How Ecom Brands Are Winning In 2024 (With Rabah Rahil) transcript

do not listen to the e-commerce doomers on this episode of the show I'm talking to Roba raahil CMO at Vermont Commerce and we had a conversation about what is the state of the e-commerce industry and why I believe right now e-commerce brands are better equipped than they ever have been in my entire time in 10 years in e-commerce Roba has got over 10 years in e-commerce I've got over 10 years we reflect on the industry and talk about why the software services and knowledge ecosystem is so much better set up than it was when we were coming up in the game you should listen you should watch and you should pay attention to this conversation I am obligated to tell you that this is technically a sponsored episode with Vermont but we basically didn't talk about formont at all it's just a couple guys who are deep in the weeds of high seven and eight figure businesses talking about what the state of e-commerce is like for those Brands and how you can get in on the action how you doing you doing good I'm actually doing really good man I was uh on the road a lot and I disc counted how expensive travel was for me where it was uh it was just like sleep stress and because the other thing is when I'm traveling dude I'm not just like I do a horrible job of clearing my schedule and so I you know I still have to run my or I still have to run the marketing department but I'm also traveling and then I'm very um I'm like extroverted introvert like I love shaking hands kissing babies and like I hate small talk so like I'm very engaged when I'm there and it just burns me out out man and I've been home for like 10 12 days now and I I only have to go out to how long did you travel for dude for like six months I was two or three weeks like in March I was home for like three days like I'm like proper proper travel dude so uh no or yeah no immediate like I don't have a partner or anything like that and then I have my dad's out in Charlotte but no like kids or anything like that yeah yeah yeah yeah the travel thing is exhausting it's exhausting and I I think like you know you just when you're outside your normal routine it's it's it is really tiring I remember being younger and like being like thinking it was really cool when people got to travel a lot for work and and there's times when it's great like it's a nice perk but man there's really a limit to it really fast you know it's so well said I I say travel is sexy until it isn't and then you end up being like this like uh that's why you always hear these movie stars or rock stars are it's like dude you're just just a different Hotel different airport it's hard to connect you you lose touch with your friends at home your social life suffers your health suffers but no too long D read man doing great uh company is screaming right now which is awesome because uh November December are usually dead months for B2B SAS so figure yeah yeah all the deer goes away there supplements is you can still quasa go after supplements because the money months for them are more January to April yeah and then um Enterprise where they want to stuff expenses on this year's kind of p&l um and then internalize it in the following year but yeah other than that could be people are interested people are interested in in they're coming to you excited about it want to know more yeah like you say scre you doing though that's a that's a better question how are you doing you sound I'm actually interested to hear what you're saying I mean like are people um when people come to you when people come to Vermont they've seen landing page stuff before yeah yeah um what are they what are they looking for and I think it I think it's an interesting conversation piece for for like how people how operators are thinking about how to generate growth in their business because they're coming to you to solve that problem and you guys sit in a different place than other so like when they come to you what are the like what are the things that you consistently hear them talking about what are the friction points and frustrations that they're looking to use even if they don't sign with you like what are what are they what are you hearing from them 100% so we play a little bit up market right now and so the biggest thing that we solve so we are essentially an experimentation infrastructure so instead of doing all this Landers custom carts custom pdps just give us money and rent it from us and most the most successful people that our brands are kind of like the brands that you're running they have a very strong view of whether it's jobs to be done personas value props however they segment their Market they have a very strong view on that and so a lot of our brands that are really doing well have that strong View but they also have you know 102 million in uh Revenue a year kind of thing and you start to tap out your core audience kind of we were just talking about offline where um Tam expansion has been a huge huge success for us and so I can give you kind of some more tangible examples where um there was a um company that made um basically like sun protection um and it was mostly for uh gardeners and so their whole Persona their whole brand is built around gardeners and then they started launching firmont funnels and they found that oh my gosh Anglers so fishermen actually want to buy this construction workers want to buy this but you also don't want to put people off that are coming to the main site that you've built because they've built it around gardeners and so what fmot allows you to do is basically keep have your cake and eat it too essentially like if you think of your main your main website needs to be average because you want it to appeal to everybody it's the joke I say is like the main website is who you take home to your parents and fermod is who you take to Cella where you can just be whoever you want to be and you can make all these different angles and you can talk to people in a way that's meaningful and then when you start attaching ads on top of that and so it starts to get really interesting and and when when people come to you the yes do they do they know that that's their problem and that's what you that's what you guys solve like how much do you think people have internalized the idea that that in order for them to reach um wider that actually need to start by going narrower and deeper which is basically what you're describing