553: His Multi-Million Dollar DTC Playbook That Launched MrBeasts Feastables | Nick Sharma

Summary

Podcast Summary: The Foundr Podcast with Nathan Chan – Episode 553: His Multi-Million Dollar DTC Playbook That Launched MrBeast's Feastables | Nick Sharma

Introduction

In Episode 553 of The Foundr Podcast, Nathan Chan engages in an insightful conversation with Nick Sharma, the brain behind Sharma Brands. This episode delves deep into Nick's journey from managing celebrity social media accounts as a teenager to developing a multi-million dollar Direct-to-Consumer (DTC) playbook that successfully launched MrBeast's Feastables. Listeners gain valuable lessons on entrepreneurship, e-commerce strategies, content creation, and customer retention.

1. Nick Sharma's Early Career and Entry into Marketing (00:15 – 4:00)

Nathan welcomes Nick Sharma, highlighting their decade-long acquaintance. Nick shares his unconventional entry into the marketing world at age 15. Dissatisfied with traditional educational paths, Nick sought to generate income early by leveraging social media for celebrities.

Notable Quote:

“I figured out a way to make a few thousand bucks a month when I was in high school. Doing that for other people.”
— Nick Sharma [02:54]

Nick recounts managing social media for artists like Pitbull and Magic, driven by curiosity about social platforms and engagement strategies. His hands-on experience laid the foundation for his future endeavors in the DTC space.

2. Transition to Direct-to-Consumer and E-commerce (04:00 – 8:00)

Nick transitions to discussing his move into the DTC and e-commerce realm through his role at Gravity4, where he immersed himself in ad tech. Recognizing the inefficiencies in traditional ad tech, he pivoted towards paid advertising on social media platforms like Facebook and Instagram.

Notable Quote:

“We went from spending $100,000 a month on Facebook to $100,000 a day on Facebook...”
— Nick Sharma [07:00]

His intensive work ethic, fueled by endless energy drinks, eventually led him to Hint Water. At Hint, Nick's strategies propelled customer acquisition from 80 to 5,000 daily within three weeks, showcasing his capability to scale businesses rapidly.

3. Building Sharma Brands and Notable Achievements (08:00 – 14:00)

Nick discusses the inception of Sharma Brands, positioning himself as an "Ecom Whisperer" with a clientele that includes Feastables, Kourtney Kardashian’s Lemmy, and collaborations with celebrities like David Beckham.

Notable Quote:

“The proudest one, in my opinion, is like the culture that we've built at Sharma Brands.”
— Nick Sharma [08:49]

He emphasizes the importance of a strong company culture, noting that minimal employee turnover has fostered a collaborative and respectful environment, enabling rapid decision-making and execution.

4. The Importance of Trust and Content in D2C (10:47 – 18:00)

Nick underscores the critical role of trust in DTC marketing. He illustrates this with the success of Feastables, which leveraged MrBeast's massive following to achieve record-breaking sales.

Notable Quote:

“Advertising is just like the variable for targeting.”
— Nick Sharma [10:49]

He explains how high trust and social proof reduce customer acquisition costs and improve conversion rates. Nick contrasts three brands to demonstrate how trust influences advertising efficiency, highlighting that authentic, consistent content significantly lowers the cost per acquisition.

5. The Broke Man's Content Playbook (14:28 – 18:00)

Nick introduces his "Broke Man's Content Playbook," a strategy tailored for brands with limited budgets to create impactful content organically.

Notable Quote:

“Focus on creating a bunch of organic content and then maybe testing some light statics.”
— Nick Sharma [18:10]

He advises leveraging simple tools like an iPhone to produce front-face videos answering common customer questions. Successful organic content can then be transformed into paid ads, minimizing initial advertising costs while maximizing engagement and trust.

6. Paid Advertising Strategy (16:03 – 21:43)

Delving into paid advertising, Nick emphasizes that 80% of successful campaigns hinge on creative content, with the remaining 20% split between account structure and measurement.

Notable Quote:

“Creative is absolutely like the variable for targeting.”
— Nick Sharma [16:14]

He explains how modern ad platforms utilize algorithms to optimize ad delivery based on creative performance. Effective creatives not only attract attention but also inherently target specific demographics, enhancing the overall efficiency of ad spend.

7. Product Differentiation and Problem Solving (22:56 – 30:05)

Nick stresses that a successful product must address a real problem and offer a unique solution. He cites examples like K18’s innovative shampoo technology and Lemmy’s itch-solving hand cream, which cater to specific consumer needs rather than general preferences.

Notable Quote:

“If that question can't be answered, then a lot of times your product is likely not recession proof.”
— Nick Sharma [22:56]

He advises founders to ensure their products provide tangible benefits and to differentiate through branding, messaging, and consistent delivery of value.

8. Customer Retention Strategies (36:20 – 43:26)

Moving beyond acquisition, Nick highlights the importance of customer retention in sustaining long-term growth. He outlines strategies to stay top-of-mind, such as personalized email and SMS campaigns that offer value before prompting a reorder.

Notable Quote:

“Every email should contain something that somebody can share at the dinner table.”
— Nick Sharma [38:52]

Nick shares success stories, including Native and Eight Sleep, where personalized and engaging post-purchase communications significantly boosted customer loyalty and engagement.

9. Case Studies: Campaigns That Worked and Didn’t Work (43:26 – 48:38)

Nick recounts his experiences with advertorial campaigns, illustrating the fine balance between publisher reputation and user experience (UX). While initial small publisher campaigns yielded massive successes, attempts with major publishers like Buzzfeed and Refinery29 failed due to poor UX elements like intrusive ads and unengaging layouts.

Notable Quote:

“If it's true that it's just really good UX that matters, it's not really the brand name.”
— Nick Sharma [48:38]

He emphasizes the necessity of seamless UX and authentic copywriting over mere publisher fame, leading to the creation of his own publication to maintain control over content presentation and user engagement.

10. Final Advice and Key Takeaways (49:51 – End)

As the conversation wraps up, Nick offers practical tips for founders:

• Grandma Test: Ensure your website and communications are intuitive and user-friendly enough for someone with minimal tech skills.

• Drunk Person Funnel Test: Verify that key actions (like applying discount codes) are straightforward and fail-proof, even when users are less focused.

