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Welcome to another edition of the Always Be Testing podcast with your 

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host, Ty De Grange. Get a guided tour of the world of growth, performance 

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marketing, customer acquisition, paid media, and affiliate marketing. 

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We talk with industry experts and discuss experiments and their learnings in growth, 

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marketing, and life. Time to nerd out, check your biases at the door, and 

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have some fun talking about data driven growth and lessons learned. 

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What is up? How is it going? Welcome to another episode of the Always 

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Be Testing podcast. I'm your host, Ty DeGrange, and super excited for 

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Roba today. What's up, man? We did it. I did it. You were, incredibly 

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gracious in your schedule flexibility. And then, we're a beautiful office here 

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downtown. There's a vibe going on in here. There's a big party downstairs. Start of the week. Vibes 

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are high. Weather's perfect. Head to LA tomorrow. We're doing it, baby. I hope you're welcome. Got 

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the power stash on. I wasn't ready. You got you got to, like, prep me for that thing, but Next time. 

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Yeah. Next time. Next time. I'll give you I'll give you a little more sense. Tag or something. I think it's dangerous. I 

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love it. Yeah. Like Rob has said, we're live at the Capital Factory. 

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We got a great crew here, and, we're ready to dive into it. I think this might 

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be you might be talking to the Pied Piper of d two c e 

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com. I don't know. What do you think? It landed. It landed. It landed. With a soft landing. It landed. It's 

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sticking. It landed. It's good. It's good. It's okay. Tell us how you got into this weird, 

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wild world of d two c e com. Yeah, man. I've been I've been in the marketing game for a minute. So 

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I'm I'm old. I'm thirty eight, and I graduated. I actually wanted to be an investment 

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banker. At one point in time, my life was really into finance. Shout out some investment bankers. 

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Was like, that's definitely not it. So I end up going to school for economics, and then I 

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got really nerdy. So I got into photography. I got into, 

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website building. So I was really deep in, like, dub AWS, WordPress. And 

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then I wanna start actually making money, and so I realized that creating a cash register 

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was actually a worse idea than making other people money. When you could 

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make other people money, you could ask for more money. So because I was making websites that were beautiful and functional 

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and incredible, and people were like, hey. Why isn't this thing working? I go, it is working. You just your business sucks. 

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And so I took that photography, and then one of my really good 

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friends at the time, his wife was a a pretty big yogi on Instagram. So, like, Half a million 

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followers kind of thing. Not like massive, but pretty big for at the time. Yeah. Yeah. It's meaningful. Yeah. And 

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the the followers are really engaged. Anyways, we decided to do an ebook together. Yeah. She was 

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her shtick at the time was like, she was a handstand queen, incredible handstands. She had just moved to 

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Costa Rica. So I went out there, shot all the photos for the book. She wrote all 

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the all the copy and things like that, and then I designed the book. And it was actually really interesting 

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life lesson for me because I can get lost sometimes in kinda where we're talking about form over 

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function where, oh, I need this tool or I need that thing or and I did the whole thing. It was, 

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like, a hundred and twenty page book. I did the whole thing in Canva, and it was pushing 

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Canva to the limits. Like, it was breaking all time, all this stuff. And, we ended up 

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doing four more books, I think, together. Yeah. I think we did five in total. And I taught after that, I 

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taught myself, InDesign, which is, Adobe's actual, like, proper print 

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product where you're kind of it's what professionals use kind of thing. Yeah. The first 

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even though I did the all the other one, more professional, etcetera, etcetera, the first one did by 

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far the most money. And so it's just such an interesting juxtaposition of 

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action breeds information and just do it. Like Yeah. A lot of times those 

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last percentage points of getting something from eighty five percent to ninety percent or ninety 

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two percent to ninety five percent perfection might not be worth the squeeze. Like, you know what 

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I mean? Like, it was there is definitely a good enough and there's definitely 

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a and I'm not against using great tools. I just think that or at least 

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from my experience, I use it to obfuscate my 

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ability to create. I'm like, oh, I need to find the right tool 

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then then because of a structural thing like a tool impediment or something 

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like that, hundred percent then get the thing, but, like, don't not do the thing because you don't have the 

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thing. Bias for action. Yes. So a book. And I give I give props to you 

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because I had no idea how multi talented you are as you as we do get to learn 

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about you. I've had multiple lives. So Me too. Me too. 

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How did things kind of evolve into from there into the world of 

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direct to consumer e com Yeah. In that bridge? How did Yeah. More about it? 

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So once we had the book created, this was during the time of I would 

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almost call it, like, the golden age of Facebook ads. And so we would put a dollar in and six would spit 

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out. Twenty Or in two Yeah. So this is yeah. We're I wrap out that kind of peak 

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where Instagram was really peak. And so this was kind of pre 

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feeds their, real stuff. This is still like main feed stuff. And so 

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she would post on Instagram and then we'd run some retargeting ads and just see 

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all this in real money. You know what I mean? Like the money was in we are on WooCommerce because I was building 

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on, WordPress at the time. And so that was like, oh, so that was kind of my first 

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meaningful foray into, like I mean, what like, in absolute terms now, it's not at 

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the scale of anything impressive. But for me, I was like, oh my gosh. Like, there's, like, I Is there anything 

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more addicting and validating seeing those initials It's so good. Performance coming 

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in from It's so good. It's so interesting too because you get like, I haven't 

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run a proper ad account in probably, like, two yeah. I guess, two, two and a half years because I was doing a little bit of 

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the triple l paid at the beginning. But, yeah, there's this weird 

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interesting addiction and accomplishment of, like, testings, shipping, and then seeing 

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that that it was a I've definitely because I used to run an agency, and I've definitely done 

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been down the rabbit hole of, like, you know, you're checking dashboards multiple times a day. It can be 

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challenging sometimes to extract your identity from your 

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performance. Like, hence, you know, the OG, you're not your ROAS. But, man, when something hits 

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and it was at that time too. It was, like because we she was hosting events as well and 

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stuff like that. And that that was one of the biggest mistakes I've made, which I don't really regret because she's a a dear 

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friend of mine. But she was like, do you just want to I'll just give you a percentage 

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of whatever kind of stuff you bring in. I was like, you know, just pay me five k 

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flat or whatever. I forgot what it was. And we ended up driving, like, sixty thousand or some 

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absurd amount of money for her in, like, two or three days. Wow. It's like, oh my gosh. 

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Definitely not. Me, but it was it was Yeah. I was the way I 

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was her oil rig on her land kind of thing. Like, I was able to extract that value for 

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her. Great analogy. Yeah. So, anyway, so from there, I went to a luxury real estate firm 

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that we're talking about. And then from that, I did all the paid 

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media at Whole Foods for the recruitment vertical. So I did the whole I I was full 

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Austin. I was on a boosted board. I had a man bun. I was working at Whole Foods 

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in the the zero drop, like, New Balance shoes. Like, I mean, full total full 

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hipster Austin. So that was cool. Whole Foods trip today is pretty good too. Yeah. It's 

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it's elevated. It's it's more, not so on the nose. There's a CMO 

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vibe, kinda like relaxed vibe. Yeah. Yeah. It is. I went through like, that big 

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phase of kind of like peacocky, you know, when you're younger where it's just like, it's, it's the, you've 

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accomplished a lot. Pick on Yeah. It's true. It's the Arab Mexican coming out of me where it's just like this this 

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dual forces of, like, I need fancy some sort of animal skin on me, bright colors. 

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But, yes, after Whole Foods that I did agency life, an agency out in New York called Flat Iron, 

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and that was probably the first time I spent real time. I was still in Austin. No. No. I was still in Austin. 

