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From Brand Moments to Revenue: How Halfdays Drives Growth - with Liz Anthony, Chief of Staff
01:29:07
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- [00:00]
Host (possibly a Marketing Operators podcast host)
We have a guest, Liz Anthony here, chief of staff at Half Days.
- [00:03]
Liz Anthony
Half Days was a women's outdoor apparel brand. We got our start in ski in 2020 and we had a really unique story because Ariana, one of our co founders and CEO, has like the business mind. And then our other co founder, Kylie, was an Olympic skier. And so we started with skiwear. My very first thing that I did was create an internal dashboard where every single person at the company had a metric that they own. So on the revenue front, we're in sort of like the tens of millions category right now, and we've been growing 80 plus percent year over year for the last three years. We launched a collaboration with HOKA in early November. Like, we grew our email list by 10% in two days just from that.
- [00:42]
Host (possibly a Marketing Operators podcast host)
All right, we got an awesome episode today. We have Liz Anthony, chief of staff at Half Days. Really fun episode because Liz oversees a big range of functions at Half Days and we talk about a lot of different things. So I think you'll enjoy the episode. Thank you to the sponsors, Motion, Prescient Rich panel, after Cell and House. And if you're liking the marketing operators, make sure to, like, subscribe, leave a comment and share with your marketing buddies. All right, I am super pumped with Motion's newest shipment of AI technology in their tool called Analyze this. So basically how it works is you create a report like usual, you know, slice the data however, however you want, whatever you're trying to get insight to. Once the report is pulled, you just click Analyze this. It'll pull the report, and then it'll send it right into your inbox and you can go into this report and it gives you a very, very detailed analysis of what's working, what's not working, and then ultimately it even goes into what you should do next based on the analysis that it's giving you. So just continuing to automate this analysis piece of creative strategy, and I'm, I'm very excited about it, how it's going to unlock more time and more production for creative strategy teams.
- [02:22]
Connor (likely Connor McDonald)
100%. And it's another example of how important critically analyzing creative is today. With Meta's Andromeda, which we've talked about at length on the podcast, creative diversity has never been more important. But creative diversity to Meta is a black box to marketers. We don't know exactly what they think of as, as new and different and unique. So Motion's building native tools to help marketers guide us through that process and ultimately lead to better performance.
- [02:47]
Host (possibly a Marketing Operators podcast host)
So a few specific Examples we've been using it for at hexcloud lately. We just launched a new product category in and we launched some social funnels around it. So I use it to analyze all the cocktail shaker ads that we ran and it gave me super clear, very actionable insights. And then even bigger report and even harder to do, manual report was looking at all of our Gordon ramsay ads from September 1st through yesterday. Like, think about if, you know, Ridge was going to look at all of its everyday carry ads. Like, that is literally hundreds, maybe thousands of ads. And it's one thing to be able to pull that report, but it's totally different thing to be able to pump literally millions of dollars of data into the analyze this report and have that analysis spit out in a fraction of the time that it would take, you know, a team of creative strategists to do it manually. So very exciting stuff. Very, very different use cases. So it just shows the breadth that this new feature of the product has.
- [03:40]
Connor (likely Connor McDonald)
So if you're a marketer that wants the insights of Motion, go to motion app.com and tell them that the operator sent you.
- [03:48]
Host (possibly a Marketing Operators podcast host)
All right, episode 93 of the Marketing Operators podcast. No, Cody, today. That's all right. We have a guest, Liz Anthony here, chief of staff at Half Days. So quick, quick, like, history. I met Liz at this dinner that I host. I host a quarterly dinner just trying to get a bunch of operators from Denver and the Colorado community together in the same room. So it started off like two years ago with me just literally scouring like Twitter and LinkedIn and like sliding into people's DMS on LinkedIn. And I, so I slid into Ari's LinkedIn DMs, was the founder of Half Days. She came to one of the dinners and honestly, the cold, the cold dms on LinkedIn, if you're hosting like, like a curated dinner, it works. So don't be afraid to slide into the LinkedIn DM. So Ari came and then I think like two or three dinners later, Liz came and very quickly, you know, chief of staff is one of those interesting roles. And very quickly I was like, oh, wow. Like, Liz wears a ton of hats and is clearly like the, you know, Ari, I feel like over time has, you know, she does a lot on the business, like in the business, but she's also working like outside of the business a lot and providing like with the fundraising and the founder led content and, and all that stuff. And that's providing a ton of value to Half Days. But it became very clear to me that Liz, you're like probably the, the core operator that's working like a hundred percent internal on the business and moving a lot of things forward. And we were talking like, I think within the first, I don't know, 10 minutes, I think we spanned a bottoms up forecast, like key marketing KPIs and then like tactics that you guys were focused on. So I'm like, wow, Liz. Liz is like wearing a ton of hats at Half days and clearly like a, a really key, key person in that org. So I was like, we gotta have, we gotta have Ariane first. Then we have Liz on to get Liz's perspective on half days. So yeah. Liz, thank you so much for coming. Could you give us a little just, you know, half Days is very seasonal, right? Like November through obviously like November holiday season and then going into winter. Can you just give us a quick run through on, on half days and whatever you, you can share about half days as an ecom brand. And then how has your, how's your November December been going? Because y' all are like right in the middle of peak right now. So it's a very exciting time of year for you guys.
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Liz Anthony
Yeah, it's a very exciting and very nerve wracking time, but it's been so fun. So Half Days, as those of you who may have listened to our episode with Ariana know, is a women's outdoor apparel brand. We got our start in ski in 2020 and we had a really unique story because Ariana, one of our co founders and CEO, has like the business mind and then our other co founder Kylie was an Olympic skier and so we started with ski wear and just kind of found a niche very quickly. Like you think about a startup and how difficult it can be to find product market fit and like Half Days found it right away in ski. And so, you know, the growth metrics year over year were insane in those first few years and the team was like two to four people and they were really just finding this niche of like flattering women's oriented ski wear. And so now here we are five years later. We just passed our fifth birthday this November and we've expanded beyond just an E Com business. We now are E Com wholesale and retail through our one retail store. And we're a year round business as well. So we're growing in areas outside of ski. But to your point, ski is definitely still the core of our business. And I think the intersection between ski season and then also Black Friday Cyber Monday makes like November, December a really crazy and fun time for Us and it's gone really well. I joined the team in January, and if you guys remember, January of this past year was like the LA fires, the election, a lot of just like difficult times for the country. And then so we kind of were like just finishing up ski season at a very difficult time for the country and then working all year on kind of like this new area where we're still trying to find product market fit in the spring and summer and so to come into winter and just see how incredibly we like, crushed Black Friday Cyber Monday was so fun for me and to see all the hard work we've been doing all year pay off. So we, we grew this year's Black Friday Cyber Monday by like 65% over last year's. And I think we can get into like some of why I think that happened. But a lot of it is, I think that we're still so new, people are still learning about us. So it's really fun. Every single year we get so many new customers and so many women that are just so excited to have ski wear or outdoor wear that like, actually is flattering and that they're excited to wear on the mountain. And so, yeah, I'm really excited to be here.
- [08:25]
Connor (likely Connor McDonald)
I will say women's apparel, but the XL fits me well. So thank you. For those listening who might want to be shopping at half days, you know, gender neutral enough.
- [08:34]
Host (possibly a Marketing Operators podcast host)
Connor's got the half day crew neck before I do. What is going on?
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Connor (likely Connor McDonald)
Well, I purchased mine. Connor, I'm a, I'm a. I'm a loyal customer.
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Host (possibly a Marketing Operators podcast host)
Yeah. Oh, my God. Oh, my gosh. I gotta go find a, like an XXL crew neck to wear. I have the half day socks. The only problem is my ski boots fit like, like my foot is this long and my ski boots are this long, so I don't have a ton of room in there. So I have to wear like the most thin ski sock. They're really comfy. I wear them just as like my warm winter sock. But I'm feeling inspired now. I want to, I want to get a half day's crew neck. That's, that's.
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Connor (likely Connor McDonald)
We totally.
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Host (possibly a Marketing Operators podcast host)
I love it.
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Liz Anthony
We have a few, we are all pushing for a few more products that are our male supporters can wear. So stay tuned for those things. But we will always be a women's focus brand. We get that question all the time. And I'm like, yeah, that's kind of why we exist. But we love, we love our male fans as well.
- [09:22]
Host (possibly a Marketing Operators podcast host)
Well, every quarter I, I half jokingly Send Ari attacks. That's like just waiting for the men's line to come out. Like, let me know when, like let me know when you're shooting content. I'm ready. Like, well, so one day I'm going to get that text and I'm going to be pumped up. Hey, there's a shoot on this day and we need you here.
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Liz Anthony
I think it would be a really fun April Fool's joke to just like get a lot of traction in terms of views and things like that. But no, that will not be happening.
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Host (possibly a Marketing Operators podcast host)
That would be cool. Do like a, like an April Fools campaign. You can even produce like a very small run of some easy to make men's product.
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Liz Anthony
Right? Exactly. Like just merch and things like that. I think it'd be fun. Yeah.
- [10:02]
Host (possibly a Marketing Operators podcast host)
So I have two, two follow up questions for the intro. One, can you share like revenue ish where half days is and how has that trended over the last, call it three years? And then second question, I think like, what y' all have done is so brilliant because you've come into this much larger category and have kind of like, you know, push people aside and really carved out your own sub niche of that category. You know, you think of the like arteryx and the Patagonia and the North Face where they're selling, you know, ski gear, but like a much broader, I guess, approach to ski gear. And y' all came in and you're not like, I don't even think you're really competitors necessarily with all those brands just because of how you're positioned within that larger category. So start off with the revenue, but then I'm curious, how do you internally, like, what's the vernacular you use to describe the very specific like sub niche of ski gear that you guys have carved out?
