633: A Simple Meta Ads Change That Will 10x Your Returns With Scott Cunningham

Summary

Podcast Summary: The My Wife Quit Her Job Podcast with Steve Chou
Episode 633: A Simple Meta Ads Change That Will 10x Your Returns with Scott Cunningham
Date: April 7, 2026

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Episode Overview

In this episode, Steve Chou is joined by Scott Cunningham, founder of Merchant Mastery and creator of the "story selling" formula. With over 15 years in ecommerce and expertise in customer-centric marketing rooted in human psychology, Scott shares his game-changing, step-by-step framework for Meta (Facebook/Instagram) ads that can dramatically improve ad returns. The conversation focuses on actionable strategies for Shopify sellers, especially those transitioning from Amazon, covering everything from deep psychological customer analysis to the latest ad construct updates on Meta.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. The State of Ecommerce & Why Your Own Store is Critical

• Amazon vs. Shopify:
  • Amazon offers a built-in marketplace but controls customer relationships; Shopify provides control over customer data but requires proactive customer acquisition (06:32–07:43).
  • Success on Shopify is NOT guaranteed just because a product does well on Amazon; you need a differentiated approach and product positioning (06:18, 07:58).
• Current Market Challenges:
  • Amazon fees are rising for 2026, impacting categories like beauty/apparel (05:34).
  • Ad costs (especially Meta) are increasing. Success means doubling down on your unique value proposition (11:23).

2. Scott’s “Category of One” Story Selling Framework

• Start with Customer Desires:
  • Use deep research to uncover the most prominent customer desire.
    “The fastest way to a sale is to tap into what they already care about and direct that desire on your product.” — Scott (12:29)
• The 4 Desire Buckets (from Eugene Schwartz's Breakthrough Advertising):
  (13:52–18:11)
  • Mass instinct (e.g., connection, love, health)
  • Innovation/problem-solving (e.g., novel solutions like double-sided puzzles)
  • Trends (e.g., screen time reduction, current events)
  • Mass education (e.g., market knowledge evolution about your product’s category)
• Build the “Category of One” Headline:
  • Your core pitch must be uniquely yours: “If a competitor can say it, it’s not category of one.” (13:10)
• Origin Story:
  • Demonstrate your personal journey and credibility (“the struggle, journey, spider bite, revelation, impact”) (22:42–24:11).
  • Even “boring” product sellers (like garlic presses) have a story; it’s your job to surface it (26:52–29:06).
• The Full 5-Part Messaging Framework:
  1. Category of one headline
  2. Origin story
  3. Differentiation stack (how you compare to competitors)
  4. Testimonial stack (social proof to address key objections)
  5. Offer (reduce risk, induce action) (30:10–30:40)

3. Using AI to Systematize Story Selling

• Scott created a custom AI (“Story Selling AI”) to help founders craft distinctive copy using their own input, not generic data (20:12–22:13).
• Tool: MerchantMastery.io/gpt (31:01)

4. Meta Ad Structure That Delivers Breakthrough Results

• Winning with Long-Form Copy:
  • Contrary to most strategies, run full long-form copy (including all 5 story parts) in your Meta ads.
    “Ten people in the last week told me they have their best performing ad of all time with this long form framework.” — Scott (34:23)
• Why It Works:
  • Algorithmic targeting now happens in creative/copy, not by interests (33:47).
  • Long form both converts the right customers and feeds Meta’s AI better targeting data.
• Creative Testing Methodology:
  • Draft 5 strong ads (your "bench"), launch with 2 (“putting them on the ice”), each with 3 creatives (owner video, UGC, static/infographic) (37:35–38:52).
  • Test different creative + copy combos, now typically all within a single ad set under Meta’s latest structure (39:10–40:04).
• Budgeting & Scaling:
  • Start with ~$60/day with goal to break even within a week, then grow spend as validation is proven (41:17).
  • Once the ad + message engine is working, then expand to organic and more social (41:58–43:01).

5. Prioritizing Paid Validation Before Organic Content

• Organic content builds community and trust for retargeting and retention, but paid ads are the fastest path to validating product/market fit and messaging (40:18–41:38).

6. Email & SMS Marketing in the Growth Stack

• Scott’s agency (Socialite) is a leading Klaviyo partner, with SMS now standard alongside email for higher open/click rates and robust segmentation (43:17–44:49).

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Timestamps for Key Segments

• Shopify vs. Amazon, Success Factors: 06:00–08:19
• Four Types of Customer Desires: 13:40–18:11
• Building Your Category of One Headline: 13:10–14:39
• Case Study: Double-Sided Wooden Puzzles: 08:50–09:55
• AI for Story Selling: 19:58–22:19, 31:01
• Meta Ads: Long Form Copy & Creative Testing: 33:47–37:05
• Meta Ad Structure Changes: 39:10–40:04
• Scaling Paid Ads vs. Organic: 40:18–41:38
• Email & SMS Integration: 43:01–44:49

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On Customer Desire:
  “The fastest way to a sale is to tap into what they already care about and direct that desire on your product.” — Scott [12:29]
• On Differentiation:
  “If a competitor can say it, it’s not category of one.” — Scott [13:10]
• Why Origin Story Matters:
  “If you’ve sold your product and confirmed that people like it, there’s a story there. Something must have led you there.” — Scott [26:52]
• On Long-Form Meta Ads:
  “Ten people in the last week told me they have their best performing ad of all time with this long form framework.” — Scott [34:23]
• On Paid vs. Organic:
  “I don’t think organic is the best way to acquire customers first. Ads are the fastest way to test what message compels people to shop.” — Scott [40:31–41:17]
• On AI Tool:
  “I taught the AI to not take what’s out on the internet, to only take from what the participant is sharing.” — Scott [21:42]
• Steve on Market Trends:
  “It seems like the brands that you work with are people that are creating something new—not necessarily novel, but something different.” — Steve [24:48]

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Action List & Resources

• Check out the AI tool: MerchantMastery.io/gpt [31:01]
• Free training and further frameworks: MerchantMastery.io (45:01)
• Ad creative structure:
  • 5 ad copy versions, 2 selected to run initially, each with 3 creative types (owner video, UGC, static/infographic) (37:35–38:52)
• Email/SMS tools: Klaviyo strongly recommended for integrated flows (43:56)
• Framework reference: Breakthrough Advertising by Eugene Schwartz (13:52)
• Contact:
  • Merchant Mastery (mentoring & resources for early-stage or scaling stores)
  • Socialite Agency (done-for-you for $80–100k+/month brands)

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Final Thoughts

Scott's approach sets itself apart by focusing deeply on the psychology of desire, story selling, and a unique master narrative—then amplifying this with long-form Meta ads that benefit both customer conversion and Meta’s modern algorithmic targeting. The episode is packed with practical advice for those aiming to build a resilient brand on Shopify with sustainable, scalable Meta ad performance.

