#97 Scaling DTC Growth Through Influencers with Lucas Beland

Summary

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Always Be Testing Podcast — Episode #97

Scaling DTC Growth Through Influencers with Lucas Beland
Host: Tye DeGrange
Guest: Lucas Beland (Founder and CEO, Goloot)
Date: August 19, 2025

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Episode Overview

In this engaging episode, Tye DeGrange sits down with Lucas Beland, the 24-year-old founder and CEO of Goloot, an ad-tech company disrupting content-driven performance marketing and affiliate advertising. The conversation traverses Lucas's entrepreneurial journey from gaming to content networks, experimental failures and learnings, evolving metrics in affiliate and content marketing, and the importance of human relationships in a high-tech industry. Lucas shares insights on how Goloot partners with brands and publishers, the impact of generational change, and the state of gamified advertising and influencer-driven growth for DTC brands.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Founding Story & Goloot’s Pivot to Content (00:38–05:30)

• Ad-tech Roots in Gaming:
  Lucas shares his origins as a passionate, entrepreneurial teenager in gaming, which organically exposed him to the world of advertising.

  "I was the weird 12 year old kid that talked about ads and everyone was like, don't you have friends and passions? ... It paid off, thank God." — Lucas Beland (01:08)

• Pivotal Shift:
  Goloot’s original vision was to transform advertising in mobile games, but quickly pivoted to serve content websites when the gaming ecosystem’s partnerships proved too difficult. Advisors steered Lucas towards the opportunity to optimize content monetization for digital publishers as legacy programmatic revenue waned.

  "Is there another type of publisher that could benefit from a new advertising product or better performance? And content sort of like came instinctively as the next channel." — Lucas Beland (03:23)

• Scalable Content Monetization:
  Goloot’s platform now enables brands to launch campaigns across hundreds of newsletters, blogs, and sites with a streamlined, transactional approach, replacing arduous outreach and legacy models.

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2. Generational Change & Evolving Standards in Advertising (05:30–10:02)

• Industry Outsider Perspective:
  As a Gen Z founder, Lucas describes entering the affiliate and content space with bold challenges to the status quo, driven by a belief that existing systems were unfair or inefficient.

  "I kind of originally came in the industry with some negativity... advertising is broken, you guys are doing this wrong... we were maybe coming in a little harsh and my mentors were telling me reframe that narrative..." — Lucas Beland (06:08)

• Rethinking Consumer Engagement:
  Lucas highlights how consumer sophistication has outpaced clickbaity advertising tactics, necessitating quality, transparency, and authentic recommendations.

  "Consumers have become very numb to advertising... They’re more refined than they ever were. So I think coming in as a Gen Z has given me some perspective on how we need to introduce advertising." — Lucas Beland (07:37)

• Publisher Empowerment:
  Goloot focuses on creating more transparent, fair transactions for both micro and macro publishers, and on evolving ad product formats to create rewarding user experiences.

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3. Experimentation and Learning Through Failure (10:03–14:49)

• Testing Culture and Iteration:
  Lucas underscores Goloot’s emphasis on constant experimentation, A/B testing, and being comfortable with frequent failure.

  "We've failed a lot. Like, we failed probably mostly. And every other year and every day, I feel like it's the thing that we do the most." — Lucas Beland (10:24)

• Shoppable Content Misfire:
  Early efforts to drive immediate transactions within content fizzled when user behavior didn’t support it.

  "Who the hell is going to get their credit card out when they're passively reading an article and actually make a purchase?" — Lucas Beland (12:22)

• Pivot to Micro-Actions:
  Instead of instant purchases, Goloot re-oriented toward enabling users to save offers, email or text themselves codes, and act later—aligning with real-world consumption habits and longer sales cycles.

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4. Platform, Gamification, and Ad Formats (14:50–29:00)

• Gamification Roots:
  Influenced by gaming, Goloot infuses reward mechanics and microsteps into ad units, making interactions engaging rather than disruptive.

  "There's a lot of that in the gaming world... It's far more about taking you onto that addictive almost like dopamine fuel journey to a reward and hence our name Go Lu to some extent." — Lucas Beland (14:16)

• The Name ‘Goloot’:
  Originally imagined for gaming rewards, the quirky name stuck as the company moved into content, symbolizing the “reward” aspect of the consumer journey.

  "We managed to bring that back to the content space... We just found it was quirky and funny and memorable and we still have this value of bringing e-commerce offers into content." — Lucas Beland (15:20)

• Brand and Publisher Experience:
  For brands, Goloot offers a straightforward, scalable, performance-driven platform free from the friction of legacy systems. For publishers, multiple adaptable ad unit formats enable native, non-intrusive integration.

  "The ad units will look and feel differently based on the publisher because we create those experiences and these micro interactions for each and every one of them, but they all behave the same way and you get about four or five options aside." — Lucas Beland (28:42)

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5. Matching Offers, Metrics, and Use Case Fit (16:27–22:30)

• Ideal Customer Profile Learnings:
  Goloot learned that offering quick-win, low-consideration discounts (e.g., Crocs) works, while big-ticket or B2B products require different approaches.

  "We realized really quickly that like ubiquitous products made far more sense for us... The same thing happened to us in B2B... had to take a step back and be like, we're not... going to sell a massive real estate deal through a newsletter." — Lucas Beland (16:56, 18:40)

• Metrics Evolution:
  Publishers are moving beyond CPM obsession towards prioritizing engaged, converting audiences—the “currency” is now engagement and authentic content influence, not only impressions.

  "It’s far more important to have a high-quality, high-engaged community and audience than it is to have a lot of eyeballs... You don’t build a sustainable business on the back of lots of impressions." — Lucas Beland (20:25)

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6. International Trends, Gamification, and UX (22:30–26:35)

• Learning from Global Leaders:
  Lucas discusses how Western tech is “behind” Asia in deploying gamification and engagement—citing viral examples like Labubu toys’ viral, gamified shopping experiences.

  "I think the Western world is so behind on what's possible within gamification... sometimes the longest path to a transaction is the most efficient." — Lucas Beland (23:25, 24:23)

• Ad Placement Doesn’t Always Equal Performance:
  Shifting ads to the bottom of articles (rather than the top) increases conversion because engaged readers are more influenced by content context.

  "...we used to have this bias that if you put your ad at the top of the article, it's going to perform better. Why? That's not how games think about leading you on in an experience." — Lucas Beland (26:09)

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7. Building Relationships & Scaling Quality Supply (31:06–33:07)

• Relationships Over Automation:
  Quality publisher supply doesn’t scale via open signup forms. Personal, human relationship-building—despite being more expensive—insures brand safety, content alignment, and superior publisher partnerships.

  "We never found a better way to scale quality than just to get on a plane, sit down with the publisher, build that relationship, shake hands." — Lucas Beland (32:17)

• People as a Differentiator:
  Despite AI and tech advances, authentic relationships remain Goloot’s “secret ingredient.”

  "It's the secret ingredient. Yeah, it really is." — Lucas Beland (33:05)

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8. Leadership, Talent, and Company Culture (33:38–38:03)

• Young Leadership & Authenticity:
  Lucas reflects on building a team as a young founder, emphasizing authenticity, leading by example, and hiring people who are ambitious, values-driven, and bored at their previous jobs.

  "Culture doesn't come from. It comes through." — Lucas Beland (34:10)

• Human Touch in Tech:
  Even as Goloot grows, Lucas insists on retaining empathy, focus on retention, and a “product starts at hello” mindset.