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So I've been in Austin thirteen years now. Everything's been out of Austin. Very cool. And then the 

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agency life is really cool. That's when I I really saw scale. And it was awesome 

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too because this was kind of the peak VC time as well. So it was right, yeah, a 

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year and a half before COVID kind of thing where they're, like, the markets are just everything is cocaine and 

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champagne. And so we were getting, we're on percent of spend. Oh, wow. And we were working with all 

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these not your back companies. And so we're working with, like, WAG, Clutter, Deepak Chopra, 

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Jackpocket, like Awesome. Proper size companies with a bunch of money. We've worked with a bunch of scooter 

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companies that was obviously, like, you saw how everything worked out. Yeah. It was it was 

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peak scooters, everything. I forget the one we were working with, but yeah. And the money they had, they raised, 

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and it was it was pretty incredible, honestly. But, like, I was pretty well versed in economics, 

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business models, etcetera, because I so went to school for it. I'm just looking at these numbers, and you're just like, dude, we're acquiring 

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people for five hundred bucks. Like, nobody's ever spent more than five hundred dollars with 

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you ever. Like, how does this work? And it's just It was it was just because 

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I think there's a certain aspect of what's the goal. And their goal was, like, we're gonna raise more 

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money, so I need the hockey stick up into the right. Whatever it costs, just as long as you can give me up into 

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the right because I'm a growth story. I already Yeah. Time. But, anyways, the too long I didn't read there was that was awesome because there is 

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just problems that you run into at scale that you just don't when you're, you know, you're spending five, 

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ten thousand dollars a day versus you're deploying fifty, seventy thousand dollars across multiple channels. 

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Like, there's Facebook spend limits. There's things that happen. There's the 

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other thing is this is why, and I'll say allegedly, but why percent of spend, I don't 

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know if this is always the best arrangement for certain clients because we 

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there was times where you could get in there and go, hey. You know, we have we're under paced. We're 

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hitting our performance targets, but we have clearance to spend, you know, five hundred k this month, 

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and there's still buck thirty five to spend over the week. I and it's like 

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Yeah. Even though you know that might not be the most efficient spend, like, as an 

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agency, you're like, dude, I was cleared this. They want to spend five hundred k and, like, it's our job to 

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help them deploy that capital. Yeah. That's amazing. That was interesting. 

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Like real estate is almost the same way. It's really weird where it's like, if you get a worse deal for me, you 

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make more money even though you're representing me. You know? So, anyways, that's not 

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I don't hate percentage spend. It was just really interesting to Mhmm. Understand the Yeah. 

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The reality sometimes on the ground and stuff like that. So Yeah. And then did my own 

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agency That's awesome. Which was awesome. I called it agency, but it was really more like a boutique, 

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almost like fractional CFO or or CMO where I was I was partnering pretty deeply with these 

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people where I was just on high retainers and then either fill in any gaps they had 

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or oversee that at the strategic layer reporting, etcetera, etcetera, and 

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then triple. That's awesome. You know, it comes as long wander random walk down Wall Street, 

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random walk down Robert Street. But Yeah. Yeah. It was great, man. It was in the in a 

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weird way, there was this kind of unique, I guess, 

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like, sign wave of I think generalists don't necessarily 

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get paid as much, but they have a higher ceiling because usually the best leaders 

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are generalists, but specialists get paid more quicker 

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because they're and and candidly, they just get paid more in 

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certain areas. Again, lower ceiling, but I have a friend that he's in 

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a I'm super nerdy. He's like king nerd, and he codes in this 

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very kind of archaic language that only certain people use, etcetera, etcetera. But he's the, 

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like, guy. He's definitely king nerd. It is king nerd. Like, I'm talking about super esoteric 

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language, like, only certain kinda like cobalt kind of shit. But, like, he's that guy. So 

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whenever anybody but he's charged, like, two thousand dollars an hour kind of stuff because, like, it's 

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so important and it's ingrained to this business, and it's like, we're not gonna change our whole code base. We just have to pay somebody 

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to fix this or do that. So there's definitely a specialist. But, again, like, most 

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leaders are generalists. There might be some, like, engineering people that are 

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technical then also switch off to be a leader. But Yeah. When you're a leader, you're not 

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you can't be an IC. Like, there there that just doesn't work. I gotta dive into some really good stuff because you 

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dropped some awesome things in there back to Flatiron experience. Obviously, 

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those years were very different than what we're experiencing now. Yeah. But 

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what are some things that you would say are good learnings that you got from those 

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years that are applicable now? Yeah. I think the biggest thing that I 

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took away from that, and I I think it also solidified my understanding of 

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how to run a successful agency is the majority of my 

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time was spent on data gathering and narrative building. Like, so give me the data. 

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What's the narrative I can build around the data? And that was really the majority of the time. And 

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then the whole goal of the meeting was to have them excited about the next 

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meeting. And so you tell them, hey, here's where you were. Here's where you are. Here's where you're going. Those were kind of the three 

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macro points that I always wanna do them. And I I remember at the time too, because there is, 

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we were working with a publicly traded company out of Australia. That was a big, we did a lot of 

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app install Mhmm. Ads. And I still remember there was just, 

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it was almost felt like you're going up on the horns because they would bring in their whole marketing team 

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and we're and we're kind of another just little small 

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digression. There was a certain aspect of, like, once 

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you charge a cert over a certain ceiling of monthly 

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billings, like, agnostic or performance, you're getting fired. And so once we 

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start to get into that seventy five to a hundred k range of billings, they're just like, 

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dude, we just paid you that much for the month. Like, we can hire an internal team, you 

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know, for this. And so that was little ancillary thing. If you're running a big agency 

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and you have these big clients, if you want to keep them, figure out some sort 

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of stop gap or ceiling that they like, you won't ever charge them. It's 

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not great because you're gonna give up that money, but it's also like we almost 

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always got fired and we were killing it. Like, it wasn't a performance issue. It was just like, dude, I'm not gonna give you fucking 

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seventy five thousand dollars or a month. You know what I mean? Like, I can literally build a whole internal 

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despite what people say. And we it doesn't matter how how much you're killing it for me because there's just 

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a certain aspect of, like, I I'm just gonna be able to get more out of that. But yeah. So I mean, the 

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the biggest things that I learned was understanding the narrative and the 

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data. And then the last thing I would give you is nobody's mad 

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about things breaking. People are mad if they found out something broke. 

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And so if there was any sort of Transparency. Thing that's or just getting in front of it. Like, you 

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never wanna be like, oh, man. I did this thing. You actually do where it's just like, hey. We saw the the 

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sites broke or we saw there's a typo in the ad or, like, whatever. We're fixing it right now. Here's what we're 

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doing it. Blah blah blah. No action items. You're part. Just an FYI 

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to have that client feel like you care and you're in control. Like, there's nothing worse 

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than getting, like, hey. Have you seen this ad? Or, like, why is there a typo? Or what's this? What's that? And then 

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I think the last thing that stuck with me was you wanna treat it like it's your 

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money, but at the end of the day, it's their money. So there was we just ran into the 

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stereotypical, like, hey. This isn't on brand. And so it's like, hey, there there 

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is a certain aspect of, like, do you wanna be right or do you wanna make money? And there are some brands that want to 

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be right, whereas it's like, hey, I know this is performing for us, but it's just not on brand and, like 

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and then I had another client where we had a Black Friday Cyber Monday ad or actually, 

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like, an October ad just to kill it. And there was a pumpkin emoji in the subject 

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line. And now you start to get in a December or January like, hey, this isn't really aligned 

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with there. Is this cool? You know, is it making money? Cool. Send it. Yeah. But 

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at the end of the day, that was, you know, it's it's their money and your job to 

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shepherd it and give them guidance and advice on how they want to deploy the capital. But at the end of the day, it's their 

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capital to deploy and if they want to, you know, put in a bathtub and light them on fire. Yeah. Exactly. 

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It's their decision to do it. Yep. I love what you said about narrative building. I think that's something 

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that is not done particularly well and is such a 

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big opportunity. Is that something you feel you've brought into 

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your other work post agency life? Triple Whale, Vermont now. I mean 

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Your life in general? At its core, I think people experience the world in stories. 

