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- [00:00]
A
We're going to talk about like the, the five jobs in E Commerce that I think are so damn hard to hire for. I don't even actually know. There might actually be more jobs than this on the list. But I have not met many people who don't complain about hiring for these roles. And I think if you're building a brand, whether it's very young or very mature, when we start talking about these roles, some of you might feel a little ptsd. You might sweat a little. I know I do. When I saw the list, I'm like, oh God, here we go. But since we've got Curtis and Katie and Sean here, I figured we can beat these up today. And I want to see if anybody actually disagrees with what Sean's saying.
- [00:42]
B
Okay. So I put out a list of five jobs that the hardest hire for. It goes head of product, head of growth, head of Amazon, creative strategist, and then head of influencer. And everyone listening to this is going to assume head of growth is the hardest one. And that's the common knowledge is head of growth is going to be the hardest one to hire for. But that doesn't make for a good post. Guys, you got to, you got to hook people in. You got to get people fighting and aggravated. And it really depends on how your guys, organizations are structured. Right. I think Katie's going to disagree with me because she does all the product, right. She's heavily involved in that. And if you're heavily involved in product, you probably, it comes second nature to you or you're currently involved in it. But if you lost the head of product, like, and we watched this happen at Apple, right? Like huge companies, if you lose someone who's really good at a product, you spend a decade doing nothing. Right. So a lot of times founders or CEOs or leaders just have this built in. But companies that have struggled for years, I bring up Fossil, I bring up Nixon, it's because they just don't have a good product person anymore. It just ends up being managed like coals, just managed to like the middle and into like, you know, obscurity. So that's why if you have to hire for somebody in product, it is such a bad, bad place to be that it's just very hard to recover from. And I would love to hear Katie's reaction to that.
- [01:57]
C
Yes. Because. Yeah, I mean, are we gonna like actually give our listeners like good information to work off of? Because header product is the easiest position to hire for. Unless you're like, yes, okay, come on, like You. Come on. Maybe you can tell me if something is heavy in R D and, like, needs all this, like, scientific studies and all that. Yes. Maybe product is. Is hard, but I'm gonna say Curtis is gonna agree with me on this one. Maybe he might not, just for argument sake. But no. And I. And you made a comment that I do all my own product. I don't. I actually have an A team that does it for people, and it really doesn't take a whole lot of my involvement. I think. I think as an easy one to hire for Sean. Man, you used it as clickbait. That's ridiculous. It's the easiest hire for.
- [02:45]
A
Hold on, though. Like, Katie, so you've got four people in product. Who on your team decides where does the next product category expansion idea come from? So is that a person on your team or is that you? So, like, hey, we're going to go into. What are you going into? You're going to pet, right? Whose idea was that?
- [03:04]
C
Mine. That's not fair. You set me up for a failure on that one.
- [03:08]
A
No, no, the last category you expanded into. Whose idea was that?
- [03:13]
C
Mine. But that's not fair either. All right, my turn. Maybe. But that is my job as founder and CEO to be the visionary of where we expand into. But they did not need me. Like, yes, we're expanding into PET and have a huge product catalog. Like, several hundred different products, not including SKUs. Like, SKUs are probably over a thousand at launch. I did not have my hand in any of it. So when you say product development, like, are you talking about the person that actually thinks of the next product that a brand is gonna like? Like, Sean started with wallets and went into rings. Are you talking about that person or are you talking about the person that's like, here's different styles of wallets and here's different styles of rings. Like, which. Because that's two different things, right?
- [04:01]
B
Yeah. So like the. The actual executive making the decision to do something new. Right. If you're. If you're at Apple and you're like, hey, we're going to do AirPods for the first time, that that takes a visionary to actually, like, put it out there and say, we're going to do this and commit all the capital and money and let's say you want to retire Katie, and you want your company to continue to grow and do cool, better new things. Replacing you in that role, being like, hey, we have to go do cribs now. Like, that is just, I think, the hardest thing to hire for because you basically, it's not only hiring a CEO, I think you're hiring a founder level person who can come in here and do. I think they're unicorns. But Curtis, you, you're the, you're the deciding vote.
- [04:39]
D
Okay? I don't have to make up things to argue with Katie about. Like really, she's just, it's wrong because she's doing it so she feels like that person's not that important. Right. I started this company so if you're talking at an E Comm and you're talking to lots of people, you need product and you need someone to grow it, someone to sell the marketing people. I did both when you're small. Then I hired Maverick and I said, hey, you take over the growth engine, right? And I'm going to go over here and I'm going to be product, product, product. And all the marketing team does is say, I want more, I want more, I want more. Give me more shit to sell. That's all they do. So I moved over there. I have a 22 person product team. 22 persons. So it ain't easy. It is not easy. That person has to juggle 6,000 SKUs development, all of these things. The numbers, how much are you going to order? The real, there's so much that goes there. If you can get your product down and your marketing down, you're set. So, Sean, doesn't matter how you wrote that. And I did read that Twitter post and I want to say, Sean, you've been so optimistic lately. I don't know what it is. Your Twitter is just like, it's not grumpy old Sean. For the last month it has just been happiness and joy. And I read that and I thought product growth, they're both important and they're both critical. You have to have both of those people getting the right product. Person. I met a gentleman in New York who had a, you know, a billion dollar brand and he was saying how he had a person who was ahead of product that was getting 1.2 million a year and somebody offered her 1.8 and he let her go. And he said, that was the stupidest thing I've ever done. I should have paid her 3 million because the right product person does nothing but print money. And that's the way I look at product.
- [06:36]
A
Sean, would you agree with the, with what Curtis is saying that like the. So I guess Curtis first, first for you, you hired a head of marketing and you went to product. Was that because in your case you thought, I can get somebody who's better at marketing and I'm just like really good at product. Or was it the reverse? Like. And I want to get Sean your take on this too, because I think that the order is actually interesting.
- [07:01]
D
That's a great point. No, a lot of things I do in business is not that thoughtful. I was the marketing guy and the product guy. I brought someone on who was good. I thought marketing was the most important. Until when you get two good marketing guys, you're both saying, hey, we need more product. One of us gotta get our ass over there and do that. So I moved over and then I built a team and a head of product that took me six years to get that person, train that person and get them to where they are today.
- [07:32]
A
Am I the guy fingers on keyboard building software with Claude code? No, and I hate when people ask me that. But I love that my team is now able to use Claude and cloud code with Fulfill. They're doing some incredible things that just weren't possible six months ago. I don't know if any other ERP is doing this too, but Fulfill has a new CLI tool and an mcp. So my team can open up Claude on their phone and ask for information out of Fulfill. They can I code custom dashboards right? In fulfillment. We can hook open claw up to Fulfill now to do work for us. If you're excited about the future of AI in your brand, this is such an obvious place to leverage it. All of our supply chains are complicated beasts. Fulfillment and Fulfill has just made it even easier to improve yours. This is real money stuff.
