Ezra Firestone: Nothing Has Changed In Ecom In 20 Years transcript

Ezra, everything is changing so fast. It is ridiculous. What has not changed in e-commerce in your time in it? What what what are the things No, what what is actually this What is actually not changing at all about growing e-commerce brands? >> Nothing has changed. Let me just start there. Let me let me be contrarian to this Everything is changing. It's new traffic sources. It's AI. Freak out, man. It's like, no, man.

It's not. It hasn't changed, okay? In a business, you kind of have three or four things, okay? You have a product, which is the thing you are selling. In e-commerce, it's a physical thing, which is really nice. Um and then you have the promise, which is the marketing, which is like, hey, you know, getting people to know that you exist, getting them to say yes to your offer, uh following up with them and treating them in a really good way and a positive way so that they are happy with you after they've bought your stuff.

And then having a product, by the way, we mentioned product first, that delivers upon the promise that you made. So, there's there's there's there's the product, there's the promise, and then there's basically support and operations. That's it. That's the whole business. It's always been that way. And you know, what's interesting is that the best product doesn't win in the marketplace. The best promise wins in the marketplace.

The job of the product is to live up to the promise that you made. And obviously continue to make the product better. Like, you want to have the best product if you possibly can. Um and it takes a while. Sometimes you launch and it's not the best and you got to work on it and reinvest into it and you know, reformulate it if you're In my case, I do a lot of lotions and potions and stuff. Um so, I do a lot of modifying formulas, but you keep making it better.

And it's like has the uh skill set it takes to develop a good product changed a little bit in the 20 some odd years I've been doing e-commerce? Yeah. It's it's it a little bit, but not really. You have to be interested in making something good first and foremost. And then you have to go do what it takes to make something good, which means in my case understanding where all the ingredients come from, trying a bunch of third-party manufacturers, figuring out, you know, where I can get the most sustainable, best working uh componentry and testing all of that.

Like whatever it takes for you. A lot of people just white label some product. They don't really invest into it. They just take something someone else made. Fine. Good way to start. Take something that works. But then you got to make it better. And so that process has not changed that much. In fact, it's gotten easier. It's easier to find suppliers. It's easier to find componentry. Global commerce markets have solidified.

It's easier, you know, when I got into e-commerce, you there was no China. I mean, there was China, but you weren't getting stuff from them if you were a small retailer. You were not. You were getting stuff in America from American manufacturers who made bar stools and things like that. It was like not this this kind of global supply chain was a lot harder to access 20 years ago. So there's product. Okay. Marketing is about the same level of difficulty in any business.

It's about the same level of difficulty it's ever been, which is you got to go out there and make a really good promise. And you got to do that on as many communication channels as you possibly can. You got to figure out which communication channels are relevant to your audience. And actually, there's more communication channels now. Back in the day it was like Google. Hey, before this episode goes any farther, I want to tell you to subscribe wherever you're watching or listening and leave a comment about it.

I love comments on these shows because I actually read every one of them. I interact with every one of them. Your thoughts, questions, ideas, disagreements, leave a comment, subscribe where you're watching or listening. Let's keep going. And then Amazon was starting to come up, you know, and that was kind of it, you know, and then Facebook rolled out about 2012 and okay. But now you got Axon. You know, we should talk about Axon.

If people don't know about it, it's the traffic source It's the first visibility source driving net new customer acquisition at scale, at efficiency better than meta in a lot of cases since meta, since 2012, man. It's the first one. You know, there's it already has more market share in the advertising space than TikTok, which is wild. It's like So, okay. So, then um So, make So, the marketing is about the same, if not a little easier cuz there's more channels.

And by the way, you don't need a designer. You don't need a developer. You don't need none of that. Now, you got landing page builders and now you got It's easier to get user-generated content, much cheaper than you could. Like, if anything, marketing's easier. If you But I mean, look, there's a lot of bells and whistles. You got to do a lot of stuff, but there's more competition. Okay, so you could say that makes it harder, but it's like it's easier to implement a good marketing plan and there's a lot more resources than there were.

So, then it's um it's support and operations. And operations in 2026, when you're talking about running a business, you know, it's kind of hard because fuel cost is all crazy, inflation's all crazy, uh the middle class, who most of us sell to, is very strained, right? For They're getting sh- It's like I I am insulated from the economic pressures. Uh but the middle class isn't. And that's all of our customers. Um and so, I think operationally things are more difficult because margin profiles are tighter than they have been and uh uh spending, you know, it just It's a tough time.