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And so giving people and being able to create the story, whether that's for 

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yourself, whether that is for your business, whether that's for your partner, like, I just think 

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that people the mind pours a vacuum in coincidence and, like, it's 

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just really hard for people sometimes to accept it is, where it's just like, dude, it just 

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well, of large numbers, like, that's just where it landed. The 9AM wars of vacuum. That sounds 

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like a maybe, like, a a legit quote from a great book you read on your European 

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adventure. There you go. Is that true? Possibly. I probably got it from a book. There's, a great book called 

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On Intelligence, which is like brain 01:01. And they did an experiment in 

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there where so you you actually have a blind spot in both your eyes, but they're in different 

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spots. And so that's why you see that you don't see the blind spot. And so 

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they flashed the picture of, I think it was like a banana or something like 

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that to let's see. Because it's crossed. So to the the left eye, which 

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would go to the right side of the brain, which doesn't have any executive function, so you can see it, but you can't articulate 

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it. And what would happen is people would pick out the same picture when asked, like, what are you thinking 

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about right now? And they go bananas. Why are you thinking about banana? Oh, because I had a banana because I like banana, but it 

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was actually because of the priming from that picture. And that's just how our mind works 

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and I don't think it's like a good or a bad thing. It's just an is, but it's just really hard and so 

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again, with great power comes great responsibility where you don't want to mislead people. Like I think 

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a lot of the most impactful stories are sincere and value for value. But, 

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yeah, that's where I just realized, like, the narrative building, if you think of 

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so the kind of two pillar thesis, people experience the world in stories, and everybody, if they're 

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not the owner, the only thing they care about is making their boss happy. And so when you marry those 

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two, then you realize, oh, man, like, my job to be done that this person's hiring 

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me is to make them look smarter, better, more awesome to their boss. So what are 

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the stories and data that I can give them and be like, hey, look at how smart you are because you hired 

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us. Here's the things that we're doing. And the more you can wrap up that story in a 

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gift box, the easier it is to give to their boss and then life gets good. When their 

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boss is happy, they're happy. When they're happy, you're happy. And a dirty little secret 

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is if people like you, you have a lot more, like, leeway and 

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performance. And, like like, you can't just suck all the time. There's a certain aspect of like, all right, 

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hey, I love you, Robert, but dude, I'm not paying you to be my friend. I'm paying you to perform. But 

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when you have this nice rapport and people think you care, people think you care because you do 

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care is kind of the point. Yeah. It just worked into and again, I don't know if it's 

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the economically optimized thing, but the other thing that I kind of as I got older 

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was just like, I like to win beautifully. And 

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so very much kind of like Brazil with football or soccer where it's the beautiful game where they 

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wanna win in a certain And like I I'm not a win at all cost guy. 

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Like, I wanna win beautifully and I think that that that unlocks a lot of doors but 

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also lowers some ceilings and earning potential. But at the end of the day, I think I love that. Figure out 

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where your freak flag is and fly it. Yeah. I love that. I I doubled 

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down on a number of comments often, but winning beautifully feels like it's, 

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might be coming out of the title of this one. And and, like, it's such an epic line. Like, 

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what share more about that because that's that's pretty powerful. Yeah. And to be fair, this might be why 

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I'm poor. Now I just there's a certain aspect of at the end of 

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the day I can identify shit. Exactly. There's a certain You really do. 

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Like, I I I've done some, you know, affiliate stuff back in the day. More like not even like 

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not tainted affiliate. This is like black alley. You know, you're making money. There's 

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there's there's No. Yeah. There's no, like, No offense to that. No honor in that 

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money that I was making there. And it's I just didn't feel good about it. And so, like, that kind of led me to that. 

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And so, you know, I just I've done things for the money in the past, and it just 

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never really netted out for me. And and the other thing is, like, I am a huge capitalist. Don't get 

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me wrong. But I think of money, I'm really into meditation. A friend of mine, his 

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dad's, ordained Buddhist monk and just a really chill dude. Mhmm. And I asked him 

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because I really enjoy Buddhism. There's a lot of, conflicting ideals, I guess, 

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if you will, with with pure hardcore capitalism. Right? And so I asked him, well, how do you 

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think of money? Because he was actually, fairly wealthy. And he was like, I think of it 

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as energy. And so that had always stuck with me where it's like the more energy you can put out because it doesn't put 

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a stigma on it. Right? Like, you can put energy into good things. You can put energy into bad things. But 

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it's not, like, something you internalize. And so that has been kind of yeah. 

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So maybe I'm not gonna be, like, the three comma club, but, you know, hopefully, getting the tens of millions or something like 

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that. But, yeah, I think at the end of the day for me, it's That's cool. Being introspective 

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on where your kind of non negotiables are and then build systems 

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and goals around that. Where it's like some people might not care or it's just like, dude, I'll slide into you. 

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I'll I'll rip the candy out of the Yeah. Hand of the baby. I just want the candy. Yeah. 

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No judgment on that. It's just wasn't aligned to my truth. I think. Yeah. And 

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I think there's nothing wrong with, you know, be yourself and do you. Yeah. I love the thought of, 

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very Austin too, by the way. Very Austin. Keep Austin. Respect that. I feel like there's something interesting 

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about the money is energy piece because in some ways there's neutrality in 

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that. That's what I love about there's no judgment on it. There's no it however you wanna deploy it and 

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however much you have, it's so well put. Very eloquent. Yes. Couldn't agree more. What an 

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amazing departure. Maybe back to, like, the concrete of, like, you 

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know, you have evolved into, you know, pretty central piece of 

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building up, you know, Triple Whale being a very prominent figure on DTC e comm 

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and Twitter. And and I think a big part of the Austin d two c e comm community and 

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likewise other other spots. How would you maybe categorize for people who 

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are not as familiar with d two c e comms community. Yeah. And how would 

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you kind of describe it to folks in the audience? I said, think it's one of the better 

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communities. I was very, very resistant to Twitter early 

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on just because it's such a active network, not only in engagement, but also, 

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in, like, setting it up. Right? Like, you have to follow the right people. You have to and right being not, 

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like, right or wrong, but right for, like, what interests you. Yeah. Like, the the things that make you make things 

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interesting. Yeah. But once I I like, Facebook started to be kinda the the 

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joke of, like, Twitter is or Facebook are the friends you the friends you 

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went to high school with and then Twitter are the people you wish you went to high school with, kind of thing. And so, yeah, I just 

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started finding way more meaningful activity and engagement on Twitter and it was there's there's just so 

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much free game on there, kind of what we're talking about offline of item killers where somebody was like I mean, 

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I remember at hey Alex p and she had, like, seventeen, not seventeen, but 

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fifty or egregiously low followers where she's finally now, like, 

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getting the accolades she deserves. But there's just some really brilliant people that will 

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engage with you in a a meaningful and respectful way. So I think that's really unique where 

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finance Twitter can get a little cringey. There there's some there's some cringe corners where I think d two c, 

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for the most part, does a really good job and everybody's really welcoming. And I think that the kind 

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of candidly the coolest people, that's where I really like the confluence 

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of b to b SaaS and b to c because b to b SaaS is like daddy money where I have incredible economics and 

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d to c are, like, the coolest kids to hang out with. And so it's always been this awesome thing. But yeah. I mean, It's 

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a combo. Yeah. Too long didn't read. If you are in the d to c space, like, d to c 

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Twitter is great, man. I I mean, obviously, there's definitely some rough edges here and there, but I think, 

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on the whole, it's a really nice, meaningful Yeah. Everybody's really supportive and 

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engaging. And I think there's a nice, like, community policing 

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of it as well where it's kind of like a party that's there's some there's some fun 

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kind of liberties taken. But like if there's a fight happens and then you let the fight happen and then 

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you break it apart, there's not like this jump rage into where people are getting proper hurt. Yeah. I think 

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there's a, like, a lot of nice guardrails on it and, that's awesome. So I 

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know. I know. I I really Yeah. What's your take? I kinda like the community too. It feels 

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to me, it feels similar to I think 

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affiliate has an interesting kind of You guys are asking. Communities. It's so pig It's 

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tight knit in a different way even though and it has different generations. Yeah. It's been around for twenty 

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years in some capacity, probably ten real estate. That's a really interesting take. I didn't think of 

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the the age difference. But but it also has that, like, they're the people you wanna hang 

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and party and socialize with, But then there's become it's kind of grown up, and 

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there's brands that are, you know, putting their stamp on it and saying, hey. I believe in this. And it's a 

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part of my media mix. So it has legitimacy. So I I really love where your head's at with that. I 

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feel like there's some similarities between affiliate and DDC. But back to DDC, I feel like 

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it is generally fairly welcoming, very and, like, academic conversations 

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can be had, and people can truly learn things where it's not just, like, okay. We're in this 

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click and you're not invited. There's certainly some clickishness as you referenced, but 

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but I encourage people to to jump in the water and and learn and and 

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observe and listen. And and I think there's a lot to be had from it, and in real life too, you know, there's I 

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think that We talked about that at one of the events here in Austin where it's like Austin, New York, 

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LA. Yeah. Great freaking epicenters of DUC. Yeah. I couldn't agree with you more. And I 

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I think that that I think also is what accelerates 

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the awesomeness of the online is the offline. We're like, oh, cool. And there just be so many 

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people where it's like, oh, I know you from Twitter. Like, oh, yeah. Oh my gosh. Oh, I know you. And like Yeah. 

