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Is Media Buying Dead? And How We’re Hiring for Culture, Autonomy, and Execution
01:14:43
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- [00:00]
A
Somehow I'm lucky enough to get both Connors here today.
- [00:02]
B
What's up?
- [00:03]
C
It's good to have the trio back.
- [00:04]
B
We've been thinking a lot about redefining the role of media buyer.
- [00:08]
A
Creative is definitely the biggest lever. Absolutely. Like, definitely the biggest lever. Pushing buttons is not a lever.
- [00:13]
B
You have to be a marketer. I've said that to my team too. I'm like, hey, let's. Sometimes it does feel like we're thinking like a media buyer or you're thinking like someone who just builds segments in Klaviyo or whatever. And it's like, okay, now you got to take a step back. You'll be a marketer first.
- [00:23]
C
We very intentionally don't use that title. I don't want to attract someone that only wants to be like, just pushing the buttons in the campaign, which we just need to do more than that.
- [00:31]
A
Very curious how you think about building your team and what do you look for when you guys hire people? Can you guys believe this? We got all three of us. Somehow I'm lucky enough to get both Connors here today. What's up, guys?
- [00:43]
B
What's up?
- [00:44]
C
It's good to have the trio back.
- [00:46]
B
The trio back? Yeah, yeah, yeah.
- [00:47]
C
We.
- [00:48]
B
We've been all over the place. Connor's in Austin this week.
- [00:51]
C
I'm in Austin, Texas. Yep. This is my. My, I think fifth Austin city limits in a row. And I used to live in Austin, so I try to come out here for like the week headed into it so I can just go and see some people and go to Barton Springs and. Yeah, just hang out in Austin for a week. It's a very charming place and great E Commerce town. Great E Commerce town. One of the best, actually. I would say it's gotta be the best, like E Commerce per capita. I think it's an interesting question.
- [01:18]
B
Salt Lake would be up there too. Only because there's not that many people here in Salt Lake.
- [01:21]
C
Right. And like LA and New York probably like best like net reach of E Commerce but not per capita.
- [01:28]
B
Raw. Raw. Ecom companies in la. New York. Yeah, totally. I like it. We need a power ranking.
- [01:33]
A
Yeah. Yeah, It's a good one. Probably Utah. Yeah, Utah's up there, but I don't know, Connor, I think you're cutting that in half soon.
- [01:39]
B
Yeah, true, true, true. I don't know if I told you this, Connor. I won't be able to make the. The Denver meetup because I'm moving to LA next week.
- [01:46]
C
I knew you were moving. I didn't know it was Next week. Yeah.
- [01:50]
B
Yeah. Thanks, man.
- [01:51]
C
Well, now I can see you more because I go out to LA way more than I. Then I go to Salt Lake.
- [01:55]
B
Totally. I got a guest room for you if you want to come crash. You too, Cody.
- [01:59]
A
Nice. I'll be there.
- [02:00]
C
Cody got thrown in at the end.
- [02:02]
A
Listen, Connor, I have to meet for the fourth time in person one day. We don't have anything lined up right now.
- [02:08]
C
Cool.
- [02:08]
A
Well, we got it. We got a good show. Excited to chat. Connor McDonald made my job pretty easy. I just stole his episode plan from last week that we didn't get to about media buying. So I'll probably just like let him run with that. That was, that was a fun episode that we did where we like, we like picked our team. Connor.
- [02:24]
B
What.
- [02:24]
A
What we did, you'll have to listen to it. We picked like, if you're starting a new brand, like, you get three roles. So maybe we'll turn that over to you because you haven't listened yet. Maybe we'll. We'll get into that. Like, that'll be a fun one. But we're going to talk about media buying. Just like the role of media buying in today's or. And I think that'll segue naturally into like hiring. I was just like thinking about it the other day. You know, it's obviously so important and I'm trying to get better at it and just very curious how you guys think about things. I think we haven't talked about, like team stuff in a while, so just very curious how you guys think about building your team and what you look for and things like that. So I think it' a fun episode. But before we get into it, always got to thank our sponsors. We got Motion, Rich panel, Prussian AI after Cell and House. All right, let's get into it.
- [03:25]
C
Foreign. So I don't know about you guys, but we are fully locked in on Black Friday, Cyber Monday and holiday sale at hexclad. Motion is, as always, a very big part of this. We do a ton of just iterations on evergreen ads with like Black Friday sale banners. So we're just taking literally our top performing ads for the entire year, slapping a banner on them. And that's at least one part of our content stack for bfcm. So easy just to use motion to look at like last 90, last six months year to date. Which ads are getting us the best efficiency, which ads are getting us the best scale. It's like a really quick and easy way to pull that report in motion and then come up with just a Bunch of overlays onto your evergreen ads. That's one way we're using motion as we head into the peak season for us. The other way we're using it is for more like instantaneous feedback. So we're saying, hey, we did that. But we also shot and produced all these seasonal ads, so which ones are performing best and then we'll iterate on those like during bfcm. So all of this is getting powered by Motion reports. It's just the quickest, the easiest way to see what's working, what's not. Connor, how are you guys using Motion at Ridge to inform your Black Friday, Cyber Monday and holiday ad decisions?
- [04:49]
B
We're in a similar headspace. We did a, an exercise that I was calling a bott up planning this year where we granularly looked at what worked at what times throughout, you know, late October, November, December last year. That all comes from analyzing our creative. So we got that foundational approach of what are the things we want to be prioritizing and then we can get into the fact of what are the new things that we want to be trying this year. And motion really kind of led point on a lot of that analysis.
- [05:14]
C
Cody, how about you?
- [05:15]
A
Yeah, same thing. Like we'll have everybody propose their strategy and their plan but like there should be no reason to start from scratch. Like there's no, you know, blank page. I think you got to hit that like 8020 of explore and exploit. But I think for, for exploiting like you got to look at what's performed well. And you know, we try to have a lot of warm up points. Like we will have like a holiday kits launch soon. We have Labor Day, we have last Black Friday. So we just build a report of all of them. We just see what traits perform well. Anything that you can filter by naming convention so we don't have to start with a blank screen. And then we're able to just get more pinpointed and in our strategy hopefully each launch.
- [05:44]
C
And lastly, one thing I really, really appreciate about motion is you don't need to like be this expert in how to use the tool. Like, like they're very good at getting you onboarded, getting your data ingested and connected and then training you on exactly how to use the tool. So if you've been dragging your feet, it's time to get going with motion. Head over to motion app.com.
- [06:06]
B
You know Cody, before we, before we get too far into the media buying point, you sent a very cool screenshot this week. Looks like you guys had a Big sales day. What's going on?
- [06:14]
A
Yeah, we are, we are so back. You know, I thought I barely slept the night before. It was like literally. I literally, I'm not even joking. Like I had some, you know, kids sleeping, but I was like wide awake kid not sleeping. And I'm just like, I'm worried about Q4, man. Like saw this like jobs data that come out where like I think we revised down. We thought we were gonna like add 52,000 jobs and we lost 3,000. Like it's just like looking pretty rough and, and, and performance has not been great. September was, was pretty rough and then what do you know, the next thing it's just, you know, we're so back. It can flip like that in, in a moment. Here's what I'm excited about. So this was our anniversary kit. We do like a bobby kit every year, right. One of this was I would say like last October we crushed it. We sold through like a hundred K, like maybe two, two weeks, three weeks of like units. So like crushed it pretty hard. It's going to be hard to comp. It's going to be one of those where we had like crazy growth and it's going to be hard to comp. So far, day one, we beat it, which I'm pumped about. I think, I think a few things that, that were successful. You know, it's our five year anniversary. We have a lot of exclusive. What, what, what we've had a lot of success with is kits over the years. And I would say the success of them has gone down over time as we've launched more of them and then people have more of the existing products. So like what we learned last year from like our holiday kits and things like that is like, you know, it's not like if people have, we can't just put one exclusive thing in these kits because no one's gonna spend 90 bucks to get that one exclusive when they already have four of the products already in it.
- [07:44]
C
Right.
- [07:44]
A
You know, and so it's just hard to continually come up with exclusives. And so in this kit it's five exclusives for five years. And so we have two completely net new products, actually three products that you can't even buy. So what we'll usually do is we'll take a product that we're launching in the following year and put it in this, in this kit. But we have one of them that we launched in this kit last year, never actually brought out. And people like want. We just didn't really didn't didn't launch it yet. We have like a net new product which is like probably like a tier 2 launch. So pretty big one that people are excited about. One, like, product that like, we're probably never going to launch. But, like, technically, how Jones Road started, it was like the first sample that we had and then two new shades. So, like, there was a ton of that. We did the strategy I was telling Connor about where we like, we announced that we were launching it five days and we revealed one product every day. And so everything was like a teaser. Probably got like 10,000 signups for it. But it seemed to get some buzz trying to figure out the right announcement strategy. It's so hard to know because you can't. Like, there's so many variables, right? Like, did this do well because of our strategy?