But that's like that ebbs and flows. There's been other tough times like that, you know? Um the 2008 crash, I was in the game when that was happening. That was a tough time. Uh the um you know, early pandemic before we got the post, you know, the the sort of like mid-pandemic and post-pandemic economic boom, there was a There was some tightening down. Like, there's been There's been periods of this before. But I actually think and I think I've been now talking for 5 straight minutes.

I apologize cuz that's rude. I I >> you on here to do, it, It's all good. >> I think nothing's really changed. It's just a little different in certain ways, but you're doing the same thing. You're You're making something cool. You're telling people about it. And then you are supporting them in a really good way and operating your company in a really good way. And fundamentally, we've been doing kind of the same thing since I started. >> It's funny because you started by saying nothing's changed, contrary to take.

But then you actually described a lot of things that have changed. Like for example, you you wanted to pause on Amazon, which has You actually you even when you said it almost put an exclamation mark on it a exclamation mark on it in in the sense that you said >> I disagree that it's a change. There's always been places you could go to buy visibility. Here's just a new one. You do the same thing. You go and you buy visibility.

You make a message that you put in front of an audience. It's like this is the same game, man. It just has a different you know, color on it. >> Yeah. Well, I and I I mean, I think I actually what I'm getting at by sort of pushing back a little is is in fact is in is in fact the same thing that you're getting at, which is that that the operational elements of it, including sort of where you distribute the ad dollars, is always changing to some degree, right?

There's like all there's all of these little things that are kind of popping up and going away. You know, for I for a minute there, it was like, oh, maybe you can use Taboola and Outbrain to sell some stuff. And you know, whatever. There's like all of these little things that go up and go down. But uh but the the thing that you that you are saying is that at the core, the job is the same cuz there are these genetic components to what a e-com what an e-commerce business is that have not changed actually at all and will not change in in in e-commerce land. >> that you got to get good at. >> Yeah. >> really matter what traffic source is or whatever.

It's like can you tell a really good story? Do you understand who you're selling to well enough to capture their attention and have them feel seen and and offer them a solution to a problem they're facing that is your product in a way that resonates with them. And it's like if you can do that, it doesn't matter. And then of course, do you have the margins, the unit economics on whatever you're selling to go out and afford advertising, to afford a team?

Like there's there's sort of the one thing that has changed okay so I will actually counter. I think unit economics are harder today than they were when I started. >> Interesting. Why? >> it's it's um there's the the expense profile of running a brand has is is like cogs are going up in most markets. And when you look at it like when you look at it like an e-commerce brand, you kind of only have like four or five tranches on a P&L that if you screw up any one of those tranches, the business is going to go under.

So for example, if you spend more than 30% of your total revenue on marketing, you're probably going to go out of business. So what that means is let's say you did 10 million in revenue. If you spend 3 million, 30% of that top line number on marketing, that's about where most brands sit, 20 to 30%. You start getting to three and a half, four million, that's eating into all your profit because think about this, you're going to spend between 10 and 20% on uh G&A which is team, salary, contractors, etc.

So let's say you spent 30% on marketing, you spent 20% on G&A. Cost of goods is going to average about 25%. Some people can get it for 20, some people are paying 30 or 40. But let's imagine you're paying 25%. So so of the 10 million you spent 3 million on uh on marketing, you spent 2 million on team, that's five. You spend another two and a half on product, now you only have two and a half left to uh pay for insurance, shipping, other random overhead.

And if you do that well, maybe you have a 20% margin. Maybe there's only half a million dollars in other expenses outside of general administrative costs which is your team, contractors, etc., marketing, and cost of goods. But there's always that fourth bucket of just randomness uh which a lot of brands lose a lot in shipping and stuff like that which is not actually in the shipping of cost of goods getting your product to you, but there's actually shipping to the customer and whether or not you're losing or charging them for it, whatever.

The point is that you've got to try not to screw those up and I think that the COGS what I see across my portfolio is that the percentage of my P&L that's going to the COGS line item is increasing pretty rapidly year over year in the last couple years. And I think that's Tariffs, you know, just wars, fuel cost I mean just you know >> Tariffs and fuel costs are the sort of obvious ones there more recently, right? Have you tried to claw back your tariff costs by the way?