  "Our product starts at hello. It's not just an advertising platform... Our product is the events we put together. Our product is how we interact with our clients and remembering what they care about." — Lucas Beland (38:03)

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9. Personal Touches, Recommendations, and Inspirations (40:20–49:46)

• Dinner Party Dream Guests:
  Lucas would invite JFK (for communication mastery), tech legends like Bezos or Jobs (for scale), and a musical icon like Michael Jackson or Elton John (for creative inspiration)—even if the dinner would be “hella awkward.”

  "Maybe a last one... I would love to get an artist like a musician or a hyper creative... Madonna, whatever. Again, I wouldn't ask everything because I don't want to get everything from them, but there's certain topics..." — Lucas Beland (42:34)

• Little-Known Facts:
  Lucas is a history enthusiast and musician—trained in piano and guitar.

• Product & Book Recommendations:

  • Praises Shopify’s Shopee app for enormous UX learnings.

    "That onboarding experience I forwarded to my UI UX designer at like 11pm and I was like, this is unbelievable." — Lucas Beland (44:40)

  • Recommends the Steve Jobs biography, highlighting its lessons on leadership, business, creativity, and personal growth.

    "There are so many lessons... It's about balancing out family and balancing out health and being aware..." — Lucas Beland (46:27)

• Leadership Epiphany:
  Inspired by Jobs, Lucas now pushes his team harder, expecting more because he believes in their potential.

  "My team can do more. These people on my team are so smart. They can deliver more and better and don't settle." — Lucas Beland (48:22)

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On transparency in advertising:

  "Let's create more fair and transparent transactions between publishers and brands." — Lucas Beland (07:04)

• On the myth of 'short sales cycles':

  "Sometimes the longest path to the sale or the purchase ends up being the most efficient..." — Lucas Beland (13:48)

• On publisher value:

  "You don’t build a sustainable business on the back of lots of impressions. You build a sustainable business with having readers that are influenced by your content..." — Lucas Beland (20:25)

• On culture:

  "Culture doesn’t come from. It comes through." — Lucas Beland (34:10)

• On client relationships:

  "Our product starts at hello. It's not just an advertising platform..." — Lucas Beland (38:03)

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Timestamps for Important Segments

• Goloot origin and pivot: 00:38–05:30
• Generational outsider perspective: 05:31–10:02
• Experimentation and learning from failure: 10:03–14:49
• Gamification and ad formats: 14:50–29:00
• Ideal customer profile & metrics evolution: 16:27–22:30
• Western vs Asian gamification: 22:30–26:35
• Scaling quality supply with relationships: 31:06–33:07
• Company culture and leadership: 33:38–38:03
• Personal inspiration, tech & book recommendations: 40:20–49:46

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Closing & Where to Connect

• To connect with Lucas or learn more about Goloot, follow them on LinkedIn or message Lucas directly.

  "We are very present on LinkedIn... Connect with me. DM me, tell me your story. I'm always happy to chat..." — Lucas Beland (50:44)

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Summary prepared for those seeking actionable insights on scaling DTC growth through content, affiliate, and influencer marketing, and for leaders aspiring to build resilient, human-centered tech organizations.

Transcript

[Lucas Belan]

Foreign.

[Ty Grange]

Welcome to another episode of the Always Be Testing podcast. I'm your host Ty Grange and today I'm talking to Lucas Belan. Lucas, how are you man?

[Lucas Belan]

I'm doing well. What about you?

[Ty Grange]

I'm doing great. We're here in New York. We're in this great recording studio.

[Lucas Belan]

Absolutely.

[Ty Grange]

ASC little partner sack. What more do you want?

[Lucas Belan]

Nothing. And thank you for having me. It's a pleasure. This is a really, really cool space.

[Ty Grange]

Thank you. Yeah, I think we just learned that did Nos record in this studio? I think that's.

[Lucas Belan]

And the album apparently too.

[Ty Grange]

The album.

[Lucas Belan]

The album, not just. Yeah, exactly, the album.

[Ty Grange]

Lucas Belan is the founder and CEO of Goloot. Tell us a little bit about Gout.

[Lucas Belan]

Yeah, absolutely. Goloot is a an advertising platform that helps brands, advertisers and agencies leverage content websites as a means to attract and acquire customers at scale. And the vision and the idea was why is content such an expensive and hard to scale channel with flat fees and iOS and as we like to say internally, like a hundred emails for a hundred different publishers. And is there a way we could create a transactional platform that facilitates everything for every party so you can come onto our platform, create a campaign. You pay one price, one budget and we activate you across now hundreds of of newsletters, blogs and top tier content. There's technology, there's AI, there's services and so much behind it and a great team.

[Ty Grange]

But it's amazing.

[Lucas Belan]

So we do.

[Ty Grange]

It's such a huge topic for affiliate marketing. Having been in affiliate for so long and seen so many changes like content is what there's been an explosion of the demand for it. People are claiming for they're trying to pay and understand the value. So the fact that you're facilitating this, making it easier, giving brands better access to it is super exciting.

[Lucas Belan]

So thank you.

[Ty Grange]

That's amazing. What inspired you? What was it? You were 19 years old to start this thing at such a young age, that's insane.

[Lucas Belan]

No one starts life thinking they will build a content ad network. That's definitely not like what I wanted to do when I was 5 years old and it wasn't on my destiny, but I originally started in gaming and it ties back to kind of what we do today and how we do it. But 12, 13 year old Lucas is like a passionate little entrepreneur and games was probably the only thing I understood well as a teenager. So I started playing around and trying to build my own games and with that comes advertising very instinctively. So most mobile games are monetized through ads.

[Unidentified Guest]

Yeah.

[Lucas Belan]

So I discovered ad products really young was the, I was the weird 12 year old kid that talked about ads and everyone was like, don't you have like friends and passions and things you like to do? It paid off. Thank God. I started doing that young. And yeah, fast forward to starting this company. The original ambition was actually to reimagine how ads are run and executed in gaming and in mobile games. But we hit so many hurdles along the way. We realized that like gaming platforms are too rich and too large for us to partner up with. There probably was just not enough demand for change or the problem wasn't significant enough for them to change. And we realized, is there another type of publisher that could benefit from a new advertising product or better performance? And content sort of like came instinctively as the next channel. We were like, can we help fix content? It's like a dying media, but not so much because people still love content and gravitate to it. So about a year into our journey, we really pivoted to only serve content websites and never look back. And I owe this pivot to so many advisors that told me you're not going to make money in gaming, you should turn your back and try to find something else. And content just felt like the next natural step.

[Ty Grange]

That's amazing.

[Lucas Belan]

Yeah, that's amazing.

[Ty Grange]

What are you hearing from those content sites? Was there something that kind of allowed you to land on content in particular? Yeah, I'd love to learn more about that.

[Lucas Belan]

Well, I mean they've, they've been in business for way longer than I have even existed. Like we're talking some of them century old platforms that used to be print and now transition off to digital. And with this digital came programmatic revenue as how they survived and how they made money. And it was almost like a park and play. 20 years of Google and meta paying us high CPMs, so high cost per thousand impressions effectively, and that's it, status quo. But in 2020, 2021 when I started my career in Goloot, things were changing. So cookies were disappearing from the Internet, Meta was, I mean Mark Zuckerberg spent more time in Congress in the last four years than like anyone on the planet. So their reputation was falling apart. And I think our content website partners, the blogs that we support today, were just nervous and they were thinking, well, if we lose the source of revenue, what's next for us? Is there another ad network that can support us? We love telling stories, we don't love selling stories. And that's where we came in as a partner. And so we built products that were far more performant than their display ad units. We helped them leverage their newsletters in a way that was far more efficient with ad units that they could integrate natively. We built a CPC pricing model that was fairer for the advertiser and better for them than traditional affiliate links or cpm. And eventually the problem just got bigger with Google, bigger with Meta, and Goloop became just more and more evident as an alternative that they should all rely on. And we've grown from five publishers in Canada to now 300 different partners relying on us to monetize 70,000 something articles today.

