Fulfil is an ERP designed for DTC brands like Ridge, HexClad, and Grüns. Manage orders, inventory, accounting, purchasing, fulfillment, EDI and manufacturing in one place. Native integrations with Shopify, Amazon and 400+ 3PLs (no middleware required). Go live in 8–12 weeks with fixed-price implementation (no third-party consultants).
Get a DemoOperators Titans is brought to you by AppLovin. Get access to the Operators channel expansion playbook, online masterclass, and up to $5k in ad credits here: https://www.9operators.com/paid-growth Or, skip the waitlist and launch your AppLovin ads today with our Operators-exclusive link: https://axon.ai/en/9operators “We’ve never had anyone do four deals in 60 days.” How do you build two nine-figure brands with no outside investors and a Facebook ads background as your only real edge? Zach Stuck, founder of Easy Street Brands and co-founder of Hollow and Mars Men, joins Matt Bertulli (CEO, Pela Case & Lomi) and Sean Frank (CEO, Ridge) to break down how he turned an agency into an eight-figure exit and cold-started two nine-figure brands in opposite categories. Closing four deals in 60 days and an L Catterton round, Zach’s brand building decisions are laid on the table. He walks through nearly losing Homestead keeping Hollow alive, and lays out the ecommerce strategy for building from zero. He closes on what the holdco model requires to work and why most operators get it wrong. Chapters 00:00:00 GT3 & Origin Story 00:08:00 Homestead’s First Clients 00:16:00 The Revenue Share Model 00:24:00 Discount Dave to 35 Hires 00:33:00 Hollow Socks Burns Cash 00:41:00 The Holdco Model Truth 00:49:00 How Mars Men Was Born 00:58:00 All In on Subscription 01:07:00 Four Deals in 60 Days 01:15:00 Catterton Gets First Look 01:20:00 Mars Men Team Structure 01:23:33 Titan 10 Rapid Fire
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I'm just gonna say it, today's episode is so damn good. Let me tee it up properly so you know what you're about to get and why you wanna stick around and listen to this one. So our guest is a longtime friend of the pod. He's built an 8-figure agency, recently sold it. He's also built 2, yes, 2 9-figure brands in 2 wildly different categories. He's one of the few people I know who is willing to just kill a company and move on if it isn't hitting his goals. He's easily one of the top bad guys in the game today. You're going to have to really try and not learn something from this episode. Welcome back to another Operators Titans brought to you by our friends at AppLovin. And yes, we are talking with Zach Stucke from Mars Men and Hollow Socks.
Professional podcaster, former agency salesman. He has sold brands for 8 figures. He just raised 8 figures. He's on top of the world. He's the coolest guy in e-com right now, and he's about to pull out his summer car. What's up, Zach? How's life? How's How's the G-Wagon treating you?
Yeah, well, sadly the G-Wagon is gone now, but the GT3 RS is here. I don't know if you said G-Wagon or not, but that's what everyone keeps asking me about. They don't even care about the Porsche anymore. They're like, where's your G-Wagon? So, well, yeah, yeah, I got rid of it.
Dude, Zach, we gotta teach people about taste. That's what we gotta teach people.
I got the Hennessy truck, even though I wasn't, everyone thought I was a winner of like the Ridge giveaway. Not a winner. I did it myself.
You just bought one.
I just bought one, yeah. Cause you know, Wisconsin, right? So might as well.
Yeah. You're in Wisconsin. I assume you have a boat. So how many boats do you have?
I have one boat. I have one boat. Yeah. Yeah. One surf boat, but it's, uh, yeah, it's, I mean, you know, we get summer for 3, you know, we get nice weather for 3 months out of the year. So gotta take advantage of it.
Well, beautiful brother. Okay. So what is the background? Who is Zach? Why are you in Wisconsin? Why'd you have the number 1 email agency on earth and what are you doing now? So Early days when you're 8 years old, what's Zach like? What's he doing?
I mean, I was going to say, we're going back there. I mean, candidly, I don't remember much of my childhood, which I'm not sure if that's a good thing or a bad thing, but I mean, I did start, I did start an e-commerce business when I was 19, started a WooCommerce apparel business. And that's really where it got started was I was, my dad was a small business owner. Mom was a small business owner. So entrepreneurship was like in my, in my like, you know, ethos of what I could maybe do when I grew up. But small business, when I say this is not like when we talk on D2C Twitter, small business under $100 million. No, this is like does less than $1 million in revenue, barely survives type of small business. So grew up in Wisconsin, went to, you know, just like very casual, normal schools. Didn't go to anything, you know, prestigious as far as like growing up. So was, you know, lower middle class in Wisconsin, which is basically poor everywhere else throughout the US. Um, and, and yeah, I mean, like, I think I, my dad had a business where he was, um, manufacturing enclosures for tractors, which is like super random and niche. But at one point he was selling them on online. And so I like learned, I learned about e-commerce when I was like 13, 14, uh, which was like a PayPal button on a, on a, on an HTML page, um, which is gnarly. So that got me interested in, in the internet. And then as most kids do, uh, you just like tinker. And so tinkered with a bunch of stuff, started building websites. Like my, my most famous story from when I was in high school is, um, I got our, our school district's like, uh, Microsoft like suite disc with like the full licensing and I would sell it to people as like a side hustle. Uh, so I basically sold it to like 50 to 70 year olds, uh, when I was in high school. Um, charged them a small discount. So it was like great margin, 100, you know, 100% margin. Uh, just installed on their computer. So anyways, like that's like the OG, you know, had entrepreneurial stuff back then. Um, but yeah, started an e-commerce site when I was 19, dropped out of college when I was 20. Uh, got a job at a marketing agency here in Wisconsin and Did that, worked at another one, worked at another one. And then that led me into the time where I was like, I think I want to go out on my own finally. And had a conversation with, with Andrew Foxwell. And then he introduced me to David Herman. And that's where the Facebook ads world of, of, of my background really started to kick off.
I think in order to be in consumer, I have a theory before we keep going. I think in order to be in consumer, You are either currently a degenerate or you at least flirted with stealing something at some point in your life. Like, I don't think you can actually be in DDC if you haven't been one of those two things.
I don't disagree with that statement. I think the, I think that, I think the young degenerates make great entrepreneurs. Uh, I mean, Sean is a perfect testament of that.
So, you know, oh yeah, no, Sean's absolutely a degenerate.
Let me completely break here.
—guys knew.
Yeah, but that, that, that gets me to like Homestead days. So like basically Homestead started out of— and I, I try to give David Herman as much credit as I can because he really was kind of the catalyst. But Dave, Dave was running like a, his small agency and he wanted me to be an employee. And so I went and kind of got mentored by Dave for a few months and started tweeting stuff. Uh, this was, you know, a while ago, 8 years ago. Um, of small little, you know, case studies like that. And then people wanted to hire Dave, but they couldn't afford Dave, so they'd reach out to me because they knew that there was some association there. And so I started building a book of business. Yeah, I was Discount Dave. And then Discount Dave turned into like 15 clients that I was running on my own on top of like 3 with Dave. And that was just too much. And I was like, okay, I have to start an agency. So that's really how like the catalyst of Homestead got started. Um, so a lot of, a lot of kudos to him, a lot of kudos to people like Andrew Foxwell who pushed me over to say, hey, it's time to go out on your own instead of working for for other people.
Did you go into the agency thing knowing what it was like to build in like a sort of a service business, or was it kind of like ignorance is bliss and I'm just going to figure this out?
Yeah, so I mean, I was at 3 agencies prior, so I got to see like how each one did it. One was like a traditional marketing company, which is more like TV, radio, like very basic print, and then 2 digital agencies. And the one that I was at right before working for Dave was, was a digital marketing agency. So like I was able to, Scoop, like service agreements, you know, kind of learned the trade of like the ops side very lightly. Um, and so I kind of knew what I was doing, but definitely, I mean, I knew what I was doing to start it. I had no fucking clue. Feel free to beep that. Uh, what I was actually about to go build, um, and what was required to build an agency. So yeah, I mean, to an extent, I kind of knew what I was doing.
Let's, let's talk about the agency because I think it's a great launch launch point for building all these great brands you've built. So 8 years ago you started originally. Who are the clients? Who'd you end up growing with? How big did it end up getting? Like, let's, let's really talk about Homestead from day one. Like, you leave David, you're like, hey, I can't work with you anymore. Shout out David Herman, love the guy. You're like, I'm gonna do this thing myself. You have 15 clients.
