Operators Titans E002: Portland Leather Goods (with CMO MacCoy Merkley)

Summary

Marketing Operators – Operators Titans E002: Portland Leather Goods (with CMO MacCoy Merkley)

Date: October 2, 2025
Guests: MacCoy Merkley (CMO, Portland Leather Goods)
Hosts: Connor Rolain, Connor MacDonald, Cody Plofker

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Episode Overview

This episode of the Operators Titans series dives into the grassroots journey of MacCoy Merkley, who went from a wedding photographer with no formal marketing experience to CMO of Portland Leather Goods. The discussion covers MacCoy’s unconventional entry into digital marketing, navigating the growth of a fledgling Etsy shop into a nine-figure DTC brand, and his perspectives on scaling teams, channel expansion, and the mindset frameworks, tactics, and philosophies that have driven his and the company's success.

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1. MacCoy’s Unconventional Beginnings & Wild Interview Story

• MacCoy shares his struggles with feeling unfulfilled and believing he “was not smart enough,” leading him to seek purpose and structure.
• He answered a Craigslist ad for a "digital media specialist" at Portland Leather Goods despite lacking a resume or formal marketing background.
• The interview with founder Curtis was unorthodox and energetic:
  • MacCoy recalled, “I started making fun of him back. Cause I was like, screw you, man. Like, I'm not gonna sit here and take this.” (04:24)
  • Initially sent away, Curtis called him back 30 minutes later for a job offer.
  • MacCoy started the next day at $13/hr, with no clear job scope.
• He described his early days as “basically trying not to get fired” (06:33), attaching himself to the neglected Shopify site and refusing involvement with the Etsy side.

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2. Early Days: Scrappiness, Self-Teaching, and Grassroots Growth

• MacCoy relied on self-taught skills, learning media buying and eCommerce via “the University of YouTube,” and trial and error.
• Recognized some foundational marketing intuition from pitching wedding photography services, particularly “targeting engaged women in Portland”—analogous to early, highly targeted media buying.
• Revenue growth: <$1M to over $15M in a few years.
  • “We ended up hitting around one, just over one that year. Five the next year, 15 the next year. So, like, exponential growth in my first few years.” (08:26)
• Reluctant to adopt the existing Etsy focus, insisted on owning the Shopify direction.

Key Quote:

“I wouldn't hire me if I was, if I came in. I was like I'm a wedding photographer. Let me run your, you know, your nine figure company. Like no thanks. But I knew how to like put my own content online.”
(08:01, MacCoy Merkley)

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3. Influences, Learning Resources, and the Evolution of the DTC Marketing Operator

• Early learning relied on available content creators:
  • Credit to founder Curtis for product-market fit and “delivering insane value.”
  • Relentless YouTube learning: Neil Patel, Gary Vee—though most resources felt vague and non-actionable.
  • Heavy value drawn from peer communities (“cloud of Operators”) as the company and DTC ecosystem matured.

Notable Reflection:

“From being able to like to run ads for a great product at an insane price is just, you can't beat that. And I'm like, so sorry for people who are stuck in brands and in businesses with like a terrible product they have to put some sort of spin on.”
(10:10, MacCoy Merkley)

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4. Operator Roundtable: Self-Taught Marketers’ Journeys

• Hosts share their own self-education stories—from Facebook groups (BAMF, David Herman, Taylor Holiday, etc.), agency experience, and investments in direct response courses.
• Shared sentiment: community and paid learning (courses, masterminds, etc.) remain vital for operators at all stages.

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5. Transition from Generalist IC to Manager and Executive

Key Discussion Points:

• The rare path of growing from doer to manager to executive within a single scaling organization.
  • “It's really hard to get good at a specific thing and then getting good at executive level management is difficult by itself. And so when you have two things that are rare, it's not just how rare each individual thing, they multiply against each other.” (20:02, MacCoy Merkley)
• The challenge of letting go—delegating, trusting team layers, and evolving from hands-on work to executive direction.
• Continual personal growth is necessary: “...given a long enough period of time I won't be the CMO... but I'm trying to make sure when that happens it's because I like die of old age, not because like the business grows to a point where I can't support it.” (22:13)

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6. The Philosophy of “Accelerated Common Sense”

• MacCoy’s core management framework: most business problems are knowable; attack problems swiftly with “velocity”—whether solving them directly or sourcing domain experts.
  • “Accelerated common sense... it is knowable. I just need to figure out how to know it... that's the framework.” (26:05)
• On overcoming imposter syndrome: “I wasted way too many years believing I was not smart enough... only to figure out that it's basically just accelerating common sense all the way up.” (23:51)

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7. Decision-Making under Uncertainty

• Effective operators don’t wait for perfect information—hunt for it, move forward, forgive mistakes, and create risk-tolerant environments for their teams.
• Insist on action: “You have to go like hunt and kill [information], but at some point, like, you have to move. It's not an option to stand still and so forgive yourself.” (31:22)

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8. Channel Expansion, Marketing Mix, and Vetting New Opportunities

Early-Stage Approach & Channel Mix Evolution

• Start focused: “When you're very small, I recommend that you focus on like as few number of things as possible... pick something... do it really, really well.” (33:44)
• For Portland Leather Goods:
  • Early mix: Meta (Facebook/Instagram), accidental reliance on Pinterest, later balanced with Google when a specialist joined.
  • Through nine figures: “I spent every dollar on meta, myself and one other person, up until we hit nine figures in revenue.” (35:18)
• Recent years: More diversified; Pinterest still small, AppLovin now ~10-12%, Google 20–30%, heavy on Meta.

Vetting New Channels

• “The first part is to say no, like, over and over and over and over and over again.” (37:41)
• Lean on operator peer groups to validate new opportunities before investment.
• Ratio of “no’s” to “yes’s” is extremely high to keep focus and avoid shiny object syndrome.
• If opportunity isn’t sought as part of a deliberate strategy (versus cold outreach/pitch), it’s a default no.

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9. Media Mix Analytics, Frequency, and The New Growth Challenge

• Measuring paid media impact: In a recent year, they reached 60 million US women 20 times each on Meta.
  • Hard question: “Is it that I think I'm going to spend way, way, way more money and I'm going to get it to 70 million, or am I going to spend way, way more money and my frequency goes to like 30 or 40? Like, what's the correct number?” (44:53)
• Strategic focus shift: Increasing value per impression through brand, influencer, and multi-channel storytelling, rather than just scaling ad frequency.
• Both hosts and MacCoy agree on a need for unique reach and creative diversity, moving beyond “just spend more on Meta,” especially as reach per dollar plateaus.
• Emphasis on cross-brand learning: “...I think by 2028 and 2029, none of us will shut up about retention, right?” (52:31)

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10. Titan 10 (Rapid Fire Round)

1. Desert Island Dashboard – Top 3 Metrics:

• CAC (Customer Acquisition Cost)
• 12-month LTV (Lifetime Value)
• Contribution Margin per Customer (55:11)

2. Non-Business Book/Resource:

• “It's gotta be some sort of caffeine... like a Celsius energy drink.” (55:30)

3. Contrarian Belief:

• “80% of your performance is completely outside the ad account. It's brand and, and your company and your position, your product.” (55:53)

4. Most Important Leadership Word:

• “Courage. It's like telling people the truth. It's confronting stuff you don't know. It's being uncomfortable, it's growing.” (56:13)

5. Best Meal:

• “Breakfast... the meal you can tweak the most, like in time.” (56:42)

6. Most Overrated Growth Tactic:

• “Creative volume. I think most people don't need it. I think they're just listening to conversations from people way, way, way, way larger than them.” (57:04)

7. Most Underrated Tactic:

• “CRO [Conversion Rate Optimization]... one good decision can lift every channel, every campaign, every ad set, every piece of creative.” (57:41)

8. Most Important Word in Business:

• “Growth. Like we business exist in an economy. Like they serve a purpose, like they're, they're here to generate money and growth is absolutely imperative to that.” (58:24)

9. Is Constant Revenue/Profit “Growth”?

• “Depends on the time... if you had to build a business whose sole objective was to survive 100 years, could you describe that business? ...Is it gonna be healthy in 10, 15, 20 years? I don't think so.” (59:42)

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• “I wasted way too many years believing I was not smart enough.” (00:00, 23:51, 26:05, 26:18, 26:30; motif throughout)
• “The whole world was built by people no smarter than you.” (00:17, 23:51)
• “Accelerated common sense all the way up.” (25:52, 26:05)
• “If you have a very short amount of time to succeed... the less you know the harder and the faster you should commit to, like, throwing yourself in and being at the mercy of the people who do know…” (29:27)
• “You do not get to stand still. The business itself has to grow — its natural state is dying. There's no standing still on the treadmill.” (00:17, 58:24, 58:57)

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Timestamps for Key Segments

• 00:00 – Opening theme; the struggle with self-doubt
• 02:05 – MacCoy’s wild entry and interview at Portland Leather Goods
• 06:33 – Early days, finding a way to contribute and not get fired
• 09:58 – Influences and resources for self-taught marketers
• 20:02 – Transition from IC to manager to executive: the “two rare things” challenge
• 23:51 – Frameworks for management and accelerated common sense
• 33:44 – Channel focus, media mix, and growth stages
• 37:41 – Channel vetting process and philosophy of “default no”
• 44:18 – Media mix analytics and frequency as a new constraint
• 55:11 – Rapid-fire “Titan 10” operator questions

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Tone & Takeaways

The episode is candid, punchy, irreverent, and full of lived experience from the DTC marketing trenches. MacCoy’s journey illustrates self-taught grit, strategic focus, and humility in leadership, while offering tactical and philosophical frameworks for operators scaling from grassroots to nine figures and beyond. The conversation is a reality check for early-stage founders on prioritization, and an invitation for advanced operators to rethink incremental gains in frequency, reach, and brand value as the real engines of sustained growth.

