What Every Great DTC Operator Has In Common transcript

[Music] I get a lot of questions from people in e-commerce who are in what I would call a sort of wakeup setting they're waking up to things that are going on in their business particularly on their growth marketing media buying side and they're realizing there's all this information there's out there and they don't know exactly what to do with it and where to go next with they may be earlier in their business earlier in their career or they may have been burned by their third agency and don't know what to do about it and they're just scratching their heads and trying to figure out what to do next and so today on the show I want to talk with you about what I think the number one thing an operator or or just an e-commerce professional can do if they are in a wakeup stage of business and really what I would advise almost anybody to do after 10 years in e-commerce 10 years in growth marketing what would I say to somebody about what's the core skill they need to learn and to build on and I'm going to give you the preview here it is to develop clear point of view develop clear point of view so today I'm going to talk about what I mean by that phrase why I think it'll be helpful to you so thanks for listening for watching as always hello I am Andrew Ferris this is the Andrew Ferris podcast I'm so glad you're with me and now let's jump into an episode about developing Clearo so what do I mean by the phrase point of view what I mean is very often the reason that e-commerce operators and professionals struggle especially on the growth side of things is because they don't really have a clear strategy that they're trying to execute or a clear point of view they're constantly at the mercy of what experts tell them and they don't have any internalized convictions about what is true about building a great e-commerce business and this is true across a lot of different parts of the business and in one respect it's actually completely unavoidable this is the reality of experience is that you know when I got into e-commerce I had some ideas floating around was developing some principles uh of thinking but the truth is I didn't get the vast majority the things that I believe now really internalized to me until I had a bunch of reps doing it but what I believe is possible for a lot of reasons I believe this what I believe it's possible is is that you can actually develop better internal point of view and internal perspective around some key strategic principles in your business earlier now than it has been possible to do at least ever in my 10 years in e-commerce because there is so much more knowledge in the e-commerce Community today presented and packaged so much better than it was when I started that you can accelerate your learning and the number one way you protect yourself from terrible agency experiences from terrible employer experiences from losing a lot of money on ads and from building a business that really never works the number one way you can do that is by getting your feet planted firmly on some clear growth principles and Big Ideas that are true and will work the enemy of this kind of thinking is the every business is different line every brand is different every ad account is different that is the most likely thing to frustrate me to no end that I see spoken regularly on Twitter or elsewhere this whole idea that every brand is different every e business is different of course is true in one respect but in another respect that's a really unhelpful phrase because actually there are things that apply to almost every business that are out there and at least ought to be the starting point for the way that you ought to think about things the notion that every single brand is different and every single account is different while technically true is actually unhelpful and there are things there are rules you can apply this is why there are professionals who are capable of repeating their experience in multiple places it's not just because they are talented that that might be the case it's also because they develop ideas and principles that work this is why agencies exist because agencies across lots of different areas of expertise right like I I have a friend who runs an operations and supply chain agency my friends at more Staffing you know my my my longtime sponsor on this show they have particular expertise around recruiting and training and they have a whole separate side of their business around around supply chain and expertise they've built up there because there principles that work in all of those places and of course that's true in meta ads or in Google ads Etc so there are things that really do work and here's the thing that I'm that I'm getting at if you are in a stage of business where you are earlier or or in a wakeup stage like I said again this doesn't actually have to be early stage because you can actually get really far into a business while not doing very well on some of these things just because your product is so good your margin is so good your LTV is so good Etc that can all be the case but what you really need most more than or what you really need when you're in that wakeup stage is to learn those principles that are true across as many of those parts of the business as you possibly can and because I am me and because my because my show focuses on what it focuses on I want to apply that specifically to meta ads growth for your business right now into growth Marketing in in general because this is an area where people lose lots and lots of money and have totally frustrating experiences maybe you've heard the story or you've had the experience of working with an agency or working with a freelancer or something like that and the interactions go like this freelancer or agency tells you X is what we are going to do they layout X plan right whatever this is the plan this is what we're going to do and then you say because you don't necessarily know any better okay sounds good you're the expert I want to trust you you've convinced me that you're an expert for whatever reason and how they convinced you that who knows might have just been a good salesperson might have been something they showed you that really convinced you of that so like for X expert or or for excuse me not for X expert for the expert to do that they roll X plan and they tell you that and then what what ends up happening is it doesn't work very well and then they give you this thing over and over again which is like just trust me I need more