← Travis Makes Money
Travis Makes Money
INTERVIEW | Make Money by Mastering Persuasive Marketing in the AI Era with Ashley Grace
00:25:54
Loading summary
Transcript45 lines
- [00:01]
A
Close your eyes, exhale, feel your body relax and let go of whatever you're carrying today. Well, I'm letting go of the worry that I wouldn't get my new contacts in time for this class. I got them delivered free from 1-800-contacts. Oh my gosh, they're so fast. And breathe. Oh, sorry. I almost couldn't breathe when I saw the discount they gave me on my first order. Oh, sorry. Namaste. Visit 1-800-contacts.com today to save on your first order.
- [00:28]
B
1-800-contact contacts.
- [00:30]
C
You're listening to the Travis Makes Money podcast presented by gohighlevel.com for a free 30 day trial of the best all in one digital marketing software tool on the planet. Just go to gohighlevel.com travis.
- [00:44]
D
What's going on, everybody? Welcome back to another episode of the Travis Makes Money podcast where it's our mission to help you make more money. Today on the show, I have a new friend of mine, Ashley Grace. He's the founding CMO of Ignaton, a groundbreaking quantum wellness company merging subatomic particle science with integrative health. With a background in strategic brand building and clinical innovation, Ashley has helped position Ignaton at the forefront of the cognitive and longevity supplement space. The company's formulas, powered by ignatons, neutral quasi particles embedded via cold plasma and laser photonics, are clinically proven to outperform placebo and standard supplements in university studies published in peer reviewed journals. Frankly, it sounds way too smart for me, but I'm hoping Ashley can shed some light on this for us. So, Ashley, what's up, man? Welcome to the show.
- [01:29]
B
Thanks, Travis. Thanks for having me. Yeah, this is groundbreaking stuff. I mean, we like to say what we're doing for the human body, what Google and Nvidia are doing for quantum computing. So we're the world's first quantum supplementation brand. We've discovered through some collaborations with really smart quantum physicists From Switzerland over 10 years ago, even over 20 years ago, they were working and discovering this phenomenon called ignaton, which is a, as you said, it's a subatomic quasi particle. That's the technical definition, but basically it's energy that's created from the sun through the interaction of the photons and the plasma that are also created by the sun. Ignaton energy is created in that process. It goes out into the atmosphere, passes through the space and comes to earth and gives way to life among all the other great energies that are coming from the sun. A lot of folks that have studied this have referred to ignatons as kind of the basis for what the ancients used to call world spirit or life force. It's the unifying field that connects us all. We've developed some very sophisticated laboratory methodologies as you mentioned, using cold plasma laser photonics. We've got these space vacuums that create an atmosphere, 1, 1 billionth of our atmosphere. And we're able to embed this energy to create it, harness it and embed it into supplement ingredients. And since this is so far out there and a lot of people are like, well wow, how do we even understand this stuff? We decided to take our products and put them into university studies and see what happens. Right. And so what we did is we created a cognition formulation focused on brain and memory. We created a longevity formulation focused on stress and inflammation biomarkers and we charge the, there's nothing special about the ingredients before we get our hands on them. They're very common, you know, ingredients that are known to either stimulate the brain or to work on stress and inflammation. What makes them special is we've charged them with this ignaton energy and so we put them into university studies and they found that the ingredients that have the igneton charge actually outperform the same ingredients without the charge and outperform placebo. And so while this is a pretty advanced topic, highly complex, you know, we, we generally like to say the science says this because that's what is tangible for people and you know, in terms of helping, you know, relevance to your show and your, your listeners, you know, we've got all kinds of different folks that are using our products. One group that's probably listening to this show are high performing executives, professionals that are looking to get, you know, to maximize their, their output without stimulants and without a crash. You know, it's the, the results in terms of improving attention and focus and short term memory are off the charts.
- [04:33]
D
Nootropic.
- [04:35]
B
That's exactly what it is. And I use that word all the time. You know, it's, it's basically we're taking these nootropic ingredients and we're supercharging them. And you don't have to take our word for it. We've got the university studies and that have been published in these peer reviewed journals that show that it's just this whole process actually works.
- [04:49]
D
Yeah. What type of pushback have you guys received from the maybe supplement community or you know, MD with this stuff?