Notable Quote:

“Run the grandma test or run the drunk person funnel test.”
— Nick Sharma [50:14]

He advises simplifying copy to a fifth-grade reading level and ensuring all marketing elements are easily digestible and accessible.

Conclusion

Nick Sharma’s episode on The Foundr Podcast offers a treasure trove of actionable insights for entrepreneurs and e-commerce brands. From content creation and paid advertising strategies to product differentiation and customer retention, Nick provides a comprehensive roadmap for building and scaling successful DTC brands. His emphasis on trust, authentic engagement, and intuitive user experiences serves as a guiding principle for brands aiming to thrive in the competitive e-commerce landscape.

Key Takeaways:

1. Start Early and Leverage Opportunities: Nick's journey underscores the importance of seizing early opportunities and building expertise through hands-on experience.
2. Content is King: Organic content creation not only builds trust but also serves as the foundation for effective paid advertising.
3. Trust and Social Proof Reduce Costs: Brands with strong trust factors and consistent content can achieve lower customer acquisition costs and higher conversion rates.
4. User Experience Matters More Than Publisher Fame: Seamless UX and authentic content presentation are crucial for campaign success, regardless of the publisher’s reputation.
5. Customer Retention is Essential: Engaging and value-driven communication post-purchase fosters loyalty and long-term business growth.

Nick Sharma’s insights provide a strategic blueprint for entrepreneurs aiming to navigate and excel in the dynamic world of DTC e-commerce.

Transcript

[A]

Hear the stories, learn the proven methods, and accelerate your growth and future through entrepreneurship. Welcome to the Founder Podcast with Nathan Chan.

[B]

Nick Sharma. Welcome, man. As we were sharing offline, we met about 10 years ago. It's been incredible to see your journey from afar. So you started managing social media accounts for celebrities at age 15. That's how you kind of got your, I guess, your foray into marketing. How did you get into that, like, and why'd you get started at such a young age?

[A]

Well, first of all, thanks for having me. It's cool to be on the Founder podcast now. So, yeah, I mean, you know, When I was 15, I was in high school and all the kids around me were getting into MIT and Stanford and Yale and Princeton and UC Berkeley, you know, all these great schools. And I thought, there's no way my grades are going to let me get into any of these schools that, you know, all these other kids are getting into. And so I thought, well, you basically go to school so that you can go to go get a good job, and you get a good job so that you can support your family and send your kids to, you know, school and tennis camp and all these random things. So I thought, well, if the end game is just to make money, then I wonder if I can start making money now. And, you know, for some reason I had this thought that, like, if. If you're famous, it's easy to make money, but I was like, I can't sing, so maybe that that's not going to happen. So then I thought, what if I can work with singers to do some of their marketing or help them on social media? Because that was something I was pretty fond of. And it started with just cold emailing random people. And, you know, some of the people I worked with early on were random soundcloud rappers or people who had some level of following on the Internet, but nothing too major. And eventually one thing leading to the other ended up working with some larger artists and celebrities on their social media strategy and what they were posting. And, you know, me as a person is always like, I see something and I'm like, how can I do more? So then, you know, it was like I would go into Photoshop and start designing what the post look like and trying to figure out how we drive engagement higher. And eventually it just became me in 10th grade, you know, doing things like overseeing Twitter and Facebook and Instagram for Pitbull and Magic and a few of these other artists. And it was all just a way of or it was all just a result of More curiosity, I guess, and things that. That interested me, which at the time were just kind of how Social was working. And. And honestly, a lot of the stuff you were doing back then, too, was so fascinating to me. Like, the way that Founder grew on Social was so amazing back in those days, too. But, you know, I would just try to learn and soak up as much knowledge as I can. And then, you know, I figured out a way to make a few thousand bucks a month when I was in high school. Doing that for other people.

[B]

Yeah. Crazy. So you've worked with people like Pitbull or Priyanka Chopra. Like. Like, do you have any crazy stories? And like, how, like, you were just helping them build their socials and personal brands. Like, that's crazy, man. Like, do you have any crazy stories?

[A]

You know, there's not a lot of crazy stories. I would say, like, the craziest thing was probably like, you know, I was, you know, 15 years old, and when our family was out at the. We used to live in San Diego. When we were at the beach, day, you know, everybody's sitting on the sand with a towel. And I had my laptop. I was writing an audit for Pitbull's social accounts because that night I was going to go see him backstage at the concert and show it to him, you know, to see if I could work with him. There were stories like that, but not a lot of crazy stories. Most of it was, you know, in the music space. It's like, unless you're really on the touring side or like the. Yeah, unless you're on the touring side, most of it's pretty routine, I would say. Or kind of like at a desk.

[B]

Yeah. Got you. And then eventually you started to get into Direct to Consumer and E Com. What drew you to that world? You was, you know, you were the director of Director consumer for Hint Water. Was that kind of your first foray? We interviewed Cara a long, long time ago. But yeah. Was that your first kind of foray into ecom?

[A]