right I I just I just put out an episode about this is like it's like this is like where I'm putting all of the chips of of AJF growth right now for my clients and I really mean that because like we're we're we we're percentage of spend um you know uh in our thing so we are investing our creative resources and time on the theory on hypothesis that basically like the key thing for us is to speak more deeply to a narrower narrower segment for our for our clients and then and then to replicate that on multiple segments of people and so yeah I won't I won't belabor this because I I like if if somebody wants to hear me talk about that more I just did an episode about this but um but I I think that um yeah I don't know I've been in digital Adent somewhere or another for 10 years and while at various points I've articulated something like that I think in some new way and maybe it's because I'm in exactly the the Revenue range for most of my clients that you're describing like 10 to 20 somewhere in that range and it's like yep we hit we hit broadly on a lot of stuff and now it's like how do we go bigger and deeper well like the story I hear over and over from people who are successfully growing their spend with Focus starting on meta but of course this can get beyond that is like they are going like okay I am getting more and more Concepts in my ad account speaking to more and more people and I'm doing that deeper with a with a larger number of groups as opposed to as opposed to trying to hit everybody at once so so my question is if that's if that's basically true and it sounds like you basically agree with that um how how much do you think like the The Operators and the cosmos and whoever else is coming to you um have really internalized that idea I'll say one more thing about this really fast which is um people have this idea in their mind that like for Creative to be good you'll they'll say things like it's got to Res you got have to engage with people it have to resonate deep with people and you have to you have to know your customer and these are all ways actually when you like sort of draw out the implications of those kinds of statements they are that same idea which is like to to engage deeply there's something exists the level of human desire that is different for different subsets of people even though they mo may both want your product so people have some idea of this but like how much do you think that they like really deeply internalized know this is the way forward for my brand is to be able to build a brand and build messaging that that reaches these different people in these different ways yeah I think it's a great question you know as because I'm old you're you're uh also very seasoned as well um there was a few things going on back in the day man like when I got started Facebook ads were so underpriced and the targeting was so good that you could just you put a dollar in and $6 doar comes out you're just like oh my gosh this is insane where now I think the world has moved to Facebook ads are properly priced but the targeting is worse so net net the Facebook ads are probably a little bit more expensive um and so my whole thing is now you don't have that huge Arbitrage that you used to and so that's why I think you're seeing a lot of drop shippers go away a lot of these things and again there's no I'm big capitalist there's nothing wrong with that but if you want to build a true sustaining brand the what you need to get down to is I'm a big fan of jobs to be done people don't buy products they hire them to do a job and multiple people might hire that same products to do a different job and so understanding your customer like you said almost at the Primitive like the root level the first principle why are they coming here I think is super important uh people like personas people like value props it doesn't really matter what your view is on that but I think that is really important and the people that were in the old world have that have not converted to the new world I think are struggling but the people that either started in the new world where they're like hey I don't have easy money I have to be a a great marketer and understand my customer are doing very well um and so to your point I think it's a mix of people that have that I I think the other challenge is there's some people that have great products but bad businesses and so what I mean by that is there's yeah there's a certain profile that you need for paid media to work and so when I was because I like I said I've been in the game forever I used to run uh had my own agency I worked at agency and there was a a men's care company like beard beard stuff that I used to run ads for and they had maybe like 30 SKS 25 SKS we only ran two SKS uh for paid ads because those were the SKS that actually had the economic profile to succeed in paid and so I think there's some challenges when people have um a business problem not a product problem because they like hey yeah we're selling all this stuff uh but it's really not about what you make it's about what you take home and so I think that is its own challenge but the educational thing I think again like people like you your podcast there's some really blue flame thinkers that the the information's out out there but um you know feature or bug however you look at it with capitalism like there's winners and losers and so you you can be right or you can make money and so I I like to do the latter and so I think that's there's just no no way around it where you just need to figure out ways to um understand your customer and again this is this is we're like we're talking about more mature businesses I think again you can have a hero product and do really well with one angle one audience go broad get that really strong pmf get to that 1020 million year run rate but at that point then you need to understand like am I an aov business like if I'm buying indestructible wallets or like a big fan of uh modern fuel I have a modern fuel pen here but it's a really hard business because how am I going to get more money from people like I I spent 250 bucks with them but I have no reason to spend any more money with you and now that changes your economic profile because it's like okay cool and the other thing is like I mean I'm kind of mansplaining to you but the way ADS works work are you're going to get the best customers for the cheapest and then as you start to spend more and more and you