S17 E5: Your Moat Already Expired (And Most Founders Don't Know It Yet)

Summary

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Limited Supply S17 E5: "Your Moat Already Expired (And Most Founders Don't Know It Yet)"

Host: Nik Sharma
Guest/Interviewer: Ryan
Date: August 5, 2026

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Episode Overview

This episode of Limited Supply is an unfiltered, in-depth dive into the current state of defensibility and competitive advantage in DTC (Direct-to-Consumer) brands, the enormous disruption AI is causing in the agency vs. in-house landscape, and the reality most founders are ignoring: that their business moats are vanishing faster than ever. Host Nik Sharma, fresh off his agency exit, brings his signature candor and tactical insights to the conversation, driven by pointed questions from Ryan. They candidly explore what makes a brand actually defensible today, the wild possibilities and realities of AI, and the nuts and bolts differences between agency and brand businesses—backed by hard-won lessons.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. The New Age of AI: Agency vs. In-House, and What Actually Matters Now

[02:01–16:53]

• Nik’s AI Deep-Dive:
  Since exiting his agency in October, Nik committed to not getting "left behind" in AI. He describes going deep, building custom agents (like Hermes) on a Mac Mini, integrating APIs, syncing memories across devices with apps like HQ, and rapid AI-driven prototyping.

  • "I spent a Saturday night from basically 9pm to 9am, figured out how to just learn Claude code... now my setup is I use a Hermes agent... and this app called HQ, it’s like a very good memory system." (A, 03:01)

• Leveling the Playing Field:
  AI is democratizing creative production and operational leverage. What would take 2–4 weeks with an agency, brands can now do in two hours (e.g., landing pages via Framer’s API and agents).

  • "What used to take two weeks with a really good agency... is now taking like two hours." (A, 05:50)

• Key Use Cases:

  • AI for CRM design, creative supply chains (emails, ads, landing pages), and as a practical consultant via podcast/data ingestion.
  • "There's just so many ways where I feel like the leverage is now in your own pocket." (A, 06:35)

• Distribution Is the Real Challenge:
  With creativity and operations leveled by AI, the new choke point is getting and retaining eyeballs—customers are less loyal, overwhelmed, and quick to leave.

• On Getting Technical:
  The barrier to entry is much lower than people believe—if you’re not “cracked out” on AI, you fall behind in strategic understanding and ability to diagnose issues.

  • "The more you miss out on that, the less you're going to be able to diagnose things later." (A, 08:55)

• Cost of Experimentation:
  Nik details spending $8K–$9K/mo on AI credits at his experimental peak, illustrating how fast—and costly—AI R&D at the edge can be.

2. The Agency Model in 2026: Where’s the Value?

[13:23–27:43]

• Agencies Are Niche or Die:
  Gone are the days of the full-service agency. You’re either “really good at one thing or nothing.” Quality drops fast as you scale unless you invest heavily in top talent.

  • "Most agencies are generally really good at one thing or nothing... It's rare that an agency is good at multiple things." (A, 13:40)

• Agency as Bootcamp:
  For marketers, starting at an agency is unparalleled training ("boiler room environment"), but it’s not where long-term wealth or brand equity forms. - "You get cash up front... but as soon as that work's done, your cash stops... Agencies are phenomenal for learning." (A, 25:53)

• “Go From Agency to Brand”– Nik’s Career Advice:
  Experience at an agency exposes you to diverse problems and rapid communication—skills that transfer directly (and powerfully) to building and scaling a brand. - "You’re a lot more of a weapon when you get to a brand and you’ve been at an agency." (A, 26:58)

• If Building a Brand:

  • Focus on high re-order/consumption, not heavy-to-ship, vanity or vice-driven products, easy social/prop value, with no head-to-head against big celebrities or exclusivities.
    • "I love the whole just health and wellness world...if you do your job right, you could get people healthier as a byproduct." (A, 28:43)

3. Moats: The Hard Truths of 2026

[17:21–23:08, 33:21–38:28]

• Moats Are Harder; Do You Even Need One?
  Most moats are rapidly eroding: “I told him that, and I was like, dude, you need a reason to exist... scream that this is a problem and this is our solution.” (A, 18:23)

  • Product/Supply Moats: Owning your own 3PL (Black Wolf Nation), exclusive ingredient rights (Update/Paraxanthine), or family/factory insider advantage (Buffy).
  • Distribution/Marketing Moats: Celebrity/cultural leverage (Kourtney Kardashian, David Beckham) or exclusive creator partnerships (Hudson method)—access and exclusivity matter as much as product.

• Practical Example:
  Brands founded on curation, access, or manufacturing oddities can carve space, but even these are at risk unless consistently reinvested and innovated.

4. Brutal Brand Autopsy: Commoditization, Pricing, and Where to Pivot

[30:03–38:28] [35:11–37:44]

• Blood Testing Brand Example:
  Ryan shares his own DTC blood test brand story—crushing early margins eroded by VC-subsidized competitors, race-to-the-bottom pricing, and fundamental commoditization risk.

  • "The only reason I'm making money is... people are probably buying from me because they're unaware that these other better priced options exist." (B, 33:05)

• Nik’s Practical Advice:

  • Differentiate on brand relatability or bundled membership/post-purchase offers.
  • Use loss-leader tactics and maximize affiliate backend, or consider exiting if passion/comparative advantage is gone: "I'd probably go with adding onto the back or kill it if you're not excited by it...For E Commerce to work well, especially today, you have to do 15 out of 10 things right." (A, 37:44)

5. If Nik Had $5 Million (With or Without Strings)

[38:54–42:25]

• Lean Mindset Doesn’t Change With Capital:
  Nik would still launch lean: "$100 to $150k to stay lean and launch a brand..." (A, 38:59)
• Downsides of Raising Too Much:
  "You're basically starting this game where you're already behind on valuation... saw so many businesses go through that." (A, 40:00)
• If No Strings Attached:
  All-in on highly defensible, innovative product, then go hard on distribution using the “Hudson method” (exclusive creators, community, performance media): "Put everything else into distribution, put it into Tribe and run the whole Hudson method..." (A, 41:00)

6. The “Agentic” Future: AI Meets Media Buying and Ops

[42:25–45:47]

• Agentic Buying Is Real:
  Triple Whale, Converge, and in-house builds enabling full-agent, cross-channel media buying for nine-figure brands. "Triple Whale has agentic media buying and they have multi hundred million dollar brands doing it fully." (A, 43:38)

• Creative Velocity Is King:
  Success depends on rapid, intentional creative production—faster than competitors.

