Taylor & Andrew Break Baseball Cards & Break Down DTC in 2025

We're back. New set, new location. We're just gonna try and upgrade. Daytime it every time.

the actual problem with the e-commerce in my mind is the barrier to entry is zero.

And so all the profits eventually get competed down to nothing. 

Some people talk about how hard it is as if it was supposed to be like, you walk down and somebody just gives you a bunch of free money.

And so you can get to, and this is just me as a designer, I'm a death treadmill.

Doing this in like six seconds. Like I, I can make this ad that there's nothing like this in the account because right now, will it work or not? I don't know. Probably not. But who cares if you could take a thousand shots, right. It took zero seconds to make it right. 

I'm not making any bets on poly market related to e-commerce, but I am. Uh, I am starting an eCommerce brand, so, Ooh. I believe in it enough.

Is this I think that there's just an opportunity Yeah. To build on some of these really great ideas and keep going with it. But 

And when he asked that, I thought, I've never thought about that in my whole life. 

doesn't know. Could be.

. It's worth noting that it's daytime.

'cause usually when we do these, it's like. 9:00 PM We both, yeah. And our wives are not happy about the fact that it's happening. Yeah. That's when we start, we get, yeah. You know, one of us is leaving the other one's house or location at 11:00 PM for a 40 minute drive. Exactly. Exactly. Maybe there's been a beverage pour at some point.

Um, or do you have any non alcoholic beer still? Oh, we might Some lunchtime. No alcoholic. Well, so we got something instead. So normally we like, oh, good point. We've been adding like a, some sort of element of thing we're doing. It's been the beer. You've been bringing that. So before you tell me about this, do you wanna start arguing so that nobody turns it off?

'cause they think we're gonna open baseball cards? Well, we're not. Okay. So we're gonna argue, we're not gonna break, we're gonna start with Andrew's just horrendous. Take that. He's tied himself to Uhhuh as like the internet. The e-commerce optimist, uh, is his, his disposition, which is great. I think it's gonna be really hopeful for people and Yeah.

Will lead to endless sadness, but, um mm-hmm. So we'll get there.

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Mm-hmm. But so to start though, so many of you, uh, probably lots of you watch breaks on the internet like me, which is you watch people open baseball cards, um, is a big part of the internet that I grew up in, in COVID, and so I figured. We'd have a little fun.

So Andrew and I, uh, have a lot of shared history as it relates to baseball and our fantasy league and our appreciation for prospects, which neither of us are in anymore. Yeah. We both quit. You rage quit. I rage quit because I was mistreated so egregiously by the league mates. I my life got too busy. Quit.

Yeah. Yeah, yeah. So Bowman, uh, for those of you don't know, this is, uh, the premier baseball card and what we're after here, Andrew, is they have a card that is your Bowman first. Okay. So if it has first on it, it's that more so than a player's rookie card Okay. Is the most valuable baseball card you can find.

Okay. So today we're after this set of prospects that includes your guys iir, hope over the Dodgers. Yeah. Walker Jenkins, Charlie Conden, a number of other top 100 prospects. And we are hunting. The three box. Is this the order of the best of the best ones or it's their number? So like these will be the card number.

BP nine. Bp. Okay. So exactly. Okay. Bowman Prospect. So C but Christian Campbell's in here. Like he's like already a good major league group. That's right. So some of these guys might already be up and some of them, like James Wood, it'll be his rookie card. So it won't be his first. So we're not looking for James Wood first, but Charlie Con, it'll be his first.

You'll see the distinction. And these are the first speed people one. Yeah. Okay. So we're gonna open these as we go. We're not gonna talk about 'em, but Andrew, I have to tell you that if you get one K, what you're gonna do is, okay, you're gonna take this sleeve right here. You are gonna put the card into the sleeve, Uhhuh.

And then you're gonna load it into the top loader. Yeah. Great. Okay. And that's gonna protect us. Yes. So we can turn this into a profitable endeavor. We're about, it's about 1500 ish dollars of cards we're gonna open. Great. Uh, uh, my friend Chad, GBT told me my expected value on this is not great. What is it?

