How Curtis Matsko Planned His $175M Leather Empire One Day At A Time transcript

Curtis Matzco is the founder and CEO of Portland Leathergoods, one of the premier monster brands in the ecom DTOC space. You have heard of Portland Leatherg Goods because they're doing over nine figures in revenue. And he's going to tell us what we can say about that, what we can't say about that, and how much he does or doesn't like talking about his revenue numbers. But he's got a lot of revenue numbers to talk about because it's a really big, really impressive business.

He is uh there's 1400 employees at Portland Leather Goods. I can see the warehouse in the background right now behind Curtis's shoulder. I'm looking at it. If you're watching this on video, you can see it now or in a second, too. One of the most energetic, dynamic people in our space. You are going to love this conversation with Curtis about how he got his business to where he did. And specifically in this conversation, we're going to talk about how they connect daily actions to annual plans, which is so hard and so important.

And all the time I'm more interested in people who can really bring together strategy and process. And that's what Curtis is going to do here. Let's get into it right now with Curtis Masco from Portland [music] Leather Goods. >> You nailed that, buddy. I I was a little bit worried about that. These intros can go really bad. Like they look look you up on the internet and they read some old stuff that you might have said one time.

You nailed that. You did great. >> Uh, like I said, I like to record it while the person is there so they can hear kind of what I'm going to say. And and I want people to know too like how I'm going to frame them to the audience, you know, and so a lot I may go back and re-record it, but if I do, it will be uh well, now that you said I I nailed it, I won't record it, but uh but you know, I like there you gave you gave a few little things we can talk about.

One thing go >> how big are we, right? Like that's always one of the question. >> Tell tell me you said you I said I asked you the question I ask every operator, which is like what can I say about your revenue numbers? And some people are like you can say the broadest vaguest thing possible and other people are like you can tell them down to the scent that we made last year and everything in between. So you have a take on this.

Tell me what your take is on this. >> We started in a garage and I made everything by hand and then we went and we were artisans and then we went to art festivals and Etsy and making everything in Portland and every time we stepped up people are like oh we want them to you know we we're artisan. We want that to picture that we're hipsters like handmaking every single piece. And every time we grew and we grew and we grew.

I was proud of that because I worked on that. That's really important. I can now give people benefits. I can pay their salary. We're not going out of business. We can buy our building. Right? I want us. And all my people would say, "Oh, no. You can't talk about that. Oh, no. You can't go on to LinkedIn. You can't tell people what we do." And finally, I'm like, "We live in a capitalist society, everybody. You have to make money to pay your bills.

I'm very proud of what I do. Now, I read something about me one time, a comment someone did on Reddit. I have made read one comment about me on Reddit and it was a mean one and they said, "I watched a podcast and all this guy talked about was making money." Well, it was a financial podcast. Of course, I talked about that. If it was a customer service one, I would be talking about how wonderful we love our customers. If it was about building a community, I would talk about that.

But I'm a guy who runs 38 divisions. When I talk about something, I go all into what I'm talking about right there. If we talked about the Dodgers, we would talk for 20 minutes and then we did say, "This guy's an idiot. All he ever does is talk about the Dodgers." So, >> don't temp me don't temp me, Masco. [laughter] >> We did. We did. We're well over nine figures. Uh we're going to be doing this year well over 200. Uh so that gives you the number.

And people listen to that and if they say, "Oh my gosh, I thought they were important leather goods. I thought they were still in the garage hand making a journal." >> We're not. We're we're selling like a a sale every couple seconds. So, uh I think people can adjust to that new reality and we'll be just fine. >> I I believe you're in the great country of Mexico. In fact, right now, right? >> I am actually not in a warehouse.

That was the only one thing. Oh, really? This is a large facility. This is just the stitching area of one area of we now have 280,000 square foot. This is only a small portion you see behind me. >> Well, I meant warehouse not necessarily like in a fulfillment center, but I mean in like it's a production facility, right? >> It is a very large building. Yeah. >> Yeah. That's what I mean like Yeah. The kind of building it is more than anything.

Yeah. Okay. Yeah. But but you are in Mexico. You are in Mexico though, correct? Yeah, >> I am. and we own oneto Mexico and everybody knows Leon for shoes and you know Tovz and Thursday and Aryat and everybody if it's a leather shoe and it's made in North America it's made here because all the tanneries and all the makers are here and we move down here and uh I love it down here. I spend a lot of time I have a couple homes down here and I and I love it. >> Let's get into the specific things.

I I there's all kinds of questions and I'm sure other interviews have covered the sort of journey of Portland leather goods and how you got where you got all that's interesting to me. But I I think there's something that I've watched really good companies do and it's something I'm most interested in as we try to grow our agency and I think there's a real similar thing here uh and it stems from this tweet that you posted a while a while back uh as you have as you have I think gotten more active on on X recently.

You said that you predict and track sales daily for the entire year. And so, for example, you give that you you wrote um step one, how much are we going to do in Shopify revenue next year? 170 million, that's what we're planning. Step two, now using historical month, please, what percent do we put to each month? And you do that all the way down to the day to where you get to this point where you say you had 21 million projected for November in 2025, um seemed a little off the final week.