- [08:31]
B
Yeah. What I would say is, look, once you have a business, growth becomes like, I mean, you need an amazing marketing person. Our biggest line item is marketing. Facebook gets more money than my suppliers or my people, right? So, like, it is disastrous if you do it bad. But it is there. There's an agency market for it, right? There's no agency market for product people. You can hire product design studios, right? You can hire, you know, freelancers on upwork or whatever, but they're not going to come in and be like, hey Katie, we have to do pet or whatever, right? Like if, if we didn't build the skill internally, I would be a $30 million a year wallet business. Like we would have. We would be shrinking right now because I know sunglass brands during COVID who got to 75 million and now they're at 30 million. Like it is just a common story if you don't have product leading it. And so you could hire great product people. We've hired great product people. We have Allison on my team. She. She's our product development manager. She. She runs the department director of product whatever. But the actual head, the person who is like, hey, we're going to do like, by the time this comes out, we're going to have chains. So like, like a men's chains business. The person to say we should do that is. Is very, very hard to hire for because they're going to fuck up and then you're going to want to fire them. So that's. That's like my.
- [09:47]
A
Well, Kate, Katie, do you. Do you think you can hire for that? Like, for that vision that Sean's talking about? Like, can you find. So is there a person on your team that has your level of taste right now that can. You can say, like, they're confidently going to make the right next choice?
- [10:00]
B
Well, Katie, you're lucky. You're blessed.
- [10:02]
C
She's worked for me for night. She's worked for me for nine years.
- [10:05]
A
That's a great point. Does she have that because she's been under you for nine years.
- [10:09]
C
You know what? Everyone listening is to be like, let Katie freaking talk. So she can say how all three of you are wrong. You're still wrong. And the reason you're wrong. And I love that you guys have women as your product designers, your senior product designers. I think that's a good call out. We just hired not less than a year ago somebody to completely run our pet. So even my senior product designer, she's really just been a sounding board. But the girl that we hired has been the one completely running PET with zero experience. Guys, I just. Maybe your senior level product designer is very important. But in Matt, you called out like two products types that I did come up with, but you didn't call out the other 10 that we launched last year that I didn't come out with. So I think that for a large catalog company that's constantly coming out with new products and remember, I don't expect all of them to be bangers, right? Like, they're not all going to be 50 $100 million product categories. We're going to throw a lot of spaghetti at the wall to find the one that is scalable. You don't need somebody that is that high level to do that. And I think involving your entire marketing team should be very in tune with your target audience and what your competitors are doing. You know, opportunity and space in the market. We actually just broke our product. We just redid our entire org chart and took product out of Marketing. So now it's equal level tier to ops and marketing. And it had always lived under marketing. It still is going to be very close and live within it. But no, I'm sorry, guys. I think it is. I think if you can find somebody that's extremely creative, very good at merchandising, understands your category, I think there'd be a lot of probably very young people that would be perfect fits and not expensive hires.
- [12:03]
A
John, do you think that some part of this is category specific?
- [12:07]
B
For sure, right? I mean, know Katie has a more natural place to run than a brand like Ridge does. Right. Like, you know, when you're in baby kids grow up, you can go to toddler, you can surround yourself, everything else in the home but hexclad shout out. Jason, love that team over there. You think product would be really easy for them. And I've pitched them like a million times to get into flatware or cutlery or whatever and they don't do shit. So you, you think natural categories would help you expand out. But people, people hit stuff sometimes. Curtis, you've been wanting to talk. I want to hear from you. Fire back. And then we should talk about why Katie thinks marketing is so much harder. But Curtis, go.
- [12:48]
D
You know, I always want to talk, unfortunately. But the main thing is it's not taste. Matt said, the person who has taste that can see, that can put together, it's not. I used to always make the mistake of saying, hey, we have seven to choose from. Which one do you like? I don't say that anymore. I say which one is going to sell the best, which one's going to sell to return customers, which one has a chance to be a hero product. I think that it's more tied to marketing. And I can do people that design products and say they're going to sell. I want someone who can design a product with marketing and the channels we have in marketing in mind, we in terms of price, in terms of color, how fast we can refill that product is not just, oh look, this is pretty, it's how does it fit into the marketing engine.
- [13:41]
A
So can we refine this idea a bit then with everybody? This is really interesting. So it's not taste because you actually bring up. It's a really good point, Curtis, because like I know people with that are like, they have incredible taste. Like people would describe them with a credit, but they can't sell shit. Like they're, they're always off the mark, right? It's like they're just, it's like that. It's like the coolest person, you know, wears something that nobody else is ever going to put on. Or like you go to a, like a fashion Runway show. It's like, absolutely nobody's wearing that, homie. So it's not taste, is it then? Is it. Is the person you're looking for very close to the customer? Like, is that a better way to describe it? It's like they actually just have a great sense for like, what does the customer want? Which then Curtis backs into the. Like, this is what's going to actually sell. Because, like, I just know what the customer wants.
- [14:32]
D
Yes and no. I just think it's marketing. I just, I come from this marketing angle of, you know, you almost have to be a basic guy in this thing, right? Like, if you have too good of a taste, then you're talking a luxury brand or what's coming or what's going to be there. I want to have something that hits right down the middle that the majority of people buy that I can run an ad set for two years on. Right? That is not what I like. I wanted to have a cutting edge, but that's not what we make. We make something that goes down just a little bit and then right down center plate. Like you want to sell through the mas.
- [15:11]
A
I love this. Like what? Like unpack this a bit because I think I actually like, I think somebody listening to this right now, we need them to come away from this and say, like, how the do I hire this person? Like, who is this person? What do they have? What are the qualities and the characteristics that make for a good product person?
- [15:26]
C
I mean, when we were interviewing for ours, I definitely the first thing I always do is kind of have them create a mood board of products that they think we should go into. I think that's a good indicator, right? You kind of get their taste, like what they're looking for. I mean, I agree with you, Sean. I could list, I mean, my team, not me, my team could make Jason a huge list of products pro, like adjacent products that I think hexclad could equally go into. However, what Curtis is saying is he could easily expand into spoons, but am I going to be able to spend 30,000 a day on marketing spoons? Is my CAC going to be there with spoons? Like, what's my LTV going to be with spoons? Like, what's my messaging going to be with spoons? So sometimes we think about product categories as it relates to marketing.
- [16:15]
B
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A
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B
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- [16:29]
D
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A
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B
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- [16:42]
D
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- [16:43]
B
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- [17:00]
A
I guess that would then bring us Sean to number two, which is Head of Growth, which. Yeah, I think everyone, if you listed it out, that would be the hardest role to hire.
- [17:09]
B
Yeah, I'm glad. The first 20 minutes were just basically us arguing about a controversy. I was just, I put it out in a tweet. I want to, I want to hear from Katie. You feel the strongest Head of Growth is the hardest. This, this post became because you had a hard time hiring a head of Growth. So I want to hear from you the trials, the tribulations, and how do you think you're going to overcome this? How can we help you find a Head of Growth? What are you looking for?
- [17:30]
C
Yeah, it, well, it was, it's Head of Growth wasn't the official title, but we are trying to hire in at a higher level because we've not had that extra tier in our marketing department and we don't have a cmo, which I think in your list. I think actually a CMO is probably hardest to hire for, but ideally you're growing them within. Right? So. So then like you said, the reason is hard for us is we're in office.