acquire more people you're going to get worse customers for more money they're going to cost you more money and they're going to spend less with you and so there's no way to really go around that unless you start putting like again these satellite stores are exactly what you're talking about where you can talk to people in a way that's meaningful to them impactful to them and take them on this journey and kind of meet them where you are and it's really hard to do that with just a website because again your website you want your website to appeal to everybody yeah I I actually think I'm not as concerned about customers getting worse over time I just think they just get more expensive to acquire once you reach the threshold of how much you're willing to pay for a customer um and yeah let me push back on that because I'm with you but you're gonna get your evangelists first Yeah by definition they're going to be your best customers maybe yeah cuz they're going to be searching for it they're going to want it they're going like I think of people in going through I mean this is a bit more of a B2B kind of framework but you're problem aware solutionware product aware and those people that are super excited about sun protection they're they're going to find the best sun protection out there but then you start to get into this like radio where it's like hey man like I have to convince this person versus these people at the beginning were were pretty much convinced like these are your direct traffic this is your organic these are your retargeting like you have people and then that's the distinction I would make though is that those people typically are not finding you on meta ads so the the thing I'm less worried about is that my meta ads customers today are worse than my meta ads customers were on day one um the if they came via organic differently it's possible although one of the things that astounds me in LTV based businesses is how much the um the cohorts end up being better for longer than people think like I I do this I mean I build a cohort forecast TR client I work with and consistently and brands that are you know reusable kind of products or whatever they all worry that like today's customers cannot project the same cohort behaviors as yesterday's customers yeah um and it's almost never true like the the exception to that that I've seen is like um clients where uh the initial customers came via uh like it's like almost like influencer founder brand like where it's like the ver people who came are the true fans the biggest fans of the influencer and so they have a deeper loal to the brand basically on day one than anybody else once you get past that group though I I'm not so sure about that I just think it gets more expensive because at some point you sort of tap out on the um I mean you know if if you're running your out spend you basically spend to your marginal efficiency and once you do that now by definition that means the next customer is more expensive than the last one and exactly and that's the real challenge I think the other thing I I may push back on is I actually think meta's targeting is better now than it ever was before uh except that the difference is and here's the dynamic I think is really is really partly playing into this is that um a lot of us are pushing it a lot harder and spending a lot more than we used to and it's because our businesses are bigger and it's and that's because uh there's a larger share of us e-commerce or us retail happens online than there used to be um business have been around for a long time now I mean just it's just think about like this like d Toc started whatever 15 years ago or something like that you know uh and so so the first couple years you know you you got like the VC backed guys in the first wave of D Toc or whatever who are all basically D Toc is a horrible VC Target you're seeing it just across the board that is gone that world is gone right there are still some people who are who came up raised money in some way who are that it's some some of the results of that are still shaking out but but there are not new companies that are happening that way at least with the pure Toc model um and anyway other besides that kind of group of like very large companies the earlier stage of these companies the bootstrapped guys who are more like the companies you see today they just had to grow slower um they just they just couldn't grow that fast so in some of those early days you saw some crazy stories but there just weren't that many eight figure e-commerce businesses like but when I talk to like let's say I talked to Andrew udarian now who runs e-commerce fuel right I mean if you think about it like his early days way the best guy ever wonderful love wonderful human everybody should go sign up free Commerce great um at EC he used to fr I remember this his was like the first e-commerce podcast I ever listened to because it was really good really actionable early on and I remember his thing was e-commerce FS a community for six and seven figure e-commerce entrepreneurs e-commerce store Founders right and now it's for seven and eight figure uh Founders right that's what the store is that's what it's for and now they have like a separate version of ECF live that's just the eight figure stores and there's like plenty of people to go to that right and th there just weren't that many of those there just weren't that many of those stores in the early days like they just didn't exist and and that's because people have all gotten better and the DDC world has um grown and got you know I mean it it just it just has evolved with time people solve problems and and and people like Vermont come in and I'm not trying to do this just because like you guys you know this is your episode or whatever but like think about how much better firmat is than the kind of software that exist to solve the problems that fmat is solving today than what existed when you earlier your existence right and you guys are not the only example of this right there just this software thirdparty infrastructure of businesses supporting businesses in space I came from Common Thread Collective I can just tell you for a fact their service is like a thousand times better than when I was there it is so good right like my friends at kinship their service is way better than when they started and it's because all of us have had time and Reps to solve these problems so these two things have