You ended up at 98.3% of the goal and you're not happy about it because you want to get it that precise all the time. I think anybody who gets within 5% is very impressive on forecasting, but that's not good enough for you. So, uh, tell tell me our goal by eight. >> We beat our goal by 8% in December, right? Okay. So, that was good. I wanted to do that, but my accountant said, >> Curtis, you told me you're going to do 24.9 uh this month, >> and I was freaking I was on there three times a day looking, checking, doing everything we could.

We ended up over 27 just on the ecom side, not you know. So worked out great. Uh love it. Fantastic. I break everything down to the day. The most important thing if someone has a business and they're and they really want my insights into this is do not do off of historicals. Do off of what I call ideal. So hey last January we did this, we could do this. No, no, no, no, no. What do we want to do at the end of the year?

Okay, let's figure out what our goal is. I know what that number is. Now let's take the months and we can use historicals to get us an idea of what we would do in that month. So you break it down to the month. Then you say what happened last year? Well, this happened and meta was really bad for these two months and we were low on product here and we didn't hear about hero products and we did better here. Great. Now how do we break that down into a day-to-day thing?

When you hand that to marketing, they're going to say all the reasons that they can't get to that goal with the right myrr, right? They're gonna say, "I can't do that unless unless what?" Unless you give me a couple sale days in February. February looks hard, so I need a couple more sale days. I need a new product launch. I need a point giveaway. I need an event. I need something special. And you're like, "Great. If we figure the whole year out, what days do you want?" I know that next October for five days we're doing a women's day and a cancer awareness.

We did it last year. It's working. We are doing products for that already. We know that the numbers of what theirs are going to be. We know that we did the 12 days of Christmas which is uh from about December 5th through the 17th. We're going to have two to three new product launches every single day. So, I'm going to come up with exactly what I'm going to do that day. And now we have to create the products that are good enough to get to those revenues.

Does that make sense? >> It does. And it's interesting because I just was off a call like a coaching call an hour ago from uh with a brand that did six million last year uh which is a really big step forward from them. They did awesome. They're up from a couple million the year four or something like that. Uh you know and then and then they they wanted to do their goal this next year is 10. Okay. So that's that's their goal.

And uh their initial forecast based on their historicals exactly to your point right spat out eight and a half. So they were like, "Okay, we think we have that." And exactly my advice to them was, "Okay, the next step here is to turn eight and a half into 10 in your forecast and to figure out what needs to change so that you can accomplish this." And this is going to be down to the monthly level for them before you ever get to anything daily.

And that means somebody's got to in order inventory. Okay, you want Father's Day to be bigger than it is. Fantastic. What What uh products are you going to sell at Father's Day distinctly for that particular moment in that way? Is there going to be a promotion? Is there not? What do you need to do to accomplish that? And this is actually why I latched on to what you're saying because there's part of me that looks at what you said and says,"Well, yeah, you have a huge team that can actually operate down to these kinds of level of details if you have 1400 employees.

This team doesn't have that." And so, is this kind of thing translatable? And actually, sometimes when I listen to or watch, >> it's more translated. It's more It's more translatable. >> Yes. I have I have 1,399 people who might not be on the same page as me. >> Right. Right. Right. Oh, hey, if they're only doing six million, they're two to 20 people and the the decision makers are right there. And of the top five people are either 50 or 20% of their company.

Our top people are a very small percent. You can do a lot more if you're a small company. Here's the what people don't understand. They pat themselves on the back for the congratulations and we just went to six million. You said that's a good number for them. That was great. Guess what? They made a lot of mistakes. >> They screwed up so many things, right? So, they're like, "Well, how do we get to eight?" Well, don't do the upups, okay?

Don't do those and then do the really good things and your numbers are way lower. They're taking what they did. They're forgetting all of the mistakes that they made. If they remembered what they were, they would be saying, "How do we beat those?" Plus, how do we add new spectacular things on top? And when you give an absence of negative and a positive on top of it, they should be running at 12 million next year. And if they don't do their numbers for 12 million, they'll do them for eight.

They'll make 7.9 and they'll go, "Oh, look at we almost made our goal." And if I was running that company, I'd be saying, "What in the hell are you doing? You're only doing six. Why aren't you at 12?" Well, to get to 12, we would have to do this. Great. Let's do that. Plan the whole year out. Plan it by the the month, then the week, then the day. Here's our plan. It's going to change. Let's go forward. Boom. Rich Panel is one of those pieces of software that I just think you should be looking into this year.

If you're not already using it for your customer service, help desk software. Go give it a look. Built from the ground up with AI, Rich Panel is built for every size of e-commerce business from starting from scratch. like the business that I'm starting will start with rich panel for sure all the way up through nine figure businesses like Ridgewallet as Sean Frank has talked a lot about why he loves rich panel and why his team loves rich panel and what what's been great for them and everything in between so it scales with your business and it does that because like I said it's built from the ground up AI first they see an average of a 30% reduction in customer tickets when people switch from gorgeous or zenesk over to them and a lot of that is powered by their selfservice customer self-help portal that is there so the customers can get answers to their questions really really fast once I'm powered by AI get answers to their questions really fast and that means that they, you know, accomplish the things that they are looking to accomplish on your website faster and easier and have better experiences.

It means reduce ticket load for your customer service team. It means less cost for you. All those things are great. And of course, Rich Panel guarantees that if you switch from Gorgeous or Zenesk, they promise a 30% reduction in your bill when you switch from one of those older software platforms. So, um, get on a call with them. It's a twoe transition to transition your help desk software. They know you don't have time to waste on this.

