Most Underrated Growth Tactic in Ecommerce Right Now With Andrew Faris

We've got the Andrew Farris from AJF Growth. Andrew, thanks for joining.

It is my pleasure to be here. Uh, you guys are, are the best, so thanks for having me.

I listened to your guys' episode yesterday and then I listened to 2 more of your episodes today, Andrew. So I feel like this is, I'm on hour like 3 or 4 of, of getting Andrew e-com content.

Great. Uh, well hopefully, uh, hopefully some of it will have been helpful to you in some way, I guess. Uh, hopefully, hopefully, or hopefully, or hopefully. Or hopefully you'll have like a, a great, a great, uh, way to like, just, just come after me. Just invite me on the show and just be like, you said this and it was just dead wrong and I'm just gonna skewer you on my larger audience than yours. That would be great.

For sure.

Yeah. This is actually an exposé.

Uh, um, yeah. Yeah. He, he just went on your episode just to like get a warmup round. It's like, that's like the hu— the hustling in pool. Like he let you win one for sure. Yeah. And, and kind of like scout you out a little bit.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Podcast scouting is hilarious. Yeah, but no, that's, that's, that's what I was on this week. Um, Andrew, for those unfamiliar, can you give maybe just a brief overview of your background, what you do? Um, and then we get, we got a bunch of stuff to jump into.

Yeah, sure. Uh, I've been in e-com D2C for, uh, 11, maybe almost pushing 12 years now. Um, and have been sort of in every side of the business. So, um, started off at QALO, Q-A-L-O, silicone wedding ring. Brand, these guys, if you've ever seen them, was doing that with Taylor Holiday, uh, early on there, that was in 2014. They, Kayla went zero to $20 million in, in, um, in like 18 months with no outside funding. And that doesn't sound that crazy now, but in those days, nobody was getting that big that fast. Um, and, and so it was just kind of a wild introduction to e-com. And also there were like no experts in e-com in 2014. Like I think Ezra Firestone was the only one. And, uh, and pretty much other than that, like nobody really knew anything. And so you just sort of found people who could do stuff, added them to your team when you could. And that's how I got it. It was like somebody just was like, you, if Taylor was like, you, you could do Facebook and Google Ads. So, uh, so here, do it. Um, of course there was no Instagram ads on Facebook at the time. Like the acquisition hadn't even happened yet. So it was literally just Facebook ads. Um, and it was, it was just a different world, but went, went from there with Taylor to Common Thread Collective when that was going in the early days, eventually became the head of growth, um, there like a sort of VP of strategy kind of role, uh, alongside Taylor. Uh, working really closely with him. And then at, at some point CTC split off its own brands into an aggregator called 4x400, which I ended up running, ran that pretty directly into the ground. Um, and, uh, learned a lot from that process. I reflect back on that all the time and think about what we got right, what we got wrong. Uh, a lot of things we got wrong in that scenario. Uh, but I left there after 2021, so experienced COVID there running brands myself. Um, and then, uh, started doing some freelancing, accidentally became a freelancer. I was looking at other jobs, but like a few sort of dream clients all at once fell into my lap. So I started doing some growth, meta ads type freelancing across, across a few different places. I was working with Simple Modern in those days, working with a baseball training company called Driveline Baseball. These are like great, wonderful people, great clients that I just love. Um, and, and some other projects along the way. And suddenly, like, I was an agency, I guess, because I started like needing some help to service those clients. And then was like, well, I guess I need this person's help. I need a copywriter. So I hired my sister-in-law who's like really good and smart. And so she joined and then this, you know, whatever. So eventually I had this team and started hiring the Philippines and I looked up one day and realized like, oh, I have an actual ad agency and that became AJF Growth. Um, and since then there's been a lot of developments to it, but what we are today, AJF Growth, has now the biggest development more recently is my partnership with Patrick Kadu, my COO, business partner. Um, but basically even partners in the business. Um, he joined officially in January of this year and we were really kind of starting to push on trying to grow an agency with the most sort of, uh, direction that I've had, uh, around this whole project in my time for a while. We service $5 to $25 million e-commerce brands trying to go from there to like the $25 to $50 range. Those are wide ranges. It, it just, just kind of depends on where they're at, but I think the journeys of brands in that space are fairly similar to one another. Sort of the part of the e-commerce world that I've spent the most of my career in. And I just feel like I deeply understand what it takes to go from that stage. Like I said, 5 to 25 to like that 25 to 50 space, uh, really focusing at this point on Meta ads, cohort forecasting, like financially driven sort of, uh, target setting, road mapping, that kind of stuff. And then, um, it's in on the Meta side, it's creative and media buying. We do some Google and stuff like that too. We do AppLovin, of course, some other channels, but really, really big focus on Meta media buying, meta creative, and then all of that driven by financially focused, uh, sort of road mapping forecasting. So that's what I do. Did that answer the question?

Absolutely. That was a very comprehensive answer. And a lot of people say they've got like the full spectrum experience, but it's really not as much as what you've got. Truly brand side, agency side, holdco, back to agency. You're like, you're moving back and forth across the spectrum.

That's, that's actually why I answer the question that way. Cause like basically the only thing I haven't done is SaaS really. Um, but I, I feel like I have very good feel for what it's like in each of those seats at this point, whether it's the CEO of the brand or the sort of coordinator level marketer at a brand or, you know, uh, an early growth strategist or somebody running an agency. Like I've, I've sort of been in all those spots and, um, and I'm really grateful for that. I, it's one of the pieces of advice I give people early a lot is like, try to get a wide range of reps if you're earlier in your career, because there's just stuff you see from each of those seats that is different.

Um, so I've got this, the question's a little bit off topic and then, and then I've got like a, a heavier hitting one to ask next. 2014 going zero to $20, uh, two quick points on this actually. Zero to $20, 2014, absolutely super impressive. I get it. Uh, not quite the like zero to $1.8 billion that everybody's talking about this week with, uh, MetaVie. Did you guys see that?

Yeah. No.

Oh yeah. Two guys, allegedly, there's a New York Times article about it. Two guys, AI-built website. It's in the GLP-1 space. They're supposedly on an almost $2 billion run rate at this point.

And what are they called?

It's like Medivie, Medvie, something like that. Did you follow this, Cody?

Yeah. And so what I saw is I think they're, you know, they're, they're Claude-pilled. They're doing a lot better than I am with their Clauding and actually turning the revenue, but they're like spinning up like 80 different whitelisted pages of doctors and running ads on them from, and from not, no doctors. So.

It.

It's an FTC violation waiting to happen.

Yeah. A lot of questionable tactics involved here for sure. Um, but it almost, at first I thought it was a joke because I thought that we were at the point in the cycle where people were just making up the biggest number possible. You've got Zack Stuck coming out extremely legitimately saying Marsman's on a, you know, 9-figure run rate and that's about 2 years old or whatever. And I thought, oh, this is now a joke. People are just saying I went zero to $2 billion with 2 people. I'm like, this is clearly some sort of like satirical take on where he comes out right now. But, um, apparently there's like, I don't know, semblances of truth to it.

We'll see.

So we've, we've gotten past the point of 0 to 20 million being like, uh, it's just a little bit different in 2026.

I know, I know. It's, it's, it does, it's funny how much that story doesn't age very well now, but it's like, I still remember the first, I still remember the first, uh, the first Google Analytics account, rest in peace, Google Analytics. Do you guys remember that? Remember Google Analytics? Uh, the, uh, speaking of aging stories. The, uh, I remember the first one as I looked at, uh, that was a $20 million a year Shopify brand and, and it was actually, it was when I was at CTC and Taylor like called me into his office and he was like, dude, you have to come see this. And it was like, because it was like 2016 or something and like there just were not many of those brands around at the time. Like it was really hard to get to that space in, in those times. And, uh, I'll, I'll say it was Diff Eyewear. I'll, I'll shout those guys out 'cause they're great. But, um, but I remember seeing their account and it was like, We couldn't believe the like traffic numbers at 20 million or whatever, because it was just so, so rare that you saw stuff like that, you know? Um, so yeah, anyway, we, and they did it without Claude, so I don't even know how they did it without Claude.

They were probably at like a 7x MER. I mean, those were like, those were the salad days.

Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah.

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Uh, I don't remember. Uh, but this is actually maybe the single most practically valuable thing that Taylor Holiday has ever told me, which was to get on Twitter. Uh, because, and I was like resistant to it and annoyed by it, like, I just have a sort of baseline distaste for active platform building, I guess. Like I'm cool to it now 'cause that's part of my job, but like at the time I was just so annoyed by what that kind of was. So maybe it was like, I don't know, 2016, 2017 or something like that, that I was, I mean, I had a Twitter account before, but I wasn't part of that. But yeah, I jumped on somewhere around then and started getting in the mix probably 'cause of Orendorf too. Like he, we were, I think I, became friends with him too. And yeah, he was at Shopify at the time.

Yeah. Okay.

Yeah. Oh yeah.

Yeah.

He was at Shopify Plus at the time. Yeah.

Because that was around the same time for me. It was like late 2016, early 2017. I thought maybe there were a few guys floating around in that 2015 era, but it sounds like potentially not.