Yeah, well, we. When we met, it was. You had actually interviewed my first CEO of a company called Gravity4. Do you remember that? Coming to San Francisco? Yeah. And so I. I joined that company initially, and over there, I kind of learned the world of ad tech and how ad tech works and also how most of it's just a scam. And so because I realized so much of ad tech in the traditional sense that these companies do is a scam, I was more so drawn to the side of paid advertising on social media. So running ads on Facebook on now Instagram channels like that. And when I worked there, one of the things that I was responsible for was, like, business development and sales and specifically with the publisher side. So I was initially working with publishers on trying to extract as much data as we can to then sell to advertisers. But the business got to a point where the only way they were like, if you can't figure out how to generate revenue from the publishers, then we don't really, like, your role is not going to be. There's no need for your role because we can't pay for it. And so I started working with all these publishers that they spend 100, $200,000 a day on Taboola and Outbrain sitting under the you may also like section of. Of articles. And, you know, it's like, you won't believe what this celebrity looks like 27 years later in some slideshow. And so I helped these guys move to Facebook and start running a lot of their ads on Facebook, which is how I got into the world of paid advertising and just running it myself and understanding, okay, this type of creative does well, this type of copy does well. This is how you get, you know, a user to stay, etc. And as I was doing that, I was just working really long hours. So I was chugging Red Bull. I was chugging Vitamin water, Monster Energy. I'd wake up and drink. Pre workout is getting crazy at one point. And then at some point, Hint water found its way into the office, and I just started chugging a bunch of Hint water. And instead of drinking Vitamin Waters, I was just drinking Hint waters. And I just ended up drinking 12 to 15 bottles a day sometimes. And I would tweet about it and tag the brand. And because I was also early at that company, I could then say, all right, we want $3,000 of hint at the office this month. And I could place the order. And they started to be like, wait a second, who the. Who is this guy ordering three grand worth of Hint online? And so that's how I initially connected with the team at Hint. And then the founder and. And then, you know, fast forward to I end up leaving the sad tech company. Hint reaches out, and they're like, you know, you're clearly a fan of the brand. Do you want to come and see if there's a way for us to work together? And so I go and meet the founder, and she basically says, you know, I want to be famous on the Internet. Help me figure out a plan for this. And, you know, that's what I got contracted to do. And then about eight or nine months into that, I ended up joining the company as the director of performance marketing. And. And that's how I got into Hint. And then from there, you know, the business was pretty small. But very quickly I started to see there's a few things that started to work really well. And, you know, we went from. Within the first three weeks I was there, we went from an average of 80 new customers a day that we were acquiring to about probably 4 or 5,000 new customers a day, all online, all direct to consumer. And then the two years that followed that were really like, how I learned everything. Direct to consumer. We went from spending $100,000 a month on Facebook to $100,000 a day on Facebook, adding TV, adding podcast influencers, basically all of the main channels. And then that, of course, led to a whole rebrand. We brought the whole thing over to Shopify. The retail business started to grow. It felt like being. It felt like I was taking a drug when I was on at Hint, because everything I did was like it would just turn to gold and it blew up the whole business. But so that lasted a couple of years and yeah, by the time I left, we were probably spending a couple million dollars a month across a ton of different channels. And, yeah, the business had gone to a really fun place. It's fun now because when I look back on, when I get. I still get the emails from Hints, their best subject lines are still the ones I wrote seven years ago. Their best offer on the homepage is the same exact one. So, yeah, it's cool to see.

[B]

Yeah, that's awesome. So then you eventually started Sharma Brands and you're pretty much like, you're known or you've been called the direct to consumer, like you're the director Consumer Whisperer or, yeah, the Ecom Whisperer. Like, so you've worked with like, Feastables, Chevy Chamberlain, Coffee, Roc Nation. So a lot of brands come to you to really help them grow and scale. So what's been your most proudest achievement? Talk us through, like, how you work with brands.

[A]

You know, it's, it's, there's, there's a lot of like, mini proud moments, I would say. But I think the, and, and, you know, for example, launching Feastables and breaking Shopify's record of traffic and orders in 24 hours is sick. You know, launching Ima with David Beckham recently, that was awesome. Working with Kourtney Kardashian on Lemmy, that was awesome. There's so many cool Little things that happen. For me, I think the proudest one, in my opinion is like the culture that we've built at Sharma Brands. There's this amazing culture where, you know, we've been in business now about five years and we've only had, I think, two people leave the company ever. And we just have such a tight culture at the, at the company, which has really allowed us to move extremely fast. There's also this like, you can rely on the fact that everybody has respect for one another, so there's never a question about it when thing, when push comes to shove or things need to be done quickly or we need to move much faster than anticipated, which is awesome. Outside of that, I think, I mean, a lot of the work that we put out, in my opinion, is some of the best work in the industry just from a design and a creative standpoint. So I'm really proud of that. But we also don't sacrifice performance to get there. So a lot of our websites, you know, if you go to like David Protein, that's a brand that just launched recently, it looks beautiful. However, we don't sacrifice performance to get there. It converts at an astronomical conversion rate compared to most e commerce sites. But I would say proudest moment is probably like just seeing our culture here and the team and the fact that anytime we've done a survey to our clients or internally, the number one feedback is always the team is a one.

[B]

Yeah, that's cool, man. And I gotta ask you the question, right? Like we gotta talk into some of these numbers. So like, when you do have a brand like Feastables, because there is so much trust already built, like the conversion rates must be astronomical because it's just so warm.

[A]

Totally.

[B]

Can you talk us through some of those numbers? Like you said that you guys broke Shopify when you launched Feastables. What does that mean?

[A]

Yeah, we broke records in terms of number of orders for a new brand in 24 hours and the traffic driven to the site. And that's obviously Mr. Beast is probably the most famous, if not one of the top three, four most famous people in the world. But you bring up an interesting point, which is trust. And that's something that so many brands today don't factor. They, you know, previously, like when you launched a brand online, whether it's a service business, a course business, an info products business, or a consumer brand, you could, you could run some ads and very quickly see the ads working. Today, it's like if you launch something and you don't have that trust or that Social proof or the ability for somebody to go on TikTok and search about it and find information. You know, find somebody else talking about what they like and they don't like, or the fact that there's no Reddit threads that go and talk deep about what people like or don't like about it, your conversion rate ends up to be much lower. Your cost of customer acquisition as a result ends up being much higher. Whereas if you have a brand where, let's say you have somebody who's a public figure who's constantly talking about the product or preaching the science behind it, or just calling out its competitors, the cost of advertising. See, advertising is just basically taking something and putting it in front of more eyeballs. And if you put something in front of more eyeballs, if you're paying a lot for a customer, it means that out of the people you're showing it to, there's just less of those people who decide to buy. If you're paying a lower cost of customer acquisition, it means that for even the smaller group of people you show it to, there's a higher percentage of those people who are deciding to buy. And we just did an analysis recently across three supplement brands that we've worked with this year. And you know, brand A is a, I wouldn't call this person a celebrity, but very outspoken person, constantly posting content on a daily basis. The person themselves is the one posting all the content and you know, very vocal about the products and what's in it and why competitors are bad. The second one is a relatively actually super famous, you could say scientist behind the brand and you know, created the product. The products are phenomenal products and, but you know, not super outspoken. They have, they have some media platforms and a good amount of followers, but they're not creating content on a daily basis in an aggressive way. And then brand number three is a world famous celebrity who's launched a protein product and, but is never posting, maybe posts once a month, but has that world famous celebrity face. Brand A makes $20 for every dollar invested in ads. Brand B makes a dollar for every dollar invested in ads. And brand C with the world famous person makes 70 cents. And it just kind of goes to show like the more content you put out, not only are you acquiring customers through the content you put out, but you're building an insane amount of trust by putting out so much content. It's like you're basically telling people you've got nothing to hide. And you're also generating a ton of awareness as a byproduct and so all of that factors into things like conversion rate, you know, or even cost of customer acquisition. Basically, what you don't do in content you create, you end up paying for in paid advertising.