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For Operators:

• Start focused, say no often, and use your peer network to validate new opportunities.
• Attack problems quickly; you don’t need to know all the answers, but you must accelerate towards know-how.
• Internal growth and brand value dwarf the impact of incremental ad account optimizations.
• Constantly question whether your “growth” is sustainable for the next 100 years.

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Transcript

[McCoy Merkley]

I wasted way too many years believing I was not smart enough. Just was not living up to my full potential and like wasting away.

[Host (possibly Connor)]

You basically went from being a no experience, one man army to building out a full marketing team. As Portland Leather Goods grew, were there any hard lessons in that transition?

[McCoy Merkley]

We go through a ton of challenges. Business and life are so close in a lot of ways. The whole world was built by people no smarter than you. And so if you're somebody who's willing to like attack problems and like get your hands dirty and learn, I think you're capable of managing just about anyone. You do not get to standstill. The business itself has to grow like it's its natural state is dying. There's no standing still on the treadmill. You got to move, you got to grow.

[Host (possibly Connor)]

This is operators Titans brought to you by Applovin Today. Today we have none other than McCoy Merkley from Portland Leather Goods going to dig into your origins at Portland Leather Goods because you have a very grassroots story which I love. I, I love asking performance marketers how they got into performance marketing because it's generally I feel like no two paths in are the same. I have a, like a very grassroots entry point into it. So do you. So it's exciting to kind of see all these different ways that people get into this performance marketing and world and e commerce digital marketing world. But let's dig into it a little bit. So I have a little bit of an anecdote and then I want to, I want to ask you about it. So I've been told that in 2018 you answered a craigslist, a Craigslist job posting for a quote unquote digital media specialist at Portland Leather Goods. At that point you were a wedding photographer, had no marketing resume, but you walked into what you've called a wild interview and, and somehow got the gig. So Portland Other Goods at this time was a very scrappy sub $5 million Etsy business. And then you basically just kind of had to figure it out. So I know Curtis, I know he's like a very eccentric founder. So I want to know like what happened in that interview and how did you ultimately convince Curtis to take a chance on you?

[McCoy Merkley]

Yeah, that, that was wild. His, Curtis, his body produces its own caffeine so he just like wakes up, you know, just like as wide eyed as you can possibly be. That interview was crazy. I applied at 9pm the night before I saw this craigslist post. I was like, okay, this sounds like what I want. As you mentioned at the time, I was a wedding photographer. So I just was. I work on the weekends, I had it during the week, but I was just. Was not living up my full potential and like wasting away and waking up way too late. So I decided, okay, I'm going to go get a job which will give me this like, very mechanical, structured reason to get out of bed. So I saw this craigslist post 9pm I. It asked for a cover letter and a resume. I had no resume because I was a wedding photographer. Like, who, what am I going to write? Like one line, you know, like photographer, like current, you know, who knows in any case. So I wrote a cover letter. I was like, there's no way I'm submitting this non resume. And I just walked in in the next morning. But as I mentioned, it was a factory. So I, I walked upstairs, I opened the door to the bottom of the warehouse. I'm like, hello, there's no one there. And I walked upstairs and I was on like a factory floor and somebody's like sewing and hammering rivets and all this motion was going on to make the products. And somebody finally walked over and was like, hi. Why are you here? I was like, I'm. I'm here to meet somebody. I submitted an application, but I just need to meet somebody. And they said, do you have an interview? I'm like, no, I have nothing. Like, I'm not supposed to be here at all. You can kick me out if you want. And they said, oh, well, do you want one? I said, sure. Great. They walked off and Curtis walked by a few minutes later. And he was like, hey, you here for an interview? And I was like, not officially, but if you'll have me. Sounds good. He said, well, I got a group. I got somebody coming in like 20 minutes. Why don't you just make. Let's make it a group interview. Like we port leather goods. We did like group interviews for years and years and years. I don't know if it's the best format, but we were constantly hiring so many people for like the production that like, you'd have these crazy, eclectic group interviews where it's like, okay, that guy's a social media person, that person's a sewer. Let's, you know, shove 10 of them in a room and just like fire questions at him. Not efficient. I'm glad we've moved past that. But I started the interview and if you've met Curtis, you know, he's, he, he's, he's a wild guy, right? He's got a lot of energy. And he basically started asking me questions. And I remember specifically he asked me, like, where'd you go to school? So I'm from, like, rural Washington, like, Sean Frank. And I actually, like, probably grew up like an hour and a half apart from each other in Washington, like, middle of nowhere. Sticks. And so I told him I didn't go to school. He said, okay, you didn't study anything. I'm like, no, I didn't even go to high school. Like, I. I'm homeschool.

[Host (possibly Connor)]

Like, I got.

[McCoy Merkley]

And I thought for sure that it was like an immediate turn off. Like, okay, this kid knows nothing and just started making fun of me. And so I started making fun of him back. Cause I was like, screw you, man. Like, I'm not gonna sit here and take this. And so we started riffing. I was calling him old, he was calling me young and dumb. You know, like, back and forth. And then maybe 10, 15 minutes later, he looks at me and goes, okay, you can leave. You stay here. And he points to the gal who was like, actually there for an interview and had her stay. So I was like, okay, like, whatever, I'll see you later. Hung my head and walked out. And he chased me out. He's like, come back in 30 minutes. I was like, okay, sounds good. So I remember calling my wife and my, like, best friend at the time. I'm like, I have no idea what just happened. But I going back in 30 minutes. We'll see what he has to say. Maybe he wants to, like, beat me up a little bit more. Maybe he's mad at me. And I literally started the very next day. So, like, a very uncommon entry into, you know, a company generally. And then my. My position at the time again was like, digital media specialist. I had no idea what that meant. I remember my cover letter. I found it at some point, and it was basically like, I shoot photos, and those are digital media. You weren't very specific. So I think I fit the bill. Like, let's talk about it, basically. So that was my Original position at 13 an hour part time. So a total all in comp of $13,000 a year. So no one can complain about entry salaries.

[Connor]

You know, I also think the. The job listing on Craigslist, you guys have. You guys have to been fielding some really, like, interesting candidates.

[McCoy Merkley]

Oh, I got. I have a lot of stories. The people who've come in especially for, like, sewing gigs, and they're like, I have very non traditional sewing experience, and I won't get into, like, what that means, but we've got some wild, wild job candidates.

[Host (possibly Connor)]

Did they h, did they hire the woman who was actually there for an interview too? Or did she get.

[McCoy Merkley]

She didn't make it? No, she didn't make it.

[Host (possibly Connor)]

Oh wow. So what, what are you. So you start the next day with like a content background which is I'm sure like super helpful obviously. But you didn't know anything about media buying, you didn't know anything about like media distribution and like probably didn't know much about like the philosophy of demand generation and demand capture and all the, and all the things, right, that like are the, are the kind of the, the principles and the scaffolding of what we, what we lean on to do our day to day jobs. Like what are you doing day one through day 90 to help grow this, this Etsy Only business?