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Transcript

[Steve Chou]

Welcome back to the podcast, the show where I cover all the latest strategies and current events related to E commerce and online business. In this episode, Scott Cunningham and I dive into something that honestly changed everything for me when it comes to meta ads and getting a real return on ad spend. Scott is the creator of the story selling formula and the moment I came across his work I knew I had to bring him on to break it down properly. And it's a simple change and I know that sounds like a big claim, but I've seen it work across so many different campaigns and niches that I had to make a whole episode about it. But before we begin, I want to let you know that tickets for Seller Summit 2026 are now on sale [e-mail] and if you sell physical products online, this is the event that you should be at. Unlike most events that are filled with high level fluff and inspirational stories, Seller Summit is all about tactical step by step strategies you can actually use in

[Steve]

your business right away.

[Steve Chou]

Every speaker I invite is in the trenches. People who are running their own e commerce stores, managing inventory, dealing with suppliers

[Steve]

and scaling real businesses.

[Steve Chou]

No corporate execs and no consultants. Also, I hate large events so I intentionally keep it small and intimate. We cap attendance and around 200 people so you can actually have real conversations and connect with everyone in the room. We've sold out every single year for the past nine years and I expect this year to be no different. It's happening April 21st to 23rd in Fort Lauderdale, Florida and if you're doing over 250k or $1 million in revenue, we also offer a private mastermind for high level sellers. Right now tickets are the cheapest they're ever going to be, so if you want in go over to sellersummit.com and grab your ticket.

[Steve]

Now on to the show.

[Steve Chou]

Welcome to the My Wife Quoter Job podcast.

[Steve]

Today I am excited to have Scott Cunningham on the show. Now Scott and I, we were on the same panel at one of Kevin King's virtual events and I'm really glad that we met. Scott runs Merchantmastery I.O. where he helps early stage Shopify stores. Actually shopify stores at any stage really reach their first 100k month 3 strategy that we are going to be talking about today on the podcast. He's been in E. Comm for over 15 years and his focus is on customer centric marketing using human psychology, which is actually one of my favorite topics to make advertising much more effective. He's spoken all over the place, traffic and conversions, Ad World affiliate Summit.

[Steve Chou]

And in this episode, we're just going

[Steve]

to talk about what's going on right now, what he's doing with his clients to grow sales. And with that. Welcome to show Scott. How you doing?

[Scott Cunningham]

Steve? What's up? So good to see you again, my friend. Really happy to be here.

[Steve]

Yeah. I know you've been on this tear, traveling all over the place, like, going on tour like a rock star.

[Scott Cunningham]

It's fun. Yeah, we honestly, you know. Yeah. I was telling you a little bit earlier about how we do, like, this tour. We're hosting Shopify Meetups. We really do believe in community. And, like, we go to a lot of the same cities every year. And so, like, I was just out in, like, Toronto, Vancouver, Calgary, I'm going to Montreal tomorrow. And we start to, like, really meet. Like, we've been doing this for five years in these same cities, and we build friends and, like, collaborators, and, like, it's been really interesting watching the community grow. So, yeah, it's a lot of fun. Probably my favorite part of the business is just, like, going around all these different cities, learning all these. Learning about what all these different entrepreneurs are doing.

[Steve]

And who would have known that Canadian cities have such large volumes of Shopify stores? Never would have thought it.

[Scott Cunningham]

Yeah, it's like, you know, I don't know if you knew this one, but Shopify was born in Canada that I knew. I don't know if that's the reason, but it also. Yeah, it also surprises me, too, because we've hosted events in, like, New York a lot, which are very busy, very, very active. We've hosted them in Los Angeles and San Diego and, like, all over the U.S. colorado, Charlotte, Nashville, like, you name it. And we do recognize when we go to the Canadian cities, it's like, I don't know if it's, like, equal to kind of New York or even busier than New York. It's, like, really, really vibrant up here. Really, really vibrant.

[Steve]

So, Scott, I know you studied psychology in school. How did you get started with E commerce?

[Steve Chou]

And do you sell today?

[Steve]

Actually, yeah.

[Scott Cunningham]

Do I sell, like, my own products?

[Steve Chou]

Anything?

[Steve]

Yeah, yeah.

[Scott Cunningham]

Like, I'm. I'm like, here. So here, I'll basically give you a little bit of history. Like, okay, I studied psychology, like, way back in the day in university. There was, like, a class at the end of my degree that was like, psychology and advertising. And that's when I was, like, really fascinated with how to build a career out of, like, psychology. And I. And I always found it fascinating to motivate people and get them to do things that are good for them. So I really believe that selling is like a responsibility. Like you could build the tools to sell, but if you're not selling something that's going to help people, then, then it's, then it's not as good. Right. So I really do believe in working with brands that actually have product validation, really good products. And we always tell people, we're like, if you haven't sold your products to people and you haven't confirmed that they like what you sell, we can't help you yet.

[Steve]

Yeah.

[Scott Cunningham]

Because we're not trying to trick people into selling. We're trying to get good products in good customers hands and everybody's happy. So yeah, anyway, kind of like, you know, I, I went on to study public relations and then I was working in digital digital communications. I worked for like a giant brick and mortar store helping them build their first e commerce site. And then, and then I, that I just became like an accidental entrepreneur at that point. Like someone was like, hey, did it for this store, can you do it for mine? Next thing I know, I have like seven clients and I had to hire

[Steve]

someone to help me. Nice.

[Scott Cunningham]

Right. So that's, that's kind of how it all started. But yeah, I, I think the customer centric psychology is still most prominent thing today.

[Steve]

So it's funny what you just said. You know, we're at this point right now where Amazon is getting way harder. In fact, they just announced price increases for 2026, which is going to hurt beauty and apparel a lot. So it's more expensive products are getting knocked off. And at least in my community, which is composed of both Amazon and Shopify sellers, I'm getting a lot more comments like, hey, I got to focus on my own brand, I got to get on Shopify. But you know, success on your own store is a completely different ballgame than Amazon.

[Scott Cunningham]

Right.

[Steve]

And so my first question to you is, do you think that all Amazon products that are selling really well on Amazon can actually succeed on Shopify? Or does your product need certain characteristics in order to succeed?

[Scott Cunningham]

I wouldn't throw out a generalization, say everyone could succeed on Shopify. But if you have a lot of validation on Amazon, I feel like there's a high likelihood you could also succeed on Shopify.

