Bonus: How Nate Lagos Quadrupled Original Grain with Persona-Based CRO

Summary

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DTC Podcast — Bonus: How Nate Lagos Quadrupled Original Grain with Persona-Based CRO (Nov 19, 2025)

Main Theme

This episode spotlights Nate Lagos, the new CMO of Adapt Naturals (formerly of Original Grain and Dugout Mugs), and his strategic use of persona-based Conversion Rate Optimization (CRO) to drive sky-high growth, especially at Original Grain. The discussion delves into Nate’s journey, his approach to customer segmentation, actionable CRO tactics, maximizing LTV, and lessons that apply to any DTC marketer.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Nate’s Journey into D2C & Marketing Leadership

• Baseball beginnings: Nate grew up outside Boston, prioritized baseball, then segued into marketing in college ([01:41]).
• Freelance gigs in college led him into e-commerce; joined Dugout Mugs, then Original Grain—"both sell things made out of wood that were highly giftable" ([02:06]).
• Now, as CMO of Adapt Naturals, he’s transitioning into supplements, bringing his customer-focused, data-driven methods ([01:27], [02:46]).

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2. How Nate Quadrupled Growth at Original Grain

• Joined Original Grain in year 7/8, business had plateaued; helped the founders kickstart another substantial growth phase ([02:50]).
• Key strategies:
  • Upgraded creative quality: Better content to reach new audiences.
  • Core messaging & persona refinement: Deep personalization for major customer segments.
  • Iconic partnerships: Jack Daniels and other major brands gave massive exposure ([03:45]).
  • Growth stats: Quadrupled the company in 4 years; 100% growth one year, 80% the next ([03:00]).

“We ended up quadrupling in size from my first year there to my fourth...on the back of a lot of great product, a lot of great marketing tactics, from upgrading our creative quality to a lot of refining our core messaging and Personas that we were selling into and then some great partnerships as well.” – Nate Lagos ([03:00])

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3. Meta Ads: Reluctant Dependence & Testing for Success

• “Big Meta guy”: Saw Meta as “the biggest and baddest advertising platform that’s ever existed,” despite a “hate to love it” relationship ([04:21]).
  • “I've spent, I probably spent 100 something million on there...and they do not care about the hundred million or so I've given them.” ([04:36])
• Creative is the new targeting: Shift post-iOS 14. Success now hinges on creative and deeply understanding personas ([08:08]).

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4. Persona-Based Marketing at Original Grain: Detailed Walkthrough

• Recognized two main customer personas:
  1. Men buying for themselves — “rugged, tough guys”
  2. Women buying as gifts — wives, girlfriends, moms (majority of customers, especially during gifting holidays)
• Further identification of sub-personas:
  • Men: accomplishment-focused, milestone-focused, self-care (“pick me up”) ([05:45], [07:14])
• Used reviews and expert customer analysis (with Tether Insights) to unearth customer motivations ([07:14]).
• Practical segmentation: Website and ad messaging tailored to major and sub-personas; landing pages and ad creative aligned for granular resonance ([08:31]).

“The more specifically we can speak to the audience, the better...ramping up that kind of complexity, because it was based on a bunch of good customer research, was definitely the right move.” – Nate ([08:31])

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5. CRO: The Game-Changer

• First real foray into CRO came after noticing traffic up 90% but only 50% revenue bump ([09:29]).
• Partnered with IntelliGems for self-serve split testing on Shopify.
  • Early over-enthusiasm: “I emailed him three days later with 17 different split tests set up and I was like, hey, I think there's a problem.” ([10:00])
• Focused on split-testing:
  • Pricing, offers, on-site messaging
  • Start on site, expand to ads post-proven website results
• CRO’s impact: “A 10% uplift in conversion on a price or a messaging test...improved performance across the business.” ([10:44])

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6. The Creative Volume Debate

• Asked about the recent debate (Charlie Titchener vs Jordan Maynard) on whether you need constant new ad creative.
  • Nate: Quality over quantity. “Produce great creative, period. If you can produce a lot of it, great. If you can't, that's fine. Just make it good.” ([12:25])
• “Setting a quantity goal is wrong for anything in life. What else in life do we measure by how many times can I do this?” – Nate ([13:06])

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7. Digging for True Customer Motivation & Competitor Analysis

• Don’t just ask “Who’s your customer?” but also: “Why are they buying? What’s your product replacing in their life?” ([14:12])
• For watches, competition isn’t just other watch brands; it’s any gift for men: “golf clubs, dress shirts, bottles of whiskey...” ([14:48])

“A woman is just trying to show how much she appreciates her husband. There's a million different ways she can do that. But that's the motivation that I'm competing for.” – Nate ([15:34])

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8. Shifting to Consumables: New Challenges, Bigger LTV

• New role as CMO of Adapt Naturals, moving from high-ticket/occasional gifts to consumables with recurring usage ([15:47]).
  • Mindset changes: The core tactics (CRO, persona research, creative) stay, but LTV and forecasting take the spotlight ([16:57]).