- [04:58]
B
Good question. I mean surprisingly the MDs are, I'd say it's about 50, 50, you know we go to a lot of practitioner conference and events like that. The, the chiropractic community is very much on board. The naturopath community is very much on board. And then I would like to say on the, on the MD side, I'd say it's about 50, 50 where some come to our booth and they're like this, you know, and they're like, okay, tell me about this stuff. And others come and, and they're like, hey, you know, let's let me see the science. And I'm open to this conversation, which is all we can really ask is take a look at it objectively and can there be more science, can there be more studies done? Absolutely. But, but you know, so far it's working quite well and we're getting, you know, we just launched officially in September of last year. We had a phenomenal event, Dave Asprey's Biohacking. We sold out everything we had that, that was our soft launch and at, at, in the end of May last year actually depleted all of our inventory. So we had to get every overwhelmed. We didn't think it was going to be that, that big of a launch, but we got our stuff together in last summer and then we launched officially in September and things have just been going very well since.
- [06:05]
D
So the supplement conversation would be very interesting and maybe potentially for my other show, I'd like to maybe dive deep on the health benefits and things like that at some other time. But I'd love to talk more on the business side of things. When you have, when you have a complex business idea like this, you being the CMO of the company, what's like stage one, there's clearly no, there's clearly no product aware market here. There's clearly no solution aware market here because there's probably no problem aware market here where people don't like think of this as being a problem that needs to be solved. What, what type of work do you need to do in a startup like this from a marketing and storytelling perspective that gets people to actually buy into what you're doing and then actually buy the supplements and the products?
- [06:50]
B
Yeah, it's a great question and it's, it's literally my life. It's continuous improvement is the answer. I mean, what my job is, is to really try to, to simplify this conversation, allow people to enter into the conversation regardless of where they are. On the education level of quantum physics, we don't want to intimidate anyone, but also just to be completely transparent with people that this is not a magic Bullet either, you know, if you, if you're looking for, have just to take a pill and improve your memory, things don't work that way. And we actually encourage people don't take our product if that's what you're looking to do. But if you're open, if you're an open mindset and you're looking and you're looking for ways to improve your life, you're taking active steps, you're watching what you eat, you're exercising, you're getting movement of some level, you're focusing on some kind of mindfulness, prayer or meditation, something to calm things down. If you're taking those steps, then integrating our product into that outcome can or into your practice can result in remarkable outcomes. And so from my perspective, it's trying to just simplify this, break it down, be able to tell the story to various folks in a way that welcomes them into the conversation, disarms them transparent about what we do know and what we don't know. And always just learning, learning what resonates with people and then trying to take that and refine it and make it more simple. Like, I'm a big disciple of David Ogilvy. I come from the ad world in a prior life and David Ogilvy, one of the many things he said that were fantastic was he said if I had more time, I would have written shorter copy. And that's very, very relevant because the longer we do this, the more feedback we get, the better I am with working with our team and everybody to really simplify this and bring people into the conversation.
- [08:42]
D
What was your background before this, Ashley?
- [08:45]
B
Well, I'm a finance guy who got into marketing. Back in marketing, ROI was becoming a thing. So advanced, you know, marketing segmentations and ROI modeling, market mix modeling, volumetric forecasting, consumer research combined with technology and SaaS technologies around marketing and ad tech is where I spent most.
- [09:07]
C
This episode of the show is brought to you by Wayfair. Look guys, the new year is here. 2026 is upon us. Get back into an at home routine that you love and elevate your space with Wayfair. From bedding and mattresses to storage solutions for every room in the house. Wayfair is your one stop shop. Refresh your living room with accent pillows, mirrors, fake plants, you know, paintings, whatever, whatever you want really. Wayfair has literally anything that you could possibly imagine when it comes to decor for your home. So you need a refresh on bedding or towels or maybe you want to redo the kids rooms. Kitchen essentials home decor, storage, you know, outdoor furniture, kitchen essentials, everything that you could want. Wayfair has it. And it's super easy and convenient to get these things shipped to your house,
- [09:54]
D
no matter how big they are.
- [09:55]
C
We got a dining room table, recently, shipped it right to the house. Really, really easy to make the entire process super smooth. And in fact, the thing that we got most recently from Wayfair was a organization. Little closet or right when you walk in the house for shoes. Because I don't know about you other parents listening to this right now, but one of, one of the things that drives me most crazy is just shoes spread across the whole floor. Just little, just little tripping minds, things that you can step on and fall on top of. And so we got this shoe organizer. So we have one place that all the shoes go. And now when the kids walk in the house, they know exactly where to put their shoes. Um, so we got that from Wayfair recently. They even have a treadmill that goes under your desk and stuff, which is probably going to be my next purchase. So get organized, refreshed and back on track this new year. For way less, head to Wayfair.com right now to shop all things home. That's W-A-Y-F-A-I-R.com Wayfair. Every style, every home.