[Steve]

Okay.

[Scott Cunningham]

But the key is, you know, the biggest difference between Shopify and Amazon. Right. Like Amazon comes with a built in marketplace of shoppers who are looking for products.

[Steve]

Yep.

[Scott Cunningham]

So that's the advantage. The disadvantage is that Amazon owns the customer relationship. So you don't get to grow your own email list, you don't get to grow your own life. You're not in control of your lifetime value as much. Right? There's obviously like subscribe and save and like there's ways to build repeat customers, but you're not as in control when you don't own the email list. Right? And so that's the disadvantage on Shopify. The great advantage is that you own the list. So you own the entire customer lifetime value opportunity. You own the whole customer journey. The disadvantage is there's no, there's no built in marketplace, right? So you got to go out there and find customers and like get them to your website. And so the way that, the way that you do that in the Shopify world, the way that we've done it very effectively is like I was saying earlier, is like. Or what you were saying earlier as well is understanding the customers, understanding their pain points, their motives, creating content that like really resonates with the pain points that they're living with and, and, and telling your story and compelling people to say, I gotta check this out. And so it kind of forces you to be a really good like marketer, storyteller, like to really dial in the benefits of your products. Whereas on Amazon you're just like, yeah, here's everything about our product, here's the features, here's what it does and you can like choose what's your best option based on the reviews and a couple other things.

[Steve]

Yeah, a lot of it's keyword focused.

[Scott Cunningham]

Yeah, keyword, keyword focused, exactly. Discoverability based on keywords. And so on Shopify you're kind of forced to do the hard thing, which is like sell your products in a really desirable way. And if you could do that, like if you could take what your success on Amazon and then build a story around your brand, you could probably have success on Shopify too.

[Steve]

And it would probably leak into your Amazon sales too. It always does.

[Scott Cunningham]

It always does.

[Steve]

So what I want to do today is I want to walk through your process and let's just, let's just make up like a mock product and let's walk through your process on how someone who's starting from ground zero can get their first sales.

[Scott Cunningham]

Yeah, let's do that. I love that idea.

[Steve]

Okay, so what product shall we choose? Let's stay away from supplements, beauty and whatnot. Anything strike your mind, what you've been working with the client or anything like that?

[Scott Cunningham]

How about double sided wooden puzzles?

[Steve]

Okay, that sounds interesting.

[Scott Cunningham]

Okay.

[Steve]

Yeah.

[Scott Cunningham]

Okay. This is actually a real, real merchant I've been working with and I'm fascinated by his business. His name's Oleg. He lives in Calgary. He's got a business called Palmeris Puzzles.

[Steve]

Okay.

[Scott Cunningham]

And I was really just going through the process with him and others on, like, how to launch, and I was just really impressed with all the work he did.

[Steve]

Okay. So that's great. It's fresh in your mind.

[Steve Chou]

Okay.

[Steve]

So these puzzles, just so I imagine they're both sides and then do they have to. Do they only fit one way or when you finish one side, is the other side automatically done also?

[Scott Cunningham]

It is automatically done also. So but what you would, what you would do is you build the puzzle and. Sorry, back up for a second. Yep, both sides of the puzzle. He works with real artists.

[Steve]

Okay.

[Scott Cunningham]

He gets these artists to create the designs for both sides. And essentially when you build one, you're done. You can like break it apart and then do the other side if you want. But a lot of his customers, like, he has a really raving fan base and like, his customers will buy every puzzle he puts out and a lot of the times they will finish the puzzle and they will. They'll hang it on the wall as an artwork.

[Steve]

Oh, wow.

[Scott Cunningham]

It's really premium poplar wood. See, I. I was just going through this process with him, but like, they're really high end collector type products.

[Steve Chou]

Have you ever wondered how much your

[Steve]

business is actually worth Now?

[Steve Chou]

I sold one of my businesses through Quiet Light. And honestly, just getting that initial valuation changed everything for me. Not because of that number itself, but because of what came with it. My advisor walked me through exactly what buyers would be looking for, how I needed to restructure my accounting, what documentation I was missing, the gaps in my financials that might kill a deal before it even starts, and stuff that I really had no idea that mattered when

[Steve]

it came to selling a business.

[Steve Chou]

And here's the thing. I wasn't even ready to sell yet. But knowing what I needed to fix meant that I could actually start preparing. And I now had a roadmap. Everyone at Quiet Light has built or sold businesses themselves. So when my advisor told me what needed to change, it was actually coming from real experience, sitting across from buyers. And by the time I was ready, everything was positioned right and we attracted serious buyers. So if you've been thinking about selling someday, even if that day feels way far off, just getting a free valuation from Quiet Light will make a huge difference. You'll learn what you need to fix, right now, so you're not scrambling later. And if you're interested, go over to quietlight.com.

[Steve]

okay, I can see the value props already. So, okay, so he goes to you, he has these puzzles. What did you, like, how did you extract all this information out of him and what did you do with it?

[Scott Cunningham]

Okay, so, so here I'm going to start with, I think if you were, if this for anybody, hey, you're on Amazon, you're going to Shopify, or you're just only on Shopify. The way to win. Okay, so there's so many like changing variables in the, in the world. You just said it. Amazon prices are going up. Oh my goodness, that's going to kill so many Amazon businesses. The same thing happens with us in our Shopify world. Facebook ads are going up. Like, things are always getting harder. There's economic downturns, there's tariffs that we don't know anything about. There's AI innovations that we feel like we need to get on. There's like all these changing dynamics. The thing that you really need to do it is to like really just thrive in any of these scenarios is double down on your own value. Okay. And so if you want to compete in Shopify, it's all about perception of value. And so the first thing you need to consider is like, how do I position my brand as a category of one the best at satisfying my customers most prominent desires better than anybody who's come before me. So it's like, you know, so it starts with understanding what is your customer's most prominent desire. Everybody who sells a product helps satisfy like a series of desires.

[Steve]

Right?

[Scott Cunningham]

You gotta understand what's the most prominent one that they have right now. Because we're not trying to, we're not trying to force people to care about what we have. That's a, that's a long sales cycle to try and get people to care. The fastest way to a sale is to tap into what they already care about and direct that desire on your product.

[Steve]

So how did you figure that out in terms of these puzzles?

[Scott Cunningham]

Yeah, and so it's like, it's really like, you know, it's kind of like I. Basically the first step I always start with is going through the desires. Okay. And then once I know the desires, I teach these like four different types of what I call category of one headlines.

[Steve]

Okay?