- [10:58]
Liz Anthony
Yeah, very good questions. So on the revenue front, we're in sort of like the tens of millions category right now and We've been growing 80 plus percent year over year for the last three years. Obviously, as your numbers get bigger, those numbers get harder to maintain. But we're on track for like a little over 70% this year. And so we're just continuing to build on the momentum and, and get into the hundred millions as soon as we possibly can. And then in terms of how we describe ourselves, we think of ourselves as functional gear for the stylish woman. And so it's really not our niche to go for the girl who doesn't care how she looks on the mountain. Like there are already a lot of brands that serve her and Then similarly, we're also not for the girl who is only taking opera pictures because she'll just buy something from that doesn't perform. Maybe I shouldn't have called them out, but that doesn't perform. So we really think of ourselves in that niche. And the funny thing is that we say niche, but I think that's the majority of women on the mountain, and there was just no one that was serving them before. So a little bit of what we're also fighting is this idea that you even can look cute in ski gear that performs. And a lot of people, even women, still think that because something is cute, it won't perform. And it's just like a classic gender norms and like biases that we are still always fighting against. But I think the only thing that we can do is continue to create great gear and, you know, test it really, really well and make sure it does perform and then let the product speak for themselves.
- [12:35]
Host (possibly a Marketing Operators podcast host)
Yeah, I say niche, but it's really just like, it's a huge market of. Of. And I love how. I love how you speak about, like, you talk about her and like, you're always speaking about this Persona, and, like, you can tell that's very ingrained into, like, your head. And I presume the entire team's had, like, everything y' all do ladders into speaking to this. This. This her. This Persona that y' all have identified, which is. It's just cool to hear how you. How you talk about that, because we don't.
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Liz Anthony
Yeah.
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Host (possibly a Marketing Operators podcast host)
At hexcloud, like, we. We have our Personas, but we don't even. Like, it doesn't spill into our. Our internal dialogue as much as I think it probably should. And I think that probably pays off for y' all and all of your marketing channels, the so ingrained who you're serving. And you can see it in every, you know, any. A Facebook ad to a. To a community event that you're doing. It all comes through and you can tell it's all serving the. The same. The same person, the same woman that you're. That your core demo is.
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Liz Anthony
Yeah. And we're really fortunate that our core Demo is also 100% encapsulated in our founders. And I think that's one of the things. I know we'll talk a little bit about that, but it is just such a competitive advantage for us to have these two incredible founders that perform so well on camera and really are our person, like, to their core, because it allows us to always keep that at the forefront. And I think we've when we're making decisions the times when we internally, because I would consider myself this Persona as well, we internally have made a decision that on paper seems right but doesn't totally resonate with our Persona is always wrong. So like you know, for example, when we launched our initial spring and summer collection, we created like a very technically hike focused and kind of like rock climb focused collection and some pieces of that did really well in our things we would wear and some of them are not. And we just kind of realized like yeah, on paper you think like oh, if she skis, she also hikes. But really when we think about ourselves, we have sometimes but like we're not really doing 14ers, like we're probably wearing on our hike the same thing we're wearing to our Pilates class or whatever. And so just like keeping ourselves at the forefront of that actually makes our decisions about where we go with product development or marketing or whatever a lot easier.
- [14:43]
Host (possibly a Marketing Operators podcast host)
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- [16:32]
Connor (likely Connor McDonald)
I have, I have a question on this. It's one of our. And the reason I'm asking is because one of our focuses at Ridge is trying to better define like fragments of the Persona. Like we obviously built for like a very general man and we've always done that and for a long time we called it, we called him everyday dad Ed and, and that worked. But like one of my theories is that just we've thought of Ed as being too monolithic. As like one, one person who likes a certain thing and he almost became this like caricature of like, of you know, your, your typical sort of like maybe aging millennial dad or something where one of my goals is to, to better define fragments of Ed because I think there are different Personas. Do you guys think about that at half days? Because I would imagine there's a. There is the. I just moved back from Salt Lake City. There were a lot of like 40 plus year old moms on the Park City slopes and like they might be different than the 27 year old on Instagram. So I'm just curious how you guys think about that.
- [17:28]
Liz Anthony
Yeah, I think it's a great point. And we, part of the reason that we are able to think about it a little bit more monolithically right now is I think because of our size and because of how much market there still is for a woman who is at the core of our Persona. And I think we have started to think about more like the core being the 50 to 80% kind of, of like all of our customers. And then what are the edges where we can design specifically for her? So for example, a more technical collection might speak to the girl who cares about looking good but is also into backcountry skiing. Whereas some of our, you know, new spring and summer line that's really more focused on like versatility and transitional from Pilates class to coffee to drinks to whatever is really focused on like that city girl who's more fashion oriented. So we do think about it, but I think we will think about it more as we grow and start to need to define those a little bit more specifically.
- [18:23]
Host (possibly a Marketing Operators podcast host)
Totally. That makes sense. All right, let's. So I want to, I want to transition into just quick run through of what you do as chief of Staff at half days. And I wanted to hear all the hats you. You wear. And then, then I really want to spend most of our time on, on the marketing stuff. That's top of mind for you right now. Before we do that, I want to thank the sponsors motion, prescient rich panel after style and House. All right, so chief of staff. This is one of those titles that just can mean you have 10 different chief of staffs in the room and you might have 10 very different people doing probably a lot of overlapping work, but also probably a lot of different work. So what does being the chief of staff at half days entail? Could you just do like a kind of a quick, rapid fire.
- [19:05]
Liz Anthony
Yes, definitely. So I would kind of put it into three main buckets. The first is all on kind of KPI measurement and reporting, and that's both for internal audiences and external internal. So in my first, like, month at half days, my very first thing that I did was create an internal dashboard where every single person at the company had a metric that they own and that we could track weekly, monthly, whatever the cadence was, that made sense for that person. And we were reporting them and we kept them all in one place. And then that way I could also use it to report to the board, our investors, anything like that. And so if there's any metric about the company, I want to be the one who, like, knows it and owns it and can speak to it. And I think that also ties into why I am so heavily involved in marketing. So we can get into that too. And then the second is very strategic. So thinking about, like, how do we grow? How much do we need to define Personas? How does retail or international or product expansion play a role in our growth plan? And how do we, like, phase those out and operationalize them, which is really, really fun. And then the third is more of kind of like a CEO counterpart. So exactly to your point, Connor, like, what are the things that Ariana uniquely can do as CEO and how do we leverage my role to create as much time for her to do those things as possible? So while she does a lot of these externally facing conversations, relationship owning content, things like that, I do a lot of, like, sitting in every single meeting and making sure that all the teams are talking to each other and that everything is progressing us towards common goals. So those are kind of the, the three, like, main buckets of my work. And so with that, my role is very, like, much across every area of the business. And I think there's a lot of value in that. And I Think that's again speaking to why I got have gotten so involved in marketing. It's really because marketing touches every area of our business and there are very few people who sit in on product development meetings and line reviews and also on the weekly marketing meeting. And so how do I help those teams, like talk to each other and make sure we're working towards a common goal and stay on track. And so that's the really, really fun part of my job I think is like making it all fit together.
- [21:21]
Host (possibly a Marketing Operators podcast host)
Yeah, you're the, you're the door between product and marketing and finance and all of it, right? Yeah, totally. I definitely resonate with that. That's definitely where I think me and Connor's role has. Has probably progressed a lot too, is making sure all the. Everyone's rowing in the same direction. So who, so you report into Ari, I presume, CEO and then like who are your direct reports?
- [21:44]
Liz Anthony
I actually don't have any and I have been chief of staff a number of times before and it can vary a lot based on how it's set up. But Ariana and I were pretty kind of agreed when I was interviewing that this wasn't a role that was designed to go into another role that we had predefined. So a lot of chief of staff roles are like, you're going to do this for 18 months and then you're going to become the COO or you're going to become the chief Commercial officer or something like that. And we didn't have that vision because what we really wanted, I basically said like, I love half days. I want to learn more about what you guys need before I say like what role I would like to move into eventually. And so we've kept my role intentionally very broad and I love it. And so for that reason we haven't yet defined like, okay, you need to start managing this team. But I do think that will come in the new year and I think it will probably be a lot of the functions of the business that are more analytics focused.
- [22:43]
Host (possibly a Marketing Operators podcast host)
Yeah.
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Liz Anthony
So whether that be like E Com growth kind of things or whether that's a little bit more of like a finance orientation, I think we'll still kind of figure that out. But that would be where my sweet spot is, I think at the company right now.
- [22:55]
Connor (likely Connor McDonald)
Yeah, I have a question on this one because I think this is an under discussed trend in the industry, but there's this like elite group of former management consultants who are just running like awesome B2C brands. Guild Capital didn't invest in half Days?
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Liz Anthony
No.
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Connor (likely Connor McDonald)
But you're familiar with Guild though. Yeah. So Guild Connor, are you familiar with Guild?
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Host (possibly a Marketing Operators podcast host)
No.
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Connor (likely Connor McDonald)
So Guild crushed it for a while and their model was like they would find these very like nascent stage D2C Brands with good unit economics. They would invest capital and then they would, they're a part of their service was they would help you hire the first key hires and they would almost exclusively hire young people out of McKenzie and Bain. And then so they're like well set up like extremely strong operators who could help scale these DDC business. And they did Dr. Squatch and they did Ruggable like both billion dollar exits and I think they, they invested in Dr. Squatch when they were doing like two and a half million a year and Squatch is at like 600 now or something. So Liz, I'm curious if you could just speak on that trend at all. Like what is it about former management consultants that make them so effective in D2C? And maybe it's just a matter of like D2C brands not having had that like structured internal organization and like maybe that's a relatively new, new concept. I'm just curious if you have any thoughts on that.