• Nik’s Daily AI Stack:

  • Hermes via Telegram for most things, with shared state via HQ across Claude code/Codex for laptop workflows.
    • "Now my setup is I use a Hermes agent... then I use HQ... everything that I'm using is fully in sync." (A, 03:01; 45:28)

7. The Team of the Future: AI-Native, Hyper-Efficient, Lean

[46:37–47:15]

• Everyone Must Be Fluent in AI:
  Nik’s small team (“four people, all cracked out on AI”) is a competitive advantage. "You need to be cracked out on AI or I don’t know what the fuck you’re doing here." (A, 46:50)

• Mechanical Example:
  Building a sales one-pager for the kiosk business went from a 2-week process to a 2-minute AI/voice prompt flow.

8. Business Models, Blue Collar Arbitrage, and Advice for Aspiring Founders

[51:55–56:51]

• Opportunities in Main Street/Blue Collar:
  Huge marketing arbitrage potential, but misalignment in value perception and management style challenges.

  • "If you raised capital and bought up all the fencing businesses within three states... now you have roll up opportunity. But I don't know that world as well." (A, 56:01)

• Niche Agencies and Freelance Opportunities:

  • Specialize in one high-value technical skill (e.g., custom pixel setups, AI ad creative pipelines).
  • Three paths: contract/freelance, app/tool building, or true business (with all the associated risks/capital requirements).
    • "Make sure you know what you're signing up for... Entrepreneurship is hard as shit." (A, 52:40)

• Entrepreneurial Reality Check:

  • 99% chance of failure in 2 years.
  • Only jump in if you have the "itch or the bug"—otherwise, stay tactical and cashflow-focused.

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On Modern Leverage Shifting:
  "Leverage used to be elsewhere... Now it puts all the accountability on you." — Nik, 06:35

• On Why Most Moats Vanish:
  "I don't know if you need a moat, but you definitely need at least that—[a reason to exist]." — Nik, 18:14

• On Differentiation in Commodities:
  "You're competing against convenience or price... Either figure out what is your moat, or catapult that into a backend offer." — Nik, 33:41

• On Caution When Raising Money:
  "The only downside... is you're starting this game where you're already behind on valuation." — Nik, 39:59

• On AI’s Future for Small Teams:
  "I have four people. We're all cracked out on AI... our speed of doing things is just insane now." — Nik, 46:50

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Timestamps for Important Segments

• AI and Agency Landscape: 02:01–16:53
• Agency Model vs. Brand Model: 13:23–27:43
• Moats, Competitive Advantage, and Real-World Examples: 17:21–23:08, 33:21–38:28
• Blood Testing Brand & DTC Survival: 30:03–38:28
• Raising Capital & The Lean Launch Theory: 38:54–42:25
• Agentic Media Buying and Creative Velocity: 42:25–45:47
• Blueprint for AI-Native Teams: 46:37–47:15
• Blue Collar/Legacy Arbitrage Opportunities: 51:55–56:51
• Final Advice and Entrepreneurship Reality Check: 52:40–end

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Tone & Language

Nik is candid, wry, and tactical—the conversation is full of hot takes, blunt advice, and practical, immediately-actionable insights. Genuine encouragement for “anyone with the itch” shines through, but always grounded in hard truths and operational realities of modern DTC.

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For Listeners Who Haven’t Tuned In

This episode is a crash course in the no-bullshit reality of DTC and agency life in 2026, AI’s redefining of how—and where—value gets built, and a tactical blueprint for anyone trying to survive (or thrive) in a market with no more easy moats. Listen for the spicy takes, stay for the blueprint, and leave with a new urgency to “get cracked out on AI”—or risk getting left behind.

Transcript

[A]

Welcome back to another episode of Limited Supply. I'm your host, Nick Sharma and today we're talking with Ryan. Actually, Ryan is talking with me and we're pulling out a bunch of insights out of my head, things that I've been working on or seeing or just diving really deep into. So we're talking about three main things today. AI agency versus in house and what makes a brand defensible in 2026. So I think it's gonna be a great episode. Ryan's an amazing interviewer and this was just a really fun, crispy conversation. So that's number one. Number two is the Q4 summit is officially announced. So we're going to be rolling out announcements of speakers which you're going to hear about, you know, over the next few weeks. But the Q4 summit is happening again this year. This is going to be, I believe, our third one. It's going to be the biggest one, the best one we've ever done. We already have insane speakers committed. You know, one is built basically the Hudson strategy, but pre TikTok. So on bloggers, YouTubers, Instagram and really other avenues of affiliate. So I'm super excited for that one. We have a founder of a hundred plus million dollar company talking about sourcing and offers and prepping for Q4 and how that whole world comes together. Anyways, it's going to be a sick, sick event. We're doing it at Capital in New York, which is an old bank building. It's a beautiful building. So go to Nik Co Q4. Nik Co Q4. That's where you're going to get the ticket for free. If you have any questions about the Q4 summit or want to learn more, shoot me a DM on Twitter @Mr. Sharma or just shoot me an email nicknick co. Remember, there's no C in that. All right, we're going to get into today's episode. I'm curious to hear what you think. So shoot me a DM and let me know what you think. I will see you at the end here.

[B]

Round two with Nick Sharma. Dude, I have to say, last time we did the episode, it was middle of the winter.

[A]

Yes.

[B]

And we looked, we looked pale as ghosts. Looking back, we look layered up. We look way better now.

[A]

Now, today it's like, I think it's like 98 degrees outside. I know Canada can't control their wildfires. All that smoke's coming here. But it's nice.

[B]

No doubt, dude. So I had to start by asking you about AI and agents because so much has Changed in that world from our last conversation.

[A]

Yeah. When did we do our last conversation?

[B]

It was quite a while ago. I would say it's probably about 14 months ago, over a year.

[A]

Okay. So I probably wasn't even really doing much, if anything.

[B]

Yeah, I really think it was.

[A]

It was before, basically like basic chat, GPT.

[B]

Exactly.

[A]

Claude might have been out. Yeah, yeah.

[B]

I don't think I had ever used Claude at that point. Yeah, yeah. So a lot has changed. So what kind of, what, what are you seeing right there? What are the use cases and fun stuff you've been messing around with?

[A]

Yeah, I mean, I've. I've gone so deep in the world of AI. I exited my agency in October and basically after that I was like, all right, I'm not gonna get left behind in this AI race. So the most intimidating thing to me at that time was trying to set up a Claudebot or an OpenCloud on a Mac Mini and everybody was buying one. And I started to see on Twitter that everybody's making these websites and apps and all this stuff. And so I was like, all right, I need to just figure this out. And so I spent a Saturday night from basically 9pm to 9am, figured out how to just learn Claude code, the Open Claw stuff. I started adding apps and integrating things, learned what power you get when you get access to an API key, for example, of different apps. And since then just been doing a ton of stuff in AI. Now my setup is I use a Hermes agent for probably a good amount of work, which has like 20 agents on it. So Hermes runs on my Mac mini with 20 agents. And then I use this app called HQ, if you've heard of that one. It's like a very good memory system basically, and that syncs across all devices. So then when I pull up Claude code or codecs on my laptop, everything that I'm using is fully in sync.