Are any of them good? Well, one is still— one is my first ever client, which was actually not through the David affiliation. It was just like through a connection in Wisconsin. Is a company called Fix It Sticks, and that, that is still a client of Homestead today. Um, so my first ever one is still with Homestead, which is cool. Um, but they're like a multi-tool product. They were basically just like this, um, cycling multi-tool that then they started selling to like— what it was like a weapons accessory. It's like a complete shift. And then that just like smashed. So that was like one of my first proper case studies for Homestead where we grew a brand from doing, you know, $10,000 a month to like $500,000 a month, like very quickly. Um, outside of that, I mean, the OG brands, like if I'm really trying to think back, I mean, a lot of them were, were brands that couldn't afford Dave. So they were like either like this weird, like hybrid brand dropship thing where there's a lot of like apparel, there was a lot of, um, random like ex, you know, home goods stuff. So I couldn't name many of them to be honest anymore. Um, one of the OGs was this brand called She's Birdie. I don't know if you guys are familiar with that brand. Richie. Yeah. Okay. So. Cheeseburdy was one of the first ones that we brought into Homestead, and I had this concept of like a revenue share model, and I was like, hey, we think this product can smash. I think there's a huge opportunity here. Give us 5% of your revenue and we'll help you grow, and let's see how this goes. And so originally I was just charging, you know, $5K a month to run, uh, paid social, which was so easy 8 years ago. Like, when I compare it to today, it was like a breeze to basically just like load ads in and do a little bit of interest targeting and shit and lookalikes and it just worked. But Cheese Birdie was our first proper first client that we did this like revenue share concept. And yeah, we took them from, you know, tens of thousands a month in revenue to millions a month in like less than 6 months. So Homestead went from making $5,000 a month to like $50,000, $60,000 a month within 6 months on one client. And I was like, this is the model to do. Until the brand started being like, hey, I'm paying Zach in a team of 3 people, uh, you know, people like Connor O'Lane and some of these other folks, they're like, we're paying you a bag to basically just do what probably would have been pretty easy with anyone kind of smart and that understood e-com for the right product at the right time. So yeah, I mean, like we had, we had brands like that that were a blast, um, that ended up churning because our fees got too high. But yeah, I mean, that was kind of like the initial catalyst of, of like what really allowed Homestead to grow because I didn't, I wasn't taking any money out for the first 2 years. I was literally just dumping it into hiring. So we'd get clients that were paying us $50,000, $60,000, $70,000 a month, and I would just go hire 5 people, um, and just keep growing the team. So yeah, I mean, we went from 0 to 35 employees in the first 3 years, which was like quite good for, for any agency, especially someone that was like 26, 27 at the time. Um, but yeah, I mean, that's, that's kind of how it got started initially.
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Did you and I ever talk about this?
So like your story and mine with services is very similar. Like we, all of my initial contracts, I think we talked about this years ago, were all percentage of revenue based and they tiered down with scale cuz like when I did mine in like the, like, let's call it mid to late 2000s. It wasn't even a marketing problem. My pitch to people was like, you don't even have e-commerce and you're this massive retailer. I'll build it for free, but I want to take a piece of anything you sell. And then like we would tier the rates down with scale.
That's what we ended up doing was having to tier it down pretty quickly. And then we just kept tearing it down more and more and more. And we just kept getting pushed down. Then it was like, okay.
Yeah, because it starts to feel like a tax. That was like where we ran into the issue was like there's just no way around it feeling like a tax.
I mean, the cool thing about Homestead in the early days is we had a bunch of people that were really driven and scrappy that were willing to do anything. So like we were shooting content without that, that fell underneath that. We were like actually shooting content in ads in a small studio that we had in Wisconsin. We were doing email, SMS flows. We were doing web, like front-end web. We were doing paid social, paid search, like the whole gambit. So there weren't many small shops that were able to kind of like actually do a decent job at all those things. So to me it felt like it was a fair offering because it was like, hey, you basically have a whole marketing team here. You don't have to hire anyone. You could be ops and product and let us just cook. But it got to the point to, to what you were saying, Matt, that we had to pull back and go more traditional with our fee structure.
At what point did HexClad come along in the Homestead journey.
So this was a— I mean, shout out to Sean and Connor, um, at Ridge, because you guys were the ones that recommended them in the beginning. Um, this was when they were doing— I mean, shit, what was this, 5 years ago? Um, so this was, I think, the like $50 million year, the $30 to $50 million year they came, they came into Homestead. And, um, yeah, that first year, I mean, I was like, I think it was $30 to $150 I think was their first jump, if I can— if I'm remembering that correctly. And that was the year that we worked on it. And yeah, wild. I mean, they came in, they're like, yeah, I don't know, we're just doing like a few million a month and like we're running ads. What else can we do? It was—
it was this pre-Gordon, before the Gordon deal.
This is right when the Gordon deal was like happening. Yeah. So it was like as it was being signed. Yeah. Just cutting that deal.
Uh, I got introduced through another friend of ours.
On the— sorry, before, before going to HexClad, on the, um, percentage of revenue thing, it's funny because Matt did it, Zach did it. That's how— that's how we work with Ridge too. So like the, the deal with Ridge is that they would give us $70,000 a month to cover our fixed expenses, and then we would get like 2.5% or 5% of top line or whatever. And we ended up getting— it was like $250,000 a month when, when I had my service business. And there is, there's like a, there's an allergic reaction to clients. Paying above $30,000 or $50,000 a month for a service business. If you have a service business, you will be shut down eventually by the CFO as soon as you get above $30,000 or $50,000. Like, it's like a $10,000 a month service can go, can live forever. But as soon as you get a little too rich, like the CFO comes out and just shuts you down.
So the CFO sees like headcount, right, Sean? Like all they see is like $30,000, $40,000, $50,000 a month. It's like, how many people can I hire for that?
And they just think nothing's worth that. Even if the work you're doing is fantastic and you're driving all these results, they just like— a CFO's like, no, no amount of work is worth that much money. But it was. So HexClad, you take them from $30 to $150 million. And at this point, have you launched any of your own brands or you're still just 100% service?
This is nope, 100% service at this point. And the following year where we were, then they really ran it up was the year that I started Hollow. 'Cause I remember going to, going out to LA to meet with Jason and me and Riley, CEO of Homestead, my partner in Homestead, went out to LA to meet with Jason and the team to basically help them forecast Q4. And I just remember like putting the forecast together and in my mind I'm like, this is crazy. I think we can do it. Like, let's push them. Let's just see how hard and how big they want to go. Like, we absolutely smashed through the forecast that I thought was like almost impossible. That business was craziest business I've ever seen, um, outside of some of these new health and wellness brands that are just ripping. But, um, yeah, it was nuts. Like, I, I never saw, you know, a brand that could spend 7 figures a day on Meta, and it would just like during Q4, and it would just work. It was nuts. So yeah, that, that was the year though that Hollow started.
And how long, how long before that, Zach, did you start thinking about doing your own brands? Like, where, where did the sort of germination of that idea come from?
I told everyone day one at Homestead that I wanted to start brands eventually. The idea was to— yeah, if you go talk to any of the OG employees, like they'll tell you that I was saying that from the beginning was that we're going to start this agency, then we're going to build brands and you're going to be able to grow within the agency and then become maybe a CMO of a brand one day. And I'm going to build a portfolio. Like I had this concept from the beginning because my background, again, going back to like when I was 19, was like I did it. It just had no clue what I was doing. So I wanted to get back to it at some point. I just didn't know how long it was going to take. So yeah, year 3 of the agency, I started getting into the brand building side.
And that was what— did you hand it over to Riley at that point?
So yeah, so that was an interesting conversation. Hey guy, like, hey partner, like, uh, you need to take over now and I'm going to dip. Like, he was like, what is going on? Um, because, you know, he was a minority stake partner in the business at the time. He came in as our head of head of Google and just like immediately became my CMO. And then it was, it was pretty obvious that he was the guy to run it. But yeah, I mean, that was a tough conversation to have and try to convince him and be like, I promise all is going to be good. You're going to crush this. Like, I have full confidence in you, but I'm going to go do this other thing. So yeah, he, that was like a 6-month transition of me kind of out, him in. And then yeah, I think it was '22, '23, he, he took over fully and he's been running, running the show since.
I just wanna talk about the idea. Day one, you have an agency and you're like, hey, we're gonna launch a bunch of brands. And I think that was such an attractive idea for every agency owner. You know, Taylor Holiday famously had 4x— was it 4x400 or whatever it was called? And you know, he was gonna launch a bunch of brands and like, you know, they, they did Bamboo Earth and they had that wallet company. Um, why did your book of brands work? And other ones didn't?
Product, I think, is a big piece of it. Um, I also think we— my, my risk tolerance is higher than theirs. I think that's the other part of it. Like, if I look at how hard I pushed Hollow to the point of like maybe losing that business, which I'm happy to talk about in a little bit, like I pushed harder than I think they did. And I think that was part of it. I think it was product first. And then it was, it was the fact that I just like sent it because I had this agency that was just churning out cash. Then I'm like, even if we have a hard couple of months in this brand, we can like survive because I can just pull more cash out of the agency and just pump it right in. And I didn't think that they wanted to do that because their cap tables were so like crazy between 4x400, the brands between the agency, they had different partners and all of it. And it was like just mostly just me. I mean, I was, I was the majority owner of the brands. I was the majority owner of, I was the majority owner of Hollow and Homestead that whole time. So I think part of it is like a structural advantage working for you.
That hap—
I would say that would be the third piece. That'd be the third piece. Cause I didn't have anyone else saying, hey, Zach, we have to be profitable. Um, most of the year I was kind of like, you know what, we're going to just run nonprofitable for Holo for most of the year. And then we're just going to send it in Q4 and we're going to make up, make our hay then.
Can you expand on product, Zach? Like, what does that mean? You said like, that was the first thing you said, number one product. Like, can you just unpack your, sort of theories or your, how you think about product?
Yeah. I mean, I've, I've been thinking about this a lot lately also is that the brands that hit the most scale from my perspective that are kind of fall underneath a few things. One, their product mix is very simple and that allows supply chain, uh, that allows, uh, complexity, like everything to be just easy to manage. Inventory to manage. The other piece that's really important is that the product has to be able to be sold in like 50 different angles, 50 different ways to position something to sell the same product. So you look at like an IM8— everyone's talking about IM8 right now. Go look at IM8's ad library. You go run it through Atria, run it through Motion, whatever. They're running so many different positioning angles. They're running— they're even, they're even talking about testosterone, which is like crazy that we're in that space. I'm like, how are they making this tying to testosterone, but they're like, hey, it helps with your recovery, helps with your sleep, which will improve your testosterone. So to me, Holo was that from the very beginning. I had these socks that were made out of alpaca that were better than anything else. I was like, how can I go sell this to a bunch of different people? And that's how the business started to build. And like, as we grew, we just found new cohorts, new angles that we could just keep doing. I think that helped us a ton. And I think that that's what a lot of the brands that grow super fast that are scaling really quickly on Meta is that they have the ability to sell it to a bunch of different people, have a huge TAM, but sell it to a bunch of different people. But it'd be very simple from a supply chain and product mix standpoint. So that was Hollow at the end of the day. I mean, we had 8 SKUs the first year. I think we had 20 the next year. I mean, it was very simple from an apparel brand perspective. Does margin matter? Yeah, margin matters. Margin matters. I would say that's a, that's an important piece. But my margin for Hollow is not, not incredible. Um, there's many brands that have better margin than us. Um, I think it's the fact that we can position things in, in a bunch of different ways, right? Like throughout the year, we're going to sell product to like 20 different cohorts of people, different types of people that completely are from tradesmen to, uh, ultramarathon runners to, uh, people that have, that are moms that whatever, just stay home all day to nurses to like, these are all completely different types of people that are buying products that are like a very simple product mix. So I think that's, that's a huge piece of why we've been successful is that I didn't have to go make, you know, our product is more function over fashion. That's what I always say internally. And when you're function over fashion, you can usually be problem-solution based. So I, again, like, I think that that's what's allowed that business to grow so much is that we have a very simple product mix, but we can sell to tons of different people and talk to them a bunch of different ways. To try and convince them to buy the product.