- [24:11]
Liz Anthony
I do think that's a big part of it. So I was at McKinsey prior to joining and I didn't actually have an e. Comm or D2C background at McKinsey. But I think to your point, a lot of what translates is this idea that you're coming into an environment that's moving extremely quickly and there needs to be a lot of things happening in parallel that ideally you would have two or three times as much time to do but you don't. And so there's kind of one person or a number of people that need to be at the center of it, making sure all the trains are moving in parallel at the same time towards a common goal, faster than they probably should be. And that's like entirely what you do in consulting. I think consulting is in some ways a little bit easier because you have a defined scope of work and so you can kind of start at one end and know where you need to get to and say each week this is where I need to be. And a startup in my experience is much more challenging because the, the end game always changes and your timing always changes and things like that. But the goal is still the same, which is like how do you keep everything moving along at a much faster pace than it probably should be and with less resources than you probably should have? And that's kind of like, what we're trained for.
- [25:19]
Connor (likely Connor McDonald)
So. Yeah, I love that. Yeah.
- [25:20]
Host (possibly a Marketing Operators podcast host)
Yeah.
- [25:20]
Connor (likely Connor McDonald)
So that's it. Like, what, what, what this, like, class of operator is really good at is making things go fast with fewer resources than, than you really need. Yeah. Fantastic.
- [25:29]
Liz Anthony
Exactly. Yeah. And I really miss, like, if I could just hire like one of my analysts from McKinsey and just have them run like, all my analytics for me, that would be my, like, dream hire. And I think some of it is just like, it is different here because you don't have the same, like, whiz kids out of undergrad that just like, want to absolutely grind 24 hours a day. But I do think as you grow, you get more of those. So I think in the earlier stages, it's a little harder to attract that kind of talent. But the more that your brand grows and has that momentum behind it, the more people want to be a part of it. So I'm excited to have some of those people join the team in the next few years.
- [26:03]
Connor (likely Connor McDonald)
Totally. All right, I want to give a shout out to Rich Panel because they've quietly become one of the most impactful tools we use at Ridge. You know how SaaS companies love raising prices or the same product every year? Our old support platform did that one too many times. So we made the switch over to.
- [26:20]
Host (possibly a Marketing Operators podcast host)
Rich Panel and the results have been fantastic.
- [26:22]
Connor (likely Connor McDonald)
Our SaaS build dropped by about half and once they rebuilt our workflows with automation self service routing, our cost per ticket fell 70%. Same team, same volume, totally different outcome. BFCM this year was our smoothest we've ever been. We've done the most amount of sales, we had the most amount of queries, but with routing, we had a lower cost per ticket and our NPS scores have never been higher. The team handled everything without the usual pan and our CSAT has been sitting around 96% every week. And what I really like is that Rich Panel isn't just software. They bring a playbook, they rebuild your workflow, set up your AI, handle migration and training, and you can be live in under two weeks. The lift is basically zero on your side. And they're launching returns portal soon, which I'm really excited to test because returns are one of those sneaky P and L items everyone ignores until it begins to cost you real money. If you want to cut support costs in half and run a leaner, more efficient operation, head to richpanel.com demo and. And they'll take care of everything.
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Host (possibly a Marketing Operators podcast host)
So what, like, what kind of projects? Because I think the other Half of your experience as a consultant at McKinsey, at least from the conversations I've had with people that have been at, like, the McKinsey is in the eyes they are working on. Like, if you ask them what, like, what do you work on? It's very. There's a ton of breadth and range to what they're doing. And it's like, hey, you have this project for two months and then you complete it and now you're onto a different project with a different company. And my understanding from the outside looking in, and I've always been in, like, the startup world, but, like, that whole consultant world always intrigued me, was like, there's so much breadth to the work that you're doing. And I do think that translates really nicely to then come into a startup and basically someone saying, hey, here's your North Star KPIs, like, go figure it out. You're going to do a lot of different things and wear a lot of different hats to hit those. Can you speak to just, like, very briefly, what are the kind of things you were even working on at McKinsey for your clients?
- [28:17]
Liz Anthony
Yeah, I did do a breadth of projects. Like, my first one was at a chain of car dealerships and we were like, optimizing their revenue. And then I. I did a lot of healthcare work and, like, public health work, which is obviously quite different from this. But I think what my reputation at McKinsey became was, like, if a project was really broke, I would come in and fix it, which is, by the way, a terrible way to just burn out, like, very, very quickly. But it was really fun because you'd come in and it would be like absolute chaos. Like, no one would even have a North Star KPI for you, or the project would be four weeks behind and I would just get to come in, clear house, pick my own team and, like, figure it out. And it was like the greatest rush of adrenaline you could ever have. And so I think that was what I then came to apply to startups is like, you could just get to come in and say, like, okay, if I threw everything that we've done so far at the window. And it's not really as applicable to half days, necessarily, because half days was doing a lot of things well. But it's a little more like, if we are trying to get to this new phase that we've never thought of before, like, how do we start from scratch and get there? Um, and I think that's the most applicable kind of repeatable skill that I, that I did at McKinsey.
- [29:29]
Host (possibly a Marketing Operators podcast host)
Yeah. That makes, it's so, it's like the perfect transition. That experience going into a startup that's, that's so exciting. Especially with Ari, who I really, I sense that she really trusts you and isn't, you know, hovering like, she's like, no, Liz, you got this. This is what your, your performance going to be judged off of, which is, I mean, I'm a big believer in managing that way too. Right. Like, I like, I like giving people KPIs and, and like, quantitative numbers to hit. I'm not always going to sit there and micromanage the initiatives that are going to drive that. Of course I'll, I'll offer my ideas. But if you say, hey, your goal is to, I don't know, grow, tag social impressions by 50% this year, like, there's a lot of ways you can do that. And I think that's, that's the way, that's the best way to manage someone is to like, let them connect the dots to hit that target. And however they hit the target, they hit the target and obviously give them ideas. But I think, I think like, your experience really lends itself to that environment and being like, go do what you got to do to, to, to hit the target.
- [30:26]
Liz Anthony
Yeah. And Ariana is such a great person. Work for, for a million reasons, but one of them is that she really hires people that she considers like an equal or that she thinks can like, drive an area that she either doesn't want to drive or like, doesn't have the experience to drive. So she's just built this incredible team around her and she has the vision and she has, like, she has such a strong direction for us and like, really, really steers the ship. And she also is totally fine saying, like, this is something that you can do. Go do it, or like, I have never done this before and you have, like, I'm happy for you to do it as long as we hit XYZ things. To your point, Connor. And so it really just creates this environment of like a lot of ownership too, for each of us, which is so important.
- [31:11]
Host (possibly a Marketing Operators podcast host)
And it just, it facilitates an, like an internal environment of creativity when you're not micromanaging the initiatives. It's like you're, you're empowering people to come up with their own ideas and do the things they think that are gonna, are gonna get the business to the. Whatever KPI it is that they're, that they're optimizing against or getting measured against. I love that, I love that that's the same environment y' all have at Half days. Yeah. All right, I want to talk marketing here. This is a, this is a marketing show. So I want to, I want to dive in here. So the. I have a bunch of questions in the marketing section. I want to. I just want to start with, you know, I, I did a. Like, I've looked under the hood a little bit at the Half Days account and like half days is every performance marketer's dream because you do so much on like the brand side so well and that just, you know, you like, get a good performance engine going and like, that stuff just compounds, you know, the community, you do the content, you do the. I was so impressed by your, by your product drop calendar this spring and summer and fall. It was really, really cool to watch. But I want to talk about Q4 a little bit. So you said you're having a really strong Q4 right now. What if you could boil it down, like, what, what marketing initiatives are really driving your strong Q4 performance this year?
- [32:25]
Liz Anthony
Great question. So I would speak to a few things. One of them is that we launched a collaboration with HOKA in early November. And obviously HOKA has such a incredible reach. And so we got a ton of new eyes on the brand and we did a very integrated strategy of launching that. It was like incredible content that we shot in studio and on mountain. It was community events and like shopping experiences in real life. And it was just an incredible amount of other content as well that we got from like creators and from our team and things like that. And so we could really just like attack it from all angles. And it was super fun. And then to have all of those people just really primed and seeing half days right before Black Friday, I think really set us up for success on that. So that, that was really, really helpful.
- [33:12]
Host (possibly a Marketing Operators podcast host)
Can I ask a question about that, that partnership? Because when I saw that, I was like, oh my God, like, not that you. It was definitely a punched up moment. Right? Like Hoka, this legacy brand that probably does, yeah. Mid nine figures, I would guess, has a massive audience. Did you get any? Because that's what I thought right away. I'm like, oh, my God, the eyeball, like the new eyeballs that they're getting is insane. Did you get any data from HOKA on like, total, like impressions maybe on like, their social content or any like, email, SMS data? I'm just, I'm curious if you guys were able to quantify, like, how many eyeballs you reached through hoka's owned, like, social email Their own marketing properties.
- [33:52]
Liz Anthony
We have not gotten that data from HOKA yet. And part of it is because I think because they're so much bigger. Like we, there's a few of us that are like all in on something and they have like a massive team. So getting, you know, it just is like such a different thing. But I can say from our channels, like, we grew our email list by 10% in two days.
- [34:12]
Host (possibly a Marketing Operators podcast host)
Just from. That's so badass.
- [34:14]
Liz Anthony
That's so badass. Yeah, it was really, really fun. And then like our social followers grew. I don't have that number right off the top of my head, but we had very, very clear kind of like, oh, we saw this lift.
- [34:26]
Host (possibly a Marketing Operators podcast host)
That's crazy. And so, so quick context setting. How many years has halfway half days been around five. So in. So you've been around for five years and in two days you grew your last 10%. Yeah, that's, that's a, that's a brand partnership done.