[Scott Cunningham]

The position you as unlike anybody else. So when I say category of headline, that's like the first pitch in the, in the message. So if you, if you had a Facebook ad that would be the first piece of body copy that you would see. And the category of one, I always have this test. I'm like, if, if a competitor can say it, it's not category of one. So you have to say it in a way that's never been said. That's unique to you.

[Steve]

Okay.

[Scott Cunningham]

But it, but it starts with a desire. So you would usually look at like, okay, puzzles. What type of desire does my customer have? And honestly, a lot of these desire training that I'm gonna go through right now I got from one of the best copywriting books ever written. It's written by Eugene Schwartz in 1966. It's called Break Breakthrough Advertising.

[Steve]

Okay.

[Scott Cunningham]

Have you heard of that one?

[Steve]

I've heard of it, but I've never read it. Is it still applicable to today? Obviously it is actually, otherwise you wouldn't be saying it.

[Scott Cunningham]

It really is, it really is. And I've worked with a lot of my own mentors over the years like Ryan Dice and Sam Ovens and, and a lot of these mentors I've worked with over the years, like almost all of them refer to this book as the best copywriting book.

[Steve]

Okay. Wow. Okay. That's quite an endorsement. Okay.

[Scott Cunningham]

Yeah, it is, it is, it is. And if you go online and look up this book, it's like a, it's like $1,000 on Amazon, but you can find it for $200 from like a publisher that got the rights to sell it. So I was able to buy a copy for $200. It's very best $200 you'll ever spend. Okay, but in the book. And I'm not going to go through like the whole book, but. And I don't use the whole book's framework, but I use the part where he talks about identifying the most prominent desire.

[Steve]

Okay.

[Scott Cunningham]

And so basically, desires come from four buckets. Okay. And so like everybody who sells a product, you satisfy many desires for a customer. But we need to like brainstorm what they are. So they come from four buckets. Two of them come from permanent forces in the world, the other two come from changing forces in the world.

[Steve Chou]

I just wanted to take a moment to tell you about a free resource that I offer on my website that you may not be aware of if you are interested in starting your own online store. I put together a comprehensive six day mini course on how to get started in E commerce that you should all check out. It contains both video and text based tutorials that go over the entire process of finding products to sell, all the way to getting Your first sales online. Now, this course is free and can be [e-mail] free. Just sign up right there on the front page via email and I'll send

[Steve]

you the course right away.

[Steve Chou]

Once again, that's mywifequitterjob.com free. Now back to the show.

[Scott Cunningham]

And so the two that come from the permanent forces, it's mass instinct, okay? So mass instincts are things that humans have had from the beginning of time. Connectivity, love, wealth, health, success, you know, family. Mass instincts, okay? The other type of permanent force is what he calls. He calls it the technology problem. I'm going to call it the innovation problem. It basically means I have a problem right now. Say I have eczema for my skin. I know we say eczema here in Canada, but I like to cater my language to the American host. Okay, so eczema, right? I got eczema. I can't solve it. So it's like I will buy and keep buying and buying and buying until I find something that actually has a solution. So like, he talks about Tylenol in the book, where it's like you could get rid of your headache in 24 hours. That's what they could do with tylenol back in 1966. 24 hours to get rid of your headache. And so it's like I have a headache, but I need to get rid of it faster. Like, I can't endure 24 hours of pain. So I'm going to keep buying and buying and buying until I find something that solves it. So those are the permanent forces, masked instincts and innovation problem, as I call it. And then the next two, the changing forces are trends, trends that you piggyback off of, where it's like, it's things like buying face masks during COVID right? It's doing a tariff sale during tariff season. It's like piggybacking off things that are happening in the world. It's. It's selling K pop Demon Hunter T shirts on a dropshipping website because it's the hottest movie, right? And so it's things like that for trends. And then the last category is mass education. Mass education. What means? What does my customer base understand about my product category today that they didn't know about 10 years ago? So it's the sum of all marketing, all advertising, all word of mouth, everything that people come to like, mature in their understanding about a topic. And so in the book he talks about like cigarettes, where it's like when they first started selling cigarettes in marketing, it Was like doctors selling them like the best, the best cigarettes for doctors. And then you know, this many years later, we know that cigarettes aren't that good for you. And so it's understanding that the evolution of perceptions about your product category. And so what you, what you basically do is you brainstorm all of these categories and so you have like, you know, puzzles. What's the mass instinct? Connectivity. Okay. So it's like connectivity, family, hobbies, memories.

[Steve]

Right.

[Scott Cunningham]

And then you go down, and then you go down to the innovation problem. And it's like, well, puzzle lovers buy these puzzles but they like lose pieces, they get soggy, they collect dust on the shelf after they're done. They're like, they're not, they're not, not that excited about them anymore. They've lost like the, the, the novelty. And so now we can say, well, you're going to get this something you've never seen. It's the best puzzle. It's, it's double sided. You can keep reusing it and, and all these other benefits.

[Steve]

Okay, that's an interesting thing that I didn't actually think about at first glance, which is the community and family aspect of puzzles. That's a great angle.

[Scott Cunningham]

Yeah, yeah, yeah. So that, that's the family one. That's the mass instinct. The innovation problem is like we have a better novel thing that people will actually get excited about. The jaws will be dropping to the floor. Okay. And then the next two is the trend where it's like maybe, maybe like these like crafty hobbies are a popular thing that people are doing again. Or like maybe puzzle Nate's making a comeback. Comeback because of screen time. That would be a good trend actually. Oh, yes. Right. Okay. So it's like avoid screen time. That would be a trend. And then mass education would be something like that. That could tie in as well. But it could be just something like it's been proven that the benefits of puzzle make more memories and, and kind of that sort of thing. And so then what you would do is you'd have this list of all these desires from each of those four sections and you would grade them, you would say, which one has the most intensity and urgency to solve right now? Okay, which one has the most staying power? Like, it's not just a fad. It's going to be something that people need to keep solving and which one has the biggest scope where the most people that you sell to share that same desire. And then you pick your desire.

[Steve]

Is this something that you can just kind of plug into AI and Have them rate it? Or is it always better to just do it from your own personality and your own opinions?

[Scott Cunningham]

Okay, so I didn't tell you this. I don't think I've ever told you this. And I, and I've really had some good conversations since, since we met on that panel. But I built an AI called the Story Selling AI.

[Steve]

Ah, okay. Nice, nice.

