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- [00:00]
A
What's up, guys? Welcome to another episode of Sweat Equity, the first episode of 2025. What we're going to do is originally we didn't plan on doing this or we plan on doing this, and then we nixed the idea. But we want to do a little bit of a recap of our year. Some of our learnings, our highs, our lows, things that we're looking forward to and kind of give you guys a bts. We talk about that all the time. I think it's important for us to do that for the people that actually care and invest their time into us and what we do for us to be able to talk about it here.
- [00:26]
B
For sure and give you an opportunity to look into our heads in terms of how we're building our businesses. A lot of stuff is actively changing on the whole landscape, and I think you have to be able to adjust. And something that people have been asking me a lot recently is, how do you spot opportunity? And so I kind of want to walk through that framework too, because think both of us saw opportunity with our businesses in 2024, jumped on it, probably spent a lot of time on those opportunities, and now are thinking, is that really the best opportunity for me, or should I expand into something else that's maybe a little higher upside? And then also, you're still trying to grow on social. I'm starting to grow on social as much as I can in the short term. So learnings from that, too, I think will be really helpful for people because a lot of folks are kind of stuck in the mud.
- [01:18]
A
Couldn't agree more. I want to start with. This is what I think every founder should do with their team or with their co founder. And so we just came. Nice.
- [01:27]
B
That was good.
- [01:28]
A
Nice. We just came back from an Airbnb yesterday. Yesterday afternoon or yesterday evening. And so John and I, we rented an Airbnb on. On Lake Austin for the last two days or two nights. Three. Three full days. Right. And the whole goal was, hey, we've never done this in the past, John, we need to sit down and we need to fully align on what we're trying to accomplish. Right. Marketing examine at its infancy was a side hustle of, hey, I have this newsletter. I have a big list here. I can monetize it. We can make some money. Hey, if we go full time on this, this can be something big. Marketing examine has evolved significantly since that stage. But the thing is, John and I have never, like, aligned on what we're trying to accomplish. As we build this, we've always just, like, kind of done it and continued to grow it. And we pivoted hard this year, drastically, you know, in June, and that changed the entire trajectory of the company.
- [02:18]
B
Real quick, tell people what the pivot was.
- [02:20]
A
I'm going to. I'm gonna get into the pivot.
- [02:21]
B
Okay, cool. Yeah.
- [02:22]
A
But the whole point of the this. The whole point of renting this Airbnb was, okay, I have six things, John, that I want to sit down. We're going to figure out. We're going to bring the whiteboard, and we're going to figure out together. We're going to essentially just obsess over these six things for the next two days, and we're going to leave here starting the year knowing exactly what we're going to execute from Q1 to Q4, from the roadmap, etc. And so we went into it with this game plan. We were going to establish the goals, revenue goals, growth goals, all that. We're going to then determine the roadmap. Third hiring. The third was. The third aspect was roles, responsibilities, and hiring. Who was going to do what, how was that going to get done, and who were going to be able to hire to do that. Fourth is budget and finances. Understanding where we're going to apply money to, where we're going to pull back from. Fifth was growth in marketing, and then the sixth was essentially big swings. If we want to take Rob his term, moonshot marketing, what are we going to do there? This was the best two, three days for us, I think we've ever had, because in the past, we've had somebody else come in as part of the team and run operations. John, in my opinion, has the strongest hold on operations. He really understands how to build very, very good operations, and he's obsessed with doing so. And so this was the first time that we've sat down and we've, like, whiteboarded together. Hey, this is what we are trying to accomplish. Here's why. Here's how we're going to get there. At least our theory of doing so. Are a lot of things, of these things going to change? Yeah, but the North Star won't change, which I think is what's huge. And so being able to sit down and, like, both understand what the goal is. And so now when we hire somebody, we know, okay, that's because of this. You know, we're trying to accomplish this. When we're investing 10, 20, $30,000 into content, it's because of this, having that alignment, even though we're just a day In, I think is going to pay extreme dividends to what will accomplish this year. I think the next layer though is you can't just do this at the beginning of the year. I think you have to do this at the end of every quarter. Yeah, I, I think at the end of Q1, we're going to have to look again, reflect on Q1, reflect on this exercise and you know, essentially two day thing that we did and say, hey, are we, are we on track? Are we doing this? Have we been accomplishing this? But what I will say is if you have leaders on your team, I highly advise you do this. When I talk to people at Jocko's team, they do this, I believe it's like on a quarterly basis, they get like a cabin that one of them owns and they go to that cabin and like the leadership, leadership team is there and they just lie.
- [05:03]
B
They just like drill a hole in the ice and just start plucking out salmon and eating.
- [05:06]
A
They just plunge and have all their meetings in the ice cold water for sure.
- [05:10]
B
Just shoot an elk while they're at it. Yeah, I mean it's the best thing you can do. It's a luxury of having co founders. That's one of the nice things that you have. And then to just bring it into my situation and anyone who's a solo founder having those reconciliation periods with yourself and just being like, well, where am I investing cash? Where am I putting human capital resources in as well? Because I run a growth marketing through content agency and what has always been a challenge there, and this is just something you can only learn a lot of these things through actually doing. You can only find insights through trying and being in the trenches, which is the dumbest phrase of all time.
- [05:57]
A
Sorry, I can't believe you said that.
