B (1:44)

Nice.

A (1:44)

I'm so glad I bought a barrel of whiskey. Sorry. That's the actual highlight.

B (1:48)

I did see that on the Twitters and I was like, first of all, is this the first time this has happened? I thought you purchased one before.

A (1:55)

No.

B (1:56)

Okay, so that's like. That's kind of big news for you. Was it as like cathartic of an experience? Were you like, oh, it's the best peak.

A (2:03)

Like, yeah, like, we got the day to hang out at the distillery. The master nice distiller, like, picked some barrels for us and we got drinks at their house and had dinner and.

B (2:17)

Okay. Just. Very good, Very good name Dropping it here. I just. I know the. The master distiller over a Jack Daniels. Not a big deal.

A (2:26)

Masters next week, so.

B (2:28)

Okay. All right. Jesus. See, this is why I'm sad that I don't live on, like, the east coast anywhere. Because where I live, there's nowhere to go. And there's. I. There's cool people in Denver, but I live too far from Denver to be, so.

A (2:39)

So anyways, what have you been up to? Can you eat any of that?

B (2:43)

Not really. My children can, though. My youngest lost his first tooth.

A (2:47)

Huge.

B (2:47)

I know he's very young.

A (2:49)

Mine got her first tooth.

B (2:51)

That's amazing. Oh, my God. We're on opposite sides of the fence at this point. Fascinating. Lovely experience anytime. If you don't have kids, it's so interesting to watch them lose teeth because, like, you shouldn't be losing body parts. And so it's just really weird experience to, like, walk them through this is normal. And don't mind the blood. And like, this is also going to happen, like, you know, several.

A (3:11)

30 more times.

B (3:11)

Yeah, exactly. So, like, get used to it. He was stoked.

A (3:14)

Did you do the tooth fairy thing?

B (3:16)

We sort of do it. They know that it's dad that runs up there at 11pm and like, drops money underneath there, but they pretend that it's the fairy, which I find really odd.

A (3:24)

Oh, they're getting.

B (3:25)

They're all like, who's fairy, Ma? Yes. Also freaking inflation. I used to get a quarter. My kids get $5 a tooth.

A (3:32)

That's nuts.

B (3:33)

That was the father's choice.

A (3:34)

I'd be pulling them out at that price.

B (3:37)

Like, how many more can I get? I told consumer Casey, I was like, you gotta slow it down. All right? Jesus. By the time they're done, they're have a trust fund in teeth. Stop paying them this much money. He loved it. He had fantastic. My eldest broke his collarbone.

A (3:51)

Yeah.

B (3:51)

Which apparently is like a rite of children passage. Everybody I know has now said they've broken. I've never broken a bone at all. Nearly everybody. This is like a normal experience.

A (4:00)

Yeah. You have two. Two boys? Yeah.

B (4:02)

Two boys.

A (4:03)

Yeah. This is gonna be the first of many broken bones.

B (4:05)

This is what I'm saying is. I didn't realize that boys.

A (4:08)

It's gonna happen all the time.

B (4:09)

Prone to it. Because, I mean, none of my girlfriends with girls have broken bones yet.

A (4:13)

I think I broke a bone every other year from, like age 5 to 18.

B (4:18)

Okay. Don't tell me that. God. I mean, not that it's like. Collarbone's apparently not expensive because they just said it. They don't. They don't even set it. They just like give you a sling and you just walk on. Just.

A (4:30)

My color was expensive. That was a $30,000 surgery, but.

B (4:34)

Oh, okay. You didn't tell me that. Thank God. Okay. Yeah, this was not expensive. Anyway, both kids did that. I did start work on a book that I am writing about specifically Creative Strategy. I had it slated to come out literally this month. And then, yeah, just got busy. And that's not a thing that happens. So anyways, that is in the works. It is an outline format. I have written nothing else on it outside of that though. I've been growing the school. I've been doing a lot of work just collaborative wise on like content with different people. I've been like podcasting and getting on webinars and all kinds of crazy stuff and then I've just been working. Man, the industry is changing and that's what we're going to talk about today on this podcast. Most of what I do nowadays is very therapy focused. People get on the call and immediately go, what should I do?

A (5:23)

That's.