- [17:58]
D
That's.
- [17:58]
C
That's the hardest reason hands down. Right. Because I need somebody that's leading my entire marketing team to be in my culture, in my office, collaborating, collaborating in real time and, and also understand my target audience. I will say for this last hire we really prioritized experience and I had never done that before. I've always brought up people within the company and I, I have done this twice where I prioritized resumes and experience on hiring and I have learn the hard way that I do not think that's how you need to hire. I actually think hiring for culture, fit and personality and energy and forget all that even drive and ambition. Right. Like how hungry are they? And how excited are they about the job you're hiring for is way more important than experience. But to say growth marketing. So I actually think that's an easy one to maybe use an agency for, because when I think about growth marketing, I think they're inside of all of my ad channels all the time. Right. Like they are Maverick Curtis, right? Like, he is your CMO slash growth marketer, is he not?
- [19:10]
D
Yeah, I don't know that. I don't know what a growth marketer is. I'm like, my mark, chief marketing officer. Dude, you have everything. You have to do everything in terms of growing us to that next level, right? And I throw everything in that thing and say, organize all these people and get that movie. Right? So, yeah, CMO is ahead of growth, right? He's in charge of everything.
- [19:32]
B
So. So, Curtis, sorry for jumping in. I was going say, in your organization, you have yourself running product. You have Maverick running, you know, marketing. And then is there like a third bucket ops? And is that like the only three leaders in the business?
- [19:45]
D
No, no, no. There's me. And then I do have a head of product, but I've worked with her for six years and her office is right next to my. So that, like, I. They were just. I had eight people in showing me ideas, like just before we started this. Right? So she's right here on site going through hundreds and thousands of variables. And I've worked with her for six years, so I moved over to product and then I got somebody and then she got better than me. But I'm here to work with her on that. So we have that, Then we have ops, then we have marketing, we have retail, and then we have our cfo.
- [20:17]
B
Yeah, because, you know, inside of Ridge, there's me, there's my cmo, and then there's everything else. And when I say me, it's really like, you know, we have. We have Brett, who's like a chief product officer. We have Daniel, one of the co founders. Like, this is like the product side of the business. We have Connor running everything else that is marketing. And then we have ops to make sure wholesale ships and warehouses are full and that whole thing. But I said head of growth, and it's just shorthand for modern cmo. The reason why a CMO would be the hardest thing to hire for is because most CMOs are horrible and would ruin your business. This, right? So, like, they would come in from PepsiCo and be like, oh, yeah, we need to hire 50 different ad agencies for whatever. Like, it would be horrible for you. So I say head of growth. It's just shorthand for. For a modern digital first cmo.
- [21:01]
C
And is that not also a VP of marketing, Sean?
- [21:04]
B
Totally. You can call a VP of marketing anyone who's directly in charge of making revenue go up. This is, this is the hardest thing to hire for and why I said it was so hard is if they're really, really good, they're going to make a ton of money because they're going to make a brand or they're going to start an agency. Right. So you have to convince somebody who's really good to not do those two things. And Katie, you brought up hiring people from in and growing them. That's the best way to actually hire ahead of growth is hire a junior media buyer and invest five years into them and make sure that they don't want to leave. Right.
- [21:37]
A
I was going to say. Can we just. Since we're getting like, practical and tactical here. Katie, you said. Which I agree with. I think that when it comes to marketing, hiring for experience is probably a mistake market. I don't know if you guys know this, but like a CMO is probably the most. It's the shortest tenured C suite position like in the freaking world and it's not even close. Right. Like, CMOs change jobs every like year and a half on average.
- [22:05]
B
And.
- [22:05]
A
Yeah. So. But I, I think that it's worth mentioning then that there are other roles where experience probably does matter. Like, I've had incredible success hiring very experienced product people or finance people or like a supply chain lead. In that case, like, the resume matters. Like, they've seen a lot of. And they're more like systems and process and in my case, product, like they got to know how to make stuff, like hard stuff. But I think on. I just want to be specific and I don't know if anybody disagrees with this because in marketing, I 100% agree with what you're saying.
- [22:39]
C
That's. That was my point. I mean, I, I agree too. You can't hire a controller or a CFO and they have zero experience. That's not going to work out. Well, you can't.
- [22:46]
A
He just not.
- [22:47]
C
Yeah, you can. It just wouldn't be a very good decision. Yeah.
- [22:50]
B
And so like COO is the easiest executive to hire for if you're. Because logistics hasn't changed all that much in 20 years. But.
- [22:57]
C
And they don't. And they don't. Sean. They don't have to be in E Commerce. Right. Like you can hire a COO or anybody in operations from almost Any industry and it's relevant.
- [23:07]
B
Yeah, dude, they could ship doors. It doesn't matter.
- [23:10]
A
Is your comment on it being difficult because you're in office? Is that. I guess my clarifying question there is. Is that because people don't want to work in an office or is that more market specific? Because I think you're in San Antonio and is. I guess that's not a hotbed for consumer. At least that I'm not aware of. Every SaaS company says they are AI powered, but very few can explain what it actually does for the revenue of my brand. This is why postscripts approach stood out to us. They don't just build AI for demos or buzzwords. They built it to drive real incremental revenue. Postscripts AI called Shopper. It shows up inside of SMS at moments with real buyer intent when shoppers are likely asking questions, hesitating, maybe even about to drop off. Shopper can answer product questions instantly, answer questions about fit for availability, recommendations, order issues, the kinds of stuff that people usually bounce for. This means more conversions, higher aov, less lost demand. So you are driving more revenue and doing it more efficiently. Check out Shopper from postscript. We use it at Pela, which is why I am telling you to check it out.
- [24:15]
C
No, we're like the only E commerce company here. No, you're. That's a good call out. I think it's deaf. If I was in Austin or la, it might be a little bit easier. Um, I actually think a lot of people, even when we posted this job before, I mean, almost everybody that was working remote wanted to be back in office, which is a trend I really like. Yeah, so I don't think that's the problem. I think it's more really. We wanted to bring in somebody that had worked with a brand bigger than us. Well, just that comment alone, right. Like narrows it down to a unicorn and all the things. And, And I, I, I won't. I've made the mistake twice, guys. And I did it a couple years ago with a cmo, which I completely agree. Like, I think the titles of C Suite's ridiculous anyways. It's. And then the people usually running them are a lot of smoke and mirrors and they're not, they haven't had the positions below them. Doesn't make them good leaders. I could go off on that, but I think it's just the people. Matt. Like just.
- [25:17]
A
I think it's probably fair that. Because like, if you look at Curtis too, like McCoy is, is. Am I fair to say Curtis, that when you brought McCoy in, or you call him Maverick, but. So when he came in, had he had any experience in this space at all? Or, like, was that basically, like, we're going to build him, ground up?
