editors are from BTS [music] and and I just couldn't speak more highly about them. They do really awesome job. The whole service is built specifically around not just general design, not just general video editing that they try and figure out how to shoot more into meta ads, but they're really a meta ads first and as well as app first, vertical video for ads, direct response advertising agency, right?

They're an agency built around creating that kind of content. They've built their whole process to do that with speed and scale and velocity so that you can get a bunch of good quality ads out really, really fast. That's the whole point of working with them. They can give you writers who will help brief ads and who will help script ads for you. They're just really, really good. You should be exploring whether or not they're the right fit to be an extension of your team, whether you have an in-house growth and creative strategist or not.

Just get on the phone and see if you can use them to generate a bunch of highquality ads that sell products for you. It's who I use. It's who you should be considering using as well. btsstudio.co. They're awesome. Go check them out. Okay, Henry, we got a we got a few few minutes left. You had a couple questions that you had ahead of time. I'm wondering if we could move over to those. Uh you've you've already turned the table to some. you've asked me some questions here about about ads, but why don't you go towards some of the other things that were that were burning after having engaged with a lot of my content.

Uh so yeah, let's let's let's get into it. >> Yeah, I think over 200 episodes of the Andrew Ferris podcast this year. Um, so, [laughter] >> so I think I've heard on on one of those sort of random showesque episodes with Taylor something about how in your origin story, >> fantasy baseball was a component to it. >> Is how do you think that has translated or how is that even part of the origin story >> at all? because that seems kind of completely separate >> potentially. >> Sure, it is part of the origin story.

Taylor Taylor Holiday and I were in a fantasy baseball league together. We actually have known each other since junior high, but the we reconnected later in life partly through a fantasy baseball league. And when I was in the midst of a career switch that ended up with putting me in e-commerce, it was because of the fantasy baseball league we were in that Taylor thought, you're going to be a good media buyer. And I'll tell you, since then, my main growth strategist at AJF Growth now, his name is Daniel.

He's awesome at his job. He's really good. I put him up with basically any growth strategies there that I've worked with. He's he's excellent. I actually purposefully to to sort of to put my chips in on this theory that fantasy baseball is a really good proven ground for media buying. I purposefully like looked in the fantasy baseball league and hired him out of there and he's been awesome. So, uh so it's at least got at least one replication.

The skill set that translates in my view is that if you understand modern baseball and the way and really modern sports analytics in general, but baseball has been the leader in this for a long time for a bunch of reasons, including about just how how baseball works. So much of what modern front offices are doing in terms of player evaluation, especially the first wave of sort of like baseball analytics, like what people think of as the Moneyball era, was about separating out signal from noise.

It was about being able to look at a whole lot of numbers and say which of these things actually lead to creating value on a baseball field and which ones don't and how does it each player play into that because like like there's a million examples of this that you could give but you know if you ever go watch Moneyball you'll hear s Jonah Hill explain this to Billy Bean or to to Brad Pitt right so the but the basic idea of like you should be trying to buy wins and if you want to not players and if you want to buy wins you need to buy runs and uh so okay so then what creates runs.

And it's so simple when you think about it, which is like the goal is to win the most games. And if I need to win the most games, that means I need to score the most runs and give up the least runs. So what things what you've got these very large data sets. What parts of of players output correlate most strongly and most likely causally to runs and to wins. And in fantasy baseball, you're just trying to answer that same question.

You're trying to say, "This is what this guy did last year. How likely is he to do it next year? and how much am I willing to allocate in salary or whatever to that. And that ability to look through a large data set and go and say like here's what is actually important and here's what's not in terms of predicting future outcomes and here's how I should think about this issue. That is so much of what like good statistical thinking is in general at the level of the both the business in e-commerce and at the level of media buying as well.

So for me that's that's the whole thing is like if you can show some demonstrable skill in doing that and this is different than fantasy football. Fantasy football is too noisy. It's there's because there's not enough games. Head-to-head scoring formats are also really noisy because you can win just with like accidental strength schedule advantages and weird timing things. You're constantly dealing with noise and not that much signal because it's so because there's so few games.