B (5:23)

Yeah, that's the general sense. Anyways, I've got the topics you want to talk about the storms that are happening inside D2C.

A (5:31)

Let's do it. Before we jump in on the return of brain driven brands, I just want to tell y', all, it is sponsored by nobody. If you guys want to listen to the podcast that's sponsored. Tax on Practical is brought to you every week by Intelligence. But that's it.

B (5:45)

Every single time is this. This is just going to be our bit now is like, I'm not sponsored, but Nate is.

A (5:51)

Go listen.

B (5:53)

Brought to you by Nate's podcast. Your podcast could be a sponsor of this podcast if you want.

A (5:58)

I like that.

B (5:59)

Oh, my God. Brought to you by Nate's podcast. Go listen to that. It's amazing. You get to watch him eat steak if you see it on Twitter. All right, which one should we even start with? I've been tracking some D2C storms and I call them storms because I'm like, I feel like a meteorologist lately where it's just like, I'm just watching this happen to everyone on the ground. I can see what's coming and I'm like, oh, no.

A (6:24)

Oh, you have a really interesting perspective because you don't own a brand, but like have visibility into lots of brands.

B (6:30)

Yes.

A (6:31)

And because you're in like the consumer psychology space, all your clients use you as their therapist. So you get it from every angle.

B (6:40)

I get it from every angle. And I also get to see the internals of a lot of different businesses of different sizes, varying industries, all kinds of different things. It is fascinating. Sometimes it's. It's terrifying, though, because it's just like, I want to help, and I don't know how for some of these people, because, yeah, man, it got real. So this was interesting, too. I didn't tell you this before we got on the call, but I went through and had Claude analyze 572 sales calls that I have been on over the last, like, six years. It's a lot. I've been on a lot of stress Golf. The sentiment change between 2024 and 2026 is mass.

A (7:15)

Oh, I bet.

B (7:16)

Massive. So 2024 people were talking a lot about, like, how do we grow? How do we reach new customers? Can you help us, like, with our ads? We need a little bit of creative strategy. The current sentiment is all creative. It was like something crazy. Like, 93% increase in people talking about creative strategy. Just that topic and nothing else. And then outside of that, most of my sales calls now are people talking in smaller increments. So 2024 people were saying, in six months, in a year, in three years. Now all the language is the next two weeks, the next three weeks, the next six months, and nothing else.

A (7:52)

Just heightened sense of urgency, desperation in there.

B (7:57)

Oh, yeah. Well. And I did word clouds, of course, because that's what Sarah does. And I'm just like, the. The language has changed. We're seeing a lot more intensity on it, and people are just. And I'm saying this also, that if you're feeling this, where you're like, is this normal? Like, I'm a founder, I'm a cmo, I'm an operator, I'm a meat buyer, career strategist, whatever it is, is this normal, what I'm feeling? Because it's. It seems like nobody knows what's going on, and nobody seems to have a sense of what's coming, and we don't know how to deal with it. Yeah, this is normal. Every single brand I talk to is in complete panic mode.

A (8:31)

Well, that's fun. Well, on that note, what do you want to talk about today?

B (8:36)

Yes. Okay, so I've got three topics, three different storms that I'm tracking, and I want to. I want this to be a little bit of an uplifting episode. Could try and handle it, because it. This does not mean that it's over.

A (8:45)

No.

B (8:45)

Does not mean that this is the end. It just means that we are Living through a transitional period. Same thing happened when the Internet became a thing. Like anytime we have big upsets, you just got to live through the transition because it will end well.

A (8:59)

And like, just. Just to bring the mood up a little bit, because I know we got dark. Just so you guys know, like how me and Sarah are viewing the industry, we spent the half hour before recording today talking about brands that we want to launch. Yes. So, like, we're like, if you're an ecom brand, it's not over. We actually think there's a ton of opportunity right now, but like, it does every six years. Playbook is changing.

B (9:20)

Yes, yes, yes. And it's changing in a very distinct way. Like if you watch it close enough, it's obvious what we should do next. So first thing I want to talk about is Andromeda, because this one in particular just cracks me up. The global rollout of this actually happened in October 2025. I had to go look and like, see, you started seeing all these tweets come up that we're talking about. Creative is the new targeting. Right. So everybody's talking about it. Then we just dumped.