You know, it's like a 30% return expected. Whoa. It's like, I'm gonna accrue back 30% of the value of the 1500 bucks. Most likely. Now, who knows? We can get lucky. Right? Right. So we'll do this as we go, like, yeah. So don't mind us, we won't make this the point unless we hit something cool. So you can kind of just open it.

I'll at least get the, the, and we'll get started here. Okay. Um, but what topic would you, uh, like to kick it off with? Okay. And why don't you, you wrote in our notes for this that my take Yeah. And I'm quoting now that e-commerce is, is easier than ever before. Better than ever. Mostly, mostly good. Mostly a good business.

Oh, okay. Now let's just make an obvious carve out right away. Same one you made when your own marketing operators. Sure. Which is that there's a subset of people. Who are like facing a potential death sentence with China, China tariffs like that. That is, yeah. So we're just gonna set that aside, or no, that's not lost on me.

Okay. And I'm not, but that's not, and it matters. We can talk about that in there too. But, but, um, but I just wanna be clear that if you actually had to pay 130% more on your product cost, that's bad. Right. I'm not an idiot. I understand that. And that, and that even down to a 30% tariff, which has by the way, has happened since your, since your negativity on the Marketing Operators podcast came out like a week later.

Exactly. What you expect that got to be probably not an extinction event for brands. So now it's really tough still, but probably not extinction event. Yeah. Probably not, but maybe, maybe certainly. Um, okay. So, but anyway, so I have repeatedly said, and, and again, because punditry is stupid. Yep. Um, there, there needs to be a thing here where you're putting your money, where your mouth is, whether it's a, um.

Whether it's, uh, you know, poly market is a way better predictor of things than pundits, right? Because people actually have to put their money where their mouth is. Okay? Um, I'm not making any bets on poly market related to e-commerce, but I am. Uh, I am starting an eCommerce brand, so, Ooh. I believe in it enough.

Is this breaking news? No. Or you've kind of leaked this? I've said it a few times before. You haven't said what you're doing yet, right? No, I can say it though. Oh, you can? Sure. Oh, wow. We'll get into that at point. That's, let's say that, yeah, yeah. No, that's good. That's a, that's a little carrot. Yeah, I didn't know that.

Yeah, I'm, I'm gonna do content showing all kinds of things about it at some point. Okay. Um, but I haven't, yeah, but I can say it. Okay. So, um, so anyway, so my take is that things are basically good. You called it outlandish. So what is the best way to go forward here? So, okay, let's, let's, yeah, let's, let's try and peg you down to a clear position.

Okay. You're, you're waffling on me. Um, yeah, there's sort of two different things. There's one thing I've heard you say. Uh, I'm just sort of collecting all the firsts. Uh, nothing major. How do you know that first? No. So see how it says first right there? Oh, okay. You got it? Yeah. Okay, good. So, I'm, the chromes are better than the pa.

These are called paper. So no chrome? No chrome. Okay. The best thing we want is colors or parallels. That'll the chrome. Okay, great. If we hit something cool. We'll, somebody, somebody will want. Okay, great. If we hit something cool, we share. So the first thing I've heard you say is that e-commerce is easier than ever before.

Like as if there's this like, collective knowledge that has grown. This is the core position to find. Yeah. Yeah. And I think it's maybe the most insane. Yeah. Um, so it it's this idea that Yeah. E-commerce is easier Yeah. Than before. Well, so here's the way I put it. What I always say is the, the little phrase I use all the time is that the collective knowledge or the, the, the accumulated knowledge on the collective intellectual capital balance sheet.

Yep. DTC. Right. The collected intellectual capital on the D two C collective balance sheet is. Is so much higher than it has ever been. The the, the access to information quality and level is now so high that now there's a problem here. There's so much of it, but that because of that, brands now can, for cheap to free, um, get an incredible amount of knowledge about how to do it.