[B]

Awesome.

[A]

But I've been using it a lot. I mean, with brands of all different sizes. There's so many interesting use cases. Yesterday for a multi billion dollar food company, I was helping them build out or concept a CRM. And so I was like, we should use postscript. That was my first thought right when you think about CRM and E commerce. And so I went to postscript and I was like, guys, we got this opportunity. They're not on Shopify. And they were like, cool, that's fine. We're now opening up our platform too. So we'll have APIs and you don't have to be on Shopify. And we're gonna launch email soon. And so then I was able to use my agent, along with the information I got from postscript, to basically build out what a CRM looks like. Ended up building a scoring algorithm to rank people so that we're not hitting people too often or too few times. So that was one fun use case. The other one everybody's talking about is you're trying to build out your creative supply chain. So you've got static ads, video ads, copywriting, landing pages, advertorials, listicles, all these things you just need to produce to generate more awareness and drive more traffic and sales. Everybody's now using agents to now build those pieces. So whether it's like I was with Cody Plafker yesterday, he's built an entire engine to create emails and static ads using GPT 5.6 or Fable. And so like, that's a huge use case. I've seen brands now basically, you know, launching landing pages within an hour or two using their agents and connecting it to Framer's API. And, you know, you build out your kind of brand kit or style guide kit, put it in GitHub, and then using Framer and, you know, whether it's Claude code or Hermes or whatever, you can now just launch landing pages in an hour. So, like, what used to take, you know, two weeks with a really good agency, or maybe a week if you had a really big. A really good internal team with resources, otherwise maybe four to six weeks for an average brand is now taking like two hours. But yeah, there's so many use cases, you know, everything from like, even. I think the easiest use case is, you know, just plugging everything in and being able to just ask it anything or tell it to go look at best practices. You know, like what I've seen some people do is they will. They've downloaded probably like your podcast transcripts. My podcast transcripts, the nine operators, podcast transcripts. Like whoever's talking about stuff going on and then they'll save that to a database and then they'll plug in all their e commerce stuff, Klaviyo, postscript, Shopify, everything. And then they'll say, based on all this advice, what should I be doing better? And it's legit, like something you'd pay a consultant 10, 15 grand for. There's just so many ways where I feel like the leverage is now in your own pocket. Leverage used to be elsewhere, right? It used to be like, oh, if somebody had a really good designer, they had that leverage. If somebody had a development team in House, they had that leverage. If somebody has the ability to just come up with these ideas and bring them to life, they had the leverage. But now it's like it puts all the accountability on you and yeah, it's pretty sweet.

[B]

It really is.

[A]

Yeah. I think now the challenge is more around distribution and continuing to get those eyeballs and maintain that customer because customers also now leave easier. They have less loyalty to a brand because of everything that's just coming at them.

[B]

Yeah. I mean, it's so fascinating thinking about, I feel like a broken record in talking about this, but like unique data being such a important element of all this stuff. And like, you know, ChatGPT is incredible, but it works on averages and the averages of all this, you know, data. And if you ask it for general marketing advice, it's going to give you some average ass marketing advice.

[A]

Totally.

[B]

And when you have it trained on, you know, specific unique data from people that you know for a fact are high level marketers and are up to date, like, it becomes such a competitive advantage. It's really, really, really cool. And yeah, I mean, when you start to just kind of grasp it, your mind goes in a trillion different directions of all the things you could do.

[A]

Yeah, I know. I've been, you know, like that whole mindset of I'm not getting left behind. I tell all my homies that too. I'm like, we're not getting left behind. You know, like, there's so much you can do. And you know, I have friends who are like music producers and I'm like, yo, you need to get on Manus. You need to get on Claude Code, you need to get on Codex, you know, and plug it into Ableton, plug it into Rekordbox. Like, whatever you're doing, do it and try to do it with AI. Because the only thing that's gonna happen over time is its AI is gonna get more and more simplified. Like we've already seen it happen from. Think about, like when we did our last interview, I probably mentioned a prd, like a product requirement document, which, you know, I would build with ChatGPT and then take that document and go to repl.it and then try to build the app there. Right. But now we're at a point where you just tell the idea to Manus and the whole thing gets done. But because it gets more simplified, you kind of miss out on understanding the steps happening behind the scenes. And the more you miss out on that, the less you're going to be able to diagnose things later. It's like the media buyers who used to buy ads in Power Editor, you know, in 2011, 12, 13, and then, you know, did all the manual ads buying from, you know, 14 to maybe 18. Like those guys have an intuition when they're buying media and they know the things going on behind the scenes. It's not just the algorithm. Like they know actually what those pieces are. And that's basically happening in the AI world. So I feel like people should just get in and play with it and see what happens. And you know, you could like. Yeah, there's just so many things you could build.

[B]

It's also like a lot easier to do than it sounds that people have in their head. Like, I remember when I set up like my Hermes, I was like this. I was like, I gotta the whole weekend, one goal intimidating thing.

[A]

It starts in terminal.

[B]

Yes, exactly.

[A]

You know, that's the most important intimidating thing ever. The first time I set up an open claw was with this guy Gio and he basically he was nice enough to just like. He was like, I'll just screen share with you and like do it for you. You can just watch it happen. And. And it was so complicated like the first time. And then I was like, I should just do this a couple times myself. And then once I started to feel the power of it, I was like, yo, to all my friends, I was like, I need to get you guys on this. So I've probably made like 20 to 30 Mac mini setups now at this point. Now I can do it in like 30 minutes.

[B]

Nice. How much do you think you're spending on credits right now?

[A]

Well.

[B]

Or tokens.

[A]

Yeah, I mean I actually don't know the token usage. But you know, two months ago, right after Claude cut their. Yeah, that was made. You have to go API. Yeah, I think the follow the two to two or three months after that it was like 4000, 5000, 6000. My Manus bill at one point was like 8 or 9000. But like I was building anything and everything you could possibly think of. I was building games for friends. I was building like I built this roast Nick co, which takes 30,000 lines of a markdown file of how I think about landing pages. And then you put your site in and for five bucks it'll just run it through the whole thing, give you a recommended like what you should do for your landing page. So I was just trying to build everything. And it sounds like you have Hermes agent too. Do you use Telegram with it?

[B]

I do. I've gone away from using it on a more consistent basis just because I found that for most of my use cases I could do them within Claude code and I don't really need to take on the extra token usage.

[A]

Yeah, yeah.

[B]

But yes, I do use it in Telegram.

[A]

Yeah, it's so much nicer that it

[B]

could watch YouTube videos and I mean, yeah, there's a lot of really cool benefits to it.

[A]

Totally. The other thing is if. Do you Pay for the $200 a month ChatGPT. Okay so if you, if you plug in GPT 56 Soul, that thing is on par with Fable. But like you get it for the $200 a month plan, you don't pay on top.