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That's a really cool like, I think it'll be interesting to see what 

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happens with the ecosystem with because Geek Out was, like, the thing. And with that 

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being gone, it'll be interesting to see kind of where what happens or steps in because I I 

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agree with you. And the other thing is, like, events are hard. Like, in real life events are hard. I've thrown a 

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ton of them at at scale, and they're they're just really hard. Gosh. When you do them well, man, you 

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can make fans for life where, like, there was a lot of events where we threw that 

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either somebody met a romantic partner, somebody got a business deal, somebody had a new 

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idea and had zero value add to Triple Whale. But like 

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the value generation, it's almost like a karmic balance of 

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value. Or it's like if you one of the things that you need to do is get like top of funnel 

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awareness, like, being able to generate value for people without any reciprocity is a hell of 

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a drug, man, where they're gonna refer people to you. They're gonna talk really highly. I mean, they're gonna we had a 

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guy that was, he was so awesome. He was, like, the proper triple wells super fan. And 

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he was just I think it was, like, Finhub or something. He's like, like, I can't even use this. I just wanna buy it because I 

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wanna support you guys. And you're just like, that's not great for business because it was like zombie kinds, but that just 

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goes to show you the power of building, like, sincere relationships that generate value for 

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people. Like, Pete Triplett fucked, man. People were at the company right to run through 

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the wall for them people. And not to say that's not doing well now. It's just for for me, there 

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was just this there's a certain aspect and there was, I think it was Marissa 

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Mayer at Google where they were kind of just at the cusp of blowing up. And she was like, look around 

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now. This is the best that it's ever gonna get, which is kinda depressing. But now I see her point where 

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it was like me, Tommy, Alexa, Colin, Kevin. We had the dopest 

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office set up. We had a podcast studio. We had budget to do things. The company's 

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screaming. Like, it was I don't know. There's just this unique windows 

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in business life because, you know, eventually, you need to grow up. You need to get a finance bridge. You need to get HR. You need to get all this. 

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But there's this this unique window of almost like Yeah. That early 20s 

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vibe in your life where it's like you're naive, but you also kind of start to get resources. 

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You start to have deep connections with humans you care about. You stop doing kind of dumb shit, but 

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you still have a little bit of fun in you. Like, you're you know, you're not like my age where it's like, dude, 

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Netflix and chill. Let me turn on the TV and 10PM kind of 

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stuff. And it was just It is good after forty two. Don't worry. Okay. I just need to I need I 

361
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need to get over this damn hump at thirty eight. But it was just a really 

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cool feeling to have the whole team aligned, 

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be able to be performing, and we're performing like, everything was just there it was it was it 

364
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was the seventy six Dolphins. Like, it it was just it was something 

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that, obviously, I would like to try and repeat, but I don't even know if it was just 

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such a perfect storm of everything of, like, because everybody like Tommy, 

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Alexa, Kevin, Colin, all these people are under market. You know what I mean? Yeah. Eventually, I got them to a 

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good place. But when I at that point, it was startup, dude. Like, you're selling you're 

369
00:30:31,200 --> 00:30:36,200
selling the dream and the Yeah. Like, you're gonna get some stamps in your passport and, like, 

370
00:30:36,500 --> 00:30:41,400
some cheap beer, and we're gonna go hunt. Yeah. Like, there isn't and so, I 

371
00:30:41,400 --> 00:30:46,300
mean, I remember Alexa, like, I was courting her for months. Tommy was 

372
00:30:46,500 --> 00:30:51,300
and so it was just this, again, perfect mix of, like, talent Yeah. And culture 

373
00:30:51,500 --> 00:30:56,300
and personality vibe. Yeah. I don't know. It was great. Well, I think we 

374
00:30:56,300 --> 00:31:01,000
joke about football and sports and music and other analogies, but I think there's something 

375
00:31:01,000 --> 00:31:05,700
similar football where it's like, hey, you got someone on a rookie contract. My 

376
00:31:05,700 --> 00:31:10,700
goodness, that's a really exciting window. And guess what? Folks are gonna be 

377
00:31:10,700 --> 00:31:15,500
earning more and more as they progress in their career, and there's a reality to that. And, bringing 

378
00:31:15,500 --> 00:31:19,900
in different financial rigor or different investor influence or different 

379
00:31:20,200 --> 00:31:25,200
different things. Things change quickly. So I think we've all seen that in our careers, but it's awesome 

380
00:31:25,200 --> 00:31:30,100
to to hear the formula that you witnessed and were part of and you built and 

381
00:31:30,100 --> 00:31:35,000
you, you know, you were working in the trenches and kinda saw that magic live. 

382
00:31:35,000 --> 00:31:39,900
You were part of that creation, so it's pretty rad. Yeah. It was the my my biggest 

383
00:31:39,900 --> 00:31:44,100
and probably my only regret outside, yeah, is 

384
00:31:45,200 --> 00:31:50,000
not enjoying it. I was so fixated on performance and, like, 

385
00:31:50,100 --> 00:31:54,700
getting where's my next stage of growth coming from? Where how do I get more? How do I get more? Because we were 

386
00:31:54,700 --> 00:31:59,700
just at one point in time, Triple Whale was the fastest growing company ever. It was just crazy to think 

387
00:31:59,700 --> 00:32:04,500
about. Yeah. It was wild. And so I did so many cool 

388
00:32:04,500 --> 00:32:09,400
things. I got to go to so many cool places, and I was never present. Cause it was 

389
00:32:09,400 --> 00:32:13,900
just always like low key CMO at early stage startup is 

390
00:32:14,400 --> 00:32:19,300
possibly one of the worst positions ever. CMOS hard. It's no matter how you slice 

391
00:32:19,300 --> 00:32:24,300
it. Yeah. Exactly. It's the fastest turnover of C suite even in the 

392
00:32:24,300 --> 00:32:28,900
Fortune five hundred kind of or even Fortune one hundred. It's the line that 

393
00:32:28,900 --> 00:32:32,400
would always go around is, like, if things are going well, it's not because of marketing. 