[McCoy Merkley]

Basically trying not to get fired. Right? Like I remember literally coming home to my wife and she's like, what'd you do today? And I'm like, I don't know, like did you do a good job at it? I'm like, I don't know. Like we're figuring this thing out. It was like the Wild West. So there was an Etsy company, the Port Leather Goods was Etsy at the time. Like we were making everything to order, going down and buying like whatever leather we could get from like a local shop in Portland. And Curtis I think just had like this wiggle that like he needed to do more in some other way. And so when I came in there was a Shopify store shell up and running. It'd been up and running since like 2016. Like I think famously we did one order on Black Friday in 2016. Like no one was managing it at all. It was just people who happened to Google Port Leather Goods after buying like a product on Etsy. And so I showed up and I, I basically just had to like find things to do every single day to try not to get fired, like look busy basically, which I've been in those like situations before, so that's not completely foreign to me. You know, trying to prove your worth out of literally nothing. And I remember finding like the dot com and starting to ask questions and you know, poke around and I realized like no one was paying attention to this thing at all. Like it was completely unmanned all of the time and attention. The heartbeat of Port Leather Goods was Etsy and the dot com basically just exists to like spill over traffic. And I made that my thing. I had a media background as you mentioned. Looking back now, I think I had a decent marketing foundation more than I realized at the time. Like but the skills were so small and undersized. Like they, they just wouldn't translate. Like I wouldn't hire me if I was, if I came in. I was like I'm a wedding photographer. Let me run your, you know, your nine figure company. Like no thanks. But I knew how to like put my own content online. I knew how to like create pitch decks to pitch people on my wedding photography services. I knew how to target engaged women in Portland for wedding photography services which is you know now looking back is like a very small amount of media buying with extremely high success rate. So I wasn't used to like you know, because you're targeting engaged women in your area so it's like fish in a barrel.

[Host (possibly Connor)]

Right.

[McCoy Merkley]

But I found the website, I attached myself to that I'm like this is going to be my thing. And I actively like refused to even own a login to the Etsy store because I didn't want to be associated with at all. I didn't want to get pulled in you know the a passing moment for help to with this like Etsy platform. I wanted to be exclusively the Shopify person. And so that is where I landed. We were doing less than pacing for less than a million when I joined the team. We ended up hitting around one, just over one that year. Five the next year, 15 the next year. So like exponential growth in my first few years. Just like finding, hunting, killing everything I could to make the website experience better and then learning media buying like from the University of YouTube. There wasn't a lot of like good resources or anything like that at the time. So literally trial and error trying to figure out like media buying, web design, conversion rate optimization, all like email, all of the things and was not doing a great job at it frankly. Like don't go to the wayback machine and look at what the website looked back. Like back then it was not great but scrappy. Just you know pull it all together. As I'm sure you know we all have our eras that look a lot like that.

[Host (possibly Connor)]

Yep. Hundred. Yeah, I remember those days and those are, those are, those are the days you laid the foundation which is it's fun to kind of like trip your way through it and figure it out along the way. But I want to like as you got so as you were doing that this like self taught approach. Do you have anybody that you really credit for, for how like you think about marketing? Like who do you credit the most for shaping your approach to, to like E commerce growth Marketing?

[McCoy Merkley]

Yeah, I mean I was, I was looking at, as I mentioned, there wasn't a lot, like, there was no marketing operators podcast obviously. Like, there wasn't like three insanely high tier CMOs, like talking about inside tactics all the time. There was a lot of vague, just blah out there. And so I listened to as many people as I could and when what really came first was like the, the marketing frameworks. So like first and foremost, you know, and credit to our founder Curtis, because he is a marketing mind and he gets it right. So creating product that people actually want is like, absolutely. I would not be here in the company, would not be alive had he not like nailed that product market fit. And furthermore, like, he's obsessed with delivering insane value. And I benefited beyond measure from that. From being able to like to run ads for a great product at an insane price is just, you can't beat that. And I'm like, so sorry for people who are stuck in brands and in businesses with like a terrible product they have to put some sort of spin on. So I mean, first and foremost, it'd probably be our founder for creating something that I could scale. But from there is like I mentioned is like really the University of YouTube. Like anyone I could, I could Google and learn from. I mean, I got caught in the Neil Patel, like funnel for endlessly for the like, like four years. I just couldn't escape Neil Patel wherever I, you know, I closed my eyes and he was there. And then, you know, some of like the, the big voices at the time are like Gary Vee, right? But none of those, if, if you look at all those people, none of those have like really distilled down and impactful, like go to work the next day and implement that tactics. It was all like general marketing frameworks about like giving value, like, and then asking for something in return. As you know, it's Gary Vee. Neil Patel is maybe a little bit more tactical with that, but like not necessarily actionable for like the stage of business I was in. So it's really kind of the wild west, you know, 2016 or 2018 or so. And I'm so glad that we're not in that stage. And there's way more mature voices for people to like look to, including like this podcast and just other really great voices out there, whether it's Twitter, x, you know, LinkedIn, you name it. Like, there's some really great voices out there now that I think, you know, I draw inspiration from everyone now. It's the community, it's the cloud of Operators who I get the most benefit from. Now it's.

[Host (possibly Connor)]

It's fun to hear you talk about like what you were doing to learn because I also was like I was getting into this I think at like the exact same time. I was like I was like 21 around 2016, 2017, 2018 ish in that, in that range of time. So I was definitely watching Gary Vee was. I was in. I was more. There's like these Facebook groups. He's like that people were like talking about ad buying and I can't even remember the name of them but I remember that was one of the spots I was getting more like tactical advice where people are actually like screen sharing ads manager and sharing how to like do certain things. Granted they all ended with and buy my course which I. Which I avoided luckily. I don't know. Connor and Cody, do you guys have any, any similar like self taught resource stories with how you started learning about like Facebook ads and just.

[McCoy Merkley]

Twitter?

[Host (possibly Connor)]

Like I remember.

[Connor]

Well actually the, the really I guess the quick sequence for me. I joined a marketing agency end of 2016. That was Hawk Media in Santa Monica. That was perfect because they had no idea what they were doing. So everybody was learning. There's a guy, Josh Fechter at the time it was like a big growth hacker and he had a big Facebook community called Badass Marketing and founders bamf that was very influential. And then, and then there was a lot of people sharing content on Twitter at the time. That's how I met like David Herman and Reza from Motion. And you know back in the day you had like 2pm links and Taylor Holiday was like a super OG. So it's like it's, it's more or less been the same crew now for like eight or nine years for me or whatever.

[Host (possibly Connor)]

Wow. Cody, how about you?

[Cody]

Mine was like so like general marketing stuff because I had a local business. So it was like a lot of like the OG direct response stuff. So like Dan Kennedy was a big one. There were a bunch of other like direct response copywriters. So it kind of like Dan Kennedy, Gary Halbert, John Carlton, stuff like that obviously like Russell Brunson, clickfunnels, all that kind of stuff. And then there was a bunch of like same thing like Facebook ad courses, stuff like that. Like Cat Howell was one like eventually made it over to like Ezra stuff and did like the stuff with Molly Pittman like train my traffic person. So yeah, definitely a lot of, A lot of like podcasts, a lot of like courses. I don't, I don't courses at all because I think I've spent, you know, probably 20 grand on courses, and I would not be where I am today without it. You just got to know the right ones. You just got to, you know, find the right ones. So, yeah, definitely a lot of courses. But I just want to say I think we should have McCoy on more often. I think we should have moderators, fans of the podcast more often. I love this. Just hearing about how great we are. I'll tone it down any day you want.

[McCoy Merkley]

Dude, that's enough gas here.

[Host (possibly Connor)]

So I found. I found the go ahead.

[McCoy Merkley]

Oh, geez. This took a turn. Let's do it.

[Host (possibly Connor)]

I just went into Facebook and I was like, I got to find one of the groups I was in. So this. I don't remember this being the hero. The hero banner, but this is like, one of the Facebook ads groups I was at is all these people trying to, like, scale out their agencies. This guy, Jeff Miller, was making all sorts of videos about how to buy ads and how to scale out your. How to scale out your agency. So I was in a few. A few groups like this trying to. Trying to figure stuff out.

[Connor]

I had a question for McCoy.

[Host (possibly Connor)]

Amazing.

[Connor]

I'm biased because I think I attribute a lot of my ability to adapt to digital marketing to having a background in both. Like, something somewhat analytic related. Like, I was like, a calculus tutor in high school. I got an economics degree and then having enough of a creative background, and that's, like, so helpful very early at a brand where it's like, I'm comfortable with numbers and I can kind of screw around in Photoshop and obviously as a. As a photographer, and you said you could build the decks and things like that. That skill set's very obvious. Did you have any sort of, like, analytical background or was that a big learning curve?