Yeah. And I think this angle piece is what Groove got so right.
Like, it's exactly what Groove did right.
It's exactly, they're talking immunity, they're talking fiber, they're talking, you know, kids, they're talking everything, right?
Dude, GLP-1s, like they hit every frigging, you go through their ad library, same thing. It's like there's 6, 7 major angles in there at all times. Yeah.
And I would say that this is why Marsman is growing as fast as it is also. Because testosterone as a male hormone is tied to everything that you feel. So everything that a man feels or could feel is tied to your hormones, which is tied to your testosterone. So it allows us to talk about the full gambit as well. So yeah, I think that that's it. I think that when you sell— I mean, like, again, I'm not trying to diminish like the brands that 4x400 had, but I think it was baby clothes. They had like the leather wallets. That were made out of baseball mitts, and then it was the pen thing, and then, um, Bamboo Earth I think was the last one. And Bamboo Earth is the one that survived, and I think that that brand has the ability to sell to more people in different ways. So I would say— and it has MRR. So like you combine those two, it's like, yeah.
So the three things are like product— your thing is like your product choice was different, better, whatever. You had higher risk tolerance, and then you— because you had higher risk tolerance, you also had the structure to back that up. And like nobody there was no like competing interests that would hold, I guess, that would challenge that risk tolerance as I understand it.
Yeah. Yeah. That's basically it. I mean, I had no investors in either the agency or the brands, you know, so it was kind of just up to me.
Sean, how does that contrast like the, the Angles thing with, with Ridge? Like did the original wallet, was that more function over like, well, basically like how close to what Zach is saying was the original Original Ridge Wallet. I don't know why that's so freaking hard for me to say.
The Original Ridge Wallet. Uh, yeah, you, you want to avoid being fashion for as long as possible. The— our wallet business is now a fashion business, but when the Ridge Wallet came out, we invented it. It was the, like, the first wallet that could expand to fit as many cards as you wanted. Um, we've now transitioned to being a fashion company, and it's harder because you have to have launches and color stories and brand campaigns, and some launches do better, some launches do worse. It's hard to predict that. Um, but like our luggage business is essentially a fashion business. It's like all luggage is basically the same. That's a hard fucking business to be in where our rings business is a, uh, function business. It's like, hey, it's a, it's a ring. We have some special stuff about it. And like, we're not, I'm not gonna try to win you on color or design or story, right? That, that's very hard to do. A ring's very traditional. I wanna talk about the risk because I think, Zach, you have a legendary risk tolerance and I don't think people know that or appreciate that about you. You're. Willing to put it all on the line and then walk away if it loses. So many people get stuck with businesses that suck, but like there's sunk cost fallacy or whatever. I've watched you shut down at least 2 brands and you've taken brands to the point of bankruptcy and saved them back. Like it's really a very legendary level of risk tolerance. And that's actually, I think the most undersold part of the story. So, uh, let's talk about where that comes from.
Are you a gambler or, or let's go back to being a DJ.
I mean, if you, if you really want to go deep on this, it's like my understanding of money is, I think, a very unique understanding of money where I grew up with like none. And so I think everyone that's— that, that talks about like, you could always go back to zero. I think Sean, you've even said this, like, I always thought of like, I could go back to zero and I would be just fine because I love the game. So it's like, I think I, you know, outside of now, obviously I have like nice things. I have nice car, boat, whatever. And I'm grateful for those things. But like, I was always willing to kind of go back to zero and if I needed to, to like get to the final winner. So that's really it. You know, grew up in a, you know, 1,100-square-foot house in Wisconsin, you know, didn't have a lot of things. So the things weren't really the exciting thing. I think of like winning was the important thing. And I just knew that eventually I would win. So, you know, I think the perseverance part of that comes from seeing my parents run small businesses for my whole life and then just continue to push through and push through and push through. So it's that. And then my idea of money is just kind of, you know, a unique one. Yeah.
Nothing scares rich people more than being poor. But like, if you were already poor, you're like, that's not that bad. It's like Taco Bell is still there. Like, you know, you still got the internet.
Like, it's all still pretty, pretty chill. Yeah. I mean, give me a MacBook Pro and like, let's cook, right? So that's usually it. MacBook Pro and Wi-Fi and we can figure black t-shirts and I can figure some stuff out. So yeah, I mean, that's really it at the end of the day. Nothing, nothing more special than that.
Did your, uh, over time then has the, I guess the watermark for what is winning changed to you? Right. So like you're, is it always moving up? So like you're always pushing it out further and further. Is the horizon always the horizon? Yeah.
I mean, it for sure has changed. I think like, you know, my, my original goal I wrote, you know, I've, I have notebooks from back when I was like 19, uh, just writing notes to myself and like what I wanted to accomplish and stuff. And my goal was to make $100 grand by the time I was 30 a year. And so, you know, started, started, started Homestead. And that was my first, like, you know, business that I was generating, you know, good money. And so smashed that at like 25, 26. And I was like, okay, what's next? And then when you see these businesses like Hexclad go from, you know, small, basically some guys that were selling pans to, you know, mid-nine-figure business in a short period of time, your reality changes. And I think that that was really helpful for me to see, just to kind of open up like what's possible. Yeah, I mean, when I started Easy Street Brands, which is like my holdco of brands, the goal was by 2028, $100 million in revenue. And, you know, we hit that last year. So like it was like, okay, change, spread the horizon, push it more. Like, let's see what else we can go do. So Yeah, I think, I mean, like, I think it'll ever be changing, you know, forever be changing, but I don't know. I'm at the end of the day, I'm a pretty simple person. Like, I like nice things, but I don't need nice things. You know, I grew up not having them, so I don't really need them. And I, you know, now have a kid, so I kind of want to embody this idea of like, these things are sick and cool, but we don't need them to like be happy and have a good time. And I think that that's what's really, really helpful about me being here in Wisconsin still is that When I go to a bar on the weekend, no one gives a fuck about how big my business is, what car I drive, what watch I wear. No one cares. They could care less. They're talking about things that are in the moment and having a blast. And that is such a good reset for me to have because they just, it just doesn't matter. So as much as like building the bigger business is like the game that I enjoy playing. The numbers getting bigger are part of that. I think I'm grateful to have this like grounded ability to like stay in Wisconsin and stay around my family and the people that I care about that like don't really care. Right. So, um, yeah, I don't know. That's, that's my take at it. Can I add on that?
Like, I think that's such an important— it's an interesting take, Zach. Like I live in a 200,000 person city in the middle of the mountains in British Columbia. I used to live in Toronto. Which is like 8 million people. It's like Canada is New York. Built my first company in a city where like everything is so big and there's always another level in front of you. And now I'm in a place where like half of my friends are just, we call them like they're dirtbags. Like all they want to do is just like go sleep in the forest in a hammock. And some of them are insanely wealthy, but it's like their best day is like, dude, did you see the stars last night? Like that's how they think. And I find it so refreshing. To just not be always around the shiny of like more, more, more, more, more. Uh, and it just is very freeing for me. So I'm happy you said that.
Yeah, look, we can talk about LA all day, man. I mean, you guys have seen my tweets.
Nobody said anything about LA. I think we're talking about Miami more than we're talking about LA, but yeah.
Um, I want to go back to, look, I was also 18 and I thought if I could make $100,000 a year, that'd be the most amount of money ever. I'm like, Oh, I could, I could buy everything, right? And I wonder about how long that journey actually took you from 19 to 26, right? You had to start your own business to do that. And just an education for all the young kids coming up because there's 22-year-olds listening to this and they're like, I need to make $1 million a month. And it's like, no, no, no, you don't. It took, it took Zach, who's an amazing operator, 5, 6 years in that journey before he actually cracked $100K. And now another 5 years later, he's doing, you know, he has a 9-figure brand. So It should just take you 5 or 10 years to actually build something worthwhile in this and get the skills. And it's just a warning for all the people who are 18 and they want to start being Comfort tomorrow. It's like you have to suffer a little bit to actually get the skills and the— to be grounded in reality. That's my perspective.
