The DTC Advice I Hate Most transcript

Your business is different than every other business out there. Every e-commerce business is unique and therefore you ought to have an open hand with nearly every strategy that comes through and test everything so that you can see what applies best to your business. That is one of the most common pieces of advice I hear in amongst e-commerce thought leaders and I think it is profoundly wrong. And I want to tell you why today on this episode of the show.

You should not be testing everything and instead you should look for the opposite perspective. You should be looking for wide-reaching broad principles that are foundational and you can really really rely on and I'm going to make the case for that on this episode of the show. I hear this all the time. I hear this idea that you ought to test everything and usually that is under the guise of what I brought up in the intro today, right?

Which is uh that that uh testing everything should be done because every business is different. And so that's sort of the foundational starting point for this idea. Your business has unique features that are unlike every other business and uh and therefore you cannot just apply the thing you hear from some thought leader. I'm trying to avoid the word guru because I think that word is actually unhelpful. Uh some thought leader on the internet that uh that you should you should hold all of those things.

Maybe take what you can from some of them, right? Listen of course to people who have done it before. I think most folks would say that even the test everything kind of crowd. And yet at the same time you ought to take those with a big grain of salt and recognize that your business is really different. And that that line of thinking is so unbelievably common. I see it absolutely everywhere. I really don't have anybody specifically in mind as the sort of counter argument uh or or the sort of interlocutor to this position that I am that I'm talking about.

And and that's because I hear it so often. So much of the time I hear people say, "Look, you got to test it for your business is different. There's no one right way to do it, etc." And you should test and see how it goes in your specific business. Now, let's before I unpack that anymore or before I make a counter argument to that idea, let me start by suggest by creating what I think is the steel man version of the argument.

And that's something I've been trying to do a lot recently. I just recognize that people even people that I disagree with about things online about how to do D2C well, etc. Are usually not idiots, right? A lot of them are experienced and they're speaking from something they've learned and and so even when I think they're wrong, I'm trying to get more in the habit of going like let me try and make the best possible version of their case that I can so that so that I can actually deal with the best argument from that side and also just because I want to you know sort of take people at their best assume the best of them as we go.

So let me make the steel man version of that argument, right? If you're if you're not familiar with that idea, right? Steel man, straw man. Steel man is the best version of the argument. Straw man is a fallacy. It's a way of sort of picking apart somebody else's argument without dealing with the substance of their argument but instead just creating sort of the worst version of their argument and picking that apart, okay?

So we'll stay away from the straw man. We'll move to the steel man argument, okay? So here's the steel man argument I think for test everything, okay? First, the test everything mentality, it is true that your business is not like any other business in some way or another. Like there are just a bajillion skin care businesses out there. There's so many and I know that Dave Rigolet had has been public about this working on Bamboo Earth that like when when he asks customers what other favorite skin care brands they have like that the number one answer has like 2% of the total answers, right?

So there's just like tons. People are all over the place for skin care companies, right? And yet at the same time, there are unique elements of Bamboo Earth that really are unlike other elements and maybe it's something about the way they do their quiz, something about the way they think about their brand, the way they do their bundling, the product formulations. It could be all you know, literally the brand itself is by definition different than other brands.

So so in that respect, that is correct, right? And there are going to be things that do not work for your business that do work for other people's businesses. And so no question that that is true. And at the same time, uh there are things where when you are sort of digging into strategies for your specific business, in fact, you don't want to be like other people's businesses. You specifically don't want to do the thing other people are doing cuz that's how you become boring.

And so, by simply avoiding doing things that other people are doing, your brand is more likely to stand out. Like you think about Liquid Death, right? Liquid Death is a great example of a brand where the whole point of the brand is that it's water, but it's branded in this extreme way. I've always loved it before I ever knew really anything about them. Like when I first saw them and kind of got what they were doing, I just immediately fell in love with the brand cuz I thought it was so clever and funny.

And you know, if you tried to do what other water brands are doing, you know, show how pure and clean, you try to create recreate the Fiji water bottle or something like that, right? Or Aquafina, like you're just going to be boring. And so, it's going to be really hard to enter into that space because you're going to be too much like everybody else. And so, the best practice in that respect doesn't apply to you, okay?