There also really cool other things that are part of what Rich Panel does, including an AI agent that will respond to your social comments for you on Instagram and Facebook. That's a big deal. You know how much of a mess it is to stay on top of comments. People are asking questions about your products on your ads right there in the comments and it's really hard to stay on top of it. It's really human intensive AI. Rich Panel does an amazing job with their AI agent that does that for you and doesn't like lose tape make a bunch of mistakes.

It just does a great job. So go check it out today. Get on a call. See if it's right for you. See if they can save you some money. See if they can scale with you. probably can. So, go check it out right now. richpanel.com or follow the link in the show notes to richpanel.com. Okay. I love that advice and I love the way you're thinking and you are a good foil for the kind of thinker that I am because actually one of the big things I'm on right now is that like I think a lot of people are trying to grow too fast.

Um but you I think you know just your energy level and your big uh belief about what is possible in things is a good is a good push back on my instincts which tend to be a little more mild and controlled and just sort of grow steadily over a little more time. So >> I met you I met you once for a couple days and I know exactly who you are. [laughter] >> Yeah. Tell me, tell me. So, so, but but I think this is why it's helpful.

Like I sometimes like entrepreneurs, you know, I remember hearing a thing about entrepreneurs that was like they they're out of touch with reality. Um, a lot of times it's like a it's a mark of entrepreneurship. Um, and like and it's like a great weapon for them a lot of times. And I'm not saying you're out of touch with reality, Curtis, but I'm saying you you clearly think bigger than I do and are saying like how do you push this farther and faster and all that kind of thing.

So, do you think most brands ought to do what you just said, which is like, okay, you you wrote down eight and you're that that's just a recipe for what's the word like averess basically? Uh, you know, uh yeah, and and do you think people should write down like you did six, >> tell me how you get to 20? Like should should people be doing that or is that like or is that is there a point at which that gets ridiculous? You know, >> if it's a product business, they have to deal with products and they have to deal with capital.

And I would not say ever do more than a double. That's that's just silly. Or >> that's helpful. I mean, I think that's that's helpful right away, actually. So So more than doubling double is really hard. >> We did it every year. We went one 2 4 8 16 like exactly 32 64. We did it every year. >> So that's hard because you have to double your things. It's it's it's not easy to do. Do I think all brands should do it? No.

I think it comes down to the person because you have to do a lot as a person to do this. I can't just say, "Let's run real fast and make it work." Oh, we blew it up. I have to understand my company well enough to know where the problems are going to be, where the market is going to be, where the cost of goods, where the things I have to deal with financial, I have to deal with taxes, I have to deal with negotiations, I have to deal with legal because I know all of that for us and our brand because me and my my senior leadership team know what the hell we're doing.

It is fine. But down at 1 million, two, four, six, if you have a brand that has the potential to go up to something bigger, 30, 40, 100, going from six to 12 is not hard. It's only hard if that person is, and I'm going to be a stereotypical jerk right now. >> No, do it. Yeah. >> 24 to 28. They've never had really anything go. They're like, entrepreneurs, I need to go to 100 million. I'm worth this. I'm amazing. They don't see the pitfalls that are going to happen.

April and May of every year, our people are feeling sad. Things aren't working the way they wanted to and we feel behind. Something's went wrong, but we have eight months to fix them and we always fix it, right? So, if it's someone who believes, I want to make a bunch of money in a short term, they're they're screwed. If it's someone who says, "I want to build the the things that we need to with the right people, and we're not going to stop at 12.

We're going to go to 24, and then we're going to go to 48." You're creating for 24 while you're making 12. So those natural tendencies are going to help you next year. You're not doing everything in one year. You've built things the year before that are now helping you, right? Is the person or people running that business able to see forward a couple years? Then yes. If they're thinking dayto day, monthto month, I want more spend, then they're in a trap and business.

And the one thing that you know, Andrew, because you know this stuff so well, and I've watched your stuff, I've listened to you spread wisdom around the world. And the thing that you know is running an agency, you can only do so much for these folks. >> Yeah, for sure. >> You can say, I can fix this part of your business. All the rest, the holistic part you have to understand and you have to do yourself. Like I can't go in and deal with all the rest of these things.

You think I'm the engine to help you make a bunch more money, but you still have to control, make sure there's not leakages and do all of those other things. A lot of people when they're really small, they don't understand that. They think everything is the growth. They don't know that their own ship might have some holes in and they need to be fixing that at all times. So, is it the brand? It's not the brand. it is the person or people running that are they capable of altering getting things and making things better. >> It's really really good answer.

I think I I think what I hear from you is a sort of a push and pull of like think bigger than you are naturally inclined to think because you could do more than you think and if you set small goals you'll have small outcomes. Uh but and and don't settle for mediocrity. That was the word I was looking for earlier. And at the same time, there are real like just realistic capital constraints to growing too fast in an e-commerce business because because inventory costs cash and and and unless you want to lever yourself into potential death, like you are you are uh going to be in real trouble there.

I think there's a nice middle ground there which is like push hard but be realistic. And um I you know I've seen again you said you've seen some of my content I've seen some of yours and I think of you as like a as like a dream bigger, push harder kind of guy. you know, you're just you think in a very large scope. And I think it's very helpful to hear somebody with your instinct say at the same time, >> be careful though.