- [08:45]
C
We.
- [08:45]
A
We even had a marketing meeting yesterday where we're trying to plan our holiday announcement strategy and we're like, well, did it do well? Cause, like, people just had time to see it and consider it or did it do well because of the suspense, you know, of like the open loop we try to create? So I don't know.
- [08:58]
C
You said 10,000 people.
- [09:00]
A
Cody signed up, but there was obviously like way more social stuff and everything. Like a lot of people see it and just didn't sign up. Um, and then I think the thing I'm most, most excited about, like, obviously all that stuff is super important. The offering is the most important thing. We. We just been filling our funnel and just been doing obviously a lot more top of funnel stuff. Um, I'm really excited. It was a pretty strong acquisition day. Our percent new on these kit ads is very high where often when we have like a promotional moment, a launch, like, it won't be really a ton of new traffic. And it's been really high and we're able to scale it. I think we'll be able to scale this hard. I think a lot of it is just the efforts that we've been doing on our meta net new reach. Like our September net new reach on meta was like wild. Even though September wasn't good. Like, our reach was amazing. We launched podcasts. I know we were talking about we're at like a 0.8. Well, now we're at a 1.4. So, you know, in like podscribe, there's a huge uptick of revenue on that. So I feel good about that. And I feel like even though overall things are not exactly where we want them to be, like moving in the right direction. And it was a really gratifying moment to see, like a lot of our efforts that our team has been doing in terms of this new reach stuff and filling our funnel, like starting, starting to get some rewards, you know, from it.
- [10:09]
B
So, so one of my questions was like, how did it perform relative to the forecast? So you said it beat year over year. Did you guys project it to be year over year?
- [10:16]
A
No, I had it down. I try to forecast, which makes sen just conservatively. Totally. I had it down. I have us down for, I have us pretty flat for the month just because last year was like so good. We probably like, you know, doubled our previous October. So like, I, I, I'd be, I'd be cool if we were flat, but no, we probably beat it by, I think, 50%. Probably.
- [10:39]
B
Yeah. Oh, okay. So a lot. Yeah. And then, and then my second question around this idea of like, did the reactivation strategy work better or did the exclusive products make the kit more compelling to existing customers versus all the net new reach? Have you looked yet relative to last year's similar kit launch, how new and returning customer revenue performed? Because that's what I'd be super curious by.
- [11:02]
A
No, that's a great question. I know acquisition performed well. We definitely always see like on a launch moment or something like this very strong repeat. So let's call it was probably like 65% repeat yesterday, but still we sold, you know, over 10,000 of these kits yesterday, so it's still, you know, 3,500 new customers buying them. So it was still like a very strong AME our day. That's a good, that's a good question. But, but I'm very excited about the, the, the percent new visits on this stuff, right? Totally.
- [11:32]
B
And then you kind of hinted at this a little bit, but you do you typically take this moment to readjust your goals for November and December at all, whether that's like a creative thing or a email, SMS thing or a media buying thing.
- [11:46]
A
Yeah, absolutely. So we have like the, our weekly marketing meeting and we're like, we were just going around, it's like, all right, guys, like, what did you see? What's like, it's almost like a postmark. Like, what did you see people saying across your channels? What was data on this announcement? Obviously the product is done for, for holiday, right? But we have holiday kits launching in a month and it's like, what are we changing? And so we, we did slightly change or probably decently significantly change our announcement and teasing strategy. And I think that was, our debate was like, were people excited? We definitely had a Lot more. What felt like buzz and visibility and it was our strongest launch because a lot of them have been falling flat on like the first day and then picking up momentum over time. And so we.
- [12:26]
B
And is okay, sorry, I have so many questions. But like that. So we see that a lot too. Not necessarily falling flat, but like, do you see it pick up momentum over the following days because it begins to work in acquisition?
- [12:37]
A
Yeah, yeah, I believe so. But like, I think we used to just like tease the day before announce the day before and like we would have a really strong first day. It's been like relatively quieter and then over time things have picked up and it's hard to know, but I think my hypothesis was like, there's just like not enough buzz, there's not enough, you know, awareness and like we just have to do that. So we're going towards a longer announcement cycle, Teasing announcement and kind of trying different strategies, getting more like community support, social proof will be like a big, big focus for next year. Like getting reviews on site even. That'll. That'll take some time for next year where like Connor and I chatted about it for like some go to market, but I think it's just so hard to know. It's like, did this perform well because it was a kit or because it's obviously a combination. So for holiday we're gonna go with something similar. We're not gonna do the whole like every day we reveal one, but we're gonna do something similar.
- [13:26]
C
And so do you. Can I ask one question? Do you. Do you know, like, I know you said you're still digging into the data, but like, generally speaking, when you launch a big new product like this, you said it's a good acquisition play. So it's like been in your list for a bit. All of a sudden they see some newness and like that's the thing I want to buy on my first order, which is amazing. But do you, do you have a sense of like what that rep split will be? Is it like 3 to 1, repeat 2 first time? Is it like 50? Like I'm just trying to get a sense of like how. I just love that you guys can like roll out iterations of your hero products like this that are like unique shades or flavors or whatever you call them and it becomes an awesome acquisition player for you. Like I wish I could roll out like some variant of our 12 inch fry pan and people are like, oh, that's the fry pan I want. And bang. They convert on the like, that's just not really how our, like, obviously product mix works. I was curious about the split.
- [14:14]
A
So, like, yesterday was probably just like, in Shopify was probably, like, again, I don't know on a kit yet. I'll. I'll look into it later today. But just in Shopify on whole was probably like, 65% repeat customer revenue. I think as spend scales and, you know, I think. I think spend will probably accelerate. So my guess is it'll be close to like, a 50. 50.
- [14:33]
C
Wow. Amazing.
- [14:35]
A
Over time, I think if it is as successful as we hope it is and want it to be, and we've done the proper work filling the funnel and, you know, have obviously, like, good acquisition funnels before it for it, often we'll launch stuff and it's, you know, 70, 30, and those ones, obviously, we can't scale them as hard, but. And I think, by the way, like, it's almost kind of like a. It's like a drug that it's almost like. I think we're trying to get off, like, the whole kit thing because it's been so successful. I almost feel like we've also found our, like, local Maxima with it. And it's like, because you guys don't really have that as an option, I guess Ridge kind of does, right? Ridge can do silhouettes and stuff like that. But it's like, if Ridge only ever did that, like, you guys wouldn't have grown as fast as if you're doing rings and all that other stuff. Well, totally.
- [15:17]
B
Yeah. So let me. Because I think there's actually a bunch of, like, very similar behaviors between, like, the way we launch products, which, like, I kind of find surprising. But one is we totally see the equivalent of kits for us is probably, like, new colorways. And we really started launching new colorways for the RIDGE WALLET Summer 2023, basically, just for a long time, just all got worse. Like, we would do. We did hyperlime, and then we did high dive. We were doing all these new colors, and, like, each one just got smaller over time. And that's more or less because more and more customers have not only their first wallet, but their second wallet also. You're like, if you're not growing the customer base extremely fast, then your new product launches will naturally kind of decay. So I think that's a really interesting behavior that we've seen. The other thing that I think is interesting is we'd see certain colorways. And I've talked about this before, just not work to our list. And we have those really from earlier this year. We have Some very interesting examples of like we did a dessert warrior, which is a donut themed wall. It's like pink with sprinkles on it. Center email, sms, Sent the, sent the email, sent the sms. Basically doa. Like the person who wanted that colorway was, did not exist on our list and was basically only successful in PA media, which I think is arguably like the most exciting type of launch because it means you're truly introducing new people to the brand. So you guys, I guess you didn't have an example of that, but like, there's probably similar effects. It's like, okay, yeah, if the, if the kits include products that a lot of your customer base already has, then it becomes like more acquisition oriented, which I think is cool. And then the last one, which is the last point you made, how do you make these more potent over time? What I'm excited about for next year is we're getting away from like single colorway launches that we just launched yesterday, Rodeo Red, which is like a red wallet and a bunch of complimentary items. Very cool launch.
- [17:00]
C
Looks cool.
