The Four Biggest 6-figure Brand Struggles

[00:00:00] Richard Gaffin: Hey folks. Welcome to the Ecommerce Playbook Podcast. I'm your host, Richard Gaffin, director of Digital Product Strategy here at Common Thread Collective. And I'm joined this week by a very special guest to talk about a subject that's near and dear to my heart. Our guest today is Grant Zanini, who is our VP of Education here at CTC.

What's going on, Grant?

[00:00:20] Grant Zanini: How are we doing, Richard?

[00:00:22] Richard Gaffin: Doing all right, man. Now Grant, Grant is my boss, full disclosure here. So a little nerve wracking him having him here on the pod, but what we wanted to talk about today is something that touches both of us very closely. So, as maybe some of you know, I'm, I'm the, the Director of Digital Product Strategy.

Part of what that entails is I'm head, the head of a program called Admission here at Common Thread Collective. And admission is primarily is essentially a hybrid training and then support platform that gives you access to CTCs resources without you actually having to become a member or, or rather to, to join us and become a client on the service side.

And what that's helpful for is brands that are in the six figure to kind of early seven figure range, get access to some of those resources without having to pay the agency price. So what we wanted to talk about today is, is that range what brands struggle with at the six figure to early seven figure level.

In, in a lot of respects, it can be very different from what an eight figure brand is going through in some respect is pretty much the same. So we wanted to get specific on like types of brands that I'm seeing on a daily basis. And, and particularly maybe how the CTC methodology can help them and how we can help them on the admission side.

So, I think I wanted to kick it off with you, Grant, giving us a little intro to yourself and, and telling us a little bit more about your history, both with admission CTC and, and this type of brand.

[00:01:39] Grant Zanini: Yeah, you brought up a good point in the beginning that I'm, I'm gonna remind myself that we get a chance to talk about every day, and

[00:01:46] Richard Gaffin: Mm-hmm.

[00:01:46] Grant Zanini: there are other people listening to this right now. So keep me on track if

[00:01:49] Richard Gaffin: Sure.

[00:01:50] Grant Zanini: off and, and get into more conversation, let's make this as valuable as possible.

But you know, admission, just starting from the kind of where this idea came from originally, it, it came out of like many businesses, the idea of, a purpose of need, So, I was coming out, this is about eight, nine years ago now. I was coming out of, had come off from creating a business with my wife, an online business.

During that chapter through that, I realized. In reflection, there are a lot of things that we were able to do due to the people that we knew. And there were also a lot of things that we were able not to do because of certain groups of people that we didn't have access to.

[00:02:28] Richard Gaffin: Mm.

[00:02:28] Grant Zanini: And, and what was very clear to me is that anybody who is starting a business or who is in the early stages of an an online operator or a marketer in this space, that there are, in this world of especially six figure brands, where you've kind of gotten over the, you've gotten to the part where you have a real business there. or you're working alongside a small group of people trying to solve things all the time. You're kind of out of the honeymoon phase. There's something there that has to get done, and the weight of that time is really, really heavy

[00:02:56] Richard Gaffin: Mm-hmm.

[00:02:57] Grant Zanini: all of a sudden you start to realize that where do you go next?

The optionality is endless. A bad decision could be a little bit more detrimental, a good decision could you feel it could have this really big swing. So there's this really, you know, it's a really unique time in, in that phase of business. Coming out of that, I had known Taylor Holiday and Jordan Palmer for, for a while.

We worked together in previous, previous eras and, I had been able to see CTC and what they were starting at that point and what they were doing. And so it was kind of a blend of these two worlds where realized that after being on this path myself, that there is a really unique ability to be able to pick up the phone and call someone that you know that is a trusted expert that is doing something else that will give you that time because they're a friend or they're a previous call.

So they'll give you a little bit time that will save you. immense amount of time and effort to figure out and solve for something.

So as I realized that, and then I realized, man, I wish I had more of that network available to you, right? As you're building this thing, is that worth to you? And then as I saw what CTC was building and the content they were putting out and what they were doing, and, and just knowing those two guys themselves of they thought about this world, I realized that there's a really unique bridge here that can be built between.

Entrepreneurs, operators, or marketers that are in this space. What was really unique about CT C as well is that they were, they were very niche at that point. They had, 

[00:04:20] Richard Gaffin: Mm-hmm 

[00:04:21] Grant Zanini: all in on e-commerce. Even this was, this was again, 7, 8, 9 years ago where e-commerce didn't look like it did today, but that's who the clients they were serving.

And with about 30 or so full-time specialists that were sitting there, that were in the work. And you know, as an agency of that size, like everybody's in the work. If 

[00:04:38] Richard Gaffin: Mm-hmm 

[00:04:38] Grant Zanini: employees, everybody's working across multiple accounts constantly trying to problem solve and do different things that if you took that and you're able to take those individuals and be able to pull out learnings that they're seeing all the time that.

As an accessible thing to other people on that journey. It can be incredibly impactful. And this was also a time where like courses were, were quite big, right? It wasn't a novelty anymore. 

[00:05:03] Richard Gaffin: Mm-hmm 

[00:05:04] Grant Zanini: where people were selling courses. It was, it was not uncommon to go buy courses, spend a lot of money for courses, but what that left you with is just kind of.

a, a singular path where you get it, you hope it's not outdated, you go through it and then you have to go apply it. And that was, that was a really time intensive thing to do. Whereas it's like, what if we created some, we're able to create some type of hybrid model here where people can come in get access to an environment that is constantly changing.