[Scott Cunningham]

And so like, I have the book actually somewhere near me here that Breakthrough Advertising. So earlier this year between January and March, I taught a three month course on like how to write copy to sell your products based on the desires, based on the differentiation based on the category of one. And there was a lot of people in our community that went through the training and got amazing results. And then there was a whole bunch of other people who like, Scott, I can't do this. Like, I'm not a natural copywriter. English isn't my first language. You make this look easy. And I was like, okay, I gotta, like, my duty to our community is always like, how do I make everything easier? But not just easier, better. Like I can't have them use chat GPT and it produces some garbage, right? And so when I was teaching like the copywriting course, I told everyone, I'm like, listen, if you try to use AI for this, the problem with AI is it's gonna, it's only regurgitating things that other people have already said. And to have a true breakthrough ad, as Eugene calls it, like breakthrough ad, you need to say it in a way nobody's ever said. And so I was really trying to caution people. I'm like, you don't you want to use AI as a brainstorming partner, but not to create your headlines? And so what I ended up doing anyway, so a lot of people were like, I got good results or I couldn't complete it. So I took the entire course. I spent like six months doing this. I built a custom GPT that interviews you. So it's. So I taught the AI to not take what's out on the Internet, to only take from what the participant is sharing.

[Steve]

Okay.

[Scott Cunningham]

And so it interviews you. It'll be like, you know, what's the top desire? What's the like, it goes through this like unsolved desire, the final fix. It goes through your unique mechanism. It goes through like your origin story. It goes through like your features and benefits comparison to others. It goes through like all these questions that you answer. And then it mocks up drafts of each section based on like formulas, templates, examples I've given it. I uploaded like 40 pages of instructions on what to produce once it has the information.

[Steve]

Right, nice. And I imagine that's proprietary to your community, right?

[Scott Cunningham]

That, that custom GPT, it's proprietary to our community, but I will share it, I will share it with you guys today if you want.

[Steve]

Oh, wow.

[Scott Cunningham]

Cool.

[Steve]

Awesome. Okay, so, okay, we figured out the desires and whatnot. What is your usual next step? Is it, is it meta ads or, or.

[Scott Cunningham]

Yeah, so I won't go as deep because the reason I went so deep on the desires is like if you don't get the desire right, everything else fails. Okay, so that is like in breakthrough advertising, they didn't have Facebook ads back in those days.

[Steve]

Right.

[Scott Cunningham]

But they would write these long form ads and, and they would spend six months making the perfect long form ad that goes out in a magazine and it's direct response. They're trying to get people to read the magazine article and go buy. So the desire had to be perfect. In our world with Facebook ads, we can test this for a week and if it doesn't work, we can test it again. Right. So we're a little bit spoiled now, but the desire is really important. So that's why I spent a lot of time there. Once you have the desire, you use that to create a five part messaging framework. It's the category of one headline where you're, you're tapping into the raw desire, demonstrating how you solve that better than anyone else. Okay. And then it goes into the origin story. And the origin story. I have this like 5 part origin story framework where it's like the struggle, the journey, the spider bite, the revelation, the impact, and what the origin story is ultimately showing. And this is really good for people. Going from Amazon to Shopify is showing that, hey, I was just like you. I had the same problem as you. I recognize the problem. I searched the world for a solution. I found nothing. I was fed up. I decided to be the person who was going to solve this. I traveled great lengths across the world and mountains, climbed mountains, swam oceans, almost drowned, got back up and I solved it. And then people are like, okay, like once you hear that kind of origin story, you're like, I'm trying to solve that. This person did all the research one could ever do. I don't need to look further. And so you're trying to position yourself as a category nerd who fought the hardest to bring the solution to your customer base.

[Steve]

Let's say you're interested. Your story isn't that interesting. It sounds like with this puzzle person definitely they probably have some sort of backstory.

[Steve Chou]

But what about someone who just sells,

[Steve]

like, I don't know, garlic presses online? They probably didn't have this revelation. They probably just noticed that, you know, it had good search volume at the time and not a lot of competition.

[Scott Cunningham]

I think. I think that that is a formula for eventual failure.

[Steve]

Okay, okay.

[Scott Cunningham]

Like, I think it is. I think it is. I just, like, you should try and challenge the status quo on your category.

[Steve]

Right. Okay. I think that's why I started out with that first question. Like, it seems like the people, the brands that you work with are people that are creating something new and not necessarily novel, but something different.

[Scott Cunningham]

Right? Yeah. Well, okay. So, like, I have also have nothing against someone choosing to sell a garlic press because it's trending. I have nothing against that. But I think that once you get that validation that you're in the. You're in the market, you're a competitor, like, you're selling. Do. Do you want a business model that just waits till that product dwindles down and then you go and jump on the next one and you jump on the next one, or do you want to stay in that category and keep competing?

[Steve]

Right, right.

[Scott Cunningham]

So, like, I think it's always, like, if you're just looking for the next hot item and you keep chasing the next hop hot item, it's like, success. One day goes down and you're just chasing this hamster wheel.

[Steve]

Yeah.

[Scott Cunningham]

But I think if you're. If you prove, hey, I'm actually pretty good at selling garlic presses, let's commit to this and make our products better. Let's. Let's, like, look at what the competition is doing and provide better solutions. So I like the idea of using that Amazon process to validate, get some momentum, get in the game. But if you want to stay and compete and become a brand, you got to, like, challenge the status quo. You got to figure out what your unique value proposition is. Is, are you competing on price? Are you competing on the features, the benefits? Like, what is it?

[Steve]

Yeah, I'm curious, do all of your clients. Are all of them like this? Because I have my own students that I teach Shopify also, and a lot of them struggle to go through this process because they don't have, like, the story. They're not, you know, you know, I'm saying. So I'm just curious what you do.

[Scott Cunningham]

So if I had a dollar for every time a Shopify store owner told me they didn't have an origin story, I could actually. I wouldn't even do What I'm doing, like, okay, we wouldn't even be here today. I would just be retired on an island. Okay. So. So the truth is no one thinks they do. But I could tell you if you have product validation, so if you've sold your product to somebody and you've confirmed that they like what you sell, there's a story there. Something must have led you there.

[Steve]

Right?

[Scott Cunningham]

Okay. Because you'll be better at selling your garlic press better than I ever would. I know nothing about garlic presses. Right. So something must have led you to that product, you know, and you just gotta kind of like document the story. I got, I got this guy we worked with. His name's, his name's Rodrigo America. American Vinegar Works. Vinegar Works. You can check out his website. He's. We met him through this organization called Shopify for startups where they recruit the next up and coming Shopify, like success stories. And so they have to meet this criteria of like good merchant, good products. He, he met all that criteria. They used to always recommend people from that community come over to Merchant Mastery. And when I, when we met him, we were like, oh, wow, Rodrigo is amazing. Like, he was doing the work he was implementing, but then when he launched ads, he wasn't getting, like, he was, he is like 0.5 roas is the best he could do. So that's not even breaking even at like one row. As, as a break even.