[B]

Okay. Yeah. That to me is cracking right after this conversation.

[A]

It's the first time I'm using a model and feeling like, oh, this thing actually is like reading my brain to some degree, like under understanding a lot more than the previous ones.

[B]

Super cool, super interesting. What's exciting you in that world right now then? I mean obviously you're building a million things and you have a little bit of. It seems like a little bit more mental space now since you agency Congratulations by the way to just like think about your next move. Like for somebody right now who's you know, seeing everything going on right now and like maybe they have an agency, maybe they wanted to start an agency but then they got cold feet because they're like what's going on in this world? I don't really know if media buying or you know, these sort of marketing stuff is going to be something worthy of an agency in two to five years, whatever.

[A]

Yeah, I mean I think, think about it. I think the agency world is, is, is a lot more niche down now than it used to be. Like, you know, I don't know how much room there is for like an agency that's good at everything anymore. Most agencies, most agencies generally are like really good at one thing or nothing. Or nothing. Yeah. But it's rare that like an agency's actually good at multiple things. But I do, you know, I exited cause I felt like I didn't want to do what I was doing at the agency, which was basically a lot of like what just felt like people management and ops management and like me personally, I wanted to just. I want to build things. I want to like I was itching to like spend more time in the world of AI because I couldn't do it because I was so busy dealing with other stuff. But yeah, I mean for me like what's interesting now is I'm just building things so, like, I've started a couple things. You know, there's a brand I'm working on bringing to market. There's a phone charging kiosk business that I launched with a couple friends, and we brought that to market and started putting that at venues. And there's one or two other things that are kind of just in the works. But the common theme is basically like, okay, from everything that I learned at the agency, all the patterns, understanding unit economics, what makes a good business, what breaks a good business, what do I know about brand, and what do I know about consumer psychology and community marketing and all these things? Like, out of that, how can I filter down to a couple of really good ideas? And then can I use everything that I know, all the knowledge that I have and AI to basically bring this to market efficiently? And I think the plan is basically, you know, how can we bring this to market efficiently? Test it very rigorously for, like, six months, Understand if there's an opportunity here, and then from there, decide, do we, like, try to scale this thing or do we say, okay, we tried this, it didn't work. Onto the next one. Yeah, the only thing, like, when I say it out loud, I sound stupid. I feel like I sound stupid because so many people have tried this in the past. But it's funny. Like, me and two or three other growth marketers I know that I respect a lot are also doing the same thing, and they also say the same thing. Like, it sounds stupid when you say it out loud because it's failed so much in the past. But I think with the growth marketing knowledge, plus being cracked out on AI and then, of course, any other advantages when it comes to having done this before, or having economic advantages as it comes to a 3 PL, or having a partner who can help source ridiculously good stuff in China, I think those are all advantages, too. But, yeah, that's kind of what I'm working on now. And it's honestly just been a lot of fun. It's like, every day I'm just building things, you know, it's just like, okay, what am I gonna build today? Or what am I gonna go create? Or, like, you know, Saturday night I was at the office and I was like, how come? Like, I should be creating AI influencers? Let me try doing that and see, look at, you know, go through that process. And so, yeah, it's just been a lot of fun, really. But it's been like. I'd say efficiency is, like, the number one thing that I'm trying to value across everything. You know? Yeah.

[B]

It is awesome, man. It kind of. It reminds me of. Have you ever read the book the Lean Startup?

[A]

I. I've like heard of it.

[B]

Pretty much the only thing, the. The only thing you need to take away from that book is. Is just the one line of test, test before investing heavy into.

[A]

Totally. Yeah.

[B]

And it sounds like that's kind of just like the main is like, let's use AI and just build, build, build.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

And then see what sticks.

[A]

Totally.

[B]

You know? Totally. And it brings up an interesting conversation of moats because in that whole world, like you were saying, with the competitive advantages of having a good supplier or having this, you know, unique knowledge. I'd been thinking a lot about moats, just in the fact that I think a lot of people thought they had a moat before AI. And we're seeing like a lot of these things are kind of getting destroyed. What do you see as like, if we're trying to think about creating a product or a business just in general, that because you obviously you want a moat that has this unique competitive advantage. How can we kind of create that? Like, what do you think? You know, in this world that is changing so fast, you know, that is.

[A]

I mean, it's like moats are definitely tougher now, I would say.

[B]

Do you think you need a moat?

[A]

Yeah. Well, I think you need like a reason to exist. You know, I was just talking to this guy yesterday. He's a super successful guy. He co founded this, like, a fertility product. And you know, there's no moat. Like, there's really no moat. It's just like another supplement brand that exists. And I told him that, and I was like, dude, you need a reason to exist. Like, you need to scream that this is a problem. And because of this problem, you're not gonna lead a fulfilling life. As fulfilling of a life as you can. And this is our solution, and this is why it works. And here's why everybody else sucks at doing this. I don't know if you need a moat, but you definitely need at least that. And I think Gruens is probably a good example of that Groons are creating. They basically came to market with the perfect product, market fit, which was basically like a reason to exist. Right. You're missing out on the fiber and all the greens. We're gonna make it super easy and in a way that Americans are gonna love to consume. And that was pretty much it. Then they just started running ads and within the first 60 days it started to take off. But I do think there is a lot of value to moats. There's basically a few main ones I think you can rely on or try to get involved in. One is on the product side or basically in the supply chain side. So, you know, pre sale stuff. So anything from, like, you've got a, you know, like the Black Wolf Nation, that was like a men's skin care brand that used to exist. You know, they owned their own three pl, and that was like one of their side businesses. So, like, that was a moat for them. They paid basically at cost for shipping, nothing for pick pack storage. And, you know, that might be. That's a few dollars an order that they're saving right there. Another one might be that like, you know, like the Buffy. Buffy is like a longtime betting brand. You know, that guy's family owns the factory where they produce all the bedding and material. So, like, that's his moat. Like, no one else can get that. You know what I mean? And then so basically, like, you know, if you've got friend, family, or a homie who owns something that gets you crazy, Advantage 3 PL or product or shipping stuff, whatever, then I think there's a moat you can build around your product. So, like, do you have actual innovation in your product? Is there something that's patented? You know, is it a formula or an ingredient that other people can't get? You know, is it like. Like there's that energy drink update. They have an exclusive on the ingredient for Paraxanthine.

[B]

Do you remember when I told you about Parisanthine in our last conversation?

[A]

Did you?

[B]

So I. After a conversation, I. So I'm like into weird biohacking stuff.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

And after our last convers and I brought up Paraxanthine and I was like, I think that this little, like, coffee alternative caffeine thing is. Is going to blow up. I think it's a. It's a great product. Wow. Super random. Side note, that was just funny. Continue.

[A]

But like, for them, their moat was like, no one else can get that ingredient, which is.

[B]

It's a great ingredient. I highly recommend people check it out.