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9. Best Offer Ever Run: The “Better Than Black Friday” Sale ([18:24])

• November 1st–Thanksgiving: Black Friday discount + $50 future gift card.
  • Result: Drove earlier holiday buying, enabled ad scaling
  • Best cohort LTV—30% higher than any other
  • High retention: “a ton of people who were acquired on that deal came back for the following Valentine's Day or Father's Day” ([19:12], [00:00])

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10. AOV & Pricing Advice: Don’t Fear Higher Prices or Premium Bundles

• Encourage higher-priced offers and bundles; let your wealthiest customers spend ([20:54]).
  • “10% of your customers are rich. Give them a chance to give you more money.” ([21:44])
  • “We started to roll out some thousand dollar bundles and some fifteen hundred dollar bundles and all of a sudden we start getting orders for 1500 bucks.” ([20:54])

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11. Managing Remote Teams and Leadership Style

• Loves remote work; believes most people are more productive outside the office ([24:35]).
• “If there's someone on your remote team who you think is taking advantage of it and slacking off, you should fire them whether you work remotely or in office.” ([25:54])

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12. Why are Marketers Prone to Conspiracy Thinking?

• Shared joke: Pattern recognition. Marketers see and create patterns—parallels between branding and “manufacturing reality” ([27:17]).
  • “If the content is convincing enough, you can get people to believe whatever you want.” ([28:33])

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13. Nate’s Copywriting Rituals & Frameworks ([29:04])

• Two creative modes:
  1. Analytical, AM research-driven—review mining, psychology, customer analysis
  2. “A couple whiskeys, go outside, maybe start a fire, and just start taking notes...thinking about my customers in a way that I haven't”
• “70% super analytical and responsible, 30%...where I think most of the flavor comes from is whiskey.” ([30:07])

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14. If All Marketers Saw Your Billboard…

• “Do one thing remarkably well over and over and over again.” ([31:15])
  • “There are a lot of different ways to grow your business…do one thing really, really well, really consistently until you get to where you want to go.” ([31:15])

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• Persona segmentation: “The more specifically we can speak to the audience, the better.” ([08:31])
• Creative focus: “Produce great creative, period. If you can produce a lot of it, great. If you can't, that's fine. Just make it good.” ([12:25])
• Remote work demands accountability: “If you think your remote employee is slacking off, fire them. Doesn't matter where they are." ([25:54])
• On premium offers: “Give [rich] customers a chance to give you more money. Don’t turn them down.” ([21:44])
• On doing less, better: “Do one thing remarkably well over and over again.” ([31:15])

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Timestamps for Critical Segments

• Nate’s Background: [01:41]
• Growth at Original Grain: [02:50]
• Persona Marketing Evolution: [05:45], [07:14], [08:31]
• CRO Tactics: [09:29] – [11:31]
• Creative Volume Debate: [12:25]
• Best Offer Ever (Better Than Black Friday Sale): [18:24], [19:12], [00:00]
• AOV / Pricing Discussion: [20:54]
• Remote Management Philosophy: [24:35], [25:54]
• Copywriting Rituals: [29:04]
• Single Billboard Advice: [31:15]

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Further Resources

• Nate Lagos on Twitter: “If you're not following Nate on Twitter, you're missing out.” ([33:53])
• Nate’s own podcast – Tactical and Practical: Short, actionable solo episodes on ecomm tactics ([32:41])

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Closing sentiment:
This episode is full of candid, actionable insight from a proven, forward-thinking CMO. If you want to supercharge your DTC brand through persona research, test-driven CRO, and focusing on what works—in ads, messaging, offers, and leadership—Nate’s playbook is a masterclass.

Transcript

[A]

We ran a better than Black Friday sale November 1st through Thanksgiving. We offered you the normal Black Friday discount, but then we gave you a free $50 gift card to use on a future watch order, and that ripped. That got way more people to buy before BFCM so we could more confidently scale up ad spend. The customers that bought before Thanksgiving had a 30% higher LTV than any other customer cohort we've ever had. And a ton of people who were acquired on that deal came back for the Valentine's Day or Father's Day. That kind of speaks to what I define as a great offer. It's like, it works for acquisition and retention. That one was perfect.

[B]

Welcome to the D2C podcast, Nate and Cheers. This is the first time I've ever had a glass of whiskey with someone.

[A]

It's a Friday, Friday at 5.