The actions are less discreet. There's too many confounding variables like your receivers too dependent on your quarterback. There's weird I mean I mean injuries are a problem everywhere. So yeah, there's just a bunch of things that make it a lot harder I think to do this in a replicable way as far as I can tell with football. Basketball's probably somewhere in between. Same with hockey because they both have 82 game seasons.

But baseball's has 162 game season. So numbers pile up very quickly. So that's the reason why. And as you know I first started working out my data muscles just from baseball and I still have I would say sophomoric data knowledge but I think I learned how to think about it because of watching uh that play out. Is is that how the fantasy baseball community approaches fantasy baseball? They look at it in a very statshoriented way. >> Depends how good they are.

Certainly more now. Like when I started in e-commerce 11 years ago, there was still less adoption of modern statistics, you know, in baseball. And still, I would say most baseball fans are annoyed at people like me who are like, well, actually, he's not really that good. like uh I try try not to be that guy whenever possible except with one particular friend of mine who I try to do it with all the time because it's fun to annoy him.

Um but certainly good fantasy players, yeah, they're they're extremely dialed into, you know, pitch level metrics like this guy's slider has this movement profile and therefore he's more likely to be good if he starts throwing his slider more. Like it's very detailed. Yeah. And and good players are are doing that. Yeah. And then there's a game system too where it's like okay how do I allocate a certain amount of budget within a salary cap system or something to solving these things and you know there's there's another element of that where beyond player evaluation there's like game evaluation and and understanding scoring systems and stuff.

So but that ability it doesn't have to be fantasy baseball it's just where I came from. Um that ability to think through how numbers ladder towards outcomes I think is is the critical thing. >> Do you think risk assessment is at all? >> Absolutely. Yeah. And I I think probably that's something missing from fantasy baseball. And I do think e-commerce people I just think most humans are very bad at risk assessment including me.

I would say it's really hard to do well. Yeah. It's something I think that people ought to think more carefully about. Like a really simple example of this is like thinking about expected values. That notion of what's the expected return on some kind of thing is like is interesting. It would be interesting to ask to do this with your app, but to say what is the actual expected value on an ad dollar right now and if if the return on invested capital with that net of everything is like 80% in a year or something, you should absolutely be spending more money.

But almost nobody does the calculation that way. And so, yeah, >> it's it's hard to tell how much more volume exists with a higher bit cap. Yeah, >> there's I think Google has some sort of calculator you could type in. Okay, and here's an estimate of more volume, but is there anything like that from? >> Yeah, it's an incrementality study. >> I see some thing that pops up. >> Yeah, I mean, yeah, it's it's a pulse it's a pulse up incrementality study.

So, because because the thing you're getting at is like the question of marginal frontier. Like it's like if I spend more money on this ad, am I just going to spend down my average because my next dollar is just going to be drastically less efficient marginal, you know, just much more marginally inefficient, right, than than the last ones. Because this is another this is another thing people get wrong all the time, which is like if you have a 2 to1 rorowass in your ad account, let's say, then that's an average. if that's the average rise you have, which by definition means that some some material portion of your spend is lower than 2 to1 and therefore possibly you don't want to be spending that money.

If 2:1 is what makes you profitable, then you probably ought to be spending at like a 2.3 to one. That should be the average outcome you want or something because then the bottom end of your spend is now a two or 1.8 versus a the bottom end of your spend if the average is two is like a 1.5. You don't actually have you're not actually spending $100,000 in a month. what you're spending is five sets of $20,000 or 10 sets of $10,000 or whatever.

And each of those buckets of spend probably has a different return than the last one because everybody knows that scale and efficiency have an inverse relationship to one another. So, so yes, this is one of the things that good incrementality studies can do is that you could run I've done this with clients, right? You run a pulse up spend, a pulse up spend. So, you you've got two geos where it's like, okay, in these states we're going to spend $1,000 a day.