[Ty Grange]

Wow, that's amazing.

[Unidentified Guest]

Yeah.

[Ty Grange]

When we think about the affiliate industry there's, there's obviously it's not a massive pool of folks. You came into it somewhat recently relative to the industry. It's not been forever like newspapers, like Times, but you know, somewhat, somewhat older. Do you think there's like an outsider perspective that you brought to the industry that like how do you think that shaped the creation of goloud and how you approach it?

[Lucas Belan]

It's, it's.

[Unidentified Guest]

Yeah.

[Lucas Belan]

So I was really, really fortunate to start this company in Canada because I don't know why Canada has so much affiliate superpower. And even if we're not the biggest market and we don't have the biggest audience, there's like amazing veterans and legends obviously Michael Yak that you and I share as a friend, so on and so on that have shaped my career. So I was like the up and coming 19 year old ambitious kid that wanted to build a platform for content sites and I surrounded myself with mentors that brought me into their world and were very receptive to my thoughts in my opinion. I kind of originally came in the industry with some negativity in the sense that I was like advertising is broken, you guys are doing this wrong. And like affiliate is not fair to publishers and flat fee is a catastrophe. And it was a very harsh opinion that we had, which I mean we were not wrong. But we were maybe coming in a little harsh and my mentors were telling me reframe that narrative and try to find a way to explain that story. Which I think makes a lot of sense.

[Unidentified Guest]

Yeah.

[Lucas Belan]

And find a way to make it constructive for everyone. So yeah, we over time just like reframed into hey, let's create more fair and transparent transactions between publishers and brands. Let's give publishers more representation, micro blogs, micro newsletters. So Golo became something far more supportive and welcomed in the industry than my original swagger as like a 19 year old destructive entrepreneur that wanted to break stuff and move fast.

[Unidentified Guest]

Yeah.

[Lucas Belan]

But still today I think times are changing and consumers have become very numb to advertising.

[Unidentified Guest]

Yes.

[Lucas Belan]

And consumers also have become very educated that advertising can be clickbaity. And I look back to what was successful 15 years ago from stories that I heard from guys like you and everyone else and it's like you can't believe almost that consumers were falling for this stuff. It's like you won't believe that XYZ celebrity buys this product and. But that doesn't work anymore and consumers are more refined than they ever were. So I think coming in as a Gen Z has given me some perspective on.

[Unidentified Guest]

Yeah.

[Lucas Belan]

How we need to introduce advertising. What do we expect for the next generation?

[Ty Grange]

Well, and I think you're on such a good track and I think our industry, any industry needs like the new blood, new ideas, innovation, outside thinking to say, hey, does this even make sense? Are we thinking about this the right way? I mean affiliate has had definitely its checkered past, definitely its challenges. And so I think it's healthy to have that injection of like, let's rethink this. Right. If you want to call it first principles, great. If you want to be one of the cool kids or it sounds like buzzwordy. But the point is I think sometimes we need that kick in the butt.

[Lucas Belan]

Yes, we do. I mean I got, I got my own. Right. So like I came in too destructive I think and I got kicked in the butt to say like there's a better way to support this industry. But our message I think was necessary.

[Unidentified Guest]

Yeah.

[Lucas Belan]

And there was a need for content to evolve its advertising offering, its pricing structure with flat fee, not necessarily making the most sense to back out to a CPA or certain return on investment metrics. There needs to be more transparency in this industry. So there was a lot that we are doing right and keep doing right. Yeah, that was a necessity. There's also a way we interact with users and have built ad products for articles that are maybe a bit more like rewarding and gamified. Maybe my gaming background helped there. We could talk about that.

[Ty Grange]

Yeah, definitely.

[Lucas Belan]

Anyway, so all this to say the clickbaity advertising format is I think slowly on the phase out.

[Unidentified Guest]

Yes.

[Lucas Belan]

This industry is now much more elevated, much more sophisticated and we've contributed to that. I want to think it's great and.

[Ty Grange]

I love that you are contributing that there's other good voices in this industry that are leading that charge and we're, we're, I think collectively we're kind of saying that ads are means to an end. They do a service, they're part of our ecosystem, but the consumer has voted. They're obviously not as receptive to them as they used to be. And so to have trusted stories, to have health quality recommendations, all of that's where it's moving. So it's exciting that you're kind of part of that movement, it seems.

[Lucas Belan]

I appreciate that.

[Unidentified Guest]

Yeah.

[Ty Grange]

No doubt. One of the big themes of the POD is testing, learning, experimentations for you to come up with creative, better, better ways of interacting, better ways of monetizing. Like, what are some of those experiment experiments you found? What are some of those A B tests that maybe informed how you got to where you are now in the Goloot journey?

[Lucas Belan]

It's a great question. I mean, we've. We've failed a lot. Like, we failed probably mostly. And every other year and every day, I feel like it's the thing that we do the most. And I try to nurture. Even now, as we've scaled and the team has grown and the pressure is just mounting to preserve that culture of iteration. A B testing, pushing the next limits and going from there. But one of the things that was super interesting early on coming into performance marketing through content was we. And when I started four years ago, five years ago, one of the big topics was shoppable content. People were talking about creating a transaction moment in an article so you could read and you see a product in whatever. Let's mention Vogue. You see a product and you'll buy right there and there. You'll pull your credit card out and make a purchase. And like, I want to say that Bolt made an acquisition for like $200 million four years ago in that. Yeah, in that sort of stack and field. And we thought this was it. Like, we had to bring users closer to the transaction moment. And we built all these ad products that would support that. We were thinking about Shopify integration so that we could have like an e commerce journey, only to realize. And it's so funny because it's like the most, the simple, most obvious thing ever, which is like, who the hell is going to get their credit card out when they're passively reading an article and actually make a purchase? And if you think about it, most of our readers are commuting from work to home. Like, the last thing you want to do in a subway in a big city is get your credit card out. Like that seems like a nightmare.

[Unidentified Guest]

Yeah.

[Lucas Belan]

Or they're. Or they're passively doing something or they're not just actively thinking about shopping. So we have to take a step back and put ourselves in the shoes of the end user. And that's where we completely pivoted our model to think, what do they need to do if we present them with a really attractive offer from a brand? Is it shop or is it save it for later? Is it send it to their email address so they can consume it at a later time? Is it text themselves a discount code or text themselves a unique code that they can use at a later time? Is it added to an Apple wallet so whenever they shake their phone they can get back to it? We completely reframed our ux.

[Unidentified Guest]

Yeah.

[Lucas Belan]

Because we were so influenced by what was modern and tacky in 2021. Completely failed to understand what kind of consumers are actually doing. And arguably even what I was doing took a step back, reimagined our model and it defined Goload's interactions with now about 50 million shoppers every month.

[Ty Grange]

Wow.

[Lucas Belan]

We have users that are coming onto these offers and ads and the first thing that they do is send it to their inbox. Like we just press of a button, forward a discount code and they will shop within six weeks of that initial interaction. They don't even have to buy. Now most of our audiences are converting onto a very long sales cycle.