- [17:00]
B
We worked with this bull rider. Next year I would love Rodeo Red to be a red wallet and like two designed complementary wallets and actually like increase the surface area of these launches because I think that's what we need to do. Otherwise they're just going to continue to kind of like wane in performance.
- [17:15]
A
What do you mean by increase the surface area?
- [17:17]
B
Okay.
- [17:18]
A
More of like a collection around it than like.
- [17:20]
B
Yeah, well, so this is what I say because we basically like, our acquisition products are wallets, rings and luggage. Right? So if we come out with a collection of Rodeo Red, which is a red wallet, and I'm, I'm cheating a little bit here because we do have a couple complimentary wallets, but like our previous ones are like literally just like one new color of wallet. And then pen, key case, keychain, just like complimentary items, things like that. MagSafe, cardholder, phone case. If we want to acquire a new customer, they basically have to buy that one wallet. Like that is what people are coming to ridge for, by and large, like by, by multiple. They're. They're by multiples more likely to be purchasing the wallet from us. So expanding the complementary items isn't increasing the surface area with which we can acquire a customer. So the way that we can actually, in my opinion, and again this is just a hypothesis that we'll really be kind of executing on next year is we actually need to increase the surface area with which we can acquire a customer that Means more wallet designs that will appeal to more people. So that's why Rodeo Red next year could be the solid red wallet. It could be some cool, you know, what do they call branded leather wallet? Something like that that's like Rodeo inspired. And then a third one and it's like, I think those three wallets can appeal maybe not to three times as many people, but to 1.5 as many people. And that's kind of the idea of how we get these. These like capsule launches to be a little bit more potent.
- [18:39]
A
Yeah. So you're just trying to scale it out horizontally and kind of find like the local maxima where, like, the wallet is like the absolute maxima. And if you want to sc. You need rings and you need luggage, but you can scale the wallet business much more if you go horizontally and don't try to just sell a metallic wallet to everybody. But that'll appeal a certain number of people and then, you know, the donut one will appeal a certain number of people and then. And then just keep finding new pockets. Audiences. Is that right?
- [19:01]
B
Yeah, totally. And then also batching those up a little bit more too. And that's like, this is a different point now within Ridge, but we went from a period of time where we were launching one or two products a week, and then next year we're going to focus on batching them up more so we can have fewer, like, moments basically. But we'll be able to extend those further because there will be more wallets, we'll hopefully have more paid media success and we can speak to them longer in email and sms and we'll have multiple things to highlight within each of them. So that's the, that's the playbook.
- [19:28]
A
Do you do, like, collections? Like, are you just doing a single wallet again, especially if it's like a licensing or like collaboration or are you doing like, you know, I think you did probably for like Marquis Brownlee, like, you did a collection or like a capsule collection where like, you got his branding on like four or five different products. Right?
- [19:45]
B
Yeah. So we've, we've been doing more of those. Like the biggest wallet launches we've done basically have two designs and then even those. I, I think we. Next year I'm excited about the merchandising calendar because I think the launches have. They are unique enough wallets from one another that will actually be appealing to net new people. I could give you an example. We launched smokey bear in 2023 that had two wallet designs, but they were basically the same idea you had Like a floating smokey bear head on the wallet of both. And one was cooler than the other. And I'm like, I don't think we're actually speaking to different people with designs. We have to like try to thread that needle a little bit more.
- [20:20]
A
Yeah, I feel you One, one thing we're doing last thing on this is outside of like this kit and holiday kits, the only kits we're doing next year we still have a few are collaborations. So we've done like no collaboration. So we have a few big ones just for reach. It's just like, all right, how do we take this stuff, put some exclusive in it and borrow other people's audiences and ip. So we've got two brands that we're excited about and a few like creator media podcast ones which we're excited about. So just like how do we take obviously a lot of still newness but you know, expand to other people's audiences with it as a totally is our bet for next year. Cool.
- [20:52]
B
Well, I'm excited about your guys's most recent one. Seems like a big success.
- [20:55]
A
Thank you. Thank you. Let's keep going it. Two years ago we had a crazy Black Friday. We're actually one of the top selling brands and products on Shopify. It was really cool. Harley shouted us out on TV and everything, which was awesome. But it wasn't all good news. With with unforeseen growth comes some challenges. And one of the challenges we had was we had a crazy backlog of CX tickets at one point, I'm embarrassed to say, we had a seven day average response time that lasted for longer than it should have. A big part of it was our CX software was just not scalable and couldn't keep up. We were using one of those old legacy slow players. There was no AI involved, there was no automation and just the UX was not great. And so when we came into Black Friday of last year, we knew we needed to prepare better. So we switched to rich panel. It was pretty close before Black Friday onboarding was quit. Two weeks was all it took. They got all of our macros there, they got all of our tickets, they trained our team, they just took care of everything. We got the self service widget set up. I think now like 40% of people are actually getting responses just by the self service widget. And then we're using obviously a lot of the AI. They have this like social AI moderation tool that Austin Ridge are big fans of. Our average response time is now within hours. We've gone from 18 people to 10. We're able to. Our CSAT is higher than it's ever been. And so last Black Friday, no backlog, all of our peak moments, we're able to, you know, without having to fully ramp up our team early, like go crazy with it. We're able to get back to people way better, provide a better customer experience. And Rich Panel is a huge part of that. So you want to get ready before peak season, before Q4 and Black Friday. Switch to Rich Panel. You'll save money on software, you won't need as many people, and you'll be able to just provide a better service for your customers. So go to richpanel.com demo and tell them Cody from Marketing Operator sent you. All right, I know we want to talk about media buying. Role of media buying. Today's org. It was a good conversation last week where you were picking your roles and you know, you had your creative strategist running the media. So if that doesn't say how bullish you are on, on, you know, media buying being essentially dead. And my, my views have changed. So I'm very curious, but I want to start it with you. Maybe we'll start up with a tweet. Do you want to explain. Not your tweet, but you want to explain the tweet. Friend of the pod, Enemy of the pod, Taylor Holiday, whatever you want to call him. You want to. Love you, Taylor. You want to explain his. His tweet.
- [23:07]
B
Beloved friend of the pod, for sure. Yeah. So there, there's two here. I'm sharing my screen now. You have Michael Miraflor. I've never said his last name aloud, but fantastic Twitter follower. For those who don't follow him, he talks about strategies who can do work, tacticians that can incorporate strategy. These aren't the same, but either way, the intersection of these two things are in short supply. If this is your skill set, if this is your skill set, you need to scream about it. You'll get paid well for it. Freelance or full time. So just talking about this blend of strategy and tactician or like the tactical execution of these things. Twitter or Sorry, Taylor quote tweets and he says we're currently using this exact model of the design of a new role we call quote, unquote, growth Engineer. Growth Engineer will combine financial, growth, media and creative strategy with the ability to execute against the strategy every day. These two disciplines won't be separated in the new world. Beginning next year, a single individual will be able to seamlessly deliver the work of what previously took a Four to five person team with Technology Systems AI all built on a unified data foundation for all the parts of the org. These individual, these individuals will be able to manage more work at higher levels of quality. Lots more to come about these changes, but Michael's post kind of spurred his thinking on it or spurred his excitement. I've been thinking about that a lot. Not, not really in the same way. And I'll just. Let me take it a little bit higher level here. We've been thinking a lot about redefining the role of media buyer. Like we, we, we had a director of Paid social who just became VP of Paid Media. And I think that title change going from paid social to paid media is like indicative of more things just from like a channel perspective, but also, you know, a responsibility perspective and how we want to be thinking about it. So Cody, I'm curious your thoughts where, where are you at in this like development of the media buying role in E commerce today?
- [24:57]
A
That's such a good question. Yeah, I, I agree. I also think the whole strategy and execution will, will lead us really well into the hiring conversation that I want to have after this. Actually going to be a perfect segue that I, you know, was for me wasn't even planned. I've gone back and forth like creative is definitely the biggest lever. Absolutely. Like definitely biggest lever. Pushing buttons is not a lever. I think I've, I've taken the. And again, like uploading is easy. There's a lot of uploading tools. So like stuff like that is easy. You know, pick and targeting. I think it's like, maybe it's the strategy and analysis piece that I think is probably more important and, and that, you know, guides the strategy. I'll give you an example where like I'm spending a lot of time with this. My director of growth is. We just hired like a new growth manager who'. Great. Where like we're looking at again like net new reach. We're like, all right, what's driving reach? Like we're doing a lot of, you know, analysis in, in our account. We're doing a lot of testing. Right? That's like a strategic thing where we're doing a lot of incrementality testing. We're doing, you know, and I think that's really important. It's different than probably traditional media buying of. Let me, let me surf scale budgets and stuff like that. But there's, you know, there's still a lot of analysis that I, that I think we're doing. Maybe you could make the argument that we're actually able to do a little bit more of the strategic analysis because the buying is automated.