[Steve]

Right.

[Scott Cunningham]

And so we audited his ads and we were like, what's going on here? You're not, not doing anything with the origin story. Can you guess what he told us? I don't have a unique origin story. Right, okay. And, and this is an extreme example because you're going to see that we uncovered that he had the most remarkable origin story. But like he didn't see that.

[Steve]

He did.

[Scott Cunningham]

Okay, so we're like, what's your, what led you to selling vinegar, Rodrigo? Because in my lifetime, I would never do that. I would never choose to sell vinegar in my lifetime. So what led you there? And he's like, well, to be honest, I kind of noticed that like vinegar was bland. Okay. Okay, so that's a, that's a thought. He's like, vinegar was kind of bland. I didn't really like the options. That's what he said. Right? And he's like. So I thought like, you know, I was, he's like, I was in France and I went into this like library and I found this encyclopedia that showed this like old method from the 1800s on how to ferment Vinegar in these barrels. And so I consulted the University of Massachusetts to see if they can mimic this process. And we built this facility. Now I ferment my vinegar for nine days at a time, and it has these bold flavors and. And all these kinds of things. When you hear that story, like, obviously, it's pretty remarkable. I can't believe he didn't recognize that. That was remarkable. Yeah, but you're like, I got to try that vinegar.

[Steve]

Yeah. It's funny, like, when you're deep in the weeds yourself, you don't think anything that you do is really special, when in fact it really is.

[Scott Cunningham]

That's it. And he was an extreme example, but I can list a hundred more who are just kind of like, I'm going to sell this thing. But it's still fascinating. Like, what in your life made you choose that category? What expertise did you have? What kind of desire drew you to that. That topic?

[Steve]

Okay.

[Scott Cunningham]

The AI tool will really help write your origin story.

[Steve]

Okay.

[Scott Cunningham]

With a few inputs, like it asks you a few questions and it produces something pretty good.

[Steve Chou]

So in terms of.

[Steve]

So we're doing all this research right now, coming with the story, the desires and everything. What medium do you usually advise people go through next? Organic content, meta ads, or is. There's probably more to this framework. Maybe we should finish that up first.

[Scott Cunningham]

It's. The next three are easy. The first two are difficult. Right. The category of one headline, we got to understand the customer psychology. The four buckets of desires, like grading the desires, that's like a lengthy process. The origin story, we got to document how we. How we led to this. The next three are easy. It's the differentiation stack, which just compares your features, your benefits, your customer support to the alternative.

[Steve]

Okay.

[Scott Cunningham]

It's like they do it this way. Well, we do it that way. Most. Most big box stores that sell vinegar are like, not fermented. All this, we do nine day fermented, small batch. Like, you're just comparing. And then. And then, so it goes category one headline, origin story, differentiation stack, testimonial stack, where it's. You want to include testimonials that overcome the four biggest objections, like price, trust, loyalty. And there's one more. But then. And then the last thing is the offer where you want to reduce risk or add an incentive for them to take action. Okay, okay.

[Steve]

All right.

[Scott Cunningham]

And so this, I call this like your master story. If you have those five ingredients, you're equipped to pitch your product as a category of one better than anyone else who's come before you. And so, so, so now to catch up with your second question is like, what do we do with it? What do we do with the master story? Where. So this, this AI tool I'll share with you. I think it's MerchantMaster, IO, forward slash, GPT. That might take you right to the AI tool.

[Steve]

Okay, I'll link that.

[Scott Cunningham]

Yeah. And then, and then basically you get the master story, and then you want to use different parts of the story on your homepage, on your collection page, on your product page. On Shopify, you want to use that narrative in your email flow so that when people arrive, they're going through your email sequence with the same narrative. But ultimately, the way that we're acquiring customers in our world, like, as long as you have any kind of validation, so you've sold on Amazon, you've sold at a farmer's market, you've sold in person, you're ready to launch ads, in my opinion, as long as you have validation. And so that's what we like to do. In the beginning, if you were just doing organic social posting, you're going to be spending forever, like, with a lot of, lot of inputs for not that many outputs. It's just like. And so we usually. We like organic, we like organic social. We want to do it, but we want to start getting validation, a little bit of sales momentum with ads.

[Steve]

Okay. All right. So naturally, with the type of advertising or the, the work that we've done, meta ads is the obvious choice, right?

[Steve Chou]

Not.

[Steve]

Not Google Ads, which is more keyword and search focused.

[Scott Cunningham]

Yeah, exactly. Like, this is a good lesson for anyone. I know you, you're a Shopify guy. I know you, you got your brand and I know you got your community. But for anyone I know, like in, in Kevin King's community and, and Norm, like, it's. A lot of people sell on Amazon. And I think this is one of the key things to learn is that when we're, when we're, when we want to start an ad campaign, we want to start on a platform like Meta that we call like an interruptive channel. So it's an interruptive channel. People aren't searching for wooden puzzles or vinegar on Facebook. There's no keyword searches. Right. So if, if we can get in front of the right people with the right pitch, like the right messaging, the right story, and compel them to stop what they're doing on Facebook, which is like liking friends photos and consuming news or whatever they're doing. Yeah, if we compel them to stop what they're doing and come by we know we have a good job. We've done a good job with our pitch. And then we would add on a channel like Google afterwards where it's like, we know we kick butt with our messaging because on Google you're going after that high intent traffic, and if your positioning is not good, you're going to lose to the competition. If we know we can sell on Facebook, we know that that's going to also do well on Google.

[Steve]

Okay. I'm curious since Facebook recently announced a pretty big change in September, their Andromeda update. So I'm curious, like, what your ads and your campaign structure looks like today.

[Scott Cunningham]

Yeah, like they, they got rid of interest audiences. Right. So that was the big, that was the big shock to everybody's system. Is that interesting?

[Steve]

I was never using them anyway, so.

[Scott Cunningham]

Yeah, yeah, we're just doing open lookalike. Yeah, yeah. And open are great. Like, we, we, we, we use a lot of interest audiences. But, but we know now with the whole meta ads update it, the. All the targeting is done in the creative and the copy.

[Steve]

Right.

[Scott Cunningham]

Okay. And so you got to remember that it's like is. Is my ad creative calling out my avatar and differentiating my product. That's why this, this master story process that I was introducing you to. In, in our world, we teach people to actually run an ad with the full long form.

[Steve]

Okay.

[Scott Cunningham]

Okay.

[Steve]

Which means video, basically. Right.

[Scott Cunningham]

It means like the five parts, like headline, origin story, differentiation, testimony, offer. It's like, it's a, it's a Facebook written ad, like this long.