- [34:40]
Liz Anthony
Well, it was, it was really, really fun. And we, we have gotten a lot more intentional about saying like if we are. We hosted these events in New York that were like very buzzy. So we did like an ice box because everything was like over ice because it's kind of like an ice oriented shoe. And to sign up to kind of get notifications about where the ice box would be and get your get in line and things like that, you had to put in your email address. And obviously, like, it's one of those things. It's like, duh. But also the number of times that we've done cool stunts and have missed an opportunity to capture email addresses is. I just think that happens a lot when you're a young brand. So this time we like really did it right and we, we captured so many and it was so crazy. I also think that HOKA and sneakers in general have a really, really cult following. We have people sleeping outside the HOKA store in New York City to get our shoe when it dropped in the morning. And that kind of like hype around something that you're doing as a brand is just so cool. Like such an incredible moment for us. And then to have that excitement that we could build on, on organic social was really, really fun because everyone was like sharing the video, like, oh my God, did you see people that were lined up outside of HOKA for the half day shoe? And yeah, it just, it all kind of builds on itself when you do it right.
- [35:53]
Host (possibly a Marketing Operators podcast host)
And a great example of a brand marketing first initiative really ultimately being a huge growth marketing initiative. Like Massive list growth, massive funnel building, massive revenue. The custom product is very, very cool. I may or may not have bought one a pair for my girlfriend for Christmas. Okay, cool. So, so hoka collaboration that dropped when.
- [36:16]
Liz Anthony
That was November 14th.
- [36:19]
Host (possibly a Marketing Operators podcast host)
Okay.
- [36:19]
Liz Anthony
So just before Black Friday.
- [36:21]
Host (possibly a Marketing Operators podcast host)
Yeah. Nice.
- [36:22]
Liz Anthony
And really like primed people a ton of eyes on the brand at the right time. And we also had a really, really strong content suite for this Black Friday of everything from like heli skiing footage that we took when our co founder, Kylie, an Olympic skier was in New Zealand, all the way down to like a bunch of different influencers and content creators that we gifted and created content for us. Like we and, and founder content which we can talk about because it's so important. We like really put the pedal to the metal to try to get a wide variety of content and that really paid off. We did also just to build on that piece, start working with our ad agency again or our content agency. I'm not sure our agency. And we had paused during the spring and summer because our revenue numbers weren't high enough to like justify working with them. We started them again in October. And just to see the variety of content that they can put out and test and switch out has been a complete game changer. And especially now for me, seeing that firsthand, I'm like, okay, they always need to be in our budget moving forward because it's just such a different content machine than we can have in house.
- [37:31]
Host (possibly a Marketing Operators podcast host)
Create a testing volume that you heard. Exactly. We talked about that a lot. I want to ask you about the. How spring, summer, fall Maybe contributed to Q4. Do you, do you have any sense, have you done any like co. Because one of the things that we talked about many months ago was like you guys were obviously you're still very concentrated in the four month window we talked about, but your, your first time order growth in the spring, summer, fall months was really amazing. And it was a testament to all the amazing new products, the non winter products that you were rolling out and a lot of them were first time orders. So you're actually attracting like an incremental customer which is like a huge unlock for, for y' all as a brand. Did you do any, do you have any data? Like maybe you have dove into this, maybe not, but do you have any data? Did you do any dives on first time orders that came through on those products outside of winter? How those people showed up again in the winter?
- [38:29]
Liz Anthony
It's such a great question and we haven't looked into that yet, but I would love to so I'm gonna write that down. I do think what we have seen is we are still getting more than 50% of our customers, our new customers in the spring and summer, but in the winter months that's more like more than 70% are new customers. And so there is kind of a big swing towards retention. And we did see a lot of very effective retention tactics this spring and summer to get our customers coming back with email and sms. But we did things like a collaboration with Million Dollar Cowboy Bar in Jackson Hole that again drive a ton of new eyes to the brand in that time. And they're also lower price points and they're for people who don't ski. So a lot of women love our brand but they're like I don't ski so I don't really have a use case for your things in the winter. And so offering a more year round product suite is starting to give them an opportunity to buy if they've been following the brand for years.
- [39:22]
Host (possibly a Marketing Operators podcast host)
Yeah, definitely. I think Half Days is. I generally hate lead generation campaigns. I just think you're much better off like always running a purchase conversion campaign and like getting people shopping around. I think Half Days is one of the, is one of the smaller select brands where I do think like a winter lead gen that launches maybe like the first day of fall and run and like whatever. I don't know exactly what that funnel would look like. Some sort of landing page where people can start to like get a preview and shop the looks and maybe even opt in to get notified. I think, I think that you guys are one of the unique brands that I do feel like a lead gen, like a winter lead gen leading up would really, would really crush.
- [40:02]
Liz Anthony
Yeah and I think it can be multi purpose too. Like the Million Dollar Cowboy Bar collaboration, we did have merch people could purchase. It also drew a ton of people's eyes to our website when we had just launched our fall collection. So we also saw a lot of sales on that, actually more during the Million Dollar Cowboy campaign than our fall launch itself, which was super interesting. We saw more dollars spent on the fall collection during that time frame, which was really interesting. But I. To your point, I think that what we probably saw the most was people who discovered the brand or started following the brand for the first time during that time and then purchased in the winter. I don't have the data to support that yet, but that's my hypothesis that.
- [40:41]
Connor (likely Connor McDonald)
We'Ll be digging into just kind of on this point. My question revolves around these like really awesome kind of Brand activations and their spillover into either increase marketing performance or just a lift in sales that you wouldn't otherwise explain. Like I was going to ask with the hoko, if you guys are driving this like huge brand activation, everybody's talking about it. The legitimacy or the legitimizing nature of partnering with Hoka also seems like a really big deal. Did you see any sort of immediate spillover into people buying the the crewnecks on the site?
- [41:13]
Liz Anthony
We did not see as much. I mean we definitely saw people adding to cart when they were buying the HOKA shoe. So it's like they were buying the shoe and then they got the matching base layers. We saw that a lot. I do think that what we saw more of was people joining our list and then buying later. Later because if they didn't want the shoe, a lot of people, because it was so close to Black Friday kind of double edged sword, like they were primed in the pipeline for that week but a lot of people also were like, I'm sure they're doing a Black Friday sale so I will wait to buy. I think that happened. But the shoe luckily had a lot of buzz around it and it sold out within at least. It became very, very size broken within 24 hours and so on. Those people were like adding to cart buying immediately and then adding on a few products with it.
- [42:01]
Connor (likely Connor McDonald)
And then would you say like the Million Dollar Cowboy? I think I've got that right. Activation has a similar, maybe slightly smaller effect than the, than the HOKA collaboration in terms of awareness, getting people to site, they want to buy the merch, they're checking out the other things. You're building up that awareness that maybe you're capturing the latent demand over time.
- [42:18]
Liz Anthony
I think that's exactly right. Yeah. Seasonality does play a difference because in around the Million Dollar Cowboy collection, if you also wanted to buy like one of our active tops, for example, like that price point is more like $65. If you're like, oh, I'm buying this true net for Million Dollar Cowboy bar and then I could also add this one relatively low price point item to hit the free shipping threshold. Like I'll just do that. Whereas in the winter I think you're buying hoka, you're already getting free shipping and then you're like, I'll just wait to see Black Friday. So like trying to think through how the customer behaves and like how that impacts the sales is very interesting. But I think I would not trade the timing because having all those people in the pipeline for Black Friday really worked out for us 100%.
- [43:01]
Connor (likely Connor McDonald)
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- [44:30]
Host (possibly a Marketing Operators podcast host)
So let's talk about founder content and I want to you you mentioned that you have a lot of data showing that the founder content works. You mentioned really feeling confident in the amount of time energy resources that y' all do invest into the founder content with Ari and Kylie. So can you, can you talk about that? Like can you just speak to the data and is this like organic data, like organic social data paid elsewhere? Like what are, what are y' all seeing as it pertains to the founder content that gives you such confidence in and how it performs?
- [45:05]
Liz Anthony
Yeah, we were looking earlier this year and saw that both in terms of organic social and paid of our call it like top 10 performing posts from the past few years. In both cases, about 50% of them had our founders in it. Which is pretty incredible when you think about like all the different variety of people that we've had create content for us. All of the like very highly produced campaign we've done all the way to like Ariana talking in just like her house about a product we've made. And like those lo fi founder led contents are the ones that people always come back to. And we saw that again so we said okay, like we should really have our founders creating more content. Let's try it. And then we did it leading up to Black Friday and saw that the roas on the founder led content in many cases was like double the roas on something for the same product by a content creator. And it's so I think first of all our founders are they create great content. Like they're, that is something that they're very good at. And I think part of what our girl wants is the lifestyle that our founders have. Like they're inspired by who Ariana and Kylie are as people. And so when we have them in front of the camera it like really pays off for us. So we have them now creating content once a week, which is a lot for both of our co founders to spend an entire day creating content. But we, what we've been seeing is like just to have the variety of content and have, have them in it, we've been seeing those roazes continue to stay like above 10. Even if we continue like pumping spend into it, it just like continues to perform. And so when you're seeing that you're like, all right, I guess you guys are going to keep creating content once a week.
- [46:41]
Host (possibly a Marketing Operators podcast host)
Yeah, that's, that's such a superpower. And, and the fact that it doesn't require, you know, dp, massive camera productions and the whole thing, it's like, oh, get my iPhone.
- [46:52]
Liz Anthony
It's like iPhone content. Yeah, exactly.
- [46:54]
Host (possibly a Marketing Operators podcast host)
Yeah, that's awesome.