There are some there are some real pitfalls. Yeah, I think it's really good. >> As a founder, a CEO, and at this point, I'm willing to say this, and this is for all those people who want to write on Reddit Reddit that I'm a cocky son of a I'm pretty good at this, okay? I really am. Okay? I I'm just pretty [laughter] good at course. Of course. Yeah. And to be good at being a CEO founder, you have to hold two things in your hands at all times and they don't make sense.

There's a dissonance between those two things. You have to say, "Hey, it's going to take a long time. Things take time." At the same time is we need to move faster today. Do more. Don't have that meeting next week. Do it now. Let's figure that out right now. Everything is about now. Oh, but it's going to take a long time. Which one is it? >> It's always >> Yeah. >> Next year doesn't matter. right now matters, but next year of course matters, right?

Like you have to always be holding that am I being cheerful or do I have to tell somebody they're not doing the right job. Like you have to hold things that don't make sense in your hands at all time. You can't grasp onto any one thing. That's what a lot of companies do. They grasp onto the fact they think they're smart because they did a million dollars in sales. Anybody can do a million dollars in sales, right? I'm smart.

I know what I'm doing. All I need is someone to turn this up and bring me more customers and my company's going to be successful. That is not correct. There's so many other things that you need to understand. And that's what you do when you break things down. We break down uh we're on Amazon. >> We never wanted to be on Amazon and we just we're one of those people who just said, "Why do we need it? We do hundreds of million dollars in ecom sales on Shopify.

Why do I need to be on Amazon?" Right. >> Yeah. >> So, we went on there and last year very little. We just did a couple million dollars. I was talking to the the the guy who's helping run our Amazon. I said, "What are we going to do this year?" And he said, "4.3." I said, "That's the stupidest answer I've ever heard in my life. Like, we're going to lose at least do six." And he says, "Yes, but we would have to change things in order to do that." And I'm like, "Well, I'm glad that it's the first week of January so we can decide now." My goodness.

And he's like, "Well, if Curtis, if you helped me do these, if you made Amazon specific products at a Best, if you did this, if you're willing to invest, if you're willing to do this, we could probably take it to eight." And I'm like, >> much better answer than four. Right >> now, it's not like, oh, put more spend into Amazon. It is what are all the things that we need to do to make that successful. Now, it's still a small percent of what we're doing, >> but is it worth it? >> Yes.

Yeah, it's a small percent, but if you 4x the channel, that's that's you keep doing that over a long time, you're going to be in good shape. Can you speak tactically and specifically what what uh what when you say like these are the things we needed to change besides just turn up the ad spend. And you can speak to this at the DDC level, Shopify level as well. Like you're talking about this idea that the growth agency can't do everything for you.

The answer can't just be hammer the ad spend. There has to be more to the business than that. And I think that's right. The mistake people make is that they try to grow by just hammering ad spend and not addressing things at different levels. What are those core levels that has powered you to make it so that instead of just telling McCoy, hey, turn up the ad spend, you are actually you are actually giving the fuel to the business that is needed to then make it so the ad spend goes up almost on its own.

You know, if that's the right way to put it. >> The bad news is McCoy and his wife and his kids are actually in Mexico all month. >> So, he's actually in a conference room downstairs right now. We come in, he's spending the whole month, we're going to go to the beach for a week, we're going to hang out. >> And he is a great CMO. And he's the one, >> he's brilliant. Yeah. >> He's the one who's going to say, "What I do on the ad spend side is so much.

I mean, he does a lot. He's brilliant." But he's like, "I need new product expansion. I need this in order to get to 300 and 400 and 500 million. Here's the things I'm gonna need next month, next week, in three years." So he's down this entire month saying what are the things that the person in the marketing needs and he needs other people outside of what he's doing to do this. Now what are those? We do a lot on customer retention.

Now I like to tell people I'm really smart. Uh no I don't I like them just to think I am. I don't think I like them to think I am. What I did is I really lucked out got a really good product. Right. Our product is fantastic. So when people buy it they love it and they want more. That's a a good business model right there. Okay, everyone. >> But but it's so important to say that because like everybody's had a thousand conversations with somebody saying like, "Oh, we got to turn up the emails." And it's like, "Well, that helps actually." Like there is a tactical element to this, but like there's a real ceiling to that.

Like there's just you're never going to email your way to supplement level LTV. Like there's just something that's going to happen at the product level and you're never going to email your way to like bad products being rebought. So yeah, I think it's very very important to to make this point very clearly that that's >> the two biggest things that we did, the two most powerful things that we did were we got in a large TAM without really knowing it.

[laughter] And then I lived in Portland and I started this thing in a garage and my friends were all broke artists, right? So I didn't want to charge a bunch. I didn't want to charge a $500 bag. So I kept the price down. So the quality was way better than the price. So when people got it, they wanted to buy more. So 50% of our revenue is always return customers. We keep it somewhere every month. It's between 48 and 52, right?

Always. Now that's a huge thing. When you're doing hundreds of millions of dollars a year, you can take a look at and say, "It sure is nice." Those customers are a different customer than the than the first customer. Completely different. They want to feel special. They've already bought 10 of our bags. How do you get them to buy 10 more? I it's not the same bags that we're making for them that is going to sell to a person who's buying their first leather bag. >> Interesting. >> Right. >> So, we have to have completely different design, timing, manufacturing.