- [26:09]
B
Right?
- [26:09]
C
I, I agree with that, Cody. I would say like we pay pretty, we pay like a good amount for. We actually don't do. We do a lot of media buying in house, but we do a lot of it external as well. And like we pay pretty good rate for our, our paid social media buyer in the US and Canada. And like 100% agree with your last comment on like I'd say at least half of what we pay him or more is like he's really dialed with the data. Like he can go in the ad account and he can cut it and slice it in a million different ways by audience type. Like creative in the audience type. Like where are we serving? How is that changing over you? Like it's, it's very detailed reports that really help us understand like very granularly what's happening in our media buy or in our ad account. I think that's like a massive value add and like that is why we paid that person what we pay them. I candidly think Taylor's tweet here is like a little utopian. Like one, like one growth engineer taking the role of four to five people. I don't really agree. I think that growth engineer just sits over those four to five people. Maybe some of the people do get pulled back, right? Maybe it's like a three person team where you used to need four or five. Because I do agree, like I think technology and process can replace some of these people. I don't think it totally wipes out four to five people. Now you have one person doing it. I just think this is like, I mean growth engineer, like VP of marketing had a growth. I think it's just, he's just calling it a different thing. And I think that this is the person that just like sits over the buyer, the strategist, the, the other parts of the growth marketing team. And yeah, maybe you can, maybe you can lean out a little bit with, with technology. But I think it's like, I don't think beginning next year it's like one person, like four to five people are turning into one. I mean that's like insane.
- [27:52]
B
Yeah, yeah, yeah. I, I think he's setting a really high water mark and what I'm interested in is like where is everybody landing relative to that? Because, because Connor, do you guys have a media buyer title or like who you. Someone you would, I guess you said you have a paid social director or something. They're like, they are more or less a media.
- [28:09]
C
So we actually, we've never had like we've never internally had a director of paid social. Like I resonated with your comment about your previous paid social lead. I forget their title is now VP of paid media. We've always had it that way. So like we used to have a head of advertising, now we have a director of paid media that that person has always sat over the entire paid media department and has been responsible for overseeing all of the day to day rollout of our advertising spend, making sure we're spending the budget, we're spending to budget all of our channels. But we've never had like a director of paid social. So yeah, I guess the person's an external partner so he doesn't really have like an official title within our org. But like yes, he'd be our, I don't know, paid social lead or I don't know what he would be exactly if he was internal, but that would be his role and he would report into or still does kind of report into our director of paid media that oversees the entire stack of paid media which is like a very involved role overseeing you know, 10 to 15 channels. And then like the people or the agencies buying the media in those channels. Right. It becomes very involved very quickly.
- [29:16]
B
And, and so the, the paid media lead on your team, sorry I forgot the title name but they do they oversee creative at all? Are they receiving creative. Are they receiving landing pages? And then they're just managing like the spend behind it across all those channels.
- [29:31]
C
They are. So like our, our creative strategist lead text technically reports directly into me and not into the director of paid media. But they're very involved with creative strategy. They're very, very involved. Even more so with, with landing page roadmap and strategy and like working with our CRO lead and our web dev team to like produce Landers. Their number one responsibility is managing our day to day budget. Right. Like him and I are like getting in lockstep. Exactly. On how much we're going for the entire month and then daily budgets and then it's up to him to really manage that spend. So he's also has input into creative strategy and Lanny Page roadmap. It's not his like number one responsibility but he is very involved.
- [30:09]
B
Okay, Cody. And then do you guys, you guys have growth titles or do you have media buying titles? And in your mind what's the distinction there?
- [30:15]
A
Yeah, so I, we have growth. So our director of growth also oversees retention in Econ and it's it's partly partly by design, right? Partly because she's essentially the strategist. I think a, there's a lot of value in having those things under one. So you don't just have the silos because what happened before we had people and they're like well we need this landing page and it's just like wasn't as organized. So you know, technically we have landing pages like under E. Comm and not under our growth manager but because she's overseeing. It's all the same. We have creative kind of under it kind of not but we'll have creative like strategy under it soon. And then our growth manager is mo I would say mostly paid social. This is what we, we talked about during like the recruitment process and things. I think you either have to be just a media buyer across all just to justify like totally honestly to, to justify somebody's salary, like a high six figure salary. You have to be media buying across all channels to make it worthwhile. Right. That way we can replace a Google agency, stuff like that. If you're just a media buyer or you have to be doing things non media buying which I think gets into a little bit more of a strategic part. You gotta be optimizing funnels, right? You gotta be, you don't have to be making creative, you don't even have to be briefing creative but you have to be strategizing creative. I think you have to be like hey this is perform well. You have to be doing really good data analysis I believe, you know, and so that's, that's our expectations of our growth manager. So essentially like top down. So I do overall forecasting like beginning of every month I, I, I'll forecast a month and then I'll do medium, right And I'll work on the media mix with our director of growth. But we'll run an MMM and stuff like that in terms of our like experimentation roadmap that's probably very collaborative of like the director, growth, growth manager and myself. But again I want, I want, I want the growth team to have a shared goal of acquisition performance. I don't want it to be like hey, you're just a meta buyer, you just have meta, you know what I mean? So that's kind of why we have it that way day to day. The growth manager is managing paid social. They have like a ad operations person under them who uploads stuff, things like that. And then we have one remote media buyer who buys on our smaller channels. So like an Applovin or a Pinterest or a TikTok. So they're like just a buyer but we still expect them to give some data to give requests for creative as well. So that's, that's how we have it split up.
- [32:33]
B
Yeah, I really like your point around if you want to command a high six figure salary and I'd even say like, like just anybody getting into anything media buying related today or if you want to be thinking about growth. Because I've been seeing a lot of this discussion on Twitter like people misconstruing or, or conflating growth with media buying. Like I saw someone say that the other day, like growth equals media buying. I'm like that's, that is. That couldn't ever be less true than it is today in Q4, 2025.
- [33:02]
C
Yeah.
- [33:03]
B
So this idea that.
- [33:04]
A
But it probably was a few years ago. Absolutely dude.
- [33:07]
B
I mean when we had the agency eight years ago, like eight, nine years ago, clients would pay us to like just, we would get ads, we would get landing pages, we would just set them up in meta. And for what it's worth, you could provide a lot more unique value with targeting, with testing, different forms of optimization etc like you just create more value in the account. Uniquely nine years ago today it just feels like a lot of that stuff comes out of the box. Like you're the best types of media buying is, is a much lower touch form of media buying and therefore you should be spending more time on all the things that you just mentioned.
- [33:38]
C
By the way, we don't, we don't use Media Buyer as a title either for that reason. Like our. Right, like our, we're having a new search in YouTube buyer right now. They're going to buy across every search account, every YouTube account in like all of our markets. But they're going to be like senior growth strategists. Their media buying will not be part of their title because of all the reasons we just mentioned. They are absolutely expected to dial in the creative. Like they got to do all these localization translations for all these markets. Like it's very much at least half their work or more probably happening outside of the ad account. So we very intentionally don't use that title because I don't, I don't want to attract someone that only wants to be like just pushing the buttons in the campaign which I, we just need to do more than that.
- [34:18]
A
I'll hire you to just be a media buyer. I'll pay you three grand a month though, right? It's pretty much like that's essentially the only People we have that just do media buying are, are, you know, junior lower level people. We definitely had that in the past and it just was, we just had to restructure. It just wasn't right. Well and sometimes I thought I was crazy. Like, am I expecting too much? Right. Like am I expecting too much of somebody to, to have the skills for the analytical media buying and the creative. But I'm like, well, I wouldn't hire an email person and like not expect them to actually do our emails. Like no one's just like doing klaviyo, you know what I mean? And doing analysis. Like they're doing the entire program. Yeah, they don't have to make the emails but like they are the strategists behind it. Same thing with social. You wouldn't like hire somebody just to like post on social and look at data but for some reason because there's.
- [35:04]
B
Yeah, I mean some people do for sure. Organic social.
- [35:07]
A
You don't think they're, they're, they're doing the whole channel.
- [35:10]
B
Oh, dude. I mean I'm biased but yet I'm also saying eight, nine years ago there were totally a role where it was like you just get content from the team, post it on social, write the captions.