[Ty Grange]

I love it. Yeah, it, it reminds me, there was an Andreessen Horowitz, venture capitalist, I want to say her last name was Chen, who talked about how micropayments are a big thing in Asia. And I've always thought to myself, like, when you're in that gaming moment, when you're in that reading moment, like the use case you referenced on the subway, it's like, what a perfect opportunity to like allow people those micro actions. And yes, it seems like there's maybe some convergence of that gaming background with the gamification with the micro action. Yeah, it's awesome.

[Lucas Belan]

Yeah. And it's, it's a fine line between what, where can you take the user and how close can you get the user to a desired action. And sometimes the longest path to the sale or the purchase ends up being the most efficient and trying to push on to these users. Click on an affiliate link and go shop now or buy this product immediately or you're going to lose. It is not how they want to shop. And so we had to completely reframe our products and our models.

[Unidentified Guest]

Yeah.

[Lucas Belan]

And it changed definitely the trajectory of goloot. Yeah, there's a lot of that in the gaming world. There's A lot of that in mobile apps in general where they understand that users are not going to consume specific products or not going to making app purchases immediately. And it's far more about taking you on to that addictive almost like dopamine fuel journey.

[Unidentified Guest]

Yeah.

[Lucas Belan]

To A reward and hence our name Go Lu to some extent. We can talk about that too.

[Ty Grange]

That's great.

[Lucas Belan]

As opposed to giving you everything right away and trying to force you into a paywall. It just makes no sense.

[Ty Grange]

No, it's amazing. What was that?

[Lucas Belan]

Golu. Yeah, yeah.

[Ty Grange]

Name origin story.

[Lucas Belan]

Originally we wanted to build a game and loot is so inherent to gaming. So my model was bringing e commerce offers into the gaming world and the loot would become the these crocs discounts and these footlocker discounts. And I still think it's a pretty good idea. Problem being working with mobile games is way, way more difficult than I thought it would be. Maybe one day, maybe five years from now, I'll have a whole network of games. But we managed to bring that back to the content space. And my CMO and I were talking Pierce, who's my business partner, him and I were talking about like, do we change the name? Because like Goloot doesn't mean anything in this industry. Filled with ad X, ad B, ad C, advertising A, advertising green, advertising red. So we were like, do we change the name? And we decided not to. We were like, does Google mean search engine to you? Like, absolutely not. So we just found it was quirky and funny and memorable and we still have this value of bringing e commerce offers into content. There's still an aspect of reward and earning something and taking users on into that journey. As I said, they redeem all these things or sharing our coupons with their friends from articles they read on Elle. We get so many interesting interactions.

[Ty Grange]

I love that.

[Lucas Belan]

So we just kept the Goloot name forever. And I have a tattoo of the G now, which I will not disclose where. And now I'm telling our marketing teams that you can't change it. Like the thing is, I guess it basically makes no more sense if I have the tattoo.

[Ty Grange]

It's really not.

[Lucas Belan]

You'll have to fire me and then maybe make that decision later on. That's amazing. That's amazing.

[Unidentified Guest]

You kind of.

[Ty Grange]

Wow. We'll delve into that another time. But you talked about the footlocker example. You've had some really amazing wins with brands. Microsoft is another. There's a long list, right? What are some of like, in the spirit of the pod, like what Are some of those like, whoa, that was interesting. That was surprising. That was a notable learning from some of those campaigns that you ran for those brands.

[Lucas Belan]

It's a great question. We learned really quickly what we were terrible at, given the how users were just not buying. And again, it sort of like ties back to would you even yourself do it as a consumer? Like, does it even make sense for you to buy a $17,000 Sony sound system off of like, that's such a rare purchase that you need to probably have such a strong layer of first party data and targeting to find the right user at the right time. Yeah, we realized really quickly that like ubiquitous products made far more sense for us. So something you can buy on a whim, 20% off Crocs is great for most consumers in the world. And generally if we cast a wide net through content, odds are, or newsletters or blogs even without really niche targeting, which our industry needs to stop relying on so much because it's going away. Yeah, we would find buyers. So I think we quickly adapted our ICP or ideal customer profile based on what a consumer in content is most likely to shop. And the same thing happened to us in B2B. Right. So we launched a B2B advertising business a year and a half ago or so. We were like, we're going to get a ton of buyers through content. We're going to get business blogs and all that stuff. And then we started taking on enterprise brands that wanted us to sell enterprise products. And then that was, we launched our campaigns and then just like nothing happens. And I'm like, take a step back. And it might seem evident to someone listening to this podcast, but when you're in the weeds of it, you're just like hustling and getting stuff done for us. We were like, hey, does it actually make sense for a large company like Tesla to switch CRM over a blog? Like, I don't think Elon Musk is going to switch to CRM tomorrow because he saw a newsletter. You know what I mean? So it obviously is curating for small and medium businesses. It's curating for the micro entrepreneur and changing completely. Who we sell to has changed the trajectory of our performance in B2B. It's not sage intact, it's sage cloud accounting. It's different price point, different customer. So yeah, completely reimagined our ICP based on what we are good at and who we talk to every day as a publisher has been transformative for the business. And yeah, we made mistakes because we were greedy. I think like we just took on customers because they had money. And then you burn yourself and your relationships. I'm sure you've been there. I mean. Oh yeah, we just burned ourselves there and had to take a step back and be like, we're not. I'm not going to sell a massive real estate deal through a newsletter. That's just not going to happen.

[Ty Grange]

Yeah, the focus wins piece is such a great one. As you kind of find your balance and your footing, you hone in on what works. That's so great.

[Unidentified Guest]

Yeah.

[Ty Grange]

Are there certain metrics that you're kind of working on with the content publishers where they're trying to figure out their CPMs and their inventory and their direct sales and it's such an interesting world. You have this affiliate world kind of coming into it. What are some of the metrics that are sort of like the currency for you and those publishers that you're working with?

[Lucas Belan]

Well, I think it's great to have a universal benchmark on what publishers were used to seven, eight years ago with effective CPM revenue from an article or from a page view versus what they're getting today.

[Unidentified Guest]

Yeah.

[Lucas Belan]

And I think most publishers, as sad as it is to admit, are more catching up to that benchmark as opposed to optimizing it and increasing it. Yeah, they're trying to build their way back to the 8, 9, 10, $11 CPMs they were getting as opposed to optimizing on top of it. So we are working really hard in trying to understand how many call to actions, how many ad units, how many will result in enough clicks to compete with that cpm. But I think what we're also seeing over time is publishers are changing the way they think about revenue and their P and L and their cost structure, especially within content. Like they may not be as addicted to CPM as they were, or maybe not as driven by cpm. Yeah, it's far more important to have a high quality, high engaged community and audience than it is to have a lot of eyeballs that are meaningless. And you don't build a sustainable business on the back of lots of impressions. You build a sustainable business with having readers that are influenced by your content, who make real life purchases by your content. And they got, they got taken over slowly but surely by these blogs and these micro influencers and these communities that are like, we have a thousand subscribers, but 80% of our subscribers make a purchase when we drop an article versus we are X company, we have 10 million subscribers, but nobody buys through our content. So I think publishers have started to realize they need to reimagine what quality means, what focus means for their business. And we're trying to support them in that. So as much as we can, I think it's a great step for them to compete with the larger ad platforms as well, like Meta and Google, sustainably and at scale.

[Unidentified Guest]

Yeah.

[Ty Grange]

And I think if you're giving them that power, you're empowering them through monetization, through better, a better engagement, better quality. It's, it's like music to their ears right now.