Maverick calls it the flywheel. He needs the flywheel. That means every Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday, we need new products, new SKUs, new colors. So, all year long, every Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, we come out with two to three to four new things. It's a bag that they love in a special color. It's a new one in something. Okay, we will come up with around 4,000 new SKUs this year that is launched on those specific days because it can give you a hundred to a $200,000 more on an average Tuesday and then a Wednesday and a Thursday.

And if you go out there and you make an extra a half a million dollars a week because you've done that, then all of a sudden you make an extra 24 million >> to return customers that never would have been there. Does that make sense? We know that 95% is that, but we actually have to construct the entire system to go here's new customers, here's return customers. And so, >> and I suspect some of those will end up being like mega smash hits in a way that's be surprising and and 100,000 on one day is actually a million or whatever, you know, on another day because you had something really take off, right? >> Yeah.

You mentioned that I'm sitting in in my manufacturing and I can do what no one else in the world can do. If I works, I can actually take it >> and if I if I put put a new product in five colors and I made it in China and we put that out and all of a sudden the first day two of those colors are going to take off and the other three are going to suck. You you can pretend you know, you never know, right? So all of a sudden these take off and they you do an ad set, you do an ad set and it works.

That's gold. You're going to sell out in two weeks. >> You call them China and say, "Hey, ship me some more." And they're like, "Great. In five more months, we'll have that thing arrive at your 3 p.m. >> I can within a couple hours of launching, I can see what's working, run the numbers, figure out an idea of how they're going to sell, put a new PO in, have it go from leather to chomping, uh, to matching to stitching to quality control to boxing, and have it in our 3PL in Dallas, Texas in about 14 days. >> Yeah.

I mean, it it's such it's such a huge part of your guys' success story. And I I I actually love focusing on this because it's so much work. I mean, like when you say release three products a week and use product as the as the lever, >> I mean, it sounds in some ways it sounds like simple, but there is so much process underneath that of you guys vertically integrating the way you have. >> I think I think Yeah, it's I could go like this.

A lot of my very favorite ecom businesses to look at are businesses like you who have like and you guys probably are the true masters of it than anybody I've seen where have just like this ability to launch products at scale and and scale up winners really really fast is just is just crazy. Can you can you go a few steps earlier in your history, Curtis, and talk about how you got to that point? Because again, like think about that $5 million brand owner. >> I'm gonna I'm >> They can't the $5 million brand owner can't can't do that right today, but they can maybe release two products a month.

Like what? So like >> No, we don't we don't do three a week. We have three days of launches, but on those launches, we could do anywhere from 12 to 30 new >> variants. Yeah. Yeah. Sorry. >> Yeah. But here's what we started. You know what Oh, Henry is? Oh, Henry is the famous short story writer, right? where the first line always comes back and closes off at the very end, right? He he seals it up. So, we're gonna go back to the first thing talking dayto day and what how you schedule your whole year.

I told you in April and May, shit's not going to work out. Well, that happened when you're at 1 million going for two. It happens when you're two to go to four. It happened when we were 32 going to 64, right? Something goes wrong. What do we do? We found out that that loop was too short on certain things. So, we start tightening it and making it more tight and more tight. More tight. We were making in Portland, Oregon.

Everything. We took one product that I thought was going to work and we were making it in Portland, but we also had it made in Mexico and shipped up to Portland. And I remember this day so clearly. We had already sold them because we knew they were in a truck and they were going to arrive, right? Because I want to keep that adset going. The whole pallets arrived on our loading dock and we literally just took the labels to ship out and went boom boom boom boom boom and then pushed it back off into the truck that then took it back out to the mail.

Right. All we did is unload it to put labels on it to send it right back out. And one of the guys said, "This is the closest thing to printing money as I've ever seen." [laughter] Because he was used to making everything himself. He was a sewer. He was a designer. He had to actually get the leather and stitch things. And we're like, "Aha, we need to do part of ours this way. We need to have this." You make those adjustments every year and to get better for the next year.

You're not when you're 6 million trying to be a $60 million company. You have it in your mindset at 60, but you're trying to be a 12 and a 24. You can't go to where we are. That takes time. But do you have to hurry and make changes now? Yes. Again, it's what I said. You got to hold both things now and long term in your hands at the same time. You have to be thinking this out. >> If you are the kind of operator that is serious about making the most out of every click on your website and testing the customer experiences on your website beyond the basics of colors and designs and words on the page and you need to be using intelligence for your CRO testing and CRO as soon as I say that acronym CRO conversion rate optimization is really the wrong acronym.

I say that because it will help you understand a little bit of what Intelligence does. It's split testing software on your website, but it's really way beyond CRO in a lot of ways. It's it's beyond the basics of CRO. Like I said, it can test way more than design and copy changes. Critically, it can test things like split test things like the price of your products, sitewide offers, your new customer discount, your free shipping threshold, how much you're charging for shipping, all kinds of other offers on the site.

You can actually fully split test your Shopify theme before you go push a new site redesign live. And you can even test out in checkout itself which is amazing. All kinds of stuff you can do way beyond the basics that will actually move the needle on customers experiences and therefore on the value you create out of all the traffic that you are driving. Uh you'll give customers their best experience. You will create the most value for yourself and you will measure that critically based on the actual profit that is coming through not just the conversion rate.

Because of course if you're messing with prices and discounting and shipping thresholds and things like that, you may increase your conversion rate with something you do, but you also may hurt your margin. And so beautifully, Intelligence ties into your COGS data in Shopify and spits out the value of every test that they launch. They split spit out that value based on the actual profit produced, not just the conversion rate or whatever.