Yeah. Yeah. I think the other part of it too is like I was also not around the opportunity. Uh, I, you know, I flirted with the idea of moving out to Santa Barbara, um, when I was 18, 19, and my girlfriend, who's now my wife, we met our senior year in high school. So we've been together this whole time, which is also a rare kind of unique story. She was going to go to culinary school. So it was like I was either going to stay with her or break up or go to school in Santa Barbara. And funny enough, like the team and not the team, the group of people that went to Santa Barbara and went to the university that year was a team for MVMT Watches. And I was like, I would always think in my head when I was like 19, 20, 21, 22, I was watching them start to build that business.. And I was like, fuck, like I should have went to Santa Barbara. What was I doing stuck in Wisconsin running radio ads, running TV ads, like just this, like for plumbers, like what am I doing here? So I think, I think it's interesting of like, if you know what you want to do, I wouldn't say you have to do, you don't have to win right away, but proximity is also so important for learning these things. And I didn't get the chance to like have that opportunity until like Twitter was around where then I was able to talk with all these e-commerce people. While I was still in Wisconsin, right? So I had that opportunity. And then obviously I started making enough money to travel and all that good stuff. But I will say for the young people listening to this, like proximity is important if you have big ambitions. And so if you're thinking about it and it's not going to risk a relationship that may turn into a future partner, like take the shot, go move to a town, go, go, go live in LA, go bother Sean for a month or stuff like that. Because it's— I think there's a lot that you can just learn by the proximity piece.
So You would have met Daniel, the original founder of Ridge Wallet. He, he also went to school in Santa Barbara. He knows the movement guys. So you would have been there. It was an e-commerce hotspot, bro. The world would have been different.
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So we've shut down or bought and sold 5 other brands outside of these 2. So 7 in total.
And also, look, Homestead's also an 8-figure brand. So this guy, this guy's 3 out of 8. He's got 3 8-figure outcomes out of, out of 8 brands.
That's fantastic. Yeah. So we— yeah, the most recent one was a sleep accessory brand that was focused on mouth tape that got commoditized. So we just like shut that one down. That was a miss. Another one was a brand called Frey. This one I think actually probably had the most opportunity. So full, quick, very quick story on this business. We had a client that was a manufacturer that manufactured the product. Frey was a laundry detergent company and they were the original manufacturer. This brand, Frey, Frey Laundry, I think it's just frey.com, was raised a bunch of VC money, torched it all, went bankrupt., and we were buying it out of bankruptcy. And one of our clients brought us the idea and said, hey, we can buy it out. I can manufacture the product and you guys can sell it. And you're so good at this. I was like, this is a magical opportunity. We can have great COGS. We can do, you know, on-time inventory, all, all this good stuff. And this was like a couple, this was a year into Holo. Um, and I'm like, this sounds great. And basically what ended up happening is I took it over, started to build it and started to build a team and me and the, the partner of the manufacturer just like it wasn't working. The partnership, like, basically, like, hit a point where— I won't go into details, but, like, I hit a point where I was like, I'm done. Like, I can't deal with this anymore. We were running into inventory issues. All the, all the benefits I thought I was going to get by having a partner that was a manufacturer, like, didn't end up panning out. Um, and so I've, I've had a lot of conversations with other entrepreneurs that are like, hey, this manufacturer wants to start a brand with me. And I'm like, pause. Like, do not necessarily do that because A, you don't know how good of an operator they are. You don't know how big their manufacturing business can be. You don't know any of these other details about how they run their company. Um, so I, I, I make people that I've talked to like pause on that. But anyways, Frey was a business that we started to turn into a great opportunity. We basically took it from $100K a month to like $700K a month in, in about a year. Um, and then we were just starting to crack through where we were profitable on acquisition with a 50% take rate on subscription. So I was like, this thing is going to go. And like, that's right when me and this other partner of mine, just like, it didn't work out. So that one we killed, or I killed because of the partnership, uh, basically sold my shares that I bought in with. So that was like a zero outcome for me. But from like my mental headspace standpoint, I was like, whatever, I'm better off without it. So that one I think could have been a monster if I would have like kept working on that one. Um, outside of that, there was like a licensed a, uh, whatever home decor brand that bought, sold, um, that one didn't work out, didn't scale. And then a notebook company. Um, and am I missing anything else? I think that's it. Um, so yeah, I mean, we took, took, took a decent amount of shots at that goal. Uh, but if you really look back at what were the products that had those same 3 elements, it's like, okay, it's Holo and Marshmallow.
So yeah, so the other ones were missing something, right? So it sounds like Frey had a structure problem. That, you know, back to your thing, uh, so the product may have been right, your risk tolerance was there, but structure sounds like it was an issue. Um, just cap table, whatever else. And then the other ones, just like I'm thinking out loud, but like they may not have actually had the, like the angles to sell.
They didn't, or they were commoditized to the point that it just didn't make any sense, that the margin and like the opportunity got depleted.
I was going to say, do you think it's important that Holo was so successful to start? Or do you think you just put more blood, sweat, and tears into it to make it successful? Because it was the first one and that kind of set, like, it sets you up to do more of them later on. But it was your first one and your last one are the big successes. So do you think that's just a coincidence?
It was, I think I would give that product, like, I think that the product itself, like our reviews are insane, like they're socks, but people write like novels. It's crazy. So like, I think that that helped us. Um, but it also checked that other box. I don't know. I think that— I think it was just good products, good time. No one knew what alpaca socks were. No one knew that you could make stuff out of alpaca fiber. They didn't know the difference between alpaca and merino. Most people still don't. But like, it was a— it was a unique opportunity and it solved— it solved a problem and it checked all the right boxes. It was light, you know, margin was pretty good. Returning, you know, customer existed. It's not like we didn't not have a returning customer. Like our LTV is not crazy, but it had it so that that was working and helping. Um, yeah, I don't know. I don't know. I also would say like back to the risk tolerance point, that was the business I pushed hardest compared to any other business, even compared to Marsman. Like we hit a point where we were, we were, uh, so let me think about this. We were $1 million, then $8 million, and then $21 million. And between the $8 and $21 million year, we were in the spring and I was like, okay, we need to start selling this product. In Q2 or Q1, Q2, Q3. So it's not just Q4 product. And I was making POs in preparation for Q4. So I got to the point where I had debt from Wayflyer outstanding. I had payments on that debt like hitting, tranching every single week or every single, like every other week. And so we needed to generate enough cash to pay for the Wayflyer payments, to buy the raw materials, then buy the and make the product for Q4. And we got to a point where we were torching like $10K a day. And so I'd wake up, open up Triple Whale, and it was like negative $16K yesterday. Do it again the next day, negative $14K. And it was like every day. And I like hit a point where, I mean, that was the most stress that I've ever had in any business where I was like, I thought it was all going down because I was like, okay, I have so much debt on this business now that I could actually lose Homestead because Homestead was like successful, but it wasn't millions of dollars sitting in the bank successful. And so, yeah, that was, that was terrifying. But I mean, that also taught me how to run a business properly. I had to have some really hard conversations with manufacturers. I had to lay off some employees. I had to do all the hard things to turn it, turn it around. And, you know, I had to build a proper financial plan. Like, I really needed to get in the weeds in our cash flow modeling, on our P&L, like on everything, on all of the debt, how we were structuring debt and what partners we had. Like, I really had to learn that. Um, which I think was obviously helpful then when we started a business like Mars where, you know, it started to click and we were like, okay, I know exactly what to do and not how to, I know not how to ruin this at this point. So, um, yeah, yeah.
I guess I got, I, one question I have for you, Zach, is like, do you have a strong view then on the holdco model? Like your multi-brand, like the Easy Street Brands concept, uh, you clearly were like, I can do this many times over. Why do you think that that's the case for you? But like, we've also seen other holdcos completely flame out and we, and we, we all have friends who have multiple, like actually have made this work. So I'm just curious, like your stance on this model, because I think I get this approach on this often.
You need a GM. You need someone that's not you running the company. So like, if you want to do this, you need individuals to run the business that's not you that can worry about the day to day. That's not you. That's the take because there's always going to be a problem in one of the companies every single day. Like, I think if you talk to most of the holdco people that tried it or tried to do it, like one of the brands was struggling every single day. So you as the CEO of all of them, that is your problem now. So you are going— you're just constantly shifting from inventory issues, from importing alpaca to, hey, our manufacturer is not— we don't have enough whatever, whatever. We don't have enough inventory for, for this like laundry detergent business to, you know, CAC went through the roof on, on the sock business to, like, every single day there was a different problem. And I think it's really hard to do that unless you have someone like running it and owning it. And I think that that's where like Roman did a really good job. So he's got like operators running the companies. Um, I haven't seen anyone else really do it quite as well as him. Um, but I think that that's the distinct piece is that he's not CEOing a bunch of different businesses. Um, So I mean, my honest take is like, it helped me find winners, right? I don't think it's the best model. I think like, I had risk tolerance, and it helped me find these winning businesses. But even like today, so like, we are, you know, I have a GM of Holo now, Josh, and I am so happy, because there's no way I can give Mars the energy that it needs if I'm still focused on Holo. So yeah, I mean, I think that You have to have GM, CEO, whatever, someone running the business to, to build a proper holdco. Otherwise it's just like too much for one person to do.
Okay. So I very much, you know, I've, I've noticed a pattern now, the more of these episodes, these, the show that we do, it's very easy for us to like go from had an idea to like now it's big. Would you be willing to share like how you think about literally cold starting a brand. So like you've done this multiple times where like you didn't buy an existing thing. You were like, I got, this is a product. Here's an idea. I'm gonna cold start a brand in like 2025, basically today. And I would love if you could, just for people listening, like how the hell you think about this? Like right now, if you were to start another one, how would you do it? What's the playbook that runs through your head over and over and over again?