happened at the same time which is even as meta gets better or whatever in my view um uh but the ecosystem mature URS and the problems you have to solve at $30 million and at $80 million are just so different than the problems you had to solve to get to 10 right completely um and and so and so that creates better more sophisticated conversations in in the space people start seeing that they see economic opportunities people like you guys come in and try to solve the problem for somebody and now we're talking about um entering into a world of e-commerce precisely because of the success we've had so far where it's like the next wave the next thing to push down is to like okay we're going to stop screwing around with like a with like a decent solution to this problem and instead somebody like font's gonna come in and build a solution that is like like you know incredibly good software mixed with a full agency service like it's just like when I remember when I first got my head around what you guys were doing like oh this is like night and day compared to the third party landing page builder I was using before with some ad toart upsell app mixed in you know it just is a better solution and again I'm not I'm not trying to say that just because this is your I really mean like anybody who plays around with a tool will realize oh this this is a different deal and so that I think is the really interesting Dynamic is that brands are trying to solve a different set of problems today than they were before just by definition but by nature of maturity just by nature of the maturity of of the space and as that keeps happening um it it's just gonna be interesting to watch like okay well what are the next set of problems that brands have to solve and what than you know and how you know how do you guys plan and how does your service evolve and all that so anyway I just said a lot but respond to that however you want yeah no I I I I 100% agree with you the only push back I would say is I still will die on the hill that I think Facebook ads are quote unquote more expensive now than they were because they're definitely more expensive the CPM is higher for sure well I mean expense in the sense of like they're accurately priced but the we can argue about the targeting but I guess my Counterpoint to what you were saying is I don't think you could build a brand on just paid now where in five to seven years ago you could there was Monster Brands getting built just on the back of paid what do you mean by build a brand how how you mvt uh uh uh Dollar Shave Club like these things were built only basically on paid media and so I don't think that's possible now anymore I mean I don't know about movement but like uh I mean dollar sh they do wellit right [ __ ] bar mbmt was doing well I mean again Top Line well I don't know what when you get into operational and then uh net I don't I don't know what that is but cuz cuz arguably you never could right like arguably that's a fair okay I'll give you that I will capitulate there but they were they they could make a money printer go Burr and then I think that's where you saw a lot of VC money coming in but the problem with VC money and D Toc is like what do you do with the money you're just going to buy more shitty ads you're going to have inventory that you're going to have to fire sell like you can't that's why B2B or like SAS is such a better VC Target because hey Andrew I'm going to give you a bunch of money for your SAS company you can go [ __ ] buy a bunch of really incredible engineers and just go you know what I mean you can so D Toc I think is just by nature of the business you want to grow linearly because for me the biggest advantage of D Toc is you can print money with super super low Opex yes and once you change that you start to put a husky in Texas where it's like all your natural advantages are now muted because you have this really bloated or when it's like dude I can have I have friends that are doing $30 million selling jeans and it's a five person company it's like dude these distributions are crazy you know what I mean it's like this is real money and it's a tiny tiny so I think that's where things started to get conflated because VC money came in but I take your point I don't know if the businesses were actually solving I absolutely know that Dollar Shave Club wasn't because it it just got absolutely bailed or not bailed out but just uh I believe Gillette bought them or something and they paid a boatload of money so it was great exit for the company but um well that's the point right is that the money was made on the Enterprise Value not on cash flow right they were losing money but they made their money via an exit which which again I'm I'm like you total Capal like exactly what's the goal yeah I don't have a problem with it I'm just saying that I'm not sure that I'm not like if you compare today to then I'm not sure that it was actually different at the level of ads what was different was the level of was where you made the money because if you had to build a business then the way you build a business now they would not have built those businesses is my point I'm just not sure I think it's fair yeah okay maybe I'm backstepping a little bit I think I think your your push back is fair I think you're yeah I need to re-evaluate that but I think we might be saying the same thing different ways I'm track I'm tracking what you're saying now but I do think now the environment is better suited for more sustainable businesses which I think is better for capitalism where like we were talking offline people like products not businesses and there's two different layers there were then it seems to me two different layers of businesses which was pretty small ones and pretty huge ones and not much in the middle yes and and the huge ones were like the Venture back like you know all the ones you always talk about right mement whatever right yeah and most of those um were awesome founder stories that did terrible for the acquirer or for or for or for the people who bought them on the public markets right um that's like that's like most of those stories and again like you know it's really to say that in retrospect like I people expected people expected the economy of scale to work in e-commerce really differently than it actually does and it doesn't it turns out work like software right so like um so yeah so but now now what I think has really opened up is space for like