Like this is like definitely a thing that Have you tried to claw back your your old tariff costs? >> Oh, we're working on it. Yeah, we haven't we haven't gotten it, but we're working on it. >> Yeah, yeah. It's definitely people are definitely getting it. I just saw another just at the time of recording this I just saw a new ruling that said the new 10% tariff has also been ruled unconstitutional. So uh So there may be some more of them. >> know.

I love that cuz yeah, I think there's they're kind of stupid, but inflation another issue. There's just a lot of issues, man. All the money they printed during COVID, you know? >> Yeah. You heard Ezra say it, you heard me say it. You need to build a great supply chain for everything around how to not only make your supply chain have redundancies like having backup manufacturers, but actually to make it so that your COGS go down, your MOQ's go down, your your terms get better, your lead times get faster, all the things that make it so that the cash moves through your business more efficiently and so that you get more margin, etc.

So you can develop new products. All that stuff >> [music] >> can be done. The problem is it's a whole bunch of work and it's a lot to take on and you are already busy and that is where my friends [music] at Move Supply Chain come in. Move Supply Chain is a supply chain agency built in the Philippines, based in the Philippines, which is a really, really big advantage for you for two reasons. One of them is that uh has very quick access to both China, Vietnam, anywhere else in East Asia.

It's like an hour and a half flight to those couple places. Visas are super easy. So, they can get to factories, to vendors on your behalf representing your brand way easier, way faster, way more often than you can do it yourself. On top of that, because they're based in the Philippines, your dollars just go really far for attracting great talent in the Philippines, which means you can get people with deep supply chain experience working on your business at a really reasonable price. >> [music] >> And these people do have deep supply chain experience.

The point of Move Supply Chain being in the Philippines is not just that they are cheap. And that's not it at all or that they're affordable. The point is that they are really, really good and they're affordable because they have lots of supply chain experience specifically in e-commerce brands. They've just spent a lot of time building e-commerce supply chains across their current clients, across the client uh the the company they were born out of, which was a US-based e-commerce business.

They're just really awesome and can help you, particularly if you're trying to lower your COGS by finding new vendors, find new vendors who can make your product at a good quality and better price, those kinds of things. They're a great brand. I've heard all kinds of a great company with. Go check them out. movesupplychain.com, movesupplychain.com. They're really awesome. They can help you a ton. I just wouldn't build an e-commerce business without them at this point.

Uh I just trust them a ton. movesupplychain.com. So, I'm actually interested in uh in a in talking to you more about what you're doing on the product side. And there's a reason for that, which is that, you know, I've I've seen plenty of your content over time. Uh and everybody wants to talk to you about marketing stuff. And that's great. You're a great great uh I think you have offered me a lot with that. I appreciate it.

But I don't know if I've ever heard uh you break down when you say you're reformulating a lot and stuff. I I think one of the things that is a hallmark of your content >> Here's an example of reformulating a physical product, okay? So, this is a um SafeSleeve. It's one of my companies and it's a cell phone radiation protection case, right? And it's uh detachable, magnetic, protects you from the radiation from your phone, which is a whole separate conversation of like in the 40s they the cigarette companies knew cigarettes were bad, but you didn't find out till the 80s, you know?

Similar thing with these cell phones, but look, so you know, example, this is our slim case. So, it's a detachable, slim, and we we're we we're predominantly a wallet case. Um I won't go to my drawer to get another one cuz I don't want to waste the time, but basically the wallet case is a little thicker and it's the one that everybody buys because it has the most protection, but it's kind of hard to fit in your pocket, and it's kind of a pain in the ass.

Uh but it is our flagship product, and so we've redeveloped this to be to do the same function and be thinner, and that is an example of taking a hero product and making a newer and fancier version that solves one of its issues, and then now I mean it's a big problem. We have like now we have to in terms of we've got a roll it out and phase out the other ones. There's all kinds of dis There's all kinds of stuff you got to do, but like that is an example of what I'm talking about where you're never done making your product better, and you're never done launching because it if if you win a customer, and the customer likes you, then you can convince them to buy other things from you that they might buy within that range of what your portfolio could be.