Marketing and advertising looks different every day. We know this, right? So if you pair that with a very niche genre or category like, like, e-commerce at that time, all of a sudden you have a really specialized state of things with a bunch of people here with that knowledge that are constantly learning and and building from it.

That if you can allow people into that way, access to that in certain ways, can you create something there that people can gain from that and get from that six to seven figures? Was the whole idea, create more access for those individuals there in a way that made sense for them. 

[00:06:01] Richard Gaffin: Yeah 

[00:06:02] Grant Zanini: that's really where the idea of admission came from.

And from there, we, we kind of, you know, landed on a lot of different things and we, we launched it with that, the 

[00:06:10] Richard Gaffin: Mm-hmm 

[00:06:11] Grant Zanini: can come in access the people, the content, the data, the knowledge and support in unique ways that worked for them so that they could continue to build their business or grow that brand in a way that was specific to them.

[00:06:23] Richard Gaffin: Yeah.

Okay. So let, let then let's jump into some of the specific struggles that that. Brands in the six figure range kind of deal

and both of us have a lot of

this at this point, but this actually kind of nicely or, or ties in nicely to the, the sort of history that you just gave of admission.

Because I remember like the very first tagline that admission had was like, we're your growth team, not your guru, or

something along those lines Right And cause

I remember like part of what you were interested in as somebody who had been part of a brand like that yourself was One

the, biggest struggles at that, kind of, at that tier of growth is that you have no idea where to look for, look to for advice. So that's one part of it. And then, or, or rather, that's exacerbated then by the fact that there's so much advice out there.

so many gurus that, like you were saying, there's so many training programs and it's really, really difficult to understand what specifically you should and shouldn't listen to what

what's noise talk to us a little bit about. Maybe your personal experience with that

you experience other brands experiencing it.

[00:07:28] Grant Zanini: Yeah. Something that true then and is even more so true today is that content is free and is everywhere. That is that that is, that is an obvious, response back to that, even at the, that moment in time was like, that is true. But the challenge with that, that creates a challenge in two very specific 

[00:07:47] Richard Gaffin: Mm-hmm 

[00:07:48] Grant Zanini: your time is incredibly valuable in a limited resource, especially when you're in that going from five to six figure to six figure to seven figure business when you're building a business at that size. As I kind of stated, the at the onset of this, how you use your time is critically important.

[00:08:04] Richard Gaffin: Mm-hmm 

[00:08:04] Grant Zanini: So with content being free and everywhere, you could spend endless resources and time looking at a bunch of different things. That's a, that's an incredible, how do you streamline that? How do you get to a trusted source? How do you get to the content that makes sense for you and where you're at in trying to solve the problem that you're in That very, very moment, number one.

Number two is, is that content right for you? So, as I was saying, marketing is. Evolving on a daily basis, right? In most cases there's also tactics. You can look up a tactics that one person over here that has a great experience is telling you was really right for them. And on the counter that someone's giving the exact opposite advice that also works for them.

So the challenge is like being able to decipher and get to the right content that is a trusted source for you. That you can then take and apply to what you're doing. So I think that the ability to have access to, again, back to that point 30 individuals that are seeing this across a bunch of different accounts.

different. There are unique challenges to every brand and every account. It looks different. The platforms are always evolving and changing that having people in it. Trying to do that themselves can share a better idea of where to look next. Right? They, so we use the term guru in almost a negative sense in that way, but that's what a guru does, right?

A guru is able to take you and help you, lead you to one thing, but. We didn't want this to lead on one person, one group that has this one set of knowledge. We had a bunch of unique people here that could, that could help you look into content that is everyone out, but can constantly provide content that is relevant, that is not outdated, that is always being constantly added to as these platforms are changing, that gives you the guidance that, that 

[00:09:37] Richard Gaffin: Mm-hmm 

[00:09:38] Grant Zanini: And I think that that was a really hard thing that I didn't have access to in the earlier days. Like if I could find that I'd find myself watching a ton of different YouTube videos and. Again, calling a bunch of different people and then you kind of gotta piece together things that make sense for you.

We're in that right moment. So if I, if we could find a way to save people time again, content ever, if you can save time and you can get to the thing that you need, that in that mo right moment, that is, that is really important. 

[00:10:03] Richard Gaffin: Mm-hmm 

[00:10:04] Grant Zanini: the focus on a very specific subject matter and your ability to have multiple viewpoints around that subject matter.

a recipe for providing someone with a much more successful playbook than trying to buy one thing and hope you can apply it to yourself.

[00:10:17] Richard Gaffin: Yeah, definitely. I, I mean, and I think like the big issue with the reason we were kind of framing gurus is negative back at, at the beginning there is that a lot of the times they'll offer you a solution and say, this is the thing that works.

oftentimes that's just not the way that the world works.

It's not,

not the way that e-commerce works. And so part of what we were trying to do and are still trying to do is come alongside you and say like, this is what we're learning based on

of what we're observing across all of these different clients that we work with across like our whole data set. And this is like the series set of best practices that we have that if you apply this as a general template or philosophy, this may work for you. And that's kind of like. W Yeah, just being realistic about what we're offering there. Which I think helps cut through some of the bs of a lot of, a lot of gurus in the space. But I think too, like to a point that you made earlier, like one thing that I hear all the, all the time or people are implying

me all the time is that one good piece of advice could change everything for me.