[B]

It's actually 2 my time, but this is my last. It's a. It's my last.

[A]

It's eight over here.

[B]

It's eight over there. It's like it's got to be after five somewh.

[A]

We're.

[B]

We're living proof of that. We're on the eve of the World Series here. I know you're a big baseball fan. I just want to say I've been enjoying following you over the years on. On D2C Twitter, following your journey. And so I just wanted to get on, get on the podcast, drink some whiskey with you and, and talk over, you know, your. Your big insights on the space. How you doing?

[A]

Thanks, man. So good to. To be here. I'm good. I just wrapped up my. My first week in my new job.

[B]

Nice.

[A]

Now the CMO of Adapt Naturals. I'm in the supplement space now. Big LTV guy now all of a sudden, so watch out for that. But it's good, man. Life's good.

[B]

Let's just back up a little bit. Give me your hero's journey in this DTC marketing space.

[A]

Yeah. Nate Legos. Born in 1996. I'm a youngin, just 29, grew up outside of Boston. Baseball was life. I wanted to go far away for college and I wanted to play baseball. The only place that would take me to do that. Some tiny Division 2 you've never heard of here in South Carolina, but landed here. Majored in baseball, but minored in marketing.

[B]

Nice.

[A]

And from there was freelance in doing organic and paid social for my dorm my sophomore year for a couple of brands in town. One of them offered me a job the day I graduated. Bounced around a little bit, but really cut My teeth in in e commerce. Last two brands I was a part of, Dugout Mugs and Original Grain. Both sell things made out of wood that were highly giftable. Crushed around the holidays of Christmas and Father's Day and Valentine's Day. So that's what I've been doing. And then a pretty big switch up to the supplements space now. But I think a lot of my skills are gonna, are gonna translate well here.

[B]

Talk to me about the growth that you helped architect at Original Grain.

[A]

It was big, it was a lot, it was fast. You know, I got to OG I think in year seven or eight of the business. Two brothers had started it. They launched on K on Kickstarter in like 2013, 2014 back when Kickstarter was like the spot to launch and they crushed. I think they did like 700k like in a matter of days. So they had a pretty quick come up and then business matured a little bit. They were ready for another leg of, of profitable growth. And yeah, I mean we, we ended up quadrupling in size from my first year there to, to my fourth. Last two years we grew by 100%, 80% on the back of a lot of great product, a lot of great marketing tactics, from upgrading our creative quality to a lot of refining our core messaging and Personas that we were selling into and then some great partnerships as well. I mentioned before we hopped on the partnership we had with my good friends at Jack Daniels, other big billion dollar brands that we got to work with. All that. Yeah. Made for a rocket ship. The last couple of years we talked.

[B]

On the pre interview quite a lot about CRO, but I just, I wanted to talk first. I imagine the, the rocket fuel beyond CRO, the traffic coming in here was it mostly. Are you meta? Are you a, are you a big meta guy?

[A]

Yeah, big meta guy.

[B]

Big meta guy.

[A]

Hate to, to love it kind of relationship, but yeah, I mean it's still the biggest and baddest advertising platform that's ever existed. Just sucks sometimes, you know.

[B]

And you're a flea on its back even when you're spending as much as you're spending.

[A]

Yeah, like I know it's so funny how like you know, I've spent, I probably spent 100 something million on there.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

And I'll like my like dad will call me like I got logged out of my Facebook. Can you talk to someone and get me back in? I'm like dude, I can't do anything. Like no, I've had ad accounts shit shut off. Like there's no they do not care about the hundred million or so I've given them. They've got much bigger fish to fry.

[B]

My biggest flex in this entire space is that this year Meta is sponsoring the newsletter and podcast.

[A]

And I'm like. I'm like the only person contact after this. Please.

[B]

I'm the only person I know who Meta is giving me money. That's like nuts. We're still giving them a lot more just to grow the newsletter, but. Yeah, but yeah, it's. It's a drop in the bucket, but super cool. What I. Let's just talk about and drama. I know Andromeda is not new friends. Don't let friends say Andromeda is a new thing. It's been around for a long time. But you mentioned when you're talking about original grain, you were talking about upgrading your creative quality. Talking about Personas, which. That's the whole language of Andromeda, right? Is sort of like marketing by Persona rather than by segment in a way. Talk about that a little bit.