- [25:36]
D
Yeah. Winning photographer, guys, like, he. He came in, no resume. I read this. My wife thinks I should have a job. And he. I was already interviewing someone. I'm like, sit down. Interview with this person. And I liked him enough. I gave him a shot. But there's a magic to your growth. There's a magic to your marketing people, and here's why. They have to be confident enough that they can go out and spend millions of dollars and believe they're going to make it right. They have to have the character enough not to screw you over. And then they have to be good enough people that stick with your company, because if you're cocky and you're making a bunch of money, you are going to go someplace else and then someplace else. So once you find the good one, how do you lock that person in? So they have to have some integrity as a person so that, you know the investment you're making in them, they're going to stick around. And I lucked out. I got all of those with Maverick, right? And so he has just gets better and better and better until I can say, okay, now we still fight. I want you guys to know, like, everyone, like, hears screaming matches, and we're like, we're not fighting. We're just talking very loud about what we think we should do. But I trust, just as Sean does with Conor, hey, go run this very important thing. Our whole company rests on your shoulders. Why I go do everything else. And he trusts me to say, hey, go deal with logistics, go deal with products. Go deal with all of the other things you have to do.
- [27:03]
C
I. I mean, we know McCoy very well, and I. I love his story and I love his energy. I do think. And that because he came in when it was so much smaller and he grew, his experience and talent with the company is just invaluable. Like, I think it would be harder to say somebody could come in as a wedding wedding photographer and go straight into growth marketing.
- [27:26]
A
Like, I think that's definitely not the takeaway here. The takeaway for people listening is, don't hire a freaking wedding photographer. It's probably closer to, like, somebody who's got an irrational amount of confidence in themselves, is not a total degen and is, like, digitally native.
- [27:42]
C
They don't even have to be digitally native. Like, guys, y' all know Kristen. I mean, she I got her off the streets too.
- [27:51]
A
Well, we know that.
- [27:53]
B
Yeah, but okay. And I was, I was going to say, but but specifically, if you want to hire a good head of growth right now, do not hire people off the streets. Right. I want to make the comment of, look, Maverick is remote. You know, my, my Connor, I mean Rich is fully remote. And then Connor Rolane. Hexcloud has a beautiful office. I was there yesterday. 60 people in office. Everybody's there except for Connor Rowland. He's in Denver still. And that's what I'm trying to highlight. That like the head of growth role, it's so valuable and important, you end up having to make caveats that you don't want to. Right? They end up making a ton of money. All of those guys are making 250, 300, 350 a year. Like they're making hundreds of thousands of dollars. They can set their own hours and you have to be flexible because you're counting on them to not screw you over, not ruin your account, not take on freelance clients. And like that's just the reality is my Connor gets. People try to give him freelance jobs all the time. They're like, will you be my cmo? And it's like, it's just you. It's just the reality is like there's, there's so much demand for this head of growth scale. No matter, no matter what you want to call it like VP of Marketing or whatever. What's up operators? Welcome to the Rich Panel ad. Read. Rich Panel has been a sponsor for over 12 months. I've been a paying customer for over 12 months and guess what, I just renewed the pay again for another year. We have cut our SaaS bill in half and Automation dropped our cost per ticket by 70%. Our CSAT has also improved from 88% which is still really good to 96%. Best in class. All powered by Rich Panel Panel. I told them last year, hey, you guys need to do the same thing with returns. And now Rich Panel has a returns portal. It's built to cut down your tickets and convert more refunds into exchanges. They do the heavy lifting, data import, self service, retention flows, team training, all of it. And they'll be live in two weeks. If you want to save 30% guaranteed on help desk and now returns, book a demo.
- [29:48]
A
I want to move to number three, which is this, you call it the head of Amazon. Is, is it a similar dynamic, Sean, with this role or, or do you have a different like baseline? Like this is why this person is so hard to hire.
- [30:02]
B
Yeah, I would love to hear your guys's perspective. Maybe I'm just really bad at hiring for Amazon or unlucky. I currently have a guy, Chris, who's amazing. If I told you how much money he, he got paid, you would be mad at me. And he lives in Romania or something. If he lives in Serbia, then yes,
- [30:17]
A
I'm definitely going to be mad at you.
- [30:18]
B
Yeah, I mean, he is he multiple, multi, six figures living in Eastern Europe. The guy, the guy is the richest guy in his town for sure. But it's because, it's, it's because Chris is very good at Amazon and Amazon's really hard because it's a bunch of little jobs, right? It's, I think, I think I talk about this. It's like, it's tribal knowledge. Like you, the only way to know what to do if Amazon, because they banned some listing or this thing happened or you got attacked is you have to have done it before. So, like, unlike paid media like Meta, Meta will sit down with you and tell you how to spend more money. It's in their incentive. Amazon is a black box who wants to screw you over sometimes. So, like it's so. It's so easy to burn money on ads, it's so easy to lose inventory, like, and then on all of that, they have to do all that and they also have to not screw you over and launch the same product. Okay, that's the other problem with Amazon. They see how much money you're making and at any point they would be like, I'm just going to drop ship this and I'll up your account and steal a bunch of money. So that's why Amazon might be the riskiest hire out there. But I mean, Curtis, who's running your Amazon? The K, who's running yours?
- [31:25]
D
I got no idea who's running our Amazon, but our Amazon sucks. That's because we've been bad at hiring, I guess, right? I mean, we're going to do like 200 million on Shopify and 25 million on retail and 20 million on TikTok and like 5 on Amazon. Every day I look at it, I'm like, you know, oh, well, it's not that important. I don't even know who runs the damn thing. So we go talk, we go to the big money first and it just kind of sits down there and I just think it sucks.
- [31:54]
B
Curtis, that person's listening right now.
- [31:56]
A
He's like, my name's Bob, I've worked for you for 11 years.
- [32:00]
B
So Curtis, I Mean, that's probably the big challenge to take away from this is my. Amazon's up 100% year over year. Printing money, dude. Like, you know, 8% ACOs just like printing money for me. Best part of my business right now. So that's the challenge. Walking up from this episode is, hey, you can make a ton of money right now if you just find the guy in Serbia, give him a couple hundred thousand dollars a year, run the whole thing for you.
- [32:24]
A
Our viewership and listenership in Serbia or Romania is about to go through the roof.
- [32:29]
B
Katie, who.
- [32:30]
A
Who tell us, do you. Are you selling on Amazon number one?
- [32:33]
C
Like. Like, my story is worse than Curtis's. I don't. I hate agencies. I don't like working with agencies. I don't really want to talk about agencies as it relates to hiring people. But we use an agency for Amazon and I'm with Curtis. Like, I don't even look at the sales because it's depressing. And then and every day. Kristener like, do we keep it on there? Do we not? Do we keep it? Do we not? But I don't care. I don't really want to be on Amazon.