Right Like if I get the piece of information,

could, this could be a sort of a life or death. Death change for my business.

I at the six figure range, like maybe giving the wrong advice won't kill you, but the consequences are gonna be much greater than if you're running an eight figure brand or a nine figure brand or whatever, right?

[00:11:29] Grant Zanini: That's right.

[00:11:30] Richard Gaffin: so people are just, just constantly searching for that and. Applying advice. Applying advice. It doesn't

It doesn't work It doesn't work

But there feels like there must be something to unlock here because we have this base of organic revenue that shows me that people like are interested in this brand and that there's something here. So I think 

[00:11:47] Grant Zanini: that point, Richard, 

[00:11:48] Richard Gaffin: Hmm 

[00:11:49] Grant Zanini: is critical, right? So because you can, you can hear something or read something a certain way, but without the appropriate context, maybe that guru was, was, was with truth in telling. That's what worked for them, 

[00:12:01] Richard Gaffin: Yeah 

[00:12:01] Grant Zanini: the proper context. How it is applied could look a lot of different ways.

And so I think that's what we also believed of, like going into this is like, okay, it can't just be, we can't just be constantly putting out new courses that that led them there and said, of luck. 

[00:12:18] Richard Gaffin: Mm-hmm 

[00:12:18] Grant Zanini: the context around that stuff oftentimes needed to be a conversation. Or oftentimes needed to be in a room like this where we can kind of talk through things with a few different 

[00:12:27] Richard Gaffin: Mm-hmm 

[00:12:27] Grant Zanini: That, that when you pair those two things together, all of a sudden you hear it differently. 

[00:12:31] Richard Gaffin: Yeah 

[00:12:32] Grant Zanini: it's stated to you in a whole different way that that's when power of unlock can actually happen. To your point, 

[00:12:36] Richard Gaffin: Mm-hmm 

[00:12:37] Grant Zanini: this, 

[00:12:37] Richard Gaffin: Mm-hmm 

[00:12:38] Grant Zanini: there's nothing more gratifying than getting a note from a member that says, I just got off a call with so and so.

This one little thing unlocked something that I had been missing for years, and that that's what that, that that is true. And that's, again, being a bit dramatic in many ways, but at that size of a business, there's certain things that could see on the other side, so clearly like, oh, just, just make these few adjustments.

That, oh, I heard about that. Or I might have done that a while back. Or, I try that and you move on from it. 

[00:13:06] Richard Gaffin: Mm-hmm 

[00:13:06] Grant Zanini: oftentimes, all of us as individuals are blinded by what you don't know, and 

[00:13:10] Richard Gaffin: Yeah 

[00:13:10] Grant Zanini: part of this. What you don't know or where to look or how to define the right content you're looking for is a challenge.

[00:13:16] Richard Gaffin: Mm-hmm 

[00:13:16] Grant Zanini: feels incredibly overwhelming when yes, it's everywhere. That it's without the right context, without being able to have someone that could give you that extra support. It could be meaningless in many ways.

[00:13:26] Richard Gaffin: Yeah.

definitely. And, and one just kinda last point on this too is like, one thing that I think we try to do, and that is often missing from like a lot of these, this sort of guru solutions that you see is a reason why the thing that they're offering works.

So the times it's like, Hey, if you do do X and y, I don't know, you build your campaign this way.

It'll sort of magically make things work for you without an

of like, what is the function here? That's causing this to happen. And what we're we're trying to do on our end of it in anyway, is just to say like, well, the reason we build this campaign this way is because the Facebook algorithm is set up in such a way, blah, blah, blah, that

the end of the day, if you want to get profit. Margin, and that's the thing that you're shooting for. You need to build your Facebook account a certain way because a cost cap will function to make sure that you're never overshooting your CPA target or whatever.

so a clarity to the, the overall philosophy and framework that then says, now if you understand that these things are true, now you can go out and apply them tactically. But that doesn't, that means the tactics could still change. That

one solution. There could be multiple solutions,

it all kind of comes back to this core philosophy.

[00:14:35] Grant Zanini: We talk about this all the time, 

[00:14:36] Richard Gaffin: Yeah 

[00:14:37] Grant Zanini: have to frame this as the reason we call ourself education department because that's, that's exactly what this is. This is the, the, it is our responsibility to, to help be the professor, the steward in this, 

[00:14:48] Richard Gaffin: Mm-hmm 

[00:14:48] Grant Zanini: to be the one that says You need to do this is the way you gotta be done is like one that's not useful to most people.

But two, that is we believe to be our obligation here, is to be able to give the background, give the understanding around it, give the fundamentals so that people can know where to look next, next, and how they can better solve for what they're trying to go Do not be the one that says it's gonna be done this way because.

If you work in marketing, you know, it doesn't work like 

[00:15:13] Richard Gaffin: right? 

[00:15:14] Grant Zanini: We deal with this all the time. Something can work really well today. That does not work tomorrow. That is part of the journey 

[00:15:18] Richard Gaffin: Mm-hmm 

[00:15:18] Grant Zanini: But it is our, our, our job to give very thoughtful reasoning as to why we're doing things. Help people understand that.

By doing that, you can then make better decisions yourself.