I don't, yeah, I don't think so. I mean, if the, we jumped into an existing community, so somebody must have been there.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Um, okay, cool. Now I've got, I've got, this is the heavier hitting question I've got for you. We've, we've tricked you to, to get you onto the podcast here. Uh, you work with a ton of clients. You're thinking about e-com all the time. Cody and I also, we've got our brands, we're thinking about e-com all the time. We're podcasting for 90 minutes a week. Um, what do you think is the worst advice we give? And also let me caveat this a little bit because Cody and I wouldn't, I don't think we would describe it as advice. I like the way he positioned it on your podcast where he says, I just talk about what I'm going through and the decisions that I'm making. So let me caveat with that, but people perceive it as things that they should then do. And where do you think we're off?

You shoulda, you shoulda left it. Without the caveat, because it would have been, it would have been, it would have been spicier, you know? Uh, I, I perceive what you guys are doing as exactly what you just said Cody perceives what you guys are doing. So I would never have classified it this way. Um, I, I think in some ways it's that you talk about things that are sort of almost like more complex, uh, and more like unfocused enough in some ways, in some ways. Then what is actually the problem, they become distractions for people at earlier phases of business, particularly when that's sort of like Andrew Ferriss, uh, or the AJF Growth ICP 5 to 25 stage, earlier stages on Meta. Um, there's just a, there's just a crawl before you walk on, on some stuff. And the crawling is super hard, uh, actually, like I don't want to make it sound easy. It's hard to get that early stage right still, but I think there's like a level of complexity because the problems you guys are solving are just, are, they are more complex at your stage of business. They just are. Um, and that, so that means that you guys are referencing larger teams that you're working with, more ability to bring in more partners on problems that you're working with, more need for various software tools, you know, like, uh, and, and it's not like you're saying, go get this tool. It's just that you're just casually referencing things you're doing, um, in, in ways, you know, incrementality testing and things like that. Like the reality is most of those brands. At that stage don't need to run a single incrementality test. Like they just don't. Um, and, and I, and like Olivia from the Incrementality Company would tell them that, you know, uh, and, and so, yeah, I think that's probably the biggest thing is that there's a way in which there's like a focus on the real incrementality.

Sorry.

I like how you said it. It's just in case people don't know, like, I, my point, but my point is just that like, even though she sells incrementality, she would tell people that you don't need incrementality at that stage, you know? Um, And, and so it's sort of this, you know, she has the financial incentive to say the opposite and she'd still say it. So the point is, the point is that, that, that at those stages, I think that that's not really where most people are. I don't even know if that's a fair, like, I don't even know if it is a criticism of you or, yeah, somebody's going to be mad at us for this not being spicy enough. I should have made it spicier because I really don't mean it actually very, very much as a critique, but I just think you're dealing with different and harder problems in some ways, um, than, than what people at that stage are. Maybe not even harder, just different. I totally agree.

And I think we're all aware how it can be misinterpreted at times. And then I'll talk to brands who are very small, who are talking about optimizing for non-purchase events. And I'm like, that's not what you need to be doing.

Right.

And I know we've, we've gotten that feedback and, and I've definitely heard it and I struggle with it a little bit because I'm like, I'm not trying to be like a teacher or a guru. Like I'm doing this to learn from you guys. And it's like, that's like my truth, but like. You know, I haven't ran other brands and it's also been so long since I've been inside an ad account of a smaller one. It's like, I kind of feel like an imposter doing that. You know, I think it was fun talking about Connor's brand last week. 'Cause like, you're in the weeds doing it. And I was like, yeah, if I were to start a brand, like that's exactly what I would be doing. Like, I think that was a good one. And hopefully, you know, there's some good feedback on that. But like, I think Ezra does a great job of that. Like Ezra Firestone does such a great job of, he's like actually like a teacher and he's got brands, but he makes it relate to brands of all sizes. And I don't think we do a great job of that. So it's, uh, feedback is heard.

Uh, I don't think it's bad. I like, I think it's good that like, I, I think the fact that you don't, uh, hold forth on things that you don't feel like you know of, like you, that you can't speak authoritatively to Cody is a good thing. Right? Like that. And I, I try not to do the same thing. Like sometimes people will come to me. I was on a coaching call the other day when somebody asked me my opinion on, I don't even remember what I was like. Uh, you should not pay for any minutes of my time to answer that question because like I, what I could tell you will be like me shooting from the hip and I don't really know, you know, and I think anyway, so I think it's, I think there's value there. There's, there's enough content out there for, for everything else. Like you guys, you guys are a select group of people who can speak to some things that not many people have gotten to and that a lot of people want to get to and you should speak to those things. Like I don't, it's not even, that's why it's not even really a critique. It's just that the thing that I feel with it with some clients or whatever.

Do you think we, do you think we talk about anything? Do we give advice that you think is, uh, more productive when interpreted by smaller brands?

Uh, yes, definitely. I mean, I think, I think you guys both have a really good feel for, um, essentially a, a mix of, and, and certainly Connor as well, a mix of like the tactical realities of the businesses, but also in a way that Um, is connected to the total brand, the total brand presence. You know, I hesitate to say brand and performance because it's like an oversimplified way of thinking about it. Like, but, uh, I think that, I think that to boil down a lot of what I think about brands in the earlier stage, there is this, like, there's a few things that I'll say are, I'll call them tactical. I don't even know if that's quite the right word for it, but they're like operational, let's call them things that those brands need to get figured out and need some sort of like P&L worldview sorted out. To understand how to get through the stage of business that I'm typically dealing with. Um, that is really important. And at the same time, what I think a lot of those brands need to do is sort of stop being so tactical all the time and assume every problem is that, and think instead about like, well, what actually, am I doing something and presenting something that actually is creating emotional resonance with real people? And I, I think when I talk, when I hear you guys talk about your brands, you know, Cody, like I've heard you talking about some of the stuff you're doing to get more input from customers. Like that's the kind of thing I'm talking about. You're, you're building operational tools to like, go, wait a minute, how am I really, how am I really showing up as a brand to a customer? What is my, what is my place in their life? And how does that affect what I do and say? And, and, you know, yeah, I would certainly say the same thing is true for Ridge and, and a lot of the partnership kind of stuff you guys have done. And so anyway, I think that whole way of approaching things where it's this tactical intelligence mixed with that. And the other thing is, I think at the base of your guys' stuff, one of the reasons I like talking to you guys stuff. About stuff and, and inviting you on my podcast and all that is that there is a, a sort of, um, financial sanity undergarding, undergirding almost everything you guys are saying. And I feel this all the time when you guys talk. There's just an attentiveness to the metrics that matter in your businesses. And that is true for, that needs to be true for any operator. It needs to be true for you at 9 figures. It needs to be true for you at $900,000 a year. You know, you have to be attentive to. The metrics that matter in your business and to, to really holding yourself to those things. And every time I hear any of you guys open your mouth, you're talking about this in some, in terms of some kind of payoff that means something to the business that you guys are really attuned to. Um, I think people can learn a lot just from hearing that mentality. And it's, it's like I said, it's one of the reasons I like talking to you and even feel like it's easy to talk to you. Like, I feel like we're kind of coming at it from the same perspective there.

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So I'll just go on the record now. Anything that gets misinterpreted or might be seen as negative is just us talking about our experiences.

Anything good should be considered advice.

Yeah.

This was, uh, this was the best feedback I've ever gotten. I think you're way too nice. I'm just like, you know, we asked you one question to tear us apart and you just told us what we're really good at. So, uh, you're, you're welcome back on the podcast anytime.

Yeah, perfect.

This is a great episode.

Yeah, we're done. And I'm just contrasting this with, imagine if we asked Taylor Holiday this question on the podcast. Oh yeah. Yeah.

Well, as I've said many times, arguing with Taylor Holiday is America's fifth major sport, so it's great. Good time for everybody.

All right, perfect. I got a, I got a scenario I wanna lay out for both you guys. I'm gonna kick it to Cody first. I was talking about it with Connor Rowling this week. Him and I had the pleasure of hanging out IRL one of the few times, um, made it down to the HexCloud office. Nice digs downtown. They got the, they got the high ceilings in there. They got the stocked kitchen. It, it feels like a Gordon Ramsay, you know, multi-nine-figure brand.

Anyway, I got to visit the old one once, but they moved, right? Are they still at that one in the Arts District? Yeah, they moved, I think.

Yeah.

Yeah. They're in a beautiful spot down there. Okay. So this is what I was talking about. I talked to a brand, um, last week, $30 $30 million per year brand. I'm gonna give you some, some, um, attributes here. Uh, it's a consumable, high LTV. Of the $30 million, 75% is retail. So very small D2C business. Um, they are hiring for their first like senior marketing role. And I don't wanna be like specific about what they're titling the role, but you can imagine it's a director of acquisition or a head of e-com, something like that. Um, the founders come from a tech background. They're very product-oriented, not marketing, not marketers themselves, and definitely not like DR, D2C marketers. So my question is, how do you scope that role and what skills do you look for? That's a, I'll lay it out there. Cody, where's your, where does your mind immediately go?