So, in that respect, I think I think that bit of advice is true. There are truly unique things about your business. On top of that, there are a lot of different categories of businesses, right? Apparel brands and skin care brands and beauty brands are all semi-related to one another, but they actually like a fashion brand specifically, that's what I mean by apparel, right? Let's actually put that in another category.

Fashion and then also sort of like we'll call it like shapewear apparel, right? Like athleisure, something like that could be in there, too, right? Those Those different categories all may have similar customers, they all may be in a similar space, sort of related to beauty and appearance and and you know, aesthetics and and some of those things. And yet, they have some different elements of the dynamics of what makes those businesses tick, right?

Beauty brands probably have tons and tons of product coming all the time, which makes them look more like a fashion brand or an apparel brand, and yet they are also CPG and renewable in a way that's more like a skin care brand. And so, they maybe have to think about different ways in which advice for each of those other two brands would function differently and uniquely for them. And so, there are these different categories and you could of course those categories all are semi-similar and and maybe there's more overlap.

What happens when you compare those to Ridge Wallet, for a long time a one product brand or something and you know, I so you could just name a million examples like this, right? You I don't have to tease this out too far. In one respect, it could go really far. Or what about a print-on-demand type brand or a manufacturing-on-demand type brand, you know? And so yeah, so you could keep doing this for forever. In fact, I've done episodes about different types of business categories and trying to think about where you fit into that, okay?

And so, test everything makes sense in that respect because what you want to say is, how is my brand different than the brands that are being promoted to me? And this is actually a really good mental habit to get into when you see people promoting their success stories. When somebody says, "We did X." Try to think about whether or not your brand is comparable to the brand that did X, right? If it created Y outcome. Like like think about, could your brand is your brand similar enough to X or could your brand actually execute that same playbook in a way that really makes sense?

Yeah, again, I think that's a really good mental habit to get into. It's the part of the way you save yourself from sort of being too taken in by case study sales tactics and things like that and go like, "Oh, we have to go do this." It's part of the way you maintain focus on certain things because a lot of the times those stories are from somebody selling a way of doing it or a piece of software or whatever it is that they are trumpeting and saying, you know, this this piece of software created all this value for this brand and so you should go do it too.

And so, part of you know, thinking about how your brand is different than those is really good. And of course, also things do change over time. So, there's something that worked three years ago that might not work today. A tactic that might that worked three years ago that might not work today. And in that respect again, test everything does make some sense. Maybe it did work three years ago and maybe it worked for a lot of people three years ago, but it it wouldn't work now, right?

Um so, okay, I think I think there's a lot of the steel man there and I and I hope you hear in this that I really do see in that respect what people are saying. So, uh there are ways in which your business is different and you ought to test everything. Now, let me make the argument for why I think nonetheless that it is extremely unhelpful advice, okay? So, test everything. Let's start on a baseline, okay? Baseline idea, one of the things that people most react against with the idea of giving a clear, strong opinion on something.

Like, for example, I gave an opinion uh I tweeted yesterday at the time of recording this that most view conversions on Meta ads are not actually incremental, right? I said it a little bit differently than that, but I basically said, "Look, here's really clear evidence that that uh view conversions in your Meta ads dashboard are incremental and therefore you probably ought to exclude them from your dashboard." That's advice that I believe in strongly and I'll say this, I believe is true for almost every brand.

Like Like, I don't think you should test that. I think you should just do it and I think you should believe it, okay? Now, some people brought up some interesting points that maybe smaller brands need to think about having view conversions in there for a couple reasons and I think, you know, there's some compelling more nuanced things, but even if it helps in those situations, I think it probably helps on the margins.

And I And I think at the same time most people should do it. Well, one of one of the responses I got to that tweet was, "This is another absolutist take from you." And that was the word absolutist or something like that, right? And people hate this idea. They hate the idea of an absolutist take on anything in D2C. This notion of something being basically true for everybody is very frustrating, maybe for you listening to or watching this video, okay?