[Lucas Belan]

Yeah. I mean there's still some like legacy people sitting on the board of these companies that were at the beginning of their career were selling $1 newspapers on the corner here in Manhattan and now they're still trying to make their way back to like cpm. But I think there's a whole new generation of leaders within content that understand the influencer competition.

[Unidentified Guest]

Yeah.

[Lucas Belan]

Or the curated communities that are competing against the big vogues and the big Cosmopolitan and the big USA Today and those young new leaders or whatever, senior leaders who are just catching on, still sort of young. You're younger. Exactly. That are catching on to modern trends are definitely putting more focus on engagement. That's just what, that's the currency today. It's not impressions for sure and it.

[Ty Grange]

Kind of not to like pull our theories into it, but I think there's such an emphasis for us around authenticity, trust, engagement. I think, I think people are just wising up as the, the clickbait of the past becomes a little bit more sophisticated. As you alluded to earlier, it's important that the reader is more sophisticated, the consumer is more sophisticated. Going back to the origins and like what you've seen now, like the notion of gamification is so fascinating. It's part of the growth loops. It's part of what has made Robinhood do what it's been able to do. It's what, my goodness, even Netflix to an extent. There's. There's so much in that world I've had an enjoyment and appreciation and we've been involved in UX and conversion rate optimization in my career and, and in Rambarn Labs. How do you think about that when you think about like options for publishers and brands?

[Unidentified Guest]

Yeah.

[Lucas Belan]

I. First things first. I think that the Western world is so behind on what's possible within gamification. And no matter the borders, no matter the frontiers, we are all human beings fundamentally influenced by the same things. And you go to Asia and you look at these super apps, the wechats of this world or even take more Recent examples Lebooboo and popmart. Like I don't know if you've been following this whole craze of these little dolls that everybody's buying that look like monsters.

[Ty Grange]

Okay.

[Lucas Belan]

They are viral everywhere. But the interesting concept behind their e commerce is like really limited supply. But the whole gamification engine where you need to be on at a certain time, there's a drop, then you're shaking boxes on a website trying to see what labubu you're going to get, like what doll. And you can't really pick and choose. And that just fuels engagement traffic that organically booster SEO authority. That's just like a fascinating model that you see work really well in the western world and has been commoditized in the Asian market.

[Unidentified Guest]

Yeah.

[Lucas Belan]

So I think we're super behind in general. I think that we are catching on to fundamental psychology and UX that has worked there and is starting to work here more and more. I was fascinated as a young engineer and as someone who tried to build games and as my career today in building go loot by like how you can influence human beings to soft releases of rewards and how you can lead them on. As I said earlier, sometimes the longest path to a transaction is the most efficient. We have this tendency to believe that like remove the barriers to entry, get their credit cards right away and it's going to work out. That's not how humans think and shop. That's not how games are designed too. You don't want to give them a quick path to level 100. You want to build slowly your way, build resistance, build anticipation. So even when you think about ad units and what's going to get a user to convert, we sometimes had the fallacy of like the first click needs to kick you out. Why like? Why like? Isn't it more interesting to lead the user on to here are different SKUs that you might be interested in. You can apply your discount to share this offer with a friend if it's not made for you, which doesn't monetize for us immediately, but in the long run creates better engagement, higher conversion rates than any other ad platform, generally better return on ad spend for our clients. And it sounds counterintuitive, as I said, but it made a lot of sense for us and we made mistakes along the way. We took the shortest path, the path of least resistance, whatever. And gamification has slowly but surely designed how Goud wants to interact with a reader. We are not trying even to fight for top of fold which is like at the Beginning of an article. We used to have this bias that if you put your ad at the top of the article, it's going to perform better.

[Unidentified Guest]

Why?

[Lucas Belan]

That's again, not how games think about leading you on in an experience. So a reader that's going through an article is likely more engaged if they're at the bottom of the article. You know, they've been influenced by the content leading up to my ad. They're probably in a more shopping mindset than others. So, yeah, we're reframing completely how we position, how we interact, where we want them to click based on small micro interactions adding up to an amazing outcome.

[Ty Grange]

That's awesome.

[Lucas Belan]

And there's like, as I said, you should look into Labubu. I mean, your kids are going to talk to you about Labubu within like the hour.

[Ty Grange]

But yeah, I'm sure they will be.

[Lucas Belan]

They're expensive dolls. Poor you.

[Ty Grange]

Yeah, I'll stick to magnet tiles, but maybe. You never know. You never know.

[Unidentified Guest]

Yeah.

[Ty Grange]

At a basic level, there are like five optional. Are they like these are the ads that a partner can get access to that they integrate with on their content site? Or is it kind of like one of those things where it's much more vast than that? For those that are not as aware of the GoLoad offering and how the system works just at its basic level, is it like, here are your options, like what are those look like for the average advertiser?

[Lucas Belan]

So for the advertiser, the options are standardized. So brands provide creative assets, generally offers, although it's not a must, but you know, whatever. They create a campaign that has nothing to do with the format. It has to do with what do they want to tell? What story do they want to sell to our network? What kind of customers are you looking for? What markets can we help you reach? And then the publishers themselves, we equip them with formats that are all variations of the same thing. So there's like 3, 4, 5 formats that you can integrate in any sort of article or newsletter. So they all support the same size of assets. So one advertiser can be introduced in all of them. But if your content is larger like this or has a bigger width or longer like that, or you want an ad unit that's vertical scroll, not horizontal. We've developed ad formats over time that are just like perfectly embeddable in most content formats.

[Ty Grange]

Awesome.

[Lucas Belan]

And yeah, and like now we try to customize also the ad experience so it looks and feels like the publisher. Talk about a smarter consumer or smarter reader who's Going through an article, it seems now so obvious that some of these things are ads. Like, you're just reading about fashion and then boom, you get a colgate pop up and you're like, what the hell's going on? I think your phone's been hacked. Like, that's, that's not the experience we're going for. Yeah, like we're trying to say, like, hey, our partner L Magazine or our partner U.S. news is trying to give you this added offer because you're consuming their content. And back to gamification, Click here, go there, redeem it, send it to a friend, leading them to a purchase.

[Unidentified Guest]

Awesome.

[Lucas Belan]

So, yeah, the ad units will look and feel differently based on the publisher because we create those experiences and these micro interactions for each and every one of them, but they all behave the same way and you get about four or five options aside.

[Ty Grange]

Awesome. And for the brands, there's all across the spectrum of like, super doctor super branding.

[Unidentified Guest]

Yeah.

[Ty Grange]

How do you kind of position and kind of explain and report out to say, okay, you got your CPC options, this is your return on investment. Maybe there's some full funnel value. Like, are you finding that? It's like, how do you kind of communicate the value to agencies, brands, et cetera, who are kind of like, constantly looking for ROI, constantly looking for Dr. And you need to kind of balance things.

[Lucas Belan]

Look, we, we didn't even want to bother with awareness. Like we told ourselves, that's the publisher's business. They have that figured out. They have amazing PR packages. We are performance, and you come to us with a very specific goal. You come to us because you want to acquire a customer at a CAC or customer acquisition cost that's competitive to what you're getting on Meta, and you want something that scales. So our two value propositions to agencies and brands were you'll get amazing results and we will create a structure for you that is very scalable. You don't have to pay a flat fee and get your CFO to approve your crazy expenditure. You will be able to choose and select content sites, but there's going to be hundreds of them all at once. So you are going to have to negotiate with each and every one of them. So the performance and the scale have really been the common denominators. And I just find that most agencies and brands resonate with that. Like, they want to move away from low funnel audiences. That incrementality is debatable. Are you getting value there? Are you paying these partners too much? They really want to leverage content. But then they face the flat fee, IO hundred email chains to get one campaign off the ground. Super complex asset requirement. Yeah, we fix all of that.