[A]

Yeah. So this started for us long before Andromeda. You know, when I got there, I think it was 20, early 2021. I immediately saw we had two very different cohorts of customers who bought from us. One was the rugged, tough guys like us, you know, scholarly gentlemen who were buying watches for themselves. The other was our wives or girlfriends or moms who actually make up the majority of our customer base that are buying watches for Valentine's Day, Father's Day, and Christmas. So we were forced into this kind of like, Persona marketing, maybe a little ahead of the curve because, you know, for 10 months a year, we need to market to the guys. And then for two months a year, we got to really market to their women, like, super hard. So the Personas thing was always kind of natural to us. We always had dedicated campaigns and creative briefs targeted to whichever audience we wanted to speak to. And as we got further, we realized there were actually, you know, sub per Personas within each of those groups as well. We had guys that are buying out of a sense of accomplishment. We had guys who were buying to mark a milestone. We had guys who were buying just because they felt so beat down by the world and they needed a little pick me up. So lots of research went into it. Lot of messaging and creative.

[B]

I guess Meta is how you test it, right?

[A]

Yeah, that is how we test everything. And then some intel gems testing on our website too. But we uncovered it by reading reviews and comments. You know, we hired Sarah Levenger over at Tether Insights to do a bunch of customer analysis for us. And yeah, we uncovered all these different Personas that exist within the like, you know what I just say, oh, cool. Rough and rugged guys. There's a dozen different versions of that. And they all have a different reason for purchasing and they all purchase during a different moment in their lives. So that was like super eye opening to us. And then we test messaging on our website first. Once we get some messaging to increase conversions on the site, then we roll out ad creative for it and we were able to scale up super well. So then Andromeda came and we were like, cool, we're doing this. We're doing this on a change.

[B]

Creative is the new targeting for three years now or whatever, since iOS 14. And so you guys are living it. You mentioned in the pre interview a lot about CRO. You actually, when I said like, what's the one biggest lever like you got? You were talking about like that, that CRO journey you went on. And when you've got these different avatars, do you speak? Do you run them to landing pages so that they're getting their avatar all the way through? Do you just make sure the page speaks to all of them? How do you, how do you do that?

[A]

The more specifically we can speak to the audience, the better. So when we first started testing this, we would speak to the majority. So we knew coming up for Christmas, we should target the women. All of the copy everywhere on our site was focused at female gift givers. More recently, we got a little more advanced. We had specific ad campaigns and sets going towards the sub Personas where now someone is seeing, you know, male accomplishment focused ads, they are going to a male accomplishment focused lp. So got more dialed in and more complex over time. But again, step one was just like, hey, it's Christmas. Let's make sure we're talking to the gift givers. But ramping up that kind of complexity, because it was based on a bunch of good customer research was definitely the right move.

[B]

And then just talk about generally about the CRO moves you made and what impact you're able to have with that.

[A]

Yeah, so I think it's my second year at OG we had spent like 100 more money on ads. Site traffic was up like 90 per percent. And we were like, great, that's good, but revenue is only up like 50%. And we were like, that's not good. Something, something went wrong here. And I had like, you know, I'd heard about CRO, but I'd never done anything that I would call CRO. Up to that point. So we talked to a couple CRO agencies, we talked to a couple different softwares that promised to help. We found our way over to IntelliGems, which is a self serve split testing site for Shopify brands. And I think I had a meeting with their founder. We were one of their first customers and he showed me how to set up like one split test. At first we wanted to test the price of one of our core products. I emailed him three days later with 17 different split tests set up and I was like, hey, I think there's a problem. I think a lot of these tests are overlapping. And I broke it. And he was like. He's like, yeah, he did. He's like, I love the enthusiasm, but yeah, you're going a little too.

[B]

This is true here. Former podcast alumni.

[A]

Yeah, so that was kind of the start of it, testing prices and offers. Then we got into testing all the messaging, but we just found it so impactful that, you know, when we get a small win, a 10% uplift in conversion on a price or a messaging test, that doesn't just make one ad work better, that doesn't make just one email or one campaign work better. It improved performance across the business. So we really narrowed in on our website as our core testing ground and as our biggest performance lever for the biz. Because getting a win on the homepage or getting a win on our bestselling SKU or the highest traffic LP wasn't just going to make one ad work better. It was going to make the business work better.

[B]

Did you attend or catch. I'm sure you caught the buzz around this debate series between Mr. Charlie Titchener, who I met in 2018 at my event that I put on in Las Vegas. And he had blue hair and nail polish back then. And he was telling me about the disruptors and then he told. Then I saw Disruptors was in his Twitter handle. I actually got him hired at Pilot House. We actually employed him a good chunk of time, which was interesting. He's a great. I've always had a good experience with him, but he just is a lightning rod for controversy. And so Jordan Maynard, who I also know well, is taking advantage of that. So let me just frame the central debate. There is Jordan saying, okay, meta needs creative. You need to constantly be fueling the beast with creative. And Charlie's sort of saying, no, you don't. You don't need to. If you have good creative, you only need a small amount of good creative. You don't need to. And you don't need to be feeding it all the time. What do you understand about the debate and where do you lie on it?