Yeah, it's like understanding what your strengths are, what your weaknesses are and your holes are, but also how you want to grow, right? If they're, if they're, for, you know, their background is not growth, but they also like, whether it's right or wrong, have strong feelings and think it should be more creative brand-led, like get a really strong either overall marketing leader, you know, or get a more of a, like a brand-focused marketing leader and just decide that's how you're going to grow. Or if you're like, hey, we got to get D2C, we got to crack it. This is not our background. Like you got to get a really good growth leader who can be super tactical as well as strategic and, and scale D2C for you.

That's true. So just to maybe specify it a little bit further, I know a lot, the majority of their revenue is retail right now. They're looking for someone to come in and grow the D2C. D2C business. So you wanna be erring on that, that direct-to-consumer side. Does that change your answer at all?

Yeah, I think so. It's most likely a head of growth if we're not giving a title, but it's like a really good tactical person who can grow D2C and probably do that primarily with like paid social, landers, that kind of stuff.

So what skills would you be looking for in that person?

All right. And can I ask like 1 to 2 cheat questions to get a little bit more context?

Yeah, totally.

So like why, like they're obviously doing really well. Usually it's the opposite. It's like, hey, 75% D2C, 25% retail. Why do you think, I'm just trying to figure out what the opportunity is. What do they have to crack to get D2C? Like, why is retail that much bigger for them than D2C at this stage?

I honestly think they've just built out a strong, like, sales organization. They've taken almost a traditional approach. This product is, is far and away typically bought at, like, your convenience stores, your CVSs, your Walgreens, things like that. So I think they open up a couple big accounts. They'll hit the big like convenience store mega events, conferences that they have every year, and they'll sell into all the, the, the big chains and things. So I think they've just, that's where they've prioritized it and they've never gotten good at like the, the direct response sort of scaling of it.

Then it sounds like it's probably, if you're saying convenience stores, you're probably low AOV. You need somebody who's going to be really good at testing offers and is going to be able to do bundles, offers, test all that stuff and IntelliGems test, you know, post-purchase stuff and obviously test like ads and funnels. Like, I think you just need like a really tactical, like, full-stack growth marketer.

Okay.

I like it.

Andrew, where does your mind go here?

Um, okay. So if you've got CPG, high LTV built off, uh, you know, sold in convenience stores, I had the same thought as Cody, which is just that, uh, that it probably is low, low AOV and, um, in a way that makes me think like, Um, well, yeah, I mean, I guess the way I'd put it is it's, I'm surprised they're able to do, uh, you know, roughly $7.5 million according to your math there in D2C because, uh, because it's very hard to think of many convenience store products that actually do well as D2C. Like it's, those are two channels that don't work very well with each other. And the problem is the D2C, what I think a lot of people forget, this last mile shipping is core to what D2C is. And, and, and so, so, uh, last mile shipping just is expensive and, and therefore it's really hard to make that work margin profile-wise, uh, without extreme LTV out of very low AOV. Um, because, because you're just going to get eaten up on margin by that shipping cost, even when you charge for it, right? If you charge $5 for shipping, you're, you're probably paying at least that much to get it to the customer's door, which means you have a 0% item in your unit, a 0%, uh, margin item in your unit economics that blends down your unit economics really aggressively. So, um, now having said all that, uh, the counterargument to that is if 7.5 million in D2C is nothing to sneeze at, that means there's a material amount of people buying this product there. Um, and so I echo Cody's point too, which is there's something here about offers and bundles or something like that, where to make this channel work, you probably need to either be going super heavy subscription depending on what the product is. Uh, where you, you don't worry too much about the AOV because you're gonna get so much repeat behavior or more likely to me actually. And one of my hotter takes is that, uh, this should happen in more subscription brands too. Um, is, is push the AOV up with bundling or whatever, right? So if it's some, something that normally you buy 1 or 2 at a time in a convenience store, you're selling 12 packs or something on your website. So if that's the pathway, the other thing I would say is if it's super high LTV and you've only got $7.5 million in D2C revenue. Presumably that means they actually aren't spending that much right now on Meta. Uh, because I was, I would assume of that $7.5 million, some of it is word of mouth downstream from their, from their sales org. Uh, and secondly, uh, a lot of that's probably returning customer revenue because of it just by definition of its high LTV, which means they're probably, they can't be spending that much money now on, on Meta. Um, so, so then I think one of two things, one of them is they should accept that they're not ever going to spend that much on like conversion optimized meta. And they need to think about the value of that channel differently. Um, and, and they should think instead about like, okay, uh, merchandising and super fan limited edition kind of stuff, which is what, like, I think some of these brands do with their website. And that's one kind of skillset where you're working with the product team to say like, how do we take those sort of super loyal customers who want to buy it direct and get it, you know, create great experiences there. Um, or, or if you think there's a real opportunity on Meta with some of that bundling stuff. And again, like knowing only what I know about the brand, it's a little hard to say, but, uh, then I think you need like a kind of a classic performance marketer, uh, like a little bit more of what, uh, Cody's talking about here, which is like bundle focused, somebody who can really deeply understand we're going to unlock Meta, we're going to get a retention team going and we're going to start like putting in all the tactical stuff that's sort of the basics of brands at this size to, to get them pushing. Um, So yeah, that's my take because yeah, just like back to the napkin, like it's, it, you know, is, is there a million bucks in meta spend here per year? Like, uh, it feels like it, it might be less than that, you know? Totally.

Yeah.

That means there's probably room there. That's my, that's my take. Uh, so it depends on which one of those the organization wants to go. Uh, and that would probably help me shape that job description a little bit.

Yeah. I, I, I ask because, um, I feel like I talk to brands all the time who are trying to hire this like head of growth, head of e-com, director of acquisition, whatever it is, the like silver bullet marketer that's gonna help them get back to growth on D2C. Um, And you guys bring up great points that like, depending on what the strategy is, depending on what the product is, I think you have to be prioritizing different skill sets. So I was thinking, you guys let me know if you'd poke any holes in this, but I feel like there's almost 3 large buckets. I've got media buying, measurement, channel allocation. Someone who's just going to understand how to spend dollars, how to test into new channels, how to allocate across those channels. Presumably you're figuring out content in other ways. You're hiring a junior creative strategist, you're hiring an agency, et cetera. Uh, you could do, and I feel like you guys landed on this one, like web product CRO offer testing where it's like, hey, we are gonna nail the web experience. We're gonna get high conversion rates. We're gonna build that LTV. I think that, that kind of fits into one strong bucket. And then the last one is content development, which is where my mind initially went, where it's like, if I need to hire my first person, I'm gonna figure out who can build a system where I'm activating 1,000 affiliates at scale or whatever. Like I'm actually thinking about more of those systems. And it's just a matter of prioritizing with this head of growth role, like what is their primary skillset? And then how are you solving some of those other ones with either more junior internal resources or outsourcing to other agencies?

Yeah, I, I feel like my real answer is not to hire somebody called a DTC head of growth. And the, and the reason why is like, if you're telling me 75% of the distribution happens in those channels, like I would, I just think you probably want to support those channels first. Like it, it, I'm, you know, again, it's hard to say without looking at the exact brand. So, um, so when I hear that last answer you gave Connor, my, my, my take is like, that feels right to me where it's like, if you could get whether maybe it's some affiliate to the website, because there's, because there's real revenue on the, on the website there, but maybe it's something like, uh, like a bunch of, yeah, it's like creator influencer activator type, like you said, affiliate type or whatever, however you structure that. There's a few ways you could do that, but. you do that kind of person with the assumption that the halo effect of all of that organic reach that they're all going to get you is, is actually going to be a huge thing that drives a bunch of value in your retail sell-through. And that's actually, that's a lot, like probably where you're going to do a lot of the eating, you know? Um, and so like that, that feels like a really good role for that company to me. I don't know if I would call that a DTC head of growth though.

Yeah, for sure. And that's why I said like the, the, the actual role's not that important to me. Or it's like, like, I don't even want to say like they are hiring for this role. It's kind of like, with these attributes of the business and with their priority, with their priority of growing the DTC business, like how would you even scope it? So just fun little thought exercise.

Oh, it's great.

I wanted to get you guys' take. Um, okay. I've got this as a question. You, and you brought it up briefly, Andrew, you've got a hot take on subscription strategies that I'd love to talk through. Can you lay it out?