- [32:57]
D
It shows the genius of Sean writing. That's how hard it is to hire that person. He got the right person. These and killing it. And we have the wrong people or sorry, Bob, or whoever you are, and we're struggling. I mean, I would love to double it year over year. Right? That'd be fantastic. But I'm just kind of like, no,
- [33:15]
C
I don't think we are doing it wrong. I think it's why, like, Sean's products are perfect for Amazon. Mine aren't neither. Or yours might be. Maybe you probably are just sucking at it, but mine is. I know Curtis. I'm just. I don't. I think you too. It's premium bags. Like, they're purses. I just don't think we have products that people are going to Amazon for. I think that Sean does. I think a lot of people do. And maybe my product category is easier to expand than product expansion. Right. But Sean's is easier to expand on Amazon. I think that's like, none of us are all the same. Like, that's what I learned over and over and over again with brand is everybody's like, killer at something and they're sucking at something else. And I don't know. I've yet to meet anybody that's like, good at all of it.
- [34:04]
A
Okay, a couple things here. I think what's. I'll. I'll give You a statement. It's more true. It's true more often than it's not. Most things sell well on Amazon. Okay? Most things. And there are exceptions where some things don't sell well on Amazon, but it commands 50% of fricking GMV in E commerce. Most things sell well on Amazon. The second thing I'll say in having talked to a lot of people, especially in Amazon, it's usually shouldn't be very surprising to any of us if one channel sucks and you don't know the person who runs it, but you spend all of your time with the person who runs Meta and they have a whole team. So we tend to resource the things that work, right? And we're very deep in the things that work. And then these things that we've given no freaking attention to, we don't water them, we don't. Like there's, there's just nothing over there. They don't work that well. And Curtis, like, I suspect you could say the same thing about TikTok shops. Like now you figured out how it works and it's screaming and you're resourcing it correctly and it's helping your whole damn business. Whereas like, I know somebody who's sitting there looking at TikTok shops, they're like, I can't make this work. And I'm like, well, does anybody work it? He's like, yeah, some freelancer in India.
- [35:19]
D
It makes my soul warm to say once again that I think Katie's wrong because if someone's making something work, I want to beat that person and also do it. You can't be really successful and run a nine figure company by half assing everything. Like so when you hire, we're not talking oh, I hired this person, we're talking how do you hire a great one who's really going to propel your company, right? And so if people are making Amazon work and they own.
- [35:51]
C
You don't even know Bob's name, Curtis. And now you're like promoting like how amazing Bob is and that you're leaning into him.
- [35:59]
D
No, I'm saying I'm not good enough. I should focus more on Amazon because there's something there and we need to scale that thing up. And I've been so busy on all of this that I'm like, hey, you have to take the time, capital, resources to make something work. Because I believe we can beat most people out there. I do. I just believe we can beat them. We have a mature enough and good enough. We can do it well.
- [36:22]
B
I just love that Curtis is a psycho. Like he's, he's a man after my own heart, dude. He's like somebody else is making money. I have to beat them and make more money. Like yeah, I love that dude. But Curtis, I can guarantee you you could talk to my Amazon guy for free. I'm, I'm happy, I'm happy to have him, you know, help you out on this. You, because you're doing so well on TikTok shop, you're probably losing $40 million a year on Amazon. Like, it's because Katie, my product actually sucks for Amazon because it's $95, it's too expensive. There's knockoffs next to me there, right. Like to capture the sale. But just because so many people search it on Amazon, I'm able to have a multi eight figure a year business on there. So I think it's, it's the number
- [37:03]
A
two search engine to Google. So like, and half of all shopping searches I think start on Amazon. So it's just there is again, broadly like there are exceptions, but oftentimes it's just that we under invest in the channel and I'm with all of you. I hate Amazon. By the way, Sean called out the most difficult part of Amazon, which is there are so many things coming at you from the dark on that platform and half the time the dark place is inside of Amazon. Like they're just trying to kill you all the time and they don't even know why. There's just lots of killers.
- [37:36]
B
It's such a big business. They'll just steal your inventory and they don't care. Right. So like Amazon is, is evil. But I will say to Katie's point, I just had a kid. I don't think newborn apparel is like a hot category on Amazon. That's probably not the place you want to be investing. But I think for PET it could be fantastic. And Curtis, I know for a fact you could do $40 million a year on Amazon with your bags.
- [37:58]
A
Well, there you go, Curtis. Challenge, challenge needs to be accepted. Okay, I want to move on to the fourth role which is creative strategist, which this is the one. Man, this is a hard, this is a hard role to hire for. I actually think this might even be harder than the last one. Sean, give us your take first and then we can listen to Katie tell you how you're wrong.
- [38:19]
B
Dude, it's, it's not harder than head of Amazon. Okay, maybe, maybe a few years ago and create. I heard the term creative strategy for the first time in like 2021. Right. Like, me and Connor were like, trying to figure out who we needed some guy to script ads. And we actually found this guy Chris. And Chris still works here. He was. He was hired for the role. He was a bikini photographer. So he. Chris is just like a really. He was living in Simi Valley. I mean, the guy's fantastic. Very, very talented. But he would just, like, his portfolio was just taking a photo of hot girls and I'm like, hey, we want someone to come in here and script ads and do short form. And he really grew into the role. I mean, now he's making a couple hundred thousand dollars a year at Ridge is fantastic. Lockdown. Really understands it. But that kind of shows the arc of creative strategists. It didn't really exist. We gave this guy a lot of freedom to run an experiment and he built a whole program underneath him. And now he could train anybody to do it because he's a world class expert at it. So three years ago, impossible to hire for this because you had agencies like narrative and Tube Science. Like, you had those two agencies, like outbidding you for people, like, really trying to make this a service that goes out there. But now you can basically find a creative strategist and work with them. It's still gonna be super expensive. It's a. It's 130 grand minimum to get somebody who's really good in the door. Yeah, that's. That's my perspective on the history of creative strategist. We'll go to Katie. Katie, am I wrong?
- [39:44]
C
I mean, I. I'm paying my creative strategist in tokens right now. And he tells me how amazing I am every day. He greets me in the mornings. Like, he tells me that I'm beautiful. I. I'm not a fan of his name, Claude, but, you know, we're working on it. So. So. Okay, so I agree that. I agree with you that a creative strategist is actually a. I think it's a harder hire than product, truly, because I think they have to think of different angles constantly. Right. For the same product over and over again. I think the creative strategist and the growth marketer should be very, very intertwined. In fact, we've got. I have my creative directors, McKenna, and one of our gross partners is. Her name's Morgan. And they talk all the time with their boyfriend Claude about just constant new ideas ever. But truly, it's something we leaned into with AI like just literally using AI to think of different cohorts and different ways to approach those People, that's been a big. Not to turn this conversation into AI, but personally, I think that's where we've gotten a lot of ideas, right? Because when somebody's been. When you've been thinking about creative strategy for a single product for 10 years and you're constantly have to come up with new and new and new again, it's nice to have that sounding board, I think.