[B]

Yeah, that's, that's, that's an awesome story and an awesome lesson for anyone watching that's working on their e commerce brand just about to launch or is in, you know, the early stages or trying to grow their brand. So the next question that they're going to ask is like, okay, I've got an ecom brand. I'm not famous. I want to put out content. What kind of content should people be putting out? Do you have a framework that you can share?

[A]

Yeah, there's something I call the Broke Man's Content Playbook. And essentially it's just, you know, there's so many social platforms that reward good content. Right. Reels, shorts, TikTok, even LinkedIn now rewards good video content, for example, or X. And you know, if you're, I call it the Broke Man's Content Playbook because this is assuming you've got, you know, barely any money to play with. And, and so what I would do, if I had a protein company and I was just coming to market, I would just start creating a bunch of content with my iPhone. Just front face, camera, record stuff. You know, I would basically answer, I would, I would make a list of about 45 questions somebody would have when they're deciding whether or not they want to buy my product. So what's in it? Where's the product? Where are the ingredient source from? Why is this one better than a competitor? How does this one compare to the leading brand on the market? How does this compare price wise? How does it compare? You know, what about some of the specific ingredients? Teach me about these different ingredient words on the label. Basically all these things that could be turned into content. Call it like questions. You basically answer them in videos and start posting them very quickly. You'll start to understand the type of content, the format, the way that the videos start or get going that do well for engagement. And then basically whatever does well there, you port those over and turn them into ads. So the idea is that you're creating, you're not just, you're not just making a bunch of ads and then testing them in the paid side. You're creating a bunch of content, you're testing it organically because it's free. And then whatever does well, then you port that over to the paid side that continue to scale that up from there.

[B]

Yeah. And when it comes To, I guess, you know, paid advertising. You spend a lot of money for brands. Would you say it's 80% creative at this point?

[A]

Yeah, I mean there's, I'd say it's probably, yeah, I'd say it's like 80% creative, 10% account structure and 10% measurement. You know, if you're not measuring properly, it's hard to understand what you're doing with the, with, with account structure or deciding what type of creative is working best. But majority of platforms now operate as the TikTok for you page. So you know, if you think about Instagram five years ago, you basically see who you're following. TikTok made that different and said we don't care who you're following, we're just going to keep serving you content based on what we believe you're going to resonate with. And that same concept of content delivery, algorithmic content delivery has now moved to the ad side where on TikTok they call it TikTok smart campaigns. On Google they call it Performance Max. On Facebook they call it Advantage Shopping or Advantage plus campaigns. And essentially what you do is, you know, you're basically feeding the creative, all the creative that you make, you feed it into these platforms and you sort of let the platforms tell you and figure out what works best and where in the customer journey. But for the most part, creative is, in my opinion, the targeting. If you have a creative of a, of a guy that looks like me, you're gonna start to reach more people that look like me. If you have a creative of a, you know, 22 year old woman, you're gonna start to reach women who look 22 or feel 22. And so creative is absolutely like the variable for targeting. In fact, most ad platforms, you don't even choose targeting anymore. You serve it creative so it understands what is in the actual creative. And then it also knows who is purchasing on your website, who's most engaged with your products or your ads. And it uses both of those pieces of information to decide who to serve the ads to.

[B]

So you believe the brand should be focusing if they're in the early stages on creating content organically, Broke person's content playbook and then just play around on the platforms, TikTok, Instagram, some form of Reels, video. Right? Not static.

[A]

100%. 100%. I think, yeah, I would say definitely focus on the broke man's content playbook. That gives you a really good understanding to know what's going to work and what's not going to work. It'll probably save you a few thousand bucks on testing that with ads. I do think statics are worth testing. They're very easy to create, especially if you create a template inside figma or Canva or one of these tools that are free to use. Then once you find a template that works that one template, you can swap the copy out and test 100 different versions of angles or hooks or things of that nature. Statics can also be cheaper to run. They're usually sometimes a third the cost of running a video in terms of cpm, although you may also have less engagement. So sometimes it's not fully worth it. But yeah, I would basically focus on creating a bunch of organic content and then maybe testing some light statics.

[B]

Yep. Got you. And founder led, right? Like face to camera. A lot of it with. With the founder of the brand. Right. Or ugc like or combination.

[A]

Yeah, the founder stuff does extremely well. You know, if you're a founder and you're using the founder's Instagram account or Facebook page, that stuff tends to do the best. I mean that's how, that's how earlier when I was mentioning we went from 80 customers to 5,000 customers a day that was using an advertorial where we were talking about the founder story and I was running all these from a whitelisted from the founder's white pages as a whitelisted ad. What that does is one, it increases the trust because it's not coming from a corporation, it's coming from another human. So in the feed the trust is much higher. Two, it increases the click through rate and inversely decreases the cost per click because again, the trust factor is there. But three is, you know, one of the biggest things that people don't do in when they run ads is respond to every single comment. And when you respond to comments from the founder's page versus just from the company, you know, saying blah, blah, blah, you know, email us here or send us a dm. It just makes it so much more. It brings that human experience alive. Which of course makes the ad work so much better. But the founder ad works extremely well. You know, I'm surprised more people don't do it. It's free to do. And would you rather pay a few creators thousands of dollars or you know, you can just set your iPhone up, you have one of the greatest cameras in the world right here and you can immediately set it up and get going.

[B]

Yeah, I. Look, I agree. I think it's just difficult for people, right? Like it's scary pe, like it's scary to put your face in front of the camera to, you know, create this content and say, this is who I am, this is what I'm creating. And, and yeah. Do you, do you recommend, by the way, what's that?