And Shawn at Ridge does this really well, right? They were wallets, now they're luggage, now they're backpacks. It's like they found a consumer, and then now they're figuring out how to serve that consumer in verticals that that consumer's interested in. And that's the same thing I do in my brands is I I I have a hero product. I have an idea for a brand or a product, or I buy a brand or a product that already has product market fit.

Usually I'm a builder, but in the last, you know, let's call it 5 to 7 years I've been more of a buyer. I bought Overtone in 2020 because I have capital now. I've worked long enough and had enough exits to where I have some capital, and I can get product market fit. I can just buy product market fit instead of creating it. Although I launched three brands last year, so I'm into launching. But um you you either you have a hero skew, and that's the one that you're going out to the market with, and you're running ads for, and all your sales funnels are built around.

Everything is designed to sell that one thing on the front end. You go deep, you don't go wide. But then to that consumer that bought that hero SKU, you launch other stuff that you think they'd be interested in. You find out what they're interested in. You look at the marketplace. And then some of those other ones that you launch can become hero SKUs that you do front end marketing for as well. >> When you are actually going through the process, let's take the let's take the uh let's take your your case example.

What What Tell me about how you come to the realization that you need to make a thinner case, and then what do you do in practical terms? And and granting you have a lot of your hands in all the places, so it's maybe somebody on your team. I I understand that >> yeah, so in this particular I am the chief strategy officer at this company, and I'm an owner, an investor. And so my operating partners who are who are a co-founder, CEO, COO duo, um the first thing is that we we look at what people we can look at the feedback from our community, which is "Man, this thing's kind of thick and bulky.

I love what it does, but it kind of doesn't fit in my pocket." I'm also a user. I was a user of the product long before I bought into the company. And uh I had the same piece of feedback. So we kind of knew this was like with you know, you pay attention to your consumers, you read the reviews from your competitors, you read your reviews, you experience the product yourself and think about ways you might improve it. If you're doing a reformulation or a modification to a current hero SKU, which I recommend, you could also just make something totally new that isn't related to it.

But in this case, you sell enough of them and you use it enough to understand how you might improve it. And then you go out and in this case, we have a third-party manufacturer who um we work with to design and develop uh our cases and our materials and our colors. And so you go to them, you you talk to them through the designs, they help you draw it up, you get it manufactured, you test it out, you check them test the material, whatever.

And eventually you get to a point where you know, you send it to your I have an R&D team, people who try it out who are friends of mine or family of mine or employees of mine across different companies. So you do through process of developing something, stress testing it with your community. Now, with lotions and potions, it's kind of interesting because if I do a new, like, let's say I want to do ocean waste post-consumer resin plastic tub versus virgin resin new plastic tub, well, how my product sits in that tub and how it it that new tub, how the product reacts to that particular kind of plastic and then how it reacts in cold or heat, these are all things I need to stress-test or before I put it into the market.

So, there's that level, too, of uh R&D on how the product performs if it's something that has to, you know, uh perform in different temperatures. >> Yeah. >> So, the Yeah, basically, you do a whole bunch of work to figure it out, make it good, and then you bring it out to the market, and sometimes you still miss. Sometimes you uh get something wrong that your customers point out to you, and then you got to quick make a new one or recall something or whatever.

It's just like that's the game, but you do your best. >> With companies you're starting or invested in as a CSO, whatever, like, uh do you build this into a into a purposeful repeated process, and if so, at what stage of the business? >> of my Every one of my companies, there's somebody who is responsible for product development, who owns it, who then works cross-functionally with the rest of the teams to make it happen, our internal designers, our external third parties, our supply chain and logistics people who are trying to get our our packaging, but I have And and you know, at uh at Safe Sleep, for example, the COO basically manages product development. >> Yeah. >> Amongst what else he does.

So, it can be an actual team member, but somebody is responsible for shipping and launching new stuff, and then is leveraging the team to support that. >> How early in the company company's revenue cycle are you assigning somebody to that? >> Day one. >> Day one. Yeah, okay, got it. >> Because So, for example, I'm launching a product in the pet space. >> Yeah. >> And we already have three products in development cuz it doesn't cost a lot to develop a product.