A (9:46)

Spoiler alert. Creative was the old targeting too.

B (9:49)

Yeah, it really was. I don't know what. I don't know what happened. It's fine. It's fine. Now though. We already understand that Andromeda really enjoys like really hyper specific creative. Right. We already understand that we got to kind of like do a little bit better with storytelling. But now we've got GEM on top of this. So I want to talk about Andromeda and GEM and, and I want to see from you because I just started studying this, so I don't have like a lot of deep knowledge on it. But how much do you know about the GEM model exactly?

A (10:16)

Basically zero.

B (10:18)

Okay.

A (10:19)

I don't pay attention to a lot of these meta updates. That's never really been a problem for me, so.

B (10:23)

Well, you also have like good product, good brands, and you're good at what you do, so it kind of makes sense. In general though, GEM is really interesting. It's a foundational model that's like a base layer for meta. So instead of building like separate kind of small AI for every different types of ads, meta just built one giant kind of super intelligent model that understands the bigger picture of how people interact with content, not how they purchase how they interact with content. And then this library will basically just share its wisdom with all of these smaller kind of specialized systems that kind of decide which ads to show on your feed stories reels everywhere.

A (11:01)

Yeah.

B (11:02)

So in general, and I tell people this all the time just to make it very, very clear, what Meta has just done with Andromeda is they copied and pasted Tick Tock's organic algorithm on top of their. Their system, their ad system. Now you have two filters that you got to work with.

A (11:20)

So I have looked into this more than I've.

B (11:23)

Okay. Okay.

A (11:25)

But, uh, this. The only thing this does for me, it doesn't really change anything I'm doing on the ad front.

B (11:32)

Okay.

A (11:32)

But this is making me want to invest in organic content way more.

B (11:37)

Yeah. Oh.

A (11:38)

Because where, where the disconnect happens is. And this is where like, I think a lot of creative strategists and a lot of creative agencies can go wrong, is they optimize for engagement. They're looking at click through rate or hold rate or hook rate. But I have had ads that I've spent $4 million on. An individual ad that had a bad hook rate and a bad hold rate.

B (12:01)

Yeah. Yeah.

A (12:01)

It was not an engaging piece of content, but it sold a lot of product. So the way that I'm looking at brands, and this is like especially true for my side Hustle Brewer brand, I've got the biggest batch of inventory coming in at the end of April. I'm going to launch like 15 ads and just not touch them. And then I'm gonna go post three reels a day every day and boost every single one of them. Because that's where I think volume actually makes a ton of sense, is on the organic side and not the paid side. I know exactly how to sell a hat. It's not hard. The challenge is becoming how do I get more people to look at it for cheaper? And that's what organic content is going to do.

B (12:47)

I can't tell you how much I agree with this take. And I have been watching this frickin storm just develop over the course of the last like nine months and people just like lost their minds over it because they were just like volume. That's what Meta means.

A (12:58)

Yeah. They put volume in the wrong place.

B (13:01)

Yes.

A (13:01)

They put it in the ad account instead of in the reels feed.

B (13:04)

Yes. So you're telling me you want to pay for top of funnel views instead of just running them on organic and then capturing them in the ad account when they're warmed up. Like, I don't understand where the disconnect happened, but it's real for sure.

A (13:18)

And like, this became super obvious to me as I started doing more organic because like, on a good ad for Us where we, by the way, exclude past customers as much as possible. We can only get, like, our, you know, percent of new people reached to, like, 80%, 85%. The Meta ad algorithm still wants to default to, like, the lowest hanging fruit, which is people who know who you are already. Well, when I post a reel that does good, it gets 99% new people reached.

B (13:53)

Yes.

A (13:53)

And it's like, well, why aren't we doing that as much as possible when, by the way, the cost to do that is so much cheaper.

B (14:05)

Well, it's cheap mostly because even if you have to pay for an operator to. To come in here and run all of your organic stuff, you're not having to pay for spend on top of operational costs. Like, you've got unlimited top of pay

A (14:18)

an awesome content strategist, 10 grand a month, 120k a year, and then pay some contractors another 10k a month.

B (14:27)

Yeah, exactly.

A (14:28)

Shoot and edit and everything. And, you know, for 240k a year, which is a fraction of all of our ad budgets.