394
00:32:33,700 --> 00:32:38,600
Because of marketing. You know what I mean? And so you just never not that you never got your due, but it was just 

395
00:32:38,600 --> 00:32:43,600
kind of this almost like insurance policy of, like, okay. Marketing is obviously gonna crush it. So, like 

396
00:32:43,800 --> 00:32:48,600
and so, yeah, I regret that. So if you guys do get into that place of, like, hyper 

397
00:32:48,600 --> 00:32:53,600
success, definitely look at the mile marker, maybe even pull over, have a peanut butter 

398
00:32:53,600 --> 00:32:58,300
and jelly and look at the mountains for a little bit. You can't stay there, but I I do regret 

399
00:32:58,300 --> 00:33:03,000
not enjoying it as much as I could because I was just so caught up in 

400
00:33:03,300 --> 00:33:08,100
the performance and the pressure of, like Yeah. Hey, man. Like, you know, this is I think this is 

401
00:33:08,100 --> 00:33:13,100
a special situation. Do you think some of that is inevitable? And 

402
00:33:13,100 --> 00:33:18,000
how much of that do you feel like, if if, say, that happened again in some maybe different 

403
00:33:18,000 --> 00:33:23,000
variant Yeah. Quite the same level of magic. But do you feel like you would have a little bit more of, 

404
00:33:23,200 --> 00:33:28,000
appreciation for if while you're in it? Yes. I definitely think 

405
00:33:28,400 --> 00:33:33,400
so, but I also think that I now have some 

406
00:33:34,900 --> 00:33:39,600
natural internal gyros to not get there 

407
00:33:39,600 --> 00:33:44,400
again because I I can't believe that I was just redlining. Like, I was I was making 

408
00:33:44,400 --> 00:33:49,400
content. I was traveling. I was throwing events. I was going to events. I was speaking. I was like, 

409
00:33:49,400 --> 00:33:54,400
there was a place where I was it wasn't long term sustainable. And so I don't 

410
00:33:54,400 --> 00:33:59,300
know. Like, again, I think it would do I regret it? No. Outside of not being present, but I don't 

411
00:33:59,300 --> 00:34:04,100
know if I would try and set that situation up again because it was so, like, a 

412
00:34:04,200 --> 00:34:09,100
Yeah. It was it was a lot, man. It was it was something that was not and, like, I was the only 

413
00:34:09,100 --> 00:34:14,000
person on the marketing team for the first four or five months. And then my first hire was a community 

414
00:34:14,000 --> 00:34:18,800
Kevin. So I really didn't have, like, a team. So six Yeah. Six, eight months in, and 

415
00:34:19,000 --> 00:34:23,700
Wow. I was only there for, you know, a little over two years. And so, yeah, it was 

416
00:34:25,000 --> 00:34:30,000
a if I got there again, I would definitely enjoy it, but I would also be like, Fuck. Yeah. We left 

417
00:34:30,000 --> 00:34:34,400
this place. Yeah. Yeah. Why did we come back to Detroit in the winter? I said that again. 

418
00:34:34,900 --> 00:34:39,700
Like, it's I think that would be something where I would be very hesitant. But I also 

419
00:34:39,700 --> 00:34:44,700
think there's a lot of learnings that could have put a lot more guardrails on 

420
00:34:44,700 --> 00:34:49,500
things where Yeah. I think there's probably a a certain 

421
00:34:49,500 --> 00:34:54,300
internal expectation that was never gonna be met. And so being able to modulate that in 

422
00:34:54,300 --> 00:34:59,200
more meaningful way versus, like yeah. Yeah. Were you out of 

423
00:34:59,200 --> 00:35:04,200
curiosity, were you meditating at that time? Everything felt like it was it it doesn't seem 

424
00:35:04,200 --> 00:35:08,800
like you meditate in line. It was well, yeah. Because you self 

425
00:35:08,800 --> 00:35:13,800
correct. Yeah. Where you can so the the whole point of meditation or not 

426
00:35:13,800 --> 00:35:18,700
point, but one of the the things that you can get when you start to sit so I'm 

427
00:35:18,700 --> 00:35:23,200
I'm just crazy, and so I know I need to temper that craziness, but a lot of that craziness can be 

428
00:35:23,900 --> 00:35:28,600
directed in some meaningful output. But what happens is the the 

429
00:35:28,600 --> 00:35:33,300
way my my dad's friend described as you wanna live in the gap. So you'll never get rid of your 

430
00:35:33,300 --> 00:35:38,300
reactions. Like, you're human. Yeah. Yeah. But what you can do is start to push 

431
00:35:38,300 --> 00:35:43,300
a gap between your reaction and your reactions to your reactions. And so, for example, 

432
00:35:43,300 --> 00:35:48,200
like, somebody cuts you off in traffic, like, you yell at it, oh my god, that a hole cut me off, 

433
00:35:48,200 --> 00:35:53,100
etcetera, etcetera. And then that negativity just permeates throughout your day versus, like, oh my god, that person 

434
00:35:53,100 --> 00:35:58,100
cut me off. Oh my gosh. What is why am I mad? Like and so and then you can start to back out of it 

435
00:35:58,100 --> 00:36:02,800
and you get rid of it quicker. And so that is super helpful. But the other thing too is just 

436
00:36:02,800 --> 00:36:07,700
travel's hard, man. Like, travel's a young man's game. And I was traveling One twos or 

437
00:36:07,700 --> 00:36:12,400
two and a half weeks of the month. And the other thing is, like, sometimes I would land on weekends and 

438
00:36:12,400 --> 00:36:17,400
stuff. And so, like, you're you start to lose weekends and you're back in it. And we don't Yeah. I had a friend 

439
00:36:17,400 --> 00:36:22,300
of mine that worked for Regal and thought this is a really cool policy, was if you end up 

440
00:36:22,300 --> 00:36:27,200
traveling or working on a weekend, you just get the next weekday off, which I thought was 

441
00:36:27,200 --> 00:36:31,900
pretty cool. But yeah. I mean, this isn't it. You know, we're a bunch of kill 

442
00:36:32,300 --> 00:36:36,800
killer be killed at at that point of the growth stage startup. So that's not something that 

443
00:36:44,500 --> 00:36:49,100
maybe it'd be interesting to kinda pull it back to, like, the nerdy, always be 

444
00:36:49,100 --> 00:36:54,100
testing themes. I mean, with Triple Whale, there's so much learning insight. You could 

445
00:36:54,100 --> 00:36:58,700
kinda you had the kind of the dashboard of the, pulse on the performance. 

446
00:36:58,700 --> 00:37:03,700
Yeah. Maybe, for for those in the audience who are curious, like, what are some 

447
00:37:03,900 --> 00:37:08,900
maybe interesting learnings that you could share that are not proprietary? That's like, hey. This 

448
00:37:08,900 --> 00:37:13,900
is some of the cool trends I was witnessing or may you know, things 

449
00:37:13,900 --> 00:37:18,800
that are interesting or notable. Yeah. I mean, we saw a few things. 

450
00:37:19,600 --> 00:37:24,200
A couple of them are kinda does and then a couple of them are quasi interesting. One of the biggest 

451
00:37:24,200 --> 00:37:28,800
ones was people that had good to great 

452
00:37:28,800 --> 00:37:33,500
economics, just one. Like, you definitely need a product, but, like, if you have a product that 

453
00:37:33,500 --> 00:37:38,200
says for Attribution. Yeah. And so there was it sort of 

454
00:37:38,600 --> 00:37:43,600
I just had more gas in my car. I could go get to 

455
00:37:43,600 --> 00:37:48,300
a more profitable place. Instead of having to stop at this gas station, I could actually go to this one 

456
00:37:48,300 --> 00:37:53,200
where it it just changes everything that you could do. And so the 

457
00:37:53,200 --> 00:37:57,800
the way I would describe it to people is they say you can't outwork you 

458
00:37:57,800 --> 00:38:02,800
can't outwork out that diet. It's the same kind of concept in business where 

459
00:38:02,800 --> 00:38:07,700
you just can't out market bad unit economics. It just is what it is. You're 

460
00:38:07,700 --> 00:38:12,400
actually succeeding. You're creating making it worse. Yeah. You know, I'm succeeding. I'm losing I'm 

461
00:38:12,400 --> 00:38:17,400
losing you money. That's like a perfect so definitely make sure that your economics are 

462
00:38:17,500 --> 00:38:22,300
intact. A kind of corollary to that is not all products are made for 

463
00:38:22,300 --> 00:38:27,300
paid media. And so make sure that you're only advertising your 

464
00:38:27,700 --> 00:38:32,700
and and, again, this is predicated on the goal is profitability and revenue generation. Like, 

465
00:38:32,700 --> 00:38:37,400
if there's other goals at mind where it's like, oh, I just need to move this inventory and do that. 