[A]

Yeah, I think as, as simply as I can put it, you should produce great creative, period. If you can produce a lot of it, great. If you can't, that's fine. Just make it good. And when I say good, I'm not talking about production value or design. I am talking about creative that speaks to your target's real pain points, your, their real motivations for buying. Setting a quantity goal is wrong for anything in life. What else in life do we measure by? How many times can I do this? Yeah, how good am I at it? How much is it working? How much is it paying off? I met Charlie, I mean through Twitter years ago and then we met in Austin. I think it's 2022 at Whaley's. We had followed each other on Twitter and I think he texted me and said, hey, I'm going to eat meat. Do you want to come? And I was like, yes, that's the kind of text that I want to get. I think the way he thinks about growing brands makes a ton of sense. Focused on long term health of the business and long term cash flow over, you know, day one CAC or roas, I think that matters a ton. I don't know Jordan, at all on the volume versus I don't know, not volume approach. Make great creative. And I think like for, for, for us at, at OG and what I hope to. To do at Adapt early on in my time there, I think we could only produce four great ads a week. So that's what we did. And then the next year we could produce 10. And then the next year we could produce 25. Then the next year we could produce 40. And that was more than enough to fuel growth. And yeah, we just wanted to make sure it was really good before we tried to think about increasing quantity and to double.

[B]

Like you already laid out exactly how to think about that, which is going not just like what your customer's doing or who they are, but why they're doing what they're doing. Getting to that like in a systematic, scientific way, unearthing the real. Not the whys you think as a founder, but the whys that they're actually using their product. The other thing that I've heard a lot of is like, what is that product replacing in their lives? Like what are you actually competing against for those.

[A]

That's interesting.

[B]

You know what I mean? Like in your case, with that, with the watch, it could be Any number of things for any number of those cohorts. Right. And it's like that. That mind frame is what can allow you to create great creative, I think, right?

[A]

100%. Yeah. Like, when I first got to OG, like, I probably would have answered the question why someone is buying from us and be like, well, because our watches are inlaid with whiskey barrel wood, and that's cool. That's why they chose that watch. That's not why they bought from us. That's not why they were searching for something to buy. And I think that's super important. And we talked about the Personas already, but I think, like, the competitor analysis matters a ton too, because I stopped looking at other watch companies as our only competitors. When I'm selling to gifters, I'm competing against any gift for guys. Golf clubs, dress shirts, bottles of whiskey. I'm competing against all of those things. A woman is just trying to show how much she appreciates her husband. There's a million different ways she can do that. But that's the. The motivation that I'm competing for.

[B]

Turning our attention to your new. What's your. What's your title at the new gig?

[A]

I'm the chief marketing officer. Back in the C suite. Feels good.

[B]

Welcome to the sea.

[A]

I became a CMO at 24.

[B]

Whoa.

[A]

And then, yeah. Flex had no clue what I was doing at all. That's what size of company. He did 8 million that year.

[B]

That's a real CMO first year.

[A]

Thanks. Did not feel like a real CMO, but that's what. That's what got me into D2C. Twitter. I got this insane opportunity. I was a freelancer for them for, like, a year. And then they're.

[B]

This is that dugout.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

Yeah, Doug. Because I had Chris on the podcast as well.

[A]

Yeah. And they were like, hey, come run all of marketing for us. I was like, great. And then I immediately Googled, like, what is the head of marketing do? Who are other CMOs I can follow and figure it out on the fly? But, yeah. And then I was always a director, V or VP at og. Kind of hurt the ego a little bit. But back in the C suite now, life's good.

[B]

And you're going to a consumable. You're going from a product that maybe people will buy two of for very special occasions. Maybe there's a few people that buy a lot more, but you're going to something that has an opportunity to become part of someone's life in, like, an ongoing way. What does anything that changes in your mindset about, about going to a company like that versus where you came from.

[A]

Other than a sigh of relief that we're going to get some great LTV behavior? No, I mean, you know, a lot of the tactics won't change. We still need to test messaging. We still need to optimize the customer journey. We still have to understand each of the Personas that we're selling to what changes is how we model and forecast and plan for growth. Because we can obviously bake in, you know, some predicted ltv, but a lot of the tactics don't change. You know, one of the the core reasons I joined ADAPT is consumables in, in general, but especially when you have a product as great as ours, it's just a great business model. Like we are selling something awesome that people are more than willing to buy month after month after month. So, you know, for, for me, I don't think a ton changes. I think just what me and the marketing team can do is going to be amplified by great repeat purchase behavior.

[B]

And have you. You have started or you're about to start?