[McCoy Merkley]

No, I had, like, an aptitude. I remember taking one of those, like, career tests, you know, to be my hope, like, wild homeschool education. It's like, okay, we're going to help you find out what you're going to be in life. And it said two things. I took, like, three times in a row. It said, you're either going to be a kindergarten teacher or a stockbroker. And I was like, okay, like, I'm good at. I'm. I'm good at math. Like, I'm. I define that as, like, wrong but close. You know, Like, I can kind of get the gist of the numbers and the way they move kind of intuitively throughout my life. But I'm I'm not like, technically, I don't ask me to do algebra or any like intense calculations. Um, so I, I was always decent at that, like kind of seeing the patterns and the numbers. But no, same thing. Like no formal background. But you just, it's a sense like we, we talk about this all the time internally. When you ask people numbers or stats and they go, um, let me check the computer. Like my, my brain has always been much better at like retaining those in like the, the subconscious. And I think like when you do that, like maybe it's a key to a higher aptitude for numbers, math, patterns, data, things like that. Because you're subconsciously working on those numbers all the time. Right. I'm sure like everyone on this podcast like, but you can probably rattle off a bunch of your, your, your brand stats from memory and that's probably like an indication that you have a high aptitude for like data, numbers, math, things like that. But no, no formal like I didn't, I didn't even. I cheated through my homeschool algebra class. So I know nothing. None of it. Don't ask me if you know me.

[Sponsor Representative (Applovin)]

You know, I love two things, incrementality and ad credits. And I'm about to hook you up.

[Cody]

With both of them.

[Sponsor Representative (Applovin)]

Operators Titans is brought to you by Applovin, The S&P 500 mobile gaming ad platform. Applovin is opening up its self surf ads manager Axon for the first time and offering you 5k in credits when you spend 5k. But you have to have an invite only URL plus a code to get access. Applovin has been super incremental for us. Every time we've tested. We have two proper house geo lift tests under our belt and Applovin has been very incremental is there's a lot of channels where you can spend like small amounts of scale and spend. We've been able to spend pretty significantly on Applovin each time we've tested it. We don't find that we hit diminishing returns right away. And so it's just really effective because you don't want your team trying to test out these new channels where they're barely going to make a difference for your business. And I love that there's actually a lot of scale potential there if you get it working. And again, I've seen it be very incremental for brands. The other thing is I'm all about being high leverage. We've talked about this on a bunch of marketing operators podcasts. The cool thing about Applovin. You don't have to go and shoot any new creative, you don't have to go find any new agencies. Just take your existing 9 by 16 stuff that happens to be working on channels on your main channels and just port that over. It's super easy, super low lift and highly effective.

[Cody]

You need a code, you need an.

[Sponsor Representative (Applovin)]

Invite, own URL, but that's where we can hook you up. So go to 9 operators.com applovin but don't delay because I'm sure they're going to go fast.

[Cody]

And that's not all.

[Sponsor Representative (Applovin)]

You'll get access to a live operators mastermind that we're running. Plus you get to see our entire playbook for how we scale spend across new channels. So whether you're hearing this or seeing.

[Cody]

This, here's a link.

[Sponsor Representative (Applovin)]

Go to 9operators.com applov.

[Host (possibly Connor)]

All right, so we got the, we got the low down on kind of your start at Portland Leather Goods. I want to, I want to like transition now into when you actually started scaling the brand and the team. So you basically went from being a no experience, one man army to building out a full marketing team as Portland Leather Goods grew. Almost no one I know does that at the same company, especially in, in our space. Right. Like I feel like a year at an agency is the equivalent to spending like five years at a company outside of E commerce. It just feels like people are, are in and out, in and out very quickly. Were there any hard lessons in that transition from like doer to manager to executive? I'm just always curious about delegation and, and like the unique, the unique challenge of trying to transition from being an IC to you're now still an ic but you're also managing a lot of people and doing work through others all the way to like now you're an executive and like you're not doing a lot of IC work at all. Like what did you, what did that transition look like for you? Was it, was it easy? Was it hard? Any, any things you learned in doing that?

[McCoy Merkley]

No, it's brutally difficult as I'm sure you all can like attest to like exactly how hard that is. It's rare enough to find somebody who's great, like good at market. Like you're, we're all out there hiring people all the time and like you're, we're all of our businesses are probably at a much more sure stage where you're looking for like you have a role, you have a position, you have a chair and you need somebody who has that skill set but everyone's familiar with the concept of when the business is starting. Like you're hiring generalists. And I was a very early hire in the business. When I joined, there was like 80 something people there, mostly on the production side. And now I'm like the second oldest employee, right? So I've outlived most of them. But we were all generalists at the time. No one was like specifically good at any one like facet of marketing. And most of the people of those 80 were on the production side, if I didn't mention that. But in any case, um, it's really hard to get good at a specific thing and then getting good at executive level management and problem solving is difficult by itself. And so when you have two things that are rare, it's not just how rare. Each individual thing, they multiply against each other, right? So like if you need to roll a one on a dice, it's one in six. If you need to roll a one on a dice two times in a row, it's exponentially more rarer, right? Because that sequence is difficult. So for anyone who's like, okay, I need to start, I want to start in a company and they're, they don't know anything, so they start usually in a smaller company as a generalist and then work their way up to be like extremely proficient in that thing. And then they want to move to like an executive level. Like, you have to understand that that's extraordinarily rare and difficult and hard. And so like all of you have probably gone through that journey at one point in time where it's like, I know how to do the thing and now I'm passing off the thing to someone who may be passing it off to someone talking a lot about this, like in, in the retail division of our brand that we're spinning up because we kept such a tight hold on like the brand and the messaging. And now that brand and the way it feels and the way it, it looks and talks and walks is being passed off to a VP who's hiring directors and or district managers, who's hiring store managers, who's hiring store associates, right? So I'm like all at once, exponentially, I'm like four or five layers away from the person who's actually representing the brand. Like, you lose a little bit of control in there. So it's difficult, it's difficult to get right. But yeah, we go, we go through a ton of challenges growing and growing up in the business, both as like a professional, but also like personally. Like there's business and life are so close in a lot of ways just in your ability to attack problems and be uncomfortable and grow and like constantly evolve. And I mean I was like a baby when I started. Like I have way more gray hairs. Like I'm hiding them well thanks to the lighting. But like, yeah, like my eyebrows are going gray sometimes. But that's comes along with like the personal development side. And again I'm sure you all echo that. It's difficult but so far I've been successful. I'm always looking like trying to look years and years ahead. And a really helpful framework for me is like given a long enough period of time I won't be the CMO of Portland Leather Goods. And like that's going to be true for all of us in our positions given a long enough period of time. But I'm trying to make sure when that happens it's because I like die of old age, not because like the business grows to a point where I can't support it. So I'm trying to like look to that person a few years out in the future and be like who does that person need to look and feel and act like and grow into that person today so that like I don't wake up one day and the business has passed me by and you know, my opportunity is like diminished.

[Host (possibly Connor)]

Do you think you, do you think your ability to be an effective manager and executive at an E Commerce brand is, is really because you are an individual contributor at some point? Like you've been hands on keyboard, you know how all these channels work. You can run them yourself to an extent. Like are you, do you think you'd even be able to be a manager of an E Comm growth marketing team or an executive of a, of a marketing team without that experience?

[McCoy Merkley]

I think so, but I think that that's, they've developed those skill sets like, like battle them out and blood and sweat and tears and that's to become like the executive, like that executive level of problem solving. And so I'm sure again I'm sure all you all have departments and people underneath your, your divisions and your, your wings that do things you know nothing about. So like for instance for me I have development, I have software development team underneath my team. I cannot read or write a line of code, but I'm capable of managing that group and that people because it's about alignment, not about like the local knowledge. So the local knowledge that you gather and you start to attack problems, you're like, okay, it's all about this problem, this thing, and it's ultra specific. But eventually you have enough of those problems and you come out the other end where you're like, okay, this problem kind of looks the same as all other problems, right? It's difficult. I don't know. I go figure it out. I know I overcome, and then like, okay, what's the next problem? Right? I wasted way too many years believing I was not smart enough and attacking problems slowly, only to figure out that it's basically just accelerating common sense all the way up. It's. It's all the way up. Like, the whole world is built by people no smarter than you. Um, and so if you. If you're somebody who's willing to, like, attack problems and, like, get your hands dirty and learn, I think you're capable of managing just about anyone because it's about alignment. It's about, like, okay, where. Where are we actually aiming at and how do we get there? And then you can manage really smart, great people and have success, but if you don't have that, if you think, like, you have to get. You have to, you know, turn the wrench and get everything done, then, like, good luck. Because the surface area of knowledge of the world is far greater than, like, you can possibly hope to contain in your own, like, brain. Like, you're not that smart. And so I would abandon that belief, if you have it, that, like, you have to be uniquely good at the thing and, like, work on much larger global frameworks on how to lead, how to manage how to attack problems and, like, you know, accept the approach of, like, accelerated common sense, because every problem basically looks the same. I don't know. I need to figure out how to know. Maybe someone knows. We get that knowledge, we overcome.