[00:15:27] Richard Gaffin: Yeah. Okay, so let's, let's move on onto our second point here. That's, that's very closely connected to this first one,

is that like one thing that I've learned talking to, just a ton of these entrepreneurs both on sales calls and in the membership program, is that this is fundamentally, especially for like owner operators, this is like a really lonely experience

people are, feel themselves to be. maybe the only person in their friend group even who's

this right now. So the only person that they even know personally, who's like, kind of

this

e-commerce stuff, and it's really difficult to find a community to build around that.

And so part of that, of course is like, well, that's why you end up going to YouTube for advice.

of what we wanted to offer was, is a way to get contact with like-minded founders and then also our people. So, so talk to me maybe a little bit about. maybe your personal experience with that

[00:16:21] Grant Zanini: Yeah. 

[00:16:21] Richard Gaffin: type

of thing.

[00:16:23] Grant Zanini: Yeah. I, I alluded to this in the, my overview in the beginning, 

[00:16:26] Richard Gaffin: Mm-hmm 

[00:16:26] Grant Zanini: when my wife and I were building this business, I, there's about a handful of like four people that specialized in different things that I had a really good relationship over the years. We'd work closely together, became friends that when we did this, they were always like, Hey, if you ever need anything, call me when it comes to this stuff.

And when you're in that kind of bootstrapping stage or you don't have enough money to pay other people and there wasn't. A whole lot of other options to say, I will take you up on that. And so what I found myself doing a lot is calling those individuals and spending, as you know, you're always kinda like, oh, I don't wanna like waste too much of their time and you wanna take 'em out to dinner.

And you can't really do that either. So you would just like get about an hour with them. And that what I found in those hour conversations that how much time they would save me because of what they knew they could inject into me. And I can even just Hey, can you look at this? Make sure it's set up right.

Don't do it for me. me how to kind of do it. Leave me there, I'll go around, I'll go spend the time doing it, and I'll come back to you and just say it's right. And that validation, that time spent I would find save the ton time and ton of 

[00:17:27] Richard Gaffin: Mm-hmm 

[00:17:27] Grant Zanini: and wasting money. And so I was like, that's a very valuable thing.

And like I said, then you would look for other moments like that. I'm like, I don't know anyone that can help me with this portion of SEO or whatever it might have been. And so then you're kinda out there scrambling and you're realizing how much time you're spending trying to find that. So that was, that was an unlock in that moment to me is like, if you, if, how can we help individuals?

This is not unique to myself or my wife at the time. It was how can we create more space where you can have those trusted resources that then talk to I, I'll say another thing too is go back to college many years ago for me that one little thing that I stumbled upon. My final two years I took incredible advantage of is, I wasn't great at showing up to big, big forum classes with the professor up there.

And, you know, if I did show up, I would hope to get some notes. But what I did start to do is I would show up to the open office hours. What I realized is that all the, all the professors had to have those in certain blocks. So by doing so, they want people to come, but most students wanna go to them, right?

So rather than oftentimes attend the large things, or even if I did, I would go to as many of those as possible. And what I found is there might be 2, 3, 4, sometimes up to 10 people max, the amount of access I would have in that moment with professor the guard is down. They're 

[00:18:44] Richard Gaffin: Mm-hmm 

[00:18:44] Grant Zanini: to sit there and kind of go through things with you.

I would also sit there in the back and be able to listen to other people ask their questions, and from that I would like, so all of a sudden, in that one hour block. I was like hyperfocused on being able to get so much more from the professor and other people around me that I would leave that at like a 10 x of what I would, I might've been able to do in a, in a classroom of a hundred people sitting there trying to take notes as they were speaking towards us.

[00:19:06] Richard Gaffin: Mm-hmm 

[00:19:07] Grant Zanini: That was the thing that was like. I can that, that environment where you can kinda show up in a smaller group and what you can draft off of other people and then have your own ability to ask very specific questions and get your answers. Again, the context is key. I, I would be able to learn a much faster different way than.

The other setting that worked for me. And so those are just a few of the principles that as I was on my own journey of this and as I was coming out of that journey as well, it's like those are really impactful things of when you're educating and when you're part of this thing is of acquiring these skills for the first time and you're going somewhere you don't where you need know you're gonna go.

Those are really critical moments to be able to say, how can I get there faster with less mistakes? 'cause they're gonna happen regardless. 

[00:19:47] Richard Gaffin: Hmm 

[00:19:47] Grant Zanini: so, I think those are two things that. talk a lot about you and I as from 

[00:19:52] Richard Gaffin: Yeah 

[00:19:52] Grant Zanini: years and how we can make this more impactful for people on this journey.

know, we have a unique set unique skills in different ways. How do we give that same type of access to different people? And can we re replicate that in ways that, talking to members, is that useful to them or is that not? So I, I'm curious, throwing the question right back to you 

[00:20:09] Richard Gaffin: Sure 

[00:20:09] Grant Zanini: as you talk to these guys all the time, what is, how does that, what does that look like for a lot of these, you know, six figure low, seven figure brands as they're going through this path?

That challenge of hiring or being able to get alongside other experts 

[00:20:22] Richard Gaffin: Yeah 

[00:20:23] Grant Zanini: really good at this, when you don't have the, you don't have the capital to hire them. 

[00:20:26] Richard Gaffin: Yeah

Right. Exactly. Yeah. I think that that the, the constant struggle and then, and this honestly kind of segues into a couple of our other points nicely, but like the constant struggle is, is to understand like what, what, like you're saying, like what hiring choice do I need to make to get the. The type of support that I need.