You go to a lab, you say, "Here's what I want. Here's an example of my competitor, these are the ingredients I'm thinking of using, and it's 100 bucks or 200 bucks or whatever. Like, doesn't cost a lot to do the initial development. Unless sometimes it's like, "Hey, I need to buy a mold. In order to make the components you want, you need a specific mold to fill it a certain way, that's 30 grand." It's like, there's that level, but for where for people just starting out, you can do it you can do it pretty cheap if you're not doing custom stuff. >> You just So, you're just building uh building a a muscle into the business from day one of we are we are going to launch new products and we are going to make our own products better. >> We are a brand that makes things and makes things better, and that's at the core of what we do, and we figure out what people want by asking them and by being interested ourselves, and then we try to make good stuff, and then we stress test it to the best of our ability before bringing it out to the market.

And it's just something that we do. It's one of the functions of the business. >> Yeah. That comes back to exactly what you said earlier about what's what's what hasn't changed, which is just the notion that there's a there's a product and there's a promise. The promise is what wins in the marketplace, but the product is what I think you said retains customers. Is that how you framed it? >> Yeah, well, the the product has to live up to the promise that you make so that people enjoy it and then want to get more of it.

And then I'm also a very big fan of selling consumables, things that you're going to use. You get a new cell phone every year or two or three, you know. Um I'm a big fan of things that have a a continued life cycle, because then I can keep a customer for a while. Or if I'm going to be in a a a category that doesn't, then a large product catalog. >> Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, that makes sense. Um okay, anything Well, anything else that you're doing on the supply chain side I'm curious I'm curious about.

Like, for example, do you have any built in alongside your product development muscle? Do you have anything built in to be like you mentioned cogs going up over time? Do you have anything built in where your company's in their operational processes all the time are trying to um you know, go after uh testing with different vendors and see if you can reduce costs and maintain product quality. Yeah. >> One Yeah, we have we have supply chain redundancy where we always have ideally two suppliers making things.

One at 80%, one at 20% so that you can pivot, you can bid them against each other. We're not just trying to drive everybody out of business and drive down the costs, but like you know, we had we had a business where where a manufacturer burnt down. >> Right. Exactly. Yeah. >> And we were like, you know, it was a really tough time in that business. And so we like we like to as you scale, let's say you're over 10 million in revenue, duplicative supply chain makes a lot of sense.

Um and the other thing about supply chain is you got to go to trade shows. Um that is where that business happens. You meet vendors, you meet third-party contractors, you learn what's new in the industry. So we attend a lot of trade shows. Sustainable Cosmetics Summit, you know, we just whatever in in our different verticals, we know what we look into and get into the industry and understand what trade shows exist for that vertical so that we can be staying up to speed with who who else is out there. >> You should be testing landing pages.

You should be testing changes to your website. You should be testing offers on your brand's website. You should be testing the price of your products. You should be testing the shipping threshold of your products. You should be testing how much you're charging for shipping. You should be testing upsell items at checkout and even post purchase. You should have in your business a regular cadence of testing the things that matter, the way customers interact with your stores, so that you can learn how you provide value to customers and how that drives value back to you [music] and to your business.

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One of my favorite supply chain people actually sponsored this episode and just somebody I've worked with a lot. She just says like what she does uh and they're like a supply chain agency that will help people with this is um what she does is is She just says every brand ought to have you ought to be at least all at least all the way through a a an an approved sample with at least one backup manufacturer, probably a couple.

So, you don't have to even place the order with them, right? But just like having somebody where there's an approved sample on key products with a with a second manufacturer. And and you know, your idea of like going in 80/20 or something like that makes a lot of sense, too, as part of the way to do that, especially as you scale and some of those things. Just like having that redundancy built in because yeah, you can save yourself a a lot of headaches by just having something to do if something goes wrong in one of them or if somebody screws you or something like that, you know, there's a it happens, right?

So, it is the product, it is the brand. Let's talk about the promise a little bit, Ezra. You talked about storytelling. Um let's stay away from channel for a second and let's stay away from tactics and hacks. Let's in the spirit of the question that you that we started with, what has not changed about making promises about your products? Uh again, probably everything has not changed about this in a lot of respects, but to come back to let's let's go back to first principles on this.