Uh, I think here's the, here's the simple version of it. I think AOV is the most underrated metric in, in subscription LTV brands. Uh, that, that, uh, that act that like people all focus so much on subscription rate, uh, and on, on LTV based off of, off of like getting certain subscription rates, uh, like retention rate and how many percentage of, uh, customers you get that subscribe. Um, but I've started to look at this math a little differently and think like, I think it's possible that brands are making, making the game way harder on themselves cash-wise, uh, than it needs to be. Because they're sort of like, you know, the classic subscription LTV playbook is like spend into oblivion at a 0.6 or whatever on Meta and just, and just win on your 250% LTV or whatever the number is, you know, um, that can, that totally can work. Like it's not, I've, I've like, I've, I've done it, like I've watched it work, you know? Um, and, but I also think that there's, uh, that a lot of those brands undervalue sort of just getting one-time purchases with a higher AOV and not burning so much money on first purchase. Um, they undervalue that in a number of ways, but, uh, one of the ways it happens, I think, is that I actually think that over a 6+ month time period, um, you end up with, with, uh, subscriber and non-subscriber customers very often converging on each other and their retention rates. And the basic point here is that like once a customer either doesn't want the product or just has too much of it, it's really hard to get them to keep buying it, you know? Uh, and, and so, so whatever, whether they subscribed or not, um, they can get there. And I used to kick against this. I used to think like, this is wrong. It's all about LTV in these businesses. But just, I've looked at some of these cohorts play out over very long periods of time, and I'm sort of amazed at how much like your subscriber cohort and your non-subscriber cohort converge on each other. On the other hand, when you get customers who buy more upfront, you, you actually can sometimes by putting together really good offers, get really good, um, like much better, like ROAS, AMER, et cetera. And that makes the cash management game like dramatically easier. Uh, if you can exist at a 1 to 1 or a 1.1 to 1, so still really aggressive, but not as aggressive as before and get higher AOVs, more money on first purchase. It's just, Um, it, it can really work. So you run up the ROAS by being a little less aggressive about getting people to subscribe and by bundling a little bit more and getting a little more AOV. Um, and that can really work. Now, this obviously isn't the case if you're like a single SKU brand, right? If you're a single SKU brand, the whole, you can't play that game really. But, um, but when brands have multiple SKUs, there's, there's an opportunity there. And in general, there's a trade-off in these businesses between, uh, available volume. Uh, ROAS, uh, AOV, um, and, uh, something else that is relevant that I can't remember. Uh, and, uh, and, and actually playing off of all of those, uh, oh, retention rate. Um, and playing, playing all of those, uh, people are, are often not attentive to how increasing one hurts the other or increasing, you know, or decreasing one helps the other or whatever it is. And it's just more, there are more trade-offs there than people realize. So yeah, so the hot take is maybe actually you don't need to, to exclusively focus on getting people to subscribe. It may actually be the case that, that you can exist at a, at a higher AOV, higher ROAS, uh, to start and, and those customers will be plenty valuable to you. And actually like the, the LTV to CAC math can work better and at more scale. So that's, that sounds maybe vague, but yeah.

No, if I can say it back and you let me know if I'm, if I've got this right, because I'm going to, I'm going to hit like a subset of the point that you just made, um, that one-time purchase buyers can have LTV that even though they're not subscribing, they can buy the product one time and they will come back and purchase more if they like it.

Definitely.

And if brands are disincentivizing the one-time purchase, you are, you know, you are turning off a marginal customer. You are no longer getting that one-time buyer who doesn't want to subscribe, but who would lead to LTV. Over time. So if you de-emphasize the focus on subscription, get that one-time purchaser, track that LTV that you're actually unlocking marginal revenue.

Yes. And there's a math problem here that people are not attentive to. The first person I saw pointed out in these terms is Drew Fallon, who said that, uh, who said nobody actually knows their subscriber CAC. Um, and what he meant by that was almost all of these pages, unless you're like literally subscription only. Okay. If you're, if there's no option of buying one time. Then, then you know your subscriber CAC, but almost all of the subscription brands, they have, um, they have a, uh, uh, uh, one-time purchase or a subscription option. Right. And, and people think, so let's say you get, uh, uh, you spend $100 and you get 2 purchases, right? Uh, one of them is a one-time purchase and one of them is a, is a subscriber. Okay. It's like, oh great. It's a $50 CAC on both. But what people do not understand is that you might've very well paid a $70 CAC on your subscriber and a $30 CAC on your one-time purchase. And while the subscriber's retention rate is almost certainly better than the one-time purchaser, just to be clear, like it probably is better. It actually takes, it takes a long time and a lot better to make up the $40 that you just paid incrementally. And you may actually be able to get those subscribers at much less volume. Um, and so, so there are these, this is what I mean by the trade-offs. And so, and, and it's almost always impossible to tell what the true CAC on each of those two things is. Without like playing with the offer structure or something like that. And then kind of watching the volume change because by definition, they're both coming through the same page. So you just have some blended average across the board, but the mistake is to assume that both cost the same amount. The subscriber is better because they have better retention and that's it. Like, I'm just not sure that's true. And, and that actually is a gigantic cost. Now it could still work because the subscription LTV could be so good, you know, and a 6-month payback period with a huge bunch of value over the long term still works, but I'm not sure it's actually the best way to do it.

Say that to Zach Stucke, who I don't even think you can do a one-time purchase on Marsman.

Well, so I mean, that's, I think that's one of the potential issues.

I'm just joking too.

Yeah. Well, yeah. I mean, I actually think, I know you're joking and, and I mean, Zach is always a funny example because I think he's like the elite of the elite at this, you know, like he's like, I mean, I just sort of obviously, right? Like he got to $100 million run rate, how fast? Like, and just, it's just like.

Also, actually, ironically, it proves a point, like, like My, it's a bad example because they just raised a bunch of funding because maybe they do need, they're growing insanely fast, but from a cash. So part of it depends on your cash needs.

Yeah. Yeah. And, and I think actually that way of doing it, if it's literally subscription only, is a, is like a more, in some ways, more reasonable way to do it. It's like, it's single SKU, right? I don't, I think they only have one product. I don't know. Single SKU and it's subscription only. Okay. You're now you're saying we're putting all our chips in on this one thing. And now it's like, maybe, maybe that's like a, a slightly better, I don't know, then maybe there's some, some value to be had there.

But no, it's true. And you know, the other point that I would make just around Mars Men is testosterone's different. Testosterone is a, is a, if it, if people are using it, they're using it every day. You know, I worked with a brand way back in the day and this was when everybody was trying subscription of whatever, but it was like 30-day, you know, subscription on sunscreen and they wanted it to be a daily SPF and moisturizer. And it's like, okay, I get the idea that you want people to use every day, but That's just not going to happen. Like, like in practice, people are going to use it every other day. It's a terrible product to be subscribed for. You're going to get a really high churn rate. So if all of a sudden you're, you have this artificially high one-time purchase price because you're trying to drive these subscribers, you're like totally screwing yourself over when in reality, just have a reasonable one-time purchase price, get people in, get people using it. They're going to come back naturally every 45, 60, 75 days.

If somebody wants something actionable about this, I'll tell you an example that I think has been really good. A guy who's been talked about a lot and rightly so, because he's a brilliant operator is Jack Rubin and Purdy and Fig. Um, I, I watched very closely what Jack did in that business and, and like, you know, did, did some ongoing work with Jack at one point. And one of the things he did that was really smart is he would start testing offers and, uh, and he would have, you know, here's, uh, version 1 with, with 3 cents, his things, a cleaning product with different, with different smells, you know, different scents, uh, 3, 3 cent version versus the 4 cent version. Right. So, um, and the 4th cent is like seasonal, uh, you know, it's something that's a spring scent or a winter scent or whatever. Right. Um, and then he would just like split his traffic, run the two of them, and then watch the retention rates given those different offer structures over like multiple months, uh, off of, off of like a clear split test. And then he, he was very careful operationally to look backwards and, and actually run the split test, carefully measure the outcomes, watch the unit economics, the retention rates of each group. He was like following up with customers and finding out why did you churn? Like all that. That's like the attentiveness you need to have to doing those kinds of offers to really make them work. And the result for him has been like an insane business, right? Um, they basically are in every house in the UK or whatever. So it's like, uh, the, the, that's, and I think, I think that's the sort of action thing here is like, just, just don't assume, don't assume those, like, think about, play the game for a second with your business. What happens if I do an AOV-driven offer and split it against a massive discount on a subscriber? So I like. Get 50% less LTV, but everybody subscribes, you know, and then watch the, watch the retention curves over multiple months. It takes that long to measure it because this is what you have to see. You have to see the retention curves over time and then check it again after 6 months and keep watching because these things make a difference in your business for over a very long period of time. But, um, but yeah, I think that's the way you have to approach those problems and, and you, you, you gotta be tied into that stuff.

Okay. So Cody, I kind of feel like you're moving in the opposite direction. Uh, I listened to, I've had the pleasure, I missed the, the podcast with the woman from Salt and Stone. So I got, I got a Cody Conner episode a couple weeks ago and she really He broke down like different offers and gift with purchases. And I know that you guys have a big focus on samples this year, driving down AOV, counting on more LTV. So like what Andrew just described, you're kind of working in the inverse. How is that working? And are you kind of, um, measuring it or thinking about it in a similar way?