- [05:58]
B
Yeah, I might have to cancel myself. But one thing I learned was just the importance of product market fit and what that looks like for a brand, particularly on a unique platform like TikTok Shop, for example, and how even if you're making great content, you might not have an offer that resonates with the demographic that's on that platform. Specifically, TikTok shop is high value or low risk, as we've talked about before. And so you're looking at all these brands that I work, I'm looking at all these brands I worked with over the summer. And it's clear that if I had merchandise them differently then we would have had more success. And it's a lot cheaper for me to hire someone who is an E Commerce growth expert or E commerce manager, someone who understands pricing and offer stuff and conversion rate optimization. It's a lot cheaper for me to hire that person for 80 to 100k and amortize the cost over all of our different clients than lose clients after three months. And you just kind of have to. Those things come to you almost like a light bulb moment. Unless you do this reconciliation thing where you look at your strengths, weaknesses, and trying to understand like, what, what. Where you're deficient.
- [07:13]
A
Couldn't agree more. And it is one of the benefits of, of having a co founder because it's hard to do this by yourself because you only have one POV for sure. John has the POV of like, Alex, I know your weaknesses.
- [07:24]
B
Yeah.
- [07:25]
A
And I know the things that you're never a part of because you're so focused here. And so therefore when you say, hey, we should be doing this, I could look at it from the other lens and be like, no, we shouldn't, or yeah, we should. But it's not going to be able to happen unless you start doing xyz.
- [07:39]
B
Yeah. And trust, you know, trust in that co founder to hold you accountable. Because I have no one to hold me accountable. And it shows. I'm wilding out every time. No one's looking at the dynamics bill but me. So I just pay that bitch. It doesn't matter. But you know, and that, that's not, that's actually really unproductive. I've started to have my accountant chirp me, you know, Nehemiah. Shout out Nehemiah, like, like, dude, it's my accountant too. Yeah, it's all of our accountants. The sweat equity. Yeah, the sweat equity accountant. But man, it's like, tell me when I'm spending on dumb stuff like highlight that because I just shaved like 2,000amonth in costs on random shit that I was not using in my day to day. And if you think about your budget, you should think about it in the same way that we think about copywriting. So the way that we think about copywriting is the rule of thirds, where you write your initial draft, cut it by a third, and then once you have that second draft, cut it by another third so that you can force maximum clarity into your words. You should be doing that with your budget. You should be looking at, okay, I can cut this. This is not like, enforce yourself, force yourself to go trim a 30 year budget and then you should look at it again and ask, is this really necessary? Is this really necessary? And that's across people, services, you know, subscriptions Whatever.
- [08:59]
A
I've. I've never been somebody that has budgeted well, and I know. I think you and I probably have similar spending habits where, like, we see it, want it, and therefore we buy it.
- [09:10]
B
Yes.
- [09:10]
A
Kind of thing. The last six months, I've. You know, it's hard because I've been coming on here with the same fits, bro. I haven't been buying.
- [09:18]
B
Everyone's talking about it.
- [09:19]
A
Everybody's talking about, you know, But I really haven't been spending because that's somewhere where I'd spend thousands of dollars. I wouldn't say every month, but for sure, fairly often, I'm spending thousands of dollars on, like, shoes.
- [09:32]
B
Yeah.
- [09:32]
A
You know, pants. Like, you know, just a pair of jeans that we're getting is, like, 300.
- [09:37]
B
Yeah. It's. It's extremely irrational, and it's stupid to.
- [09:40]
A
Kind of think about it because we're not at that point where no, you know, that's. That's a good. That doesn't matter.
- [09:45]
B
I got ALD Taste with Abercrombie budgets. You know, it's not good. I got it. I got to raid that.
- [09:52]
A
A few other highs and lows from the weekend. Lowe's. I got a house on the lake because I wanted to fish. I didn't catch a damn thing. And I'm a good. Like, I am very good at fishing. I have fished my entire life. I've caught hundreds of fish.
- [10:08]
B
Sure, man.
- [10:09]
A
I know. Didn't catch a single thing.
- [10:12]
B
Yeah. I mean, your record is. Your record is your record. Right? Like, now. Now you're in public saying that you. You just went over on the.
- [10:19]
A
I went over. The highest of highs was this $20 fake snake that I bought and I pranked because we're in the hill country. You know what I mean? So it's like you. It's known for snakes. Yeah.
- [10:30]
B
You're on high alert.
- [10:31]
A
Yeah. You. You just naturally, like, you're stepping a little different. For sure, the amount of. I pranked everybody that stayed. You know what I'm saying? Like, we had some of our friends come in for, like, at least New Year's night, and. And, like, ring it in with us. And I got everybody. John was the worst by far. Froze. I don't know if you ever watched New Girl, but, like, this man hit the. He saw the snake. Remote control snake hit the corner. Hit, like, froze. Hit this moonwalk. Yelled. It was. And we will say I got you about 30 minutes.
- [11:00]
B
20 minutes ago.
- [11:01]
A
30 minutes ago.
- [11:02]
B
Yeah. Yeah. No, it's. It's crazy. Alex literally walks into the office, tells me that there's a snake infestation in the neighboring office. I buy it first of all and I just write it off, say, okay, sure. And then next thing I know, he goes, oh, look at that, right by my foot. Big ass snake. Now if you're a real sweat equity podcast listener, you know, my ankle's been hurting for a little bit and I moved, I moved fast. I got to the door maybe 0.5 seconds.
- [11:29]
A
I mean, five seconds.
- [11:30]
B
Yeah, backpedal too, you know, extra hard for the high ankle sprain. That, that's sick. I think more people know the off site was this thing that really emerged in, I would say like 2022, 2023. As a founder now who, you know, the bank account is one with me, I cannot fathom that people actually were spending that much money on off sites. But certainly for the executive team, you know, like, it's good to gather in person and be in a relaxed environment, be in a thinking environment.
- [12:01]
A
It costs us like $1,500, you know what I mean? Yeah, it's so worth it.
- [12:04]
B
It's a no brainer. But if you looped in, you know, eight other team members, all of a sudden you're talking about 10 racks and it's just in the name of culture so you and the squad can play cards against humanity and, you know, it's weird. So that's cool, that's cool.