Um what what has not changed about the promise that you make? >> What hasn't changed is that your promises tend to be relevant to specific consumer avatars who have specific experiences and then there's layers of that. So, I'll give you an example. I have a brand where I sell um semi-permanent color conditioner. So, it's not permanent hair dye, but it's also not just wash out hair dye. It's kind of in between. It lasts months.

Um and it's a pretty big business. It's in the tens of millions and I'm across a bunch of different retailers. You know, I'm at CVS and Sally's and Sprouts and Target and whatever. And at the highest level, you'd say the avatars like women you know, 25 to 50. Let's call it 55. Is our high-level avatar. >> where this is going. This is great. Yeah. >> But within that group you have different experiences of the same um part of life. >> 25 and 50 for that group is so different.

So, you can call it one avatar, but 25 and 50 I mean, there's just no way they're having the same experience. Like Sorry, keep going, but yeah, I I I I'm seeing where you're going here. >> Exactly. And the way that lays out is, for example, many women in their 40s and 50s dye their hair their natural color when it begins to silver. >> Yeah. They don't want it to go silver, so they dye it. And then what happens is uh so they have dyed hair, but then their hair grows out from the roots, and it shows gray.

And so one of our problems that we solve with this product is gray coverage. We give you We have root touch-up, you know? So that's like one set of promises that we could make to a particular person who's having a particular experience. Kind of interesting cuz my other brand, another brand I have is all about >> Yeah. >> pro-age and and and growing your hair out silver and embracing that journey. It's actually for an older demographic.

It's actually for people in their like 60s and 70s. Uh so anyways, I serve as I serve both, but then you also have like, as an example, women with brown hair who do this thing called balayage, which is where you put blonde highlights in it. And my product also enables you to do that. So that's like another experience that you're having with your hair as a woman who fits in this age demo, but the promise that I am making to you is about a specific experience that you want to have or are having, and a solution I have to your particular problem.

And the better I understand who you are, what you're interested in, and how my product could solve a problem that you face, and this is why a lot of brands tend to come from uh creators, founders, entrepreneurs who were the avatar that they're selling to cuz they had the experience. They made the product for themselves, and they now understand the consumer and the problem the consumer wants solved because they are the consumer themselves.

But I would say I mostly am not the consumer in many of my brands, but I do what it takes to understand them by talking to them, by listening to what they report, by paying attention to my competitors, by paying attention to my reviews, by talking to my team, so that when I make promises, they are relevant to the avatar and the problems they're experiencing. >> I mean it's a it's a perfect example of a way to answer this question because what has actually changed uh is that is that Andromeda, for Meta in my uh in in my read of of all of these things, both in terms of the accounts that we're running and and sort of what Meta has said about this and all this, uh has has now made it much all the time has made it easier to match content to this the in exactly what you said, to the specific persona in the specific ways.

It's sort of content the message can get now really really specific and Meta is better than ever at matching that message, that promise to that exact customer. And so if if it was already important to have that muscle built, uh the the the promise to the right person at the right time and it is certainly was, right? That's not that's not actually new. You've been you've needed to speak to somebody specific forever. Your ability to execute that with efficiency and your distribution of your ads is now as good or better than it has ever been.

And uh we've seen this repeatedly. Like we're we're just writing really specific ads for clients right now because we see we see this all the time. The example I've given in a few places is that uh I I'm coaching Little League Baseball for the first time. My my children are uh four and six and the interesting thing is that uh I said to my wife and her social feeds is getting a whole bunch of content about like Little Little League Baseball coaching and like drills for kids.

And the interesting thing is the the content she's getting is drills not for a nine or 10-year-old, but for a four, five, and six-year-old, which is a very different set of drills. Like those kids are in a really different place with baseball. It looks like oh it's all the same thing, right? It's drills for for coaching Little League, but it's actually really different. My questions to somebody coaching a five-year-old are like how to get them to catch or how to get them to throw, not how to get them to catch better, not how to get them to throw better.

And so the specificity of the content now is incredible. And when you uh and when you it it some ways in ways that are eerie, right? Uh but but when you what what what when you are able to do the thing that you were describing here and speak to the very specific experience of the customer, you can be really really effective if you can do that in a way that is and this is probably also not changed, compelling, you know, attention-grabbing, uh communicates the problems with clarity.