Um now, let's start by picking apart this idea of something being absolutist being wrong, okay? And because the counterposition this person said is you should test it for your brand and see if it works, okay? Don't take the absolutist take, you should test it. The first thing I want to say is that on a purely logical level, test everything is 100% as absolutist as saying exclude view conversions from your dashboard. It is an absolutist statement.

It is self-defeating logic to say don't give absolute statement. Like here's the really famous example of this, right? Only the Sith deal in absolutes from one of the Star Wars prequels. I don't remember which one, right? Only the Sith deal in absolutes. Many people sort of famously jumped on that and said that is an absolute statement spoken by a Jedi about the Sith, right? Like it is it is a silly statement because it is obviously absolute saying only the Sith do this.

Test everything is 100% as absolute of a statement as saying view conversions work or view conversions are are mostly non-incremental. You also get rid of them from your dashboard. Test everything is a way of behaving. And now, so on a pure logic level, I just want to point that out that there is no escaping for most people absolutist type thinking at least in some respect, okay? But lest you think I'm playing logic games here or semantic games or whatever in a way that is sort of getting away from the point, I actually don't think that's true.

I think that there is substance to that disagreement and here's what the substance is. I think the substance is test everything is a suggestion about a way of consistently behaving in your business and that is the thing that I think is wrong. You have employees, you want to help them get better, perform the best for you, invest in them and their careers, and create all kinds of great outcomes for themselves and for your company.

And that means you need to coach them. And my friends at More Staffing who are a staffing agency who has recruited, trained, onboarded, and coached like hundreds of employees across a lot of e-commerce businesses with deep training in their coaching methodology, they are putting on a webinar called empowering business owners with coaching skills, five coaching techniques and free tools to unlock high-caliber talent. I know the way these folks think about helping their team members get better at their jobs.

They are really good at it and they have real formal training and thinking about great coaching method and technique. So if you're trying to be a better leader in your business who is making your team better, go check out the webinar they're putting on. It's going to be on June 27th at 10:00 a.m. all about how to coach up your team. The link to register on Zoom is in the show notes of this show. You know I love my friends at More Staffing.

They're awesome. They were at my house just a couple weeks ago hanging out. I have learned a ton from them. You will learn a ton from them, too. Go check out the webinar and get better at leading your team. I do not think you should go through your business attempting to test everything. Let me give you the counter position to that, right? Because that is what people are often saying. Constantly hold everything up for a test, right?

I had somebody reach out to me, "What about trying new audiences for Meta ads?" And people apply this to, you know, media buying skills. Like, "Okay, you can see you can see if cost caps or bid caps will work for you. Test it for your business cuz your business isn't like other businesses." And just a million things like that, right? That that there's there's a million a million ways to do it. You could see if like, you know, whether or not PMAX is right for you.

And and I don't know. You could go down the line for all kinds of tactics and strategies like that, right? I saw another one with which was related to Amazon DSP ads. I don't even really know what those are, but it was this, you know, same thing. Sort of people going like, "Oh, well, you you know, one person making a strong statement." My friend Bill O'Sandra saying they do not work. They're a waste of money. They are they they are stealing money.

And then at least one or two people chiming in saying, "Well, I don't know. If you do it right for this brand over here, you can do it." Okay. Maybe they're right. Maybe they're wrong. Maybe Bill's doing it right. Maybe Bill's doing it wrong. The wrong the the right way to evaluate that statement, okay, is to say, "Let's evaluate whether or not it's true." Bill is right or wrong about whether or not you should use DSP Amazon ads.

And whether or not he is, you have to evaluate that. And maybe the execution was done so poorly that that Bill just did it wrong and it actually does work for your business if you know how to do it right. But there is a right or a wrong answer. And of course, it may be somewhat different for some businesses, but you can develop an actual perspective and point of view on the broad usefulness usefulness of that strategy.

And therefore, either add it to your list of things to pursue or cross it off your list and move on. And so this is why I think test everything is so unhelpful. Because what you actually need to do, instead of test everything, the counterpoint is develop clear, strong opinions that you can put at the foundation of your business, stick your feet into like it's wet concrete, and then let the concrete form around it so that your feet are absolutely buried there, and you now cannot be moved off of that.