- [10:51]
E
My day kicks off with a refreshing Celsius energy drink. Then straight to the gym, pre K pickup back home to meal prep. Time for my fire station shift. One more Celsius to keep the lights on when the three alarm hits. I'm ready. Celsius Live fit. Go grab a cold refreshing Celsius at your local retailer or locate now@celsius.com
- [11:13]
B
my time. I had an accident along the way. I worked a lot. Interesting. And in that world, I worked a lot with big Pharma back in the day. And, you know, that's a whole nother conversation we could have some other time, but I had an accident then and really pharmaceuticals couldn't help me. And that opened my eyes to kind of alternative medicines, alternative healing and treatments. And I ended up becoming the founding CMO at a company called Charlotte's Web, which was. It is the, you know, the. We built that into the biggest CBD brand in the world. And after that exit, you know, I was consulting for many years with various different technology companies in the marketing ad tech space as well as emerging brands. And just this past year I was just thinking, I really kind of miss being part of a brand, being part of a team. Consulting's been great to me, but it was, you're always just this level deep into a bunch of different opportunities instead of going really deep into one. So the universe, as soon as I started thinking that the universe presented this opportunity at ignaton, and it's 15 minutes down the road from where I live here in Boulder and couldn't have been a better match. And I'm really excited to be a part of the team here.
- [12:27]
D
Let's talk about the money making side of marketing. There's multiple disciplines, multiple skills that can make people good money in life. Marketing seems to be towards the top of that list, if not the very top of that list. What's been your experience there? What would you recommend people doing if they're thinking of a career in this space?
- [12:46]
B
That's interesting. You know, the marketing ROI is, like I said, it's still not a thing. It started becoming a thing back in the late 90s when I got involved. But it's still a big debate about marketing ROI and the right technologies and most of the energy and the technology is spent on getting the message to the right person. So it's basically various ways of targeting, identifying people that are in market for certain activities. You know, there's a lot of privacy concerns that go along with that and then being able to deliver a message to that person efficiently and on target at a positive roi. But what goes ignored, what still to this day goes ignored more than anything is what is that message that you're sending to that person. And all the data that I saw for years of working with, you know, big time companies like Procter and Gamble and Nestle and Pfizer and you know, all kinds of companies across different industries. The, what you say in terms of the message that you're sending out is four times more important than how many times or how, you know, how many times you say it or how, how effectively you deliver it to the individual. So all this money and, and time and energy and companies and, you know, things, you know, market caps are built around technologies to deliver a message more efficiently. But people still don't get that. It's what you're saying in terms of how persuasive that is, how emotionally differentiating it is, that's way more important than any of this technology to deliver the message.
- [14:24]
D
Yeah, they spend the majority of their time on the bottom 80% rather than the top 20%.
- [14:31]
B
Yep. And persuasion is real. I mean, and it's a, it's a real thing. And you know, there are, there are tools and techniques to Use language and to use visuals and to use copy to be more persuasive and generally speaking at a macro level for your audiences involved in this space. Focus on the emotional differentiation. Everybody wants to talk about the feature based rational differentiation. My product is the only one that has X, Y and Z. Yeah. You know, because that's, that's easy. The engineers come into your office and they say, here's what we have.
- [15:04]
D
It's easy because it's like that's, that's what gets you excited. Once you are emotional, emotionally bought in. You know, like you, you get emotionally bought into something and then you forget that that was the thing that bought you into it. And then after you emotionally bought in, you start learning about all these cool things and all these, this feature this and check out how we're different here. And here's these three added benefits of what we do. And it's like, well, but none of those were the reasons that you were convinced that this was a good path for you. You were bought in emotionally long before you figured out any of these reasons. And then we start trying to rationalize everything logically and then assume that the, the rational logic is going to be the thing to convince other people when it wasn't that convinced us to begin with, you know.