- [46:56]
Liz Anthony
It's really amazing. And I do think we, I, I also think some of the higher production value things we've done have also worked. Like for example, the heli skiing videos of Kylie in New Zealand have done really well. But I think we can mix in like a little bit of those and spend a lot more time and energy on the lo fi content. That's a lot lower cost and see like very, very strong results from that. So that has been a really good learning for us so that we're like really making sure it is more time and energy. But it's it's far less in terms of like the actual resources that it takes. So doing both I think will be really important for us moving forward.
- [47:30]
Connor (likely Connor McDonald)
On the point of like creative diversity here, you guys do a lot of. We, we spoke a lot with Ariana about the like community programs and the, in the IRL events that you guys do, you guys create a ton of content from that. Does that make its way back to the ad account? I'm trying to put together the like, okay, you've got the, the Kylie founder content, you've got the high quality heli ski video and is there like people and a lot like UGC that you're getting from the community as well?
- [47:58]
Liz Anthony
UGC from the community is a little bit more difficult because I'm sure like you guys both know this. To have someone actually like speak to the camera or like pose in front of the camera in a way that is really going to show what works about the product and things like that is very challenging and usually requires like an actual content creator. And if you. What we found at our community events is sometimes we will send like a photographer or at least someone with like a better camera for example. But it does sometimes create this sort of strange dynamic where people are like, oh, I was just here on a hike, I didn't expect I was going to be like modeling for your. And so we've really tried to play a balance with that where like some of our bigger events we will for sure send a photographer and like capture higher quality content that we can use across our channels. But most of our UGC that we will run dollars against is created by content creators. One thing we found that works really well is because our products are a higher price point. So this like might also work for hexclad, for example, if we do gifting. A lot of times smaller content creators with smaller followings are willing to just create in in exchange for gifting. So like if you get a new ski suit that's a huge value to you and then they'll create UGC for us that works really well. And we're trying to continue to source and work with smaller creators because we find that those like organic fans of the brand, then as they grow, like we can help each other. They can grow because we tag them in their videos, vice versa. And then as they grow they like remember us and want to continue to work with us. And that's worked really well for a few of our content creators that we've been working with now for like a few years. So that will continue to be a big part of our strategy because we also want our content creators to continue to feel relevant to our girl. And like, who are the up and comers that we want to start working with now is something that we're like always thinking about.
- [49:44]
Connor (likely Connor McDonald)
One of my favorite, Connor, do you follow Brunt Workwear?
- [49:47]
Host (possibly a Marketing Operators podcast host)
Yes.
- [49:48]
Connor (likely Connor McDonald)
Because they crush this. And I actually think there's like some weird parallels between the two. What Half days is for like women who want to look good on the mountain. Brunt Workwear is for like blue collar dudes. It's a very. It's a very. And where they create all their content to the point that you just made is not via like customer, customer generated content. Like they exclusively do seeding and they have like a thousand creators who they've seeded product to over time that they just generate a bunch of content from that perspective. And then if you go into their, their ad library, they very clearly have, they do some founder content. They do like a product person from the team content. And this is like, it's like a tool in their toolbox. You see them use it all the time. They have all their community generated content. Then they have static ads. I just think it's a great. It's one of my favorite examples of like, very holistic, creative, diverse ad account. And I feel like you guys are. What you're describing sounds very similar.
- [50:41]
Liz Anthony
I think we feel inspired by like so many accounts that are doing it better than we are. And we're like continuing to push for that. And that was something. When Connor did like a little audit for us earlier this year, he pushed us on. And I think it's so important because, yeah, different things will resonate with different people. And to continue to like reach new audiences, you have to have that big variety of content. And we're trying to work now on also hitting someone with a few different pieces of content that kind of like work together. And like, this is a strategy you helped us with, Connor. But it's like if they first get a video of like Kylie skiing in an outfit, then next they should get some UGC that's explaining like the technical features of the outfit. And then maybe they also get an ad with like, that's static and just like speaks to the technical features. And so then like, if they're seeing it multiple times in different ways and emphasizing different pieces of the product, they're much more likely to convert that it's convert than if they continue to only see like skiing content with like music behind it, for example.
- [51:35]
Host (possibly a Marketing Operators podcast host)
Yeah, I think the I Think the mistake a lot of brands make is like, oh, founder content has a 5x aggregate row as a meta. And this like, everyday creator content, just explain the features only has a 3x. Like, oh, let's abandon that entirely. And only do founder content when in reality they each serve their own purpose in the funnel. They each lift one another up. Of course, like, if something's. If like your average is at like a 3x or a 4x, let's say, and this one content pillar has a 1x or a 2x, like, okay, that you have. There's some, there's some nuance with how you interpret the data. Right. If it's like way below the average, like, all right, that's a probably a content pillar you should get out of your ad account. But anything that's like at or above average is probably not everything has to necessarily be like, hugely marginally raising your average. That's not necessarily like the goal of a diversified media mix mix or a content mix in your media channels.
- [52:27]
Liz Anthony
Yeah, and that was a learning lesson for me for sure. Coming from like, not in a D2C background was. I think I do. My inclination was to do exactly what you just suggested, which is like, oh, well, these other ads all have a, an eight and this, these two have like fours. Like, why don't we just cut those? And then if you really think about how they all fit together, it's like much more nuanced than that. And so that's definitely something that I've tried to get better at over time is like understanding the role that each ad plays and, and the importance of like, spending in seasons when people aren't necessarily converting for us was a big learning curve for me. And just knowing how important that is so that we'd build the pipeline for winter was. Was a very good lesson.
- [53:06]
Host (possibly a Marketing Operators podcast host)
Well, it's going back to what you said, I think in the first minute of the podcast was it's. I think you said it's nerve wracking or it's scary. And I fully resonate. I think Connor can probably fully resonate with that too, because we both run incredibly seasonal brands and we are constantly making. Doing that math equation of how low can I run this business efficiency wise in the three months leading into peak, what can I hit during peak and will that together back into our total, you know, efficiency targets for the year? And it's like, of course you can model it out in a variety of ways, but no matter how you model it, to an extent, you're kind of playing this like Guess and check game that you just get better at, better at as you have more, you know, like full year cycles to lean back on and be like, oh, this is how we like this is how this was distributed last year. Like I think based on our new targets, here's how it should be so you get more and more exact with it. But it's scary man. It is, it is.
- [54:00]
Liz Anthony
It really. And I think especially for newer brands where every year feels like, yeah, a completely new ball game 101. If you're like nearly doubling, you're like, okay, well everything is different. Or you know, like our spring and summer, like April through June as a quarter for us grew 220% because we had like so much more spring and summer. So like the entire game has now changed based on like one quarter. And just thinking about like the implications of that and how it all weaves together from going back to like how broad my role is, it's like, okay, I see the EBITDA implications, I see like the number of people we have primed in the pipeline in terms of like views we're getting and, and visits to our website. And then I'm also looking at like our CAC and what we have to spend there. And like putting it all together is so fun but also so nerve wracking because there's just so many moving pieces that are like constantly changing when your business is growing that much.
- [54:51]
Host (possibly a Marketing Operators podcast host)
Yeah, I'm spending, you mentioned like the views. I'm spending a lot of time right now trying to get our international team to operationalize around new users to site. You know, we're also very acquisition driven and I think think generally internationally we have a fairly immature media mix and we're starting to see diminishing returns from just only being on three or four channels and having 80% of our mix in meta. So I'm trying to, you know, that's a key KPI for me that I love tracking. Right. Like new user growth precedes first order revenue growth. And if you go look at our international markets last year, like I just don't think we saw the new user growth that we probably could have with a, with a more diversified media mix. So we're spending a lot and we talked about this like when, when I did that little audit. But I'm sending a lot of time right now kind of looking where we're at for 2025. And then as we go into the, the strategy sessions here, just being like, hey, this is the leading indicator here, like this is a key KPI that everyone should have pulled up tracking weekly, monthly, quarterly. If we can grow this, we can probably grow our first order revenue during peak season. So it's been fun to, you know, that's like, that's a KPI that a lot of people in our org haven't tracked. So it's fun to. Fun to like, to your point, build the, build the strategy and then operationalize around a very specific metric that's new. Like, I always love this time of year because it's the, it's the chance for me to zoom out big picture and be like, what do we need to do in the United Kingdom next year to. To drive growth? And it forces you to like, think in terms of these like broader brushstroke strategies that are. That that's kind of where I thrive and I love spending a lot of time. So I want to, I want to talk about what is that for half days in 2026, like where I'm sure you're spending a lot of time. Probably very similar boat to me where you're still focused on the. Right now executing the rest of this year, but also thinking ahead, like, what are the big. How did I write this? Like, what are your big splash opportunity marketing bets that you're making in 2026? And this could be like, if you could speak to anything you're like doubling or tripling down on, I presume, the founder content and then also hitting on what's the newness that, that you're introducing into the marketing stack next year?
- [57:02]
Liz Anthony
Yeah, it's a great question. One of the more immediate things that we're doing is a larger CTP test than we've ever done before. And we're going to do it around the Olympics, which is very brand aligned for us. And we have really strong content again from the heli skiing in New Zealand from our founder. So that's like a very tactical new channel that we're testing and plan to kind of go bigger on.
- [57:24]
Host (possibly a Marketing Operators podcast host)
That's awesome. I'm so pumped on that. I'm so pumped on that for you guys. I cannot wait to see the creative. It's gonna. I think CTV will be a really amazing unlock for you.
- [57:33]
Liz Anthony
I think so too. And we've also been testing just actually right now. So if you guys are in the airport coming up, take a look the B terminal in the Denver airport. We have ads, like out of home ads running for the first time for half days. And that's been super fun because like, we're just thinking about the number of women that are going through for their ski trips or going home for the holidays and they're seeing half days like all over the Denver Airport. And it's just fun that we're now able to take some of these bigger bets that don't have such a direct roas, but create so much more brand awareness for us.