Right? And so

do I get it? Do I hire an agency? Do I hire a freelancer? Am I in housing this? Do I hire some like my friend's kid or whatever seems, says he knows Facebook ads. Like there's all these sort of different options and it's really hard to under to know kinda like we were saying with the first one, like what, who you should trust and what's gonna make sense.

And I think

of people run into is that like they're taking, they have gone through a series of failed experiments in, in this. Particular process, right, of like finding the right community, hiring the right people, whatever. So like the best, the best moments for me, like as when I'm sort of like running the admission program is in some of these live calls that we'll have on a weekly basis where, you know, we have five, 10 people jump on and one of our people will jump on as well.

They'll just have an open Q and a. They can ask any question they want. Just people discovering that like, Hey, wait a minute, this other person has the exact same problem that I do.

[00:21:38] Grant Zanini: Mm. 

[00:21:38] Richard Gaffin: So

people will come to these calls and be like, I am having this like fundamental creative volume issue. I

figure out how to get my account, or I can't figure out how to get out of the learning phase right now.

I can't figure out how to get this to spend.

[00:21:52] Grant Zanini: Yep.

[00:21:54] Richard Gaffin: the next person will jump on with their question, and their question will be like, huh. My question is also I'm having a creative volume problem. I can't get this to spend, I don't know how to, you know, enabling creative volume is really difficult for me. What am I supposed to do there? And then someone else will jump on, they'll have a really similar question or a really similar issue, but then they'll say like, actually we have, we've figured out this thing, this UGC. Sort of like flywheel or whatever.

cranking for us and it's great.

And so people can kind of share notes on these things, but also fundamentally be able to see that they're, the problems that they are having are not unique. And I think a lot of the times that can be a big unlock for people is understanding that like they're not dumb. Which is a big thing that I've like actually literally heard from people.

It's like, I, I just like, I, I'm embarrassed to show my Facebook ad account on this call or whatever

it's, it sucks so much.

somebody else will show it and they'll be in like a really similar situation.

will be really having trouble spending through four grand or something, you know?

So I think that's, that's. The experience that I get and like when I, when I feel like admission is working its best, is when people are sort of understanding that they're, they're not alone in this. The problems are not unique and that they're solvable. 

[00:23:01] Grant Zanini: You know what the 

[00:23:02] Richard Gaffin: yeah 

[00:23:02] Grant Zanini: behavior too, to oftentimes to that 

[00:23:05] Richard Gaffin: Mm-hmm 

[00:23:05] Grant Zanini: Feel dumb, I don't know how to solve this thing, 

[00:23:07] Richard Gaffin: Yeah 

[00:23:07] Grant Zanini: we go and hire, 

[00:23:09] Richard Gaffin: Yeah 

[00:23:09] Grant Zanini: out and we spend money to get a, and oftentimes like, okay, what do I have to go spend to do? I'm gonna go throw this at this one problem and let someone else go figure it out for me.

[00:23:17] Richard Gaffin: Yeah 

[00:23:18] Grant Zanini: And the challenge with that is they won't figure it out. 

[00:23:22] Richard Gaffin: Yeah 

[00:23:23] Grant Zanini: And now all of a sudden you wasted a pretty good chunk of change around something that didn't get you any further or. Say they do solve it for you. Now all of a sudden, okay, why did that work? I'm not too sure, but keep going.

Here's more. Keep feeding the, keep feeding the at TM and let's just keep this thing going. And at a certain point it won't work. 

[00:23:41] Richard Gaffin: Mm-hmm 

[00:23:42] Grant Zanini: unless that person is alongside you incentivized for whatever ways, again, let's assume that you can't hire them on full-time or part-time. They're also doing this for 10 other clients 'cause they're a freelancer or contractor 

[00:23:51] Richard Gaffin: Yeah 

[00:23:52] Grant Zanini: so their, while their interest may be.

Trying to help you and wanna do it, and there are a lot of good people out there that do this great. But what that could do is if you are not understanding it well enough. Or why they're doing it or what, what's being done there? 

[00:24:05] Richard Gaffin: Mm-hmm 

[00:24:05] Grant Zanini: does put you in a place at some point where it's gonna be harder to hire for that or it will stop working.

You don't know what's it gonna then go do next with it. And so, 

[00:24:13] Richard Gaffin: Yeah 

[00:24:13] Grant Zanini: Again, if you have the money to spend, do it. It's great and it's worthwhile once you get there. But part of this whole journey is, again, you're a capital allocator. You're trying to figure out does it go here or go if it's going to that thing right now.

[00:24:25] Richard Gaffin: Mm-hmm 

[00:24:25] Grant Zanini: have to take away from somewhere else, so now you gotta spend your time on energy on that. So it's, it's, you wanna be able to deploy it in areas that are gonna be most beneficial for you. And that's the part is like if you can't solve something, if there's a way that you could have more access to those people to pick up the call, the trusted source or whatever, that could be a way to offset that to allow you a bit more runway to use your capital in other ways.

So that, again, once you learn it, now you can apply it, you can do it, you can then go look for better things there going forward. I mean that's, this is very fundamental and I get that, but. It wasn't it, it, there wasn't like very specific resources we can turn for these things and I think 

[00:25:01] Richard Gaffin: Mm-hmm 

[00:25:03] Grant Zanini: we kept going back to, and still to this day is like how if we can help solve for those things, then again, it gives these individuals more time to go do what they need to go do.