Yeah. So, and just for context, if people, you know, are like Andrew and don't listen to every single marketing operator's podcast, which is wild to me. I'm just kidding. Um, yeah, we, we like our conventional, so we've never, we're not subscription again, we're bootstrapped. Art, we always want to be profitable on first purchase and always just did everything we could to optimize towards profit. And so everything was just, let's drive AOV up higher, higher, and higher. And it worked. We had a lot of our account on VO, value optimization. We would, you know, have a, we had a very high free shipping threshold. Um, and it worked for a long period of time. And what I've learned is a lot of things work until they don't. And, um, after, you know, testing and surveying and studying, like We think we, it's probably at that phase of the game. It's, it was the right thing where let's optimize for profit, but there are a lot of people we're just going to miss out on that are just not comfortable buying makeup online if they have to spend that much, you know? And so the people that were kind of the early adopters, hyper-adopters, maybe they're confident enough where we can convert them and it's a worthwhile trade-off. Um, and so our goal this year was how do we just reach more people? How do we get to more people? And you know, maybe it works for creating a $100 million business, but to get to $200 million, like we need more people and A, are we willing to take less profit per order to get more orders? Like that was our, you know, math and calculus. Fortunately, our, you know, beauty margins are good enough where you can do that, but then hopefully it's, it's a, it's a fair trade-off. So one of the first things that we did was we lowered our, we tested with Intel Gems, lowering our free shipping threshold. We were at $85 before we tested $75, $65, $55. I don't know if we tested $45, we might have. We landed at $55. Not surprising to anybody. Pretty big conversion rate increase going there. Definitely some interesting data along the way. Um, we're like, it wasn't linear. It wasn't like, you know, at every $10 it's linear, but, um, that was, that was the best outcome for us. We definitely AOV decreased. We definitely lost a little bit of margin per session. Uh, but we, a little bit of shipping revenue we lost, right? But we thought it was worth it. And then hopefully one or two tests we can make up for that if we need to. If not, the volume will, you know, outweigh that. So that's one. It's just, there are just so many people that we just think getting more new customers to try things will be better. You know, even if there's maybe slightly less profit. And by the way, when you're running an Intelligems test like that, you're not looking at CAC as well. And so you're looking at conversion rate, but you're also not like really measuring that super strategically or super clearly. So hopefully it does lower CAC when it's not like a big enough change to see in the business. So that's one. We launched minis, you know, mini Miracle Balms year round. So obviously Ari said that was a huge, you know, thing for them. So I don't know.

I don't know.

Maybe we're not being as data-driven at it. Like we, we are testing with intelligence, but we're just, we're making a bunch of changes to get more products in people's hands to try them that we think will be good for us. But we're also like, we have, it's different if you're like trying to get your AOV up on a, you know, item to even be able to scale profitably and break even. Like, that's a very different game. I think we just played that game so hard. We were sitting at, you know, for us, a very high AOV in our category, like significantly higher than competitors. And we, we just needed to play the opposite game a little bit.

Totally.

So in the case of like mini Miracle Balms being available year round, those, are those coming at a significantly lower order value? And then I would imagine you guys are looking at the, the, the cohort value of the people that are coming in on those.

Yeah.

And, and we know, and the team knows that that's, so we launched it in March, so it's been actually exactly a month today. And so we're just now getting all of this data and able to see repeat rate. So minis have a worse margin than full size because a lot of your costs are going to be packaging. So you just have less leverage. We are allowing people, this is like the closest that we can do to test subscription with offers. Cause normally it's just like, hey, here's a single product is we're allowing people to buy one. Or 3 or 6 of them and a full size on the same page. So there's a lot of different combinations that we can play with there of pricing of, you know, do we default to 3, to a 1? Like, so that'll be tested a lot. Um, and we'll find the best revenue per session and then we will look at repeat rate and we'll be, you know, more aggressive than normal in terms of how we're upselling. Because if, if our theory is we're, there's a lot more trial here, but maybe we, we make less margin, like we actually have to prove that and we have to make sure it, you know, it backs out. So we're just now getting into it because it's been a month. Um, but definitely a really big focus for us on this funnel.

I, I think this, this is like a perfect example of a lot of the things we've circled throughout this episode so far. In, in one sense, it's a perfect example of, uh, the complexity of what you're dealing with, Cody, that many brands that are smaller actually aren't dealing with because when they're smaller, they actually don't need to work like the, the, the volume trade-off kind of concern is not necessarily as big of a deal as like, like you said, you're bootstrapped, you gotta be first purchase profitable, like You just, you have some constraints built into the game where it's like to get to the next stage, if you want to get to $20 million or $30 million or whatever, like you just, you just don't have to kind of play some of the games that you're playing right there.

It's like the same thing as the reach conversation. It's like you don't really have to, or the mid-funnel events.

That's exactly right. And, but, uh, but it's also a good example of the, of where people, I think, ought to listen to this podcast. Listen to you guys, because the way you're processing this issue is exactly what I'm saying. You're thinking about it from the perspective of. Wait a minute, what does a customer in my particular category need to experience my product in a way that's going to generate the most value for the business? And that happens by generating the most value for the customer, right? So, so you're thinking about how do I sort of serve the customer in a really good way based on what I know about the relationship to this particular product and the relationship to this category. You mentioned your AOV relative to other brands in your space. And of course, knowing that people are also buying a lot of products in your category in stores where it's a different kind of experience, right? And they can, they can touch and feel the product and look at it, right? Um, and so, and so you're, you're saying like, here's how I do that. And then you're, you're thinking about the measurement of it with real attentiveness to the details of the metrics that matter the most, you know, uh, which is like, okay, how much margin are we getting on first purchase? What's the trade-off with that to the, to the margin that we're gonna get over the longer term to our ability to grow, to our ability to break through the next, you know, how do I go from 100 to 200, those kinds of questions. And then, and then it also illustrates this point about trade-offs, which is like, Maybe the higher AOV strategy is exactly what got you to $100 million, but perhaps that's actually keeping you from reaching the next tranche of customers. And you do actually need to trade some unit economic, like some gross margin on first purchase to reach the next group of customers, which in the aggregate over a longer period of time measured carefully and thoughtfully is going to generate the most total value for the business at the level of, you know, total revenue, net of retention, and maybe even enterprise value, you know, like. Uh, and so I, I think it's just a, a really good illustration of this, of, of, of a lot of these kinds of things where there is this weird mix of things where you're constantly going, if I pull this lever over here, it actually affects this thing over here in a sort of surprising way, maybe for the better, maybe for the worse. But I, the only way to find out is to pull the lever. So I'm gonna go do it and then measure it carefully, you know? Um, I have more to say about it, but I'll pause there.

Yeah, I like the conversation that we're having now. One thing people talk about the offer all the time, and I do think it's like a bit ambiguous at times. Um, so I'm curious, Andrew, if you have an answer to like, Cause we've hit a lot of points now. Uh, when I asked Cody, he hit free shipping threshold, which I wasn't thinking about. Um, we talked about one-time purchase versus subscription purchase, if that's how your business is structured. Um, if, if a brand, $10 million brand comes to you and says like, what are the atomic units of an offer? And like, how should I be thinking about putting this together for my brand? What is like the, the shortlist of things they should be considering?

Okay, let's start by actually using Cody's example and something you pointed out, Connor, when you asked him the question, which was, okay, Connor's going the other way from what you're saying, Andrew, you're saying go get more AOV on first purchase. And you said Cody's going the other way, try to get more samples in people's hands, smaller units, right? Minis. Um, and my answer is I actually don't think, uh, Cody's going a different way than I'm saying because we have now changed categories from supplements to beauty. And this is like, this is that difference is all the difference. Um, supplements, people have a playbook in mind about what the core part of the offer is that drives the value, which is subscription, right? Um, and understandably the, the whole point of the, The reason supplements work so well in D2C is because you take it on the same time period once a day, every day for forever. So it's like, it is a perfect product to subscribe to.

It's a—

subscribing to a supplement is actually the best way to experience that product. Because if you like it, and if it makes a difference in your, in your life, and as much as there's like garbage claims about, uh, garbage supplements out there, there's also ones that really do make a difference in people's lives and they want to take it every day, you know, subscribing to it is awesome. It just shows up. You don't have to think about it. You normally get a discount, like, and you can just take one every day for 30 days. And then every 30 days, the next one shows up. So it's great, like just straight to your door. Um, it, it actually is a great customer experience to do that. And so in that respect, it really works for, um, for beauty. What I would say is like, in fact, people aren't ready to commit to that necessarily because they want to sample the product first. It, you can't sample a supplement. Like no supplement company's gonna tell you, take 2 of these and you'll feel, you know, whatever. Like what they're gonna say is like, you need to take it for 3 months. You know, of course that's marketing nonsense a lot of times, but like, uh, but there's also probably some truth to it, right? Whereas like the, uh, something in Cody's category is like, there's a reason why if you walk into any like Ulta or Sephora or whatever, like sampling has always been part of the strategy in those kinds of places, right? Because you want to see what it is like and feel what it's like and, and see what it looks like on you or whatever it is, you know? And, and so in that respect, it is central to the category to think about that. And so to sort of answer your question more specifically, like, first of all, I love the instinct, Cody. Like, I think if I was in your shoes, I would definitely be trying that. I think what you're, you're pursuing—

No, no, no, not instinct against my instinct based on a lot of data and feedback. No, but seriously, because everything, because my instinct is let's go D2C, let's drive up profit. Yeah. And, and there was like, and look, for example, like Bobby for years had wanted to do sampling and I'm like, I don't just know how to justify it. It's like $50K MOQ, like I don't know what we would do with them. And then I'm like, oh, you know what? We're missing out on millions and millions by not being in Sephora. We should spend a million this year on samples and getting samples in people's hands. And like, don't even, like, obviously we'll try to measure it, but I'm like, the opportunity of what we're missing out on is so big. But that wasn't my instinct. I'm normally like, hey, every dollar I need to know where it's going.