- [12:18]
A
Let's switch it up. I'm going to ask you what were the biggest learnings of 2024 for you?
- [12:24]
B
So for sure, one of the biggest learnings and painful learnings for me was the importance of expectation setting. So in any sort of services arrangement, whether it's agency life, whether you're a software company, what you're communicating to people that you're going to do for them has to be accurate. And you also have to follow through on that in the first six weeks. Sounds obvious. People would be absolutely horrified at how much that doesn't happen. I think about that from the lens of internal communication where I say, hey, I need this done by this date. It's not done by that date. There's no notice provided. To me, a big thing with all of our different brands has been TikTok's cold start on TikTok Shop in particular is really challenging. It's about a six week ramp up and so oftentimes clients have paid their first two invoices before they're starting to see ROI on my service. And there's two ways that you can look at that. Number one is, okay, well I'm going to tell them it's going to be six weeks.
- [13:28]
A
Yeah.
- [13:29]
B
I just had an experience this morning actually where a client cut, he's got his second invoice and he cut it and he was like, well, we didn't do enough in month one. We delivered every single thing we agreed upon in the contract. We communicated up front. We did everything on our end. It was exactly what I told him on the sales call. I said, it's likely going to be six weeks before we get to revenue here. And not to revenue, but to like 50,000amonth so that you're feeling good about this. And he just, it falls on deaf ears. You know, a lot of brand owners are manic, crazy people. That's why they're delusional enough to start something. And so that also causes them to be very reactionary and impulsive. And you know, it's like some of my bigger brands, they understand that stuff's going to take time. And so that expectation setting process is really easy. But with something like this, I'm realizing that if it's someone under like 15 million a year in revenue, especially solo founders slash like CEOs of those brands that like hold with an iron fist all the power, it's always on the chopping block.
- [14:36]
A
Yeah.
- [14:37]
B
And you just have to understand, you know, it's one of the biggest lessons I learned at Spellbound was Spellbound was the email marketing platform, was my last job that I'll ever have, which is kind of sick. But Spellbound was always the first thing to get cut in any budget situation. Their lowest totem pole. It's not producing, it's not necessary. And so where I'm finding with my service as a learning is even despite expectation setting being something that is done properly, if your service is not absolutely critical, you're really not building that big of a, that great of a business because you're not sticky enough. You cannot be cuttable. And where it's showing up in my P and L is basically like say I have 14 to 17 brands at any given moment. I'm acquiring three to five brands every month or every two months. But I'm also churning three to five brands every two months. And so I'm just in this choppy waters where you're either, you know, you're doing really well, but then like unexpected churn happens and now there's pressure and I know that I'm going to get a new client in the next two weeks. Someone's just going to come in through the ether, because that's what happens when you create content. But I can't invest in growth because my offer is not sticky enough. And so that's. That's been something that I'm really thinking about right now is how do I become stickier. But, yeah, so, I mean, that's been a big thing. And then to build on that point about being sticky, I wanna quickly talk about product market fit because I've been in businesses that have struggled, for example, Spellbound, again, not to drag it, but, like, we did not have product market fit. It was not something that every brand felt like they needed. It was like a cool tool. And TikTok shop as an offer was absolutely product market fit. Like, I had overwhelming demand. Like, it feels like product market fit feels like sales is on easy mode. And too many people don't understand that your idea is bad. And that's why you don't have product market fit. It's not like you need to tweak something or be a better marketer or whatever. It's like a lot of businesses just don't need to exist. And so product market fit is a clear feeling, I think, rather than this thing that you seek. I don't think people can actually build towards product market fit as much as they think. I think when you have it, it's very clear because stuff just comes very easily and your problems are much different. Your problems are like what I'm describing, or it's like you're not sticky or your pipeline, your business operations internally are not smooth enough. But sales should not be the problem.
- [17:25]
A
Yeah, I agree with you. I think there was a somebody who said this where, like, if you're asking if you have product market fit, then you don't have it.
- [17:32]
B
Correct.
- [17:34]
A
And I'm very aligned with you where with services, it has to be something that they're looking at. The list of services, different agencies that they're working with, and they're like, we can't cut that one.
- [17:45]
B
Right.
- [17:45]
A
Like, we need that. And that was a. There was a learning curve, I think, with us as well as, like, we pivoted again, I'll talk about that. But like, as we pivoted where. And this happens naturally, where you just want to take everybody on because you need revenue in the door.
- [18:01]
B
Right.
- [18:02]
A
And I think that's good because one of my biggest learnings was only going after our ICP or our ideal customer profile and only taking leads and even our messaging only, like, filtering for those kinds of people. Right. So at first we were. When we pivoted in this idea of like essentially creating playbooks for brands and strategies for brands and then helping them execute it. Originally we were going to take anybody on. If you were SaaS, if you were in beauty, it didn't matter what brand you were, we were going to take you on. We've now pivoted to, or not pivoted. We, we now only focus on health, wellness, fitness, lifestyle, like brands that they seem like cousins, more than completely different, like relatives and family and all that shit. And that has been the biggest thing for us because now when we're on a sales call and it's a fitness related product or health, wellness and I say, hey, we only work with these kinds of brands and then we tell them brands that they almost like aspire to be like that we work with. Yeah, it changes the dynamic drastically on that sales call. But I agree, like sales isn't the hard part. Like ops and making sure we're sticking up is the hard part.