B (14:36)

Yeah.

A (14:36)

You are going to reach the vast majority of new people through organic content.

B (14:40)

New people. I don't. I can't express this enough. Like, if you are struggling with your ads right now, the solution is not run more ads. It never has been. It's getting more expensive. The more that you use that strategy, the worse it's going to get. You need organic. You need to show up everywhere. As Nate has, like, so eloquently put it in the past, you need to become unavoidable for the right person. And that doesn't mean send an ad to them. No, it means that they need to see you all over the damn place so that they remember you exist when you're not running ads towards them. So, yeah, and drama is something I'm watching very, very closely, but not for the reasons that everybody thinks. I'm watching Andromeda because I want to know what to do on organic.

A (15:21)

Yeah.

B (15:22)

So, okay.

A (15:22)

Love it.

B (15:23)

Storm number two here, which is an interesting one. I am seeing this. Oh, it breaks my heart. I see a huge brand identity identity crisis. Huge. AI Is producing, like, more content than ever, but trust, in particular, is degrading quickly. Yep, quickly. Like, so fast. I can't even. I don't even know how to advise people right now because I'm just like, God, we can create massive amounts of output, but everything that we're creating doesn't mean anything. It's completely tasteless. And it's also typically a little boring.

A (15:57)

Yeah.

B (15:58)

So we don't. I Don't. I just don't think that these brands have enough of a sense of who they are internally that they're able to communicate it externally. Right. And this is something that, like, most people have an issue with too. I don't know who I am, so I don't know where to go or who to, like, hang out with, those type of things. It happens in brands, too. So one of the most recent ones was, I worked with a skincare brand that said that they had two top creators that were basically fronting the entirety of all of their spend. Two ads, holding up the entire account. They had probably 30 creators. I mean, they were spending like 50k a month in creators to try and beat these two ads. And they said, well, every time we launch it, nothing works. And I'm like, well, yeah, because these two ads are eating all of your spend. Great for you, but that means that you're not going to be able to move away from what those two creators feel like. And I, I thought of you instantly on this because I was just like, I don't think people understand that the market's just going to pick for you unless you do what OG did, which is like, we only stand for watches that have soul. Right? That and we don't stand for anything else. The market would have picked for you. They would have dropped you in with hunters or with, like, archery. They would have dropped you in with farmers, whatever it is. But because you chose a specific emotional angle, nobody could compete with that. And you had good products, so that helped. In general, though, you had an identity.

A (17:18)

Yeah. And this is like, honestly, my biggest beef with AI right now is that, like, it's letting everyone produce mountains of content. And the amount of great content that sparks emotion and connection is dwindling. And I think brands need to start realizing that, like, you can't be for everyone. If, if you try to be for everyone, you're going to be for no one. And you are better, like, planning your flag in the ground on some stuff you really believe in and stand for and letting the community that agrees with you find you rather than trying to go get everyone to, you know, join your thing.

B (17:57)

You are going to have to repel people. I hate to break it to you, you guys need to repel customers.

A (18:02)

And like, by the way, everyone understands this. When you look at, like, political or, like, religious leaders, like, these guys all build their followings on being unintentionally shunning 50 of the people who listen to them, but the 50% of people who like them are Rabid and loyal and will fight for you. And it's like, yep, that's what we need to be doing. And like, I think, I think the, the Dr. Co founder of Harden Soil has done an awesome job with that where like he is very much anti western medicine.

B (18:41)

Yeah.

A (18:41)

Anti a lot of these new modern diet true trends. And he's like, no, like that. I think all of that is wrong. I think if you believe that you're. You're wrong. Here's some data I have to support it and here's what I believe instead. And it's not for everyone, but the people it's for love it and are loyal.

B (18:58)

The man has conviction and that's what I find none of these brands have is conviction.

A (19:02)

Conviction for.

B (19:03)

That's that skincare brand that like I

A (19:05)

was working with that there's no AI in the word conviction. There's no, there's an eye, but that's it.

B (19:12)

The skincare brand, they, they kept repeating themselves over and over because the two people that were at the top were hyper, hyper specific skin care. They were like only clean. You can't do anything else. They were like super, super into it. And they were like, well, we kind of want to be a more inclusive brand. We want people. This is Skincare is for everyone. And I was like, then you got to decide if you are. Skin care is for everyone. You have to turn off those two ads. You don't have a choice.