[00:25:11] Richard Gaffin: Definitely. Yeah. It's a, and we've, we've kind of just sort of transitioned into our next point here, which is, which is around the struggle to hire, hire agencies it is at this particular phase. But I think like one thing that, that I've really noticed or, or that I find just as general observation about like the agency world and particularly the agency world in e-comm and that includes things like freelancers and

is that hiring a marketing agency is a weird. It's a weird environment where you're like, pay a premium for what is mostly a bad product.

That just to be frank, right, like it, it's, it's an odd environment where. You can expect to pay a lot of money for something that'll maybe work 40% of the time, and that's not usually how that transaction goes.

And so like, I think part of what we're sort of identifying is that there's something fundamentally broken about that relationship and we, we've made no bones about that on the CTC side of saying like, yeah, we started this agency because we had such bad experiences with agencies. This, this is a little bit of a similar thing where it's like clearly there needs to be a different model. thinking about how you, at this phase of your brand interact with the agency world and paying a freelancer 5K an agency, 10 k or whatever a month as a, as a gamble doesn't make a lot of sense. You're putting $5,000 in and what you get out is sort of like, honestly, like in practice, a lot of the times it's like saying maybe this will work.

Um, and, and so I think we just, yeah, we wanted to figure out. Figure something out that a hybrid solution, like you were saying, that just like makes, just more sense for this phase of your business. 

So about like a couple things. So one, maybe continuing talking maybe about your specific journey with agencies if you had one, and then also how that kind of relates to our final point, which is just about the economics of being in business at this level. What was your experience, if any, with like agency hiring?

[00:27:05] Grant Zanini: Well, yeah, I would actually start with the economics. I 

[00:27:07] Richard Gaffin: Yeah yeah lets do it 

[00:27:08] Grant Zanini: can tell you there's, they're gonna have good agency experience and they're gonna have bad ones. I think that 

[00:27:11] Richard Gaffin: Hmm 

[00:27:12] Grant Zanini: most people that come to either CTC or to into admission that. They have had both at that point, 

[00:27:18] Richard Gaffin: Yeah 

[00:27:19] Grant Zanini: the earlier stages, they've had, they've been burned a few different times or it didn't make sense, and they might have had some really great experiences and they're, they're looking so they're, there's a reason why they're calling and being a part of it.

There's a lot of amazing freelancers and there's a lot of amazing agencies out there. But again, what it comes down to is, I think you gotta look is the, the relationship, right? Are the economics there? Are they, you know, incentives aligned? Like, and I think to get to a lot of those answers.

You have to go through this. And so 

[00:27:45] Richard Gaffin: Mm-hmm 

[00:27:45] Grant Zanini: of like creating a path that allows, again, or sorry, business owners, operators, early, early stage marketers, that during this phase, the more that you can go through and get a clear understanding of things and like different, not having to go all in, 

[00:28:02] Richard Gaffin: Mm-hmm 

[00:28:03] Grant Zanini: hire a freelancer right away.

Not having to go hire an agency right away. You're gonna make those decisions down the road much better. 

[00:28:08] Richard Gaffin: Yeah 

[00:28:09] Grant Zanini: And so we see that when they come in at that level of to CTC, with those experiences, we can be a better partner to them. 

[00:28:15] Richard Gaffin: Yeah 

[00:28:16] Grant Zanini: part of this is discovering that journey and creating more runway for yourself and the economics, the capital behind it is the number one 

[00:28:24] Richard Gaffin: Mm-hmm 

[00:28:25] Grant Zanini: Okay. It just is like, so when you're at the stage critical decisions around how should I be using these few dollars that I can, these resources and my time, we keep talking about, you know, a big part of this conversation I feel like I go back to is preserving your time. Creating ways for you to understand a lot of different things and solve the problems that you need to now getting to those, yourself time by getting to those problems faster, right?

You need more access to do that. And then how do you better, how do you spend early stage dollars in ways that's gonna be most meaningful to you? So I think my own experience is can be great relationships and there can be bad ones. You probably maybe experience both at this point, but the way that you get to yourself, a place where, like, how can we.

ideal path would be to learn as you be able to build the building blocks as you go to learn and be able to preserve as much of that, you know, capital as you can, and spend your time as wise as you can to keep growing to that next phase. And 

[00:29:17] Richard Gaffin: Mm-hmm 

[00:29:17] Grant Zanini: next phase, there's more doors that unlock and open and allow you that kind of freedom to go in different ways to make those decisions in a more calculated way.

So what I would say too is like, I'll just jump straight to one of the solutions that we had and that we still offer to this day is like, what if. If we can get people access to just one hour calls, 

[00:29:34] Richard Gaffin: Mm-hmm 

[00:29:35] Grant Zanini: one hour consults. Where they gonna come on in that hour? One-on-one, you're being with another specialist that you can go through real intimately into whatever problem you wanna solve.

So if it's inside an ad account, you can jump on with a, you know, a meta buyer and then get in, you can share your screen and go through like that. The same idea as I've talked about now a couple times is being able to call a trusted source and sit down with 'em really quickly and say, can you look at this?

Where, where are you seeing something that I don't see it? Or why can't I unlock this spend? Or why do I do like. having somewhere, you can't get that on YouTube. You can't get that necessarily. Even a larger community, you can't get that sitting in a classroom of 200 other people, right? You 

[00:30:12] Richard Gaffin: Right 

[00:30:13] Grant Zanini: that office hour.