[Steve]

Oh, really?

[Steve Chou]

Okay.

[Steve]

That's very interesting because most ads that you see in the library do not do that.

[Scott Cunningham]

They don't. And I can show you, like I had like 10 people in the last week tell me they have their best performing ad of all time with this long form framework.

[Steve]

Oh, that's fascinating. Okay.

[Scott Cunningham]

And it's basically using the old Eugene Schwartz direct response marketing method, which is like tapping into their desire, heightening the emotion, heightening the urgency, compelling them to take action right now. And so it works really well when people read because it draws them in. It wins their attention, but it holds it. Right, Right. And so it's a. Priming them to buy. But it also. So obviously it works good when people are reading it, but it also works really well for targeting because you're giving Facebook. Oh, yeah. Everything they need to know about what you sell to who, how much better it is, what it does. Like you're feeding everything Facebook needs to know. What's that going to add?

[Steve]

I Love it. Actually, I haven't tried this before. I've been. Yeah, because what you're describing, for me at least I'll do like a short video on it or I'll have like a customer, you know, read off a script or something. But I kind of like that. I never thought to, to create long form copy in the actual ad itself.

[Scott Cunningham]

Yeah. And we usually take your. So you're not like, we want to do the video too. We want to do, we want to take that long form ad, create a video version of it. But I would challenge you and encourage you to use the story selling AI to create your long form story with it.

[Steve]

Okay.

[Scott Cunningham]

And let me know how it goes.

[Steve]

Does that imply then that like if you're a brand new Shopify store owner, like video is kind of intimidating. Does that imply that you can get good results with just image ads in this process?

[Scott Cunningham]

Yeah, like, okay, so here's, here's the, the other rule of thumb here. So not everybody's going to read your long format.

[Steve]

Right.

[Scott Cunningham]

So it's going to be really good at selling to the people who do. So it's a good way to validate. Does this narrative convert? So we like the readers are like our sample group. Right. And if it's converting, it usually does. I'm feeling very confident that anybody who goes through that process runs a long format. It's going to convert if you do it the right way. I've had so much success with like this long form style and then we know, hey, this narrative sells. But now we want to capture the people who aren't going to ever read a long form ad.

[Steve]

Sure.

[Scott Cunningham]

And so we like to repurpose the long form into like short form story ads, mid medium form. Like different. Create like different like carousel concepts, static image concepts, video script concepts that also carry that same narrative. But I would try and test the long form copy ad with a still image with a video with UGC from the owner video infographic. Like I would test different creatives with the long form.

[Steve]

I love it. I love it. Okay.

[Steve Chou]

All right.

[Steve]

So do you have multiple. I'm just thinking about like the meta ad structure. Are you just testing a whole bunch of different versions of your, your long form copy?

[Scott Cunningham]

Yeah. Yeah.

[Steve]

I guess what I'm trying to ask is like what is your ad structure? Do you test three creatives with two, two long form copies or each, each one only uses one creative, one long form ad copy. Like what's the testing structure?

[Scott Cunningham]

This is usually how we start like a first time test, like a First launch, we will come up with five versions of our ad copy.

[Steve]

Okay, so.

[Scott Cunningham]

So we're like, okay, you know, we're going to get out there, we're going to launch. And so I like to think about the first five ads as, like, I use like a. I'm a Canadian, so I use like hockey analogy.

[Steve]

Okay.

[Scott Cunningham]

Right. Where it's like, that's the bench. We warm the bench with the five ads that we think are going to perform the best.

[Steve]

Okay. Okay.

[Scott Cunningham]

And then to. To go. To go on the ice. We start with two players on the ice first. Okay. So we got a bench of ads that we think can perform. And we're only going to start with two in the beginning.

[Steve]

Okay. All right, so. Okay, so two ad copies. What about creatives?

[Scott Cunningham]

Yeah. Okay, so we. We have the five ads we think we're going to win. We have two that we're going to put on the ice, and we call these our best foot forward ads. Okay, so we have five ads that were pretty good. And we tell people based on what you know about your customer, your insights, your instincts, what you've seen work before. Pick two. If you're going to gamble your business on the two ads that you think are going to perform form, pick those two to go on the ice first. Okay. Okay. And so you have your two versions of your copy. You want to test each of those with three different creative.

[Steve]

Okay. Okay. Yep.

[Scott Cunningham]

So it's like two versions of the copy. Each one is. And I would usually do like a. From the owner video, a ugc, and then like a static image or an infographic.

[Steve]

Okay, interesting. Okay. And then is this all going in one flex ad or are they individual ads?

[Scott Cunningham]

So this is. Okay, so now this is where I'm going to have to go and talk to our media buyers. So this is like pre. Meta update, what we used to do.

[Steve]

Okay.

[Scott Cunningham]

Okay. And so what we used to do is we would do it at the campaign level. So it'd be like a CBO campaign where the budget's coming from the campaign level.

[Steve]

Okay.

[Scott Cunningham]

And then we would have three. Three ad sets.

[Steve]

Okay.

[Scott Cunningham]

We would do interest open look like.

[Steve]

Interesting. Yeah, I think that might have changed. Yeah, it.

[Scott Cunningham]

It.

[Steve]

At least for me. I can't speak for everyone, obviously, but what's worked has changed in, like, literally the last two months.

[Scott Cunningham]

Yeah. And it's when. And the advice is to put everything into one ad set now. Right? Yeah. Yeah. Right. So that's. That. That is the update I was going to give, but it's like, I don't have the nuanced data to share with you.

[Steve]

About, like, yeah, no problems.

[Scott Cunningham]

Yeah, yeah, but like, but that is the advice now is just everything's in one ad set.

[Steve]

Okay.

[Scott Cunningham]

Yeah.

[Steve]

And then so you're running ads. Would you advise, like, new Shopify store owners start on the organic or their resources better utilized elsewhere, or just focus on putting out more creatives?

[Scott Cunningham]

Like, yeah, I honestly, like, I meet some people who are like, hey, I've built. And I built all my sales organic. You know what? You know what? They also tell me, took me four years posting every day.

[Steve]

Right.

[Scott Cunningham]

Like, and so if you could endure four years of this, like, I, I don't think organic is the best way to acquire customers first.

[Steve]

Right. Okay, I would agree with that.

[Scott Cunningham]

Yeah. And so we. I really want to speed up the validation because if you're posting organically, like, not. Not only is it not reaching that many people to start, we don't know what messaging is going to get people moving. So it's just like a really slow process of reaching people and validating what gets people to buy. And so ads are the fastest way to test what message compels people to shop. And so we, we would always start with like a really small, like $60 a day ad spend where our goal. Excuse me. Our goal is to break even on that spend within the first week.