time I can do it I know how to do it just I need more time okay and so you say okay sure and then you keep waiting and waiting and they keep and anytime these conversations happen they throw more ideas at the and they out there and they say okay here's another idea for you here's another idea for you here's another idea for you and so all the time when things are going poorly they're constantly telling you what they're going to do to solve it because most people are actually trying to solve the problem I've not been around very many people who are just selling snake oil out here like I think they want to help businesses they want to help Brands they want to help clients all those things and so they always come with the next idea because they're trying to solve it but there is this inherent built- in tension of like do I trust this person do they really know what they're doing can I figure that out and the way this op this relationship often works is that on the agency side this is the person who theoretically is armed with all of this specialized knowledge to help you figure out what's going on in your brand and so you try to trust them and then over here when it's not working you're sit sitting there asking yourself should I keep trusting them should I keep trusting them should I keep trusting them and that hamster wheel spins and Spins and Spins and Spins and you end up having this weird situation where you're not really and this is the thing to watch out for you're not really trusting a method or an idea you're trusting person and you're you're assuming this person is is the solution to your problem and is the is the problem solver okay now sometimes there are uniquely valuable talented people who you you should do everything you can to keep as close to your business as possible just because you know they know really really well but what I'll tell you is those people they don't have losses Forever at some point they get W's at some point they get wins and that's the reason why you can trust them so much right and so they pile this up so they may have a loss at some point or whatever but because everybody does right nobody's right all the time but they've proven through their thinking in your business that they are trustworthy sources when you have those people hold on to them with everything you have with everything you can don't try to do it cheaper don't try to maintain it out don't try to whatever keep them as long as you can especially if they're good quality people okay but in the midst of that my challenge to you is in that back and forth where this where the person is telling you don't don't worry I just need more time about I need more time you can trust me here's the next idea and you're wondering if you should the way to solve that Gap in your business is develop perspective develop point of view so that you have a rubric through which you can evaluate their ideas don't be stuck taking their word for it learn the best principles particularly around the areas of your business that are going to be the largest Investments and for almost every e-commerce brand meta ads is one of your largest Investments at some point if you've gone through three or four agencies three or four Freelancers and you can't solve the problem the problem is you and the reason I say that is not because you're necessarily doing a bad job it's because you need to to do the work to learn what it is that you're looking for so you can evaluate the claim somebody else is making to you need to understand as well as possible particularly in the places where your money is going to go further if you need to add to your team you should be looking in the Philippines this is one of those things that you can develop point of view about as I'm discussing In This Very episode you should be thinking about how to build an incredible team full of Highly talented people and yet how to do that while keeping Opex low as a percentage of Revenue and there is no better way to do that besides finding incredible talent in the Philippines with my friends at more Staffing more Staffing will help you recruit train onboard coach incredible talent in the Philippines and there is incredible talent in the Philippines people with deep e-commerce resumés who will bring value all over your company like marketing supply chain operations all over the place from manager director even executive level rules that can come in and make a huge impact on your business right away the value exchange is really really clear which is that salaries for Filipino employees are much lower than they would be in the US and yet by offering a competitive salary relative to Philippines levels you can get incredible talent and that is exactly what you will do with Talent that's brought to you from Folks at more Staffing more Staffing will help you locate that talent and they've done it for lots and lots of my listeners so far including not just listeners but for me I have built a lot of my team in the Philippines I'm very happy with them I love them they do great work they're great quality people they work hard and I just they're just a joy to work with and so you should be considering doing that more Staffing uh has been my sponsor on this show for a long time both sides both them and I keep re-upping this relationship because it has been a great partnership and listeners continue to tell me they've had a great experience with them really simple go find incredible talent in the Philippines for your business by going to more Staffing and you can do that at more now. c/f for Andrew feris and go get started today finding incredible talent in the Philippines for your e-commerce business so here's what I mean at some point you should have perspective on whether or not your agency should be auto bidding versus manually bidding your ad account that might sound small I actually think it's a huge deal I think it's a really big deal that that says a lot about how somebody thinks about the world it says a lot about somebody's trust in machine learning forecasts versus their own approach to managing money if I'm auto bidding my ads it's very there's not really a great reason to do that except because I believe I am better at allocating dollars than meta machine learning now look somebody out there might have a reason why they think that's really right and they might have detailed information but that person should be held to a standard of proving that point just like somebody who believes in manual bidding be held to a standard of proving that point in some way