- [15:41]
B
Yep, absolutely. And it's, and I, I fight it every day still in my role, you know, because it's so easy to say, well, we're the only supplement that has ignatons. Right. We're the only one that's. No one cares about that. You know, what they care about is we're the only supplement that. I mean, we're a supplement that's going to give you back and protect your, your memories and your wisdoms and your, your love that you're sharing with your kids and your grandkids. Yeah, like that's the emotional benefit. Now why can we do it better than other people? Because we're the only ones that have this ignaton energy that proven in university studies to work better. And always just having to work with my team and even myself every day to make sure we're trying to focus on what is that benefit that we're delivering and how unique and emotional is that that comes from this very unique feature differentiation we have.
- [16:28]
D
You've been doing this now obviously, I mean late 90s, we're talking about 30 years here in the marketing advertising space. If you were getting started in it today, what would you do differently to get good at it faster than what you did back in 1996?
- [16:45]
B
Well, I think today's world is just so much more technically advanced and there's an awareness today of what can be done. I think I would have, getting into it today, I would focus on what I just talked about earlier, bring the resonance forward that the power of the message itself is significantly better than all the technology that you have to get that message out there. You know, it took me a while to learn that, and I focused a lot on technologies early in the day. But when you look at and break down the econometric modeling and the market mix analyses and things like that, you know, I worked on several projects with Nielsen over the years that kind of validated what I'm talking about. I mean, you see it in the data. I mean, it's very obvious. So I think people getting involved today into the marketing ROI space would be. They'd have an advantage if they understand this power of what the quality of that message is. What you say is four times more important than how you say it or how often you say it.
- [17:46]
D
Is there technology that you think is going to allow that process to be a little bit easier that you're excited for? Like, how do you, how do you view, you know, generative AI in terms of helping you actually dial in the messaging versus just giving you a bunch of slop that's probably not going to actually perform?
- [18:02]
B
I see a lot of opportunity there. I don't think anybody's cracked the code yet. But yes, I think that with AI, the ability to analyze and break down the content of messaging is really what's needed. I mean, if you think about this, it's. If you've got enough data, right, you've got which big companies do, then that means they've got a measurement typically on how much money was spent behind a piece of creative or a campaign. They've got data on how often people saw it from reach and frequency. They've got data on what channels it was delivered through. I mean, they've got data out the wazoo on that stuff. What they don't. And then they've got sales data in many cases where if they've been smart and they've isolated the messaging and they've drawn different test markets and things like that, they can see the differences in sales associated with those, you know, the other data points they have.
- [18:50]
C
Sure.
- [18:50]
B
And so just that when you, when you look at it that way, what emerges is these huge variations of, wow, everything looked like it should be in favor of this campaign, it did not work, or, wow, look at this one, which we kind of ignored and we didn't put as much effort into. But look how much what the performance was on sales. Those outliers at the end of the two ends of the bell curve, that's where the magic is. And if you were to be able to look at that, those creative messages that were delivered in those outlying situations and do that in volume, then you're going to be able to and do it in a way where you can actually predict the outcome before it happens then, right? So it's one thing to look back and learn it all, but then in real time, how can you know if I have a winner here, I've got a piece of gold. I know if I spend it this way now, I know it's going to give me that, that response. Or, you know, regardless how much money we spend on this, it's just not going to work. We better be able to go.
- [19:46]
F
This episode is brought to you by Indeed. Stop waiting around for the perfect candidate. Instead, use Indeed sponsored jobs to find the right people with the right skills fast. It's a simple way to make sure your listing is the first candidate. C. According to Indeed data, sponsored jobs have four times more applicants than non sponsored jobs. So go build your dream team today with Indeed. Get a $75 sponsored job credit@ Indeed.com podcast.
- [20:11]
B
Terms and conditions apply back to the drawing board. So I think there's a lot of potential in that area for the future
- [20:18]
D
when it comes specifically to let's talk ads ads management. Do you think that right now it's more important to learn the skill of media buying or learn the skill of, of ad creative? Which one do you think is more, more impactful at the moment?
- [20:37]
B
Well, I think that I would focus on the creative side because I think that's less, there's less threat, I guess of a robot or AI taking over your, your, your job for you. In the short term, it's, it's hard for, it's hard for AI to understand the emotions of, of humans. And that's where the magic lies with advertising is in that emotional differentiation. So I would say focusing on that area would better off, I mean media planning, media delivery and execution, that's just going to continue to get more mechanized.