- [19:16]
B
Well, and that's a natural challenge for both of us where the leads come from our personal brands. And so they're expecting to work with you. And the quality of work that is supposed to be associated with that is very. It's a difficult standard to meet because obviously if you hired me to come in and be your head of growth, that would probably result in some good stuff. The challenge is I have 14 other head of growth roles that I'm kind of working with at any given time. So you're naturally going to see attrition as you deliver that. And that's where I also think we struggle primutually is the systems part where it's like building those systems is actually most of your job rather than just being a marketer and it's more so being an operator. And it's had me unlock a huge level of respect for other CEOs that are really effective. Whereas before I think if you told me CEOs make 40x the average employee or whatever, I'd have been like, should be like 20.
- [20:22]
A
Now you understand the fact.
- [20:23]
B
No, I'm like, it actually should be like 200x because the person driving the boat, driving the ship is the only one that actually, really, really matters in a lot of this situations. Um, so it's all stuff that you really can't even understand. You can know it, but you don't understand it until you love it.
- [20:43]
A
Biggest learnings for me this year were people and culture. Yeah, that was a huge learning for me where at the beginning of 2024, you know, our overhead was like 80 to 90,000, something like that. Close to that.
- [20:58]
B
Yeah. You were wilding. And this. This office had too many.
- [21:03]
A
Too many. And God damn. The reason for that was I wanted to hit a specific number. And so I just hired and brought on people to help hit those numbers versus really searching for the right person and finding the right person that not only would help us get to that number, they would elevate everybody in here. And then they would also, I don't want to say make work fun, but they would bring a certain personality or vibe or, like, intensity to the office that elevated everybody else.
- [21:34]
B
Yeah.
- [21:34]
A
And we didn't have that outside of. I would say myself and John. Like, we just didn't have that to the level that I would have wanted. And it starts with me. It starts with me and funnels down. But what I will say is there were weeks, months where, like, we could be executing at this highest level, and the people that were paying a good amount of money from just aren't producing.
- [21:59]
B
Yeah.
- [21:59]
A
And they're not matching that intensity level. And that's super frustrating. And so now, you know, we're back and we're hiring some. Some folks. It's like, no, we're actually, like, making sure we're hiring the right person and not only, like, running them through assessments and whatnot. It's like, not just would I hang out with this person, but, like, would you have a fight and call this person? Like, would you, if you had to, if you had to figure something out in the next 24 hours, that was huge. Would that person help you and help you accomplish it? Because you need that kind of culture in a company, like the ones that you and I are building.
- [22:34]
B
Yeah.
- [22:35]
A
You know, especially, like. And you have to have a lot of people that are down for the mission. They have to understand the mission, and they have to want to accomplish that. And we had too many people that wanted a great paycheck and just felt like they had the skills to be able to hit a number, and that was it.
- [22:51]
B
Yeah.
- [22:51]
A
You know, I. Whether I do this or not, I want to have people on my team that I can brainstorm and text on the weekend with. You know what I mean? It's like, yeah, what do you think about this idea? And you just go about it because you love the game. And we didn't have enough people that loved the game. They wanted to, like, tinker in our game so they could get paid and then go run their own game and do their own thing. And for me, that was a huge, huge learning Curve this year because it cost us. I mean, it cost us hundreds of thousands of dollars, quite frankly, like, a lot. A lot of money. Yeah, that was the first one. The second one, they kind of. I'll say it's two parts because this one plays off the last one. Intensity and hunger. I think intensity is the most important and vital aspect of any startup or of any company that somebody is building is intensity. When John and I were at the Airbnb, yes, we were, like, taking our time doing things, but then when we were like, okay, we're gonna set the timer for the next hour and do xyz, we got it done. When? In. In the last month and a half that we've been. Or two months that we've been, like, the leanest we've ever been. We've accomplished the most we've ever accomplished. Why? It wasn't like we got even more. Yeah, we got more efficient, but really, the intensity level went from a 5 to a 10, 11 right in our. In. That just drove everything, whether it was how our designers produce content, how it was like our EA getting things done that day. When people would say, hey, like, I'll get this to you Monday, but it's Thursday, I was like, no, just get it to me today. When a client would be like, hey, let's. Let's talk tomorrow about xyz. Hey, can I call you right now, that intensity level has shifted the entire culture with our team, where now everybody is doing so much more, so much better and so much faster.
- [24:46]
B
Yeah.
- [24:47]
A
Again, what I'm realizing is, and I've always known this, but you have to be the example of the person doing that. You, me, like, we have to be at the forefront just being, like, raising the intensity level every single day. Because if you think about it, if every week there was like, two to three scenarios where on a Thursday, somebody was like, hey, I'll get to that Monday. And you're like, no, let's get to it today. At the end of the year, how many days do you save for?
- [25:12]
B
Sure.
- [25:12]
A
And how many tasks do you. More. Do you get completed within that time frame?
- [25:16]
B
That's all I could think about that was huge. Is the importance of. Yes. Intensity and mentality overall of exactly the situation you just described. Thursday to Monday. Delays.
- [25:28]
A
Yeah.
- [25:29]
B
Not. Not, you know, losing days, basically. You lose so many days just chilling because there's no culture of getting stuff done on time. And that's. It never seems like a big deal in the moment.
- [25:43]
A
Yeah.