[A]

Totally. One of my tips from that, by the way, is. I was gonna say one of my tips for that is if you have somebody who you work with sort of treat it like you can do two things. One is you can do something like this where you sit two people down on like a zoom and you just ask questions and you know, you record this and then you take clips from this and turn those into what those ads could be. The second version is you just get somebody to grab their phone and hold it up and just start asking you questions. And so it doesn't then feel like you're talking to a lens because that's the part that people I think tend to freeze up on is like, all right, I'm staring at something blank and now I have to pretend like I'm having a two way conversation. But you know, if you have a friend who can interview you by holding up the camera, another good one is like if you've got, you know, I'm sure you've seen those podcast style ads where people are discussing something over a podcast. You know, those crush and those are so easy to film. And so, so yeah, there's different ways to do it, but it is intimidating. I think once people do, I always say once you do seven of them, your eighth one's going to be much better.

[B]

Yeah, I think it's, it's funny you talk about that. I remember in the early days when I was starting the podcast, I found it easy to interview people. But when I had to record the intro to the show, I couldn't. I couldn't. I really struggled to do it because I was in a room speaking to microphone by myself and I asked a friend that was like a podcaster for a long time. I was like, how do you do that? And he's like, oh, it's funny you ask because I never really thought that, like this is something that I had to learn. Just getting comfortable speaking into a microphone by myself. So I can see. Yeah, exactly why. Because I. Yeah, I can see exactly why. Why people would find that difficult. Same thing. So when it comes to growth for a new director consumer brand, you talked about content. What are the other things that people need to be doing? When it comes to growing an E comm brand, you talked about trust. What are some other things you talk about? Content. Using content to build trust. But that takes time, right? That does take time. Like what? What? Like. And it takes a while to understand the creative side of things and getting all that going. If you were wanting to grow a brand and you're bootstrapping it, what would you do?

[A]

The biggest thing that a lot of people, well, I wouldn't say a lot of people, but many people will skip over, is making sure that whatever you are selling is addressing a real problem. So for example, if you were to launch a, you know, if you were to launch a pasta brand, right, and you said, well, I'm going to just make the tastiest pasta and I feel like I can make it better and it'll be, you know, much cooler and whatnot. The problem is that you are, you're going into a category without some sort of a competitive edge. The competitive edge usually comes from solving a problem differently or, you know, figuring out how you are better than whatever else is on the market. A good example is like, if you've heard there's this shampoo brand called K18 and, and you know, they bring some innovation in the technology of the actual shampoo. Or what's another good example? Basically, like any sort of innovation or things that make something better or they do things differently, those are great. Anything that solves a real problem. For example, you know, a moisturizer on somebody's, you know, a hand moisturizer probably won't do as well as a cream that's gonna solve people's itchy feet problem because you're addressing a real problem that people have versus something that's sort of nice to have. So that's one thing that I think that should always be addressed is like, what is the thing that's actually being solved here? Or how is somebody's life going to be better as a result of this? If that question can't be answered, then a lot of times your product is likely not recession proof, meaning that the second people have to cut back on expenses, you're in that category of discretionary spending versus something that you must buy. If your feet get itchy and recession comes, you're still going to make sure your feet aren't itchy, but you're not going to care to get some sort of a gel that makes your nails shinier on top. So that's one. It's making sure that you have a good product solution. The second one is making sure that you have a way to cut through the noise. If you take the lazy way of launching a brand and take the font from one brand, the colors from another brand. You sort of create some ambiguous branding message. It's very hard to cut through the noise because you don't have sort of a unique way to approach it. But if you take a brand like Jolie. Have you seen that brand, Jolie? It's a filtered showerhead. Jolie's a great example where Jolie's a filtered shower head. But it's never described as that. It's more so described as a beauty tool or a beauty device. And that's the reason that they're able to sell. They sort of created this formula that resonates with people, which is if you use Jolie and take a shower, your hair will be beautiful. Because of our filter, if you stop subscribing, your hair is going to go back to normal. And it's sort of. It's all in the positioning and the massaging of how they do it. If you compare that to any of the competitors Jolie has, you know, they're running at 50% off because they can't get anybody to buy their filtered shower head. You know, no one cares to buy a filtered shower. They care to buy this beauty tool that's going to help their skin and become their step zero for their skin care. So anyways, product, problem solution, some sort of good branding and messaging, and then you also need to make sure the product actually delivers. There's a lot of products that people buy that, you know, they have great marketing, really high, great funnels on their website, nice landing pages, good creative. But the product is just garbage and it doesn't deliver on the promise. It might be a sleep gummy, but it doesn't really help you sleep. It's more so feeling like a placebo or, you know, it might be a. Whatever it may be. So problem solution, good branding and messaging or positioning and making sure the product actually works. If you have those three, you can almost sell anything. Then the content is really easy because it's easy to create content when something works or when something solves somebody's problem or makes their life better. It's easy to build landing pages because there's a lot to talk about. And yeah, I feel like the first three are the things that most people don't have.

[C]

But.

[A]

But they tend to have really good websites or really nice creative or really beautiful branding. And, you know, then they have this issue where they have the first couple of days of sales that are great because, you know, friends and family are excited to purchase. But very quickly, no one's coming back. No one's talking about the products, no one's posting about them. And so you don't get this trust built in the first place. And you know, eventually it just, it either taps out or burns through all their investor dollars or what have you.

[B]

Yeah, look, what you're saying is a hundred percent right. From my experience, I've interviewed a lot of founders at this point, over 100 billionaires, which is kind of crazy at least, and especially in the D2C E COM space. One thing I've noticed is like they always spend the time to get the product right. So I talk to them when they've got, you know, $100 million billion dollar brand, you know, even 50, even $10 million brand, eight figure brand multiple, they all have done the time to get the product right. And I think there's this rite of passage on product selection that sometimes people just don't follow. And it doesn't have to be this 6 month, 12 month long thing. You could probably find the right product in a month or two and get it right. Yes, it takes a while to get the samples and manufacture and all that kind of stuff, but just get doing the research, getting close to the customer. That's the uncomfortable stuff, that's the juicy stuff. You can, as you said, you can layer in all the tactics, but one of the fundamentals is you have to have a product that is clearly differentiated, solving a clear problem in the marketplace and then also right. If you want to make ads work, you need a decent AOV.

[A]

Totally 100%. If you, if you, yeah, if you've got a low aov, you better hope you've got a consumable product where there's a high percentage of people coming back for a second, third, fourth order. Otherwise you really have to play the game of profitable first purchases. And the best way to do that is by having high conversion rate, lower CPMs, high click through rate. And the only way that happens is if there's trust and awareness in the market. And if that's not there, then you're sort of stuck trying to figure out, you know, you're basically between a rock and a hard place.