[A]

I started on Monday. So five days in, five days in.

[B]

Very cool. You're also a new father.

[A]

New father. Just had a daughter. Yep.

[B]

Congrats. Oh man. What an exciting time in your life.

[A]

Yeah, it's busy.

[B]

Yeah, I bet. We're headed into Q4 here and one of the questions my do you know who Jason Kriske is? He's a friend of mine who's been in direct market for a really long time. But his favorite question he thinks I should ask is what's the best offer you've ever run and why do you think it worked so well?

[A]

Best offer I've ever run. That's a good question. It is.

[B]

I should have prepped you.

[A]

I think I've got it good. It was at OG being in the watch industry and I'll say like our products were good. Like we had a solid repeat purchase behavior considering the category that we were in. But increasing LTV was always a goal of ours. We know if we can sell you a second watch without a $150 CAC, we profit a bunch. So our best offer at OG, we rolled it out three years ago and we've done it every year since. We ran a better than Black Friday sale from November 1st through Thanksgiving where we offered you the normal Black Friday discount. But then we gave you a free $50 gift card to use on a future watch order and that ripped. That got way more people to buy before bfcm. So we could more confidently scale up at ad spend. The customers that bought before Thanksgiving had a 30% higher LTV than any other customer cohort we've ever had. And a ton of people who were acquired on that deal came back for the following Valentine's Day or Father's Day.

[B]

So yeah, or even Black Friday. You've got that, if you've got that coupon. Even just the actual Black Friday had people do that.

[A]

Yeah, yeah. So I think like that kind of speaks to what I define as a great offer is like it works for acquisition and retention and that one was perfect.

[B]

And then in the supplement world is, is bundling a big like, but like it's all about like your aov. What are, what are your. I know it's only five days in, but what are your thoughts about sort of maximizing AOV in the supplement world.

[A]

If you can, without sacrificing, you know, what your 12 month LT TV is. I think that's awesome. I think maximizing AOV is like pretty good advice for most brands. And I think especially with like how bad inflation's been since COVID I think more people should raise their prices and I think more people should test higher priced offers because everyone uses their own personal price anchors, right? Like a week of groceries used to cost us 200 bucks. Now it's 300. So now if I'm considering a $300 purchase, that's only one week of groceries. That's not a week and a half. It's not two weeks of groceries. So I think the numbers are getting bigger. I mean our currency's screwed.

[B]

Not let's do it, let's talk about that.

[A]

But yeah, I think testing higher priced offers is a great move. And the, the way that I kind of think about it and explain it to people, it's like, listen, you have customers, let's say 10% of your customers are rich. Give them a chance to give you more money. Like don't turn them down. Like the biggest orders we used to get at OG were for our highest price, $400 watch. And then we started to roll out some thousand dollar bundles and some fifteen hundred dollar bundles and all of a sudden we start getting orders for 1500 bucks. We didn't develop any new products, we just bundled them together. So rich people are going to come to your website and shop. Give them the chance to give you more money.

[B]

I think it's great advice and it's like every single. And this is not the best point, but it's like we're the grocery store is raising the prices. Every grocery store is raising all your prices. And you have all these owners and founders being precious about whether or not they should raise their prices. But like every week we're getting stared in the face with higher prices. So it's not uncommon. You know what I mean?

[A]

Yeah. Well, and I think this is actually funny that I'm sipping on this Jack Daniel 12 year whiskey here.

[B]

Lovely. I've got Elijah Craig, by the way. If we're doing product placement, I'm open to sponsorship. Elijah.

[A]

But a regular bottle of Jack cost $25. I think I spent 300 on this one because it's a specialty one. And like that's the example I'm explaining here is like if Jack didn't think they could go more premium and didn't think they could get a, you know, more affluent group of whiskey drinkers to buy from them, I wouldn't have given. They might only got 300 bucks out of me all year if I'm just buying $25 bottles. But no, they got it all in one here.

[B]

When it comes to what you want to do at the new company, I imagine your bag is still going to be of a heavy focus on Meta CRO. Are there any other platforms or approaches that you're looking forward to testing that maybe you haven't as much in the past?

[A]

Yeah, there's going to be some new channel expansion. I don't know what those are going to be yet. Maybe some YouTube, maybe some programmatic, probably a lot of influencer affiliate world. I think what I'm most excited for is a lot of that offer testing, you know, where we promote and distribute that offer. We'll figure it out. But I think that's what's so cool about these businesses is balancing, you know, day one performance of an offer and then how that affects, you know, 3, 6 and 12 month LTV. I think that's going to be a really fascinating puzzle to kind of get into. There's a lot that goes into it and the existing marketing team at Adapt has already done a good job testing a bunch and we've learned a lot. So I'm downloading all that info. But yeah, I think that's going to be where I'm actually able to, you know, do some damage and produce hopefully some, some big wins.