[A]

And then on the distribution or marketing side, you know, like, if you've got Kourtney Kardashian, if you got David Beckham, like, that's a huge moat. Right? Not only because you get a ridiculous level of awareness and instant eyeballs, but you can walk into any retailer in the country and just walk right in and they're very happy to have the meeting. And your test rollout is national instead of in a tiny little region. So I think Those are like, I mean, those are the main moats that I think about. There's obviously also like, if you're doing things around licensing, you know, you might be able to be the exclusive beverage licensee of like, you know, some big franchise or whatever. But yeah, I think those, those are at least like moats that I think about most. It's basically like, okay, is it around the supply chain or is it around the brand or distribution?

[B]

Yeah, yeah, the, the creator stuff is interesting because I think for a lot of people, like, you know, it's going to be hard to have a moat in supply chain when you're not familiar with that world. But you know, I think a lot of people would be even on a smaller scale, like a more of a niche micro creator. There's a lot of kind of competitive advantage you can gain by partnering with

[A]

those people 100%, especially if you can do like what Hudson did, which is you get exclusivity on the creator. So it's not like one creator is working with even two or three companies. It's literally just one forever, you know, and there's a huge moat in that because now you've basically got an army that only does work with you. And, and it's also way more authentic to a customer. You know, if they go and look up the profile and they see that Sally only has 5,000 followers, she only talks about one brand ever because she's obsessed, you know.

[B]

Yeah, no, no doubt, dude. So I really wanted to ask you this question because, you know, I come from more of an E. Comm background. So many friends of mine come from the agency background. And man, oh man, do I get jealous sometimes just in terms of the fact of like high recurring revenue. Obviously it's high ticket. It seems like it's a lot easier to sell a service which has an ROI to it, you know. And then kind of on top of that, when I just think about the fact that like, you know, for me to make $100,000, I need to sell a lot of customers. Yeah, for them it's like 50 customers, you know, and you know, I think grass is obviously greener always on the other side, but I think you have a super unique perspective kind of being on both ends of that spectrum, seeing both sides of that equation.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

When you think about like, you know, the right business or like what's your kind of 2 cents when it comes to that agency, E commerce or just business model in general?

[A]

For me, I think it depends, like it depends on you as an individual. But my Take is basically I worked at a brand first for about two years and because of my experiences there, I was able to start consulting. And then that kind of snowballed into an agency. And then as the agency started to grow, then I was like, oh wait, this is now just people management and operations management. But until a certain point, like until probably the 200k a month mark, 250k, I think agencies are great. You also like past a certain point, the quality of the output starts to go down unless you really are sacrificing profits and investing in the best possible talent. So like, you know, basically you're also competing with brands for that same talent. Like all of the senior creative people that I had are basically now at like Groons, Array, Marsman, you know, that was the talent pool I was competing with basically. So for me, like I decided early on that I didn't want to sacrifice, I didn't want to just gain margin for exchange of like producing a shittier product. And I think that's why so much of our websites or our stuff was really sick. But at the same time, the thing that you build like agency, you get cash up front essentially, right? You're basically doing work for exchange of cash, but then as soon as that work's done, your cash stops. So that's the thing that sucks about the agencies. You're not really building much longevity. There's with the brand, if you turn your ads off, you still got subscriptions, you still got organic, you got all these other channels. When you're ready to sell the business, you're selling the brand, you're not just selling the product or the revenue that you were able to get. Whereas on the agency it is kind of that you're basically focused on, okay, how much margin are you able to squeeze out? And then where are you at in terms of EBITDA or revenue. So all that said, I think agencies are phenomenal businesses to learn because like a lot of the people, a lot of the great marketers today have come from the world of agencies where you're basically like, you know, thrown into a pool when you don't know how to swim and you gotta figure out how to swim and then by the end of it, you're doing laps. So agencies teach you a lot. You kind of get into this boiler room environment out the go. So you learn how to communicate quickly, communicate up, down, left, right to clients internally, across other vendors or partners. So there's a lot of like benefits. It's almost like, I would say the equivalent of like going to college before you go to a brand. On the other hand, there's a lot of people who are just wicked smart out the gate and they start, you know, the brand thing right away or they maybe get to a brand, but they. Yeah, I don't know. I think you could go either way. My personal recommendation for people is go from agency to brand. I think you're a lot more of a weapon when you get to a brand and you've been at an agency because you've seen multiple brands at the same time. You can, you have a better like collection of patterns at an agency versus a brand. And yeah, and also again, I think culture wise, like you, you know, you just get like thick skin and all that at the agency side. But you know, if I were to like decide which one do I want to run and operate today, I would say brand. Yeah.

[B]

What type of brand do you think that would be?

[A]

I mean, you know, the typical for me is, you know, high consumption or high reorder.

[B]

Okay.

[A]

Not too heavy to ship, you know, caters toward vanity or vice, easy to share, easy to be a prop when it comes to content. And ideally something where you're not competing against people who've got exclusivities on retailers or celebrities or creators or things like that. So yeah, anything from. I love the whole just health and wellness world. That's where a lot of our work has been and that's where I started my commerce journey. And I love the idea that like if you do your job right, you could get people healthier as a byproduct of whatever you're doing.

[B]

Yeah, it makes it a great mission.

[A]

Yeah. I'm not a huge fan of the apparel world. I think it's insanely hard. I don't know how people like Hudson do it, man. You gotta be like insane in a good way to do that. And yeah, super interesting.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

So, okay, I told you about the benefits. Now here's Saatva on what changed when their brand moved to TV advertising.

[B]

Using Tatari TV has been the perfect way to drive upper funnel awareness and overall brand awareness and favorability. That also supplements our lower funnel performance channels. Where we've always been pretty successful and now we're seeing even additional scale. The beauty of working with Tatari is we can leverage their platform to look at both our linear buys, streaming buys under one roof and be able to compare performance between the two media channels to optimize them as one sort of holistic TV approach.

[A]

Want the same head to Nick co Tatari to learn more That's Nik Co Tatri.

[B]

I mean, I love kind of you breaking things down in that way because it shrinks the search a lot more than probably you would think about totally. I mean, kind of running through the like. I wish I knew that when, when I got started because yeah, like my product, we sell lab tests, like blood testing.

[A]

Okay.

[B]

Direct to consumer. And you know, I think that there's a lot of challenges that come up with something like that, that like, you know, you initially, there's pros and cons and you initially kind of just have this idea and want to try it and you're totally green and don't have any of these experience. But I think for myself now, I find myself in a position where three years later we've had success. But it's like I know for a fact I'm far away from a lot of the unit economics and things that I need to have this be something bigger. For example, I had the perfect unit economics here, which is 80% gross margins. Huge TAM, you know, high discretionary money to spend those sorts of things. And it's like lab test, blood testing is a commodity. First of all. It's, there's a lot of venture capital that has entered into the space and it's like kind of like a race to the bottom in the sense because the, there is no real, like if you're getting your blood work done, you know, at any of these different companies, there's not really a major difference. Like your results are going to be your results.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

Um, and in terms of margins, like, you know, when I, when I first started, I was running at like probably 45, 50% gross margins and now that's down to like 30 and I'm still way overpriced and compared to some of the other competitors in the market.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

Is that.