- [35:19]
A
I just think like yeah, yeah, but like those channels like you're a marketer first, right. You're a clip, you're an email marketer. You're like. And so like you can't really strip out the creative component from the performance of it for some reason on as you've talked about on paid social, we've kind of done that a little bit in the past.
- [35:37]
B
Yeah.
- [35:37]
A
And I think we're all aligned.
- [35:41]
C
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- [37:49]
B
I love that point that you just said, like you have to be a marketer. I, I've said that to my team too. I'm like hey, let's Sometimes it does feel like we're thinking like a media buyer or you're thinking like someone who just builds segments in Klav or whatever and it's like okay, no, you got to take a step back. You gotta be a marketer first. First, let me, let me quickly talk through the, the, the ways that I, the notes that I have for like redefining how I want to think about media buying and then it just slowly becomes growth at Ridge and, and see where you guys land. Because I think that there's a lot of parallels to what Taylor said. A lot of parallels to what we've already hit. So I've said many times. Our VP of Paid media oversees performance, creative media buying measurement. So there's like from the jump, like more going on there, measurement being our experimentation Roadmap, managing house, all those things. Media buying the standard, like setting ads up and spending them across channels and then performance Creative, I think uniquely rolls into paid media, at least in our organization, but that's how we do it. The other two big things in my opinion are. And this becomes like the finance piece that Taylor mentioning, but like consistently understanding the objectives of the business, like the. And the different categories within the business and then reporting on those. So they are at the end of every week analyzing on an M E R AM R basis by category, by market market, helping them make better budget allocation decisions, which I think is maybe a new development for the media buying role. And then two, I've got. Nick Sharma used this on a podcast I listened to a couple weeks ago called Funnel Diagnostics, which I really liked, where at the end of the day everything is coming together. When the media buyer sets up an ad or when this person sets up an ad, the landing page, the email pop up that we're getting, the capture, you know, the capture rate we're getting on that, the creative give, the channel, the mix, the whole thing is like all coming together right there. So I'd like them to be the torchbearers of making sure that's all making sense and performing the way that they need. And it's basically their job to like surface any issues or opportunities back up to the rest of the organization. And I think that is a. Also a somewhat new development in terms of ownership and responsibility. At least in what we've thought about it in the past. We've thought about those different, the different pieces that make up that funnel as being different members of the team are responsible for it. But I'd really like to, to, for it to kind of centralize around the person who's building the ad.
- [39:57]
C
That makes sense. So, so if they see like, if this person's owning a funnel and like part of the funnel is new ad creative and a landing page, let's say it's for like I don't know what the donut wallet. And if they. So sorry, what would this person's question number one to clarify what would this person's role be in your org? They'd be like a media buyer or.
- [40:17]
B
They'D be like a, I mean what we're calling it right now is we have the VP of paid media and a, you know, director of paid media.
- [40:23]
C
Got it. So the director of paid media would be this person that's like, like owning this funnel with. And then let, let's say hypothetically like so they're owning the entire funnel from beginning to end and they're like, ah, like I just think the conversion rate on this could be better. Like the add to cart rate is like lower than our core website and like, we need to fix that. They're, even though they're not the person that's actually going to be like redesigning and redeveloping the page, they're going to call out the KPI and then they're going to basically probably come up with some ideas on like, all right, this, this KPI needs to improve. I think to make the entire funnel improve. They'll outline a strategy to do that and then they'll actually go. And like they'll be a true producer in the sense that they're going to go like brief in your web team. They're going to redesign it, redev it. But they're that. But the buck stops with the person. I love that. I think that's, that's brilliant.
- [41:09]
B
And it's really just creating more of like a push pull relationship because I think right now the E Comm team will be like, here's our landing page. Maybe here's a, here's a. The AB test that we're running.
- [41:17]
C
Right.
- [41:18]
B
They are trying to improve it from a push perspective. But also I would like the person who is assembling it and looking at the data on a very granular basis every day to also have the ability to trigger new landing pages or tests in the opposite direction.
- [41:30]
C
Yeah, that makes sense.
- [41:30]
B
Rather than just receiving it from the team.
- [41:32]
A
Well, you have to because you're, you're holding this person accountable to, especially at a VP level, you're holding this person accountable to performance. And so you, they have to be able to have the levers and have like the autonomy to be, to be able to, to do that. And if you put, and again, this is where we've centralized as well. But if you put creative under another team, ecom under another team, you know, like, obviously finance is a different team but like they don't have the, the resources to be able to make these changes. It's like, what are they going to do? You know, they can be like, oh, we need more creative. And this is what we had in the past. You know, media buyers would be like, oh, we need more creative. I'm like, all right, like do something about it. Do something about it. Yeah, totally. So yeah, I totally agree with that. I mean, I think even like. And again, you're never going to have everything perfectly underneath them. I think some of that Is our job as a leader if we oversee all of marketing or the whole team of, like, all right, like this. Yeah, I get that this designer is not on your team, but, like, you have a dotted line and, like, let me get the culture and, like, the expectations the same. So even if they're not directly underneath you, like, we can work cross functionally, like, get you what you need 100%.
- [42:33]
C
That's actually like a red flag for me when people say what you just said, Cody, like, we need more creative. And that's where the line stops. Like, because that used to be the norm. Right. That's actually, like, swung so far that it's a red flag for me now. Like, all right, you're going to, to, you're going to recommend that we need more creative, but if you don't follow, it's a red flag if you don't also follow up with. And here's what I think would work, or maybe even more importantly, and here's how I think we can produce it. Like, oh, we need more landing pages. Oh, we need more creative. That's such a lazy. That's just lazy. That's like lazy growth marketing work. Okay, thanks. Thanks, Captain Obvious. Like, tell me what we should make here and how we're going to make it. Like, that's my big thing with, like, some agencies and consultants is like, everyone has good, big, grandiose ideas, but it's few and far between that are like, all right, is pitch you this, like, campaign that's very net new and could drive performance. But I didn't add a shred of. Of advice on how to actually operationalize around it. Like, you gotta. You gotta offer strategy and operationalize the what you're recommending.
- [43:34]
A
Yeah, I mean, we, we've just been talking strategy. I feel like we've been talking a lot of strategy and how automation has helped. Helped free that up, you know, because you're exactly buying. But then the next step is, okay, like, where are the performance levers and how do you execute on those?
- [43:47]
B
And that was. And. And that, that's. I guess the, the ultimate point that I'm making is we're moving away from this world of being a tactician at the media buying level, where you're clicking buttons in platform. And like, frankly, like I said many years ago, you could provide a lot of value that way. Now you have to move up the stack into the strategy world. You have to be doing both because a lot of media buying is becoming automated or simpler to do or more consolidated or whatever else. And up that stack. What do your responsibilities look like and how are you interfacing with the rest of the organization? And I think that's just an interesting trend. That's why I wanted to talk about it.
- [44:18]
C
It makes it so much more satisfying too, like to, at least in my experience as a growth marketer, this change has made like when you really connect on a, on a, on a new swing you're taking, it's so much more satisfying because it just naturally takes more coordination and there's a longer lead time to actually executing on the thing you want to do versus my ad account sucks right now. I'm going to see if switching from like a seven day window to a one day click works. And it's all happening in real time. It's like, no, like we have like a huge marketing supply chain that we're trying to coordinate right now and when it comes together perfectly and it hits, you're like, that was cool. Like that was delayed gratification and it worked out and it was totally worth it. You could say the same thing. It's like, God, we just spent two months on this landing page and it's tanking compared to where our, our control is right now or the like current pages. But like, I think it's made the job more fun and it's also like, like really weeded people out because you have to be able to think bigger picture and to like see it through and to really know how to work a, like what I keep calling internally, like the marketing supply chain. You really have to know how to work the marketing supply chain to be, to be an effective like Internet marketer these days.
- [45:25]
A
I think it would be interesting to do a, a future one on like how we operationalize this. Like what are the reports that your VP of growth or Pete Media or whoever it is is like, like, like what are they doing weekly? What are you doing monthly? Right? Like, I think that would be an interesting one to see. Like what's this actually look, look like in practice? You know, because like, for example, I, I feel like this person should be sending a report, you know, weekly. This is how we're pacing. Maybe they're, they're checking. You know, I, I think that would be a cool one.