Everyone's talking about health and wellness, but like, that is the space that I would play in if I were to do it again. Um, seeing what we were able to— category matters. Um, I would create one product, no more than one, just one. And I would try to build that product and set it up in a way where I could talk about it 50 different ways to, to, to a bunch of customers. And I would love the ability to sell it to both men and women. So not necessarily like an IM8, but like in that range, I would try to do something about that. Maybe I would go a little bit more niche where I would maybe make a, you know, a heart supplement. Something that's for like heart health where it could still be 40 to 70 year olds. It could be men and women, but it's a, it's a comprehensive product. Um, and then it needs MRR. It needs, it needs returning revenue. Like any brand that tries to say that they're an LTV brand, like it's so hard. Like there's been some of these apparel brands, like there's Represent, there's, you know, some of these other ones that customers get super loyal and they come back and they buy and they buy again. But that's so rare to see. So I would much rather lean into a business that inherently is a returning customer revenue-driven business because Facebook ads has just gotten more expensive. Like acquiring customers has just gotten more expensive. And especially if you want to hit scale, you need the ability to lose money on your first customer or on that, on that, on that first purchase to actually achieve proper scale. So yeah, I mean, if I were to like start from zero, I just, whatever, riffing. Health and wellness brand focused on heart health, which is like holistic health for 40 to 70-year-olds. That's a, you know, multi-ingredient product that has some clinicals. So I can make some pretty bold claims. I can tie them to clinicals that has MRR. And, you know, I try to find a manufacturer in the States that can make a holistic product like I, that I wouldn't have to worry about sourcing packaging or bottling or boxes or any of that. Just make it all for me in one so that my like operations of the business are super lean. Then literally one person, me, could run that business because I could use AI for CX. I could use AI for, you know, BSing email and SMS. Like I think you could kind of get away with it for a little bit. And then it's just Facebook ads at the end of the day to get it started. I think you can. Yeah, 100%. I mean, I think like that's just my, this is my playbook. Like everyone says like do the organic content piece. I'd say do that as well. But to do that properly, you need the ability to have the cash to seed the product in the first place, and you need to seed at volume to actually get enough content to actually get the banger. I'm— that's the route that I would take. I mean, I'd run static ads up to, you know, a 6-figure-a-month business, and then I'd start incorporating video, and then I'd maybe go into the organic thing. But yeah, I think, I think you could literally— that concept right there, you could stand up with $30 grand, you could stand that up and get a $100K MRR business and 30 to 60 days.
Give me your take, man. I want to know how you, compared to what Zach is saying, like, uh, from a cold start perspective.
Well, Zach's right because Zach's a ruthless operator. Like, you know, I would do organic, but I, because, because you wouldn't be testing a product. You'd be like, this is the product I care about and I'm passionate about. I'm the face of it. I'm gonna go post videos about it all day long. But that's not what Zach's describing. What Zach's describing is he's like, I'm fucking amazing at ads. I've done this 4 or 5 times. I, because if the heart health thing didn't work for whatever reason, if there's not a TAM there, he'd pivot to gut health or sleep health or something something else, right? And like what you don't want to do is put your social brand on the line, like making videos of yourself and like on your own organic social channels for a brand you're going to shut down and then relaunch with a new ingredient, right? So it's, it's, it's so that if you're a ruthless operator, just follow exactly what Zach is saying, but Zach's just better at it than other people. So it's like you have to, yeah, you like, you have to be good at ads and actually understand this process. Um, you know, I want to talk about, uh, and this is going to be a little bit of a pivot, but like the structural structural advantages that you typically produce when you're doing brands. People know this or not, you're a very generous person when it comes to equity and partners and stuff, right? Like, you know, a lot of times I find like founders who won't give up 1%, right? But like on Homestead, you're like, hey, Riley, you're going to run it now. You're, you're an equity partner. You're going to fucking run this thing. You're the president. If we sell, you get a bunch of money. And with Marsman, it's the same thing. It's like you brought a partner in this business. You're always down to partner with people. And that is something I think people don't appreciate is you're in like you're very into aligned incentives, like the team that's working on it or the co-founder. You're going to make sure that like they are healthily taken care of. Do you think I'm overstating that or you think that's a big part of your—
The only thing that I'll correct is that Benjamin Smith brought Marsman to me. That was not my idea. So Ben, my co-founder in Marsman, who was previously the founder of Disco, which is a men's skincare brand, brought both the Melt Tape idea and Marsman to me. And so we started those together and we said, you know, his whole thing was, I'm great at product, brand, vision, organic, and I know how to build a brand, which Disco crushed. If everyone ever like you look back 3 or 4 years ago, people knew who Disco was and they were like a sub— they were a 7-figure business. It looked like an 8 or maybe even 9-figure brand. So Ben was so good at that that I saw him do that and fail, and I'm like, but I'm good at growth. So like, this could be really interesting. Um, and I'm not really a product person at the end of the day. Like, I, I feel like I have my opinions on product, but I'm not, I'm not the innovator on product. So he brought that concept to me. I think that Marsman is working and it has worked to the level that it has because he invested in things and wanted to invest in things that I normally wouldn't have, right? So he wanted to invest in brands. He wanted to invest in like making things sick, making the packaging great, making it, you know, fully paper unique. Like no one else had done anything like our packaging. And he was all into that. I'm like, I think we're wasting money. We should just do a plastic bottle and like, let's just sell this thing, right? So that's like my end versus his. And I think that a lot of those decisions that he made were really important to people buying into it. So yeah, I don't know. That's the only correction that I have is that Ben did bring Marsman to me and present that to me, which when you run an agency and people see you grow a bunch of businesses like those, I've had a bunch of those opportunities. This one with Ben was just unique enough that I figured it was worth taking a shot on. Okay, well, and Frey was the same thing.
Like Frey came to you with an opportunity. So you've seen it work once and you've seen it not work once. Do you think incubation by yourself is going to be the future, or are you looking for more partners to launch stuff with?
It's a hard question. I don't know. I don't know. There's, there's, um, there's a lot of peace in running a business by yourself. Um, partnership can be hard, you know, depending on like who, who that person is and like their, you know, their goals. Um, I will like give— I don't know why my camera keeps going blurry, but I will give Benjamin like a lot of credit on how hard he pushes. I think people in the D2CX space think Marsman's success was because of me. It literally is 50/50. Like Ben has pushed so hard on that brand. Like we'll set a forecast to be no bigger, bigger, bigger. And then it's up to me to be like, okay, can we actually like pull this off? And is that even reasonable? So I do have to give him like a ton of credit. I think there's been moments in this business with Mars that he's definitely carried more weight than I have. Certainly.
So how can you, can you go, go deeper on that? Like, what does that mean? Because so people listening are going to know you as the paid guy. Like, what's Ben doing? Sorry, Ben. I'm not discounting what Ben does. No.
Yeah. He's super in the weeds. Like he is reviewing every single email that goes out. Um, we have a channel where we still were reviewing between Ben and I, every single ad that was going out. We, I approve every single lander that goes out. Um, website changes, Ben, me, plus our designer in Figma making the design changes. Like he's very in the weeds. Every product change, like we were reviewing product product packaging together, making tweaks of the product packaging, him and I. He's done a lot. And he also, like, what I will give him a ton of credit for too is he's been patient with me while I've been making this transition into like creating more time for Marsman. Because I had Holo, I had Homestead, I had these other businesses. And so he was like all in on Mars. And so from a time perspective, I mean, like, he was, it was 80/20 for a while there from time committed, me versus Ben. So I mean, I think a lot of that, credit is, you know, credit is due to Ben for that is just the commitment. And he's, he is very, very good at identifying problems in the business. Like he will find pockets of problems that I wouldn't find, operations issues. Hey, we don't have a system for this. Like he's, I'm much more like run, you know, fly by the seat of my pants. And he's much more like, we need an SOP for this. And we need this in Notion and we need this automated and we need an AI person to come into the company and build out this full automation so I never have to do this again. I will just do it over and over again. So he has a lot of really unique skill sets that have made the partnership work. And then his idea to push is like, you know, Ben wants to build a billion-dollar outcome business. Like, that was his intention, was like, I want to go big. He thought that was Disco. He's like, this is going to be Marsman. So when you have a partner that is like, we are fucking going for it, no matter what your intentions are of the business, it's like, okay, like, I'll try to keep, you know, the train on the tracks while we keep pushing. But yeah, I mean, that is, that is a big attribute of his.
Yeah. And for people who don't know, I mean, Disco, great product, great branding. They were trying to sell makeup to men, which is just a very, very tough market. So the fact that you even got to 7 figures, I mean, hats off to them. Like that is, that is generational change if they could pull that off.
Yeah. Yeah. A very, very tough market.
Um, you said, you said one more thing, you know, LTV is not guaranteed and that's something people should take away is that like the reason why all the subscription brands are working right now and selling for hundreds of millions of dollars or billions of dollars, it's because subscriptions are guaranteed. Like, you know, the problem with being a fashion brand and LTV, it's like, yes, t-shirts you know, do wear out. But go in any guy's closet, they have shirts from 10 years ago. It's like, unless they gained a bunch of weight, they're gonna keep the shirts that they have for 5 years, 10 years. And the only way to get them back in is to do new and more exciting stuff. And that's why collab culture has gotten so big. It's like, Kith gets me because every week they're like, oh, here's a new, you know, '90s retro collab, or here's a new, you know, uh, we're partnering with On Running or New Balance or whatever. And it's like, that hype machine is really, really hard to build. And it's really like, and if you have something that flops, you don't get the sales where MMR, every single week, every single month, sales are coming in regardless. So that's why there's been so much push to anything on subscription and it's physical products are harder because of that.
Yeah. The other thing that I will say about the subscription, like health and wellness brands that I don't think people are paying enough attention to, maybe they are, maybe this is just like a thing that I've been thinking about lately, which is How do you drive? So to get a big outcome with a strategic, you need retail velocity, right? D2C is important. Amazon's cool. International's meh. Doesn't really matter as much, but retail velocity is important. When you have MRR, you can spend into that MRR. So these brands are spending more money on paid social and just awareness than everybody else. So when you think about brands like Groonze that then went into Walmart, everyone already saw GrooveAds. They like, they noticed it, of course, when they were walking past, they're like, oh yeah, that's that like green gummy thing that I saw Facebook ads over. So I think like there's an unmatched value add when you have MRR for the fact that you could literally spend into that MRR and keep pushing, pushing, pushing the awareness that by the time that you do hit the, you do hit the stores, the retail placements, the velocity is just going to just crush everybody else that's in there. So, um, that's another thing too that I think is people don't give enough value to because they're like, oh yeah, these brands are growing really fast, but some of these brands are spending $10 million a month on Meta ads. Who else is spending $10 million a month? Like, you go to like even like the huge, like Fortune 500 companies don't spend $10 million a month on Meta ads. So the awareness is there, um, which is, is a huge piece.