[B]

Yeah, 100%. When you talk about high AOVs, what's high AOVs for you? Like what's it, what's a solid low AOVA? What's a low AOV for you? And what, what do you find is the sweet spot if it's a non consumable product?

[A]

It's a good question. I would say, you know, anywhere from 1 to $400 is a pretty solid AOV. Under 100 is, you know, I think like 60 to 100 is. It's doable on paid media. Like 60 to 100 is very doable to do profitably. Under 60 is like, you're probably better off not running ads. You might be better off on channels like TikTok Shop or leveraging affiliates, creators, influencer marketing, things of that nature or having a celebrity, if you sell press on nails for $14, but you're Nicki Minaj, you don't have to pay for that awareness or those eyeballs because that audience is already built in. So, yeah, I think, like, if you're, if you're running on the paid side, you know, 60 to 100 is probably a good range to be within. And of course, over 100, you know, as long as you're selling something of value, over 100 is always great because it just gives you more room to play.

[B]

So talk me through kind of other things that founders should be thinking about to stand out in the marketplace. You've talked about product differentiation. You've talked about really solving a problem. What are some other things? You talked about content. What are some other things that founders should be thinking about when it comes to, like, having a strong differentiation in the marketplace?

[A]

Let's see. I mean, I think from a positioning standpoint, you know, when, when founders talk about doing a rebrand because things aren't working, usually that that translates to just different Ux on, on how they think about customer journey and different messaging or positioning. A lot of times that can solve for things. You know, product expansion is another one. You know, if you're selling one or two products that are doing really well, you should try to figure out what is that third product. Or if you, let's say you've got two really good products, but you need to figure out how to tap into a new audience. Maybe you have like, what I call a Tier 2 product that accompanies it. So if you're selling, you know, let's say you're selling men's personal care products as your kind of flagship, your body wash, shampoo, conditioner, et cetera, Maybe your tier 2 product is a Dopp kit that accompanies that. And, you know, that allows you to figure out a new offering or bundle or kit that helps you find new customers. You know, retail, obviously marketplaces in retail, whether it's Amazon, whether it's Goop, whether it's Walmart.com, whether it's Credo Beauty, all these different marketplaces that exist but then also the retail equivalents. So actually showing up in store, that obviously requires a whole different strategy and approach and understanding of how you're deploying dollars online to see transaction offline. You know, another one that I think is really underrated is partnerships, both with celebrities and influencers, but also with other brands. So if you are, you know, there's a haircare brand called Crown Affair that I believe made a dopp kit with MZ Wallace, which is really famous for their one tote bag. And you know, that, for example, is phenomenal because it opens up MZ Wallace's audience to learn about Crown Affair and vice versa. They create a product together. That product that they created together now gives them the permission to go talk publicly in publications and podcasts and things of that nature about the brands themselves, which brings more eyeballs back. And it's all done in a fun way where, you know, it doesn't feel like it's too salesy or anything of that nature. And then products, partnerships and collaborations with celebrities, with influencers, with creators is also so much fun. There's so many opportunities now with the world of on demand product development or printing or whatever it is to do that. And, and it just gives you the opportunity to tap into audiences that have been built and nurtured for years. Those are some of the ones that come to mind right away. Any come to mind for you?

[B]

Yeah, look, I think, I think when it comes to differentiating your brand, I think honestly, you've talked about the product and having. Having something that's different, unique value proposition. You've talked about the problem, you talked about partnerships, you talked about influences, you've talked about. Yeah, man, I think you pretty much covered it.

[A]

But yeah, the only other one I can think of is like, you know, trying to be first to a channel. So when new channels launch, for example, TikTok Shop or the affiliate program on TikTok or a new mobile ad network like Applovin, or, you know, the ability to do streaming TV ads versus just running traditional linear TV ads. You know, there's. There's definitely a advantage to being the first to that channel if within your category. But that's also very hard to do because there's not that many scalable channels that pop up all the time.

[B]

Yeah, I think when I agree, I think that's a great one. And sometimes it's tough though, because you've got to. Because not because it's new. You got to work it out yourself. I love to learn from other people. I think it's One of the biggest hacks to find somebody that's already done it and then just learn from them. But another one is like, I love the Liquid death concept. Like, there's just selling water. But what makes it so unique is the brand itself. Right. Like, you don't even have to like, what are they doing that differently for the product?

[A]

Nothing. It's mountain water. It's not even spring water. I wish it was spring water, then I would enjoy drinking it.

[B]

Yeah, yeah, there you go. So, so really it is just brand. It's, it's really just great copy. Like, that's, that's what it is. It's copywriting. So that's one we didn't. You talked about positioning, but yeah, copy. Copy can be used in a really, really, really strong way to really stand out. Like, similar to, you know, the purple cow, like, you know, Seth Godin talks about.

[A]

Yeah. What's interesting, what's interesting with Liquid Death too is they, they were so adamant of being where people are having a good time. So, you know, they did that massive deal with Live Nation to end up in all of the, basically almost every concert touring venue around the country. And you know, they not only positioned themselves as a fun, very well branded water product, but they were, they became that alternative for somebody who doesn't want to chug a beer or a vodka soda that night, but still kind of feel like they're enjoying that concert experience with the tall boy can in their hand.

[B]

Yeah, yeah. It's kind of crazy because there is this movement. We have a mutual friend, Nick Shack, and what he's doing with Brez, him and Aaron and the partners. Yeah, they're like, with Brez, right. There is a massive movement away from alcohol. Right. That, that, that's, that's a rising tide. So that's really clever. So talk to me about customer retention. You talked about this a little bit around consumable products. Like what can. What strategies? Because you, you don't help, you don't just help brands on the acquisition side. You help on the retention and optimizing LTV side too. Talk us through. So someone's got a brand, it's growing. Perhaps they're doing, you know, 50, 100, 200 grand a month. What, what are things that people should be looking for? Do you have any benchmarks around customer retention or. Obviously. And like, but it depends on the industry if it's a consumer or non consumer. Like, like talk us through that. And then how, how do you, what do you do when you work with brands? What do you look for what are some things that people should be thinking about?