Yeah. Well, to, to, to answer the question very directly, uh, an offer I have always defined as, as a very simple formula. The offer is the product plus price. That's it. That's what the offer is. Um, and, uh, and those are the two levers you have to play with. And there's a lot of ways to play with the price, right? Uh, it, though, maybe the one variation to that is something like subscription, which is not really either of those, but, um, but, uh, you, you can add products by bundling. You can make products smaller by doing samples, right? You can, uh, change the price with a free subscription threshold. You can again, do a discount. You can do a BOGO, something like that. But they're all different little, um, ways to, to play with those two things. Yeah. Again, with the maybe possible exception of like subscription method or not. And, um, and so I think that's the way I would think about it. And the core thing I would first think about if I'm constructing an offer is like, is, is what actually makes sense for this customer in this category, in this way to experience the product in the way that makes the most sense. Like for supplements, right? You can't do the sampling thing. It just doesn't make any sense. You're not going to feel anything. So you shouldn't try to go that route of make it smaller and sample more, right? Uh, for something like beauty, it's different food and bev. If you go to anything, uh, like you just have to get samples in people's hands because they have to taste it. Right. So, um, so yeah, that's the kind of first question I would ask is like, what is the right way to actually get somebody to experience this? Wallets, you probably can't sample, you know? Um, so, um, so like you have to think about the offer differently than in that category versus the other one. So anyway, there's a bunch of other things you could say about that, but that's the, the core way I would think about it is product and price are the two levers. How do you put those? That's what makes the offer the offer. And how, how do you present those in a way that make the most sense in the category? There's a million answers to that question, but that's the That's the basic lens.

I go, I go a little bit deeper, like 100% agree with you. I go, uh, product offer price positioning and just like any terms that are associated with it. So like if you do a try before you buy, like technically it's not priced, but it's maybe, maybe you like lump that in the price, like free shipping. If you're, you know, you're having shipping is in there, you're even your guarantee like that I think is part of an offer. So I think it's any terms that you have associated with it and just how you position it.

That's a good clarification. I think that's right. Yeah. But I would say free shipping is a good example of price in the sense of free shipping. Uh, like one of the famous things about free shipping is like, it's possible that a customer experiences the same $5 discount really, really differently if you position it as free shipping versus if you position it as, um, as just a straight up discount on the product, right? They, they, they may end up getting a, having a really different relationship to that. So that probably actually reinforces your point, Cody, which is that like it's sort of an angle element of it and a terms element. So price may be, price may be oversimplifying. I mean, it's definitely, it's definitely oversimplified, but yeah.

I think that's a good, that's a good sort of, um, addition there. There's multiple prices involved in the purchasing of the product. One of those can be free shipping. We talk about this all the time where if we're providing value, we want to be getting credit for it. And that's a matter of like positioning it to the customer.

For you guys, I'm curious because you have so much more of like a, uh, like non-LTV-driven business, when you think about offers, my instinct would be in your business to care overwhelmingly about AOV, but I, I don't know if that's actually true. And I'm curious how you guys, like, I, I don't know if I've heard you talk about this really. You probably have somewhere, but AOV. Yeah.

Yeah.

I mean, like, like in, in terms of your offer strategy, like how do you guys think about offers relative to your core products? Okay.

Yeah, I'll hit a couple points here. One is a lot of our big wins. This was, this was years ago, but like when I joined Ridge and end of 2016, 2017, for the first like 18 months, one of our biggest wins was we dropped cogs and we raised prices. So like the wallets used to be like $65. I think the original Kickstarter had like a $45 wallet and now our base aluminum wallet's $95 and it's like, and then we dropped cogs at that same time. So just being able to tolerate a higher CAC. So we actually, the offer didn't get better. The offer got worse, but we found that people could tolerate higher prices. Like it was just continued to be a win over time. So that's when we found a lot of, um, we were able to unlock a lot of value. Uh, our structure now, when I think of offer, and it's different the way that other people do, but really we are largely full price and then we just have these big promo events 3 times a year with our anniversary sale, our Father's Day sale, our holiday sale, where we are really trying to clear the funnel. Um, so it's almost like we're, we're building up, uh, demand that we are then capturing at different periods of time, and it's not the same as an always-on offer. Now, the more recent thing, maybe the last 18 months that we've been playing with, and what I would add very quickly to the atomic pieces of a, of an offer conversation are like different thresholds. So like free shipping is an example of that. What Cody mentioned, we've seen a bunch of wins with stuff like the progress bar where it's like, yeah, look, if you're just, if you're willing to spend, um, you know, $10, $20 more, we'll give you a free gift with purchase. That could be keychains, key cases, pens, things like that. And that is almost secondary. And what, because really that can happen in a full price period. All of our wallets are $95, $150, the standard stuff. And it's just as you move through the purchasing journey, you can capture value. And that's where a real offer is, this free gift with purchase living in the cart or really aggressive upsells on a full, or what should I say, really aggressive accessories, really, really aggressively priced accessories on a full price wallet will convert people on the full price wallet at a higher rate. So it's almost these like complimentary offers that are driving, um, you know, marginal purchases. Um, so that's really how we're thinking about it now. And I think at different times we're kind of piecing those together depending on what we need.

Yeah, that makes sense to me. Yeah, I, yeah, I, I think that's a good clarification too. Like essentially the marketing calendar component of the offer, uh, which is like, like, and I, I think for a lot of brands, this is actually something I say a lot with brands in the spaces that we are dealing with. A lot of times, Brands get to like that $5, $10 million level without too much attention paid to the marketing calendar. They have a couple sales because it's like, you know, Black Friday, whatever, but they're not thinking about, about sort of, uh, uh, seasonal moment or, or they're thinking a little bit about seasonal moment and because there's some natural ones that present themselves in their businesses based on their category and all that, you know, like Father's Day for you guys or whatever. Uh, and then also, um, and, and Black Friday, but then, and then maybe a little bit of product here and there because they're, They just are like, you know, the CEO develops another product at some point and does it. But at some point you have to move in your business to, to having real attentiveness to the kinds of thinking that you just described, Connor, which is like, we want to have 3 sales per year to clear the funnel. Or when you hear like, uh, the Portland Leather guys talk about this, where it's like once a month we have a week, we have a week off and it's the same thing. It's like funnel clearing. Uh, and for them, they're comfortable doing that as a monthly thing. and they, they, they have this sort of rhythm in their business that's really thoughtfully done and they know how their spend is going to relate to those moments. And that is definitely part of the, the offer kind of element too. And again, that fits their category, right? Bags, like the idea of sort of like they can use it to, to, um, spin off lower, lower, um, uh, uh, slower moving inventory. They can use it for seasonal stuff where that's going to go out of season soon, you know, whatever. So, um, so there's different ways to think about sort of calendar moments, seasonality in relation to your brand and product. That's very different than the, like, D2C funnel, you know, which is like very put a, put an offer on a lander and, and you have that sort of thing. 100%.

Um, all right, cool. I'm gonna pivot us a little bit. Andrew, you had this in the doc. Question for Cody and I, so I'm gonna, I'm gonna hit Cody with it first. Um, what are you doing right now that is the most transferable and least transferable for operators who are earlier in the journey?

Should I hit most or least first?

Whichever, whichever. Directionally.

Follow your heart, Cody.

What are we doing right now that's the least transferable? We got some really big like reach campaigns coming up that I think I've talked about. We're spending like a few hundred grand on some out-of-home that will measure full funnel stuff. We're going to go pretty big on some, you know, Meta and YouTube reach testing. It's all tied to a really big launch we have coming, so just just trying to go really, really big and test a lot of different new strategies as we, you know, are gonna reach people. So we're gonna look at, you know, house, we're gonna look at GA metrics, we're gonna look at, you know, brand, brand studies. So not something I would even consider until you're, you know, 9 figures plus. But I mean, there's the most transferable part is there's still something like, I think part of that is like, all right, we need the right strategy for that. We have to align, from a principle perspective. So tactically, like, don't listen to, to anything there. From a principle perspective, the thing I'm trying to get really big on is like, let's align our creative with our media, with our measurement, with our signal, like all of that stuff together. And I think that's important wherever you are. And so like, we're trying, like, you can't do DR, you know, ads on these reach things. And so we're, we're having to try to get better at storytelling. And I think that's something that's transferable wherever you are, whether you're doing these big brand collabs and partnerships or whether you're just, you know, brand new and whether you're on an iPhone or you're on a RED camera is just trying to get better at storytelling. And I think that's essential for everybody. Storytelling and community are big focuses right now. And it's like, you know, I agree. I think where my company, my team could get better and I could definitely get better myself is like probably focus on the really simple things. And I think like this is what Zak Stucke is really good at. Like he's maybe not the, I don't know, he's probably fine at it, but like I don't hear him talk about incrementality that much, but you know what he talks about? He talks about offers, he talks about testing creative, he talks about, you know, And just velocity on that stuff, right?

They're just, they're just doing that stuff. They're actioning it so fast, so far as I can tell.

Yeah, just like mastering the basics. And I think I can definitely get better at that and my team can as well. So I think, I think that's it. It's like, what's the most actionable? Like, get really good at building community, get really good at storytelling.