- [58:05]
Host (possibly a Marketing Operators podcast host)
Liz, can I call the out of home first off? Saw it. I didn't see it in person. I just saw the photos and the ad unit looks incredible. We also have some out of home active right now in the Denver Airport. And I love, I love the activation. I love the ad units we put together. But I saw yours. I'm like, dang. Like, that's a great ad unit. I wish you would have got that like upper. I don't even know what the name is, but it's like, it's like, it's, it's really visible because it's, you know, in the sky or in, you know, 10ft above you. And it's like, I forget, right?
- [58:35]
Liz Anthony
It's right above the gate number, right?
- [58:37]
Host (possibly a Marketing Operators podcast host)
Yeah. So it's like B24.
- [58:38]
Liz Anthony
It's a screen right above.
- [58:40]
Host (possibly a Marketing Operators podcast host)
Yeah.
- [58:40]
Liz Anthony
And it is really fun because yeah, if you're looking down the terminal when it changes to half days, it's like half days everywhere and it's like right in your line of sight. So that, that's really fun. And then we're also testing for the first time like a post targeting. So basically like after someone sees her out in the Denver airport, then retargeting them on, on meta and things like that. And so I'm very, very excited about that and think we'll be able to make more plays there. But I would say more broadly, 2026 is a huge product development year for us. I think we're going to have like 50% new products in our line by the end of the year. And so really capitalizing on that opportunity to talk about like the different new kind of product franchises that we're launching and create moments around those similar to what we did with the HOKA collab, like making sure that if we do launch like a new technical product franchise, for example, or a new collab, which we have a number of, that we're really excited about doing these kind of like concentrated brand stunts, capturing emails, priming people on our other, like making sure that they're in our channels for them, like to convert at these key moments is really what we're going to be focused on. And we just have a lot of newness to talk about. Like way More than we have in any other time of the business. So making sure that we're creating space for each of the, like, specific moments, I think is a really big focus for us.
- [59:59]
Host (possibly a Marketing Operators podcast host)
I would love to be a fly on the wall for how you go through the process of. Because you're, because you're. These, these moments you have just have so many layers to them and every detail is so considered and it's, it's, it just feels like you never leave any stone unturned. So I just, I would love to be a fly on the wall from like, all right, here's the first meeting we have about new product X and like, just understanding how the strategy, like, comes to be and then how you go into execution. Like, can you, can you speak to that at all? Like, how does, how do these things come to life? Because they're just so detailed, so nuanced. You're activating on. It's, it's. You guys do 360 campaigns incredibly well, which is very impressive because I feel like at Hexclad, it took us until we hit 500 million to even get like. And I still think we have a lot of room to improve, but now we're getting a lot better at them. But y' all are sitting here in like the low 8 figures range and your 360 campaign activations are just so buttoned up. So how, how does do you just like, talk through that process of how those come to be and how you're, you know, rolling those out at such a incredible pace, like consistency and, and like quality. I mean, volume and quality are both, are both there. Like, right when one ends, like you end the Million dollar Cowboy campaign and then the HOKA campaign rolls out, I'm like, jesus, yeah. How do they just level up over and over again all the time? It's crazy. So I would love to hear any, any insights you have on how that process plays out.
- [61:25]
Liz Anthony
Yeah, well, first of all, our marketing team is incredible. And I think that one of the advantages of being where we are is that it's still small enough that it's easier for things to not fall through the cracks. Because, for example, we have like one retention marketing owner, one paid ads manager, one brand marketing, who does, like, all of our events. And so when we have like a team marketing meeting, it's like every single one of those people is in the room and every single person is thinking about what is the role that I play in this new, you know, strategy that we're. Or, like, moment for the brand or product that we're launching or whatever that is. And because we have basically one owner for each of those things, every person feels personally accountable for what they're putting into it. I think that's the power of a small brand actually, is that we can still like get everyone in the room and that we have that accountability. But this kind of goes back to what we were talking about with like why management consultants are, are effective is like basically what it is. It's not rocket science. It's just making sure that every, that like every box is checked. So it's like if we're doing a 360 marketing campaign and I can't take credit for this, it's really our VP of marketing, but she basically is like, okay, well if we have a new campaign that we're launching, we have each of these different work streams, like down the line, how are we checking the box on every single one? And checking the box makes it sound easier than it is. But it's like, what are we doing with influencer and affiliate? What are we doing with pr? What are we doing with email? And we just like go down the list and make sure every single one of those shows up. And it's like not rocket science. But it is one of those things that's very easy to fall through the cracks as your team gets bigger, I think, and as it gets more difficult to mobilize people. Whereas right now for us, we're like, oh, we don't, it's two weeks before we don't have anything going on. Email, like, okay, Emily, quickly spin up email. And it's just done because we're small enough that we can still make that happen.
- [63:08]
Host (possibly a Marketing Operators podcast host)
Yeah. So you have your objective templatization. We're going to do an influencer activation. We're going to do a community event. We're going to have a paid ad stack. You start there and then you're going into the more creative. Okay, now how? Like now let's have a brainstorm about how all these different verticals come to life. And you're just making sure that you're, you're always checking every single channel. Really.
- [63:32]
Liz Anthony
Exactly.
- [63:33]
Host (possibly a Marketing Operators podcast host)
Got it.
- [63:33]
Liz Anthony
Yeah. And maybe one of them doesn't play as big of a role as another one does in certain ones. But yeah, that's exactly it. It's just how does every single person show up.
- [63:43]
Connor (likely Connor McDonald)
Lately? Every market I already talked to says the same thing. Budgets are tight, goals are higher than ever, and I have to prove what's working, not just report it. And that is the new reality.
- [63:52]
Host (possibly a Marketing Operators podcast host)
Of marketing.
- [63:52]
Connor (likely Connor McDonald)
If you can't afford to rely on guesses or platform reported results, you need clear causal proof of what's actually driving growth. And that's exactly where House comes in. Incrementality testing is the new scientific way to measure true impact, to see what's moving the needle and what's just noise. So you can reallocate spend based on fact and not faith. Cody, Connor and I all use House for incrementality testing, and it's become a core part of the modern measurement stack. They're now working with more than 40 of the top 100 DTC brands, which shows just how quickly this approach is becoming the new standard for serious growth teams. House helps you run real experiments across your channel so you can answer questions that actually matter, like which channels are truly driving incremental revenue, how much should I really be spending on Meta, Google or YouTube? And what's the halo effect of my ads on Amazon or retail sales? What sets House apart is the combination of rigorous science and marketer friendly design. The math under the hood is complex, built on causal inference and experimentation. But the platform itself is simple. You can choose your questions, launch a test in minutes and get clear, actionable results you can actually use. Plus, every customer gets a dedicated measurement strategist, someone who's lived in the world of growth and knows how to translate data into strategy. They'll help you design smart tests, interpret the results, and build a repeatable culture of experimentation across your team. With House, you aren't just buying a tool, you're buying the growth marketing team that can help you make the most of it. In a world where every marketing dollar is under a microscope, you need to know what matters with House by going to house IO operators, that's H A U S.IO/ operators and start allocating your budget with confidence.
- [65:23]
Host (possibly a Marketing Operators podcast host)
If you look at the calendar for.
- [65:24]
Connor (likely Connor McDonald)
Next year, I'm curious, are there, do you guys have a defined set of moments and then do they have like tiers to them where you say, hey, the hoka's tier one, we're doing the icebox activation in New York, but this other thing is actually just a tier three we're gonna activate at a smaller level. Like, what is that like quantifying look like?
- [65:43]
Liz Anthony
I think that's exactly right. We, I think we basically start with like, what are our biggest moments? And those are like our tier one like things we're gonna talk about. And usually we try to make sure that we have like one per, like we don't want to make. We don't want them to be more than one in a month. That's easy to say it. So it's like we kind of like, like try to space them out appropriately and then we fill in with what we have in other areas. And we honestly try to do that like 18 months in advance because it takes so long on the apparel front. If we did want to spin up like a new collab or something like that, like, we need to start working on it that far in advance. So I would say actually this past summer we were looking at 2026 all the way through like the winter season into like early 27 and saying like, what are our big moments and where we have gaps? What do we need to do to fill them now? So we just, for example, like signed a contract for a collaboration that will go live in early November of next year. And a lot of that was motivated by. It was a partner we've been wanting to work with forever. But we like really went hard on it over the past six months because we were like, okay, this would be an amazing time for us to like have something to talk about and again, prime the pipeline of a new type of customer right before Black Friday. So a lot of it is thinking about it in that way for us or like, what are the big moments where we can and want to get eyes on the brand? How do we do that and then like fill in the gaps around that?
- [67:03]
Host (possibly a Marketing Operators podcast host)
Totally.
- [67:04]
Connor (likely Connor McDonald)
One a month is a lot is.
- [67:05]
Host (possibly a Marketing Operators podcast host)
Just what I was going to say.
- [67:06]
Connor (likely Connor McDonald)
I was like, we may be trying to do like one a quarter.
- [67:09]
Liz Anthony
We, I mean, I think that's like the high growth phase of a startup and we definitely don't have one every single month. Like especially, I think one every single month would be too much. But we're trying to have I would say a few tier one moments throughout the winter and then like a few in the summer and then we fill in with like a tier 2ish moment every month. Just because, you know, our. The name of the game for us is still getting eyes on the brand. So whatever we can do to do that is still at the very, very forefront of our focus. And as we grow and our moments become bigger, we will also probably do fewer of them. But for right now, we just go on all out on anything we can.