Okay, in these states, we're going to spend $1,500 a day. And what we're going to see the impact of that extra $500 per day on this set of states. And when I do that, that's going to tell me what is the marginal return of the extra 500, not just the total return on on the average. Because now you're going to actually compare that specifically that $500, that last $500 you spent per day. Um, so that's the way you would that's the way you would do it.

Now, this is where a bid cap is a really nice tool though, by the way, is that a bid cap is a threshold, not an average. And so theoretically, when you go up in threshold there, you're not necessarily just spending down your marginal amount, especially if you see more more volume come through, you're actually just saying like, okay, I'm willing to push the top end of my CAC a little higher, but I'm going to get so much more volume and I'm seeing the volume come up with it because I'm not just like spending letting letting dynamic bidding blend down my average.

Um, so yeah. >> And is is doing that incrementality test, what did you call >> incrementality? The whole the pulse up test. the pulse up test is that pulse up test is that something that's accessible to you know how much spend does somebody need to be doing in order to do that >> right depends including the conversion volume you're getting and some of that stuff but yeah certainly an currency testing firm would be able to do that I don't have a like like I've worked with a firm called Paramark for a while talked with Olivia Corey from house on here they have different spend levels and cost structures but you're really what you're really asking for is like what you're paying for is like essentially good statistical modeling.

That's like that's what that's what the product is. >> This this isn't this isn't something that somebody could just spin up on their own and be like >> but you no but you could vibe test it. You could just look what happens if you deploy more money just the bank account never lies, right? So if you generate if you push up your bid cap by 10% do you actually get a bunch more money or not? You know uh that's the way to test it.

And so would you say a practical implementation of that is you know go in and see okay here's the every week increase the bid cap by this much and then check but how long do you need to run it at that bid cap to see is this some sort of noise that's happening? Is this enough data? >> You you'll see if you raise your bid cap you'll see if you're getting more spend or not and you'll see what the what the return is. you know, you you should be able to tell what the revenue is.

Uh, for sure. Yeah. And and you could you can even do some little simple back in the napkin analysis where it's like, I don't know, I spent $1,000 more dollars a day. I generated over the next 30 days $1,500 more. Okay. So that then that marginal 10,000 was producing a marginal 1500. You know, something like that. And you could just sort of compare it that way. It's a bit like what some of us do with Amazon where it's like you we increased our meta-spend and suddenly our Amazon revenue went up.

Well, how much should we increase our spend? How much does Amazon revenue go up? The relationship between those two things is essentially like a halo effect rorowass, you know, because you can't actually see it in reporting, but that's the idea. >> Got it. >> Yeah. Got it. Interesting. >> Yeah. >> Well, in in in the on on a slightly different I don't know how much time you have. >> I got a few more minutes. Yeah, we're good. >> On a All right. on a so on on the risk topic, I think what what was kind of the what I was trying to assess the risk of when deciding to stick on working on this app rather than, you know, working full-time again was do is there desiraability, is there feasibility, and is there viability?

And so it was kind of this process of testing. Do people want this? you know, is it possible to make the thing that I think should exist? Is that even feasible? And then, you know, can it make money or will are people willing to pay for it? And I I wonder I don't know if this relates to how you view fantasy baseball. I don't play, but if risk is a component to it, >> how often can you look at something and say, "Okay, maybe I can break this apart >> and then, okay, maybe I've got this hypothesis on this message that's going to work." Do you kind of derisk it in a way by starting out with a lower like production value ad? >> Risk I mean in this case risk is is could you consider on two I basically the risk question is how much money are you willing to put towards it?

And I think there's a couple ways of thinking about this. One of them is, again, we actually purposefully build our ad production process to have some ad types that we do not think are going to be the highest performing ads we will ever make, but they're so fast and so cheap to make that we just can like rip them out as a way to test messages really quickly. And so that in that case, the risk is low because the production cost is low and the distribution cost is extremely low because we run manual bids.