Yeah, I think that's good. That's what I was going to hit. I mean, when I was reflecting on that question, so much of what Ridge does is having a, it's like having a bunch of small businesses, like the ring business, the power bank business, the wallet business is 9 figures itself, the luggage business. Most of the ones I just mentioned are low tens of millions of dollars. So it's like, and, and really what we're trying to do is, Cody, what you said is we're trying to build redundancy in aligning creative with web experience, with measurement, with channel allocation. And we're doing that over and over and over. Um, so that's definitely the most transferable. We're kicking around this like fiber supplement brand now. It's the exact same process. It's a completely different website, completely different product, completely different value props. It's like, oh yeah, we're very comfortable in the system that this brand needs to be supported. Which has been sort of an interesting process, but like proves out that it is, it is quite transferable. We've gone from, from, you know, the processes that support $250,000 a day in spend to like $500 a day in spend. And it's like, it doesn't look all that different. Where it gets least transferable is, is what Cody mentioned. I mean, we're like, We're spending more time now. One of my goals this year is, um, as we diversify in where people can buy Ridge Wallets, you know, we're in all the Best Buys now, uh, we're in all the Shields, we're, we're opening up new doors, we're in Dillard's, we've got some big box retailers that we're really excited about. I think we need to be more brand oriented. We need to move up funnel. In a lot of these situations, we're not even going to be able to be measuring incrementality. I mean, theoretically, if we have access to the data, we can, but it will be very hard. So we're spending more time looking at like brand lift studies and just like, what is our cost per someone saying that they're now interested in Ridge? And that's where we're going to spend a lot more time. And I think if you, if you shrunk the size of Ridge down 90% and all of a sudden we're doing $20 million a year, it's like, I'd have, I'd have very little interest in doing something like that.

Yeah.

What do you think, Andrew? You, you think we're, you think we're on base here?

I think so. Uh, yeah, I, I think you guys are, I, I think the lease transferable ones are exactly right. Um, Yeah, I, I mean, I even wonder if the most transferable ones are, are actually even simpler than you guys are thinking, which is like, uh, attentiveness to the value creation, need to the value needed for it to be successful. Like, it's just amazing how many brands I look at and see who just don't really understand what kind of value their ads are producing in their business. Sometimes negative, sometimes positive. They just don't really deeply understand that. And, uh, and so much of the value we brought, like so much of the value we provide is just helping people kind of screw their heads on straight about that. Like, and I, I can think of both. I have brands that I've, that I've, uh, that we're working with right now where we're doing, I mean, we're doing fantastic work for a couple of brands where they, they got really turned around because of some overspending and stuff, uh, that, that happened, you know, and there's all kinds of reasons for that. And I'm not pointing any fingers. I've made every mistake everybody's made. So it's just not, I don't mean it with an ounce of condescension. Um, but there's something like that. And so our job has been to come in and like, we've even joked, we had one client where we like, uh, decreased their spend year over year and, or their revenue year over year by like 75%. We're like, we gotta put that on our website. You know, like you hire AJF Growth to decrease your brand, but you know, whatever. Um, and, and the client, by the way, was like thrilled about it. Uh, they were, they were really, really happy because like we decreased it and also like made money. Um, and that hadn't happened previously, you know? and, uh, and now we're building back up, right? You don't do that forever, but in that moment, that's what they needed. Um, and then I have another brand I'm talking to where they're just dramatically underspending and it's because they just don't have a deep understanding, uh, where of, uh, of like why their business works the way it does. And if they could get that, and once I showed that to them, they were like, whoa, that's, let's do it. You know, like that sounds great, but they just hadn't done that. And I think what's easy to forget, uh, you guys as part of the journey is just That's, that a lot of my failure at, uh, at, uh, 4x400 was because I also didn't deeply understand those things really as much as I thought I did. And I really thought I did at the time. Uh, I didn't as much as I thought I did. And, um, and it's just really hard to know that until you know it and until somebody can show it to you in a really clear way. So to me, like, it's even almost more foundational than what you guys are saying about, about the stuff that you guys are doing that is super transferable to those businesses, which is like, like just really understand how value gets created in your business and then operate out of that. And hold yourself, desperately hold yourself to, uh, to not, to not doing things that create negative value in your business. It's crazy how well not losing money works if you want to make money. Like it is, it is really, really effective. Um, and so, uh, yeah, if people can sort of get that straight, um, then, then actually that sets them up for growth. That sets them up for all the things they want in the long term, but it starts with really understanding those things.

Good. Yeah, I think that's sage advice. You know, the one thing I would add, it's very similar to what you were just hitting. But I spoke with another brand recently and they showed me their like daily dashboard that they look at and it just like wasn't very good. And it's like, oh yeah, we spend a lot, we spend a lot of time just like getting the granular details or like I'm a total OCD about that sort of stuff and just like getting it dialed in so that I know how my business looked last week or yesterday or last month relative to forecast year over year, things like that. And it's just, I think a lot of people, I think that's very transferable. I think, I think the best brands at basically any size have that, uh, attentiveness.

Yep.

All right, cool. We're, I've got a couple more topics here for us. Andrew, like we said, you've hit the whole spectrum between brand, holdco, agency. You've bought media in all sorts of different ways. Today, like, what are your thoughts on brands sticking exclusively to in-house media buying? What's the value of in-house versus agency? Where do you land?

I think Ridge should fire their entire in-house team and take it all to AJF Growth right now.

Just 15% of ad spend, reasonable fee.

No, uh, uh, okay, so there's phases to this. Um, okay, at the baseline level, the whole distinction is very silly. Uh, because what you should actually do is get the smartest people doing the smartest things on behalf of your business at a price that makes sense for your business. So like, if you find the best media buyer in the world, you shouldn't be like, uh, and most people wouldn't, but you shouldn't be like, nah, they will only work in an agency. I won't hire them. I'm anti-agency. Like, don't do that, right? Hire the best person in the world, uh, and get them to work on your business. Um, the idea that something happens materially and importantly by in-housing is wrong, I think. Uh, there are probably some good things, but there are also some bad things about it. And, uh, and so, and so you, you have to make the decision through a different framework than in-house versus, versus agency. Get the best people, get them working on your business. Um, which creates a problem, which is how do you know who the best people are? And, and so one of my very practical pieces of advice here is that if you're spending, in most cases, less than $50,000 per month on Meta— now there are exceptions to this, but in most cases, if you're spending less than $50,000 per month on Meta, you should manage the spend yourself. Uh, and by yourself, I mean you as the CEO. Now the exceptions to this are if you have a material other part of your business that produces a bunch of revenue in some way that makes it maybe like it's a, there's a better use of your time elsewhere, right? The business you mentioned earlier comes to mind, Connor, which is like, they're a $30 million business with $7.5 million DTC. It may actually be fine for them to go get a media buyer somewhere else in an agency or something, because they have a little more money to spend. But that's the key thing because, uh, most media buying, most, um, agency contracts, uh, to support a sub $50,000 per month spend simply do not work financially for the agency to provide a good service and make margin on it. At, at that level of spend at the same time that it works for your business. What I mean is you probably need to be able to pay that agency, you know, at, so if you're getting creative in there, at least $10,000 per month, like probably, uh, and, and, uh, there's some exceptions to that and, and, and everything, but like basically something like that. And it becomes pretty hard, pretty fast to make some of that work really much below $50,000 per month in spend. Um, and, and, and it may even cost you more than that because, uh, because otherwise your business is not big enough to absorb the cost. Um, the other reason that you ought to do this earlier, yeah, like if you're paying your, your agency, um, for anything more than just media buying and it's costing you less than like $4,000 a month or something like that, there's almost no way they're providing a good service as far as I'm concerned. Um, and, uh, cuz, cuz good work takes time and time costs money. Uh, on, on the other part of this though, and the sneakier part is that for brands in that early, early, early stage of business, there is so much value in managing the spend yourself because it will teach you things about how to manage Meta ad spend and give you some point of view, which will save you from the wasted money and time of the like crappy agency carousel, which is like a such a common experience in D2C that people need to be aware of that. So that's like the first stage. When brands go outside of that, when you start to get beyond there, then the thing I would, I would actually look for is, is essentially point of view. And that's to me more important than in-house versus, versus agency. I do think there are some distinct advantages to in-house. I do think there's some distinct advantages to agency. I actually think cost is the most overrated of those. I don't think it's necessarily the case that you can do it like cheaper in-house and get more hours applied to your business for a few reasons. Um, uh, it can be the case, but I don't think it necessarily is the case. Um, uh, but, uh, but the, the most important thing to me is, is that you actually pursue a point of view. About what makes great media buying on and, and probably creative on the channels that you're on. And developing that point of view is actually the most important thing. So understanding from the best thinkers in the space what great work looks like, and then going and finding that work and getting it applied to your business. That is also hard. That's why I have a podcast. Why I'm like, it's funny you mentioned this earlier with Ezra. Like, I actually do see myself as like an educator a little bit, Cody. It's why I do solo episodes sometimes and stuff. Like, I'm trying to teach what I think is the best principle because I think it matters that you know and understand it. And I actually don't have a lot of people on who disagree with me very much because I'm not really, I don't see myself as like a debate kind of show. It's like, I wanna teach you what I think is right. Um, I'll do it sometimes, but, but, but rarely because I, I think like, I think there's things I've learned here that work for most businesses in the space and I want you to do them too until somebody can prove otherwise. Um, so to me that's, that's actually the core to it. So there's a few different ways to actually do that in-house versus agency, but to me the point of view of it is the most important thing. And then in that early stage, you should manage it yourself as part of how you develop point of view.