People always underwrite clarity. Like all all of all of those kinds of things are really important, you know. >> Absolutely. >> Um do uh do you see anything else in the in the elements of the promise that hasn't changed? I wonder if you think about the uh the way you think about an offer in any unchanging ways or anything like that. Sort of like you just talked about the idea of speaking specifically with messages to the right person at the right time and in specific ways.

What about when you get past the initial promise of what the product is going to do for somebody to how you then offer it to somebody? >> I mean, I think in this particular moment with how squeezed people are, you need to do you need to have stronger incentives. Whether that's free gifts with purchase, whether that's stronger upfront discounts, whether that's um you know, bundling. Basically, you're seeing more and more incentive-heavy physical product offers because of how strapped people feel.

Unless you're selling to the part of the society that is not affected by the current economic conditions, in which case then then then I don't think there's much has changed. >> Yeah. Do you do anything sort of uh when you're working with a company again across your you you guys just have so many places where you could do these kinds of things operationally. Do you have anything that is sort of like the hey, this is how this is how our companies develop offers, landers, those kinds of things like that.

Sort of like SOP for you. >> We we have many different styles and frameworks for ads and landing pages, as well as the kinds of offers that we make. We do a lot of bundle offers, we do a lot of free trial offers, we do a lot of gifts with purchase, we do a lot of um yeah, we have we have we have different kinds of offers, but it really just depends on the market, the business, the it's like not not all it what works in health doesn't necessarily work in beauty, doesn't necessarily work in electronics.

Like I'm across many different verticals and it and price point dictates a lot. >> Yep. Yeah, it's certainly like a >> when you're selling something cheaper. >> Yeah, you're not going to do a trial offer for uh you know uh apparel or something, right? >> I sell soap, you know, it's like it's it's uh you don't have to do much to sell a $9 bar of soap. >> Uh let me ask you about one more area of the business that is kind of related to the promise that just just curious if you have anything that you guys do about this.

What about uh organic social and storytelling in your own channels, uh whether that's organic social, really any own channel, could be email, could be blogs, like I don't know I don't know where you're putting that attention right now. Anything that you're doing there? >> Yeah. >> Yeah, I have a whole course called the Smart Social course. And it's my system for creating content that's relevant to the life experience of your customers outside of your products.

So, it's like how do you engage with them, build a relationship, build connectedness, build intimacy uh so that when they do see an offer from you, they're compelled to say yes to it because they've been seeing you in email and on social and feel good about you and have been enjoying your company and content. So, I think every brand is kind of a media company. I've been playing that game >> For a long time. >> one. I I do content uh heavily and I have brand ambassadors, influencers, paid creators, uh as well as my own team making stuff.

And so, yeah, I believe in that um heavily. And I think it is something you definitely need to do uh and works really well. And I think straight organically you need to put amplification behind it. You just don't get much visibility uh organically uh on social. So, we put a little bit of paid amplification behind our content system. Um but I think at the basic level, it's like you need to make at least one communication a week, whether that's in email and across social that is not a sales communication that is somehow designed to educate, entertain, or intrigue or interest your audience.

And if you just do that much, you got it covered. >> Okay, let's let's run it back here. Let me summarize and see if I can hit all the things that have not changed, okay? And then you tell me if I got any of them wrong or or if I'm I'm going to try I know I know. I'm going to try though. I'm going to try. You you just tell me if I got any of them wrong, okay? I was listening. I I I was trying to get the most out of this conversation possible.

So, okay, the promise and the product have not changed in the sense that you need to make a promise. That's how you win in the marketplace and then your product needs to fulfill that promise. Needs to follow through on that promise. That's partly just good for the world and good, right? It's ethical and it will feel good. You'll sleep great at night, but also it's the way people will come back uh and the way that people will come back and buy your product.

The way you do that is by continuing to make your product better and better and better over time cuz at the end of the day you're selling a product to a customer. And the way that you handle the promise is by speaking compellingly and specifically to the needs of your customer. You do those couple things across all of your channels that you can and you do them while efforting operational processes like keeping operations at 20% or less.

I would actually say 15% or less and I think it's very possible to have OPEX like G&A run sub 10% in today's environment. Uh you do that while running those kinds of uh margin profiles across the business on your P&L. You uh you you do all that while also communicating in a relational ways in your organic channels um and uh and let's see, I don't think I missed anything else. Uh oh, efforting building redundancies in your supply chain to make sure that you are you are not taking on undue risk and and those sorts of things.