[Connor]

Can you expand on accelerated common sense? Oh, you said accelerated common sense all the way up. Is that just, like, a density of common sense? Like, the higher up, you need to be in management or. I'd love to hear more details there.

[McCoy Merkley]

Yeah, that's. If I ever write a book, it may be called Accelerated Common Sense. Like I mentioned, I wasted weight. I wasted way too much time thinking I wasn't smart enough. Like, I literally told you, like, I cheated through algebra in high school. And so I was like, I. In the back of my mind, I'm like, I know I don't know that book, that algebra, Brook and I that book. So I assumed at some point I'd run into a problem that took a scientist to figure out, and to some extent you kind of do. But what you do at that Point is you go find a scientist to figure it out, right? And so like the accelerated common sense framework is just like it is knowable. I just need to figure out how to know it. And sometimes that's me personally, sometimes that's like grit and like figuring it out myself with my own two hands and other times and more likely it's finding out who knows or finding out how to know. And so that's the framework. It's just like it is knowable, most likely. And even if it's the most complex thing in the world, like somebody out there is a rocket scientist, I can go find that person, I can recruit them, I can bring that knowledge in house and we can move on. So that, that's for me, that's. The accelerated common sense framework is just to accept that it is knowable and then attack every single problem with like velocity so that you can solve the maximum number of problems in your business as quickly as possible over you know, whatever period of time. And then the output result of that input is typically growth or progress.

[Host (possibly Connor)]

That's, that's a great, that's a great point. I, I thought, I've thought about it differently in my career. I think at some point a few years ago, which helped me kind of get over this imposter syndrome that I think everyone has to an extent was I can figure literally anything out. But, and I don't have to figure it out alone. Like I can do it with people who are the right, the right subject matter experts to go and figure that thing out. And I think that's like a really, a really empowering way to approach any, any problem really. Not just in growth marketing. On the flip side though, I've also seen people that spent like, you know, the majority of their career as like marketing executive or marketing manager director at like a massive, like, like a png, right? Like a huge like Holdco, like CPG brand. And then they come into like a scrappy ecom startup and they're just not able to manage the team that's actually doing the work because they don't fundamentally understand. And so yes, over time they kind of get the basic brushstrokes like, oh, like we need to make a landing page for this. It's like, okay, but you don't really understand what goes into a landing page. Like, you don't understand why we're building these pages the way we are, how they're built, who's responsible for it, what the timelines are. And it just creates this level of like, okay, you're Sitting in your chair saying let's create a landing page but then like that's it and they don't really know how to take it forward and like build a system around that and get that page like produced. Like I think in all of our roles we're producers at this point. Like we're not, we're, we're responsible for the end movie but we're not holding the camera, we're not doing the post production. Like we are producers of like marketing work. And I think you have to, I mean you have to have some of that like nuanced like directly in front of you experience to be able to at least manage the team I think and then you can learn some of the other things. Like you said like you had hands on keyboard experience with content paid email, maybe not with like actual doing dev work but like you have like you're adjacent to it to the point where like you can manage a team of UX designers and developers and like figure it out. Whereas like if you didn't have any of the actual E Comm hands on growth experience like I think that that connection would have been harder to get to.

[McCoy Merkley]

Yeah, I think you're likely right. I think you, I mean you could still approach that with like the same idea. Like I'm going to figure this out, I'm going to know how to know and maybe you won't succeed like given a small window of time. Right. But if you commit to that process of like I'm going to dig in, I'm going to know and like again most things are. No, almost everything is knowable either through like the recruitment of knowledge and somebody who knows you can get there. So like if you have a very short amount of time to succeed like you're. And if you throw me into like a finance department, I'm not going to succeed depending on like exactly how much work they need from me immediately. You know this finance is a lot of like it's experience. It's hard to erase the experience of working in like finance for 60 years, you know, for instance or that's obviously a long way too long of time. But in any case given a long enough period of time like most things are knowable and you can apply yourself to that solution. Just commit same idea like okay, the more, the less you know the harder and the faster you should commit to like throwing yourself in and like being at the mercy of the people who do know and apply yourself to like gather as much of that knowledge as you can. So it's not to Say you can succeed with no knowledge permanently, but like there is a framework for how to gain that knowledge and, and a lead in the line.

[Connor]

I have a question on this. We're talking about making decisions or you know, setting direction on things that we might have imperfect information in, right? And there's obviously the like, hey, we need to dive in and learn. But like you're not going to be able to become an expert in whatever you need to make a decision in. You need to be able to make it under uncertain conditions. So I think this is at least something that I've thought, particularly when managing processes that you don't directly possess the skills to do. There's just a certain level of dogma that you need, right? You need to decide, hey, I'm pretty confident given the information that I have, given what I know about the process of problem solving, this is the direction we need to go. And I think that's such a double edged sword because it's so incredibly important and valuable. And then it can also too much dogma and you're making the wrong decisions all the time. Have you thought through like the correct balance at all?

[McCoy Merkley]

Well, it, I think it depends on the situation. I mean clearly and obviously, like that's the, where you start the answer. You have to go somewhere. Like you have to move in some direction and so you have to, at some point you have to forgive yourself and you have to like rally the team and they have to respect you and you earn that respect through, you know, consistently being a good leader. That we're going to take as much, we're going to take as much time as we're given. We're going to take the information that we can find. And information entitlement I think is like a big problem. People assume the world is going to bring them all of the right context clues and bring them all the right information and then they'll move the direction they feel most comfortable. It's not you have to go like hunt and kill that, but at some point, like you have to move. It's not an option to stand still and so forgive yourself. You know, communicate with your team. Don't be, you know, for lack of a better rephrasing it and like acknowledge, like, hey, we're going to move in this direction because we think it's the best direction forward, but we will make mistakes. Like we are absolutely here to make mistakes, make people feel safe in doing that. Like as executives or as higher ups in the company. Like you're, you're ins, you're fireproof to a certain extent by design, you're allowed to make much more mistakes than like an individual contributor. Like I've wasted tens of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands of dollars and survive, right? Because I'm proper, I'm well built and insulated for that risk as an executive and so recruit people into that protection. Move the way that you know best and then forgive yourself if you make the wrong decision because you absolutely will. And you may make wrong decisions and never really know, right? And I mean you may never know the cost of the, the opportunity cost of not going a different way. But at some point you have to move. So do all of the prep work that you can, gather all the information, don't feel entitled to it, then move in that way. And if you do that, then like I don't know what else there is. I don't know what else how, how you couldn't forgive yourself or how you couldn't forgive an employee, right. If they did the best that they could to prepare, prepare themselves and then move the direction they thought was, was the correct way. But like we don't, we don't have 100 success rate or hit rate on anything, right? And so to a certain extent that that's, that's natural.

[Host (possibly Connor)]

I want to, I want to pivot here a little bit to speak a little more tactically which I think is, is really what our listeners are really enjoy. I think a lot of our listeners are like the hands on keyboard folks or the managers of certain departments. So I wanted to talk about marketing mix. So walk me through your, your marketing mix by stages. At what levels should brands push hard on channel expansion?