- [41:11]
A
Call me nerd all you want, but one of my favorite things is when one of my existing software partners, in this case Northbeam, add something that I historically would have had to pay separately for incrementality was broken and North Beam fixed it. So let's face it, most incrementality tests are slow. They're manual. One mistake can invalidate an entire test and waste thousands of dollars. If you've done it, you know, not anymore. So only North Beam incrementality automates your incrementality test design and monitoring, letting you focus on insights and not logistics. They're the only ones who build the test for you using your MTA data. I love this. Northbeam continuously monitors your test in the background, making sure everything runs smoothly and maintains stat sig. Once your test is complete, North Beam then gives you actionable and precise results fed into your North Beam MTA dashboards. Finally, go to NorthBeam IO and request a demo today. Curtis, I'm curious how you guys do this, because there is creative is like. I mean, all of us are starving for it all the time. It's. It is like the part of the business and direct to consumer that you feel like you never have enough of or better. Right? How at. At Portland Leather Goods, like, how do you guys handle this? Like, do you have a creative strategist? There's a lot of people that don't even have this role. So tell us about the team.
- [42:31]
D
We. We do. I did a lot of it. You know, the word creative is every stupid person thinks they're creative and they're really rare and you got to get the right one. So that's number one. Number two, we did and we outsourced it. We do ours out of Brazil. And he's very good and he brings a lot of ideas in. I served as a lot of that at the beginning and then I moved away from that. But I think the most important thing, like we're at number four and we're still arguing about this and we got another one coming, is that hiring isn't ongoing at all times. Times. Like, it's not like I got the person, I got the private person. Now I can kick back for three years. Like there's always bringing in more talent as you grow. It is. You've always got to be looking, you've always got to be evolving and I'm going to say the one that everyone hears but we don't always do. You've got a clean house of the people who are just sitting someplace and aren't excelling. You've always got to be cleaning a little bit out to make room and always bringing somebody new win.
- [43:35]
A
I, I guess on this, like Sean, do you, based on what Curtis and Katie are saying, do you think that this function in a business is actually one that's changing a lot right now because of AI? Like is this actually a thing? Like I always think creative strategies. I'm like, well what about copywriters and what about the analysis part and then the supply, like the creative supply chain management? Like there seems to be, there's a lot of jobs to be done in creative and it does seem like a lot of that's getting squished together now. Or, or do you have a different take?
- [44:05]
B
It's the newest and most dynamic of these roles. I mean, I'm glad Katie brought up Claude. So internally at a ridge, what is a creative strategist, they come up with the concepts for ads that will be shot. So they come up with, you know, hooks, visuals, like hey, we like, we, you know, all that type of stuff. So they have a script and then they find UGC people. They manage the UGC people, they make sure they get the products, they shoot it, they get all that raw footage back and then either they're hands on editing it or they're working with third party editors to produce 50 or 100 ads a week right now. It used to be we had probably five people doing that job. We probably have three people doing that job now. And they are cutting out large portions of that because they can script way faster with Claude and they can do a lot of visuals inside of Higgs Field or something else. Right. So that role is very much compressing over time. And also once you do it for like a year, you have a list of UGC people that you just like and you always go back to, to them. Right. So I think at first you're getting a bunch of random people and trying it out and you know, using TikTok to source people. Then at a certain point you can really, you know, hone this down. The last thing I'll say and then we'll go to Katie is the Hudson method of mass eating on TikTok. Getting a bunch of content and then promoting that content is also, you know, directly at odds with the creative strategist because you're mass sourcing versus scripting and you need to do both of those things. But it also just helps fill the creative funnel. So, Katie, anything I say piss you off?
- [45:34]
C
No, I agree. Oh, my God. I'm just here to help, guys. So ours is separate too. Like creators, influencers, and listening to each of your, like, how you describe your creative strategist. Like, ours is in the photo shoots every day and ours is styling and ours is working, like you guys said, like with the image generation, with AI or ad generation and. And then also just making ads themselves or working with our graphic designers. Like, to me, the creative strategist has to know the style and aesthetic of the brand and be able to, like, I don't know, make it, make all the different aspects of it work. Because if she doesn't, or mine is McKenna, she doesn't do her job right. And get really good creative for our product, it's going to fail on social, it's going to fail in activations, it's going to fail a product on site. Like, I, I think that it's a, I think it's a very important role to hire for and to Curtis's point too, and what we've done. So we've got four people on our creative team and I have hired all of them to do something different than they're doing today. And I think sometimes with creative people, you've got to get them in and then see what they're really good at. Like, we hired a girl that was just going to run YouTube for us and then in her free time, she started going in our studio and just shooting content. And it was amazing. And so we've completely shifted what we use her for and are hiring somebody else now for the role we initially filled for. And I think that's with creative people in general. You've just, you got to get them in the door and then see what they're good at.
- [47:11]
A
Agreed. I think, Sean, just for everybody that Curtis, myself and Katie, the common thing between our brands is we, I think Curtis, you coined this term we sell buy my things, which is, you see the visual of it and that is the reason to buy most of the time. Right. Whereas, Sean, I would say your products have like, there's an, like, these like, very intrinsic features and functions that they have that you guys just do super well. Like, there's a material story and like where a creative strategist for you might have a very different sort of, like, job to be done. And then if you could then bring in something like a supplement or. Or a food or a beverage where they're like actual problem solution products.
- [47:56]
D
Right.
- [47:56]
A
Like, I'm solving a pain. So, like, I think creative strategist or like this person who heads up creative and every brand, again, is one of those things that can be quite category dependent, which then drives like, well, where do you find these people and what do they do? And, like, what their job in the day is Very different.
- [48:13]
B
Yeah. You know, I think I should have went through before we talk about each one and define what I think that job is. And then it probably would have given us common language. So we would argue.
- [48:21]
A
No, it's good, because then we can just argue about it, Sean. Yeah, it makes for better content if we're just all pissy and laughing at each other. All right, so you guys just brought up creators Influencer. Your fifth one was actually head of influencer.
- [48:35]
B
I'll just say real quick. I mean, I need to find a fifth one because I said I would make a list of five. So I was thinking about people, and yeah, I was thinking people inside, original, like, who's hard to hire for. But there's some justifications for why a head influencer is so hard. And what it comes down to is, and I've seen this happen a couple times, you hire someone who's into who's. Who loves influencers, who love celebrity, who loves YouTube, like, whatever thing you want them to manage, they have to love it. They have to be all about it. But then they also will bring their biases into it, right? Like, you know, they will want to work with a creator so bad, they will overpay it. And, like, you know, we. We had a guy who loved Casey Neistat, and he just kept bringing up, like, how can we get Casey Neistat? Like, look, dude, he doesn't want to work with us. We have to go find somebody else. It's like, I'm like, he's not responding to the emails. Okay, email 10,000 other people. And every. Every day, he would just think about new ways to reach out to Casey Neistat. I'm like, okay, man, that guy doesn't want to work with us. So it's. It's. You have to find someone who's obsessed with, like, you know, pop culture and celebrity and the Internet, but also has to be fickle enough to not care about any one person and willing to work with Whoever is going to generate you the most money and then also not abuse that relationship because you're giving them money and if they're nice to you, you want to give them more money. It's not your money. You like this person a lot. So it's like the ultimate form of patriot, like Patreon or patronage or whatever. So anyway, that's why all the risks of the role. Curtis, you see, you seem like you're digging it.