- [25:44]
B
It never seems like a big deal in the moment. And that's why it's so dangerous and it's such a trap. Because in the moment it actually feels nice, feels convenient, because you just let something kick down the road and then you multiply that over 52 weeks of the year and all of a sudden you just had 120 things take 30, 40% longer than they needed to and you're not even remotely. And it kind of reminds me of sports. It's the definition of the little things and the details. The details are where teams win games. You win in the little things. You don't win by making more threes, you actually win by out rebounding teams. In basketball, you win by not having penalties. In football, all the mistakes actually cost you more in the process of winning than your actual. The fun stuff, which is going and scoring and producing great client results. And yeah, I mean, dude, the Snowflake CEO has that quote. I'm sure you've seen it, Frank Slootman, where he's like, your job as a CEO is to drive the team every single day. You have to bring the intensity every single day. It's just another thing where I remember when I was more on the employee side of things. I love chilling. You know what I mean? I loved when things felt less intense at work. It was nicer. And so I do think that it ties into a broader conversation around how you motivate people and how do you reward them for adopting your intensity? Because that's why you have to give equity to people. That's why you have to tie them to bonus structures and stuff like that. Because otherwise why would I give you. I don't care. Like, you're paying me the same salary every single month or I'm getting fired. I don't think firing is actually the healthiest way to motivate people. I think it's obviously like providing the positive incentives. But even then, I mean, you had people that were in the sales roles that were still not going to be motivated by the commission stuff. It's like, how do you reconcile that, right? Like, if commission's not enough, then it's probably like a culture problem. The number one things that people need to have to avoid getting automated by AI are they need to be resourceful, like, they need to be adaptive, they need to be consistent and they need to be proactive. If you don't do those things, if you're not someone that can react to a situation, you basically need to be given an assignment and then just figure out how to do it rather than asking your boss five questions. About how to do it. First, go research stuff, go find potential solutions, try something, fail, and then bring that attempt to the boss. But don't just say, well, what about this? Well, what about this? Well, what about this? Because I think that's probably the thing that's going to get taken away is like anyone that needs your help basically and is not immediate value add is going to get destroyed by like chatbots.
- [28:43]
A
Couldn't agree more.
- [28:44]
B
So what were some of your biggest wins?
- [28:46]
A
All right, marketers, we know you love the tldr, so let's get right to the point. Here are five things you can get done faster with wix Studio. Number one, you could scale content with dynamic pages and reusable assets. Then number two, you can integrate with Meta's conversion API, Zapier, Google Ads and more in just a few seconds. Then number three, which is a given, and this is AB test where you can create them in days, not weeks with their intuitive design tools. Then number four, you could connect to tracking and analytical tools like SEMrush and GA4 in seconds and manage all of your client social media from one dashboard. All right, if you're ready for more, then go to wix studio.com again. That's wix studio.com biggest wins was the first one was our Pivot. Initially in 2024, we focused on like, I had a goal of getting to $3 million run rate, but the focus was media. How are we going to expand our media media ecosystem and, and scale the newsletter, pod, YouTube shows, all of that. We pivoted hard in June, July because I saw just an open opportunity and I seen this opportunity for a while and I knew like, hey, we should do something here because I'm getting the questions people are asking about it and we have to just productize this. And we pivoted in, in June to literally like shifting the entire business where, hey, I don't care about focusing on the media side. And when I say that, what I mean is like monetizing there. Not to say I don't care about newsletter sponsorships or podcast sponsorships. It's more so saying, hey, we're not going to.
- [30:12]
B
And we do care about podcast sponsorships.
- [30:14]
A
It's more so saying, hey, we're going to allocate all of our resources to taking this off the ground and running and we're going to leverage the, the revenue that we're getting from this, this side to make sure that we can, we can take a big stab at this side. And we did that really well, you know, and we didn't hit again. We pivoted hard. We didn't hit 3 million, but we got pretty like we're starting the year close is we're, we're like on, on track to be able to hit that at the end of Q1, right as of right now. And so having that pivot, by far the biggest thing for me, the biggest win. Now what I will say is when you pivot, don't put together some strategy. Just execute and do whatever you need to do to get things done and to get proof points and data points. That was like, we didn't, we didn't sit there and say, okay, we're going to pivot. Here's how. We don't know what we don't know. You know, I'm saying, like, we're trying to do something that is relatively like, net new. And so therefore, like, as we pivoted, we just had to keep iterating and making, making things better. If we got on a sales call, we didn't really know how to sell it. And then so we had to sit back from every sales call and be like, was that good? Was that not good? What could we have done better? How do we position this better? And you just have to like, that is your strategy. That is how you get better at it. Now, six months later, I can look back at the last six months and say, now we put together a strategy. Now I know what I should do to, in Q1 to get more leads or to close more people or to shorten the sales cycle. Now I have all those data points. Right? And so that was one of the biggest wins was the, the pivot like that for us was instrumental. It also puts us in. And let me explain actually why on the newsletter side, why I wanted to pivot. I still think newsletter and media is extremely valuable, very valuable when you have something else you can funnel to. The hard part about media is you can. You always have to start from zero every single month. We would have months that we did 100, 120k selling the newsletter and IG and stuff like that. If that was January, February starts and you have to sell 100k again.
- [32:23]
B
Yeah.
- [32:23]
A
You know what I'm saying? Or if you sell 80, it's like, well, you just went back, you know, and that's. And that's a tough spot to be in unless you have a mega sales team. We had one person at one point, two people like doing sales.
- [32:33]
B
I think you were also, you were also very specialized in marketing versus, you know, the people that are Able to sell like these three months, six month media commitments are oftentimes news related. Yeah. Like those packages really only come from a guaranteed like daily audience of millions, you know, if not like upper hundreds of thousands. And it's just not possible for you to build a marketing newsletter organically to that level. I think now if we would have.
- [33:02]
A
Had 2 million in cash and we could have got the newsletter to 500,000 people fairly fast without like with ads, that's maybe a different conversation.
- [33:10]
B
And let's explain, let's explain that too because basically you get into this either pay for performance or pay for awareness camp. And what you're selling when you have a huge audience like a 500 some million plus is you're selling awareness versus when you're selling at 100,000 people in your newsletter, then you're selling basically cost per lead. No one's paying you a reasonable rate to just reach 100,000 people that you can build a business on. And so you're actually beholden to your newsletter has to drive conversions for them. And that's where you get into the game of well this didn't really do that well for us so we're just going to cancel in February and then that's why you have to go get these more people. Because I could just hear it in my head, a lot of people are going to be like, well why don't you sign me to longer term deals? It's because that's just not what these people are interested in. They're testing a bunch of different newsletters, seeing which one's going to drive the best results and then they're probably going to lock into a longer term agreement. There's. But even that longer term agreement it's not going to get, I mean it's not going to fund your new, new wardrobe.