466
00:38:38,000 --> 00:38:42,600
But assuming that you wanna make the most money at the highest profit, like, you need to be high margin, high velocity 

467
00:38:42,600 --> 00:38:47,600
products. And so, even when I was at running accounts with the brands, 

468
00:38:48,000 --> 00:38:53,000
sometimes they might have 10:20 SKUs, and only two of them would be pushed with paid media because it's just, like, going 

469
00:38:53,000 --> 00:38:57,700
back to, like, I'm winning but I'm losing. Like, the other thing is you wanna make sure 

470
00:38:57,700 --> 00:39:02,600
that that first interaction because d two c usually doesn't have a retail presence is 

471
00:39:02,600 --> 00:39:07,500
amazing. And so the more you can make somebody feel successful and awesome, the closer to 

472
00:39:07,500 --> 00:39:11,700
the first touch point, like, you're golden. And so even if the 

473
00:39:12,200 --> 00:39:17,100
magnitude of success is way higher, if it's farther away from that origin, it's not as 

474
00:39:17,100 --> 00:39:22,100
impactful. So people that would have the flagship really awesome products, and 

475
00:39:22,100 --> 00:39:26,900
then the community was actually something that was really interesting. People that had community 

476
00:39:26,900 --> 00:39:31,900
plays were, like so, Avi, there's some other people that had some really interesting, community 

477
00:39:32,000 --> 00:39:36,400
plays. Yeah. And this is gonna sound silly, but, like, people that planned, 

478
00:39:37,100 --> 00:39:42,000
like really looked at they weren't thinking like month to month, but they were like, 

479
00:39:42,000 --> 00:39:47,000
Okay, cool. And not to say that you need things like carved in stone, but they had, here's the 

480
00:39:47,000 --> 00:39:52,000
purchasing moments we're gonna create. We see some dips in revenue here. Can we launch a product? Can we do a promotion? Can 

481
00:39:52,000 --> 00:39:57,000
we do a special holiday? And being able to generate those purchasing moments and think of things 

482
00:39:57,600 --> 00:40:02,500
annually or at worst quarterly to understand where they're trending with something that was 

483
00:40:02,500 --> 00:40:07,300
really interesting and meaningful. And then, honestly, like, it sounds 

484
00:40:07,300 --> 00:40:12,100
again silly, but the the people that were focused on 

485
00:40:12,300 --> 00:40:17,100
performance and not sophistication won. And so people that had not 

486
00:40:17,100 --> 00:40:21,700
only simplified accounts but, like, depending on the scale, you only needed one to two 

487
00:40:21,700 --> 00:40:26,500
or maybe three channels. Like, very rarely did we have we had 

488
00:40:26,500 --> 00:40:31,300
stores up to half a billion dollars a year, and they were still on four or five 

489
00:40:31,300 --> 00:40:36,200
channels. And Yeah. The majority of their revenue was still aggregated to the top 

490
00:40:36,200 --> 00:40:41,100
two kinda thing, and these were more so, like, again, going back to those percentage points at the end where 

491
00:40:41,100 --> 00:40:45,700
it's like, you're a Olympic sprinter. Like, you do need to add on 

492
00:40:46,100 --> 00:40:50,900
some other of these things because you're maxing out these other big channels. And so 

493
00:40:51,200 --> 00:40:56,100
yeah. So I guess not super meaningful, but the the one thing that I did see in the data that was really 

494
00:40:56,100 --> 00:41:01,000
interesting and now I maybe I'll ping Alan and see if I can get access to data again was we 

495
00:41:01,000 --> 00:41:05,900
saw TikTok shop or TikTok ad ad spend Yeah. Just absolutely skyrocket. 

496
00:41:05,900 --> 00:41:10,900
There was a point in time I remember that a friend of mine got who's big spending, 

497
00:41:10,900 --> 00:41:15,900
they got to parody almost with Facebook, and it was outspending Google. And they were and they were spending sixty, seventy 

498
00:41:15,900 --> 00:41:20,900
k a day. It's like real money. And then that just kinda blew up, which I thought was 

499
00:41:20,900 --> 00:41:25,500
really interesting. Yeah. So on my way out, like, I don't know anybody that 

500
00:41:25,500 --> 00:41:30,300
TikTok was a big spending channel. Now it looks like it's interesting, but now seems like it's off the 

501
00:41:30,300 --> 00:41:35,100
back of organic social and shops more so than actual paid spend. I've seen a 

502
00:41:35,100 --> 00:41:39,800
lot of that. Yeah. So That's interesting, but that was something that shocked me because I thought it 

503
00:41:39,800 --> 00:41:44,800
was looking at the preliminary data, it was a runaway train. Snaps was 

504
00:41:44,800 --> 00:41:49,700
pretty much a defunct platform, pretty much useless. I didn't know anybody that spent on that. And 

505
00:41:49,700 --> 00:41:54,700
then the ASC and the Google performance actually, really I 

506
00:41:54,700 --> 00:41:59,500
think that in combination with the targeting or especially in specific Facebook just 

507
00:41:59,500 --> 00:42:04,500
started to they started to figure out kind of the iOS updates and how to just get back to the 

508
00:42:04,500 --> 00:42:09,100
the closer to the glory days of, like, the ads are delivering, the tracking's better, the 

509
00:42:09,100 --> 00:42:14,100
targeting's better. I'm supposed to use AI where they did it because they can't books really 

510
00:42:14,100 --> 00:42:19,000
They're not allowed to, you know, actually pass the data. And so they were just using that data to then 

511
00:42:19,300 --> 00:42:24,000
put it through AI and they spun up like that was, I guess, the counterweight to spinning down the 

512
00:42:24,000 --> 00:42:29,000
metaverse was that's where they put all that money was in the huge AI team that just started helping with targeting, tracking, 

513
00:42:29,000 --> 00:42:34,000
analytics, stuff like that. And candidly has been way better. I mean, definitely from the 

514
00:42:34,300 --> 00:42:39,300
the iOS fourteen stage to now. Yeah. It's only, what, like, a year and a half ago, 

515
00:42:39,300 --> 00:42:44,300
and it's it's night and day. But Yeah. Those are the lot of people. That's that's super helpful. That's a 

516
00:42:44,300 --> 00:42:49,300
lot in there to Yeah. Those are the big ones that, you know, have a great product is number one. Make sure 

517
00:42:49,300 --> 00:42:54,300
your economics work. Be able to, you you know, generate value for your community. 

518
00:42:54,500 --> 00:42:59,400
Usually, too, around either consumption or ancillary things to, 

519
00:42:59,800 --> 00:43:04,400
like, create at, they do the creatine gummies. Yeah. He's doing all these kinda, like, 

520
00:43:04,400 --> 00:43:09,200
ancillary add on products. So people that were doing these things of, like, going back to that job to be 

521
00:43:09,200 --> 00:43:14,200
done and then building, can you help this person get this job to be done 

522
00:43:14,200 --> 00:43:19,200
better? Yeah. Whether that's with your product, whether that's with an add on product. Yeah. That's so 

523
00:43:19,200 --> 00:43:24,200
cool. Tell us about the new gig. Tell us what you're pumped about. Wanna share it. 

524
00:43:24,300 --> 00:43:29,200
Yeah. Really excited to, end up going on full time at vermat, vermatcommerce 

525
00:43:29,400 --> 00:43:34,100
dot com, f e r mat commerce dot com. Yeah. So we do, 

526
00:43:34,500 --> 00:43:39,300
essentially, like, experimentation on steroids through landing pages at scale. So, 

527
00:43:39,600 --> 00:43:44,500
right now, we're working with bigger to big big brands. Yeah. And so it's been 

528
00:43:44,500 --> 00:43:49,400
great. It's been really cool to see kind of that. And then just the evolution of the product has been incredible. 

529
00:43:49,400 --> 00:43:54,400
So right now, our experimentation kind of feature is gated to kind 

530
00:43:54,400 --> 00:43:59,200
of the super, super high end enterprise customers, but we'll be kinda rolling that out 

531
00:43:59,200 --> 00:44:04,100
probably early q one. We'll be doing some cool events. So, obviously, 

532
00:44:04,400 --> 00:44:09,300
the event the event gotta have the events. Yeah. We'll be doing some cool stuff around community. Kind of 

533
00:44:09,300 --> 00:44:14,100
very similar to the the o g triple o playbook. The one thing that's definitely different is right now we're 

534
00:44:14,100 --> 00:44:18,800
servicing I don't know what to call them, like, Shopify enterprise client. You know what I mean? Where they're not, 

535
00:44:18,800 --> 00:44:23,700
like, Target, but they're not these kind of, you know, thirty, fifty million dollar a year 

536
00:44:23,700 --> 00:44:28,700
stores where Was it Was a hundred million kind of the Yeah. That's what I'm saying. Like, for me, 

537
00:44:28,700 --> 00:44:33,700
it gets to kinda, like, you know, fifty to 07:50 almost where it's like that's yeah. 