At least until something really, really strong comes and breaks the concrete, okay? At your feet. Until that happens, you should be stuck in those ways. And I think that is a drastically better way forward for your e-commerce business. And the way, the concrete that you should use for that is the best point of view from the best thinkers in the business. And it is incredibly, amazingly, completely freely available to you in a number of places.

Now, I'm going to give you some suggestions as to where I think you can find that in a little bit. That's not really the point of this episode, okay? I I will tell you who I think other people were where you can go and do that. A little of who I think is like mostly just really trustworthy, okay? But even along alongside that, or or aside from sort of who it is, right? Like I think the most helpful thing you can do is develop a way of thinking about your business, like an operating system for your business that generates the outcomes that you want, and you should not go relitigate a bunch of little things.

Like a bunch of examples that I just brought up, right? Media buying strategies. I think in the vast majority of cases, you ought to be using bid caps or cost caps. And I don't care that much which one of those you use, and maybe there's an argument for minimum ROAS. But that those are details that are not so important to me in this respect. And I'll tell you why in a second. We're going to We're going to link that back to another principle in a second.

But you ought to use those because they are an objectively better way to buy media in a profit-focused way in your business than non or than automatic bids are in your business. So using cost controls, manual bids, works better than automatic bids. Now, I want to back up that statement a couple a couple steps and so you can hear where this is coming from. The point The reason that I can say that with a lot of confidence is because I believe that the vast majority of businesses ought to be aiming at profitability as the main goal of their e-commerce business because that is the basis of their valuation.

Now, it is true right now in this moment that on the whole, according to everybody I know of talking about this, that profitability is the basis of your valuation if you're going to go take your business to the marketplace. So, the value of your business is based on its profit number, not its top-line growth number. Growth and top-line revenue can matter, but they are as multipliers, like as as adjusters, to evaluation of your business as based on your profit.

Okay, now that was not always true, but it seems to be true today. And so far as I can tell, that statement is either right or wrong. If that is true that profit is the goal of the business, then there are some implications of that statement that could go down from there. One of them, for example, is you should operate with a lean opex. D2C e-commerce businesses can run at a very lean opex relative to many other businesses.

It is one of the fundamental advantages of the business model. I believe that statement should not be tested. I believe that statement is true. In fact, I believe that same with the valuation statement that I made. I believe that statement is true. The valuation based on profitability is true. Lean opex as a as a way of generating value in the business is true. I think that means also that you ought to be thinking about how to create margin expansion relative to your ad spend in your business.

That might be with organic customer acquisition. That might be with LTV. Depends on the the state of your business and and it and that statement that creating operating leverage via margin expansion leverage leverage in your business via margin expansion by making CAC a smaller and smaller percentage of your P&L even as you grow via some form of organic revenue coming into your business. I believe that statement is true and it ought to be evaluated as true and you should build strategies that do that.

And the same is true with your COGS. I think many people right now, I've said this before, that the most under-optimized place in D2C e-commerce is supply chain. And that many people are leaving cash flow and actual bottom line dollars on the table in their business because they are not pursuing optimization of their supply chain. And you know, I I had a sponsored interview like last week at the time of releasing this show with my friends Lara Guevara and Greg Carey who have done this in e-commerce businesses including ones that one that Greg owns, other ones that Lara has worked in and they are just I mean Lara said to me when she gets on calls, I don't know if she said this on the episode or not, when she gets on calls with people who are talking to her about supply chain stuff, she notices her and her director of supply chain in in that part of her business, they notice how often it's the case that by people just from the questions potential clients are asking that they have no idea what's going on in their supply chain and they have no idea how to optimize it.

And if you can do that, you can create more margin expansion which generates more profit. Again, I do not believe that statement ought to be tested. I think it is true that there is a way to you should be pursuing margin optimization via supply chain optimization in your business because it will create bottom line profit and that is the goal and I don't think that should be tested either. And so you start to develop these principles, right?