- [67:50]
Host (possibly a Marketing Operators podcast host)
So who's the person internally that's like thinking 12 months ahead, 6 months ahead, 18 months ahead, like, who's the person saying this is the brand collaboration or this is the moment that we're going to do? Like, who's doing that. Because that's. That's happening well ahead of time. Then presumably, like, the actual marketing stack for that, that moment gets built out. You know, clearly you start working on them just based on the quality. Well ahead of time, but obvious. I assume you're like, oh, we're going to know we're starting to sign deals for, like, this summer or even next winter or next November. Like, who is that person that's deciding who to go after and then is actually going after it? And are those two different people? Like, is that Ari and you and Kylie that are defining, like, oh, I want to do a partnership with Brand A, and I want to do it in January of 2027. And then is there someone else going out and actually, like, making the deal happen? Like, what, What. What does that operation look like?
- [68:48]
Liz Anthony
Yeah. All credit goes to Ariana on having the vision, like, 18 months out saying, like, I want to do this and let's make it happen. And having a leader who, like, thinks big in that respect is, like, the only reason we're able to grow as fast as we are. Like, because she just sets these audacious goals. And you're like, all right, we'll figure out how to get there. And I do a lot of the next, like, blocking and tackling of how do we actually get there. So does our chief product officer if it's more of, like, a collaboration, and then so does our VP of marketing if it's more of, like, a marketing moment, things like that. But I do a lot of, like, again, I say blocking and tackling, which is like, such a dumb, like, corporate term. But it is really. It's like, okay, like, who is getting the contract across the finish line for this thing? Or, like, who has it at the next meeting? Like, who has the deck for that meeting? Like, when you are a lot of these deals and, like, big moments, as you guys know, are happening, like CEO to CEO in many cases. And so then you're. I'm coming in and saying, like, okay, but what's happening in between to make sure that those conversations are, like, as fruitful as possible. But really our whole leadership team does that and is really good about thinking, like, knowing how far ahead we have to work, particularly some of the more experienced people, like, our chief product officer came from the North Face, and in her mind, like, we should be working, like, 24 months out, even just to make sure that we actually have enough time. So everyone plays. Plays a role in thinking that far ahead.
- [70:10]
Host (possibly a Marketing Operators podcast host)
Yeah. So it's almost like you're kind of the one outlining the jobs to be done. It's like if, if, if you guys agree you want to do some sort of partnership or moment, then Liz is saying, hey, here's the jobs to be done. Like right now to start gaining momentum on this and just making sure that you always have a clear roadmap of, of the tactical jobs to be done that are going to lead to the actual, you know, end product. Right?
- [70:34]
Liz Anthony
Yeah, exactly. And even just like filling in the cracks on the jobs themselves, like with a small team and fewer hands, having someone who knows all the jobs to be done and then can kind of jump in on any of them as needed is really, I think one of the big value adds of a chief of staff. Like I'm not the best person to create like the product collaboration roadmap or whatever, but like I can do it. I can get us an 80 plus percent answer that then other people can just say like yes or no to, which is a lot faster than saying to someone like create something net new. Um, so that's a lot of what I do too is like just try to put something in front of people to react to as a starting point to keep us moving along.
- [71:11]
Host (possibly a Marketing Operators podcast host)
A true operator. Seriously? Seriously. Okay, so I want to go back to something you talked about in the notes and something that I think you also led with when I asked, like what does your job entail, which was like data tracking and data clarity and making sure that you are tracking the data points that, that, that, that makes sense for, for half days. And I, I'm a firm, firm believer that every first off, everyone in your team, especially in your marketing team, should own like 1 to 4 KPIs that are indicative of that channel's performance and that they should be optimizing against. And that most businesses, any scaling business like from a business wide standpoint, has probably two to four KPIs that as long as they're optimized, as long as they're like thoughtful and well set, like those can guide your business and you can make most of your decisions around those business. So like a few examples like Groons for example, and Chad talks about this publicly, they optimize against a 3 to 1 CAC to LTV ratio because they know that at that 3 to 1 CACT LFTV ratio with all of their product costs and their cost of ship and everything else, all their other line items that that's going to net them at, at the, you know, the margin that they want to be at. So they're very confident and it makes their decision making very easy because anytime they're above that, they just say, hey, we're gonna go spend more on paid. Oh, we're at a 3.5, let's spend more. Or at a 3.2, let's spend more. So it like makes the decision making really easy. For hexclad. We are very like very much like half days. Like we, we do drive good repeat business, but we're very first order driven. So we really follow revenue ad spend in MER as our North Star KPIs and IT, and it works for us, for us for two reasons. A, we're in aggressive revenue scaling mode and we have been for the last three years. And B, we know very confidently, and this is probably the most important piece, we know very confidently exactly where our bottom line will fall in the context of all our other business costs at various MER levels. So we're, we're very confident in making quick decisions based on media efficiency ratio. So I want to ask you first, like, what does half days measure? And, and why are you, why are you measuring those KPIs? And like, any insights into how you're tracking it?
- [73:19]
Liz Anthony
It. Yeah, I, I have a lot to learn from you all on this point. So I also want to hear from, from Connie McDonald. But what we really focus on right now is also net revenue. I say net because we have a lot of returns, which is very common in women's apparel. But that was a huge shift for us of making sure that we're actually knowing that especially in the winter months, like nearly a third of our gross revenue will be returned. So making sure we're like actually optimizing for that. The second is CAC and the third is roas. And I think just making sure that we have these different ROAS targets at different points in the, in the year and knowing that our CAC will needs to stay under a certain level for us that's like under a hundred dollars because our AOV is over 350. And so making sure that like those numbers work out with one another is kind of our three North Star metrics right now. But we do a lot of this, I would say like almost all of it in like Google sheets. And I think that we are in a transition phase of like needing to move towards something much more sophisticated to track. And I'd love to learn from you guys on how you're doing that.
- [74:24]
Host (possibly a Marketing Operators podcast host)
Yeah. 100.
- [74:26]
Connor (likely Connor McDonald)
Well, just quickly, one of, one of the, I remember this was like 8 years ago at this point, but I was working with a client or with a brand who came, they had had an impact. They should invest with dollar Shave Club so they'd like inherited dollar Shave Clubs system, dollar Shave Club, billion dollar exit. And they literally ran all of their analytics just right out of Google Sheet and they would manually input every single day, spend by channel and then orders and then they would just calculate CAC and they did it all the way down. And honestly it was one of the best examples I'd seen of just a brand knowing exactly what metrics they needed to care about and extremely granularly tracking it on a day to day basis. So Bridge adopted that strategy and no joke, we still, I still use the Google Sheet that I've built out today. We do have a data warehouse and, and we've onboarded over the last six months but there's still like a handful of like workflows that I just have such, the, the, the ingrained habit of checking our Google Sheet for. But we do it all with super metrics as well. So it's like it is probably 85, 90% automated with super metrics. And what we care about is similar to hexclad because we have very little like cohort value is what I would say. If we get a, if we get a hundred dollars for our Customer on day one, at day 30, we're getting like $3, something like that. It's really relatively insignificant. So we're mostly focused on measuring revenue. We will look at, we call it demand revenue, which is net revenue and the ad returns back in. And I don't know if this would be helpful or not, but what the reason we do that is because in January we also get a lot of returns. People get it for Christmas. We get a lot of returns. We actually want to know what is the efficiency of the ad spend we're spending in January independent of what's getting returned from December. It's almost like an accounting question. So we track both of those. If our demand revenue MER is good, then we know that our ads are performing well and we don't want to pull back spend just because we're getting hit with returns from last year.
- [76:24]
Liz Anthony
Right.
- [76:25]
Connor (likely Connor McDonald)
So we do things like that and we calculate all these things, demand revenue, net revenue spend and then we do it by category and by market and we've got four categories and five markets. So you can imagine this Google Sheet gets like big and hairy over time.
- [76:36]
Host (possibly a Marketing Operators podcast host)
Crazy.
- [76:37]
Liz Anthony
We are, I am starting that every day. Like are you updating it every day?
- [76:41]
Connor (likely Connor McDonald)
It gets updated every day. Yeah, it's all Based on. All those metrics are based on, on a daily. Like the rows are days.
- [76:49]
Liz Anthony
Okay, so interesting.
- [76:51]
Connor (likely Connor McDonald)
So I would say, I mean you guys could totally get a data warehouse. But like I actually think people, I joke all the time, super metrics and Google sheets could easily be like $20,000 a month worth of software costs. Like you could just do so much if you get creative. And, and we've, we've definitely pushed the limits on that. What I will say the reason we moved to the data warehouse where we've gotten the most benefit is more flexibility around simple things like date picking Google Sheets more codified. So all of a sudden we could do that a lot more flexibly. In the Google Sheet we get. No, like the, the, the, the granular unit is spend in a day or revenue in a day day in the data warehouse, a granular unit is SKU sales in a day. So we actually have like a lot, we have a lot more granularity and all of a sudden, all of a sudden we can layer in cogs that's much more efficient. We can look at basket analyses and things like that. So just because it's built like the, the atomic unit is so much smaller in the data warehouse, it provides a lot more flexibility. So we, we think we're going to grow into it a bit more. But that's our approach right now.
- [77:55]
Host (possibly a Marketing Operators podcast host)
Now.
- [77:55]
Liz Anthony
Okay, so interesting. What about you, Connor?
- [77:59]
Host (possibly a Marketing Operators podcast host)
Yeah, we, so first off, I think we, I think there's always going to be those workflows that live in the Google Sheet. Like we're the same way where we have like our daily, like we have an automated Google Sheet that's our daily spend, revenue and efficiency tracker right next to our daily budget for the day. So we know down to the day like how much we're at over or above or sorry, above, at or below our revenue, ad spend and efficiency. And it's just instantaneous. So I think certain things like that just is easier for us to use a Google Sheet, but we do have a data warehouse. I think the data warehouse has become a lot more helpful when you have just a more diverse media mix. Like when you're starting to pipe in ad spend from 10, 15, 20 channels. It can. And some are, some have clean integrations, others are like you have to do like a manual spreadsheet upload and it just, it becomes a lot. And all of a sudden you're spending half your time just, just QA the data to make sure it's trustworthy and accurate. So I think the data warehouse is Helpful for that. So we use BigQuery as our like, I don't know, what's the word for like the data ingestion sent is that. That's probably not the right verna like vocabulary for it. What do you call the. Where the actual data lives, Connor? What's the word verbiage you use? Like, what do you call Google BigQuery?