[A]

Cause they're selling stuff on the back of that.

[B]

It's, it's interesting. I think it's twofold. I think one, you know, you take like Function Health for example. They've raised over 300 million in VC. And I think that they're kind of, they're, they're running, you know, subscription based. So I think they're operating at a loss to acquire a customer at the current moment.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

At a price point that is just, you know, I don't even get the wholesale price at that and we use the same wholesaler. So it's like, it's interesting there. And I think they're starting to add things into the back end. I think they're starting to do you know, more supplements and I think like peptides and that whole world, but I think they're still very much in like beta with some of that stuff. So I think it's kind of tbd. But it's interesting because I find myself in this position where it's like, you know, I'm making money, it's. But I know that it feels either one temporary because I feel like the only reason I'm making money is because like an inefficient market in the sense that like people are probably buying from me because they're unaware that these other better priced options exist. And I find myself in this weird kind of predicament of being like, you know, where do I go here? What would be your advice in a situation like that?

[A]

Well, you know, like one of the problems with competing in a commodity market is you're competing against convenience or price. So like if you're selling like toothpaste, you're competing against somebody going to CVS around the corner when they run out. And if you're selling this, you're competing against everybody else who's selling it for cheaper, right?

[B]

Yep.

[A]

In your case I would say like, either, you know, basically you gotta figure out like, what is your moat? Like why should people come buy from you? It might be that your brand is a lot more relatable than these VC backed, you know, gradient loving startups.

[B]

Gradient.

[A]

Or you know, it might be that, you know, when people sign up with you, they get X, Y or Z after. You know, maybe there's like a membership component that you get enrolled into and it includes, you know, you know, mindfulness app and this and that and the other thing. You know, if I were you too, I would basically, I mean if, you know, like, like what happens after the blood test, like I would use that and catapult that into affiliate offers or build your own storefront or process orders and collect the cash and then place orders separately and get those shipped. You know, like I would, I would basically try to figure out like the post acquisition world, I know, like Superpower for example, like whatever. And I imagine same for function, like whatever they say is the membership price, by the time people check out it's like double or triple because they just add shit as they go. So I feel like you could use that as like a loss leader and yeah, catapult that in. Or if you're like, hey, I'm tired of this, like I tried this, I don't want to be competing in a market like this where all I'm Doing is swimming upstream. Then you know, there's probably a company out there that's looking to add this into their stack.

[B]

Yeah. I think how I kind of see it is I think there's three different options. I think number one would be to kind of parlay it into a high ticket health coaching offer of sorts. You know, I don't want to be a health coach. I'd probably bring on like a physician or somebody to be, to. To be that role. My kind of, I guess beef with that would just be high ticket health coaching I think is a pretty hard offer to sell in the sense that like, you know, it's hard to get businesses to spend money. Yeah, I feel like, you know, B2C and kind of a little higher tick health related.

[A]

What about if you became the white label provider for other health coaches or concierge doctors? Yeah, yeah. Like, you know, all these concierge doctors in the city that get paid five, ten grand a year from their people if, if you're their back end.

[B]

I think the issue is that it's a bit of an arbitrage in a sense.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

You know, that it's, it's not really like pretty damn easy to sell to, to you just pretty much need a doctor's license in order to get these tests. Got it. So it's not like it's a super difficult thing from that sense. Yeah, I think it's one, it's the health coaching. The second option is I think the moat lies in the interpretation of the labs and you know, reading through all the reviews and complaints from you know, Superpower and Function. The number one complaint is like, I just want to talk to some, just want to talk to somebody about my results and I want actual insights and not like AI slop answers. And so I think that, you know, you could do something cool with like almost creating a. How I was thinking about it was like take a content creator in the health niche and gather all their posts. Kind of all the things like you were saying with how you're doing things currently with like the landing pages and the roast. Nick.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

Where I gather all their data and then I have like, you know, a lab test plus an interpretation from this like creator. AI.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

Of this certain person. And then I could kind of co brand that with a bunch of different creators.

[A]

Yep.

[B]

And so that's one option. But I still. It doesn't solve the margin issue because I think the margins, you know, it's, it's. You would need to like you said, kind of have something on the Back end.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

And all the thing. And then I think the third option is kind of what you said of just throw, throw it out and sell it to, you know, somebody who wants, you know, this offer in there.

[A]

Right? Yeah, yeah, I think, yeah, I would probably go with adding onto the back or kill it if you're not excited by it. Honestly. The thing too is for E Commerce to work well, especially today, you have to do 15 out of 10 things. Right. You have to. If you don't, you can't even step in to compete with the guys that are just on it. And so I think a big part of that is making sure you're passionate too, about what, what you're creating and selling.

[B]

Yeah, it's a great perspective. It's a great point.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

I mean, so right now for you, you just have this exit. So now you're in this position where you have a little free time on your hands. So let's say, let's say Elon Musk started listening to Limited Supply and was like, yeah, man, this guy, this guy knows his shit. Yeah, I want to invest in this guy. And he was like, dude, I'm going to give you $5 million. Start whatever you want. Yeah, I just wanted to be an investor in it.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

What are you doing?

[A]

Well, honestly, I probably wouldn't deviate much from my current plan. You basically need, at least in my eyes, about 100 to 150k to stay lean and launch a brand branding identity. Your first purchase order, your first order of branded boxes, tape, packaging material, the actual product, you know, getting it in the hands of your three pl, and then initial capital for ads, you know, maybe like 25 to 50k. You could do all that for 150, in my opinion.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

And the problem with raising money, which, you know, I've had VCs who are basically just said that they were like, yo, whatever, like, whatever you want to do, we're just going to put this bank, this money into a bank account and you can use it however you want. And then whatever, you know, you start creating, like, we got first dibs on that.

[B]

Yeah, yeah.

[A]

And the only downside, in my opinion is like, one, I did this to like get free, and I feel like I'm not going to be free there. But two is, you know, let's say you take 5 million bucks or 2 million bucks or whatever, you're basically starting this game where you're already behind on valuation. And I invested in this drink company, Barcode, a few years ago and they did this thing where they raised 2 million on a 10. So they started basically six months before launch. If they don't hit 2030 million valuation by the time they burn 2 million or in 24 months, whichever comes first, they're already cooked. And so like, you know, I saw so many businesses go through that and like, that's probably why I wouldn't take 5 million because then you're starting at like a 50 million.