that really like makes a difference that really convinces you because it is a major decision about how your money will get spent you will lose a lot of money by doing this wrong and you will make a lot of money by doing it right and so you as the operator or an early media buyer or something like that should go figure out what do I believe about this issue and who has the best evidence in support of their case and it can't just be settled on a screenshot because this is where Brands actually are different uh a $10 million brand and a$1 million brand and a $100 million brand are all in different stages of business different relationships to Their audience and so saying my business spent lot of money is not enough evidence to justify uh one of those opinions you can do a great job with manual bids in a $1 million business and A1 million business and $100 million business you can do a good job with auto bids in each of those businesses as well and understanding the difference between those things is really really important and so so just because one B one person has a big business doesn't mean and a big agressive screenshot doesn't mean their their perspective is right about everything they do right I mean you know this you know this every business has problems and so there's lots of ways that you can be right or wrong but the thing you looking for is what is the most likely thing to be right in the most cases so that I can apply that strategically to my business and I don't get stuck taking someone's word for it so what I'm saying with that last point is is not so much both Auto bids and manual bids can be right and wrong what I'm saying is it is true that creative really matters so this is another thing I would say develop perspective about what makes great e-commerce creative find someone and hold their feet to the fire on do they have a real idea about what they believe like in my case the thing that I would say is like people customers need Clarity above everything else and so I'm going to develop creative with an aim at getting as clear as possible in everything we do and conveying as much information as possible in my ads okay you should have some idea of why that is the right or wrong opinion for your ads and you should hold people who are making ads to you to that standard develop a position on that issue now it's possible of course this is where it gets confusing that does great creative and bad media buying and that can push an ad account really far forward they can still be wrong about media buying though they can also do great media buying and bad creative that's going to be a lot harder I think to push an ad ad account forward I think at some point you need you need some creative that works but it's not even I mean I don't know there's ways in which that can work too and so the point is you should develop perspective on both you should develop perspective on how media buying ladders to your finances the one word for that is attribution understanding what is basically true this you should develop clear and good perspective about why or why not you ought to trust meta 28 day click versus new customer Revenue in Shopify versus Google analytics last day click versus North Beamer triple wh or whatever and you should have an idea of why you believe what you believe don't just take someone's word for it because they say of course you need a third party attribution tool don't just take someone's word for it because they say oh meta is in it for themselves and so their attribution can't be trusted like go do the work and figure out what you actually believe about those things and in particular in meta what I think is for earlier stage brand BRS especially and for Brands spending lots and lots of money for in both of those scenarios it is more important for you than ever to get really deep and clear about what's going on because in the earlier stage it can unlock the viability of your business and when you're spending lots of money it can unlock huge amounts of profit or loss in either direction okay so that's the number one thing I'm looking for develop clear perspective on these issues if you do that you will then be able to go into a conversation ask pointed questions to somebody and when they are jerking you around saying hey uh this is why I'm going to do this just give me another week you can either say you're right some problems are hard to solve and we're going to keep hammering away at it together I trust you because I believe in your methodology not just I trust you and take your word for it but I believe in your actual methodology so there's that or you can say on the other side no what you are saying you're just you're just throwing things at the wall and hoping hoping they're going to stick that's not good enough for me I actually need you to have a clear perspective and tell me why you believe that Etc so that is the number one thing I would say for most earlier Brands and this is also why for earlier Brands my constant suggestion to them is if you're spending less than 50 Grand a month you should run your ads yourself there's a lot of reasons for that because as much as there is great information out there you you will not internalize that information to your maximal ability unless you actually spend some time doing it yourself it's going to be just really really hard I mean the way to do it if you need to if you want to is to actually go into a call and ask very good hard questions to somebody and every time they say something that you don't totally understand don't just Breeze past it stop them and say explain that again I don't understand it okay because that is what's going to help you to develop the skill you need to develop if somebody says on a call your am is two and your bidc caps are set at at whatever number and you don't know what AMR or bidc caps are you need to go and ask the question what does that mean I don't understand how are you measuring that show me it in the spreadsheet force yourself to dig in because that will help you scale the business over more time and if you're something 50 Grand and spend per month doing it yourself especially in a business that you run first of all Economics work a lot better than actually hiring an outside person for that in the vast majority of cases but secondly besides the economics what it's going to do is make you look and see how the Facebook Revenue number in that Facebook dashboard is how that actually ladders to the new customer Revenue in your Shopify account and you're going to go like huh those are