So like I said, CRO is really a misnomer. It's much be it's much bigger than that. Uh it's really built for the operator who is serious about optimizing every [music] part of their e-commerce business. Go check it out right now. Go to intelliggeems.io or follow the link in the show notes and use the code ferris 20 f a r i s20 like paris ferris 20 to get 20% off your first three months. So you get a nice little discount there.

Uh ferris 20 to get 20% off your first three months and try intellig gems for yourself today. Really awesome piece of software. Very fast and easy to use. Incredibly intuitive. Go check it out. Do you remember do I mean do you remember specifically like like what the sort of like product release cadence was when you guys were a little smaller? Like did you go to once a month to twice a month to to to every you know what I mean?

Was there like some kind of graduated version of that that that happened a little bit over time? >> We were like every startup we were as fast as we can. >> Yeah. Right. >> That's all it was. It was like do we have something? How long can we get it next week? The next week as soon as it's up we're taking pictures. We got it. Then we realized wait a second we're making so much on these new variants and the return customers and it's just we don't have any ad spend for it right?

You want to fix your myrr, you you just sell to return customers a bunch of stuff, right? There's no ad spend. It just it's gonna fix it's going to fix those ad spends like so much that the marketing people say, "Hey, >> easiest way to get a better my is to sell me a bunch of product to return customers." That's the easiest way to do this stuff. >> So, they start demanding more. and you say, "Wait, if we double our design team, double the sample team, double the photography, do all of these things." And then I'm me, right?

So I said, "Well, let's not double it. Let's quadruple it. We're going to need it next year because we're going to grow, grow, grow, grow, grow." >> So my design team and that just does the design, uh, 24 people. >> That's not counting the sample lines of 30 more people who are making samples every day. That's not counting the 12 different photography people that have to do the White House because we're doing, you know, all of these new things that have to be done immediately.

So, yeah, do you have to build the infrastructure? Yes. But when you're small, you start working and planning on that right now and you go fast at first. As soon as you get it, test it. After that, start figuring farther out and then increasing that. >> Yeah, it makes makes tons of sense. Um, what else? You said to me in the beginning of this that uh you know you're involved you 1400 employees with 30 some odd teams in the in the business.

How many is that? How many teams you said? >> 38. >> 38. 38 teams. And that you feel like the thing that you're hottest on at any given moment is whatever was in the last meeting you were in. So I want to ask you about that. What was the last meeting or you were in or whatever that just got your mind going on something that was like >> Oh man. My fantastic. Hey, come on in here. >> Mariana's out there. If anybody's ever seen my LinkedIn or anything, they know who Mariana, my assistant, is so just looked in to make sure I'm doing okay in here. >> Earlier, I'm setting up right next to me an enormous video studio.

I just had all the sound people in, and we're doing four different uh sets to to have it so that we can do that. So, I could just be working, walk right next door, have a four cameras set up with all the lighting that I can talk to people and tell them what's on my mind right then because everything else next. Like who's who's gonna who >> come in here and say hi to Andrew. >> Who's [laughter] who's that content for?

Like when when you're making that stuff a little bit right here. There's Mariana, everybody. Go ahead. Say what you said, Andrew. >> Who's that content for? You're gonna you're going to go shoot content like that? Uh like is that like ad content? Is it like uh is it something internal stuff for employees? Is it for like this kind of stuff? What who who you shoot for? >> I'm an Oregon football fan. Okay. And I was watching a show called The Solid Verbal.

And one of these two guys talking football. Okay. And one of the guys said, "I was so sick yesterday. I didn't want to do the the live show after the bowl games, but you know what? I sat I got here and I did the show." And the guy said, "There's not a lot of heroes in the world, but you sat in a [laughter] chair and talked for an hour, right? You congratulations. you sat down and you talked about the one thing you talk about all the time.

There is nothing easier for me than to talk about what is happening. So yeah, I went on LinkedIn. I had never been on there till like a year and a half ago. I did a couple videos and all of a sudden I go pe places and people say I know that guy, right? I've had connections. I get employees now because of LinkedIn that literally it's not what I write. It's not the followers that I have. And that's nice. And let me tell you that's nice.

It's the people who turn down more money for a different job and say, "I want to work for Curtis and I want to work for >> Yeah. Yeah. >> One of the people that we hired uh last year took a $200,000 pay cut to come to work for me." >> That's a That's a lot. >> That's a lot, right? She's fantastic. So, all of my main people, they know who I am before they do that. So, there's a little bit of Yeah, there's a little bit of stuff that we do out there, very little on Instagram.

There's some other stuff. Uh, I'm on podcasts and I want to look good on those. Like I'm tired of the bad cameras. [laughter] >> Great. >> I did this blood I did this amazing podcast and I'm talking to the guy before we start and he's got like bad lighting and everything. I look really good and all of a sudden he turned on his top camera and his lights and he just glowed and I looked like I was in shadows and I'm like you son of a >> So I just got it up there because something good will come out of it.

Right. I've been offered a podcast with a pretty large network >> and I'm considering signing that contract this month and when I do I want to have a studio that they can fly in and see and work with me on the first episode. So >> nice. >> We'll see. >> Okay. All kinds of stuff. What What's the value of that stuff for you? I mean a hiring and all of that like uh I'm sure you're gonna you there's ad dollars and stuff like that, but like you know you got you're busy guy with a big company.