- [79:14]
Connor (likely Connor McDonald)
I don't know. But that's where it's. The data is getting stored in BigQuery.
- [79:17]
Host (possibly a Marketing Operators podcast host)
That's where it's stored. Right. So that's where like. Yeah. So you have all your channels integrated there, all your distribution channels, ad channels. Great. And then we use looker for our data dashboarding and ultimately we use an agency for all of this. And the, the big thing that I like about our data warehouse and specifically outsourcing it, at least at the start is like I'm not, I'm not gonna be, I'm not ever gonna like, I'm a marketer. I'm not ever gonna be good at necessarily going into looker and like engineering and building a dashboard. And nor is that like how I should spend my time. But what I, what I love doing is I love going to our data warehouse partner, our data partner, and saying, hey, I need this dashboard for this use case. And like, here's all the KPIs I want to be able to track. Here are the, the like time adjustments. The, like the, the different time slices I want to make. And then they go, then they'll go and build it. So now all of our core dashboarding, our. Our core key. Like we have a core marketing metrics dashboard for every single market. Now we have like, we have a business product dashboard where we can categorize like knives versus non cookware as a whole versus, you know, hex mills. Like so any like non cookware or like business specific product specific unit we want. So I think that's the big value of having someone like we use SARAS for this is like we're starting to build out more and more and more dashboards and it's all instantaneous. Obviously, like, we can get that data whenever we want it. And we trust the data for the most part. We usually, we sometimes will find stuff that's broken. And I would estimate that across our whole team, we are saving probably literally thousands of hours per year on a. Just like getting all the data together and visualizing it and then also just not having to QA the data. So it's really, it's just the time saving and then you can make decisions quicker and everything is downstream of that. So. But we didn't really start building that until last year year, so.
- [81:14]
Liz Anthony
Oh, wow. Okay.
- [81:15]
Host (possibly a Marketing Operators podcast host)
Yeah, it took us a while to get to this point where we started building it, but I think we, we waited way too long. I think we should have started doing this two, three years prior. So that's, that's how we have it set up. And, and it works pretty well. And, and now we're starting to move more into the, like, using our data warehouse partner that, that we have a lot of our core dashboard set up and like we, we're operating and using them. We're still building new dashboards to visualize other things we care about, but really leaning on them as a data analytics partner because we don't, we don't have a data team internally. So like any, like, we just launched our cocktail shaker and it's been awesome. It was a really cool brand collab with, with Stilgen, Dr. Dre, Snoop Dogg. So one of the things I was, I wanted to understand was like, what are the market basket analyses of, of this cocktail shaker? Like, what's the first repeat split? Are people buying other products with it? And like, that's a request that, you know, I, historically would have kind of just spent an hour doing a deep dive on myself with our tool, our suite of tools. Now I'm just putting a brief in with our analytics partner. They're giving me a much better report than I would have ever pulled for myself and I'm not spending an hour or two hours pulling it. And I'm able to act quicker on it because it's just like, better, better visualized. So it just, I think it just unlocks your marketing team in ways that it's just time intensive to pull all the data manually at times.
- [82:38]
Liz Anthony
Yeah, I think it unlocks your marketing team. And then anyone who's like, I think about my time and how much time I spend helping people like wade through data and try to put it into a format that's usable. And that's why I would be so inclined to have these, these dashboards. And also I tell people all the time, so many organizations use Google Sheets, like way longer than you think that they are. Like, you assume that every company has this like, incredible data warehouse and it's like, like probably not actually until they're like well into the hundreds of millions of dollars of revenue. But I think there's so many benefits to it that I would love to move there soon.
- [83:12]
Connor (likely Connor McDonald)
So because there's pros and Cons. Connor brought up the Groons example, which is, you know, actually Connor Dalt, our friend, friend of the pod CMO of Groons. I can't be tracking CACT LTV every day. They have to be. They have to be tracking cohort increase in value at the cohort level. Right. Like they're completely independent. You acquire someone day one, their 3x LTV to CAC isn't happening at, you know, 18 months or something. I have no idea. So those are actually completely disconnected. So if he's tracking CAC to ltv, it is CAC on one side and then it is these like aged cohorts on the other. The conversation Connor and I had with Richie a couple episodes ago was around these brands that are like halfway in between and like half days Ridge is somewhat like that. Half days is probably more like that where you get a woman coming in, figuring out, oh, I love this new, you know, gear that I just got. Now I can get more. So you get a high increase in that 1, 2, 3 month cohort, but then you have these like long reactivation periods where someone's not coming back for nine months until the spring and summer line comes out. And that's just. So it's infinitely harder to forecast than a Groons where I'm getting. Spending 60amonth getting a bunch of gummies every 30 days.
- [84:22]
Liz Anthony
Right, exactly. And I would say for us, the other thing we've found very challenging is like the price point of our highest price point. Ski items can just completely out weigh like another purchase that they make in the summer. So it's like we were looking at our highest LTV customers and they were just all of our highest priced ski products.
- [84:40]
Connor (likely Connor McDonald)
Totally.
- [84:41]
Liz Anthony
Yeah. Maybe it's that that consumer is more affluent and they're spending more, whatever. But like, maybe it's just because that jacket is $525 and the spring and summer items are like usually under 100. So it is, it's very complicated. And yeah, something that I think we need to get better at is like figuring out what the right metric is there.
- [84:58]
Host (possibly a Marketing Operators podcast host)
Totally.
- [84:59]
Connor (likely Connor McDonald)
And Connor, you guys are looking at that too, right? Didn't you said Q4 is the first time you discounted some of the single cookware? So you guys have a much smaller initial order value from like a segment of customers.
- [85:08]
Host (possibly a Marketing Operators podcast host)
Yeah, exactly. Yeah. Well, we're the same way, like the, the higher the first order aov, the higher the. I don't care what window it is ltv, but what we're trying to strike that balance. And this is really Based on last year, in 2024, we're like, for the first time we actually like, again, as you scale aggressively, you're going to see efficiency losses. But 2024 was one of the first times since I had been at hexcloud where our CAT grew as much as it ever had here. So I was like, okay, well our AOV is still great, but as I was auditing the business, like, I gotta combat this cac. I gotta make it so our first order, like our cost to acquire someone's not continuing to go up and up and up, up. So this year, yes, we started to introduce like, we were trying to introduce lower, like better entry points into the brand without cannibalizing the first order aov, knowing the data point that I just shared. And we did successfully do that this year. We had more, we had like more individual product offers. We had some smaller bundle, bundle SKUs. And we did see our AOV come down a little bit on first orders, but Cat came down way more than AOV did. And ultimately our acquisition merchant grew. So like our efficiency on acquisition grew. So I felt like we, we did a good job of combating that this year without swinging too far in, in the other direction where it's like, oh, well, you know, your first order AOV has dropped 100 bucks. And, and that's, I don't care if your CAC dropped. That's not good. So we definitely struck that balance this year. But yeah, it's, we'll see how it trends next year.
- [86:35]
Connor (likely Connor McDonald)
Because I want, Yeah, I just, I bring that up as an example because that level of nuance is great for a data warehouse. If you want to automate that, that sort of, that level of granularity and like cohort analyses. I find that sounds daunting to do in a spreadsheet.
- [86:49]
Host (possibly a Marketing Operators podcast host)
Absolutely. No, I'm not, I'm like, and, and that's why I think these, these text to data LLMs, I'm so excited about them. I keep like shouting off, like shouting on Twitter about them because the same way meta ads like democratized entrepreneurship in whatever, 2015, 2010, this is really democratizing data and like letting people like you can run really detailed LTV analyses literally just by going into these data platforms and saying, hey, here's what I want to look at and it's going and pulling the report for you so you don't have to even know how to navigate these platforms as much anymore to be really just dangerous with, with a bunch of data at your fingertips, which I think is so exciting. And I'm really pushing my team to like when, when people start coming to me now and say hey, like I'm, I'm curious about this data point when in the past I may have just pulled it for them. Now I'm saying hey, actually I think you can like go into here and like prompt this platform and you might be able to get what you. So I'm just trying to like train almost like train the team and and I want to do some like lunch and learns with the team early on this year about all like Shopify Sidekick. Our CDP decile has one now. I'm sure our data warehouse partner will have one in the next six months and just do like the lunch and learns on how people can use these tools to, to make even more data driven decisions. It's just really exciting time.
- [88:09]
Liz Anthony
Might be a podcast episode in there in addition to a lunch and learn.
- [88:12]
Host (possibly a Marketing Operators podcast host)
Oh, we've talked about it. We've, we've, we gotta do some, we gotta do some more screen sharing though.
- [88:17]
Liz Anthony
I love it.
- [88:19]
Host (possibly a Marketing Operators podcast host)
All right, that's a wrap on this episode of Marketing Operators. Thank you so much to Liz Anthony, chief of staff at Half Days for joining us. It was a jam packed episode. We talked about what does the chief of staff do? What was Liz Liz, Liz's experience prior to Half Days? Talk a lot about the big marketing moves that Half Days is making right now and what they're making bets on in 2026. Talk about data and data cleanliness and how to organize data. So really a, a wide ranging, jam packed episode. Very actionable, very tactical. So thank you Liz for coming on. Thank you to the sponsors Motion, Prescient Rich panel after sell and House. And as always, if you're liking the Marketing Operators, make sure to like, like comment, subscribe and share with your marketing friends. Thanks.