[McCoy Merkley]

Yeah, when you're small and small is a relative term depending on your category. It's not a dollar amount, right. Because you can be very large and doing low eight figures in your category. But when you're very small, I recommend that you focus on like as few number of things as possible. Typically most people's journeys like start with something like Meta and then most commonly they roll over to something like Google. My mix didn't look much different than that except for one major caveat is I didn't know how to run Google Ads and I logged in that manager every day and pounded my head against it and I couldn't figure it out. And then I stumbled upon Pinterest early in our marketing days and the ads manager was slightly better. So I ended up being way heavier indexed on Pinterest than I think most people and more than I would recommend. Now people in the early stages so typically that marketing mix when you're small looks something a lot like heavy Google heavy meta. And then you sort of start to get to the mid stages. Again this is all relative to like your category. So like this is not a one size fits all, you know, scenario. One of like the downsides of even talking about like being a nine figure operator or nine figures in general is like that doesn't absolutely certifiably does not apply to every category. So you really have to like abandon that idea, like worship these mile marker posts and figure out where that those are for your business in your category. Because you will just absolutely rip yourself in half and cause yourself way more pain and misery chasing some sort of like figurative mile marker in a category that absolutely doesn't make sense for you. Um, but for us like we're, we're in a pretty big category. Like most women carry handbags. There's 108 million women in the United States over the age of 18. Like that's a very large category for us moving into like the mid stages. You know, we're like, we're in the eight figures but we're sort of mid stage. We were, we kind of heavily dnx on Pinterest because it largely stopped working at the time using the methods that we were deploying. And we focused in heavily, heavily, heavily back on meta and a little bit of Google. I recruited somebody to the business in 2021 who was better at Google than I was. And so we started to heat up there. But it was basically all meta up until the nine figure marks. I spent every dollar on meta, myself and one other person, um, up until we hit nine figures in revenue. So it was all meta. I recommend people pick something, whatever that is and like focus in on it. That's most likely going to be meta for you. And then moving like past into the nine figures and kind of where we're at today, we're a lot more diversified and we're trying to get actively more diversified into smaller channels for different reasons, not necessarily for hammering you know, a million dollars a month into it and using that as like our primary growth mechanism, but trying to spread out and get strategic impact. That's things like, you know, influencer and affiliate. But today we're, we're still on Pinterest in some small way. We're still about as like where everyone is on Google, you know, in that like 20 to 30 ish percent. We're still heavily, heavily, heavily in Zix on meta but new for especially starting last year and I think most People in this call are probably on is Applovin. So we were one of the first five brands on AppLovin last year. We're part of, like, you know, that alpha beta, and I've seen, like, a pretty good amount of success with that. And again, I, I previously described myself as like, channel phobic. I think that's a safe way to behave. But every so often, like, something does come along and it's worth trying. So channel phobic, but paradoxically one of the first five on this, like, new DTC advertising channel. And so far that's been really great. So today Applovin is like roughly 10%, a little bit more than that, 12 or so of our spend. I'd love to give it more. We're slowly proving that over time, but we've definitely diversified over the course of, you know, our state or growth stages. I think that's natural. But I just like to reemphasize, like, focus on one thing and do it really, really well. Whatever you choose as your primary channel, like, make sure you're pushing that to its extreme because it will likely yield better results than fragmenting yourself out into a million different things at, At a slow or low or poor rate.

[Cody]

So what's your, what's your, like, vetting criteria for channels? Like, how do you evaluate opportunities with your team to figure out, like, Applovin is worth testing and, you know, Twitter is not worth testing for us?

[McCoy Merkley]

Yeah, the first part is to say no, like, over and over and over and over and over again. Right. Just to say no. It's like the safest, like, sorting mechanism. It's like, hey, something's happening to me. I'm like, yeah, no, I think another, like, super underrated tactic is to build a community of people who, like, such as communities like this, but who you can go to and like, hey, I'm being approached by this ad channel. I'm being approached by this opportunity. What do you all think of this? And, like, see what the collective experience or thought process is about that we're way smarter, typically as a collective, like, and we can kind of help each other identify risks or opportunities in those ad channels. And that's how we, like, for instance, got involved with Applovin was they reached out to us, we started reaching out to other people, and we basically felt comfortable enough that it passed that mark. But first and foremost, I recommend you say no. Right. I know, Cody, like, specifically, you and I are in the back end. There's a few, like, opportunities where I go to them and I'M complaining about something. They're like, yeah, Cody said the same thing. I'm like, oh, Cody's here. Okay. Like, like, you know, we're, we're, we're in the back end of some of these, like, new opportunities. But it's also like, the type of investment you give, it should be proportional, whether that's in a dollar amount or in like, focus. It's okay to take small swings and you should, could and should, but they should be small at first. Like, you shouldn't dive in headfirst. It shouldn't like, absolutely tank your business if you make the wrong call. And that's the, that's a safe way to behave. But first and foremost is like, say no to everything. Then make sure you have a community and that's a huge insurance policy. As like a marketing leader, like, I. To know whether something's viable or let's say, like, the market is something. Sales dip for a period of time. Like going to your community and saying like, hey, is this a me problem? Do I need to pivot the business or are you all feeling this? And if everyone in aggregate's like, yeah, we're having a bad week, that's an extremely helpful thing to know so that you don't cause yourself unnecessary harm. Motion and like, stress yanking the wheel to the left. If in fact, like Meta or Applovin or whatever, these bad platforms are having a bad week or trying to figure something out. But those. That's my primary vetting technique. And the truth is almost nothing gets through. Like, almost nothing except for the best. Because it's that criteria so tight.

[Cody]

Yeah. One, what I agree with that for sure. One of the things I'll do is just like. And occasionally I'll break it. I actually think I did with Applovin is like, if it's not something that me or the team is seeking out as part of our strategy, it's. It's not, It's a default no. So if it's a cold email, things like that, because, like, team members will send around. It's like, no. Like, you know, it's a sales pitch, it's coming inbound. It's just like a simple, like, heuristic that, like, is not always true, but it's just like a default no. Hey, you want to pitch us this media opportunity, like, out of blue? Like, no. Like, we're going to get 10 of those every single day that we could, that we could say yes to. And so we're going to say no to all of them unless we are Deciding, hey, this is part of our strategy and our goals.

[McCoy Merkley]

Yeah, absolutely. That's, that's a super sensible way. And then you go back to like Connor's big tree analogy, right? So when we get approached for certain channels, we're like, okay, what's, what's the opportunity here? Okay, how many users do you have? Like, what's the behavior of the app? What does this look like? Okay, taken to its extreme, we don't think that this is worthwhile. And when we heard, you know, Applov in specific, we're like, okay, how many users do you have? Okay, these are unskippable ads. Okay, like this, this is more interesting than like, you know, the next opportunity where it's. There's a small user base with non dedicated attention. It's sort of flighty. Like this represented a much larger, like potential opportunity for us. And so it's worth pursuing. But I love that policy. Like if it's not something we're actively looking for, we say, we say no. Like it, you can, you can go the wrong way with that. Like famously, we didn't run a single UGC influencer ad until we crossed nine figures. And people ask me why and I'm like, I literally rip statics 100% of the time all the way up to nine figures. And they're like, why'd you do that? I'm like, cause I didn't have a problem. And like I didn't. It was working. So I just kept going and going, going. It wasn't an opportunity that I felt we needed. And again, we had more to gain from just like focusing our attention on the thing we were already doing. So like it was a default no for the most part now maybe that maybe we could have gone further faster, who knows? But I'm happy with the outcome.

[Sponsor Representative (Applovin)]

What's up everybody? Welcome to Operators Titans. This show is Only sponsored by AppLovin, the S&P 500 mobile gaming ad platform. You guys know that I'm an Applovin defender. I spent in Q4 last year over $3 million on the platform of my own money. We drove amazing results on par with Meta. And now for the first time ever, they're opening up Applovin to anybody. It's still invite only. You have to go to 9operators.com applovin. They'll give you $5,000 in credit if you spend $5,000. It is a unique way to reach unique people. I think Applovin has an audience that is harder to find on other platforms. These people are locked in. There's audio only vertical videos. You can use the same creatives you're already running on Meta. They're unskippable so there's 100% thumbstop rate with an average view time of 35 seconds. First come first serve get in before your competitors. I've measured the results with house tests, with post purchase surveys, with north beam everywhere I slice it it seems nice net new and incremental to my business. So if you want to try to reach a new audience this Q4 if you just want to be less dependent on Meta and Google and you want to have another option, I think Applovin.

[McCoy Merkley]

Is a good place to start.

[Sponsor Representative (Applovin)]

Go to 9operators.com applovin to get this ad credit but also the 9 operators team is making step by step guides about how to be successful on the platform. We're going to have Black Friday Cyber Monday webinars. We're going to walk through how to set up and start spending and just the best practices tips and and tricks. All of that and more is [e-mail] applovin. You're listening to this right now. You run a business, you're interested in E commerce. You're already spending money on Meta, Google, TikTok, wherever else time that a new ad channel, get access to $5,000 in free ad credit, get access to step by step guides about how to get this set up and get access to our Black Friday Cyber Monday Q4 scaling webinar. All of that is available because of [e-mail] applovin we want to thank them for the support of the Titans episode formats. Thank you.

[Host (possibly Connor)]

What, what numbers can you speak to in terms of media mix? You basically got to nine figures on the back of metads Google Pinterest. But Pinterest was kind of like a hot flash. It sounds like like it was working and then it wasn't so really mainly in the back of of Pinterest or sorry of Meta and Google. Hexcloud's very much the same. We got. We didn't. I don't think we man. Maybe we started to a little bit before but not too, not too far before now now you're into the nine figures. You said Applovin is a big part of your mix. Apple's become a nice part of our mix too. I've been very happy with that channel as as one of our expansion channels in the last year and a half. Can you speak to your media mix now? Like where are Meta search app Loven? Any other channels you want to mention? Like, where are those sitting in the mix? If you can give us percentages, I think that would be interesting as well.