It wouldn't be surprising if Groove's marketing budget was way bigger than Liquid IV. Right. It's because like they are in a, they're in the scaling phase right now. So like, yeah, I totally, I totally get what you're saying, but the impression that they're pumping out in the world is just scary because what you end up seeing is, you know, they're really, they're really getting 10 billion impressions a month on paid social. Like they could take over your whole category if they wanted to.
I saw something super interesting.
Grunge is basically carpet bombing America.
Yeah. Like totally. I saw something super interesting on Twitter. Uh, Yesterday, a friend sent it to me and there was, I forget who it was. I think it was for Sarah V. And they're like, hey, Sarah V has a YouTube channel that got 150 million views. And I did the math and I'm like, on a $30 CPM, that's $4.5 million. Like there's brands that cook through $4.5 million in a month. So it's like, yes, organic is interesting and 150 million views sound interesting, but when you're actually spending real dollars and your CPMs are decent, like you can blow past any organic reach that you're going to get from building like a big organic brand. That's my perspective. And so I think brands like Groove, like Sarah V got 150 million views on, on YouTube. Who gives a shit? Groove's got 150 million views in the last 7 days on Meta ads. So I think that's what's, that's what's super interesting about these brands.
Dude, can I ask a thing on Mars, man? Where did, I mean, this might be more of a Ben question, but like, it seems sort of counterintuitive to me to go into this category, like, TRT is a, like a, I felt like that was a common thing. Like there's a lot of TRT out in the world. It's like, what was the, the insight to create this product and to go into this space?
Yeah, I'll try to tell Ben's story as best as I can cuz it's his story. So Ben was, uh, a little bit of a wild child, let's call it that, in his early 20s. And he depleted his hormones massively. He hit a point where he was like, you know, getting pretty out of shape, not feeling good, and started to try to go down the path of fixing that. So of course he did the like, okay, quit drinking, start eating healthy, start doing the things right. He started trying a bunch of different products and so he ended up building basically a stack of products that cost him, I think he says, $300 in total. And then that thesis of like, okay, here's the stack that I've been taking now for a couple of years is what turned into Marsman. He's like, someone needs to just buy a product that is my stack stack of natural T-boosting stack. And that's where the shilajit, the Tongkat Ali, the boron, all that stuff, the vitamin D, all of that comes into one. And that's how the idea was, was created. So it was actually like a true founder story that led to the product innovation being, being what it is.
And how come when you looked at it, right? So Ben, Ben brings you the idea, you must have seen more than just like angles and, and What we've talked about before, like you, there's gotta be an insight that you had where you're like, you're looking at it, you're like, oh, this could actually work.
Ben will talk shit about this probably till the cows don't come home, but I thought the Maltate brand was gonna be bigger than, than Marsman. Um, so yeah, that's what I thought. I'm like, ah, this fucking T-Booster thing. Like Nugenix has been around forever. No one really cares about this. TRT exists, who cares? That's what I thought until I realized that there are Millions of men that hate needles that want to go natural first before they go to, you know, something that they have to inject every single month or every couple of weeks for the rest of their life. Otherwise they're going to mess up their hormones. So there's a huge market. The TAM is massive. And then the other part of this too is it's not just the 50-year-olds, it's everyone now that is literally 25 plus. Because if you look at the chart, there's like a really important chart that, that shows testosterone levels over the course of time. Now, 2026, men in their 20s have the lowest testosterone they've ever had in the last, like, 100 years that they've been tracking this because of our diets, because of sedentary lifestyle, because of all of the things that we do that lead to, you know, just sitting and scrolling on our phones all day. Like, none of these things are helping us create the natural hormone that regulates our body. So our TAM got a lot bigger right now. We have 25+. We have, we have guys in their 20s that don't like— Ben didn't want to go to TRT. That wanted a natural supplement to do it. So yeah, I mean, I think that was, that was the kind of the eye-opener for me when I realized that, you know, Ben had his story, but I was like, how many people are there like Ben? There's a lot of them. And then I think, you know, the other piece is like testosterone has always had this weird stigma. And our goal with Mars is to like push that stigma away. Like testosterone doesn't mean like you're just like horny all the time or whatever. It has a huge impact on how you feel holistically. It is the energy, it is your focus, it is your sleep, which is a huge piece of this. So there's, there's, we have customers that tell us that they take it specifically because of the sleep benefits, which is super interesting. Um, so yeah, I mean, I think I was proven wrong. I thought it was going to be mouth tape, but obviously, you know, this is a great product. And then the ability, you know, I've shared this publicly a few times, but we were at a point where the business was doing, I don't know, $200K a month in revenue and we were kind of flatlining and we were kind of struggling to get NCPA in a spot where I felt really comfortable. You're running, you know, an offer for a subscription versus one time. And I had a conversation with Jordan Menard from Instant Hydration, and he's like, dude, you've got high risk tolerance. What the hell are you doing? Send it, go all in on subscription. Just go, just do it. He's like, torch money for 2 months, track the cohorts, it's gonna back out, I promise. Jordan, if any of you don't know Jordan, Jordan had the, you know, had the opportunity and he was the main kind of guy behind this for brands like Everyday Dose. He was the guy behind Rise, like he was the marketer behind those brands. So he saw it and he was starting to come up with this idea for instant hydration while we were talking. And so we, we, we, we sent it and we basically, we torched $250K over 2 months building our, our MRR because we went all in on subscription.
So you took away one-time purchase as an option?
So we have to, you have to show it FTC regulation. You have to allow it. So we allow it, but it's just like not for the forefront offer on our site. Um, and so we went to 99.99% of orders were subscription only. Um, and because the product's good and it does what it's supposed to do, the cohorts held and MRR started to stack. And we're like, holy shit, this is interesting. So that is where then the company started growing by, you know, a few hundred thousand dollars a month to then a million dollars plus a month. Every single month we were growing by consistently. So That's really what allowed us to kind of kick things off. So it was a good product. It had the opportunity, but it took the extra push from Jordan to be like, dude, torch some cash, like build, build the MRR, go all in for us to really hit the gas on it. And once that started, it, you know, it's kind of lights out from there.
How did you fund the cash gap on— because I'm assuming you're not, you're not profitable day one. You've got a payback period.
How did you guys, uh, bridge the gap? Founder investment from us.
Yeah. Okay, let's actually— if you're down to unpack that, like, you have businesses that are cash flowing. Did you guys go 50/50 on the cash in, or did you take the lion's share of putting the money in? Like, how did it actually break out?
Yeah, I took the lion's share, um, but Ben— again, going back to like the original point— Ben was working 80%, I was working 20% on this business because I didn't have the capacity to work on it because I was still the CEO of Holo and I was still an owner of Homestead and still involved in that business. So yeah, it was, it was me basically saying, I'll take the bet kind of on you, on us that this is going to work out. We were 50-50 partners. We still are up, you know, up until the raise, we still own, you know, the fair share majority of the business, but our equity is split still today. Um, but yeah, I was like, I'll take the bet on you. Like, I think there's an opportunity here. I trust Jordan Menard. Like, let's, let's give this a shot. So yeah, Ben put money in, but I definitely put, you know, the lion's share of it in.
Okay, so let's talk about the last couple of months because you're a titan on this episode because you had the craziest 2026 of anybody else I know. So I think you started off announcing the official sale of Homestead and maybe, maybe talk us through that process. You hire a GM for Hollow. Hollow is now ripping, growing.
That's a lot of processes all at once.
Yeah, we had technically 4 deals because I, you know, raised for Holo as well. That wasn't public, but we did a small PE round for Holo during that same period of time as well. So So yeah, gnarly. And then we purchased a large 100,000 square foot warehouse facility, which is now our fulfillment center for all the brands. So yeah, it was nuts. Like I've— my accountants, my tax team, my attorneys were like, we've never had anyone do 4 deals in 60 days. But yeah, it was gnarly. I don't know, like I think I will, I will say and give credit. To Riley. Riley led a lot of the Homestead deal because I wasn't the CEO. You know, I kind of put him in charge and not even put him in charge. He was in charge of that, of that deal and did a great job. Verndale was a great opportunity. It was a good fit. So I'll give him a lot of credit there for doing a lot of the heavy lifting. Ben led a ton of the, of the heavy lifting with Elk Atterton. Ben is— his whole kind of pitch to me also is like, if we need to raise, I know how to raise. I've done it before. He raised, I think, almost $10 million for, for Disco. Um, he has— his Rolodex is insane. Like, he's one of those people that you, like, name someone in the health and wellness space or an investor, like, they know who Ben is. Um, he did a great job with that. So, I mean, Ben led a lot of that. Um, and then I led the, the raise for Holo because I was the CEO. So I did that. And then also this, this warehouse deal. So I mean, yeah, it was a crazy 60-day period. I survived the other end of it now, which feels good. But yeah, I mean, it was definitely a— I don't know, like, I try to give advice to people now when they're doing a deal, like one, not 4 at once, of just like, try to just level set. There's going to be really great days where you're like, it's happening. There's gonna be days where you're like, it's falling apart and it's never gonna happen. We're never signing this business. So Yeah, I mean, I think that the goal of the buyer usually is to not share their temperature. And that happened to me 4 times in 60 days because I thought I was maybe not going to get the warehouse. I thought Homestead Deal was going to fall through. I wasn't quite sure about how the Holo Raise was going to go. It was a great business. And I didn't really know if Elkaderton was going to be the one. So like full context with Mars, like Elkaderton got first look. We didn't, we didn't shop that deal around at all. Like Ben and I spoke to 5 PE funds, like very loosely, but Alcaterton got first look. No one else saw our financials. No one else saw the business. They were the one to look at it. And we've obviously seen what they've been able to do for a handful of these companies. I mean, they're, they're a blue chip fund. So we, we had the opportunity. We're like, we're going to go all in on this one. So yeah, I mean, I have to give credit to, to, to, to my partners, to be honest. And the other two were a little bit smaller, but Well, you're probably your lawyer's favorite customer.