You need to be able to have that one-on-one call for someone to sit down and go through it. So like that was one of the solutions that we kind of landed on. I was like, I. That, could that be a solve for what we're kind of talking about here during this phase? Having access to be able to do those kind of things.

One hour calls, not one month contracts 

[00:30:28] Richard Gaffin: Mm-hmm 

[00:30:29] Grant Zanini: because now I'm paying you three, $5,000. You're, you're valuable your time. I'm not there yet. I don't, I, but I'll do a bunch of one hour calls to gimme like. Through these immediate moments of things that I can do to help me unlock. I still have to go do the work, but I'm learning during those things.

I'm, I'm adjusting, I'm learning as we go, and I'm making those decisions with someone who knows who has been there and can see it differently than I can. 

[00:30:49] Richard Gaffin: Hmm 

[00:30:49] Grant Zanini: that's a, that is a, a way to completely expedite that process of learning what you need to be doing, maximizing that time to then solve the problems you need to solve in that moment.

So. that's my, I mean, from your side, 

[00:31:02] Richard Gaffin: Sure 

[00:31:03] Grant Zanini: as the hiring, what we call the hiring center, that one-on-one calls has been something we've always, since day one 

[00:31:08] Richard Gaffin: Mm-hmm 

[00:31:08] Grant Zanini: due to this day. What is the kind of feedback you get when typically what, what is, what is the, what is the normal journey for someone who has one of those calls?

Do they come back? Is it useful, is it not? Like, what, what have you seen? I mean, is it something that's,

[00:31:20] Richard Gaffin: Yeah.

[00:31:21] Grant Zanini: that's true to everything I just said or not?

[00:31:22] Richard Gaffin: Yeah.

Yeah, No, definitely. I think that like, generally speaking, the feedback on, on a hiring center call was like. Thank you. This is amazing. Can I talk to them again?

You know I that that's, that's kind of, the, the point that we've been kind of making throughout about this, this idea that at this phase of the business, there's like one thing that can unlock everything, it's, it's hard to get to it. Like, I feel like that moment happens on hiring center calls probably the most frequently because what you're doing is taking your business. That maybe like, I don't know, you haven't had maybe the, the extent to which another person has looked at it has been

very minimal. Maybe like your one freelancer who's

friend of a friend has looked at your account or whatever, but other than that, it's just you, you're just living in it. You don't really understand the context of what's happening. But within an hour, sitting down with like one of our. Paid social buyers who have seen,

know, probably literally hundreds of accounts and spent literally billions of dollars. Like, what you're gonna see is what they're gonna be able to see is they're gonna be able to read your account in the context of all of the other accounts that they've seen.

And they're gonna be able to tell you. I tell everybody this on sales calls, they're gonna be able to tell you this pretty quickly with like, the three things you could change right now are,

it's gonna be straightforward. I think like that it's, it's, you're getting access to the very best in the world at this

for

I mean, really a, an honestly pretty, pretty inexpensive fee. So I think that that's, yeah, yeah, like the real, like big specific unlocks happen there because every business is different, every account is different. And getting one-on-one direct eyes on your unique situation is really important.

for that, I think, so let's yeah, I mean, I think it's probably no secret that this has been not so subtly a bit of a pitch for a mission here.

So we talked a little bit about the hiring center and how that touches on that specific issue, both look how

helps the economics, how it helps with the,

finding the right information piece of it. But yeah, I wanted to just kind of quickly discuss some of the other things like our, our content library, for

which to go back to our first point around having no idea where to look for advice, again, the idea behind, like the content that you're gonna get is it's going to be CTCs content.

From CTCs perspective with

philosophy,

you're not gonna be getting competing points of view. Unless, for instance, I don't know, Taylor's decided to go off on something and he disagrees with a number of our media buyers on small things like, but I think that's part of what you get as well. You're getting a

of a multitude of voices, approaching things tactically, but from the same sort of philosophical perspective. So I. One thing too that I like to say about the content library is it's like, particularly from where it started, we've kind of moved past it being like a course per se

of here's the beginning, middle, and end. And once you kind of go through this, you're going to know Facebook ads. Because the truth of the matter, of course, is that like meta ads are not, it's not like learning geometry where. know, you can start your geometry 1 0 1 course and you learn about trig and trig is always gonna be the same. And by the time you're done with the course, you know enough trig to go do

in the real world, which I don't know if any of us ever have. Right. But with Facebook ads, it's like, for instance, currently all the sort of entro changes that are rolling out, meta ads are changing all the time. The fundamental principles of marketing don't change though. And so like. What we wanna do is have ongoing updating content from like a consistent perspective. So I think that's what you get with the content library. Do you have any thoughts on that?

[00:34:44] Grant Zanini: Yeah. Well I wanna, I want say something really clearly 'cause you've helped me. Get over this hill 

[00:34:50] Richard Gaffin: Mm-hmm 

[00:34:51] Grant Zanini: when we started admission, my belief was that, if we wanna give more access and make this such an incredible, valuable place and a resource for that, people would leave and say, wow, this is way more value than I was expecting for this price.

That my belief from the beginning was that we had to put everything into one. It was all inclusive, right? You would get all the content, you would get all the support, you would be able to go hire one-on-one. You get everything in one place. And, and what we knew is that not every member would use all areas of it, but to be a part of it.