That ladder on top of each other or that layer on top of each other as a way of thinking about and operating in your business. And they are well-worn principles from smart people. So the media buying thing that I brought up before, the reason I care about bid caps and cost caps is not because I care at all about some technical right way to do meta ads or like, you know, there's no aesthetic beauty to a meta ads account run with bid caps or cost caps.

I don't care about that. It's not about that at all. It's this. I think you should create margin expansion in your business, uh to generate profit. And I think Meta ads with bid caps and cost caps and minimum ROAS and depending on a number of things in your business that uh that Again, so that's the that's the steel man version of this. There are reasons you would use one tool over another based on various things, okay?

In your business. But whatever one you use, it's because of this goal of of profit maximization. And that that no matter which one you use, in the vast majority of cases, they are better tools for you to use than auto bidding is. You're going to generate more profit uh and you're going to expand margin against your CAC by using manual bids. And that's the point, right? You should not, I believe, test that. And now you can go down into this uh a little bit deeper across the board for a lot of the other things that you are doing.

Ought you to have creative testing campaigns in your business? This has been a topic I've been talking about recently in a few different places. Uh again, I'm not going to relitigate that whole argument here, but the whole reason that I care about that that issue is because I want to generate as much profit as possible, and I believe there is a better or worse pathway to doing that. And the better pathway is to launch with manual bids uh in in uh and to not actually have separate creative testing campaigns at all because the cost is too high, the scaling is too poor, and you end up costing yourself tons of money on your P&L.

And I have countless examples of that. It's what I think most people do. I think most accounts I've looked at do it that way. And so, this idea of test everything, the reason I think it is so dangerous is because what happens is if you don't know what a bunch of things that are going on in your business, you end up relitigating all of these different things all the time. And it turns out that actually, instead of testing everything, what you should do, I think, is accept the best principles from the smartest sources, and instead of testing those uh again and again and trying different ways and seeing what way {quote} {unquote} works for your business and your ad account and all those things.

What you instead should do is divert your attention towards things that make a larger difference in the business. The Divert your attention towards things that make a larger difference in the business. And in fact, Taylor Holiday did just did an episode about the creative testing conversation that I'm going to link in the show notes that I think is really, really helpful in this respect. I actually think he got some things wrong in that episode about the creative testing conversation overall, but I think the overall point he's making, which I'll summarize like this, the bigger way to make an impact on your business is actually to do really great stuff with your product and brand, not to incessantly iterate on creative tests, okay?

And so that's that's the big point that he's making. If underneath that point is this idea that that there are some things that you ought not test. And instead, you ought to go put your attention on giant needle mover type things that really separate the great brands from the rest of the pack. And if you can do that, you can actually generate a ton more profitability in your business, and that is ultimately the goal.

And so again, you know, if I think about Common Thread Collective here as the as the extreme other example across spectrum from test everything. You know, it's funny, if you talk to Taylor about this, and I plan to talk to him about this in an episode in the future, the next episode that he and I do together, hopefully soon. I'm curious how he'll respond to some of this because I can tell you that Taylor is the kind of person who is thinking at any given time about like, oh there's a he's not so married to objective ideas as as you would think in a lot of areas of life.

But when you go look at what Common Thread Collective does as an agency, and part of the reason I refer business to them and and I recommend them and their programs so happily right now, is that they have now operationalized like everything they are doing. I was talking to Taylor the other day actually about the idea of him thinking about e-commerce the same way that somebody like EOS thinks about leadership, right? If you know the entrepreneurial operating system, the whole idea is don't test how to operate your business.

Like don't test the operational side of it. There are well-worn pathways that people have carved out before you, and you can actually experience the fruit of their labor by just taking the knowledge that they all figured out. Somebody at some point figured out really good executive meeting structures and goal-setting structures that work for the vast majority of businesses and help you scale your business up. And then they packaged it up and they put it into a thing called the Entrepreneurial Operating System, and you can implement it in your business, and you don't have to go test the best way.