[A]

Yeah, I mean, you know, fundamentally I think retention is basically a game of how do you stay top five in somebody's mind so that when their product runs out, when their cleanser runs out, when they finish their last bottle of the hint case, when their breeze runs out, their first thought or it's on, it's already on their mind that they should place another order or become a subscriber. And so a lot of the stuff that people do over email or SMS or remarketing ads, for example, is there's so many playbooks that exist, right? Somebody orders your product, if you think their product's going to end in 30 days, you start sending them a sequence of drip emails to remind them to come back and reorder. Or somebody goes to your website, they add a product to cart and they leave. Well, there's a four email sequence you can run to get them back. Now all that stuff I think works. The main thing that I like to think about is what gives me the permission to send somebody an email and tell them to come back. Like what, what is it first that I'm doing for you as the consumer? What am I giving you? Whether it's an offer, whether it's a piece of education, whether it's a piece of content, whether it's something that entertains you first to then come back and come to my website. And a lot of people don't solve that. They just think, okay, you know, they cart abandonment email, you know, it needs to look like it's got the product up at the front and it says return to cart. Or you know, site abandonment. It says hey, we saw you browsing, you know, come back to our site. But what they don't think about is like, well what can I put in there that is first offering them some form of value, whether it's entertainment, whether it's a discount, whether it's a gift with purchase, whatever it may be in order to get them back. And the other thing I think about is like in my opinion, every email should contain something that somebody can share at the dinner table. I think that's what that, that's how you can very quickly do a checks and balances of what makes a good email. And so that said, I mean I feel like if you focus on those two things with every email you put out, you know, there's so many playbooks online of best email drip campaigns to have for an E commerce site, you know, of course you've got your as soon as somebody puts their email in, you've got your post purchase, you've got your site abandonment, your cart abandonment, your checkout abandonment. You've got people who buy one category to upsell them into another. And for the most part those are really the same. But again, going back to what we were saying earlier, the copywriting and the positioning, but then also making sure that there's something in it for them of value, not just another reminder for them to come and give you their credit card information is sort of like the filter or the layer I put on before the emails, if that makes sense.

[B]

Yeah, and I think, I think it's such a, such a forgotten thing when it comes to retention. Right. Like, a lot of brands are so focused on acquisition, it's easy to forget. Okay, well, I've got a customer now. What do I need to do to retain? Do you have any interesting stories or crazy clients that you've worked with where you've massively increased their retention from? And, and anything you could talk through there?

[A]

Well, I have a couple examples of things that, that have done really well. One is, do you know, do you know Moy Zali by any chance? He started Native?

[B]

Yeah, yeah, yeah, I've seen that guy. Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes. I don't know him though.

[A]

Yeah. So Moyes has one of my favorite post purchase email receipt templates I've ever seen. And I don't know if it's still, still this because Native is now owned by Procter and Gamble. But when he was running it, he had this amazing email. You would buy, you know, a stick of deodorant from the site and the first email you would get would say something like, you know, Tommy, just let me know that you placed an order for the coconut vanilla deodorant. And I just want you to know that we're currently placing it on a pillow and then putting it into a box to ship it right out to you. You know, it's going to be perfectly packed. We can't wait for you to try, you know, something fun before you see the actual receipt. And that was an email that always got a ton of replies, a ton of engagement, and did really well. Another one is, have you heard of this brand called eight Sleep? They sell these mattress pods.

[B]

Yeah, yeah. We interviewed the founder and I'm a big user of the product. Next level, next level.

[A]

Amazing. Yeah, Love eight Sleep. And you know, they do this thing where every time you order Mateo, Mateo is the founder, you get an email from Mateo, a plain text email that basically Says, you know, thank you so much for ordering the eight sleep. You know, we've been working on this for so long, blah, blah, blah. Let me know if you have any questions. I'd love to answer. And it just, it just, you know, people, it's a plain text email and a ton of people respond with questions or with feedback or maybe it's a concern they have and it's something that is so easy to implement. It's literally a plain text email. You don't have to design it, you don't have to develop it. You just put it into Klaviyo or whatever tool you use and, and you put it into a sequence. So in your post purchase flow, you've got your receipt, you know, three days later you've got the plain text, three days later you've got the regular sequence of beautifully designed emails that are going. And so there's a lot of like smart little things you can do like that tactically that sort of maximize the impact of those post purchase emails or the upsell emails or what have you, or even just NPS in general or that help you get ahead of, you know, customer issues, customer problems.

[B]

Yeah, I love, I love the Mateo one. I think that's, that's a, yeah, that's, that's a killer one. And do you reckon, did they actually do that? Do the emails actually go to him and does he respond?

[A]

So the emails, I believe they go to, they get redirected to like customer service. But I would imagine if they went to him, they'd never get a response because it would be too big of a, of an inbox. But at least with customer service it gets responded to right away. I'm sure it gets tagged differently actually. But what's interesting is like they, they're so good at that. Like, you know, they just sent me, have you seen, they just launched or they're about to launch a sleep supplement with, they developed with Peter Atia.

[B]

No, no, no. So when I, so I interviewed Mateo probably about three, four months ago and he said he was working on some cool stuff because I was like, dude, there's a lot of crossover with you guys and whoop. Like that would be a killer partnership. And he was like, yeah, we're working on a lot of stuff but yeah, please go on.

[A]

Yeah, yeah. So he, you know, they just launched or they're about to launch this new sleep elixir and it's, it's sounds weird but like it's a very good smelling capsule, sleep capsule that you take at night and it just, it just gives you better sleep. I've seen in the app I get better deep sleep and better REM sleep. My breaths per minute is lower, which is good as a result. And you know, they do the same type of thing like with this beta testing program where I'm sure I'm one of a hundred or 200 people who've got the product and is using it on a daily basis and they have the same sort of plain text sequence that's constantly following up, you know, hey, did you try the product? How's it going? Hey, checking in a few days later. How are you seeing your sleep scores improve? Are you seeing any difference in your numbers? And same approach of that, like plain text email, except now they're collecting a ton of data as a result. And you know, it's, it's. That might not be super applicable, but the concept of using these plain text emails to drive better engagement is something that I think more people can do.

[B]

Yeah, I think that's killer. And just getting close to the customer. Right. The closer you get to the customer, you know, their objections, you know why they're buying the product, you know, how you could further serve them other products you can create. That's where it's at. So, man, talk to me about campaigns that haven't worked. Can you give me some examples of campaigns that you've run, maybe even for big brands or what you can share? Because I know a lot of it's, you know, NDA and stuff like that. But like, what can you share of campaigns you've run that haven't worked and what your lessons were?