Why why are you creating content for for people out there like that? because I have no life other than talking about [laughter] I mean I'll be honest I met you in Boseman Montana I went down into a restaurant in uh in the copper restaurant >> and you didn't recognize me and I went over and I knew who you were talked we had a a good thing I lost my platinum card in that restaurant by the way still never found >> and I want you to know I had a couple great days and I met a lot of people but when we talked about work it was amazing when we talked about their companies it was amazing When they talked about life, I said, "I have no idea what you're talking about.

I have no life. This is what I do." So, I run 38 divisions. I have a new company called Buckaroo that we are buying companies. We're now investing. We've just recently purchased two uh amazing companies that we're going to be scaling up. I'm going to be purchasing more. I still bored, man. And so, there's nothing easier than me to sit in a chair, >> make content, >> smart people around the world. >> Yeah. Yeah. >> And it's not just content.

It is it is talking to people like you. Like something's going to happen by us having this conversation. We don't know what that is, >> but it's going to be someone who comes up to me later. It's going to be something you say that I'm like when I was talking to Andrew, he said this, >> something will happen. The more good you put out there, the more stuff comes back. The problem is if you are a person who tries to measure that ahead of time and say, "Yeah, >> if you do this, here's the outcome." You're screwed.

If you do passionate things and go toward what you want to do in three years, you're going to look back and everyone says, "Hey, Curtis, I want to get on LinkedIn. I want to do what you did." >> And I'm like, I I just did it because I like talking. Right. >> That's it. >> Yeah. And also, they need to grow $175 million business first and then then people >> Oh, yes. I do have that. I I I have the ability to uh >> uh >> to do a little bit more >> uh on that.

And >> and I I think that's good though. I I think you're right though. There's a mix of things. I haven't grown $175 million business. A decent number of people listen to this podcast. Not huge or anything, but like a decent number of people listen and care. Um I've I've worked on and grown a lot of other businesses and and certainly nothing to that large. And so there's still something to be offered there that I think happens.

And I agree with what you're saying too. Like people will sometimes ask me about you know like podcast and yes there's advertiser dollars. Yes it's technically lead genen for our agency and all those things are true but I really don't measure it according to those things very much. Like there's I have like sort of a target number of ad slots I want to fill all the time and it definitely helps but I really think about it mostly as like I think over the long run by having a lot of these conversations over time people will be helped which I really like doing.

I I I personally just have a lot of pleasure in like >> I always call it like the ball of knowledge transfer. There's some little bit of knowledge that I have about something and the act of taking that knowledge and then going and transferring it and watching somebody else receive it is addictive to me. I love I just like teaching. I like I like I find that process very fun. >> But then there's also like human connection on these kinds of things that I think is helpful.

And then also like uh we're all going to die at some point. And so when you think about that it's like >> think for yourself you son of a I've been taking really good care of myself. I really Mariana's been giving me the vitamins and working out and all that stuff. >> Yeah. Well, and so finding a way to take joy in your work and the people you're with along the way uh is worth doing, I think. You know, um >> you know, that was one of the the most it was an interesting time.

I had some people in u some investors had flown into Mexico and we were having a dinner at my house. About 14 of my top employees were there and this investor pulls me aside. Now, we have had no investment. we've never accepted anything. I'm totally self-funded. We bootstrap whatever all this, but they wanted to see if they could make an offer for part of my company. And he said, "I love this. I love the people you work with.

Everyone's so happy. They're so friendly. They're so optimistic." He said, "Do you know how lucky you are to have employees like this?" >> Yeah. Yeah. >> And I said, "You >> not luck. lucky. >> I spent eight years finding these people. I sat through 2,000 interviews myself. >> Yeah. >> I had to train them and get them and get rid of the bad employees >> to make room for the good ones. I had to have people go on and write negative about me so that I could get rid of the bad employee and get the winners in there.

Does that make sense? >> Yeah, definitely. It takes a lot of work. I love it. It's what I do. But being surrounded by the right people. If you could add any amount of zeros, any amount of zeros to the end of my accounts. >> Yeah. >> And I would do the exact same thing tomorrow as I'm doing today. >> Yeah. Right. >> There's nothing else I would do. So there's when you're already surrounded by the great people doing the right things that you want to do, I would maybe get uh more tickets to the Dodgers and come in and see you guys more and see.

It's going to be a great new year. >> I think you can I think you can already afford that. I don't think do that. I I'm still going to be there a bit. I I'm gonna absolutely love it. >> Yeah. Curtis, we have like a just a few minutes left. Let's just do one more round of like highly practical, highly tactical thinking. I want you to think especially about that sort of like seven early eight figure operator who's starting to see what that eight figure world is going to look like and kind of growing beyond that point. like what can you tell people about sort of what what you think in that stage of business is maybe the most valuable things they can be doing?

I think you might say products there. I'm not sure. But also what you see as like the hardest part of that stage of the journey as you're going from like you said that 2 to 20 team up into um up into sort of that mid tier into the eight figures and stuff like that. What do you what do you think about that part of the the process is like what has been the hardest? So before you get to the the scale you're at, before you get to true nine finger scale, as much as you can look back on that time period and and with as clear eyes as possible, what is what is that?