- [50:04]
D
No, you're nailing what you do and what you do very well. We don't really even do that type of thing. We hired for community, we have a 250,000 person Facebook community that they just. They're worth 40, 50 million dollars a year. They're just always buying. We have entire teams, 24 hours a day keeping those people happy. And then we went the TikTok affiliate route to create the flywheel of new information in. We failed at everything in terms of this. Like, you're nailing it. Cause I watch some of your stuff or I'm a YouTube guy, so I'll be on there and that Ridge stuff will start coming at me a little bit and then they'll start following me around. I'm like, oh, shit, I wish we did this stuff. But we don't. We have a community. We do meta and then the TikTok thing, which has really taken off for us recently, just crazy.
- [50:55]
A
Katie, what do you guys do at Caden Lane? Are you community, like what Curtis is talking about, or are you more creator influencer? Do you have ambassador as an affiliate? Like, there's just. There's so many ways to skin this, like relationship.
- [51:09]
C
Yeah, I. We do all of them. So we definitely lean into like a VIP community group and then do a lot of education around our products right online with YouTube, things like that, but with creators and influencers, which are two different things. Right. So influencers are more partnerships that you're doing with them. They're talking about your product, they're posting it on their accounts. They're hopefully toggling on like whitelisting with your brand, things like that. We do a ton of that. We do mostly honestly mini, like micro influencers. I mean, I used to be like, what you said, Sean, where I'm like, oh my God, if we could only get so and so right to post, then we'd crush it. Well then we got them and it honestly wasn't as great as we thought it would be. Most of them buy our stuff anyways and then don't link it, which just infuriates me, because I'm like, that you actually paid for that product. Tell your people about how you love that instead of your hair growth serum or something like that. And then creators is the team that we've really leaned into and that we've got several people working on. And it's just constant outreach to, I think, a lot of people that want to be influencers. So we don't care if they have 300 followers or 3,000 followers. If we like their content, what they're putting out, their style, their voice, what they look like, right? Like the whole esthetic of their personality, then we bring them on. And usually we only pay like $200, truly. And they'll send us multiple videos, which, you know, then we can put on meta and YouTube and TikTok and all the things to test out ads. And so I think keeping them as two separate things, does that make sense? Like, influencers are partnerships, creators are content creators.
- [52:57]
A
I think that's like head of Influencer, what Sean is calling head of influencer. There's like a bunch of different types of, like, working with outside sort of like creators or influencers, right? Like, you could just do seating for content. You could do the hired creators. You could do, like, integrations. Curtis brought this up. Sean Ridges, like, best in class at, like, YouTube integrations. You guys have been doing that for years. Then there's like, what a lot of people now do is. Katie, what you brought up is creator, like, more relationship management to get whitelisted creators. So, like, you're actually not even wanting the organic post from them. You actually just want them to make content and give you whitelisting so that you get the paid machine going, which has got far better reach than organic. Anyway. Sean, what am I missing? There's like, I know there's lots of types in here and it. And does all of this fall under this one person, or do we think this is multiple?
- [53:51]
B
Yeah, so we. We tip right it out. Our creative strategist manages all of our creators, right? So like, that's probably like, the difference is like, my creative strategist is managing the UGC people, the people who are whitelisting. They're, you know, we have a guy, Mason, internally, who's runs TikTok shops. He's running the affiliate program for us, getting that content and then feeding it to the paid media team. When I say influencer, I mean paid dollars for posts on their channels. And here's a story. I had a guy on my team, and he loved Livy Dunn. Livy Dunn's Like a female gymnast who like Gen Z thinks is really hot. And this guy, every meeting would just bring up trying to sponsor Livy Dunn. He was obsessed with sponsoring movie Dunn. He would have spent any amount of money to sponsor Livy Dunn. And I'm like, this is where. If he was the influencer manager, he would be bad for my company because he would sign a deal for millions of dollars just to talk to her. And that's why it's like you need someone who's like, incredibly locked in, knows the industry, probably is a creator. Our guy Doug, who runs it right now, has a 200,000 sub YouTube channel, right? Like, so he really knows the space. But also Doug is cool enough to not ruin everything for us. He would not spend millions of dol to sponsor Luffy Dunn because he thinks it's just hot. He would look at the deals and actually like be able to assess what the value is and then have really tough conversations because, I mean, this went viral. I don't know if you saw this or not. Bill Gates daughter has a startup, okay, and she is doing DM outreach to influencers, trying to get them to post about it. And the influencer was like, Yeah, I want $4,000. And she's like, Look, I think it's worth 500 bucks. And that person screenshot that and they said, your dad is Bill Gates. Give me the $4,000. And like, the problem is that ad space wasn't worth $4,000. So how do you tell an influencer that their ad space is not worth what they used to get or what they want to get? And it's just a really difficult conversation. So you have to hire somebody who's good at that. And it's why it could just be a tricky hire. So I do think Katie's point, keep creators and influencers separate, like paid for posts versus paid for rights or content. But there are some trial and tribulation if you want somebody to, you know, get paid posts for you.
- [55:57]
C
Those are very important positions to have. And they're not. They don't have to be extremely high level. I think those are almost better if you've got a bunch of people working on it constantly. Because that's, that's a game, right? Where volume counts.
- [56:13]
B
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- [56:55]
A
I could actually argue that while this might be a hard role to hire if you're actually a newer brand, this might actually be one of the first roles you go higher is like somebody who manages, does outreach and like is getting content and like building relationships. Like if you're sort of younger as a brand, this is a super important role right now. Yeah, I could actually make that argument. Curtis, I got one on your sort of like community. First answer. Do you guys get like you obviously they drive a lot of revenue for you. You called that out. Do they also provide a lot of content for you guys? Like, do you get a ton of raw, like stuff that you use in the paid machine?
- [57:35]
D
Well, we have two different things. We have our community, our insiders who follow us who are just like every day they're there and thousands of posts and they follow us and all we have to do is feed them anything. It will sell out there that day, right? So need a million dollars, come up with something on a Tuesday and they're going to buy it out, right? So they just generate a lot of interest and hype and cult behind what we do. On the other side are the creators who are creating for this flywheel engine that we, that we're doing. And I believe that is the new thing. I think we all think that is. It's not. Everyone used to come to me on the influencer side and say, like, who do you think would be a good influencer for our product? Product? And I'm like, I don't know. I think I'm a cool guy, but I don't know shit about most of this stuff. Right. Like, what about this person? Never heard of them. What about this? I have no idea who that is. Right. Like there's so many things out there. Sean. I was shaking my head because there's so many little different areas out there that you have to have people have their, their fingers on each one of those. I don't have that. So what we've done is the little TikTok, send out things, have them create videos and throw it in that flywheel and throw it out there on Meta and show what works. I was just in Austin, Texas, at Commerce Roundtable, and this guy got up and he had just like a Yeti thing. He knows, like, Mike and everybody. He has a frosty mug thing that he sells. He's like, four years ago, I did 10 million. Three years ago I did 20 million. Two years ago I did like 30 million. This year, I'm expecting to do 190 million. And he did it all because of the creation flywheel of TikTok creating all of these things. He comes out with new things and will every new release he has. He already has 500 new videos to throw into Meta to actually scale that up. And his jump is incredible. And I sat with him at dinner and he's just like, yeah, they create all the content. I throw it in. It works. I'm making a bunch of money. So I love that new idea. I think that is what a lot of people are doing. It's what Hudson does, it's what he does. It's what we've proven in the last month to work for us. So that's kind of what we do. Like, specific influencers out there. I'm too dumb to know who they are.