- [34:14]
A
No. And there was such a cap too. Right. With the cap only increased if you increased frequency or size.
- [34:22]
B
Yeah.
- [34:22]
A
You know what I mean? And to even increase size at what we were doing because we're such a small team, it's like we can't spend 50,000 or $100,000 a month on paid ads. Right. And even from the organic sides, like you have a post go viral and you get 500 subs, you know, and that doesn't increase.
- [34:37]
B
Yeah.
- [34:37]
A
That much.
- [34:38]
B
No.
- [34:39]
A
So that was that one. And then so I struggle for the second biggest win I from the agency side. What I'll say is because we niche down and we figured out how to show hey, this is how our product is delivering X Result. And we, and we actually understood our icp. We've had clients that have gone from what the retainer was to tripling it and 4xing it. That has been a big win because I think we're. I'm going to have more of that in 2025 where, okay, you gave me this, you told my team to execute this, you showed us exactly how to do it, and we made X amount of money from this. You know, this Sprint, what if you take on this, this and this, that is another big win. And I don't want to take yours. But I'll just say like one sentence. I think the other one was short form video as a big win.
- [35:32]
B
Yeah. I mean, for sure that your reason you're able to pivot is because it's short form video. You wouldn't have been able to pivot without with just your Twitter. Yeah. Which, yeah, I mean, I think it's, it's brilliant.
- [35:43]
A
Although I know you started like, you started nibble on the back end of your Twitter.
- [35:48]
B
Right.
- [35:49]
A
Last week I put out a, I didn't put out tweets in a minute.
- [35:53]
B
Yeah, right.
- [35:54]
A
I put out a tweet. Yeah, okay. I put out a tweet and then I responded to somebody else's tweet with like a little game plan. They scheduled a call and we closed them the next day. And they're two, $300 million company.
- [36:09]
B
Let me, let me be very clear. Twitter is way better for lead gen, for anything smarter people are on Twitter just full stop. It is a more intellectual community. As much as people might disagree with that in the current context of Elon buying it and everything. But it is absolutely where operators are lurking. I had three clients last year be full on Twitter, anonymous accounts, DM me and being like, hey, can I book a call? And I'm like, I mean, are you a real human being? And they're like, yeah, I run like this $40 million brand. I just want to work. And so that experience was crazy because half the time I'm denying calls like that. I'm just like auto saying no to the calendly.
- [36:54]
A
I do that shit all the time.
- [36:56]
B
Yeah, it's tough.
- [36:57]
A
I see brands on there.
- [36:57]
B
I'm like, no, hit that similar web. See no traffic. You're done, bro. But yeah, I mean, I think short form videos was a 20, 24 win. I think long form for both of us is probably something we're both looking at quite a bit next year. I mean, yeah, the biggest wins this year, we hit $10 million of GMV generated for our brands. So that was cool.
- [37:23]
A
That's huge.
- [37:26]
B
But I don't know, TikTok. I'm currently shackled by political games that I have literally zero ability to influence. And so I think platform risk is something that's pretty top of mind for me. Like, what's a big win? Yeah. Million dollars in your first year of starting a business. That's sick. But, you know, big loss. Could. Could like lose 80% of my revenue.
- [37:50]
A
In the next 10 days or no.
- [37:52]
B
What is it?
- [37:52]
A
In 17 days?
- [37:53]
B
Yeah. So, I mean, I'm like checking Supreme Court filings and shit. I mean, so it is what it is. The biggest win for me, though, I would say is we pivoted into organic brand social execution. You do a lot of the strategy stuff, we do the execution, deliverable side. And those two clients, you know, Kettle and Fire is one. They're a bone broth company. I've talked about them on here.
- [38:17]
A
Yeah.
- [38:17]
B
I think I'm really excited about what we're going to do for them because we're going to transform their brand into a creator as an account. And I think that case study will carry Nibble into, you know, what is that, like 5 to $10 million range of revenue compared to TikTok shop was like I was saying earlier, I'd hit like 150, 200amonth and then really stall out because choppy churn and just bullshit. And so I think, like, you know, how do you get stickier? Well, they're not going to cut the. If there's results based on the videos you're making. They're never cutting that because they're just going to have to do it because they internally can't.
- [38:58]
A
Yeah.
- [38:58]
B
Whereas TikTok shop is a speculative channel for all these brands and so if it's not working, they just kind of. It was just an investment. What are you looking forward to?
- [39:08]
A
You see? So you want to hit biggest loss first.
- [39:13]
B
Yeah. So biggest loss.
- [39:15]
A
I think this was like more of a personal one as I stepped it, because I went from similar to you from employee to founder, even though I've taken. Like you and I are both similar with, like, where we tinker and we have side things and we, we. There's like the entrepreneurial spirit and we've kind of built things where it has that entrepreneurship aspect. But this is probably the first time that we have teams underneath us.
- [39:37]
B
Yes.
- [39:38]
A
Right. Where you're a legit entrepreneur. I don't want to say a legit entrepreneur. You're.
- [39:42]
B
You're. I would Say legit entrepreneur. Yeah, I mean, well, like there's, there's.
- [39:46]
A
Quote unquote, like solopreneur is totally fine. You build a big company. But I mean like entrepreneur to the standpoint where we're employing people. Like we, there's people eat because of us.
- [39:54]
B
It's crazy.