A (19:37)

Well. And you have to be the cheapest product on the market, which you don't want to do.

B (19:41)

If you are not though, if you are this hyper natural, very elevated, very wonderful brand. You need to cut all the creators that don't fit that profile and only go source people that fit those top two UGC creator styles because you're, you're competing against yourself at this point and customers can feel it.

A (19:58)

Yeah.

B (19:58)

Oh, brand identity, man. This is going to become one of the only levers you have left.

A (20:03)

Yeah. Now this does make me so excited to build brands.

B (20:07)

Yeah.

A (20:07)

Because like we get to do something that stands out and like that's going to rub some people the, the wrong way, but it's going to build a loyal, small but dedicated army. And like I'm, I'm really excited for that.

B (20:19)

Ambassadors. I can't wait. I need to go like research some products now and figure out if I want to start a brand. What I was. Okay, last thing in here that my

A (20:27)

best performing reel, by the the way, because this touches on like the, the first storm and storm too is I bought A bottle of Pappy Van Winkle, which is like, regarded as like the most rare and high end bourbon expensive. I paid sixteen hundred dollars for the bottle. For one bottle.

B (20:47)

No, thank you.

A (20:47)

And I did a reel that said this is how much I paid for it and this is how much I'd pay for it next time. And the price I pay for it again was way lower and it pissed some people off. But a lot of people were like, yeah, that's overpriced and hyped up and ridiculous. No bourbon is worth 1600 bucks a bottle. And that reel has been up for months and like, it is still getting views today. New people are discovering the brand today and buying because of that reel. And I know that because I haven't ran an ad in a month because we've been sold out.

B (21:27)

I love this though, because now you're still reaching top of fun of people who might be ready to purchase in like another three to six months, which you need because we just sorted inventory. We're trying to warm customers up for the next three to six to 12 months. Whatever it is, whatever you do today is going to echo next year. So you got to think you have to account for that. And a lot of that comes down to what's your building and your brand, like, what's your identity, what are you convicted about that you can share with people. That's kind of all that comes down to. Okay, I want to talk about AI gentrification, and I might repel some people.

A (21:59)

AI Gentrification.

B (22:01)

AI Gentrification.

A (22:03)

I haven't heard those two words put together yet.

B (22:06)

This, this is something that I was like talking to Claude about. And again, gentrification comes with a lot of stigma in that particular word. So for everybody, let me look up the actual, like, definition of it, because

A (22:15)

I was gonna ask, I was gonna Google it over here. No, I'm following along.

B (22:21)

Gentrification in the traditional sense is an urban development process where higher income residents and businesses move into historically disinvested lower income neighborhoods. So it's basically just like.

A (22:32)

And pricing.

B (22:34)

Yeah, a wealthier person coming in, purchasing up all of these lower income neighborhoods. And it kind of just destroys infrastructure in here a little bit. It raises property values and rents. It forces those long term residents to kind of like abdicate. Now, the reason I use this word is because I couldn't think of a better one to describe what I'm seeing. I am starting to see that entry level jobs in this industry are completely changing. Right. So the apprenticeship model that we were built on in D2C, where you came into a brand at the bottom, you worked closely with somebody who was a little bit senior than you and then you just gained skills and raised up to peer level. That doesn't happen anymore. And I think AI fluency is starting to become like price of admission. Right. You have to know AI before you even get into these companies. So you don't have growth skills. That's what I'm seeing here. And that's why I think this kind of like gentrification style thing that's happening in the workforce is bad because we're losing skill set.

A (23:35)

I've thought about this with like, AI has essentially like let you skip steps one and two.

B (23:44)

Yes.

A (23:44)

And like it puts you on third base and it's like cool, you take it for from here. But I think about like the stuff I learned in my career on steps one and two serve me well today.

B (23:57)

Oh my God. And like, yes, yes, yes.

A (24:00)

I think the next generation is going to be like super bifurcated. Look up that word. I think I use that correctly. I think it's gonna be super bifurcated. But between guys like who get absolutely cracked at AI and get so good and probably out earn me within a year and like make an absolute killing. But then I think there's going to be a bunch of people that get essentially left behind.