[McCoy Merkley]

Yeah, I mean, applovin is roughly 10%. Again, it's like maybe a percent or two above, depending on the month. I'd like to grow it, you know, any, anytime. Like, especially like 10% represents like a pretty substantial amount of dollars. Right. And you know, best something is going to get is like start to steal. It's not taking money from Meta today. It's, it's, it's incremental dollars, which I think is like, again, one of the benefits of the channel. I mean, we can. I know, you know, Connor and I were talking about this last night on Twitter, going back and forth about like, how we conceptually look at media mix right now. And I mean, do we, how do we want to get deep and tactical? Do we want to tackle it or no? Who knows?

[Host (possibly Connor)]

Yeah, yeah, do it.

[Cody]

I want to hear.

[McCoy Merkley]

Okay, so, okay, producer Aaron, you can't maybe can't save his. On the, on the back saying thumbs up. Okay. So yeah, we were looking at this and like, me specifically, I looked at like at the end of the year, again, we were testing on Applovin and we looked at our. What was the total result? What was the total impact we had with our advertising at the end of last year? And so for instance, when we total up meta, we looked and we had reached 60 million women in the United States and we showed them ads 20 times. Right now, again, as mentioned, there's about 108 million women in the United States over the age of 18. 60 million is. That's a lot. That's most of them. I know it's just barely over 50. But nonetheless, like, not everyone has a meta count. Not everyone's targetable. That's a lot. And furthermore, we showed them ads 20 times and I, I trust, like, if I could drop my frequency to 18 or 17, wherever the math pans out and hit that extra, you know, go to 75 million or 80, who knows? I trust Meta loosely to have done that. But we looked at that and I said, okay, me as a cmo, I have to justify why I think I'm going to do better next year. Is it that I think I'm going to spend way, way, way more money and I'm going to get it to 70 million, or am I going to spend way, way more money and my frequency goes to like 30 or 40? Like, what's the correct number? Um, and we, we, we really had that conversation internally for weeks. And weeks. And we're like, okay, what is the plan? And so this year, one of the ways that we're going to pivot is spend a lot more time and effort on things that we've historically neglected, frankly, because we didn't have to. We were just pulling in the slack of like, growing on channels like Meta and Applev and things like that and focus a lot more like brand marketing activities. We want to make, it's our theory that we want to make each of those 20 impressions. If we never increase in total reach and, or like frequency, we want to make each of those impressions more impactful. We want to show up to each of those individuals in a way that resonates with them more locally. So whether that's influencer or affiliate, being on their favorite media channel, like, whether they read Forbes or, you know, like tmz, who knows? Like, we want to be where they care about what the story is and what the narrative is. We want to show up on their feed through influencers that they care about. And I look at that as kind of like we typically, right now our behavior is we're the center point of the brand and we're trying to radiate energy outward. And that's gone very, very well. And now we want to shift slightly to a strategy where we create like a constellation of people and platforms and channels, again at scale not one to one because that's too slow and painful, but where those, that constellation of people are talking about our brand in their native language to their native audience and then pushing that energy inward. And so we get this like, nice circular exchange of energy. But that's, that's a primary conversation we're having when it comes to channel mix. If we're going to go to a new channel, what's the benefit? Are we buying reach? Are we buying frequency? We're buying some mix of the two. Like, how incremental is this? And that's obviously like the big hot button word of this year, but that's how we're thinking about. I'd love to know, like, how you, selfishly, I love to know how you all are thinking about that because I, I, I don't know, frankly, like, what is the correct frequency per year? Is it 30, is it 40? I don't know. So for now, we're defaulting to, like, create more impact per frequency and we're going to see how far that takes us.

[Host (possibly Connor)]

That's, it's funny that your frequency, we had the same, we've been having the same conversation. Our frequency number is actually the same. I couldn't tell you the unique accounts reached on meta last year, but it was like 20 frequency for the year. Same question, right? The question is, could our meta frequency have been 15x and we would have gotten the same performance? So we're actually testing that this year we are spending down on meta and so far we're, we're answering yes, we, we can spend less on meta and get more performance out of it and then take this budget and put it into channels like Applovin and CTV and Linear TV and do you know new influencer deals that are gonna pour more people into the, the meta funnel eventually. So we're, we're thinking about it very much the same way. Like if, you know, I think you guys have probably better repeat business than us. But for us, like if I'm not continuing to drive new unique user growth year over year over year, like that is gonna be the beginning of a slowdown in our growth. So I'm very, very hyper focused on that messaging. Our frequency marketing is like really buttoned up at this point. I'm not worried about that. I'm worried about getting more unique users to our site, more new unique users to our site specifically. So I think thinking about it similarly, like finding that balance between frequency with our existing funnel and pouring more people into the top of the funnel. Cody, do you have any additional thoughts on how you guys are thinking about this at jrb?

[Cody]

Yeah, very similar stats as well. Probably very similar spend to Portland Leather Goods. Similar frequency, similar reach. Just checked right now. So we are going with kind of more closer to hexclads which is we just have to reach new people, especially for us wanting to be D2C. So a lot of it is get. I've talked about a lot on here audience expansion as well, Creative diversity, partnership ads and then also different channels. Like definitely the brand stuff. Like we're trying to reach new people outside of ad accounts in much better ways and in real life, you know, influencer partnership, stuff like that. So that's really like the big focus and unlock for next year is just like how do we shock the system with new reach new channels? We just launched podcasts this week. Like we're trying to ramp up influencer spend. Excited to scale up app lovin, you know, going into Q4. So I think that's it. And, and it's not to say like diversify for the sake of it, but like I think just spending more in meta right now is not gonna reach new people. It's there. I remember When I was, like, really diagnosing this a few months back and I was looking there, I was. I was slacking Nick from. From House. And like, he's gonna. I was just like, no. Like, I was trying to explain it, and I was like, no, we're.

[McCoy Merkley]

We're.

[Cody]

We're spending more money year over year, and we're reaching less people. And he's like, that's not good. I was like, no, that's not good. You know, so, like, that's our main focus right now.

[Host (possibly Connor)]

And.

[Cody]

And I think that's like, the biggest thing we're trying to keep our eye on is like, are we continuing to reach new people? And if we're not, like, let's. Let's adjust course.

[Connor]

You know, the one thing that I would add is we're all in the same boat. We need to reach new people. Brands not going to grow unless you're getting out in front of people who haven't seen you before. The nuanced point I've made it before is not going to be new to anybody. But there's also an exercise around appearing new to the same people, right? And that's like, that's partnership ads. That's creative diversity. That's new products. Like, I talked about this months ago, but we were running this. It was like a clip from a Joe Rogan episode where he talks about Ridge. And we drove like, 90% plus new visitors. I said, oh, my God, we must be reaching so many new people with this new Joe Rogan ad. And it had an extremely low, like, net new reach is actually all more or less all the same people that we had hit earlier this year. They were just clicking through for the first time because we'd reached them in a different way. And I think, like, the ideal marketing mix is balancing all of those things. Where are you reaching new people? Where are you driving them in market as they're in market or somewhat aware of you? How are you reaching them in then new ways and finally getting them to your site?

[Cody]

Yeah, yeah, yeah. I think it's. It's like there's almost a different metric that needs to be had. It's like, you don't necessarily need to reach, like, completely incremental new people time. You. You should focus on that. But it's also like, I don't want to reach the same people I've totally showed 20 ads to. I want to reach the people I've shown, like, two ads to who didn't. Who saw it and didn't consider us.

[McCoy Merkley]

Okay.

[Connor]

And then the Other thing that said a lot here is like, well look, if, if you just spend on conversion optimized campaigns forever, you'll eventually hit every man in America. And like Rich is an example of that. So there's also a question around, well, what is the most affordable way to reach net new people without giving up quality?

[McCoy Merkley]

Right?

[Connor]

Like, I don't, I don't want to run like spammy display ads like Critio and think that I've successfully hit everyone in America. But if you get onto new short form vertical video unskippable ad channels, it's like that is a great way to get in front of people. That's more affordable than just spending on the same purchase optimized campaigns forever.