You're probably going to get a great gift basket this Q4.
Dude, they better buy you a second boat. Yeah, they did just fine in the last 6 months for you. Did the success of the brands have any impact in your decision to sell Homestead?
Yes. Yeah, for sure. For sure. You know, candidly, we went to market a year prior. Or we're going to go to market a year prior with Homestead, and we started to have a little bit of a downturn. Um, and that was a good reset for the business. Like, it gave Riley and me an opportunity to like really sit down and be like, okay, what do we have to do to sell this company for a number that we're both excited about? Um, and a cash-out amount that we're both excited about. So that helped us kind of reverse engineer our way into the exit. So when we went to market, um, it was just like, it was quite easy to sell Homestead because our churn got, got better. Like the, you know, the retention got better. No one on the team was like, we didn't have any turnover. We had like much more of like a stability from a leadership standpoint, like we were able to like level up a few people and put them in a role for like an entire year. And our service offering became so heavy on the retention side, which our retention clients, like the longevity, the LTV of our email and SMS clients is way higher than our paid clients because obviously paid is much more volatile. Email and SMS is a little less volatile. So, um, the business was, was kind of primed. So we, we did try to go a little bit earlier. Um, but then yeah, obviously as Marsman was ripping, Hollow have been ripping, like it was, it was a pretty easy decision to say, all right, now's a good time.
Would you be willing to hit on Uh, just for, I know we have a lot of people that actually own agencies that listen to the show. Could you give like a quick, like, here are the things that are most valuable when it comes to selling an agency business?
Yeah. I mean, I think number one is deciding, like, a lot of people are like, I'm gonna sell it and I'm not, I'm, you know, I don't, I don't have to go with it. Unless you have a CEO or a GM, you are going with that business. So like, I think a lot of people think like, I can check out. Very likely you will have an earnout. We have an earnout, um, and you're clocked in and you're pushing for one more year, even after like all of the stress of getting the deal done, you still have a whole other year to, to kind of hit that. So be, be conscious of that. Um, the other piece I'd say is like, I'd say invest more in your best people. If you have good people at your agency, continue to pay them more, continue to invest in them more as much as you can and keep them around because what usually happens in the agency space is an agency is arbitraging people so they can only pay their employees so much. And it's not like brands where like brands are arbitraging their product, not their people. So a brand can usually pay more. So we would usually like have all these incredible people kind of come up through Homestead and then there'd be a brand that would come in and offer them a job for $50K more, $100K more salary. And so we just kept getting awesome people swooped. And I wish that if I like look back, I would have paid our best people more and try to incentivize them and potentially even give more of them a piece of an outcome. To stick around longer to try and push for an exit. Um, because I think the outcome gets much bigger once you have more people bought into it, especially when your business is the people, which is an agency. So those are kind of the main two, um, that I would say outside of that, like if you can have a service offering that isn't tied to daily performance, green light, that's what you want. You don't want the service offering that's tied to daily performance. Um, when you're, when your service offering is like, hey, when, when any e-com founder is having a bad performance day, they go, who do they go talk to? Media buyer. They go talk to like the head of paid. They go talk to their agency that's running their media. They're not looking at their email, not saying agency, they're not looking at their dev agency. They're not looking at their, you know, uh, organic social agency. They're not looking at any of them. They're looking at them. So, uh, the paid team. So that was always hard for us. So as soon as we started to switch and be like kind of 50/50 between paid and retention, it really helped us level set and like keep clients around longer. Which then built stability. And yeah, that's, those are kind of like the main, the main 3 I'd focus on.
You know, Sean brought up the, like doing a bunch of deals all at once. And the last one I think that sort of got announced was the Elcat deal for Marsman. Why did you guys choose to go to them like almost exclusively? Right? It's like one thing to talk to a few guys, but like what, what was the thinking behind that?
Oh, sorry. No, great, great line of questioning. And I want to know, did you use a banker or not, or this was all you guys self-negotiating? Yeah, no banker.
No banker. But we were in a spot where the business was growing literally $1 million plus a month every month for like 7 or 8 months in a row. And so we were like, okay, how long can this stay this good was like my number one concern. How long can this actually stay this good? And what other factors are we not thinking about? And so Ben and I basically were like, okay, this helps us take some downside risk, helps us take some chips off the table, which is great. It also builds our balance sheet up bigger in case it starts to slow down. It also builds up our balance sheet if we want to go to retail. And we knew that always the intention here is to build a great business that's growing MRR on D2C on Amazon,, but we initially need to go to retail. And to do that, we need a balance sheet that allows us to go to retail and send it in retail to have the ability to do a nationwide roll-up. So there was that. And then the other part of it too is like, we wanted to have a partner in the business that we felt like could properly coach us and reverse engineer our way to a very big exit. And Ben and I have never had that. I've never done a deal, a 9-figure deal before doing, you know, even just like the Homestead deal was like stressful enough. Um, and so I really wanted a partner that could help us think through this and be like, here's the timing, here's how you think about it, here's the business you really want to build. And, you know, we talk with, we talk with the Elcat team a couple of times a month now, and even sometimes like a couple of times a week, uh, just getting feedback, getting feedback on our model, getting feedback on, hey, we're going to maybe go sign some celebrity. Like, what do you think about this? Are we thinking about this correctly? Like, they've been incredible to be able to bounce ideas off of because they've seen such big businesses and they've seen these transactions happen. To happen. So Ben and I figured that if we did the bet, especially with an, with an Alcaterton, that our chance of outcome would go up. Because we're like, yeah, we might be able to build $150 million business, but like, is the business going to be structured in a way? Are we going to think about it correctly? Are we going to lean too much into international and then a strategy doesn't care about it or PE doesn't care about that? We wanted someone that was going to help us kind of coach us and guide us to have a high likelihood of a 9 or potentially even 10-figure outcome.
Um, can you comment on— you made the— you referred to LCAT as a blue chip, which I think we would all agree, like, that, that's a, that's a, like, a very legit fund. Um, can you comment on the brand value that having an LCAT as a sort of on the cap table brings to not just to Mars Men, but like even the category, right? Like men's testosterone supplements, like these can be very hard categories from a, like, perception brand, like long-term brand equity, you know, maybe just go there a bit because I think you guys thought this through.
They, they know this. So the closest comp that Ben and I would always think about when we thought about Marsman was Nutrafol, or like, is a very simple product mix. And they, you know, were heavier in the men's product because it's mostly about hair loss. It's very simple. It's subscription-based. And they sold, they sold to, they went in with, they did a round with, um, Elkatterton and Elkatterton helped sell them to Unilever. So we were like, okay, what other comp do we have? Cause you know, there's other, there's other ones out there. I mean, obviously there's, there's Groon's, um, there's like brands like Primal Queen, which are crushing single SKU, whatever. Like there's some of these other ones that exist in the ecosystem, but we haven't seen many of them actually have the outcome. Like when we did this round, we obviously didn't know that Groon's was going to go sell. Um, so we knew that they had the track record and then we also knew that they, you know, they've done and have a deal with Thorn, right? They're, they're an owner of Thorn. And so we thought if there's any fund that has access to data about holistic health, it's going to be Caterton and they see it on a massive scale. So we thought if we were going to do a deal with a partner instead of partnering with another, you know, maybe smaller private equity fund that maybe would have got us a bigger valuation. Um, we figured that our likelihood and chance of having this blue chip, like I said, partner would increase the likelihood of an outcome. And so, yeah, I mean, to your other question, like we've gotten, we've gotten like the rollout treatment, right? Like the Google team was like, hey, we have a team that like wants to support you. Meta's like, hey, we have a team that really wants to support you. You know, any, any agency, creative agencies have like thrown themselves at us to like do work for us because of this news. Uh, they're like, we'll work for free for a month and just like try it out, run our ads for free. So like we've gotten a lot of that, which has been, which has been great and really cool. And so I'd say like that also has helped even in the last like 30 days, um, help with our trajectory and help us keep winning.
How did you navigate, uh, if there was at all the conversation with Elcat about like You having multiple companies, you've still got Holo, like Zach, where's your focus, dude? Are you going to help build this thing? Like, dude, I mean, like I've been in these processes, like it's going to come up, right? So how, how did you just talk this through?
Luckily, luckily while we were doing that, the Homestead deal was happening. So I was like, hey, selling my agency. I know I'm a majority owner of that, but I'm selling it. It's literally like it's going down right now. Sold 30 days before the Alcat deal closed. Host. Hollow, I was like, I'm hiring a GM. Like, I promise you, I'm hiring a GM. Was able to bring in Josh, like found Josh really quickly and hired him, brought him on like right away. So I was able to be like, hey, Zach's hands are not in, you know, a million different cookie jars. They are in the Mars Men one. And I think they were also understanding, like there was going to be a little bit of a transition. And Ben's the CEO, like I, Zach, I'm not the CEO, I'm the CMO of the company., and they have a lot of confidence in Ben, as, as do I. And I think that that was the underlying piece is that Ben led the raise. Ben was, was, and is the major main face to Elkatterton. Um, so I think that that also helped. It's not like I was the, the only guy. It's not like I was a sole founder that also had other stuff going on. Um, having my partner that was all in on it was definitely helpful too. But yeah, they know now, like Chris, who's the partner at Elk Hatterton who's been absolutely— Chris Roberts has been absolutely incredible. Like, we've gone to him with a bunch of ideas and concepts and he's been the chillest, like, best. Like, I couldn't— we couldn't ask for a better partner. He, you know, I like was able to let him know recently, I'm like, hey, like, you know, I'm able to go fully in on Marsman now. And he, you know, he was supportive of that along the way. So, um, where I don't think some of the other funds would have been as willing to do that. I think that LCAT saw the business, saw the opportunity. They're like, Ben's a great, great operator as well. And these guys got it.