In a way that was actually not the case, not that long ago because, and there's a crucial reason for this because there are so many more big businesses now in this space that have, and this is just a function of time. Like there's just so many more bigger businesses that have now gone through stages of the journey and reported their learnings.

It's like, it's like somebody who has explored a new territory, they've gone out ahead and they've said backwards. Like, here's how to get there, here's how to do it. And that, that literally didn't exist that long ago. And everybody underweights that. It is a big deal. But I think, I think you're just looking at it.

Wrong. What you're describing is that you are now competing with a much smarter, much more mature industry. So as a new person entering in, the gap is substantially wider than when you started. What do you think? What do you mean? Competing with like you enter specifically? What do you mean by competing?

Somebody entering into your product category is now competing with you. Okay. Today versus Andrew, 10 years ago. Yes. Are you a harder competitor or an easier competitor than you were 10 years ago? Well, it depends. 'cause almost nobody, you're dumber. You've gotten dumber. No, no, no. Well, almost nobody's actually competing with me.

Right. I'm saying if someone wanted to go into the category that you're in Yes. Are they competing with a better or worse version of you? Yeah. I just don't, I just, I think in most cases this is not true in every brand that like the notion of even being competitive at the size of businesses we're talking about here.

Oh, see, this is another thing that think is wildly, is basically silly. And what I mean is like I. Uh, like, uh, uh, you know, like, uh, apple and Samsung have to compete with each other for how many phones they sell because like you and I only have one phone and they're the, they're the two, two of the monsters, right?

Or whatever. Yeah. Or Apple and Android. Okay. Whatever. It's, so something like that. There's like real competitive dynamics there. But, uh, but for like a, a brand that's coming in and taking, uh, even a 20 or $30 million revenue business in these larger categories, like let's take, let's take a athletic, wear, athletic apparel, right?

Great example. Something like this, right? Yep. Those businesses, like if I'm Nike and if I'm, uh, under Armour, then I'm probably thinking about the collective, um, problem of a bunch of upstart, mid, mid eight figure eCommerce businesses and the way they're chipping away at my business. But if I'm born primitive, yeah, I barely care because Yeah, it's completely untrue.

When, when Born Primitive started, they had a massive advantage. What was it? Oh, well, I don't know. But when they started, they, you do know you were the one who discovered it, uh, crosswalk. The organic search term for the sports bra. Oh, yes. CrossFit sports bra. Yeah. Yeah. That's gone. You mean it's completely competed away?

You mean when they were a $2 million business? That's right. And it's been completely competed away. They who cares? Take, take categorical search. They, they as a category. They are. So this is a perfect example. They, you say this is a big advantage. They are 20 times the size of that business now. No, it was an advantage then that they, someone entering the category today could never get Yeah.

So that category, okay, this is good. This is good. All these did pieces of digital real estate, like imagine trying to come in and be a silicone wedding ring right now. Yes. All these categories get competed down to nothing. Yes. Where the access point to profitability that was leveraged by people when the industry started is gone.

Yes. And, and, and it's the idea that you're competing for total market and D two C is not what we're competing for. We're competing for very limited digital real estate. Very limited, like the SERP results page for women's leggings is no longer a profitable arena for anyone. The search term, the search term women's leggings, the idea that categorical search has basically become uninteresting.

It's a channel. Fine. It's a channel, yeah. That is now far less profitable than it was 10 years ago. Same thing in many ways with meta generally. I think that's just false. Meta is wildly more competitive in the ROAS expectation over time for a decade is decreased. The ROAS expectation? Yeah, the median ROAS of a brand on the platform.

Doesn't go up over time it goes down, it gets compressed. Yes. But that's because brands figure out how to, like, they're spending into that based off of the rest of the economics of their business. That's not always the case. Most people run on lowest cost, like in reality. Um, yeah, but I know, but they're still spending, I mean, not, not in the sense of like being a manual bid, but they're, they're, they're, they're spending in a way that is.