- [59:50]
C
Product seeding, though, like, is what you're talking about on TikTok. And I think it's important, too, to call out, like, imagine if Jason was like, product seeding hexclad to every single little influencer. Like, some brands have to take into consideration the product, right? Like, I'm jealous of. Of, you know, our friends at BK Beauty because they're sending makeup, makeup brushes out for TikTok too. And I'm like, it's cheap to ship. It's right, like, not an expensive product. It's one size. Like, they're just like shipping thousands and thousands out to all these creators and mine. I have to know the size, what size does the kid wear, right? Like, the whole thing. So. But it is if. If you can do product seating, I think it's a massive unlock. It's been a huge unlock for us, too.
- [60:36]
B
That's very much where the world of Influencer is going. It's like, you know, celebrity is less and less important. Like, you know, and big accounts are less important than ever before. So unless you're getting ad rights to run the big account in your content, like, it's. Those marquee partnerships are just really hard to, you know, the Libby Dunn deal wouldn't have made sense. Now we have a deal with Marquez and, like, that's part of our influencer. Program and Marquez is a co owner and we run all that that ends up working out. The. The big celebrity deals really need to live on YouTube. I think you have to, like, work with a big YouTuber because they have. They have just a better audience, a commanding audience, like paying for a Libby Dunn Instagram story. Or, you know, we were talking to Hailey Bieber and like, this is probably two Christmases ago. Like, she was going to give Jason, or no, sorry, Jason Bieber a ring for, like, Christmas, because he loves. Like, they're married or whatever. And they're like, yes, we probably want, I don't know, $450,000. And I'm like, it's just that that's not gonna make it. This won't see a good return.
- [61:34]
A
I got my.
- [61:35]
B
My.
- [61:36]
A
I'll give you a good Hailey Bieber story. This is actually another shout out to Jason from Hexclad.
- [61:39]
D
When.
- [61:40]
A
Remember when he did the Hailey Bieber cooking thing? Like, they did their. Whatever. Jason went on set and they were doing their show. They were filming, and he saw that she had a lomi in her kitchen. And he was like. He's like, I'm just gonna move this in the shot for my buddy Matt so that he sent me the YouTube video. He's like, I did that. I'm like, thanks, Jay. All right, so five roles. Good debate, good discussion. Does anybody have. Would. Would anybody have another number one? So, like, Sean's was not product. Katie, you said head of growth. Curtis, what would your hardest role to be on everything we've talked about? What do you think the hardest one is?
- [62:21]
D
I'm gonna be an right here and say it's replacing me. Like, I. Like I create. I. I create.
- [62:33]
C
Videos on this show are so exhausting sometimes. Oh, my God, Somebody make Curtis's screen on the YouTube thing bigger so that it's proportionate with his head size right now.
- [62:47]
D
I have never thought about giving up being CEO, but I'm at a point where soon I will be moving to a board and other areas and having somebody. Maybe it's several years, maybe it's five years, but I've created this thing with duct tape and in my brain, all the ways that the books say don't do it, like, create systems and create processes that we're growing too fast, right? Like, let's get it done. Let's get it done now. And people say, when I'm not in the building, the energy is down and things do not get done. So how do I get somebody to come in and replace my Crazy ass energy, my crazy ass optimism with the systems that are going to run for the next 10 to 20 years. And I don't even know how to judge that person. Right. Like if they're too much like me, I'm going to hate them. If they're not like me, I'm going to hate them. So how the hell do I choose that? So I'm going to be fair. Sean, how do you replace yourself?
- [63:44]
B
Typically a private equity group would come in here and fire me and then it's their fault to deal with it. But I think it's a fair question. What I was going to say is, you guys, this is my list of the top five. What did I leave off? So Curtis is saying CEO, that's, that's, it's, it's too hard to replace a founder. That's the number one job, especially if you're going to have equity. If you're, if you're not selling your business and you just want to replace yourself, it's like, yeah, the way you do that is you hire somebody right now and you wait five years. It's like, it's like that's the transition plan. Like, you know, I think Katie has found that in her number too, that if Katie wants to step away, she's, she's put in the five years. It just takes five years. But besides CEO, besides my list, Katie, Matt, who'd we forget off go to?
- [64:28]
C
Katie first in marketing specifically.
- [64:30]
B
No. Any, any role, the hardest role that you think is out there to hire is it just head of growth?
- [64:35]
C
I think it's head of growth. I do. Yeah. But, but I'm, I think more like VP of marketing. Like I, I don't necessarily think it's in the ad buying part. I almost think it's somebody that is like what Curtis is saying, almost like just running the entire machine of marketing and making sure all the pieces of the flywheel are communicating together. Because they have to understand, right. Like we're all talking about jobs where they have to obsess over influencer or creator or product or whatever. I need somebody that obsesses over all the product cat all the categories. And I, I think that's a hard. And if it's not a cmo, what is it?
- [65:09]
B
Totally, I mean, yeah, good feedback. Matt, who, who do we leave off the list?
- [65:15]
A
Off the list? You know, there's a lot of them, but I think that this is one of Those like a top 1% person in this seat could do a lot of damage. Is a retention person. So like Somebody who really knows how to bring people back. Like, they can write. They're like, just crazy empathy. They like the whole system. I think that person is hard to get just because there's a lot of mediocre and. But there are exceptional people out there that when you see them and you, man, they're awesome, and they are worth their weight in gold.
- [65:47]
D
My cfo, my who's in charge of all the money and taxes and pain and everything, is someone that I like to talk to, which is really weird in accounting and finances. That's actually somebody who's got a great personality. Is amazing because I talk to her every day, and there are people who I avoid talking to because they just kind of bug me. And you never want your people who take care of your money to be that person. So we really lucked out. It took a long time to find her. And once you got someone who was just an amazing person, amazing friend that I can call to 18 hours a day, we can call up and get that information. Having people who control your money, who you like and trust, I mean, that's the world right there.
- [66:33]
B
Curtis, I think it's a great point to end on. You said trust. The CFO role is so hard because they can steal from you. Like, they. You only see what they prepare. Unless you're loaning the bank account and you're in charge of accounts payable or whatever else that is, there's no easier role to actually commit fraud. So you have to have a CFO you trust. It is. It is hard for that reason. All right, guys, I think that's in the books. Curtis and Katie, we love having you here. We always love a good debate. You guys are fantastic members of the operators family. Curtis, enjoy your. Your whole kingdom that you've built. The people running around you go drop
- [67:10]
A
some for somebody to pick up.
- [67:11]
B
Talk to you guys later.