So we don't really have to worry about blowing a bunch of money on creative tests. And so therefore that allows us to go and say okay we can make a high volume of ads and see what works. I um and I I think that is one way to think about it for sure for for risk assessment is like is there is there a way to reduce the dollar amount that you have and certainly this this becomes especially true if you think about like an e-commerce brand with like inventory buying or something they you have to if you're doing a season imagine you're an apparel brand doing a seasonal product drop now you have a risk assessment around like what happens if I if I believe this jacket is going to be like this the jacket of the season and I'm going to just I'm just going to smash on ads with this but then nobody buys it and it's January, man, you got like a month to get rid of those jackets or you are sitting on them for 9 months in clearance because nobody's buying jackets in the summer.

And that creates an actual cash risk to the business that is really massive. And eliminating those risk centers in businesses can be a really big deal. It's part of why I think like running a low opex is really helpful. Hammering your supply chain is really helpful. all these things that you can do to make it so that there's just less cost structure in the business which allows you to take bigger bets in other areas because just everything is padded a little bit safer.

I do also think that people generally ought to be less excited about the rocket ship growth stories than they are sometimes because they're outliers by definition first of all but secondly a lot of the times there are really massive risks that you take to get there and there survivorship biases in the story that we tell. So people who tried to go rocket ship like that but actually just burned all their cash and died don't those stories don't get told in the same way.

I try I should try to feature them when I can if people are willing to talk about them because because I think they're important parts of the consideration process. Having said all of that, I do think a thing that is also underconidered in in e-commerce is when there are venture style curves at play. I think creative is one of the ones where it's like if you can just make a whole bunch of creative. A lot of time there's a venture style curve where it's like you have uh or like venture distribution where it's like yeah seven of your ads don't work at all.

Two of them spend $50 a day uh you know which gets you to something like break even on the ads but one of them is a hit. If you could sort of do that at a lot of scale then you win you know you win really really big even though seven out of 10 like don't spend you know but that's that's that sort of same venture style bet right where it's like venture capitalists are willing to let a lot of investments go to zero. they're really comfortable with that because the total performance of their portfolio is still really really good because the one winner is so outsized.

So, so I think ads work that way and that is that is a risk assessment gain to some degree and and how much money how much how big the bet is on each one of the ads right uh so we're keeping production costs low think about a creative supply chain things like that really help another one that like this is product uh very obviously like this is a question I asked you Henry is how long did it take you to code that app and could you code now three other apps like you you mentioned this earlier like this is what some people will do is they'll like they'll make 10 apps and put them all in the app store and see if they can pick you know, ASO, right?

Apple search optimization. Like that's that same kind of bet. They're saying like it's it's much faster for us to make a bunch of apps and see if one of them can win versus trying to go all in on one app because there's some kind of a venture style curve, you know? Um and that's the that's the same kind of thing I would say um happens for products for e-commerce people as well is like man, if you can figure out how to make a bunch of products and one of them hits, you can go really really far.

So again, it's it's a risk assessment game, but it's also like expected return kind of game, I think, is is part of the way you think about it. So >> you should look for those in your business and see where there's those kinds of bets that you can make. >> All right. Any last questions for me? I think uh let's see. I think we got to some of them. >> Uh yeah, this is a long one, but it's all right. >> No, I mean uh thank you so much.

Super interesting. >> Good. >> Um love. >> All right, man. Thank you for for all your answers. Very >> good. Yeah. Good. Hopefully it's been helpful. Uh when when you're ready to make the app push the app live and tell people where to find it and uh and and all that, come come back and let's talk about it some more. >> Sounds good. >> All right, Henry. Thanks, man. >> Such a fun conversation with Henry and really interesting look in my view into the app world and to what is going on there.

I really did think, boy, those economics sound nice. I wish I had those in my e-commerce businesses. Go and subscribe wherever you're watching or listening to this podcast episode. If you like this, you will like most of my content and uh and hopefully it will help you the way it has helped Henry. Don't forget to also email me at podcastfgrowth.com if you have thoughts, questions, anything in between. And uh of course do follow up with my sponsors who are awesome.

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