- [39:55]
A
You know what I mean? And so this year I think I said yes to too many things and I wasn't as reliable as I should have been. You know what I mean? And what I mean by that is like, if I told somebody, hey, yes, I'd get that done today. And it's like you just say that kind of out of instant because you, when you're a founder, you kind of always feel like you're in God mode.
- [40:17]
B
Yeah.
- [40:17]
A
And I don't mean that in a bad way. I more so mean like you just think you could get everything done in a day and that the reality is you can't. And so I said yes to too many things, even if it was small things and then they would never take priority over like the big things I knew I still had to do. And so therefore I would sometimes neglect these and then not do them or they would take weeks. And what I've. This was a loss for me because I think it. At some points I, I would have been unreliable. And I think now I've shifted that. The last two, two and a half months where like we built ops more around me, it was like, okay, the, the ops need to be completely built around Alex. And then I've gotten way better at saying no and then saying, hey, like giving myself that leeway of that is something that's not priority right now, so I'll get it to it in this day. And then being like working with our EA or VAs and like actually having a scheduled date for that to get done and then having in the roadmap and in the pipeline to make sure those things get done, that was a big loss. But again, learning. But the loss was, I think over the last year that has affected me. Right? Like just having too much on my plate and then having the, oh, I gotta go do that. And like it just affects, it could affect someone else's job for sure.
- [41:34]
B
You know what I mean? It's true. I mean, you can't over commit. And it's something I said earlier. Every founder is pretty delusional. And so that delusion, if not managed properly, will become a significant weakness rather than strength. You have to be insane to want to start a company. It genuinely is like you're breaking a mold. And I don't even want to sound like a hardo like guru guy, but you're just rejecting basically the a regular path. And so that's kind of a crazy move initially. And then it's even crazier to think that your idea deserves to exist. And so that becomes a weakness for a lot of people that I see. And I've seen it. Right. I mean, to your point, I've worked with, I've been in a startup zero safety net environment my entire career. I've never been a founder of my own thing that I owned 100%. And in my previous experiences, every founder I worked with had really critical flaws that I think caused them to fuck up and destroy their business. And not destroy, but hamper it at least. And almost all of it boiled down to not knowing when to rely on other people, ask for help, just have a reality check. And so that always turns into a loss because it's going to hurt the employees that you have, it's going to hurt you in the long term, it's going to hurt your personal finance. So totally get that. My biggest loss was just billing. When I tell people the numbers about, I mean, I'll just give the sweat equity fam a little insight. I bill on the first of the month. I pay twice a month to my people. So half the time I'm basically going through two pay cycles for my creators and my internal team which is around $75,000. And I'm waiting on six figures of accounts payable and receivable. And everyone's like, well, why don't you just put them on auto bill or send them to collections? And that's just a completely irrational way to view anything. Most of these brands don't want to be on auto bill. That would be like a non starter for them in the first place. So it's a waste of time to introduce friction into the sales process. And then additionally sending someone to collections that you want to get the money from is like just impractical in general. And so floating cash has just been like such a huge loss. And it's a big thing that I'm looking at in terms of how do you expand in 2025. I think it's selling products with the distribution engine that I've built. So what have I done this year? I've just relentlessly trained a team of actors, if you will, on how to create content that converts. That's what our entire business operation is. And so now it's like TikTok Shop is Doing great, whatever. If that keeps going, then I'll keep growing that vertical. I'll keep growing the organic one. But now it's how can I launch products that have our distribution engine as the back end? And then there's the arbitrage there of the cost too, because obviously my cost is different than what I'm able to charge. And so you're getting a better rate for really strong creative that you can put your fingerprints all over. And what are some different things that I can sell? I'm looking at a lot of different skus, a lot of different products. And that's what I'm looking forward to the most in 2024. Five is switching up my cash conversion cycle from services. Everything's late to products that I sell where you just get paid up front. Hopefully have some recurring revenue based on that. But yeah, it's like services, man. A lot of people think it's like this golden thing and it's crazy how much. And also brand owners just disrespect them out of you. They just think every, every brand owner is so holier than thou. They think like agency people are parasites, you know, and so there's this attitude of like, well, I don't need to pay for this if it didn't work. Which is psychotic.
- [45:46]
A
It's crazy.
- [45:47]
B
It's actually psychotic. And so, yeah, that, that's just been one part where I'm like, fuck this shit. I'm not getting disrespected by an average ass founder, bro. This is crazy.
- [46:00]
A
Like, is that what you're looking forward to? You said is diversifying the. Yeah, that sounds so guru. Diversifying the revenue.
- [46:11]
B
I'm adding new revenue streams, whether that's info physical or whatever. That. And then YouTube for sure. I'm about to really get after YouTube in a big way. Shout out. Callaway bro radicalized the entire friend group, you know, with his success. I feel like I've got all these people being like, yo, you seen Cal? It's just like he's done such a good job so fast with YouTube that I think it's a really big motivating blueprint to be like, oh, you know, if I could achieve half of that success or a quarter of that success, then I'd be extremely fired up. And you know, both you and I have. This is the difference between us and Callaways. Both you and I have direct, monetizable things that would funnel from that YouTube growth. So that's, that's probably the other thing I'm looking forward to.
- [47:02]
A
Biggest Thing I'm looking forward to as a whole is I'm going to niche down everything I'm talking about because of essentially what we are offering. So this year in, in most people that understand and know marketing examine think of us as probably we talk everything marketing. That's a problem when then you're trying to sell something on the back end because can't sell everything marketing. Yeah, right. I was on the call with, with True Classic months ago and one thing that he said that's just stuck out to me when I like mentioned something about marketing exam and was like, he's like I'd rather just pay specialists. Like I always rather have specialists and. And that was just a big learning for me. And so we like. What I want to focus on and hone in on is like marketing. Xama will own brand social. Like the idea of brand social from like the content we produce to services to tools, all of that like it is brand social that is. And that's the lane I've been in since 2015.