538
00:44:33,700 --> 00:44:38,700
I mean, maybe 07:50 gets quasi enterprise, but, again, like, the seven hundred fifty is, I don't know, 

539
00:44:38,700 --> 00:44:43,700
like like, d to c should be there. D to c enterprise or something. Yeah. It's like this because it's a it's a 

540
00:44:43,700 --> 00:44:48,100
business. It's a real business. Don't get me wrong. But, again, it's not a Home Depot. It's not a 

541
00:44:48,400 --> 00:44:53,300
Target, Best Buy, you know, where you're Yeah. Walmart's of the world where that's proper enterprise. 

542
00:44:53,300 --> 00:44:58,300
But anyways, yeah. So if you wanna go do some cool experimentation, we do a bunch 

543
00:44:58,300 --> 00:45:03,200
of cool CRO stuff and then being able to deploy kind of your ad creative 

544
00:45:03,200 --> 00:45:08,200
to maybe four different destinations, whether it's a quiz, advertorial, some gift guide, things 

545
00:45:08,200 --> 00:45:13,100
of that nature. You can spin it up real quick and then test it out, see how you make your money. Love it. Are how are you 

546
00:45:13,100 --> 00:45:18,100
thinking about kind of building out resourcing and supporting them and and growing 

547
00:45:18,100 --> 00:45:22,800
them? Is there certain needs that you have now or or folks that you're kind of looking to Yeah. 

548
00:45:22,900 --> 00:45:27,200
Bring on board in the next, you know, twelve months? Or Yeah. Is a fantastic question. 

549
00:45:27,900 --> 00:45:32,800
Right now, I'll probably build out kind of that four or five person squad. And that that's really 

550
00:45:32,800 --> 00:45:37,700
where I like to operate. Like, I don't like to manage. I like to lead. Like, give me just give me some killers and let 

551
00:45:37,700 --> 00:45:42,700
me run. And then if we need more hands, they can hire them. And I don't I don't need to not that I don't need 

552
00:45:42,700 --> 00:45:47,600
to deal with them. Like, I'm too affluent, but, like Sure. They can manage their own people. Like, that's an extension. 

553
00:45:48,300 --> 00:45:53,200
Yeah. I just wanna deal with the lieutenants. And then if we need more people, we can hire them and Yeah. Yeah. 

554
00:45:53,200 --> 00:45:58,000
So we're doing probably a community person, content person, brand person, product marketing, 

555
00:45:58,000 --> 00:46:03,000
probably be the Awesome. The squad and then, you know, fill in some holes here and there with contracting. Very cool. And 

556
00:46:03,500 --> 00:46:08,400
yeah. But I'm I'm excited. It's a the the cofounders are amazing. The product's great, and the the 

557
00:46:08,400 --> 00:46:13,300
value we're generating is real. So it's it's really nice to be in kind of post PMF. Yeah. 

558
00:46:13,300 --> 00:46:18,300
You know, it's like, okay. Cool. Let's got a lot there to work with. Yeah. The product the product is 

559
00:46:19,100 --> 00:46:23,900
it's kind of a little bit of a marketer's wet dream where the the product is amazing and the marketing, 

560
00:46:23,900 --> 00:46:28,800
there's there's a lot of opportunities to grow. I love it. I love it. You kinda reference 

561
00:46:28,800 --> 00:46:33,500
the theme of leadership, you know, throughout your career and what you've done and in referencing to the 

562
00:46:33,500 --> 00:46:38,200
team that you're looking to create. What's some advice you give to leaders out there? There 

563
00:46:38,200 --> 00:46:43,200
may be new leaders or leaders that are looking to improve. You've you've obviously done it well. What 

564
00:46:43,200 --> 00:46:48,000
would you counsel people on? I would say one the first thing which is super, 

565
00:46:48,000 --> 00:46:53,000
super important is understand the most effective 

566
00:46:53,800 --> 00:46:58,800
communication style, one on one. And so for me, I'm kinda gregarious, rough around the edges, 

567
00:46:58,800 --> 00:47:03,700
loud, and I can be overwhelming to introverts. And they won't either 

568
00:47:03,700 --> 00:47:08,400
say what they mean or they'll they'll just kinda cow. And not like a judgmental way. It's just 

569
00:47:08,500 --> 00:47:13,100
that's just their personality. And so what I found with people that are more introverted was 

570
00:47:13,500 --> 00:47:18,400
giving them time to go work on their own and think of their messaging. So they did really well 

571
00:47:18,400 --> 00:47:23,400
with, like, written messaging where it's like, hey. Cool. Here's what we need from you. Here's what I'm thinking. Take 

572
00:47:23,400 --> 00:47:28,400
this home, you know, figure it out and just answer, fill in this Notion doc, and we'll chat about 

573
00:47:28,400 --> 00:47:33,200
it tomorrow and stuff like that. So that was super helpful understanding people's communication style and how 

574
00:47:33,700 --> 00:47:38,400
they take feedback, and that's also a function of hiring where I actually 

575
00:47:39,500 --> 00:47:44,300
prefer people with scars versus a pretty face. 

576
00:47:44,300 --> 00:47:49,300
Because if you haven't like, even if you're super talented, if you haven't dealt with failure, 

577
00:47:49,900 --> 00:47:54,500
I don't know how you're gonna react in, like, the fog of war and some people who haven't failed 

578
00:47:54,500 --> 00:47:59,200
before. It's just not that it's right or wrong, it just doesn't fit my 

579
00:47:59,200 --> 00:48:03,800
management style. Like, I just don't deal with that well. And so all the people that I hired 

580
00:48:03,800 --> 00:48:08,800
weren't were not only Vybe. So, like, there's a funny thought experiment of, like, if the plane 

581
00:48:08,800 --> 00:48:13,800
got delayed and you two were both at the airport, like, would you be mad or not? So, like, I would hang 

582
00:48:13,900 --> 00:48:18,100
like, we all all hung out together, actually, like, after work and stuff. So we had a really 

583
00:48:18,900 --> 00:48:23,900
like, chemistry and team morale matters. And that's something that I I was in IC for most of 

584
00:48:23,900 --> 00:48:28,400
my career that I never believed. I was like, dude, my trust falls. Like, I don't care. 

585
00:48:28,600 --> 00:48:33,500
Absolutely matters. So I would say communication style, understand kind of the personalities 

586
00:48:33,500 --> 00:48:38,100
on a team, make sure, team morale and people rowing in the right 

587
00:48:38,100 --> 00:48:42,700
direction, the incentives are there. And then I I think the last thing would be 

588
00:48:43,700 --> 00:48:48,600
ultimately, like, goal setting and expectations. So I 

589
00:48:48,600 --> 00:48:53,600
found that I'm very allergic to decision by 

590
00:48:53,600 --> 00:48:58,400
committee. I think people operate the best, especially killers, 

591
00:48:58,600 --> 00:49:03,600
when they have their own silos or responsibility because you can start to not to get too economic y, 

592
00:49:03,600 --> 00:49:08,600
but you get into a free rider problem and nobody really owns it. It's like this person, this person. So it's like, oh, 

593
00:49:08,600 --> 00:49:13,200
there's shit in the restroom. Well, if it's a public restroom, I'm not gonna clean it up. And so but if that was like your 

594
00:49:13,200 --> 00:49:18,100
restroom, like, dude, gross. Somebody pooped in here, but I'm gonna clean it up. And so, there's 

595
00:49:18,100 --> 00:49:22,900
one of my favorite David Ogilvy lines where go walk through the parks of in your city, you'll never see a 

596
00:49:22,900 --> 00:49:27,500
statue for a committee. And so I was just very big on giving people responsibility 

597
00:49:28,500 --> 00:49:33,000
and very clear output goals of, like, hey. This is what 

598
00:49:33,500 --> 00:49:38,200
you're responsible for. This is what I needed to do. But I also had to make sure like, 

599
00:49:38,200 --> 00:49:43,000
Tommy was really hard on himself. Alexa, all like, my team was very hard on themselves, and so I had to 

600
00:49:43,000 --> 00:49:47,800
get people out of the mindset of right and wrong or good and bad and more into a scientific 

601
00:49:47,800 --> 00:49:52,800
method of, like, here's my thesis. Here's the bet I wanna make. Here's what I think is gonna happen. Here's what did happen. 