Efforting your COGS and then you've got a good e-commerce business. And you do that repeatedly over time and over business as capital and opportunity allows and you'll build really good businesses. What did I miss? Anything? >> No, I think you covered what we talked about. I mean, obviously there's a lot of nuance and intricacy in all of it. >> easy. That's right. We did it, right? >> There's a lot of there's a lot of nuance, right?

You We talked about one strategy in supply chain, but there's a lot of nuance in how to run a good supply chain. But the key is you're trying. You're trying to do well at product and development and launch. You're trying to do well at marketing and you're trying to do well at operations and support. And it's like if you have attention on all those areas and you're doing your best and you're paying attention to your money, you'll do all right. >> Yeah.

Yeah, I think that's I think that's right. It's not because you got a pat on the back for trying, it's because pretty much if you effort those things and have some attentiveness to what's working and what's not, you'll find problems and you'll solve them and and you'll do that over a long period of time and you win. Uh all right, man. Thank you so much. Uh you are the best. You've been at it for a long time. I know I've appreciated your content for a very very long time.

I referred to you on marketing operators the other day as the the first the first e-commerce the first e-commerce uh content influencer type person. Uh I >> I was I was one of the first for sure. >> the first one that I found. So uh so when I was got in the game 12 years ago or whatever, it was like it was Ezra and nobody else telling you how to do it. So uh so thanks for coming on. Thanks for taking a few minutes. I know you got big big things to figure out and solve and so I appreciate you taking some time. >> Thank you for having me on.

I appreciate I like talking to e-commerce business owners and anyone interested in branding and entrepreneurship. It's really a pleasure. So um thanks, man. >> Yep, appreciate it. >> Peace out. >> [music] >> The genesis of that episode was a coaching client of mine who said, "Bring Ezra Firestone on and ask him what hasn't changed for all of his years." That's why I asked him that question to start. And it's so funny.

I mean, like the guy's running a whole bunch of businesses, but you listen to that conversation and you just What's he talking about? It's all the stuff we talk about all the year all the time. Uh and I think it is very helpful to remember that that you don't have to go >> [music] >> and do something new and crazy and like you know, I don't know. Maybe there's a way to win on TikTok Shop or Axon like he brought up or or whatever and maybe there's you know, but but at the end of the day, probably if you effort those things over a very long period of time that are most important in the business, you will [music] you will be successful.

And and there's an opportunity there. It's just a matter of learning those things really really well, getting deeper and deeper, getting some experience, keeping knowledge around you, and doing that. So big thanks to Ezra. Go follow up with him. Uh it's so funny. If you were here looking at the show notes for this where it says the little bit about who Ezra is, the description. Ezra Firestone is the you know, I put I put that on every episode just in case anybody checks that like you know, a little bit about my guest.

Patrick could do when I have him on is the you know, COO and business partner at AJF Growth or whatever. Ezra's is like 50 sentences long or it could be and it just it's just like Ezra's got his hands in a whole bunch of e-commerce he has for a long time. He sees a ton [music] of businesses and so he just knows a lot. So it's great to have Ezra on the show talking about all that. Do go follow up with him and Smart Marketer.

[music] Go check out what he's doing over there at Smart Marketer where he's putting out all kinds of content all the time about how to do it better. Links for that are in the show notes like I said. If you want to follow up with me, you can email me podcast@ajfgrowth.com. That's the easiest way to get a hold of me on a lot of things or you can leave a comment on this episode if you have thoughts, questions, anything like that.

There's no place that I am actually faster and better at replying to comments on my YouTube channel. So leave a comment there and I will engage with it for sure. And you can also tell me about your business if you want to work with my business. You just got to go fill up the intake form at ajfgrowth.com. >> [music] >> Tell me a little bit about what is going on in your business, what problems you're trying to solve, what kind of business you have.

I'll get back to you and learn a little about that to see if we can be a fit to work together in some way. Big thanks to Move Supply Chain who I mentioned in a couple places in this episode for sponsoring this episode of the show. Also a big thanks to IntelliGems, legendary company. Just two great sponsors for this episode. Love them. They've both been working with me for a long time. Links for them are in the show notes as well.

Thanks so much for watching, for listening, subscribe, whatever you're doing that. I will see you next time.