[Steve]

Yep.

[Scott Cunningham]

Right. And then, and then we can stay in the game. But it's. And then, and then we usually would like to scale that up to a bit. Once we start hitting like 10k months and, and higher, then we know we're like, we built the prototype of the sales engine. We know the messaging works. We know we can grow this. That's when we would start, like, layering on organic. So I think organic is. You can see my daughter running behind.

[Steve]

No, that's cool. Yeah.

[Scott Cunningham]

There was, there's a. There was a strike. Teacher strike in Alberta. So, like, all the teachers, all the kids are home right now.

[Steve]

Okay.

[Scott Cunningham]

Okay.

[Steve]

Wow. Because your postal system's on strike too, you said, right?

[Scott Cunningham]

Yeah. It's crazy. It's crazy. But the, but the big one for Alberta, not in all the provinces. Our schools are completely shut down right now.

[Steve]

That is nuts. Okay. The world we live in is like falling into chaos, I feel.

[Scott Cunningham]

Yeah, yeah. And so seriously, just to go back to what you're saying, we like to, like, if we want to build it on Shopify, we like to get the initial sales engine going with ads. You start to validate our messaging, get the website converting, get email performing, and Then we know we have something and then it's like from there we are going to start layering on social. Like social media is really good when you're running ads for people vetting you. Like they're like, well who is this business? And they're going to go look at your page, they're going to see if you're active, they're going to see if you're building community. It's also really good for retention because they've bought from you, they follow you on social media, they see that you're active, like you're staying top of mind. So it's really good for like, like when they're in the consideration stage before buying and when they've already like and they're in like the repeat purchase opportunity mode. So really good for that. But then as you, as you really start growing and your business is doing like a million and you want to get to 10 million, you need a very active organic social layer on top of that.

[Steve]

Right. Okay, so, so we talked about meta ads, we talked about organic email is obviously a huge portion of all this. Are you guys using SMS in your flows and how does that compare with email for your company?

[Scott Cunningham]

Yeah, we do absolutely. Like our team like because we have Merchant Mastery, like our mentorship community. But I don't know if you knew this. We also run an agency.

[Steve]

Oh, I didn't know that.

[Scott Cunningham]

Okay. Yeah, so we run an agency called Socialite that has been that I founded in 2011.

[Steve]

Oh wow. Okay.

[Scott Cunningham]

And we only work with like higher growth Shopify brands.

[Steve]

Okay.

[Scott Cunningham]

So like you know there's businesses doing anywhere from like 50 to 250k a month in ad spend. I think upwards maybe of even half a million. Million maybe. But so, so a lot of this stuff that we're teaching at Merchant Mastery comes from our real world experiencing running ads for all these brands.

[Steve]

Ah, okay.

[Scott Cunningham]

And so we, our agency is like a top 3% Google advertising partner. So we do a lot with Google. We're a top Pinterest advertising partner, top meta advertising partner. But we're also a one of a few in the world of a Klaviyo like platinum diamond partner. Right. Exorbitant amount of sales and marketing with Klaviyo with email. And within that is not just email, it's sms. Right. And so with with sms obviously you probably experience this too if you're doing any SMS is it has higher open rates, higher click through rates. I think you need to if you're going to use it, start building your list as soon as you can because. Yes, right, but, but yes, I would say it's, it's been very effective and it's more like it's because in Klaviyo you can actually build your flow so that you can send out an email and if people don't open then you can follow up with an sms. So yeah, we're using both in the same automations.

[Steve]

Scott, I want to be respective of your time and clearly I didn't realize all the businesses that you had. So why don't you tell the audience where they can reach you, what all the different services that you offer.

[Scott Cunningham]

Yeah, I think like the way we really believe is like we're here to help Shopify stores at any stage like you said. And so most of the time like with Merchant Mastery or Socialite, we need businesses who have at least validation. But we even have free training that we help people that don't have validation. Like we try to help guide people at every stage. And so I think if you were a new business we probably have some resources we could share. But if you're a business who has product validation and you're doing, you're doing like sales somewhere, like you're selling at a farmer's market or Amazon. Yeah, Merchant Mastery might be a good fit. MerchantMastery.IO is, is our website and I think there's like a free training on there in the top navigation bar that might be a good place to check out where I actually go through this like story selling framework in that video.

[Steve]

Right. And then if you were doing what was it, like 100,000amonth then the Socialite.

[Scott Cunningham]

Yeah, our agencies like, you know how we built Merchant Mastery was because we've been Shopify partners since 2014. That's when we like really started getting involved with Shopify and we started hosting the meetups and the events and we started to build a pretty good reputation in the space and we started to realize that there was a lot of early stage businesses that were approaching us that had no business hiring an agency. Right. It's like a lot of strain on a business hiring an agency too soon. So we were like, there's so many great, great people coming to us. What do we do? Let's maybe just teach them. So that's how we built Merchant Master. We decided we're going to teach people who shouldn't be hiring an agency. Okay. And so I think when it comes to the agency you want to be doing at least like probably 50k a month or trending towards that.

[Steve]

Right.

[Scott Cunningham]

But I think the best time to hire an agency is probably when you're closer to like 80 to 100k a month.

[Steve]

I was going to say 50 is. Sounds a little low because you guys have to get paid too.

[Scott Cunningham]

So it's that it's like 50.50k. Only if we see that there's like this upward trajectory, we're about to just keep scaling scale in it.

[Steve]

Yeah.

[Scott Cunningham]

But if it's like sales are declining and you're hitting 50k, that's a. That's a scary scenario. Yep.

[Steve]

Well, thank you so much for sharing your knowledge. I, I love everything that you do. I love the way that you presented all the material today. Actually. It was great with the storytelling and the frameworks and. Yeah, just thanks so much.

[Scott Cunningham]

I'm.

[Steve]

I'm so glad that Kevin introduced the two of us.

[Scott Cunningham]

Oh, Steve, I appreciate you inviting me out. It's really appreciate having the conversation with you and hey man, we got to hang out some more.

[Steve]

Absolutely. Yeah.

[Steve Chou]

Hope you enjoyed this episode. If you're currently running Meta ads, you have to try Scott's method.

[Steve]

For more information and resources, go over

[Steve Chou]

to mywifequitterjob.com episode633 and once again, tickets to Seller Summit 2026 are now on sale over at sellersummit.com if you want to hang out in person in a small intimate setting, develop real relationships with like minded entrepreneurs and learn a ton, then come to my event.

[Steve]

Go to sellersummit.com.