[McCoy Merkley]

No, I just, I agree. I think like the conversation is, is really fragmented also. Again, like I'm thinking about the listeners who are not at this scale. Like this is a champagne problem, right? This is, we have enough firepower with dollars to hit these problems. And I think that's where you tend to see like brands like us leading the conversation year over year. Like I think by 2028 and 2029, none of us will shut up about retention, right? Like, like give us a few more years. We all do exactly what we just said we were going to do. We create more impact per frequency of people who've already seen our ads and we reach new people. How long does that last? And then what do we do from there? Okay, well we have this group of people who are buying from us and this group of people that we've shown ads in every possible conceivable way and every, you know, channel and influencer has ever talked to them and like now it's time to one maybe focus on like the business itself and making that more appealing to more people through like product expansion. I know, you know, everyone on this call is doing and, or like we time to retain the customers that we have, right? And I try to think oftentimes like with this is a show and a series of podcasts that are, you know, largely dedicated to like nine figure operators. I think people forget there's like 10 figure operators out there, right? Like there's billion dollar brands out there and they have marketing teams in there too. Like what, what is that going on? Like, I often use this example, I'm like have you ever seen the Chanel fashion show? You ever seen like during Paris Fashion Week, like this incredible event? Like they, they don't, they're not thinking about meta ads, right? And this is a billion dollar brand. Like and so eventually I think that like, you know, we kind of up level this conversation and it goes somewhere. So what if you're way smaller? Like this is. You understand we're talking about like a champagne problem here. Most of you probably won't have this for most of you, like trying to split up a small budget when you're a small brand into like a million different Personas and trying to reach everyone in what in different language is probably not the way to go. You probably have more to gain from like putting more money into the system and centralizing your message and trying to amplify that. This is like a, this is a higher scale problem and there's, there's a tier above this that we're not even like conceptually aware of of how to operate. I'd like to get that. I'd love to talk more 10 figure brand operators and move them down. I think one of the problems with those brands is their second, third, if not like 10th generation. Right. They're. Well, there's not like a, a public CMO figure that's on podcasts and so we don't know like what those brands are operating at. But nonetheless, like, I think it's important to like disclaimer, this is a champagne problem. Like most of you are not reaching every man or woman in America 20 times. Like, this is. This is what happens when you spend millions per month on a channel like Meta.

[Host (possibly Connor)]

All right, so we're going to round this out with the Titan 10. This is basically just like quick rapid fire questions. First question, the Titan 10. You get a desert island dashboard to manage your business. What three metrics do you take with you?

[McCoy Merkley]

Okay, I take CAC. I take 12 month LTV and contribution margin per customer.

[Host (possibly Connor)]

I like that.

[McCoy Merkley]

I think I can do, I think I can triangulate most of the business with those three things.

[Host (possibly Connor)]

All right. You also get to take a book or resource, but it cannot be a business. Book or resource. Which book or resource are you taking?

[McCoy Merkley]

Okay, I think I take. It's gotta be some sort of, some sort of form of caffeine. Like I'm taking like a Celsius energy drink. Like I'm not doing this forever. Like uncaffeinated. Sounds miserable, right? I need to be productive on this island.

[Host (possibly Connor)]

Got it. He's taking with them. Makes sense. Okay, what's your one contrarian belief about business that other CMOs, VP of Growth, head of growth think you're crazy for?

[McCoy Merkley]

I'd probably say that like 90%. Let's just stick with like a standard 8020 distribution. 80% of your performance is completely outside the ad account. It's brand and, and your company and your position, your product. It's not, it's not like you can mess up meta pretty bad and still grow if you have a great brand.

[Host (possibly Connor)]

What is the single most important word to you in leadership?

[McCoy Merkley]

Um, well, going back, I. I said that and you nodded, so maybe it's not that. Contrarian. Darn it. Um, single most important word. It's courage. It's like telling people the truth. It's confronting stuff you don't know. It's being uncomfortable, it's growing. It's. It's courage to do all that. Like the damage a non courageous leader will do is like, cannot be measured.

[Host (possibly Connor)]

Yeah, you gotta have some. You gotta have some serious courage to spend nine figures a year on. On media too, I think.

[McCoy Merkley]

Yeah, absolutely.

[Host (possibly Connor)]

All right, what is the best meal of the day and why?

[McCoy Merkley]

It's. It's for sure. Breakfast. It's like as if you're a growth marketer. Like you're obsessed with optimization. Like the meal you can tweak the most, like in time. And what you eat has gotta be breakfast.

[Host (possibly Connor)]

I agree. You gotta bring that cortisol down. Gotta do it. Sets you up the right way. All right, what's the. What's the most overrated growth tactic in e commerce marketing right now?

[McCoy Merkley]

Ooh, overrated. Maybe this might be contrarian. This is. Adam, this is not going to make me friends. I think it's creative volume. I think most people don't need it. I think they're just listening to conversations from people way, way, way, way larger than them and they don't actually know how to optimize performance anyways in the first place. And they're just band aiding that with a hundred ads a week and have no idea what they're doing.

[Host (possibly Connor)]

I thought you were going to say premature channel expansion. Based on our. Our previous conversation.

[McCoy Merkley]

I don't. I'm not sure I like the way you worded that, but yeah, maybe so.

[Host (possibly Connor)]

All right, and maybe you saw this coming. But then what is the most underrated tactic in e commerce marketing right now?

[McCoy Merkley]

It's CRO, I think making one good decision on, you know, from a conversion rate optimization perspective. You know, and there's again, that's a. That's a swarm in and of itself, like talking about zero. But one good decision can lift every channel, every campaign, every ad set, every piece of creative can make it more efficient with one centralized decision. That's like an insanely high leverage Way to spend your time compared to like trying to adjust copy all day long basically on ads.

[Host (possibly Connor)]

I like that. I agree with that. I like, I like starting with the website in any of the campaigns we do and then, and working outward because everything else, even if it's not speaking to that campaign, will work with the campaign if the website's super buttoned up.

[McCoy Merkley]

Yeah, absolutely.

[Host (possibly Connor)]

What is the single most important word in business?

[McCoy Merkley]

It's gonna be similar to like the leadership answer, but I'd use a different word. It's growth. I think like that like we business exist in an economy. Like they serve a purpose, like they're, they're here to generate money and growth is absolutely imperative to that. Like you don't, you do not get to stand still. Like this thing is a treadmill. You need to be growing. Whether you take that to like the personal angle and like we as the leaders or like the people running the business need to continually grow. Like the business itself has to grow. Like it's, it's natural state is dying. And so there's no standing still on the treadmill. You got to move, you got to grow.

[Host (possibly Connor)]

Can I ask you a follow up on that one?

[McCoy Merkley]

Yeah.

[Host (possibly Connor)]

What do you, what do you think about a business that is, let's say, standing still year over year, revenue wise and, and bottom line wise? Let's say it's a $20 million per year business. We're top line. Let's say they're profiting 2 to 5 million per year. They're comfy, cozy there. They're still adding, you know, they're still compounding year over year, you know, $2 million of profit or whatever it is, would you still consider that quote, unquote growth even though they're like top line's not growing and their bottom line's not growing, but they're consistently a healthy, profitable business every year, presumably putting money in their bank accounts and like living a good lifestyle because of that. Like, do you still see that as growth or would you not consider that to be, to be growth in the sense that you're talking about.

[McCoy Merkley]

Depends on the time you're talking about, right? So some businesses have like cushions built into it. So one of the questions I love asking founders, right, or like CEOs, I say, if you had to build a business whose sole objective was to survive 100 years, could you describe that business? Right. And so if you have a business and you look at, you take the physics you just described and you, it did no additional motion. It stayed exactly constant for a hundred years. Do you think that business would. Would survive or go extinct? Not. Not the funds, not the money they made in the profit and how they reinvested in the individuals, but the business itself, I wouldn't bet on it being alive in a hundred years. Right. That's an extremely long window of time. But I think it's an acknowledgement like, okay, we're talk if. Is it healthy today? Yeah, it sounds like it. Is it gonna be healthy in 10, 15, 20 years? I don't think so. And I wish people had the conversation about longevity like I with. With. I'm sure with all of your brands. Me with port, leather goods, like, I help build this things my two hands from like the dirt. Right. I want to see it outlive me. And in order to do that, there's some level of growth that needs to happen under some window of time. So even if I'm fine today, like growth is, it has to be a constant, given a long enough window of time.

[Host (possibly Connor)]

Yep. McCoy, that was amazing. Thank you so much for joining us on the Titan series. Some big shoes to fill for everyone that comes after you. We really appreciate you coming on today and sharing your. Your insight and your. Your experience.

[McCoy Merkley]

All right. Hopefully I lived up to the reputation of a Titan. I'm not.

[Cody]

Hopefully.

[McCoy Merkley]

I don't know. That's makes me nervous. But I appreciate all you. Thanks for having me and I'll see you around the space.