really close or not and so this thing is working or this thing is not working and you know figure it out so the actual best version of this is to do those things together get external learning and do it yourself in the early stage of business if you can do the two of those two things together at the same time so that you actually have a Sandbox in which to test ideas that you're hearing and then to actually learn to and then actually to get reinforced learning as well especially if you can also be talking to other people about those things talking to experts about those things that's going to help you really internalize the ideas so even if you get to $50,000 a month and spend and decide your attention needs to go somewhere else in the business when you go hire an agency or a freelancer you will now be very well equipped to hand to hire somebody who will be really good you'll be able to ask them pointed questions you'll know what they're you'll know what you're looking for you'll know it's what's BS and what's not and then you'll be able to find the right person you won't get taken for a ride by an agency in quite the same way because you'll understand and internalize things that then help you evaluate and make a better decision if you're wondering where to go to find that I have an answer for you and my answer is to go to Common Thread collectives admission product admission is by far the best learning community for Facebook ads of which I am aware if you want to learn meta ads and not just meta ads but full e-commerce growth go to admission I put a link in the show notes and I'm going to get out in front of this now and tell you that is an affiliate link this is not the reason I did this episode this is not a paid sponsored episode it is an affiliate Link in fact I am going to also add a non-affiliate link so if you feel uncomfortable with my recommendation because you feel like it's not fair that I make some money on this that's fine click the non-affiliate link and go sign up anyway okay that's okay with me I just want you to know I that's not the reason I'm doing this I'm saying this because Common Thread Collective as an ad agent what separates them in my opinion from just about everybody else in the space is point of view they have absolute Clarity to some things that work in the large aggregate of advertising and in e-commerce in a way that nobody else I know of does they have worked very very hard for a long time at distilling that into information that you can internalize and understand they communicate clearly and admission is a really costeffective way for you to go and learn those things as much as possible in a community of people people through some pre-recorded content and some ongoing live content including exclusive webinars with Taylor holiday who is the smartest person in e-commerce that I know in growth marketing and and thinking about how to grow an e-commerce profitably and they're going to present that stuff to way to you in a way that's really really helpful and understandable and so if you were to ask me where do I go to get that information that is my answer go to admission internalize the information you will develop point of view there they will make the case for the things they believe about how your marketing spend ladders to your p&l why you should be running manual bids how great creative works all those things that become really foundational and you'll be able to build from there you also get access to a bunch of their team and some of that stuff too to help you answer questions along the way so that's the way I would say if you're wondering what what practical step you should take if listening to this episode listen to my podcast go back try to internalize as much of that as possible I really try to teach these principles as clearly as possible and then go and join admission so I hope that makes sense develop as much point of view as you possibly can as you develop point of view that will be a foundation that you can build on and of course it will develop more and more over time with more experience and from there you can also go and hire great people build your business as profitably as possible and then keep yourself from being taken for a ride in all kinds of different places and losing a lot of money in the [Music] process I'd hope that one made sense to you it made sense to me when I was saying it but I've just watched so many people have things go so wrong and I get so many questions from folks about where they should start and what they should do and all these things and this is the thing I go back to over and over and over again develop point of view get some help from the folks at Common Thread Collective via admission and you'll be off the races to know what you need to know to build a great e-commerce business as always I'd love your feedback on this episode so you can do that by reaching out to me at podcast aaf.com some really great questions and thoughts and even just like kind work recently which has been very much appreciated and very encouraging to me so thank you so much uh you can also reach out to me on Twitter Andrew J Ferris I love to talk to you there or find anything that I am doing and working on at AJF growth.com you can also sign up for my email list there I will not spam you fact I have sent very few emails ever to that list but I will send you my favorite free e-commerce resources four of them that will get you started sent straight to your inbox so go sign up for my email us at hf.com of course go visit my friends at more stopping who I just absolutely love virtual assistants can be helpful virtual professionals can change your business you can find them in the Philippines with more Staffing go to more now.co to get connected to more Staffing and next week on the show what's Happening next week on the show I don't think I know yet you should subscribe though oh very soon my next opening the books is coming out it is in production post production right now opening the books with some people running a great men's Personal Care brand it is not beard brand this time so some funny crossover there but I'm going to talk to a brain that that we really have to see their whole startup journey and a big turn towards profitability as they made some changes in their business business in the last bunch of months so it's going to be really really good don't forget to subscribe so you don't miss out on that episode it's going to be awesome thanks so much as always for listening for watching we'll talk to you next [Music] time