- [21:12]
D
And you know, that was kind of my thought. I had this conversation recently with a ads expert and she, she was heavy on the media buying side and I was just like, maybe right now, like as of this recording February 6, 2026, media buying might be the more useful or tangible skills. But I just feel like a year from now Two years from now there's going to become a point where the algorithm becomes so effective at finding your audience that you won't be able to compete with it anymore. And then the only thing that wins at that point is just better creative.
- [21:47]
B
Yeah, I think you're exactly right. You know, and that's, that's where we, you know, as we a new startup brand like Ignaton and what we're trying to do is try to focus on continuously learning and refining that message and understanding what's working and, and writing shorter copy, you know, trying to figure out how to, how do we do what Ogilvy was talking about. And obviously we got to deliver the ads right. And I, and I don't mean to diminish that at all of course. You know, I just for, for context purposes, I mean there is no sales if the ad doesn't get delivered. So, so that's very important. All of this goes as within an assumption that the ad is being delivered to the right person at the right time. Then it's what is that ad?
- [22:28]
D
That's kind of what's cool about like this, these non traditional marketing platforms like Google or Meta versus you know, television or radio or anything like that is that a single piece of creative can outperform anything else. Just because the creative is that good. Like it can, it can take on a life of its own beyond the money that you're spending on the creative. Just because people are hooked into the creative, they want to share, they want to comment, they want to engage, they want to talk about it. They, they, it's, it's controversial. They're sharing their opinion. You know, there's, there's something that's cool about the potential. Like that's why, that's why I that a little bit more. Because it's just like. Yeah, but if I take more shots on goal on creative and I go really hard on creative, then we can have one ad that outperforms the other 150 ads that we've tested this month to the degree to, to like such a significant degree that it makes all other skills almost irrelevant in that, in that space. Because this thing just outperformed everything so. Well, because it was well done or it, it struck a nerve. The, the bummer part is that you don't really know exactly what is going to do that. So you just gotta just throw out a bunch of stuff and then kill the ones that don't work and then boost the ones that do work and then just continue that process over and over again.
- [23:38]
B
Well, one of the companies I worked with along this path was basically there used to be something called copy testing. And it was basically you would take. You would take the TV ads that you would spend money creating, oftentimes hundreds of thousands of dollars, and then you would test them to see how persuasive they were going to be, how well they're going to perform in market before you then spent the tens of millions or hundreds of millions of dollars on. And it was still an inefficient process because you still had spent, you know, six months of time and 100,000 maybe. I mean, that's on the low end of development right up towards upwards of a million dollars back in those days. And then if it doesn't work, what are you going to do? Just throw it away?
- [24:15]
D
Right.
- [24:15]
B
So I think, you know, today's world with AI and generating as long as the ads, I mean, and it's getting better all the time. But, you know, once ads can be generated that aren't obviously AI. Yeah. Then this really becomes a different conversation because you can, at volume and at scale, produce enough. Throw it out there, test it in real time, and get back to that kind of process that we were talking about.
- [24:41]
D
Actually, I love the conversation, man. I geek out on some of these things sometimes. I appreciate you coming on, being willing to kind of open up the hood and share what's going on underneath. Where can people go to get more from you, from Ignaton and the things that you're working on?
- [24:54]
B
Yeah. Thank you. Ignaton is ignite.com. you can check it out there. If you use code Ashley A S H L E Y. You can get 15% off your first order. You know, I'm on LinkedIn as well, you know, and I've got a consulting business and a podcast that I do kind of for fun. So that that podcast is called Ashley on a S H L E Y O N and that's Ashleyon.com and I explore different things. Very eclectic topics around health and wellness, spirituality and what I call all things new. So I'm a geek about innovations and new technologies and new approaches of all types.
- [25:32]
D
Love it, man. Ashleyon.com Go check out some of the stuff that Ashley's up to. Connect to them on LinkedIn. And if you're interested in their supplement line, that's Ignaton Ignition, but without the I at the end. That. In fact, that's what I thought it was before we jumped on.
- [25:47]
B
Yeah, we're working on Google. So Google may still autocorrect Ignaton into Ignition if it does, just re enter it and you can get to us that way.
- [25:57]
D
Perfect. Ashley, thanks so much for taking the time, man. I appreciate taking taking some time with us here today. I know your time is valuable, so I do not take that for granted. Everybody else listening. Remember, money only solves your money problems, but it's easier to solve the rest of your problems when you got money in the bank. So let's solve that one first here on the Travis Makes Money podcast. Thanks for tuning in. Catch you guys next time. Peace.