You don't have to go re- you know, reinvent the wheel on the best way to to operate as a business on the whole. You just implement what they did, and you don't test it. Now, it will take some different shapes based on your business because, again, there are elements of your busi- in there ways in which your business really is different than other businesses, right? And so, it will take some specific shape, but the broad principle actually applies.

And that is what I'm looking for in D2C. There's actually another reason why I think that test everything is unhelpful, and it's that it becomes untestable. It's sort of ironic, actually, but when you have a test everything mentality, it's really hard to be held accountable to any results because everything is a test. And now, you're actually not accountable to any particular outcomes well, because it's different for every account.

You just got to keep trying stuff, etc. That actually makes it really hard to evaluate work. So, under the guise of testing everything, you don't learn from any tests. In that respect, it's not like science, you know? There's no There's no like outcome that gets created and sort of increased amount of knowledge. Science is maybe a good comp here. In In the In throughout the universe, there is in in the world, there is this um mountain of scientific knowledge that has been compiled and even like centralized in certain repositories, right?

Where uh where you can go and access scientific knowledge, and it gets disseminated through all these things. And so, you know, we know the world is round and the the Earth revolves around the Sun, and we know about the water cycle and what you know, whatever. Like all of these different things that you probably learned about in elementary school or whatever. And it's because people did tests, figured out some answers.

They were right or they were wrong. Though, either the Sun went around the Earth or the Earth went around the Sun. And when they did those things, they then were able to collect that knowledge and while occasionally there's somebody who who refuses some of that knowledge and thinks maybe the earth is flat or whatever it is, right? Like on the whole, basically, that knowledge has uh has been passed down in a way that can be tested that can be believed, tested, and retested and you can approach it that way.

If you have a test everything all the time mentality, you really can't do that. And what I'm looking for all the time in D2C businesses and and what I think is actually true of the most effective D2C operators is that they act like people who have received the the uh the all of the scientific knowledge and they're just building on top of it. They have clear perspective and point of view. Again, I did actually did um another episode about this a while ago, which uh talking about this idea that the thing I look for most is people with clear, centralized point of view that they can speak to all the time.

Cuz those people can behave in D2C as if there are certain things that are true, the kinds of things I was mentioning before about OPEX and um expanding margin via uh making CAC a smaller percentage of your P&L and and thinking about optimizing your supply chain and some of those things and really trying to build everything they do in a business around those elements of it. And and maybe there's elements where they haven't quite figured it out.

Maybe creative is a place where you go like, "Gosh, I just don't know if I have like a real true creative operating system for my business yet." And I'll tell you like that's an area where I think it's still harder. So, I've put forth things like the long-form explainer trying to build something like that that can be tested and can be proven to work or not work. And ugly ads, you know, and and talking about those kinds of concepts because uh may- maybe they work or maybe they don't work um more often than not at least and it can be a place to start thinking.

And then, if you do that, you can then evaluate other thinkers in the space, other thought leaders in the space, by their ability to articulate repeatable strategies that they that can actually be tested and believed and held to some kind of more rigorous standard. And that's the thing you should look for. If your conversion tracking is still being done for your Meta Ads account via the native Shopify Meta Ads integration, it is time to quit right now and switch things over to my friends at Billy.

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The way that I know this is that I have tested Billy and use it on all of my brands. It is my go-to over all of the other options in the space. There's a few reasons for that. One of them is when I have tested it against other third-party tools like this, it has outperformed them all. Like we've just run campaigns side-by-side and the ROAS is better. Secondly, we I've seen the event manager numbers in Meta Ads. You see the event match score and the quality score goes very, very high.

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It is really worth doing it. If you really are still using the native integration between Shopify and Meta Ads, you should just stop right now. Don't test it. Go install it and start getting better tracking for your Meta Ads today. When you see people who are suggesting what to do in an e-commerce business and it can be backed up in some way with a somewhat more rigorous standard, those are the people you should flock to.

And so that's my answer for who to go to. This is part of why I recommend Taylor's content all the time. They're they're just aware of a data set that is larger than than the majority of them and and look, they don't even serve every client. So I guess there's something in it financially for them and that maybe skews them. But, Taylor Taylor's a great great example of this. Um I like Mike Ryan a lot on Twitter on the Google Ads side, constantly citing really good uh detailed data around um his positions.