So, so, Zach, is this the end of Easy Street Brands? You have Hollow, you have Mars Men. There's no— I can't bring you soap ideas. I can't bring you beer, deer. I can't bring nothing. It's over.
Well, I mean, I have a pretty strict non-compete now that LCAT's in the, you know, in the mix. So depending on what it is, we'll see. But no, I think I'm going to focus on these two. Um, I think, I think Holo has an opportunity to have a 9-figure outcome. Um, it's a great business. It's growing, growing very fast. We're profitable. Uh, Marsman has an opportunity to have a, you know, potential, potential 10-figure outcome. So I'd be kind of silly to keep, keep taking even more and more shots at goal. So for now, I will say no. Uh, and maybe this is the end of Easy Street Brands and it's just going to be these two.
Okay. Well, dude, yeah. Yeah. I'm looking forward to you sell both of them. You get a billion dollars and then it's, you know, then, then we're really on easy street.
No, I was just going to say, for what it's worth, like the name Easy Street was the most cocky remark of— I did Homestead, which was the street I grew up on, and now we're on Easy Street. Now we're, now we're on the easy part of it. You know, agency was tough, brands are easy. So that's where it came from. That's the honest take of where it came from, which is like the most arrogant shit ever. But whatever. It is what it is.
Dude, if I could ever give you advice, don't, don't jinx your shit. With stuff like that. Like, just, you know, stay away from that. Um, hey, I, I'd love to just talk a little bit about, um, sort of like Mars Men today. Let's just pick one. Like, Mars Men today, what does— for the growth that you guys have experienced, what does the team look like? And has— how has it changed over the last, like, 12, 18 months? You know, like, where did it start and where are you guys today? And then how do you think about team and scaling brands? Like right now with how the market is and everything we're experiencing?
Yeah, well, I'll say one thing that blows everybody away. We have one ops person. Um, we have one ops person that was a junior ops person that is now our, our director of operations. Um, he was working with me on some of the previous projects and we were able to kind of like work him into, to Marsman. We have one operations person, which is crazy. We're hiring a VP of ops now, but like we got to, you know, 9-figure run rate, 8 figures a month in revenue with, with one ops person. Um, we have a head of CX who oversees a team of about 15 reps. Um, we have a head of retention, uh, who oversees our agency, which we use Homestead still. Um, and so he oversees that and then oversees kind of the, the day-to-day of, of, uh, the backend of the subscription side of things. And then I'm trying to think, we have a, you know, a brand, uh, brand director, we have a creative director. Those are like newer, uh, newer role, newer hires. Creative director is, is one of the newer ones. Um, and then pretty much, I know I'm missing something. We have a chief of staff that, that's been, she's been absolutely incredible. So technically it goes Benjamin, myself, our chief of staff, Evita, and then like very flat line of a bunch of like head or VPs and almost all of them, everybody else is like growth. So we have a head of growth, we have a head of paid, we have a VP of performance creative, we have, um, I don't even know, we have 3, 3 designers, we have 4 creative strategists, we have 5 video editors. I mean, like, everybody else is the growth engine. Uh, we have 5 creative agencies right now. Um, Yeah, it's like, it is an ad creative and landing page. Uh, we have, you know, head of e-com, um, who handles our like CRO. It is, it literally is, we have, you know, you know, ops, CX. We have no head of product. We have no product people. It's basically just Ben. Um, and everyone else is just growth. So it is pretty wild to see. And I think that, candidly, like, I think this is more the future of like these, these types of businesses, especially if they're in like the health and wellness space. And even, even if it's not, even if like the SKU count gets a little bit bigger, I think like all the AI AI, like things that you can do to oversee ops now, I think is getting way better. I think it's basically like, hire the people that are going to help create the growth engine. And that's exactly what we did here. And funny enough, like Holo is very, very similar. Like we have one product person on Holo, two ops people, and everybody else for the most part is growth. So that's how, that's how we've structured things. And that's what I've obviously, we've seen some success with.
We, we like to finish these things off with this, like this, these 10 rapid-fire questions. I do think because you have agency background and brand background, I'd love to, like, if you can, like, do the quick context switch, like give us one and give us, then give us the answer from the perspective of the other. Um, so I'll start it off when we ask everybody the same questions and I, I'm amazed at how much variety I get in these answers. Like, we're all in consumer, shouldn't they be the same? Um, so first question is, you get to a desert island, you get a dashboard to manage your business, you only get 3 numbers on that dashboard that tell you how the business is doing. What are the 3 numbers that are most important to you?
New customer CPA, cash in the bank, month 6, uh, cohort retention.
Okay. So like net revenue retention at 6 months? Yeah, 6 months.
I'd say that's relevant to both brands. That's, that's my brand side. Agency side, team retention, client retention, and pipeline. Yep. Yep. And pipeline. Yeah. Uh, okay.
So then you also get to take a book or a resource, but it cannot be about business. And this, this might be just like a one, one answer. Like, what is the thing that you're, you're on this island? What are you going to read?
I'll go with something like super like childish because it's fun. Like I'll go with like Harry Potter, Sorcerer's Stone, first book. Just kick it off with just like a Harry Potter book. Yeah, I don't know if I'm stuck on an island, I might as well just try and enjoy it a little bit and be playful because it's pretty brutal. I don't know.
You just may have made this the first time ever that my daughter might listen to this damn show because she loves Harry Potter. So thanks for that. You made me cool, man. What is your one contrarian belief about business that other people think you're crazy for?
Profit doesn't matter as much as people make it seem like it's the most important thing. That is a very contrarian belief.
I love that. That's, that's great.
Cash flow is great. I'll add the context. Cash flow is incredible. So I'll call that out. Free cash flow.
Love it. What's the single most important word in leadership? Patience. Okay, then what's the single most important word in business? Grit. Best meal of the day and why? Oh, and dude, I want to know, has this changed pre and post baby?
Uh, best meal or words? Best meal of the day and why? Uh, breakfast, obviously. Um, I don't know. You can, you can rip, uh, savory. You can rip sweet. You can rip whatever you want. I mean, best meal of the day is definitely breakfast. Pancakes, breakfast burrito. I mean, how can you go wrong?
Were you always a breakfast guy, or was this like, oh, now that I got a young kid, I'm up?
This is the fact that I married a chef and she went to culinary school and she makes everything dope. But specifically, like, we can have like incredible breakfast every single day.
So yeah, that's how I think it's the most underrated meal of the day for sure. What, uh, what do you think the most overrated growth tactic is right now? Creative volume. I dig that. Uh, okay, then what's the most underrated Funnel congruency.
If you want me to go into details on that, that's my big one.
Yeah. Okay. So like, yes, just give us the, the, the TL;DR on what the hell that means for people listening.
You're talking, you're talking about whatever you're talking about weight loss in an ad. And then you push people to, you know, a 10 reasons why everyone's starting to do listicles now because listicles work. Maybe you mentioned weight loss once in those 10 reasons, and then you push them to a product page that maybe mentions weight loss, like in a review, one review. Why would you not build an entire funnel that tells that story from A to Z, especially if they're watching a video ad that they only watched 5 seconds of before they go through. So the intention is that you're making an ad with a whole concept of weight loss. You've got all of your, you know, awareness ads that are about weight loss. You've got your, you know, uh, product aware, solution aware, whatever. You've got all the awareness stages there. Your page should be able to tell that same story all the way through about weight loss. And then your product page should also tell the same story. All the way through. So yeah, I mean, if you go study Marsman stuff lately, it's, it's doing that. We don't launch ads unless we have a funnel that's congruent with the ad, and we've seen a big bump in performance based on that.
So you could even go further for people listening, like you could actually make that pretty dynamic.
You could take it all the way down to cart, take it down to cart, you can take it down to your email flows, you can take it down to your popup. So now we're running popups that talk about the same thing based on the landing page that you're on. We talk talk about email flows that fire based on the funnel that you're on. So like you can take that same thing. Funnel congruency, I think is the, the, the biggest piece.
Why do you think that's underrated? Is it just 'cause it's hard and it's like, that's just a lot of work?
It's hard to do, but it's getting easier. So I'd say like it's getting easier, but it was always super hard and people always thought, people thought that you could run broad ads, a bunch of stuff, push 'em to a lander that kind of talks about stuff and then push 'em to a very generic page because you want the ability to sell all these things to one. Really, you need to just tell the story all the way through because people are going to get confused along the way. Are you selling weight loss? Are you selling, you know, strength? Are you selling longevity? What are you selling? You know, so I think being able to tell the story A to Z, if you don't get them in each part, you can at least catch them in either the ad, the lander, or the product page.
Freaking love it, man. That is awesome. All right, dude, we will let you go. This has been a ton of fun. Uh, it's just good to jam, bro.
Zach, you're a killer, man. I'm so happy to know you. I— you really deserve all your success. Very few people have grinded as hard for as long, come from as little to as much as you. Multiple brands, cross categories. You are one of one, brother. I appreciate everything you do. Thank you for being part of the community.
Thanks, guys. Yeah, Zach, this was— this was a lot of fun.
Come back anytime, man.