- [45:52]
B
And, and you know, it's okay. So I, and I know we have some questions on the hiring we want to hit, but this goes back to Taylor's tweet. What is the phrasing that he uses? You know, it's all built on a unified data foundation because that's really what matters is like oh, at the end of the day and that's not even the, the whoever we want to call this person, this like new media buyer role, this growth role, whatever. You also need to be supplying them with the views of the data that they can use to make better decisions. And like that's almost a completely different function within the organization that goes down to like pro. Are you forecasting your business in the same way that you're buying the media or allocating across channels.
- [46:28]
A
Channels?
- [46:28]
B
Because it's all, it's all super connected.
- [46:31]
C
How much time have you guys wasted in your, not just like now, but in your careers having this conversation where like I'm looking at the same thing that Cody or Connor is. And then all of a sudden I'm like person A is like speaks out a data point. I'm like wait, wait, like I don't have that at all. Like where are you seeing that? And then I'm looking at my, the data. I'm looking and it's just like this disconnect. I do really agree with that Unified Data foundation because I know in like my agency days we would spend so like we waste time being like wait, why do you have like, why are you seeing it, analyzing it this way with these data points? And I'm seeing it totally differently. Like all of a sudden 30 minutes has gone by and all we've done is try to figure out like which data is accurate and try to align at the same numbers. That is. I think that happens a lot probably for sure.
- [47:17]
B
I think we've wasted. We're, we're probably. I'd like to think we're on the lower end. You know, I'm, I'm a big proponent of naming conventions. Like I am OCD about making sure we're all on the same page, like tagging things. But like we've like. Another thing that I've heard is, you know, I have friends at big multi n figure businesses who will launch new products and they're like, and they'll be on like you know, eight figure run rates or something. I'm like, oh, is that beating like forecast or are you guys like baking that into the financial projections? Does your goal for October consider that you expect 10% of revenue coming from this new category? And they're like, no, they have like a topline revenue forecast. I'm like, I'm like, I just don't understand how that works. Or like if you're expecting thing you're going to expect a lot of other people in the organization to interpret those financial goals and then reinterpret them into like, well, what does that mean for this new product category that I launched versus this one? We're pretty good about hedging against that. Where we've wasted a ton of time, but are in the middle of addressing is the communication of like, product categorization between ops and planning and marketing, where it was like, we've all been on really pretty different pages at different points in time, but that gets addressed in the next, like, two weeks. That's.
- [48:24]
A
That's what I was going to say. I feel like that's. I don't. I think we're in a very good spot. But that was one that, as we've grown, we've had to really work. Work out that side of it because it's like, you know, there would be. There would be POS placed and. And demand plans based without ever getting a, you know, a spend goal or how a marketing team feels about, you know, or. Or vice versa. So now it's like super close together. But that's when I. Here's a funny one. So we were. We're doing this big, like, Pinterest test and we have a lot of credits and we're. Our data analyst was like. We were in like a thread with. With Noah from House and the House team about like, should for our mmm and stuff. Like, should we report our total spend or with the credits? And me and our data analysts were like, we thought we were disagreeing in the thread and like, saying things and I was just like, so confused. And for. I just walked over like 50ft to go talk to him and we're like, we're saying the same thing. Like he was saying, like, oh, let's send it. Like, let's send the total spend. Like, like the gross spend, not like the net of credits. And I was saying the same thing, but we were saying it differently and like, it was just like a funny one. I just like walked over and I'm like, yeah, like we're saying the same thing.
- [49:23]
B
The beauty of in office work.
- [49:25]
A
Exactly. Take that, Sean.
- [49:32]
C
I keep hearing the same things from people lately. I'm being asked to do more with less. I have big goals to hit, but my budget is tight and every marketing dollar needs to work harder. I know I'm hearing this at Hexclad. I'm sure a lot of operators are hearing this at their brands. Super relevant right now. Incrementality testing is the best way to figure out what's actually moving the needle so you can move around your ad spend in a way that's backed by science. All three of us use House for incrementality testing. We all love it. And House is now working with more than 40 of the top 100 DTC brands, which is pretty insane. I can speak personally for Hexclad. The amount of insights that we've gotten, especially on our view based channel channels and how those are driving impacts and efficiency and revenue for our business is not only super valuable, but only possible through House. You know, channels like Connected TV, YouTube, TikTok, these very view based channels that don't garner a click the same way that Facebook and Google does have been really only measurable through geo incrementality, holdout testing and the actionable next steps from these tests in terms of deciding to scale up or down or keep spend where it's at. That is is really amazing. House helps you run experiments on your channel so you can confidently answer the questions you've always wondered about. Things like what channels are actually driving my business? How much should I be spending on each channel? What's the impact of my ads on Amazon or retail sales? How should I structure my Meta and Google accounts to make sure they're spending dollars in the right way? The beauty of House is that it's built for marketers. The science under the hood is rigorous, but the platform itself is simple. So you pick a question, launch a test in minutes and get real results fast. Every customer is paired with a measurement strategist, someone who understands growth and brings a clear strategic point of view. They will get to know your business, help you build a roadmap of impactful tests and guide you as you operationalize incrementality in your day to day. Even if you're brand new to testing, you're not doing it alone. It is very much no in no way. Like go sign up for the platform and figure it out on your own. You have a partner in these customer success reps from House who's been in your shoes. And now more than ever, you need to make every marketing dollar count account up. Level your measurement with House by going to house I.O. forward slash operators. That's H A U S I O slash operators and start allocating your budget with confidence.
- [51:49]
A
All right, let's segue to hiring. I, I actually think this is a good one because we're starting to just like talk about our culture and things like this. And I think the one you know just from, from knowing you guys like from what I can tell about both of your cultures, like so much of this success is how you structure things, like how the different departments work together. And we've learned a lot of like who works in a culture like this. And so I'm very curious like as you guys go, maybe let's start with a culture perspective. Like I'm hiring. We actually just posted today VP of marketing. We've been like recruiting quietly but just posted today. So like that's when I. Connor, I know, I know you hired, right? And so I have some questions about that. But like for a leadership position at your company, let's say like director above. Like what do you guys look for from a culture perspective? Because I'll share what I've learned. Like we've probably only hired one or two people from like a big company before, like an SD lot or something like that. Like just could not be the worst culture because they're just all like, they just build decks all day, right? And that's like pure strategy, right? And like you have to execute. You know, we have one vp, she's our VP of retail. And like I think she's a perfect fit where like she can be very strategic. I can do a, you know, know, we can plan two years out and where are all of our openings? She can, you know, request data, things like that. But she can also like get into a store and open a new store and go work with a team and be like, here's how we're getting this AOV up for the store. So like she's a very good. Maybe it's a hybrid role. Is that something that you guys look for in your organizations as well?
- [53:14]
C
I mean we've had the same issue by the way, you know, like someone from like, you know, some big massive corporation. It's still like consumer but it's just like to your point Cody, they just, there's a, they can only get as low as 500ft. They don't know how to get any lower. And that just doesn't work at a scrappy like fast growing startup, I don't think probably anywhere. So we've like learned the hard way there, you know, like I'm. One of the main things I look for is just like self starterness, for lack of a better term. Like what we, we've talked about this but like we operate on a quarterly tempo info. So like every quarter, like we have a very thorough process for setting every single person's like key results and initiatives for the quarter and we do that every single quarter. So I'm trying to hire for the person. Like I learned this this is what Chad from Grooms taught me this and I've started to use it more at hexcloud is like, you are the CEO of like insert your focus right? You're the CEO of retention or you're the CEO of, of CRO and like, you should treat your job that way. So like, if you and I sit here at the beginning of the quarter and we shake hands and agree, like what your priority should be and what you should complete this quarter, in theory. Now this isn't in reality how it works. Like, in theory, like, I should not be able to, I should, I could not talk to you for two and a half months and like at the end of the quarter I should know exactly what you did or didn't do because we aligned on it at the beginning of the quarter. And that really creates a, that requires a level of like self motivation and being a self starter to like go and do the thing. Now reality where we are still meeting regularly to like collaborate on the things that the growth team is focused on, but I think that's a huge personality trait I'm looking for right away is like, is this person going to take their list of, you know, five to 15 things that they're held accountable to and just go and get it done at all costs and really own the completion of it? Right. They're not going to be the type of per. Like, what really bugs me is the person who's like, well, I like couldn't complete this thing because like the balls and so. And so's core and like I'm still waiting on them. It's like, no, like go make it happen. Like go force it out of them. Like you can get, you do have control over that. And so really like avoiding that and, and like trying to find the people or like, if you very clearly outline what they're responsible for, like, they're gonna go and make it happen and they're gonna work through problems and like, I don't need to be like knocking on their door every week or every two weeks to be like, check in, like, check in, check in. Status updates, status updates. I know, does like get it done and like give me the key milestones along the way and especially when it's, when it's completed and if you're not going to complete it and you really do feel like it's out of your control, like, that's when you need to let me know. Don't sit there and like, let it be out of your control for a month and a half and then we get to the end of the quarter and it's not completed. Like, you need to proactively communicate, and then we can work through it together. But, like, all boils down to that person being like, all right, I have my list. I'm going to go get these things done, because that's my job.