And there's probably more of them like that. But, it's really less about the individuals you ought to go after, and more about uh more about the uh the way of thinking that is underneath the surface of a lot of uh these thinkers. Are they presenting a point of view that looks informed and is something you can actually even agree with or disagree with on the whole, and can be held accountable to? If so, try it, and don't relitigate it over and over and over and over again.

Don't go looking over and over and over again for these basic principles. Like, you should just you should just run manual bids in your account. And if they aren't working, you should do the work that's required to get better at it. Most of these things are not easy, right? So, the execution is difficult. You should go and implement my creative testing strategy. I really think you should. I think you should go join Admission from C D C.

I'll put a link in the show notes. I've got a small on it, just so you know, and get everything I can about how to drive your business financially towards profit outcomes. That's the whole the whole system is built around that. You want to go do it. And just receive the information, learn from people who have gotten a lot of reps at this, spent a lot of money, seen a lot of money made, and have distilled that into data-driven principles across a large data set that you can then replicate.

And do everything you can to avoid testing too many things. Instead, don't test everything, test some things. Test needle-moving things. Test some things that might make a big difference in your business. Test a new product, right? Test expanding into a new product line. Test uh a wildly different kind of creative than you've tested before. Test a new ad channel if it's time, and see if that can help you. Like, those are the thing you know, again, not too early.

Here's Here's something not to test. Focus for longer than you think on Meta Ads. It works, right? Test organic content. Whatever it is, test it, test it seriously. Give it a time constraint on the test, a budget constraint on the test, find some way of evaluating it, and then move on from it. Uh and or or invest more deeply into it. If you can start creating that mentality in your business, you're going to create a lot of outcomes because all of those will pile up, and some of those tests will work, and you'll actually take bigger swings that create bigger outcomes in your business, uh and make a bigger difference to the total uh profitability and ultimately value that you're trying to pursue.

Don't test everything. Test big things. And for the rest of it, receive the knowledge that people before you have gained, accept it, and get good at it. All right, thanks so much for watching listening. That was a soapbox episode for me. If you want more soapboxes for me, you should subscribe to wherever you are watching or listening to this episode of the show. I try to release one of these every week, a mix of solo episodes like this one if you're new to it, and then also interviews with people who I believe have given us material that you don't have to test, but they're just really really good, as mixed in as well with some live coaching calls.

I just released my most recent opening the books episode with uh Sarah Resnick from Zola talking about how to launch a product. If you are launching new products and want to think about email, SMS, ads, um how do you approach buzz, all of those things, uh influencers in that in that product launch. Go check that episode out. I will link in the show notes. Uh there's a lot there, and uh again we as usual on the opening the books episodes, um we show the ad account, and you can see exactly what is happening uh there.

So, uh as always, thanks so much for my to my sponsors, uh who I really love, More Staffing. Uh virtual assistants can be helpful, virtual professionals can change your business. Go to morenow.co/af to go check out More Staffing. Uh I have actually uh gotten zero negative feedback about More Staffing. Maybe one semi-medium piece of feedback of all the people I've sent to More Staffing ever. Uh but zero outright negative feedback from sending uh folks to More Staffing, and I've been working with them for about a year now.

So, go check out More Staffing if you're trying to staff your business. Billy, uh billy.ai is uh uh amazing and they are 100% server-side tracking that will give you enhanced conversion tracking on your meta ads for much cheaper than many of the other options out there. Really great software. It's what I use with all my clients. Go check it out. As always, you can reach out to me by email me at podcast@ajfgrowth.com.

Go to ajfgrowth.com to work with me or see everything else I'm doing. Uh I'm seriously starting to think more about newsletter material. I sent one out uh a little while ago. So, if you want to sign up for my email list, you'll get my newsletters as it comes out. We'll see how often it comes out, but uh starting to finally do that. And of course, reach out to me on Twitter at AndrewJFerris. All right, that's everything.

Thanks so much for watching, for listening. I'll see you next time.