[B]

That's cool. How big of a team will you be leading?

[A]

We've got, I don't even know to be honest. It's a mix of agency and in house right now. A couple great full time employees, a couple Big dtc, Twitter agencies. And then the founder has been acting as the kind of head of growth CMO for a while. He's not a marketer by trade, he's a doctor, but he's done a great job grown it so far. So looking forward to leaning on all those folks early on to help us keep growing.

[B]

What's your leadership style like or what's your approach? I think everyone's remote in most situations. I assume it's the same for you. How are you focusing on alignment and, and, and management leadership in this role?

[A]

Yeah, I, I love managing remote teams. I think people work better when they're comfortable. If you're one of those employees that likes to be in an office, good for you. It's not me. I don't think it'll ever be me.

[B]

No, me neither.

[A]

I. It's funny, going through this past job interview cycle that I just went through, I had a couple of folks that wanted me to work in office for four or five days a week and I told them I would, but I told them it came with a price and I told them all that price was quadruple my asking price to stay remote. And they thought I was kidding. And I'm like, no, I'm not kidding. Like if you want me to drive somewhere every day at 8:00am, no, that's, that's gonna cost you.

[B]

It all, it just happened like at Pilothouse we went from like, like 19 employees to like you know, over 120 in one year kind of thing. It was insane, insane growth. And we did it all from home. So it's like there was just no, that just launched us into a, you know, a remote team forever. Because you can't tell that team that did that that you got to come back in office, right?

[A]

No, for sure.

[B]

And it would have quadruple or it would have like 10x'd our office costs. It would have like all these things. I feel like there's so. You see so many like old timey entrepreneurs you gotta be in. You don't see enough people really sticking up for the obvious fact that working remote is amazing when you're aligned.

[A]

Here's the thing. I never want to manage an employee who I feel like I might have to babysit or keep an eye on to make sure they do their jobs. You know what I mean? I mean like if there's someone on your remote team who you think is taking advantage of it and slacking off, you should fire them whether you work remotely or in office. Like they're not a Good teammate if you are feeling like they might be trying to take advantage of it. So yeah, no, I like working remote, paying people well and then the only thing it takes is just, you know, a little extra effort on communication and organization to make sure stuff isn't slipping through the cracks, to make sure everyone's getting their work done on time and then to also make sure we're not over indexing on meetings. I think there's a lot of communication that would happen in, in office that might take a minute, that sometimes we turn it into 15 minute meetings because we're remote and like it feels like, oh well, we hopped on a call, we can't just talk for a minute then leave. So yeah, slack asana twist notion are all my friends. And yeah, it's just about keeping everyone aligned on the big goals for the business. We want to grow, we have growth metrics we want to hit. I'm currently giving the team my vision for how we do that. And as long as everyone stays aligned on that, then I have no doubt we're going to be very productive.

[B]

Why do you think so many marketers are also like closet conspiracy theorists, dude?

[A]

Because it's. Because I think we recognize patterns.

[B]

That's my answer too. It's pattern recognition.

[A]

Like I think it's patterns and then some communication stuff and like it's all branding. Right? Like if we rewind to 1962, we're at the height of the Cold War. The Russian space program is embarrassing ours. And our president makes a bold claim that we're going to go to the moon this decade. NASA only started in 1958. NASA's four years old and he says they're going to the moon within the next seven. The following summer, JFK is murdered. Now NASA has to live up to that promise our late president made who was loved by most of the country. Every rocket we sent up exploded. We were struggling. What would you do if you needed to get a win for the country?

[B]

Yeah, to bring it back to marketing. It's kind of like when you start seeing the ways in which truth is created, it helps you understand that's what you're doing as a marketer as well, in a lot of ways is you're trying to create a truth for a consumer so there's a real connection there.

[A]

If the content is convincing enough, you can get people to believe whatever you want.

[B]

When you realize it's all psyops all the way down, then you get good at your own psyops. Right?

[A]

That's all marketing is.

[B]

It's just I went to our Slack channel that we're in and I said what should I ask Nate? And I and I thought I was going to get a bunch of joke questions, but I got some good questions so I thought I would ask what are your mental frameworks or rituals before sitting down to write copy besides chatgpt oh, great question.