Because I think that's where a lot of my listeners are at and would probably would probably benefit from hearing. >> No, and I get it and and I I've been working with dozens of these people just like you coach and work with a lot of these people and you help them out. >> I I've just purchased two companies and they're in the same they're in the same boat. They're like, "What do I do?" And as you talk to them, they're it feels like they're in a box and they can't see out of the box.

Like from up here, it's easy to say, "Wow, you're worrying about things that shouldn't worry about." You're like, "Oh, yeah, but if if I hired that person, I'd have to spend $60,000 for that person." And they're thinking about it ground level. Right now, I don't have $60,000. That's how they're thinking about it. And like, you don't need It's just like buying a house. You might not have the money right now, but you can put down a down payment and pay that out over time.

What is that person going to produce for you? Right? Your company is not going to grow unless you get that good person who's doing those ads, who is doing that, who is writing that, who is taking care of the technology. You have to spend money to make money. You're not there to suck money out of your company. You're there to grow a sound and solid company. And so, you're going to need the right people to do that. You have to, and most importantly, I would tell them this.

Everybody talks about their successes, especially to their friends. How are things going? Oh, let me tell you. I I built a $2 million business. And they tell that story so much. How did you do that? And they say how they did that. 90% of that is wrong to get to $10 million. But when they tell the story over and over, they just have it in their mind of you know what? Several years ago we did this and this worked and this worked.

Yeah, that worked to get you to a million or two. >> That's everything you would do wrong to get to 10. >> You have to kill off the best things of yourself so you can move on and grow into that next one. >> I think that's a fantastic answer that that that the actual challenge of the next phase is that you have to stop behaving like you behaved that in the in the previous phase. That is really right. I think and I've Yeah, same thing.

I've sort of watched that happen for a long This is how people get stuck in the sort of like just turn up the meta-pend loop is like because like the meta-pend got them to 10 million, you know, and so I'm not I mean listen, I run a meta ads agency basically like I I want people to keep investing in I want them to get so but >> but it's like yeah that's I think that's really really good advice. You have to start looking and say how is this business going to be different and and that actually is a really big challenge to stop doing the things that you were doing that got you to where you were and start doing different kinds of things.

It's very hard to see that because you're living in your day. You've made what I tell people is you've made every decision up to this point for very rational reasons. I don't want you to tell me what they were. Just understand that I know that at that time you thought that was the right decision. Let's get rid of all that old crap. Let's start right here from right now at your friend at 6 million. What do you need for 12 and for 24? 90% of what you've done in the past is the wrong stuff. 90%.

What are you going to be doing at 12 and 16? Let's start working on that. You need to spend more time, the majority of your time on where you're going, not on your dayto-day of where you currently are. You have to spend more time, oh, if I have extra time, I'll spend time on that. No, no, no, no, no, no. >> Yeah. >> You get someone to do what you're currently doing and you move on to the next thing and you pull them up to that next level. >> Yeah.

I like that. >> It's easy. >> I like that a lot. >> I know we have to go. I it's easy to say, but the most important thing is the things that got you there are not going to get you to the next level. You have to get rid of those things and create become a new person and a new company every year. Every year you have to be new. >> All right, man. This has been a great conversation. Thank you so much for taking the time and for doing it.

Uh again, I'm I'm always conscious of the fact that um you are building and growing a very large business and therefore your time is even if you weren't, you're a human. So, your time is the most valuable thing you can offer and I really appreciate it a lot. We'll get a lot out of this episode. I think Curtis, >> hey, you did the best thing. You saw a stranger sitting across from you at a restaurant and you invited me over to your table. >> Yeah, >> that was a hell of a nice thing to do, and I appreciate it. >> Hey, buddy.

Thank you so much. We appreciate it. >> Thank you. Yep. Absolutely. [music] >> I told you high energy. I didn't lie to you. Curtis just is a ball of fire all the time. Big thanks to him for taking the time to come on the show. Follow him on LinkedIn. Follow him on X. Links for those are in the show notes, of course. And of course, you can email me podcastfgrowth.com with any follow-ups on this episode or any others. I also linked, by the way, the tweet that I mentioned at the beginning of this episode is also in the show notes for this.

[music] So, if you want to see um Curtis's pathway to daily planning, daily action to generate the annual and monthly outcomes you want. The tweet for that is linked there. Go check that out. Like I said, email me, subscribe wherever you're watching or listening. And if you want to work with AF Growth, go to afgrowth.com, fill out the [music] intake form there. Tell me a little bit about your business. What I'll probably want to do is poke around your business and send you some thoughts on your ad account, that kind of thing.

If it looks like you're a decent fit, a possibility of working together. So, fill out the intake form, tell me a little bit, and do that. Big thanks to Rich Panel and to Intelligjam. Links for both of those are also in the show notes. They're both great sponsors and great products that I'm very, very happy to be working with and be partnered with on this show. I've been with both of them for quite a long time now because they do great work and they really do an amazing job in the [music] e-com space for ecom operators.

So, go check both of those out. More great episodes coming I've got Sarah Kerosona coming on soon to talk about growth for e-commerce businesses and how she is thinking about that with real playbook kind of thinking across a lot of different businesses. Really smart gal. Really like Sarah a lot. Rob Fraser from Outway Socks is coming soon. And of course ongoing monthly updates with Patrick, my COO and business partner about where our business is at, what we're working on, what we're seeing across our clients.

Thanks so much for watching and for listening. I will see you next