the mid to to pretty large size business that grows consistently for a long time and you know take take when you hear like Sean Frank talk about the goals for Ridge right the idea of building a billion dollar business or whatever I don't think his expectation is that he's going to build that tomorrow you know it's not like we're going to like Venture scale to the moon or whatever it's like we're going to be profitable from day one and we're going to build a billion dollar company that way you know I'm not I'm not sure if that's exactly true but like basically basically it's it's a really different Pathway to doing it and either way what that comes back to is okay if now the problem I have to solve is not just pouring money into ads I actually have to profitably sell people my product and get them yes that means I have to resonate more deeply emotionally with a customer than before when I just solved that problem with money you know like and and now it's like I actually have to do something that makes somebody love my brand and at the same time there are way more interesting tools to do that today especially for that mid- tier when you really get you know to that stage we're talking about than there was at the time yeah yeah total dressable market for everybody falling along I hate when people use Acron and don't don't explain them no I couldn't agree with you more I think that yeah no notes I I I think that it is a really awesome time I this is a really interesting time because it is I say it's the best time to be exceptional and the worst time to be average where before you could be you know you you clock in you clock out you do your thing you have a partner you have a house you have a kid you have a white pick of fence everything's fine 401K whatever now you're just seeing a barbell of like the the average people are kind of sliding down to the non-talented and the exceptional people are just taking even more value from the market and so um but there with that there's opportunity right and I love opportunity and democratization where like I I think the only reason you should go to university one if you can afford it's a fantastic experience if you don't have to borrow money go for it [ __ ] send it um two if there's a professor you really really want to study under go there or three if there's a legitimate like um school that has like Ivy leak still payoff you know I mean if or a Stamford or something where there's just this prestige just schooled at the but dude I went to Indiana University it's it's a great school but it means state school I got economics degree and I'm doing marketing now like and so I think that you can really learn pretty much everything you want to from your podcast from YouTube from C Toc does great content like udarian like all there's so much knowledge out there now and um as two kind of old fogies like the advice to the Young Guns out there is man learn in your 20s earn in your 30s like I took so many disadvantaged economic decisions because I wanted to figure out ways to understand how I could generate value and then finally it's almost like in a weird way like targeting right like you want to start Broad and then kind of circling back to this point then how can I become t-shaped where I I know what's going on but then I can go really deep and narrow because I think skills are acquired by a kind of flywheel of like I like it and I'm interested in it so I do it I do it I get better at it I get better at it so I get positive reinforcement that oh Andrew you're so good at this then I want to do it more and that's how you acquire skills so dude if you're not good at spreadsheets don't don't do spreadsheets go do if you're a creative go be creative if you're a data person go be data person that it's not to say like there's things that are really necessary that you just need to make sure that they're not existential risks to the system but outside of that just do I think one of the worst pieces of advice is make your weaknesses into straints I think it's horrible I think you should make your strengths into insurmountable super strengths exactly very well said and I think that is something that is uh really uh evident where all the people I know that are super successful are very t-shaped where they they have broad interests but man they can go deep on one or two things and do it really well and For Better or Worse man speciality is where the money is where people want killers they want experts they don't want generalists so this is actually my my one of my theories about the space in relation to sort of like the evolving landscape of e-commerce is that another thing that we have now that is so different like Rob just I mean think back to the kinds of conversations that we were having publicly in terms of the level of sophistication yes in those days compared to now it is night and day how much more knowledge there is today than there was then so there's these actually these two things that I think are both major factors in why Brands can reach that like mid to you're hearing about more and more nine fig businesses now whereas like and I think that's going to go the same way that the eight figureure thing did you didn't hear about that many eight figure businesses some were getting there that was a really big e-commerce business I remember being at Kao when we got to eight figures or whatever and it was like I remember Taylor turning to me at one point and being like we've got to be one of the bigger Shopify stores right and we probably were at the time that was like nine years ago you know um and now it's like I mean there's so many of those and yes it's I mean not to not to uh discount anybody's accomplishments it's really hard to get there but like you um there's just so many more of those businesses now that existed and that that next uh and now it's going to be that same thing with nine fig businesses where that's going to be like okay there's a there's a lot more nine figure businesses in e-commerce than there used to be and and they're not even really just dedc anymore so all that I think is happening at the same time and my my like I said earlier I think one of the things that's powering that is the availability of tools made by smart and incentivized um people who can make money adding those tools like like I was saying with you guys and and again there's like you know I think I think of a bunch of other tools like this um you know as well as other