[A]

First of all, it depends. There's like two main creative moods I'm in. It's either 9am 9:30 after I just played nine holes of golf and this one is going to be very, very research based. I am reading reviews, I'm reading summaries of review analysis from chat. I'm reading things about persuasive psychology and, you know, different methods to get someone to act the way I want them to. That's framework one. That's where 70 of my copy comes from. The other 30 would be a night like tonight, have a couple whiskeys, go outside, maybe start a fire and just start taking notes and just start thinking about my customers in a way that I haven't because I'm in a completely different setting in mind state now. So yeah, probably 70 super analytical and responsible. 30%. Where I think most of the flavor comes from is whiskey.

[B]

Nate.

[A]

Having a couple, having a couple of strong pours.

[B]

It's funny because the second question in this thread is without mentioning whiskey, if someone were a fly on the wall, what would surprise them about your creative process? But maybe it is just that. Do you have an answer for that or is it really just the change? The like the other people would not.

[A]

Expect me to have the first part of that where I'm like very diligent and like research psychology oriented. I think that'd probably be a surprise. One thing I've had to clarify as I go to conferences is that people like will assume when I tweet a glass of whiskey that I'm gonna have 12 that yeah, it's not true. I'm having. Not always at a time. But yeah, I've had people at, at conferences who are trying like stay at like 3am and drink with me and I'm like, I don't do that anymore. Like keeping it relatively chill these days.

[B]

All right, well, we'll see what happens.

[A]

Well, yeah, we'll see.

[B]

But okay, last question from the from the group here stolen from Tim Ferriss. If you could put what this is something I should ask more. If you could put one message on a billboard that every other market in the world would see, what would it.

[A]

Say and why that every other marketer could see specifically.

[B]

Yeah, let's keep it to marketing.

[A]

All right. If we're going to keep it to marketing, do one thing remarkably well over and over and over again. I think it's so easy to get lost with shiny objects and new tactics and, you know, different things in our industry. Whatever. You know, the operators guys are tweeting about this week and there's a lot to learn for from that. Like there's no shade on them. But you know, when I look back at. @ OG and like the growth we had there, we grew through messaging, testing and meta because that's what I'm good at. Someone else could take that brand and grow it through influencer and affiliate or own content. There are a lot of different ways to grow your business. So I don't think you need to worry about doing all of them. I think you need to worry about doing one thing really, really well, really consistently until you get to where you want to go.

[B]

Can love that. Because this will be probably episode 560 of the D2C podcast.

[A]

Dang, that's nuts.

[B]

I think 559 or 560 or something. So it's. We've been doing these. Yeah. Twice or three times a week since March 20th of 2020.

[A]

Dang. That's huge.

[B]

So. And it. And I. Yeah. And this, this one was as reward. It's kind of crazy. It's the first time I've ever actually shared a. A drink with a. With a guest.

[A]

So I've only done like 70 episodes of my pod and I've drank on a lot of them, so.

[B]

Nice. Plug your pod. What's your what? I like the concept for your pod.

[A]

Yeah. Tactical and practical is different than most pods. I don't really do guests. I've had a few here and there, but each episode I just break down one tactic that I'm currently doing and is working well. Most episodes are short, like seven to 12 minutes long.

[B]

Just like a naval episode.

[A]

Get out, let you know what I'm, I'm doing and, and let you go execute it on from there. So if you have any topic ideas or anything, let me. No, but that's coming out once or twice a week these days, whenever I get to it. But yeah, man, it's been good.

[B]

Nice, man. Well, thanks for taking the time. I'm glad we got to connect. I look forward to. Yeah. Seeing you in the Slack Channel and then otherwise, let's. I. Let's reconnect. Maybe later, maybe in the new year after You've had a Q4 with your new gig. Yeah, talk about the supplement space, because this is awesome.

[A]

Yeah, for sure. I know. I've. I've been on a couple pods in the last week, and everyone's like, how's the new job? And I'm like, I don't know. I don't know yet. Okay, everyone seems great, but I have nothing relevant to share with anyone yet. So, yeah, few months. I definitely.

[B]

Lots of relevant stuff and some awesome irrelevant stuff in this one as well. Cheers, Nate.

[A]

Cheers. Thank you so much for having me. Congrats on Five70, by the way. That's nuts.

[B]

Follow this guy on Twitter. If you're not following Nate on Twitter, you're missing out. Go, Jays.

[A]

Yeah, Go Jays. The Dodgers. I mean, listen, I'm just a jealous Yankees fan, and I'm jealous that the Dodgers have a front office that wants to win rather than our status. They do soft executives who aren't willing to do what it takes. So, Jays, I guess you can be.

[B]

The hard executive this world needs now that you're CMO again. Thanks, Nate. This is awesome.

[A]

Thanks, man.

[B]

Thanks so much for listening to today's episode. If you're not a subscriber to our newsletter, you can do that right now at directtoconsumeralloneword Co Eric. I'm Eric Dick, and this has been the DTC podcast. We'll see you next time.