- [56:06]
B
We. We had an old executive at the company who would say, don't let. I think he would say, don't let others let you fail, which I think is great. Like, super simple. Exactly what you just said.
- [56:15]
C
That's so good.
- [56:16]
A
Connor, how about. How. How about you guys, like, how do you approach. How do you approach or balance, like, the strategy level that you need with, like, getting the right cultural fit and getting a doer?
- [56:25]
B
Okay, I. I have a slightly different spiel on culture I'd like to hit because you guys are totally right. Well, we've all had the same experience. The last one, I spoke to someone at Croft Crocs, and I was like, dude, Crocs is sick. Awesome. And then. And then she laid out to Oregon. It was, like, massive. And I'm like, oh, yeah, you're just, like, constantly. Like. It just sounds so bureaucratic over there. I'm like, you. She could be a. And it depends on how we want to define culture here. And that's what my spiel is going to be about. But she was coming from a organization that was far more bureaucratic and led me to believe that she might not be, like, the on the ground doer that we need. But, like, frankly, it's kind of hard to tell sometimes. It's very hard to tell most of the time. I would say the spiel that I want to make about. About culture, though, because we'll talk sometimes and I'll hear certain people say, I've heard this in the past, but we'll. We'll talk with, like, you know, cool, like, quote unquote, cool people, man or woman. They're kind of chill. They, like, they got a good vibe, whatever. And. And, like, we've had someone on the team who would be like, they're a great culture fit. And I have. I'm like, I'm. I've totally, like, reversed on that where it's like, I do not care about that at all. And maybe it's partially because we're in a remote workplace where, like, I don't need to, like, necessarily sit next to you or, like, have lunch with you every day or grab beers after work or whatever. Like, maybe, like, the interpersonal connection isn't quite as important. Remotely as it is, as it is in an in person workforce, or it just doesn't really matter to like the objectives of Ridge of building a great brand. And then I say, and I say this very lovingly, I say our culture is like, we're a bunch of dorks. Like, we're like, we're like mostly dorks and we work really hard and we're like marketing dorks. We do podcasts, we listen to podcasts, we spend a lot of time on Twitter and. And it's like, that is culturally probably closer to what we are than some people will be. Like, oh yeah, I want it to be. And the other thing here is it ends up getting reflected in how the brand operates as well. Right. If I am at. We have a competitor, James Brand, based down in San Diego, extremely cool. And when they need to be hiring a marketing director, that person needs to be cool for sure. That's a game they're playing. I think Huckberry is like that too. They have roles where like, those people need to be cool if you're producing dirt videos or whatever. A lot of what we do at Ridge is we need to be marketing dorks and into analytics and into, into tactics and into trends. And that's really what we're looking for. And I think only recently did I realize, like, oh, yeah, when we, when at least I've heard people talk about culture, that's actually more or less what we're trying to nail.
- [58:42]
C
That's a great take. That's, that's such a great take that called like, being someone that you like does not equal good culture fit is basically what you're saying, right?
- [58:53]
B
Totally. Yeah. Or like, I mean, yeah. The flip side of that is you end up liking the people who are also marketing dorks and help the business.
- [59:01]
C
Oh, you're a sick operator. Yes. I really like, like you. Yeah. And want to hang out.
- [59:04]
A
I'm smiling because I couldn't agree more. And I have this conversation with my team all the time. Like there we. We had somebody recently who was like one of those, like, good for the culture. People, like, goes out, gets drinks with people, like, things like that. But. But like part of our core values is like, go above and beyond. Like, no job is beneath you. You know, no one can say, like, that's not my job. And this person, good for the culture goes out, gets drinks. But. But they were also like a, hey, this is not my job. Like, I'm not going to bother to make other people's jobs easier. I'm not going to Go above and beyond. I'm not going to like learn about it. It. I'm like, is that good for the culture? Like, like and, and what happened was because I'm, I'm trying like, I think in the past we haven't had a high performance culture and I'm like working my butt off to try to get it there. And what happens is, yeah, they go out for drinks a while in their first year and things like that and then things start get tougher and like people especially as the rest of your team elevates and as you know, cares about performance, like they're no longer want, going to want to go out for drinks with that person, you know, if you do have a players and stuff like that. So I think, think, I think that's one. And like, yeah, here's an example of culture. Like we hired this VP of retail and she's very focused on numbers very things like that. And like we've had decent amount of turnover as store managers. And I actually shouted her out in like a, a meeting of like our leadership team this week. I was like, you guys have done a great job of that and like, I want everybody to know, like, I consider that a really good thing that we've had t. Because, because you've improved the culture. Yeah. Some people, managers said they don't like the culture. It's becoming too corporate or whatever. I was like, no, our business is much better off for it. That is positive culture for our business. Like my business is. And it's not that I don't care. I'm not going to be the one who's going to organize the, the, the, the drinks and the happy hour. Like go, go do it. But like that's not making my business better, you know?
- [60:39]
C
Yeah, totally.
- [60:41]
A
So yeah, I, I, I could not agree more with you on that take.
- [60:46]
C
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- [63:02]
A
So, so what do you look for when you guys hire people? What do you what tells you? Because you can't just say hey are you good for culture? Do you work hard? Like do you guys have any tricks, any interview questions or processes to help figure out is this person going to be a match for the performance culture of our culture company?
- [63:19]
B
I've got a really obvious one. I don't think it'll be helpful at all. But we've, knock on wood, have made Some fantastic hires over the last year. And it's really, I think it's just come from me being, having had to be extremely in the weeds. Like I, I felt extremely comfortable hiring a, you know, paid social director or growth person like many years ago. But when it comes to like creative director or VP of marketing or VP of Ecom or something like that, I only felt confident. Confident having been extremely in the weeds and then while interviewing people understanding when they are dorky enough or have the tactical knowledge enough to be able to like do the role. Yeah, no, and I, like I said earlier, I mean that in a, in an extremely loving way. I don't think anybody on my team would take any offense to that. And yeah, so that's, that's obviously helpful. The roles that I've mishired in the past are the ones where I didn't deeply understand what was needed and defaulted too much to their quote unquote expertise. You know, we're hiring you as a director, I trust you and executing on this well. And there was just like a few times like too much misalignment there.
- [64:19]
A
Yeah, I, I had that realization this morning because that's like the conventional advice is like hire people and get out of their way.
- [64:26]
B
Yeah. And we talked about this with McCoy is I was like, you need a certain, it feels like leadership and hiring same sort of idea is best with a certain level of dogma. And that's like such a, that's such a, like double edged sword because it cuts both ways. Like if you're dogmatic in the wrong way, you're leading your organization like down the wrong path. But at the same time you need to be confident enough in your expertise and your vision that someone's executing within some sort of guardrails and you understand when they're deviating from that and you understand that they're not a fit.
- [64:57]
A
Well, what I tell my VP retail is like, you know retail more than me. You've opened far more stores than I have. I know Jones Road better than you do and I think that's how like, like I, I. Because I also think you can't, you can't pretend to know it all. And it's one thing if, right like Hunter, if you're, if you're hiring a paid media person, like you're going to know that and you're going to be the expert in that. But if you're hiring, you know, a brand person or a retail was like not your strength. Like I, I think we have to have the humility there but it also doesn't mean just, you know, throw caution to the wind, like, you do whatever you want. Like, I think you still have to. To own the culture of your company and make those decisions because you know best for what your company needs. Yeah.
- [65:33]
B
And I think what McCoy said was something like, it's just competence all the way down. And it's like you realize that, that, that problem solving mentality can actually port across more departments and teams and functions you might previously realize. So it's just a matter of striking that balance of you have expertise that you need to be hiring for and then you need to make sure that they are aligning with like your competent understanding of your business because they're not going to be more of an expert in Jones Road than you do.
- [65:58]
C
You do like projects with your, with your hires. Like, that's something we do is like actually let. Make them do something and, and that can't get you all the way there. But I think that's been really helpful for us to be like, all right, this person. And they do understand it all the way from the strategy level all the way down to like the how this actually comes to life through a E commerce brand with all the little, you know, Internet marketing details. I think that's been really helpful. Do you guys do that with your, with your hires?