[Ty Grange]

That's amazing.

[Lucas Belan]

On a beautiful, simple, easy to use platform fueled by the team of experts that are going to help you make the right decisions along the way. We got so confident in our ability to deliver performance and to embody that performance aspect that we told brands and agencies we'll give you a guarantee, like give us 10,000 in CPC and I'll guarantee you 10,000 in sales. Done deal. And I mean, because we know what we can do. Let's go, let's go, let's go, let's go. Now what do I sign exactly?

[Ty Grange]

Kind of the other flip side of that coin on the, you know, you get your brand side.

[Unidentified Guest]

Yeah.

[Ty Grange]

When you're thinking about courting the supply, Great publications, all this history, all this, all the challenges that they're dealing with, good and bad. How are you making sure that supply is rich and high quality?

[Lucas Belan]

Yes.

[Ty Grange]

Constantly. Right for goloot.

[Lucas Belan]

That's the hardest part of our business. Like supply has been way more. I mean we're one of the only businesses, I guess we're like the thing that doesn't drive revenue is the hardest to get. The brands have been the easiest to court but the publishers are, are a heavy lift. So we have a challenge in scaling quality obviously like any network. So that's been a priority of ours. Like I never opened my platform to a public page where anybody can apply. And we purposefully chose, although it meant more expenses, full time human beings building relationships, having conversations, traveling to cities to meet with publishers. We invested in that because we knew that was the only way to control quality and not have a Google workspace that we are proud to support or a whatever, a Forbes, a footlocker, whatever brand we work with. Forbes. Not a brand. But you get the point. Not end up on the wrong content.

[Unidentified Guest]

Yeah.

[Lucas Belan]

Not end up alongside or adjacent to an opinion they don't want to support.

[Unidentified Guest]

Yeah.

[Lucas Belan]

So yeah. We never found a better way to scale quality than just to get on a plane, sit down with the publisher, build that relationship, shake hands. And that's probably why the brands come to us as well. Because there's just a lot of depth and a lot of scale but consistent quality and a team of publisher superstars like Zoe that you know very well on my end who are just building these amazing relationships. I don't know if five years from now we'll have an open network. I tell you my investors want me to because they're like, that's so expensive to maintain, but it's part of the secret sauce, you know?

[Unidentified Guest]

Yeah, it's.

[Ty Grange]

It's kind of this interesting thing where you have AI and data and all these tech things coming at us. And you and I live and breathe it. We're experiencing here at this conference and here in New York, where the relationship piece is still a magical part of the ingredient. It's a big differentiator.

[Lucas Belan]

It's the secret ingredient. Yeah, it really is.

[Ty Grange]

I think you're doing a great job of emulating that and being a leader and being walking the walk, and I.

[Lucas Belan]

Think that's coming from you. Coming from you. That's crazy.

[Unidentified Guest]

Yeah.

[Ty Grange]

Speaking of that, we're both in the game of bringing on great talent like you referenced earlier, and finding amazing people and attracting that and retaining that. What are some of the things you and your team are doing to make sure that you are bringing on the best people? Quality standards are there. All of that good stuff.

[Lucas Belan]

That's another really tough part of just managing a business. And that has nothing to do with building content and networks and CPCs and performance. That's just culture. And I think the first thing that I realized being such a young founder, like, I'm 24 years old, I have employees that their kids are older than me. You know what I mean? Like, I. I hire people and put food on their table. That's a huge sense of responsibility. And their families are older than. Than me. And that's. That's a very weird and interesting relationship. I think the only way you can manage that properly is authenticity and understanding that culture doesn't come from. It comes through. Right. It's not because you say great things as a leader. It's not because you promise amazing things and you have a vision board that says we are inclusive and we are hardworking, that magically your company will trickle down and embody those values. Everything comes through. First ones ins, last one's outs means you as the CEO are the first one in and the last one out. Prioritizing client relationships means that you as a CEO are prioritizing client relationships and showing to your team that you care, that you're putting these events together, that you're shaking hands, that you're gifting people. And, I mean, this didn't come to me naturally. I've learned from the best of the best.

[Unidentified Guest]

Yeah.

[Lucas Belan]

Like, I'm not, like, I'm really in the industry when it comes to that, but, yeah, that's been my strategy for finding talent and retaining talent. We Brought on people that were genuine, good at heart, hardworking, ambitious. I like to find people that are bored at the companies they work for. That's my passion. Like, if you're bored and you feel not satisfied, you will have a great time with me because I will put you on early flights and we will be working really hard together. But again, that culture that we have at goload is not something that's just a cute mood board and an employee playbook. It's something that we live and breathe every day.

[Ty Grange]

That's amazing. That's amazing.

[Lucas Belan]

What about you? I mean, what have you done? You're such, you've built a great company, an agency now you've found some of the best talent in the industry.

[Ty Grange]

I think having that excitement and curiosity about like, what this can be. I think we talk about it a lot as our team. It's a lot of people can do what we do, affiliate or be an agency or put up a shingle as a consultant. But if you're actually thinking about diversified partners, if you're actually thinking like, like this finance person does, you're actually thinking about, hey, does this actually net out as an ROI positive channel and lever? For me, I think having come from that seat and been through the pain points of being in house of hiring agencies, of knowing what they charge, I think that it kind of creates that empathy. It's like you, you almost have to like, yes, you're so much, you're so much well aware of what they go through. That I think that, I think you kind of demand that standard. Your team sees that higher standard opportunity and they know that it's not just another job, it's not just another agency. We recognize we're not putting the man on the moon occurring cancer, but there's a pride element to it and there's an excitement element to be a higher quality standard. And I think that like you said, it's like you can get people. We're all in this together, we're all rowing together. I'm willing to do. There's an old Michael Jordan claim of like, yeah, I'm going to ask you to do what I'm willing to do. I'm going to be up early, I'm going to work hard. So I think there's a little bit of that walking the walk piece that you referenced that helps. But I think it's just, it's exciting to know that you're giving that value. It's not just a claim. You're actually saying, we proved it's ROI positive, making A lot of money. We want to make you really wealthy or really successful. A really great experience for your customers.

[Lucas Belan]

I love that you think and it applies also to the network, not just the agency business or the publisher business, not just the agency. We tend to build these processes and these systems that desensitize all of us from the human beings behind this business and who the buyers are. What do they think about it feels like it doesn't scale really well, but actually retention scales. Yeah, that's the one thing that I remind everybody. Retention scales. Training your customers every year because you are trying to fit everybody in the same mold and you're overcharging them and you're not sensitive and you're not having these conversations. Might get a great run for two years but your business won't be around when I'll be still building my mountain. So I remind our sales team all the time and I think you have those values as well. Like our product starts at hello. It's not just an advertising platform and a content network and great data and great roi. Our product is the events we put together.

[Ty Grange]

Yes.

[Lucas Belan]

Our product is how we interact with our clients and remembering what they care about. Our product is calling them, checking in on them. That's all part of the experience. And I look for people that vibe with that and are not just going to come in to kill the emotion behind the business.

[Unidentified Guest]

Yeah, yep.

[Ty Grange]

My heart and soul and I turn.

[Lucas Belan]

Around to the board and I say, well it might be slightly more expensive but retention skills, absolutely. Big time.