[B]

What if there was no strings attached? What if it was just your exit

[A]

and there's no strings attached, $5 million. Then I'd put it all into distribution, like make a crazy innovative product that's very defensible. Maybe it's patented, maybe there's a new ingredient that you got exclusivity to or something like that. And then put everything else into distribution, put it into Tribe and run the whole Hudson method and parallel that with trying to crack the code on performance media.

[B]

And for those that don't know about Tribe and what's going on there, because

[A]

yeah, Tribe is sick. It's basically everybody now talks about the Hudson method from comfort, basically building your own internal community discord, community of creators. You know, we're talking like 20 to 100,000. And then eventually these people, the people who are really good, you bring them on as like full time creators. And these people are pretty much just making money off commission. It's not like they're making a retainer, but some people will make a million bucks a year doing that. And so Tribe basically is the software that facilitates all that. So everything from finding and sourcing and messaging them, bringing them in, you know, managing their payouts, making sure they're up to date on product specifications or angles or things like that. And so yeah, so I'd put it into that, I put it in, you know, that's kind of like the, the TV or guerrilla marketing of 2026. And then I'd go hard on performance media, you know, Facebook, Google, landing pages, offers and, and then make sure you have a killer product.

[B]

Are you seeing a lot of, of stuff going on right now with AI and media buying in terms of.

[A]

Well, to be honest, like I've actually personally not bought media seriously for a minute. So I'm not super deep in that world, but from my friends who are there. Is agentic media buying happening?

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

You know, triple whale.

[B]

Is it not getting banned?

[A]

It's not getting banned. Okay, so the things that were getting banned were like when people would try to hook up things that were not kosher with Facebook.

[B]

Okay, yeah.

[A]

But if you do it through the. Yeah, if you do it. Well, Manus just got blocked. You know that acquisition got blocked by China.

[B]

Oh, shoot.

[A]

Yeah. Manus is so good that China was like, you guys are not getting this.

[B]

Wow.

[A]

Yeah, Manus is insane. It's cracked out. But no, if you like. For example, Converge is another app that a lot of people use for custom conversion events. So you know, people buy like two blood tests versus three or four, like it sends a different conversion event back to Meta. But they also have like agentic media buying now starting to be built, built in there and people are using it. Triple Whale has agentic media buying and they have multi hundred million dollar brands doing it fully.

[B]

Really?

[A]

And basically now has become a game of like how fast and how proficiently can you make and add creative into the creative pipeline basically and make sure too that the creative is like intentional with its angles and its messaging and trying to reach a different consumer.

[B]

Super cool. Yeah.

[A]

The whole agent, like connect Claude code to anything or Codex to anything is about to get wild.

[B]

I know. I think that that's going to be for. I think that that could be a saving grace for a lot of SaaS companies. Yeah, totally. Super interesting. So if we're talking, we mentioned Hermes, openclaw, Manus, Claude Code, Codex in that world, kind of. When do you use what for yourself?

[A]

I use, I actually used to use Manus for a lot of stuff. And if people are not using Claude code or they don't have their own Mac Mini setup, just use Manus. Go to like whatever you normally use, ChatGPT or regular Claude and tell it to make you a full document of everything it knows about you, what your preferences are, what you like, what you don't like, what your goals are, your visions, et cetera. And then give that to Manus and just use Manus because Manus is like the best everyday use type of app. And then the main setup I use is pretty much Hermes for everything. But when I'm at my laptop I might pull out Claude code and just do it in Claude code versus Hermes. You have to use Telegram for everything.

[B]

So you use Hermes within Claude code as the harness.

[A]

No, no, no. I'll use, I'll use Hermes and communicate with that through Telegram, but then separately I'll use Claude code. But the thing is, because I use HQ, the memory's in sync.

[B]

Yes.

[A]

So every minute or 15 seconds it's sending updates and downloading the updates. So like on the way here, I was using Hermes as I was walking to write a couple emails or I guess That's a bad example. But whatever I had done there, it's. Next time I open Codex, it's already synced up.

[B]

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Super fascinating. I mean, I think in terms of jobs in that whole world, it's super interesting to just see like the macro perspective of where we're going and where things are heading. It's super odd. Like, you have an incredible va. Yeah. Who I spoke with Ramis. Ramis. Quite a bit. And I'm like, damn, this is, you

[A]

know, I need one more like a chief of staff.

[B]

I need one of these. Like, how do you think that that role, like, you know, being so deep in AI, but also leveraging VAs and employees, like, do you think that we're gonna go leaner in terms of teams and there's for sure there's. We're gonna have this kind of a job crisis. You think that that's the direction we're heading?

[A]

Yeah. I don't know, like what the job crisis will look like. You know, I, I hope that it's just jobs get displaced and move towards different things. But Ramiz is cracked out on AI just as much as I am. And my whole team is. I have four people. We're all cracked out on AI. And it's something. I'm like, guys, you need to be cracked out on AI or I don't know what the fuck you're doing here. So they've all gotten 10 times more efficient and our speed of like doing things is just insane now.

[B]

Yeah. As a result, it's super cool, man.

[A]

Yeah. I mean, like, you know, a simple example was like, you know that the battery charging kiosk station for venues. Right. Like we, we yesterday had the idea that, oh, you know, we know all these people who can actually refer venues to us because they have a better relationship with them. But we need to build a good one sheeter or a one pager that they can pull up to read the benefits or show the venue owner or whatever it is, you know, that would have taken like a two week thing, even if it was maybe longer. If it was just. It was not me and just for me's doing it and you know, now that's like a two minute whisper flow into my phone and then it gets built by the time, you know, I finish lunch.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

I mean, man, it's insane.

[B]

Super cool. Have you been DJing a lot?

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

Has that been the main focus right now?

[A]

Yeah, not the main focus, but a good side quest. A good side quest since. Yeah. Like probably mid to late Last year,

[B]

what's the Instagram on that called again?

[A]

After Hours.

[B]

After Hours. So no H, After Hours came up on my suggested on Instagram.

[A]

Oh, man.

[B]

I clicked on it and I was so confused. What, like, is this Nick?

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

I was like, this is awesome, dude. This is cool.

[A]

Troy and I started. Started making music like, last year, and we were just like, let's try to see if there's. If we can just like, let's just put music out and see what happens. And first we just thought it would be a fun thing to do, and then a fun thing, like, you know, with our friends. And then. Then it was like, oh, wait, there's a lot of, like, fun things that come as a result of this. You know, you go to. You have cool experiences, you go to cool places, you meet cool people, you get into cool rooms. You know, if you can. If you can DJ a good set, you have some leverage, you know?

[B]

No doubt.

[A]

You always get first choice on ox. So, yeah, it's been fun.

[B]

Super cool, brother. Yeah. So I want to ask you because I'm going to. I'm gonna go to China in October.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

Mainly as, like, a curiosity side quest.

[A]

Yeah. Are you going to the fair?