services uh so the tools and services Eco um ecosystem and infrastructure and e-commerce on top of what Shopify is constantly adding to their tool just first party is so amazing that that really really helps because like those tools actually do create leverage in your business and yes and it's great that the creator of the tool makes money in the process but like you know you're making a return on a tool like like I I've mentioned before like when the client that I've used you guys with Right started using you building that in got the tool going it was a 50% spend increase really fast and so it's like that created because you guys built that tool that generated leverage in this in this actual e-commerce business that I was working on um but the other element of that is knowledge and what you just said is also right which is like there is so much free knowledge of people speaking at a really sophisticated layer in the ecosystem now that did not exist when I started like when I think of the content that Taylor and I were putting out eight years ago it sucked I mean it was so basic and now it's like people are coming in as like like like they're they're they're running Facebook ads but they're thinking like a CFO and they're like and they're like you know they're building their cohort models down to each customer and like and that's like becoming table Stakes for agencies now to build like Financial forecasting off the back of that that was something that like so there's just so much that's so different and so much better and actually um I sort of wonder if this is one of the places where you guys fit in this which is that like um like on the marketing and advertising side there is this ability to think that way about the actual task of marketing advertising because in the again previous generation of this right what was happening was like was very sort of tactics oriented um in terms of your approach to paid and that's still really good like the tactics are still really helpful I mean I talk about them a lot but um but what I think may happen here is there there's sort of a l the same kind of depth that we talk about on the finance side that I think is starting to happen on the supply chain side though I think that's actually the most under optimized area for a lot of businesses but more and more I'm hearing people talk about increasing sophistication there is actually starting happen in the marketing advertising side so that people are are instead of just being in a call where somebody's like man Nike sure makes cool ads why don't we do it like that which was like the level of sophistication before um just like now it's like okay can we think down to the level of what is motivating our customer how do we speak to all the way through from ad all the way through the funnel you know whatever and I'm watching Brands build businesses by doing that at scale that's exactly right I think there's a few things going on one these Solutions existed but the economics were so prohibitive for so many people that it just didn't make sense and so like it was just like hey I I know you can get me there but I don't have enough money to buy mayback so like hey you know I know it's a great car but I can't get it so I think that's one thing where to your point the evolution of Technology has just been on this huge trajectory where the economics start to become less prohibitive and again the democratization like the arm the rebels kind of [ __ ] um the other thing is I love the sophistication of the supply chain stuff but like that doesn't really matter until you're big like it quasi matters but it does and that's what we were saying I think it's the hardest thing to do to go from 20 to 100 because mistakes start to really matter like especially if you only have like you're incredible at ads dude like the death blow is when you mismatch demand and Supply and it's like dude I just sold out of our hero product or I sold out of two of our hero like most most brands have like the par principle right like 80% of their money is made on three to five products usually like they have their core products there's nice ancillary stuff but those are more beers at the game they're not the actual game if you run out of those if you think of like a basketball analogy if your top two or three players are out of the basketball game like what am I supposed to do here you know what I mean like I I can't run ads against this stuff cuz people don't want this they want the other thing so I think you're you're the supplies matter but the mistakes hurt more as you're bigger and so that's where I think it's really hard because you can't just be this running gun from zero to 20 you can just basically send it versus 20 to 100 you're in this weird kind of middle space you're not big enough to be command like a price Setter or yell at your uh manufacturer saying like hey you need to make my stuff first like I've had buddies that have $70 million businesses that basically just get shortcutted because the manufacturer has one business that makes up 50% of the revenue and they're like hey we took a bunch it was in um supplements and like hey we took a bunch of your supplies that were allocated to you now it's going to be two more months instead of 30 days to get your stuff because these people basically keep the lights on and you don't and so you're in this really weird place where you really need to make sure your demand and Supply match um and then to your other point yeah i' love to see the sophistication so I I lucked out cuz I came from an economics background so all the finance stuff was not foreign to me prettyy simple for you dude five years ago I mean I had friends doing again 10 20 $30 million they had no clue what gross profit was yeah and like there's there's never a problem till there's a problem right and so when you're stuffing the money in the walls who cares you know everything so much is making it down to the net it's like I don't care what's going on but then when when the water starts drying up and the faucet isn't a fire hose anymore you're like oh my gosh like why why am I spending all this money on this random Opex and I have this incredible Top Line but nothing makes it down to the bottom line so I think that uh you guys uh CTC Taylor in specific have done a really good job of getting some uh Drew Fallon over at Iris have done a really good job of bringing into like I don't think people need to be CFOs but you need to