[Ty Grange]

One of the recent pieces we shared on LinkedIn with around some of the team was around even the best technology. There's, there's a human that thought of it.

[Lucas Belan]

Yes.

[Ty Grange]

Created it, drafted it out, built it, maintained it, delivered it to the customer, made it make sense for the customer, responded to the customer service ticket and we're in a very much people based business away from that uber tech world. But even the most technology piece out there, you guys see it, it's like this, it's this pairing of people and machine and tech and I think that's what's going to win especially with all this AI, the fact that you have.

[Lucas Belan]

Multi billion dollar businesses where as an advertiser you can't get a customer support rep if you're not spending like 10 million and up. You know what I mean? Like, and I'm not going to name drop the platforms because I'll get sued. But like there's, there's so many platforms where your account will be banned or shut down almost Arbitrarily, because you're not following their crazy, complex guidelines. And I know so many independent boutique agencies or accounts that are spending value, meaningful money that are just like, I have no one to call, I don't want to talk to. And it feels like they just don't care about their customers. And they would tell me, patronizing, like, you don't understand the scale we're dealing with. I just. I just want to naively believe that I can maintain this level of relationship with our customers and stay true and close to them. I think that's what you guys have also achieved at our bl.

[Unidentified Guest]

Thank you.

[Lucas Belan]

Which truly stands out because there's a lot of meat packing agencies that maybe don't have that sensitivity for publishers and brands.

[Ty Grange]

I appreciate that a lot.

[Lucas Belan]

Hopefully we don't become, you and I, those giants that are desensitized.

[Unidentified Guest]

Yeah.

[Ty Grange]

We want to stay close to it, and I appreciate you saying that. It's. It's definitely something I think is part of our dose and part of what you're going for, too. Is there. Taking a little bit of a segue here, thinking about aspirational people in your life? Fun topics. Is there any. If you could put together, like, a dinner party.

[Lucas Belan]

Oh, my God.

[Ty Grange]

Who. Who's your. Who's your three Living or a lot.

[Lucas Belan]

Living or my three? That's such a great question. Living or alive or not?

[Unidentified Guest]

Yeah.

[Lucas Belan]

I feel like I. I have three people I really want to talk to, but I don't know. If we all got together at dinner, it'd be a great dinner. I feel like they would disagree and have a podcast. Yeah. They would all be like, who the hell are you? Because it's, like, different centuries also.

[Ty Grange]

But now I really want to know.

[Lucas Belan]

Yeah, yeah, yeah. My party. What my party looks like first. I've been inspired by a lot of people in my life and across so many industries and genres and artistry and creativity. I feel like you can borrow from so many. I grew up as, like, a history nerd. There's something I really wanted to do. If it paid more, I would so be in history, too. Yeah, me too.

[Unidentified Guest]

Yeah.

[Lucas Belan]

Maybe. Maybe it's a good thing that it doesn't pay that well then, because we wouldn't be here. But. Yeah. So like a John F. Kennedy for me. Legendary. I feel like from a communication skill, a negotiation tactic, and an ability to influence and to understand media, it's just a crazy, fascinating individual.

[Ty Grange]

Absolutely.

[Lucas Belan]

That we lost way too early. I mean, even if we lost him late, I would have never met Him. I think we're like way apart.

[Ty Grange]

Yeah.

[Lucas Belan]

But that's someone that I would love to have dinner with.

[Ty Grange]

Amazing.

[Lucas Belan]

Probably would not understand a single thing about what I do and how I do it. But there's so much to learn from someone like that.

[Unidentified Guest]

Yeah.

[Lucas Belan]

I, I'm also equally as. There's so many than entrepreneurs in tech. It's so hard to choose one.

[Unidentified Guest]

Yeah.

[Lucas Belan]

I just feel like there's a lot of inspiration that you can take from people who have scaled machines like a Jeff Bezos, a Bill Gates, a Steve Jobs. You want to learn and borrow. It's hard to pick and choose amongst like the centi billionaires.

[Unidentified Guest]

Yeah.

[Ty Grange]

But I wouldn't go for, to learn there.

[Lucas Belan]

I wouldn't go for all the things they have to teach. I feel like what I'm interested in particularly is like their, their ability to scale and build processes.

[Unidentified Guest]

Yeah.

[Lucas Belan]

And like how do you, how do you go from 0 to 1, 1 to 100, 100 to a million, a million to a billion? What did that journey look like as a leader and as a founder and as a CEO? That's a fascinating conversation. And again, I think they wouldn't vibe with John F. Kennedy. So the dinner gets a bit awkward. But we.

[Ty Grange]

Maybe it's a one on one. Maybe it's.

[Unidentified Guest]

Yeah.

[Ty Grange]

Add a few other people.

[Lucas Belan]

It's a speed dating dinner, I think.

[Unidentified Guest]

Yeah.

[Lucas Belan]

It's a, it's a drive through we'll find.

[Ty Grange]

Yeah, it's a in and out.

[Lucas Belan]

It's an in and out relationship and maybe a last one. Like that's so hard. Again, I would love to get an artist like a musician or a hyper creative. Again, hard to choose between. Like a Michael Jackson, just Elton John.

[Unidentified Guest]

Yeah.

[Lucas Belan]

Someone who's changed the boundaries of music or boundaries of art and how did they think about authenticity and a dare to be creative, dare to be bold, a Madonna, whatever. Again, I wouldn't ask everything because I don't want to get everything from them, but there's certain topics that. And again, I think that dinner would be hella awkward now with like Jeff Bezos, Michael Jackson and John F. Kennedy, but.

[Ty Grange]

Yeah, that's a good mix.

[Lucas Belan]

Yeah, we have a good table.

[Ty Grange]

That's amazing.

[Unidentified Guest]

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Ty Grange]

I wonder what you guys would eat. That's amazing. What's something that the audience might not know about you?

[Lucas Belan]

Oh my God. That is a great question. I feel like I kind of spoiled it. I'm like, I'm a big history nut like you like passionate about history and what has come from history and why we're here today. And I'm also a musician. I play piano.

[Ty Grange]

Oh, that's amazing.

[Lucas Belan]

And I went to music school. My parents were like forcing me. I wish. I think when you're a kid, you don't understand it. Like, music is really sexy. And I wished as a teenager I understood that same. When I was a kid, I was like, mom didn't appreciate. I'm so bored. But thank God I know how to play guitar. And thank God I know how to play piano.

[Ty Grange]

Wow. So you can do piano and guitar.

[Unidentified Guest]

Yeah.

[Lucas Belan]

I actually went to music school, quote unquote, more academically for guitar, and then taught myself piano. And it's still like, it's still a big part of my life. I wish I had time to play more, but it's a huge part of my life. So, yeah, I'm a musician. I'm a history nut. I love music and.

[Ty Grange]

Awesome.

[Lucas Belan]

There's so much more there.

[Ty Grange]

We're going to have to nerd out on the. On the history stuff and the music stuff.

[Lucas Belan]

I feel like we're in a good place to talk about music.

[Unidentified Guest]

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Ty Grange]

Got a guitar right behind you. It's meant to be.

[Unidentified Guest]

Yeah, don't tap me.

[Ty Grange]

We'll play on the next one. You're obviously in the technology world. We're looking at consumer B2B.

[Unidentified Guest]

Yeah.

[Ty Grange]

Is there a B2B SaaS tool that's kind of got you. Speaking of gamification, maybe.

[Unidentified Guest]

Yeah.

[Ty Grange]

Kind of enamored or interested or you might recommend to people?