602
00:49:52,800 --> 00:49:57,800
Here's why what I'm gonna do in the future. And I had no problem with bets that 

603
00:49:57,800 --> 00:50:02,600
missed. I had problem with bad bets. So if you couldn't explain to me, like, why did we spend that money or, like, what were you 

604
00:50:02,600 --> 00:50:07,600
thinking behind this? I was like, oh, there there's a great book called Thinking in Bets by Annie Duke, and she calls it 

605
00:50:07,600 --> 00:50:12,600
resulting where it's like, you get so fixated on the result where at the end of the day, building a 

606
00:50:12,600 --> 00:50:17,300
system with a high probability of output. Like, if you can build a system with an eighty, eighty 

607
00:50:17,300 --> 00:50:22,200
percent success rate, ninety percent success rate, land in the ten or twenty percent, it's like, hey, that's 

608
00:50:22,400 --> 00:50:27,300
it is what it is. It just happened. Don't throw the system out. You know? And so those would be the kind of things that I 

609
00:50:27,300 --> 00:50:32,100
would get around and then Yeah. I would definitely meet with 

610
00:50:32,100 --> 00:50:37,000
your lieutenants, once a week. Love it. I did one one on ones 

611
00:50:37,400 --> 00:50:42,200
every week and when I would travel and stuff like that and we didn't have them, you could 

612
00:50:42,200 --> 00:50:47,200
fill, a gap. Yeah. I think that you could fill a gap. That's interesting. Yeah. 

613
00:50:47,200 --> 00:50:52,200
There's definitely a place that you can get to with some mind melds where so at the beginning when I would hire 

614
00:50:52,200 --> 00:50:56,700
my people, you ask them, hey, what do you think I would do in this situation? And then once the answer, 

615
00:50:57,100 --> 00:51:01,900
like, lines up with what you were thinking, hey. Go run, you know, shackles off. Go 

616
00:51:01,900 --> 00:51:06,800
go cut your own week kind of thing. Yeah. But where you really get interesting is, and you're like, no. 

617
00:51:06,800 --> 00:51:11,800
That's not what I was thinking. It's actually better than the answer I had. That's when you know you are well. Where you're like, 

618
00:51:11,800 --> 00:51:16,800
that's fantastic. I didn't think of that, and that's even better than the answer I had. That's amazing. You you can hear it through 

619
00:51:16,800 --> 00:51:21,700
the thing. Very cool. Yeah. What do, what do a lot of people don't know about you that, that you 

620
00:51:21,700 --> 00:51:26,400
wanna share? Maybe I'll go braggadocious. I used to be a really good runner. So it's 

621
00:51:26,400 --> 00:51:31,400
a freshman of the year conference in division one. Wow. Yeah. I used to be 

622
00:51:31,400 --> 00:51:36,300
I used to be pretty quick. What what event? This was cross country. Okay. So this was eight 

623
00:51:36,300 --> 00:51:40,900
k and then nationals are ten k and then That's amazing. Track and field with, 

624
00:51:41,200 --> 00:51:46,200
yeah, mile mile to mile in high school and then thirty two hundred and five k, a 

625
00:51:46,200 --> 00:51:50,800
track. Wow. What are you what are you doing now to Not running. Do your thing. Not 

626
00:51:50,800 --> 00:51:55,700
running. No. It's hard as you get older. It's horrible for your body. Yeah. It was the 

627
00:51:55,700 --> 00:52:00,400
when I look back on it, though, I think it was, really helpful because it's so mentally, 

628
00:52:01,100 --> 00:52:05,700
good. Like, I think there's a certain aspect of getting to a place 

629
00:52:06,500 --> 00:52:11,400
of uncomfortableness and being able to, you know, like, hey. I know it's uncomfortable, but 

630
00:52:11,400 --> 00:52:16,300
it's okay. You're not new to that. Like, being able to deal with that Yeah. Is very meaningful 

631
00:52:16,500 --> 00:52:21,500
to build character. But now I'm just doing some some workout stuff. I pickleball pickleball 

632
00:52:21,500 --> 00:52:25,700
a little bit. I used to be really into racquetball, and I'd go back into that. I used to do some slacklining. 

633
00:52:26,500 --> 00:52:31,500
Yeah. Alright. Now I'm just trying Can I get on my pickleball court, man? Who? Tried once. I didn't make it, but 

634
00:52:31,500 --> 00:52:36,400
we'll we'll get out there. Have to. The, you know Tyler from Peachy Babies? Think so. Yeah. I think he 

635
00:52:36,400 --> 00:52:41,300
has a good spot. I got a crib. He says, I need, Oh, he has a court. That's so nice. That's 

636
00:52:41,300 --> 00:52:46,300
how Travis do it. I know. Well, because I was thinking too, the the community in town, dude, we could 

637
00:52:46,300 --> 00:52:51,100
get, like, a weekly just Oh my gosh. Standing date and have people come meet up and run through. And I 

638
00:52:51,100 --> 00:52:56,000
went to have to wake surfed without him and I showed up. That's it. I told him to 

639
00:52:56,000 --> 00:53:00,900
cancel. I told him it was a there was always No. He was like, best day. He's the F 

640
00:53:00,900 --> 00:53:05,600
boat score. It was awesome. He's the best. No one was out. Yeah. 

641
00:53:05,600 --> 00:53:10,400
He's the best. We'll get Pickleball going. Brava, Stud, Pied 

642
00:53:10,400 --> 00:53:15,300
Piper of d two c com. This has been an awesome conversation. This is great. It's the first time 

643
00:53:15,300 --> 00:53:20,300
I've done the the look in the camera. I feel like I made it. I was, like, nervous. I this is this is, like, 

644
00:53:20,600 --> 00:53:25,400
really advanced level, like, talk to the cam I feel like the, you know, the the TV people 

645
00:53:25,500 --> 00:53:30,500
We do what you do with our hands. Yeah. Do do am I looking at the no. He's talking now, I gotta look at him or no. We need the 

646
00:53:30,500 --> 00:53:35,500
producer in there. Turn up the heat. Turn up the heat. Ask him about the The base. The base needs to be high. Yeah. 

647
00:53:35,500 --> 00:53:40,400
Exactly. And, just wanna just wanna finish with this, you know, for 

648
00:53:40,400 --> 00:53:45,400
folks who wanna find out more about Rava and all the cool things you're doing at Vermont, where can they find you? 

649
00:53:45,400 --> 00:53:50,000
What's the Yeah. I'm on the Twitters at Robert Rayjo. I am on 

650
00:53:50,000 --> 00:53:54,900
LinkedIn ish. Yeah. Just send me a DM. Candidly, I suck at DMs, but 

651
00:53:54,900 --> 00:53:59,800
shoot your shot. I suck at times. That's your chance. Yeah. Chance. If it's not like text, 

652
00:53:59,800 --> 00:54:04,500
DM, or or text, WhatsApp, or Slack I might recommend it. 

653
00:54:04,700 --> 00:54:09,700
An upcoming bug snake in a world. Real life event. Yes. That is That's the way to do it. That's the best way to 

654
00:54:09,700 --> 00:54:14,300
get. I I love everybody at the event, so definitely get me there. But, yeah, unless 

655
00:54:14,700 --> 00:54:19,500
you unless you get the text message, then I'm very convinced. You're the man. Alright. You're the best. Pleasure. So bad. 

656
00:54:19,500 --> 00:54:24,000
See you, everybody. 

657
00:54:25,500 --> 00:54:28,000
Did it.