understand how to run a business or how you're impacting the business because again like if you're if you're product doesn't have a paid media profile in terms of economics like if this is a super low margin product a a sign of a horrible system is if it scales it breaks so if I'm selling the super low margin product at High Velocity like who cares you're making no money and you might be losing money because of the picking pack and the shipping and handling like okay cool I sold a $50 product I spent $20 on acquisition I spent $10 on Pick and Pack and it's like what are you doing I'm not saying those are bad products but those aren't products that have the profiles to be used on paid and so I I completely agree and honestly I think it's a it's good for the industry to get people into a little bit more um financially literate and understand what impacts the business because at the end of the day you want to make your clients win or you want to make your brand win and there's a saying in Fitness where you can't outtrain bad nutrition yeah you can't outm Market bad economics those are the physics of your business dude you just can't change those and if you don't understand those again you can look at something that seems super successful but you're like you can't you can't sell $20 bills for $10 in perpetuity no no the um yeah the the mistake people make there A lot of times I think is that they they sort of have this idea that their p&l like was handed down from on high and like those elements of it they they sort of the response like well yeah but like like that's what my margin is and like I can't that maybe I agree with you Roba what what can I do about that right that's a business problem that's not a marketing problem that's not a product problem that's a business model problem and you horses for courses man like you're like d you either got to change this or I can keep liting $100 bills on fire for you on Facebook and show you all this funny money at the top but like if you want real business impact and yeah you have to decide at some point hard it's a hard conversation you're calling the baby ugly that's right that's that's exactly right yeah that's exactly right um yeah it's funny I in fact I can think of a specific situation where that was EXA like we could not overcome unit economics we talked about all kinds of different things and trying to fix things and the founder of the business who I was talking with reacted to it like I called his baby ugly that was definitely the respon he couldn't he he had so much Sweat Equity in it that he just couldn't get distance enough to go like the model doesn't work you know and probably today I would be able to handle that conversation differently I think I think this is a little ifus ago now but like yeah there's and that that's exactly the point though like at some point you actually have to be willing to do that your business to sort of make a more drastic change and that might mean you know firing a bunch of people because your Opex is bloated and that's something you really don't want to do might really hard sucks it's also it's hard to yeah or like or like cutting a bunch of AD spend that like you don't have a great way of measuring but like it's just it's it's a really big like slice of Humble Pie to be like oh I've been spending hundreds of thousands of dollars maybe millions of dollars in these places that are not getting a return and I really thought I needed those or you know whatever you know there are these things that people get sort attached to in their businesses that that that uh that is yeah just makes it really really tough now some of that that I don't mind too much like if that's how you want to run your business and that's where you feel like there's join life then fine but like um but if you want to sort of actually protect your bottom line and grow the business then there's points at which you have to make these really drastic and radical decisions and the decision actually might be I gotta shut down my business is this actually is never going to work and the longer I spend I I've done a terrible job of opportunity selection the longer I spend time on this is is the is the less time I can spend on something that's a better opportunity I like to win man don't play games you can't win and I I I've had the same like um I don't want to say conflict that's too loaded of wor but the same discussions with brand owners as well and I just hit him with a line I'm like do you want to be right or you want to make money if you want to be right it's totally cool man it's your business this is your founder this is your baby I will deploy the capital in whatever way you want me to deploy it but if you start telling me what to do then why are you paying me1 $20,000 a month to run your business then why are you even paying me if you you know what I mean like it's fine I'll deploy it's your money I will spend it in the way that you want but then why do you need me if I'm telling you hey man this is not the path forward this this you're just racing to a red light and um you know and and again it's it's total personal preference and good on them they took a shot and they started a business and it is what it is but I think the at the end of the day man I try and like people are all on their own journey and you know I I never find it useful to judge people and it's just like hey man I'm here to help and support you and if that diverges it's you know it is what it is I wish you the best hit me up if you ever need help again and you know Off to the Races because it's just don't get me wrong I had to shovel [ __ ] for a really long time and just smile and Nod and just be like yes but like that's the point like I was trying to say earn learning in your 20s earning your 30s cuz it's okay to do that when you're young but when you get older man it sucks to get talked down down to by somebody that's dumber than you and all this stuff so if there's anything you kiddos take away from this like really invest in yourself be a good human and try try and make the day better for people but I will say the one caveat to that is I have a pet peeve of uh toxic optimism when stuff isn't going well man you got to address it it's okay this is the thing your comments about like I don't want to judge people but like sometimes this actually I mean the gift of there's a there the gift of um clear um an honest uh analysis or feedback or whatever for somebody even