[Lucas Belan]

Hmm, great question. Like, let me think. It's a products that I've been impressed by recently. You know, funny enough, I just went through. So this is not really a B2B SaaS. But I want to bring this up. I was recently onboarding myself on Shopay, which is Shopify's app. And that onboarding experience I forwarded to my UI UX designer at like 11pm and I was like, this is unbelievable.

[Unidentified Guest]

Yeah.

[Lucas Belan]

Like, this felt so smooth and natural. And again they take a path of. It's a super long journey with multiple steps where you would have thought like they could condense that on one screen, but just the buttons feel easy to use. It feels like there's achievement and there's mystery awaiting on the other side. It feels like there's a world of products that I'm going to fall into. It was an amazing. I'm not even like sponsored by them in any capacity. I wish I was not yet 00. After this they can call me. I think they should call me. But Shopee great. I mean, Shopify in general, just a great product.

[Ty Grange]

They're amazing.

[Lucas Belan]

Amazing ecosystem, powerful technology, and their consumer app is unbelievable.

[Ty Grange]

Yeah, that's fun. That's phenomenal. We'll leave a affiliate code in the show notes. Just kidding.

[Lucas Belan]

Let's get Shopify going.

[Ty Grange]

You talked about the history piece. Is there like a book or a resource? It doesn't have to be history related. Yeah, anything related. We have our RBL reading list and we're kind of book nerds a little bit. Is there one that you recommend for the audience?

[Lucas Belan]

There's. There's probably a couple that I can think of. I feel like everybody, every entrepreneur should take the time to read the 800 pages of Steve Jobs biography. I think that is a phenomenal lesson for any creative person, which all entrepreneurs are in some capacity. There are so many lessons. There's also a lot of. It's a very rich human story.

[Unidentified Guest]

Yeah.

[Lucas Belan]

It's not just about building a business. It's about balancing out family and balancing out health and being aware and conscious that I think he wishes that he had more time to do more things. And he took away years of his life because he worked too hard or did too much or did too many drugs. And he's a very interesting character. It's a life lesson for all entrepreneurs and it's a business lesson for all entrepreneurs. I'm sure it's already on the list because it's like an inevitable. But I recently finished it and it was a marvelous, marvelous story.

[Ty Grange]

That's amazing.

[Lucas Belan]

Very much so. Fascinating individual, very cool.

[Unidentified Guest]

Yeah, he's.

[Ty Grange]

He's unreal.

[Unidentified Guest]

It's.

[Ty Grange]

Love that. Love that book recommendation and yeah, more to come. And I'm a huge bio guy too. Like the biographies and historical biographies. I feel like there's a lot of the past history you reference that are. That's actually really good when you're thinking about what's coming next, what is investable, what should you build, what's coming, what are we experiencing now? I think that history knowledge, taking that in, it sounds like. What are you talking about?

[Lucas Belan]

Most people don't know much. Like we know him as like, you know, Apple and whatnot, but like his whole story with Pixar, who's also. He started and found. He's this unbelievable creative person who also was his own enemy in so much capacity. And also Apple's culture is fascinating and pushing limits and boundaries. I changed the way I run my business because of this book. I came back from reading this book on the beach after like a Couple of days of holiday, and suddenly I thought to myself, like, I'm way too much of a nice guy. And it sounds terrible to say, but it's like I'm. I'm too lenient. I'm not putting enough pressure on all departments. I'm not keeping things performance oriented. I'm not expecting enough from people I know can do more and have the potential to do more.

[Unidentified Guest]

Yeah.

[Lucas Belan]

And I think he had this affinity of finding in each and every one that he worked with the best of the best of the best.

[Unidentified Guest]

Yeah.

[Lucas Belan]

And the most that you could deliver.

[Unidentified Guest]

Yeah.

[Lucas Belan]

So I came back halfway through the book. You don't even have to finish it.

[Unidentified Guest]

Yeah.

[Lucas Belan]

Inspired by, like, did the audio. I'm like, my team can do more. These people on my team are so smart. They can deliver more and better and don't settle.

[Unidentified Guest]

Yeah.

[Lucas Belan]

There is so much there.

[Ty Grange]

In some ways, you can kind of lift up teams and individuals in a very positive way and expect more of each other. And I think I've had similar epiphanies at times where I've read resources or read certain snippets or leaders like that. And you don't necessarily maybe go to that length or quite that far, but I think there's definitely times in my career where I've had a similar epiphany of, like, okay, it's time to dial.

[Unidentified Guest]

It up a little bit.

[Ty Grange]

It's not just about being the nice guy. It's about benefiting results, performance, helping everybody get to a better place.

[Lucas Belan]

He's almost like the caricature of, like, he. Obviously. He yells too much. Right. He's too angry.

[Ty Grange]

Yeah. Abrasive.

[Unidentified Guest]

And. Yeah.

[Lucas Belan]

That's where you go. I think that's the one thing that you learn through the book as well, obviously. But his ex. His expectation of what everyone could do.

[Ty Grange]

Yes.

[Lucas Belan]

And they talk about, like, he has this ability of, like, transforming reality around him.

[Ty Grange]

Almost bending or what they called it.

[Lucas Belan]

Yeah, whatever. Like. Yeah.

[Ty Grange]

Reality distortion field.

[Lucas Belan]

Reality distortion field. Steve Jobs. Like, reality distortion Feel it's so again and like, as a. As any creative person, any manager, because I feel like entrepreneurship is. Is a. Is something that you could bring into your life as an athlete, you can bring into your life. It's just a way of living, not so much a career.

[Unidentified Guest]

Yeah.

[Lucas Belan]

So anybody who, you know, wants to be an entrepreneur wants to redeem entrepreneurial qualities. There's a lot to learn from this book, and there's a lot to learn from. Expecting from the people around you more.

[Unidentified Guest]

Yeah.

[Lucas Belan]

They can do better. And pushing them. Positively.

[Unidentified Guest]

Yeah.

[Ty Grange]

Without yelling and enabling them to do it. Enabling them to unlock it for themselves.

[Lucas Belan]

Yes.

[Ty Grange]

Hey, that's their path. They can choose it.

[Lucas Belan]

And very inspiring. Opt in there and wear shoes in the office. That's the only thing that you learn from this book. No, I need to.

[Ty Grange]

Maybe no calligraphy. I don't need to do the calligraphy or the drugs or the notions.

[Lucas Belan]

No retreats in, like, Japan for, like, two months. None of that. Yeah, no, not for me.

[Ty Grange]

Amazing. Lucas, this has been amazing. We've dropped some amazing stories about just your journey, how you've. What you've created with Golut is. Is it really something special for the affiliate community, for growth, for brands, for publishers?

[Lucas Belan]

Thank you.

[Ty Grange]

It's just awesome to have you and hang out with you here in New York.

[Lucas Belan]

You're the best.

[Ty Grange]

Thank you.

[Lucas Belan]

Thank you.

[Ty Grange]

Where can people find you that want to learn more about Lucas and Galoot?

[Lucas Belan]

Well, we are very present on LinkedIn, so feel free to follow us there. I think that's like the number one way to interact with us and interact with me and follow our journey and we try to post videos there and stories, so I definitely encourage anyone to reach out. Same on my LinkedIn. Connect with me. DM me, tell me your story. I'm always happy to chat and. Well, thank you, Taya, for having me. It's been a real pleasure. You're an incredibly inspiring person. Can tell great stories. Working with you outside of the podcast and in the podcast. It's just always a pleasure.

[Ty Grange]

Always a pleasure. Thank you so much, Lucas. It was awesome.