[A]

Yeah, the first one that comes to mind is from running advertorials. And you know, the first couple of times I ran advertorials, it was on small publishers, publishers where, you know, they don't really use their site much but they do have a well known, somewhat well known brand name or publisher name. And the first couple of times I did, it worked extremely well. You know, we could choose what the content was. We were basically selling a product, but we were using an advertorial as kind of the landing page. So we would go from Facebook ads to an article style page. Advertorial is just a sponsored editorial article. And then from there people would click the brand name or the product name and end up on a landing page or the product page for the website and then make a purchase. And you know, the first, the first advertorial I ever did completely blew up, took off. That's where we went from 80 customers a day to 5,000 customers a day. And it wasn't because the publisher had a huge audience. It was just because we were so efficient with that article. We ended up spending a lot more money driving traffic to the article. And the second one did really well. Then in the second one, this publisher decided we want an affiliate fee per order instead of a flat fee for the article. We had paid them five grand to put the article up. And they said, if you don't give us 10% per order. This is the founder of the publication. If you don't give us 10% affiliate cut for every order that comes through our article, even though you already paid us $5,000 and we already had a deal that we agreed on, we're going to delete this off the site. And so he ended up deleting it completely off the site. The next day I went to another publisher, Digg.com and asked them, hey, can I put up these articles on your site? You know, I'll write them, I'll send it to you guys, you can make sure everything is sort of kosher good with you. You put it up, I'll run the ads, we'll do the whole thing. And we started doing that all of a sudden, took off again, did super well. And again, digg.com is not something that people really went to or used in 2017, 2018. And so then I thought, okay, this strategy is working really well. Like, you know, maybe I'm just really good at it. Let me see what happens when I do this with Buzzfeed or Refinery29 or Complex, these massive publishers. And we put up an article, we actually put up two on Buzzfeed, three on Refinery 29 and one on Complex. And the refinery articles costed 50 grand a pop. The Buzzfeed one was about 35 grand a pop. Complex was about 30 grand. And I remember the articles went live and we were looking 24 hours later and we were like, this has to be wrong. How did a $50,000 article drive six sales? And that's it. And so then we started to think, okay, how is this possible that these sites that nobody knows about, but they're going to, these are doing insane numbers. Whereas, you know, some of these massive publications, huge trust, big brand name, everybody likes them, they're not doing anything numbers wise. And when we looked into it, it basically came down to the UX of these pages, meaning what's the user experience of the actual article pages. The first few publications we worked with where they were doing really well, they had no Banner ads, they had no pop ups, there was no sound on videos, there was no autoplay videos. The headlines were really written from a direct response standpoint. They were very like benefits focused to the, to the reader. Right. The font was easy to read, the headline didn't take the whole page to be written out, the complex refinery, etc. They had pop ups, they had banner ads across the whole page. You know, if you think about like if you go to Forbes.com, you read an article on Forbes on your iPhone out of the whole iPhone screen, maybe 15 to 20% of the screen is actual like reading. The rest of it is just ads and videos and different ad units and whatnot. And so anyways, that was a huge mess up that, you know, that was probably 60, 150, probably call it 250k worth of content that we paid for but could never really make use of. So that was a pretty big blunder, I would say. The, the, the way we fixed it was we said, okay, so if, if it's true that it's just really good UX that matters, it's not really the brand name. We created our own publication on a.com separate site and we just started running our own articles that way. And that completely fixed the problem and, and allowed us to continue doing the strategy without paying anybody else.

[B]

Yeah, that's a great lesson. And it just goes to show how much a difference UX UI and good copy and structure can make to running like paid ads and making it work and not work like that's like night and day, what you described.

[A]

Totally the best test for UX in my opinion, there's two 1. I call it the grandma test. So assume your grandma is trying to go through, you know, she clicks the ad and is trying to go through the funnel or the landing page or the product page and eventually check out, you know, if she's using an iPhone that's three, four years old and doesn't have LTE, it's not the fastest Internet. It's like mediocre Internet. Is that going to even load in the first place to a point where she's going to use it before she decides to quit the site? And if so, then is everything easy to explain? Is everything labeled properly? Are the buttons organized properly? Is there proper messaging hierarchy on the pages, et cetera? The second one kind of similar vein is like if somebody's had two or three drinks, can they actually click the ad and then go through that whole experience? You know, if they see, for example, if your ad says get 20% off with code FOUNDER20. But that, but when you click the link, it doesn't carry the discount over automatically. If somebody's had three drinks, they're not going to remember the code at checkout. And so, so I like to do the grandma test and the, the person who's had a couple drinks test to really understand good UX and make sure that there's, you know, good UX checks and balances in play.

[B]

Yeah, that's a great one. And like, look, if you're not strong on that piece, you can always model other great brands.

[A]

Good artist copy. Great artist steal.

[B]

Exactly. Yeah. Okay, awesome. Well, dude, I could talk to you about this stuff all day, every day. We've got to work towards rapping. If our audience wants to remember just one thing from this conversation, what would you hope it would be? And yeah, what, you know, any final words of wisdom?

[A]

I would say the one we just talked about is probably the most important, like run the grandma test or run the drunk person funnel test. That'll help you through, you know, if you look at, if you look at your emails, your website, your ads, your copy, your positioning, your packaging, even through that lens, it'll really just help you make sure you have full clarity on what you're putting out and that it's being consumed in a way that's digestible. You know, that also means, like, for example, your copy doesn't have too many fancy words or it's not abroad, not above like a fifth grade reading level. But that I think is the most important.

[B]

Well, dude, thank you so much for taking the time giving back to our community. It's been awesome to watch your journey from afar and I'm excited to see what you do next.

[A]

Likewise.

[B]

All right, so if you love this episode, make sure to check out my interview with Alex Hormozi on how he scales companies from zero straight to $2 million a month in less than a year.

[C]

You were like, how do you achieve? Like, there's five years of my life that disappeared. In fact, I lost all the money, which I talk about in the book. I had all the gyms, I did the turnarounds, and then I had $0 five years later because of mistakes that I made. But the things that I was gaining was not the money. It was the skills. It was the character traits and the beliefs.