So I like that. One question I have for Cody, 'cause I feel like these are highly related, is the question between outsourcing and insourcing as it relates to channel expansion. 'Cause I think that's, that's a key one here too. Like, I love Andrew, your point. If you're spending $50K a month, like you should really just do it yourself, get familiar, learn some of the basics of, of like meta media buying at that point. But when you're doing $25, $30 million a year and all of a sudden you wanna unlock YouTube, like what's the best approach there? Cody, do you have a perspective on that?

I like doing new things with an agency because you're not going to be an expert at it from the beginning. And so like, for example, like, I don't get this as a total channel, but like TikTok Shop, we signed a 6-month contract with an agency because I'm like, hey, I want to learn everything I can. You, you know, you vet them and then you see, and hopefully you bring it in internally if it makes sense later on. And I think it depends, like, you know, I think it depends the value you feel like you're getting from them. And obviously you don't always know. A lot of brands will bring things in-house and, you know, performance goes to crap and they're just trying to save money. So you got to be like really realistic. About it and like you can't be great at everything internally. So it's like, what's, what's, what's our core skill set? What are the things that we gotta do? But you know, what are the things that maybe we want to keep the flexibility and I don't maybe need a full-time person to run podcast or to run, you know, to run this channel.

I had a prediction this year that we would see more AppLovin-specific agencies pop up because I think that's one of those platforms where there's just like unique aspects to it. The 5 non— I talk about this all the time, 5 non-skippable seconds. The other half of inventory is 30 non-skippable seconds. When I think, um, specific agencies, like in this case, it would really be a mix of developing the creative that's best suited for that platform as well as the media buying that supports it. YouTube's the same way. When we started spending on YouTube 6 years ago, we like brought in an agency to build both the creative and the media buying. And that's like, I don't see how we could have possibly hired immediately for that internally.

Yeah, I, you know, it's AppLovin's a good example of this where I, You know, we've definitely spent, managed some clients' ad spend budgets and spent some money and been fine there, but I have kind of had that relationship to it where it's still so early there that like there's, there's not a lot of, you know, I sometimes talk about the, the, uh, the intellectual capital on the collective D2C balance sheet, right? The idea that there's like a bunch of knowledge at this point that's been built up that's accessible through shows like Marketing Operators, right? Um, where people can go and learn all of these things from a bunch of lessons from the good and the bad of everything. And so you go access a lot of point of view. Like I said, from my podcast, like if you want to know media buying, I talk a lot about it. And I think people will disagree with me on some of it, but like, it's going to be a point of view that's, that's hard won, I think. Um, and so. Apple just hasn't existed for long enough for, for, for there to be tons of, there's a little bit more of it happening now, but it was, it's hard to find that kind of thing. And, and, and you're right, there is, it's a good example of something where there's some sort of, there's some desperate need for people to sort of create some thought leadership there. And there probably is an opportunity for people to, to do more. I've actually been hesitant to push my clients. I, um, I, uh, I am extremely pro-AppLovin', to reference how much I'm putting my money where my mouth is here. I am an AppLovin' stockholder.

Okay. Oh, there we go.

So, so there you go.

Um, not financial advice.

Not financial advice. I am, uh, I am very pro the channel. I think it, I think it works. I think it's going to keep working. I think it's going to work better in the future than it does now. So I'm, I'm, I'm long AppLovin', but Um, but I think there is a, there's a world there where there's, there's some, um, there's a little bit more, uh, you know, for the reasons you said, 5 unskippable seconds and, and yeah, some other things, right? Who the customer is and all that. There's just a few, there's some more knowledge to be developed there and it's sort of a perfect use case for an agency to come along, develop the point of view across a lot of different, uh, uh, brands all at once and then come to your particular brand with that knowledge. And it nicely illustrates where the value of an agency can be so unique is when something is specific to a platform. And that's all they're thinking about all the time. They really can provide something that like in-housing is much harder to replicate from your one narrow point of view.

Totally. And it's probably like the need for that sort of specific agency probably increases as the platform becomes more competitive. Like we've basically benefited for the last 8 months on like being early adopters, but as CPMs continue to climb and as more advertisers get on board, like you're going to need to get better at the platform. And that's probably where that like outsourcing becomes valuable. If someone's like really spent a lot of time thinking about it, it's no different, like like, you know, I, I, uh, this is maybe like a really outdated reference, but like, you know, the agencies back in the day that were really good at like Taboola or Outbrain, like had a, they had a specific POV and they knew the publishers that weren't gonna send you junk, junk traffic and you could get off the ground much quicker and much more effectively by outsourcing versus insourcing.

Yep. Yeah, that's, that's a great example.

All right, Andrew, we're gonna wrap up here with the rapid-fire 10. There's a bonus episode.

Oh, I'm so bad at these.

They're coming in hot. Okay.

All right, let's do it.

Number 1, you get a desert island dashboard to manage your business. What 3 metrics do you take with you?

Oh gosh, this is exactly what I mean by saying I'm so bad at these. Um, uh, I don't know if this counts. Uh, shoot. I only get 3 across the entire business. Yep. Spend, revenue, and gross margin. Okay. All right. We'll take it. Does that work?

Yeah, that works.

I like it. I'd definitely go spend and revenue. Gross margin. Yeah.

You know, we'll see, but it's your desert island, so, uh, well, I, I, I mean, I mean it as gross margin defined as margin landed to the customer. So yeah.

Got it.

Got it. Got it.

Okay.

All right. Not just gross. Yeah.

Uh, all right. Question 2, you also get to take a book or resource, but it can't be a business book. Resource?

Okay. Uh, well, I'm a Christian. I would probably say the Bible. Uh, but I, uh, let's, we should probably throw that answer out, right? Like, I feel like that's like a cheat answer almost. Like it's sort of too obvious. It's not really the answer you're looking for. It's like one book that I can read besides that.

The Bible works. We, I think we've gotten the Bible before.

Uh, that's, it feels too easy. Like every, every Christian's gonna say the Bible. Um, uh, what would be one other book I would take? I don't know. I'm just going to say the Bible. Forget it.

You go Project Hail Mary?

No, no, no.

I started going down the route of novels in my mind and I, I just, uh, I, I just was like, uh, I don't know if I want to read that forever. You know, it's just immediately doing that. Bible is sneaky big too. So you can get really far on it, you know, if you've only got one book. Yeah. All right.

What's your one contrarian belief about business that other marketers think you're crazy for?

It's that ambition is good, but that money won't really make you happy. I think that some people will think I'm not crazy, but you have to have some purpose in it besides just getting really, really rich or you won't actually have any joy in it.

Okay.

So, love it. Yeah.

What is the single most important word in leadership?

Integrity. Easy.

What is the single most important word in business?

Integrity.

Yeah.

Yeah.

I like it.

I think I thought about it. That was where I got to. I think, yeah, that's good.

What's the best meal of the day and why?

Uh, breakfast because it comes with my cup of coffee, which is Uh, which is like literally one of the highlights of my day every single day. Uh, so yeah. Uh, probably, probably that, but maybe I wanna change my answer to dinner cuz you eat street tacos at dinner and street tacos in Los Angeles are the best food in the world.

Okay, cool. People, listeners can choose their own answer on that one.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah. Um, I, I'm sorry. I just, they're just, I just like coffee and tacos both so much that it's very hard for me to pick.

Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah.

Uh, all right. Right now, what is the most overrated growth tactic?

Uh, CPMR.

Uh, oh no.

Uh, might, might be CPMR. Just be— yeah, I think if we really want right now, um, I think it might be, it might be CPMR. Uh, yeah, it's pro— it's probably something like that.

Okay.

All right.

Um, Do we just like throw out the rest of the episode? We just, we just discard this one.

We actually need to, the episode starts now. We got another 75 minutes to do on unpacking CPMR.

The problem is the framing of the questions. The, what the, the question isn't whether or not CPMR is useful. The question is what's the most overrated tactic right now? And, and, and that, and, and if you frame it that way, I think probably CPMR is gonna be a distraction for some people.

Okay.

Yeah, I'll totally take it. Um, last one here. What's the most underrated tactic?

It's the same as it always is, which is, uh, which is being, uh, well, the tactic, tactic is, is a, uh, different answer. Gosh, I suck at, uh, at rapid fire questions. Um, the most underrated tactic is, uh, okay. The most underrated tactic is, uh, relentlessly focusing on the message of your ads. That, that, that in advertising, the message is the most important thing. And really, really, really caring about that and using that as a core tool through which you evaluate how good your creative is, what kind of creative you're making, what kind of landing pages you're making, what your brand is saying everywhere it says anything. Just the message, the message, the message. Having real ways to understand what you're saying and how you're saying it and where you're saying it is, is really important.

Love it.

All right.

That's a rapid fire 10. That's a wrap on the episode. Andrew, thanks so much for coming on.

My pleasure, guys. Thanks for having me so much.