- [47:54]
B
You know, people keep saying we're like the brand social podcast sick. Yeah, good. It's been fascinating to hear that because I've been asking a lot of our friends who are affiliated with some of these really big business podcasts about like what do you think we are? And they're like, you guys are the Brand social thing and sorry to interrupt you but like no, that's good. I think why I love that is because in my opinion short form and Brand social is eating everything else.
- [48:21]
A
Everything else.
- [48:22]
B
It is becoming such a better investment than paid ad creative, which is the biggest industry line item in all of consumers facing brands. And so Brand Social is absolutely the next big investment slash blue ocean for most marketers because it's done so poorly at this point and the tools have never been better to do it well.
- [48:46]
A
Yeah, I couldn't agree more. And I think so many people are starting to have that realization of oh my God, I'm putting in $10 million into. Into Meta for X million impressions. Like what if I put that into short form and obviously there's the attention versus conversion aspect, but both can coexist.
- [49:05]
B
Yeah, I'm really excited. I want to have the founder of Chubby's, one of the co founders of Chubby's shorts on here.
- [49:13]
A
Is it the CMO guy?
- [49:14]
B
Yeah, but he talks about basically what brand marketing does to the customer life cycle and how it's a lagging indicator. So the brand investments that you make lead to more sms, lead to more email, lead to More organic traffic. And the compounding of that is a lower CAC six months from now. And so how do you have a better roas? It's by investing six months ago in the right channels, which is brand social and affinity and all these things. And it's like his tool that he's building is really cool. It's called Marathon and it's basically going to be like a measurable tool for all of this to help quantify. It's like a triple whale for brand social.
- [49:55]
A
Bro. We talked about something like this in one of the early episodes. Yeah. Where I said like I wish there was something basically tracked affinity.
- [50:05]
B
Yeah. Right.
- [50:05]
A
That like you were able to look at. Okay. The person that engages with you the most on social is this person who's been buying from you for X amount of time.
- [50:13]
B
Yeah.
- [50:14]
A
Or X amount of products. But that's one of the biggest things I'm looking forward to is niching down and just owning that. The second one is I had an idea for SaaS early, early in the year, a month and a half ago we started tinkering it. Tinkering with it and like the idea of it and like started putting you know, building some designs and whatnot into figma. Started having conversations with other people that own SaaS and we started creating V1. I think it's going to complement perfectly what like this pivot to brand social or not pivot like the niche down of brand social and I think it'll be the same thing. I. You know it's going to be hard to build a SaaS. Like just getting off the ground and getting into a place where it's actually really making you money is. Takes a while but I do think it has, it has legs and I'm excited for that.
- [51:05]
B
You obviously don't want to talk about it right now.
- [51:07]
A
Not the overarching idea. As soon as the cameras come off. Yes. I'll tell you.
- [51:11]
B
Cool. But damn. Bts.
- [51:13]
A
Yeah.
- [51:13]
B
Tune into his patreon.
- [51:15]
A
Yeah. Yeah. But I'm very excited about that. And I mean we weren't doing three but yeah. Video contents like 3Xing the amount of content that, that I produce. I have my first YouTube like playbook case study that I is done.
- [51:31]
B
Damn. Year later.
- [51:33]
A
I know dropping that.
- [51:34]
B
I know I'm paying a YouTube agency. I think I'm going to come out of pocket like six racks a month basically for this like end to end scripting, ideation, packaging, thumbnails, editing and just like kind of do that. Forget about.
- [51:51]
A
I feel like you should like Tinker first, bro. No, we just had. You just had something.
- [51:55]
B
You just said we gotta go all in.
- [51:57]
A
I know, but like, you, we. You just paid 3K to like this YouTube.
- [52:03]
B
Well, yeah, that guy. First of all, if you. If you haven't liked our thumbnails for a month and a half. No, I'm kidding.
- [52:10]
A
I think the thumbnails were good. I think it was everything else that like, you paid for that.
- [52:14]
B
I mean, it's a month to month, so it's like whatever. It's like if it doesn't work out, I'll just cancel it. But I think it's a total example of what we just described though, where it's like, run fast, break everything, and then see what happens. Because, like, I'm not going to do it unless I pay this dude 6 racks. I'll probably publish my first YouTube video in March if I don't pay him. So it's like, how do I publish a video in January? It's like I work with this guy and he goes, script something, packages it, edit it, like so. Yeah, that's kind of. We'll see. Nuts on the chop block as always. Sweat equity. Yeah, just put. Put your money where your mouth is. That's really. What. Maybe that should be our slogan.
- [52:53]
A
Put your money where your mouth is. Yeah, I like it.
- [52:56]
B
I always like, stop the cap on.
- [52:58]
A
I know. Stop the cap's great. Yeah, stop the cap's great. I mean, that. That's like. You know how MFM had their. What was like post economic.
- [53:06]
B
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
- [53:07]
A
Like stop the capsars. Yeah, and that's something we gotta. We have to create some hoodies around or something like that. Yeah, but shit, I think that was actually a really good, good episode. I don't know if this is that episode that's gonna go viral or anything like that, but.
- [53:20]
B
No, but I mean, let us. For the people that. Let us know if you like that too, because, you know, we're doing. We're basically experimenting with how much you all like us.
- [53:29]
A
Yeah, that's exactly what.
- [53:30]
B
How much do you want to know about what we're doing on the business side versus sharing those learnings that we're getting it. So leave a comment if you like this one and please, as always, like, subscribe. Helps us grow the channel and, you know, get us that two episodes per week that everyone keeps asking about. But until then, catch you all next week.
- [53:49]
A
Peace, y'all. Appreciate it.