- [66:26]
B
We've started doing a lot of case studies and that's also something that I would recommend we pay to do the case studies. It's like a couple hundred bucks. It should take someone a couple hours. And that's just helpful to see how they think through problems.
- [66:36]
C
Months. Yeah. You know what I think is the one that I, that I. It's hard to, it's hard to gauge this in the hiring process, but it comes very apparent quickly once you've actually hired someone is I want. I think what's great culture and the, the person that I'm trying to hire for is the person that gets super, super excited about producing amazing outcomes. Right. Like our director of Paid Media London, like, he's texting me on Saturday with like our year over year Screenshot, like up 30%. Like, let's go. Like, like new media mix is doing well. Like, I want, I want the CRO lead to text me and be like, dude, like 20% lift in RPU. Like, yeah, like this. Like people that really get excited about the outcomes that we're all trying to produce literally every single day. Like, because that's what we're trying to do.
- [67:17]
A
Right?
- [67:17]
C
It's just like stack marginal wins on top of each other and that's how you like ensure you're always improving as a, as a E commerce brand and just like an Internet marketing driven brand. Like I want my creative strategist texting me on a Sunday morning or like, like a, or like a Tuesday night and be like, oh, this new creative test is crushing. Like hell yeah. Like, I want to feel that enthusiasm. Like be enthusiastic about these amazing outcomes that we are working tirelessly to produce. Like it's, it's cool to launch a new ad that's a new swing and all of a sudden it's just banging to a totally new audience. Like that makes me excited and like I want to hire people that also get excited about that.
- [67:52]
A
So Connor MC Give me give. Because your. Your VP marketing I think is from a. A larger brand. Brand. Right. And so like again, like I think where.
- [68:00]
B
Oh actually, yeah, actually this is like ideal. Yeah. Her background is she was at Wayfair massive brand. But also everybody I've spoken to at ways her. It's tactically just like insane. Like they are, they're so much different than, you know, like we've hired some people from YETI who are like not very good. And I think yeti, if you are like, they are just so big and just like at such critical mass that the people within that organization are not de facto amazing. Amazing. That a little harsh, but like it's true.
- [68:32]
A
Yeah.
- [68:33]
B
So really big brand. And then she also had D2C experience at a much smaller brand and she had a management consultant background. I'm like, oh my God. Like I just absolutely checking a lot of boxes.
- [68:42]
A
Okay, cool. So. So it seems like, because I would imagine VP marketing, like there's a very strategic component to that role. Right. FSVP marketing. But it's not just that. And so I think I'm at the same thing that I'm looking for where it's like, like this person's going to be doing brand strategy. They're going to help us figure out what, what is like the next phase of our growth and business and you know, Persona development and you know, strategic insights for, you know, just like reaching new audiences and, and how we speak to them. So it's a very strategic thing. But then if they give me a deck, then it's like, okay, go, go execute on it. So my concern is you get somebody from a big brand and they're not going to be executor, but if you get somebody from a smaller brand, like they haven't done what they. They haven't experienced or done that. So like what made you feel confident that somebody from a larger brand could also be a fit for executing in your culture?
- [69:30]
B
Well the, the experience of having been in both brands is a huge value. I think our COO worked in banking and then at another D2C brand from a very, he was very early at the brand and then they grew to over nine figures and it was like I actually think that is such a unique experience to have. Like I'm very partial to those people. I think they're extremely hard to hire frankly. Like if you, you've, if you've worked at a billion doll brand and gone from 20 million to 150 million at a D2C brand, I think you know that you just have a skill set that spans a very large spectrum. So those were the two things and then the other thing was the case study. The like it was just, it was just extremely detail oriented and we could talk offline about like some more details of the role but in this case they oversee and I've talked about this on the pod before go to market Strategy.
- [70:15]
C
Strategy.
- [70:16]
B
There's a huge operation behind that. So you need someone who understands strategy but at the same time like process and organization and timelines and things like that. And then also a lot of our own channels so email, sorry retention, partnerships, organic, social cx. So yeah, anyway those were some of the things that we got where given what I needed from a person that would oversee those functions within the business. We were looking at the case study, we were looking at previous experience. We did probably at least three interviews at the time.
- [70:42]
A
I like that. Yeah that you said that they have you know, big brand experience and like smaller D to cuz that's. I think one thing I've been looking for where in the past we talked to people from big companies and like oh I want to work at a startup but it's like I'm not willing to let this be your first startup because you might romanticize a startup because you don't like the bureaucracy but like you don't. That's what I've learned. And so a few of the resumes that I've like people were at Johnson and Johnson or l' Oreal or something but then they gravitated to startups and they went like they were at multiple after it. So it's like, like there's some proof that they kind of like it. So I think that's a good one. I also, I just try to be very transparent about our culture as part of a process and just like this is how it works. You're, you're not going to have the most resources. You're going to be expected to do these things yourselves. And like I think the, the right people are not phased by that and the wrong people are like oh, maybe that's not for me.
- [71:30]
B
I've gotten that advice as well and I think it's particularly hiring for like more junior roles where I got the advice at one point, like you have to sit before you hire them. You have to sit them down and tell them like hey, I'm going to sometimes expect you to like answer my slacks on the weekends and work hours outside of 9 to 5 and things like that. Like we have a high performance culture and that will sometimes be expected of you and really like to a certain degree try to turn off the people that won't fit in that culture.
- [71:54]
A
Yeah, I think it's probably some of the best advice I've ever gotten. I'll just like especially. And by the way, I'll do, I'll, I'll interview almost, almost everybody at the company and especially now that this is so important to me in the culture. And even if it's a junior person, I'll sit them down and I'll say that I'm like I right. By the time it gets to me, people like you. My job is to tell you why you shouldn't work here.
- [72:14]
B
Okay. So another thing we, we'll have Zack stuck on again in the future. He walked me through his hiring process and it was extremely cool cuz he, he talks to everybody but he has like, he does like 15 minutes. The first person he talks to, just screening them for like the few attributes that he's looking for and then he's passing them off to the more like tactical stuff so that his you know, director of paid media can hire a media buyer or whatever. And that's a very interesting sort of.
- [72:38]
C
Flow I think to start with the founder, CEO to filter founder, 15 minute.
- [72:44]
B
Grill him super quickly, vet him whether he thinks that they're going to fit the culture, etc. I don't know how he would describe exactly what he's looking for. And then they're getting passed down to the 40 minute more in depth interviews and case studies.
- [72:55]
A
That would be good. I feel like obviously Connor, you know, but I feel like Zach is really good at hiring and building a team and has like solid performance expectations.
- [73:02]
C
Oh dude, totally. Yeah. He like he's the classic example right where he can, he's been, been so deep in the weeds of an ad account. But now he's also like, CEO, founder of these brands. And he's not as in the weeds on all the details. So he's like the. He knows exactly what to. What to look for. And he's also. He's always done a great job of attracting really good talent. I mean, or alternative theory.
- [73:24]
B
Wisconsin residents are extremely good at digital marketing, naturally. And it's just shooting fish in a barrel for Zach.
- [73:29]
C
Well, there's not that many of us, so it's like you find another media buyer in the wild. It's like. Like, what this happened? Like, this is crazy. I remember being in, like, Milwaukee, Wisconsin, like, in my Facebook ads account, and like, this person walked up to me and like, he had the most insane look on his face. Like, what? Like, you're in Facebook ads manager right now. Like, no way. I've never met another one of me.
- [73:48]
A
Wait, is that how you met him? Is that how he hired you?
- [73:50]
C
No, this was when I was already working at Homestead, and I was working. I was living in Milwaukee. I met Zach. I ended up getting hired by Homestead because I met zach's partner on LinkedIn and. And I joined. Joined him three weeks later.
- [74:02]
A
Okay. Would have been a cooler story if.
- [74:03]
C
That happened, though, actually. Hold on. Can we cut that?
- [74:08]
A
All right, cool. Any. Anything else? Anything else you guys want to share? Hiring. Building. Building team culture.
- [74:13]
B
No, I like it.
- [74:14]
C
That was good.
- [74:15]
A
All right, well, that was. That was a good one. Excited to. To. To. To have everybody here. Appreciate it. Appreciate the time, as always. Want to thank our sponsors. I think this is episode 81. We got motion rich panel, oppression AI out after cell and House. If you like this, please subscribe. YouTube comment. Let us know any questions you have and hope everyone's gearing up for a good Q4.