[B]

Canton Fair.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

I don't think my. My timing's gonna work out. I want.

[A]

I really want to go next year.

[B]

I really want to go. I think it's in. I know there's one in April, and then I think it might be in November, the other one.

[A]

Got it.

[B]

I might work things around because I definitely want to check that out. But yeah, in terms, I just kind of want to go as a little side quest to figure out how that whole world works and suppliers and kind of just see what innovations are going on over there. Experience that world, you know, touch it firsthand from your perspective. Like, if you were going to do a trip like that, what products or things are you kind of circling? And, like, I want to go kind of touch that and check that out in person. Like, what are you looking at?

[A]

I mean, robotics would probably be one. You know, the world of robotics. You know the thing with like. Well, one also get, like, do you have somebody there?

[B]

I'm trying to figure that out. Okay.

[A]

You're 100. Don't go solo. You're going to get scammed. You're going to get ripped off.

[B]

Yeah, it's gonna be tough.

[A]

And, yeah, try to find, like, somebody who can be like, your on the ground, concierge, walk you in. Like, they know the factories. They love this person. Yeah. I would probably Go get a flavor of everything, to be honest, because, like, the way my brain works is, like, I just think, okay, what can I sell? You know, like, what could I see that would make somebody's life so great that, like, they'd want to buy this and then go from there? I. Yeah, I probably wouldn't restrict it to certain categories, but definitely I'd want to, you know, like today, without going to China. I'd never touch the world of electronics or hardware or anything that requires, like, a customer service line where people got a call or, you know, you got all that. But when I go to China, like, I'm definitely going into that world.

[B]

Do you think you will go?

[A]

For sure. I'm going next year. Yeah.

[B]

Oh, yeah.

[A]

I'm gonna hit that. The Canton Fair. Yeah. In April.

[B]

Awesome, brother. Yeah. Well, Nick. Dude. So for the person listening right now, who, let's say they're either in an entrepreneurship vehicle, feel like it's kind of not the right one for them, or they're on the sidelines and are like, I kind of want to get into this world, man. What would your. Any offers or things right now that kind of excite you? You know, we mentioned agency getting more and more niche. I think there's. I think if you can get cracked out at AI, there's a ton of really cool opportunities there. But from your perspective, anything you seeing right now that you would like, business ideas or things you would kind of throw out to the audience.

[A]

I mean, on the service side of things, you're not launching a brand, but you want to get hired by somebody to do something. I think that world of niche agency is cool. Basically, you get really good at one thing, and you just do that for everybody. It could be something as simple as setting up custom pixel events across your site so you have better data, pass back into ad platforms, and klaviyo, and a brand will pay you five grand to come set that up. And you just do that one at a time. You could do this whole idea of helping brands figure out AI ad creative. So there's a constant supply of new ads coming in. Somebody would get paid ten grand a month to go in and consult on that for three months and then bounce.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

Now the actual starting a business. Right. Cause that's almost like freelancing or contracting. And I think adjacent to that is maybe building things like building an app and trying to get some users or trying to create something. But the other side of it, where you're, like, building a business, you've basically, you may have to Put money down for a po. Money down for this, money down for that. Just make sure you know what you're signing up for to some degree. Cause entrepreneurship is hard as shit.

[B]

No doubt.

[A]

And it's, you know, you want to. Yeah. You want to make sure that like from wherever you're at in life, like you're at the right place to do that because you're basically competing against 99% chance of failure in two years. And. And you know, entrepreneurs, like if you're the CEO of the business, you're basically dealing with whatever everybody else couldn't do.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

You know, problems wise or whatever. So it's totally a grind, but you know, it's not. Yeah. It's not impossible. And if you've got the itch or the bug, you should definitely like try it out.

[B]

As you say, that just kind of sparked something in my mind that I've thought about for a while now in the sense of like, you know, we think about the world of entrepreneurship so often as like younger people through the lens of like online businesses.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

And then there's obviously this whole world of like blue collar work or like real, I think they call them like Main street businesses.

[A]

Sure.

[B]

H vac, pest control, kind of all this whole world. Do you think that there's a super cool opportunity there? Like, you know, you mentioned, you know, 90 fail rate in two years. Like a lot of these businesses you probably acquire that have been around for much longer than that.

[A]

Mm.

[B]

And kind of already have cash flow and a proven track. Track record.

[A]

Totally.

[B]

And it's so interesting to me in the sense of like, I think direct. Direct. I think the direct to consumer world and agency world, you gain a marketing chop that's probably a lot more advanced than a lot of these companies are working with for sure. And there's kind of this, maybe an arbitrage opportunity there. I don't know because I'm haven't experienced it yet.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

Have you thought about that at all? Not for you personally, but just like in general.

[A]

I mean, like one of my closest friends runs a fencing business and you know, decent sized business, but like they have no idea what they're doing when it comes to marketing. You know, anything from their website being on like an old WordPress theme to their Facebook page looking like shit. Their Instagram looking like shit. The ads they run go to a dead link. You know, there's no level of like identity resolution happening on the site that are all basically cold leads. They haven't figured out how to use AI to respond to People quickly or call people back. So there's definitely an opportunity there. The only thing is that those guys also don't value like an agency for 10, 15, 20 grand a month and they hate it.

[B]

They're very anti.

[A]

And they also don't know anything about this world. So like whatever you tell them, they're just like. I don't know if like my friend Bob has a similar business. He doesn't do that.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

You know, so I think that's. But like if you can, there's definitely an opportunity there.

[B]

Even partnering with one in terms of more. Yeah.

[A]

Or even like if you could, you know, like if you raised capital and bought up all the fencing businesses within three states or something, you know, now you have roll up opportunity. Exactly. Yeah. But I don't know that world as well. I know that also like management of people is completely different in blue collar world and white collar world. So. So yeah, and I actually, I had this thought the other night which was basically like the best hospitality experiences are actually by places who have the best understanding of how to manage blue collar workers. Like it's a different type of worker than somebody who's sitting in an office after four years of college and writing essays and all that stuff, you know, but like if you look at the best restaurants, the best venues, the best hotels, it's like the ones who really understand training and education. Like that.

[B]

Super fascinating. How do you like being in New York, dude? Do you think you'll be here long term?

[A]

I'll be here for a while for sure. Yeah. No plans to leave right now.

[B]

I love New York, dude. This summer especially is.

[A]

Summer has been phenomenal. We got, we had the Knicks, the World cup is happening now, FIFA and

[B]

we got that game coming up here.

[A]

Yeah, yeah, we got this game shortly. Yeah. New York's been on fire.

[B]

It's been on fire.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

Nick Sharma. Appreciate you, brother. Thank you for coming on.

[A]

Absolutely. Thanks for listening. We'll be back. Next time to cut through the noise on CPG retail and E commerce. If you enjoyed this episode, why not share it with a friend? And be sure to subscribe wherever you listen so you don't miss the next one.