It's all of it there. So that as you evolved, it evolved with you. And that's served us really well over the years. But I think that what you've really helped see to this point is we also have to 

[00:35:33] Richard Gaffin: Mm-hmm 

[00:35:33] Grant Zanini: have to have the talk to our members, understand what they need and what they don't need.

And over the time there's more people have gone through it, you can, you can start to see that certain people really gravitate towards certain things. So rather than say, oh, we don't, we no longer need this part of it, we still have all the same elements to it. But could there ever be a version where.

People can just get access to a very specific part of it that they wanted. And I think that's where, you know, even part of the reason we decided, let's talk about this more today, let's bring more of the stuff public, is we're, we're playing with that idea 

[00:36:02] Richard Gaffin: Yeah 

[00:36:02] Grant Zanini: allowing people to let's just take the content side.

Some people. Want all the content, which is, you know, find a better place where you can have a very concentrated amount of content around this, you know, very specific industry that gets added new content every single week and we have to removal. It's like there's a ton of work that goes into that, just that one part of the mission.

[00:36:20] Richard Gaffin: no 

[00:36:20] Grant Zanini: And that's. parts that that's the only part that people want. And so could that be possible? And so if we go back to our, you know what the goal of this is, is to create more access for people who wouldn't normally have it, then we probably should listen to that. And so I think that, I just wanna call that out because I think part of this conversation right now and previously up the, over the years, has allowed us to say we have to continue to evolve it as well.

[00:36:41] Richard Gaffin: Mm-hmm 

[00:36:42] Grant Zanini: big part of helping us find that and see that. So, that's something I'm really excited about personally of like when, you know, if and when that moment does come then let's I think that people can be really interested in that part of it 

[00:36:52] Richard Gaffin: Yeah

Yeah.

definitely. No, I think like, part of part of what we're trying to do here with admission is evolve to, to kind of fit the needs of the market. I mean, as, as every product does. And I think part of that is that, like what we wanna do is make,

you're sort of hinting at this, but what we wanna do is make the content, available.

Kind of the, as a, as a separate thing or is, is like you can get that piece of the hole. And I think part of that has to do with, again, like I was saying, like the, the evolution of the market of, of like this is what we've been talking about have been, these are all struggles with six figure brands that have been true for at least the extent of the time that you've been a part of CTC and have founded a mission, so like five, six years. Of course, like there's fundamental things that will always be true, but I

this particular moment right now is, is very difficult

and

People are always strapped for cash, but they're strapped for cash in a way that they haven't been in in a long time. And I think that's part of the reason we wanted to make at least the content library separate from the rest of admissions so that you can sign up for that.

And then there's a way you can upgrade to get access to everything else, to some of that community, to the hiring center, to our people, and more of our resources to our live events as well. But at the very least, that piece of the puzzle, what we're talking about, which is like. If you have no idea where to look for advice, here's, here's a library of content that we can provide to you where you understand where it comes from and you understand the perspective and that you're gonna get something consistent out of

it so by the time everybody out there listens to this, that will be rolled out. You may have seen some emails about it. So please, please check it out. We would love, love to have you in the admission platform there. So we'll have a link to the checkout page for that in both the show notes and then in the comments or rather on the description in the, in the YouTube version of this particular podcast. But, but yeah, so, so we're opening it up. We're making it more widely available for, for a, a reduced fee, monthly fee to just get access to that content and start that journey of, of kind of having an interaction not only with our content, but with our people as well. So, any other thoughts you had there?

Grant you wanna leave us with 

[00:38:55] Grant Zanini: say for, for the listeners that if there's one thing to take away from this know that it's. We're always trying to make this better and solve for these different things. Know that we've 

[00:39:05] Richard Gaffin: Mm-hmm 

[00:39:23] Grant Zanini: and there's a lot of stuff out there and that's really hard to navigate.

And so the challenges 

[00:39:26] Richard Gaffin: Mm-hmm 

[00:39:26] Grant Zanini: be facing right now or feeling are very normal challenges. And there's a lot of good things. There'll be more ups and downs with it. But that we're trying to create a space that, a trusted place you can look and go help, whether it's our free content that's always out there, or you join admission in different ways or you come into the CC.

Network and, and as a part of a client or an employee on the client side that these are all things that it, it is something that drives not only Richard or myself, that everybody here at CDC driven kind of around this core goal of, of constantly trying to find ways to better, individual's business. And whether you're on six figure path, seven figure path, eight figure path, nine figure path, we, we, we see it in a lot of different areas, but it's something that is at the end of the day core to us and why we say education is 'cause that is, that's where it all stems from. 

[00:40:09] Richard Gaffin: Yep 

[00:40:10] Grant Zanini: I hope that that's, that's the thing that gets me excited to wake up every day, 

[00:40:14] Richard Gaffin: Mm-hmm 

[00:40:14] Grant Zanini: you and everyone else here, is that it gives us that opportunity to meet more folks like that and see how we can learn from each other.

[00:40:20] Richard Gaffin: That's right. All right, folks. Well, we're gonna leave you there. We're at 42 minutes. Went a little long because this is what I like to talk about. But so we're gonna have a, again, like I was saying before, link in the show notes link in the YouTube. Around what we're calling admission light for now.

This is our content library access. If you want to kind of get, like I was saying, get that started with getting access to the content, into the support and the voices that you need at that six figure level. Okay. Cool. Well, great chatting with you. Thanks for joining us Grant, and we will see you all again next week.

Take care, y'all.