if it's unflattering it's like it's one of the most precious things that you can give somebody if as long as you have the relational context for that to make sense right so I call it political Capital but yeah yeah exactly very wary of where you spend your political Capital but this is so perfect cuz um I used to be an athlete so Sports is always top of mind for me and the number one thing like you wanted the coach tol at you because coach is yelling at you he still believes or she still believes in you she you still have the ability when the coach stops yelling at you that's when you're in trouble because they've given up on you and so I think that's when you're when you get yes men and women around you or whatever you need to have uh I I'm not a decision by committee guy there needs to be a man woman at the top saying this we're the captain this is where we go but that person needs to synthesize information from all their lieutenants um and and figure out what the best path forward is and you know at the end of the day dude we're all making bets and stuff like that that but um it it it's easier said than done because uh I will say one way to communicate with people I think people experience the world in stories if you can wrap the data in stories that's much more meaningful like data won't change people's minds but a story wrapped in data will and so that's something that is Steve Jobs said the most powerful people on the planet are are the storytellers and so the better you can be the more astute you can become at storytelling and the more you can understand uh there's a great book kind of a little hippie dippy but I have a 200 pound amethyst crystal in my house so I'm I'm big capitalist but also hippie dippy there's a great book called The Alchemist and you need to understand what your boss's question is or what your client's question is what are they trying to answer what what is that and I I just have a thesis that unless you're the founder or owner the only thing you care about is making your boss happy and so figuring out ways to make your boss happy and again it it stinks if you know it's the wrong decision but at the end of the day if you aren't the owner or the founder you're making recommendations not decisions and then if you don't like that then either go somewhere else or start your own thing yep all right we got like just a few minutes left give people the the twom minute formont pitch and while you do it answer their biggest objection about it oh my gosh you're putting me on the spot um so the biggest pitch is instead of thinking of an ad or an acquis um in that basically we just need to get them to the ad and then to the house you can build different Pathways so again that Hub and spoke model where you can have one product but it can jobs be done whatever and what we do is we give you essentially these firmont Primitives or we call them firmont functions and so you think of the funnel in five places you have the the content the thing that gets the click essentially then you have the post click experience then you have the cart or the PDP and then you have the cart we give you access to the three most important things from the thing that's generating The Click but most people don't really need help with that it's the Lander the PDP and then the cart and so being able to test offers free shipping thresholds different pdps where I might want to show a PDP with a woman I might want to show a PDP with a man I want want to show a PDP with the product and be able to test and so um we're just really big proponents of growth through experimentation once you start to hit kind of terminal velocity um in Aeronautics they they kept blowing up planes so propeller planes basically what happens at 500 milph basically make what happens with the sonic boom they just make this huge air wall that just destroys the plane and so when you're ready to go from a propeller plane to a jet this is how I I that's my thesis this is how all the best people are going to start marketing is um building Jets instead of trying to make a faster propeller plan because it's just going to blow up yep love it all right um I'm a fan I um I have told people a lot of times before I don't take these kinds of um sponsorship Partnerships uh without uh without having it be something that I actually usn't believe in um I think the way you just framed up the value of Vermont is exactly the value that we've seen with it and exactly the value I expect to see with it um for future clients as well um and uh and why I'm pretty happy to be doing it and having the conversation so um Roba thanks man appreciate your time and um where should people follow up with you uh you can go firm out commerce.com go book a demo go make my boss happy uh also slf you see this I love you make sure it comes through through me so people you found this let's get it done uh what else we got we got an incredible newsletter that goes out uh called the geometry of growth uh curated by the indomitable Alexa killroy our director of marketing you can sign up right on the you have there you've got you Alexa and Aaron orendorf 92 Barcelona baby we're we're doing people get that if they're basketball thing but um yeah man hit me up on the twitters uh usually pretty active on Twitter LinkedIn I try but just it eats at my soul um and then uh yeah but I I I love connecting with people and people have been so gracious um early on in my career so if I can make a lot of impact with people but also uh it doesn't cost me a lot I'm I'm always up for that so hit me up there and then uh it's criminal this is the first time we've met so I'm gonna I'm going to do the Shameless thing and you need to come on my pod and and we can jam even more send um done done but this is this is really awesome Andrew big big fan of yours I think uh the way you think about the market and the way you uh treat people is really meaningful and I think that a lot of people do the first thing right um and then as you get older you realize man you you can always make more money but being a good human and just trying to make a [ __ ] like make somebody smile today make a good impact on the world I know it sounds super hippie dippy coming from a capitalist but man it's it's so meaningful to uh really leave the world better than you found it so hopefully your product or your service or whatever you guys are doing out there can do that thanks Roba appreciate it man thanks brother peace [Music]