B (24:25)

Yes.

A (24:26)

Because they're not great at AI. And then these entry level jobs are disappearing because of AI and they're going to be left out to dry. I saw a really scary stat yesterday. It said the average age of a new hire in 2025 was 42 years old.

B (24:45)

Whoa, whoa. That is happening with all of like the 20 year olds and the only

A (24:50)

reason jobs and they're leaving burning, living

B (24:53)

with their parents, the 20 year olds. Like, I'm concerned about that generation just in general, but also these are the people that have quite a lot of creativity because they see the world differently than I do or all the rest of like the millennials or Gen Xers that I work with do so. And I'm not saying that we're not creative, but I'm just like the creative skill atrophy here is a huge problem because again, we see the world in only one lens. My social media, like manager is, I think she's like 22 and the girl is freaking amazing at Instagram and like running all of my socials for me. And I'm like, I would have never thought of anything that she's posting. I would have never posted that for one thing. And the girl just gets it. This is why I'm concerned, because we're hiring people for their ability to prompt a computer. You're not hiring them on their ability to actually be creative or put any sort of, like, conviction into the brand. And I'm like, this is bad, guys. This is really bad. We were fluent in only one thing now, and that's so damaging.

A (25:57)

I think it's gonna bring a renaissance on, though.

B (26:01)

Do you?

A (26:02)

Okay, yeah, I do.

B (26:03)

A renaissance of what exactly?

A (26:05)

Meaningful legacy brands that last a long time. And I don't think it's gonna happen yet. I think it's gonna be the start of it. I think it's gonna be four years from now. But, like, I think I'm actually way more bullish on building things for, like, the anti AI crowd than the pro AI crowd. Speaking of being, like, confrontational or, you know, conflicting, controversial, I think, like, I can build a brand on human connection and authenticity and in real life events and do very well because I think more than anything, people are craving it.

B (26:45)

Yeah.

A (26:46)

Like, I honestly, I think, like, since COVID and then remote work and now AI, like, I think everyone's just exhausted, like, just wants to sit around with people and in the same room and share.

B (26:59)

Yeah.

A (27:00)

The human condition with them.

B (27:01)

Oh, my gosh. Especially in this industry. Like, all I do is reach out to all my friends now and just be like, are you okay? Because I'm not okay.

A (27:07)

I can't tell you how many times in the last year I've, like, gone out to dinner with someone in our industry or like, I've gone to a concert with them, or we've gotten a drink and at the end of it, we shake hands or hug and someone says, hey, thanks, man. I really needed this. And, like, that's as emotional as guys get. But if you know guys, you know, that is, like, peak level, yo.

B (27:33)

That's saying something.

A (27:34)

And it happens every single time. So I think people are craving it.

B (27:38)

Okay, that's good. I'm gonna take this back because I want to start a brand and I think it's going to be more analog than digital.

A (27:44)

And, like, I did hate to plug my own podcast again, but I did an episode this week on the good, the bad, and the ugly of AI.

B (27:52)

Oh, okay.

A (27:53)

And the good is, like, it's saving me time at my job. Yeah, it's not really making us more money. It's not really saving us money, but it's saving me time, which is helpful. But other than that, like, I'm trying to flip the spectrum in the complete opposite direction with the rest of my work to, like, be more authentic and human. I think that matters a lot.

B (28:17)

Oh, we should end it there. So, yeah, I mean, these are the storms that I'm seeing and if anybody's feeling this, this is. It's normal. This is what's happening. Feeling it like, I'm sure you're feeling it. On the upside, though, we got a lot more episodes coming on our thoughts of, like, how to account for this if you want to be ethical, a moral brand that has to compete in this ridiculous weirdness that we just entered into. Keep listening because I have a feeling you and I are going to dissect this to death until we figure it out. So.

A (28:44)

Feels so good to be back doing brain driven brands. We'll see you guys next time.

B (28:50)

Thank you so much for joining us on the show today. Appreciate you guys listening. If you want to follow me, I'm aralevinger. Anywhere you consume content, he is aatelagos. If you like this show and if you like this episode, go ahead and like, subscribe. Share with a friend. Drop us a review when you have a minute. We would appreciate it. Otherwise, have a great week. We'll see you next time.