Spending towards the growth level that they can achieve to, to, or that they want to achieve. And they're therefore, whether they're doing, whether they're doing it in a poor way with auto pitting, right? Where they're like, right. But if that volume was where that curve exists, like is different, and if the curve is lower than it was when we started, then you're able to get less volume at lower efficiency.

Okay. So here's, here's like my fundamental question response. You just said less volume at more efficiency. No, no. At less efficiency. Oh, excuse me. Less, less efficiency. So here's, here's like my, here's my big question to all of the eCommerce is on fire people. Okay. Again, put aside, it's not, so we're don't change the, is it easier now than before?

That's the question. Not is it on fire? So here, so here's my question. Well, okay, so we're starting, we're starting. At one point we'll move to the, is the state of the industry a disaster right now? But I'm, but is the state of the industry a disaster is basically how everybody frames it. Every, but I'm not me, I'm interrogating a specific point that I brought up in the beginning, which is.

But I might not disagree is easier now than before. I might not disagree with your point here a little bit then we should we, we should, we should add another win the first one and move to the second. Well, we should add another, the poll. So the, but the question is like, when I think about the idea of, uh, of something like meta, um, as a channel mm-hmm.

It seems to me that the tool itself is, is, has been built now to make life easier for almost everybody now. Oh God, no. Yeah. Yeah. Uh. Yeah, you may have to know how to do it. And, and I actually think this is the thing that's the hardest part of this whole thing is actually you, you brought this up on your marketing operators thing too, which I was just listening to on the way here, so it's fresh in my mind, but just, it, it sort of fits one of your classic positions.

That's definitely right. By the way, uh, and you know, it pains me to say that sometimes, but, uh, no. One of your positions that's definitely right. Which is that like the attribution wars, all they do is complicate things. Yeah. They don't actually bring clarity at all. Right. The whole promise of attribution is right.

It's all gotten more complicated and less clear and, you know, the marketing operators guys are talking about this idea of like, oh, now you can optimize for ad North Beam attribution and Google Analytics and what has happened. They, they, they, Cody ER's on there throwing his hands up saying it just, I don't know what to do.

Well, exactly. I go back to when you and I started meta. Yeah. We didn't know anything about any of that and we were more successful. That's not true on running Facebook ads for kalo, silicone wedding rings our performance well, but kalo, that's, that's not well, yeah. Okay. So my point is like we, the, the simplicity of the system was beautiful.

It was the ability to set up, you're gonna run for sales. Oh, okay. That cools, I don't even remember what optimization setting I think it was, was called Sales 28 Day one. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It was like the default and we just, we never thought about it. No, we never debated which optimization setting to use or what attribution model to use.

Just put the money in and went like, this is good. Yeah, let's do more of that. Yeah. Yeah. Now maybe we think we underplayed it and would've made a better, smarter decision maybe. I don't know. But, but it was also at so much less scale than people are spending now. And, and, and Kayla was an extreme outlier for the time.

So like, I mean, this, this is actually the point that I was gonna make earlier. Why are there so many more bigger businesses now than there were before? I think there's just older businesses that that is part of it. But there are also more stories of people in the last few years, like. Getting to a much faster state than before.

I don't know. I don't, I don't know how to validate that claim. Yeah. Like I, well, okay, so this is actually another point that nobody knows how to validate the counterclaim to mine, right. Which is like, right then it's definitely that. So why I would just like concede an unknown to, are there businesses growing faster today than ever before?

I don't, I don't. Maybe I, but I don't know for sure. But I, I, I think that the question is, is it easier to win in e-commerce today than what do you mean by win before? This is, I think, another important part of the question. So when you, 'cause when I say easier win, I think the goal of business is enterprise value.

I think, I think I feel very clear that the goal of business is shareholder value creation. Okay. But how much, at how much do you win? Because this is another thing that I think I, I see very differently than most people. Um, because one of the things that I see in this conversation a lot is people with pretty big businesses putting up pretty big bottom lines talking about how hard it is.

And I'm like, yeah, but like a few years ago that wasn't possible. And yeah, your growth rate slowed down, but that's what happens when your business gets bigger. Like there's just like a thing where it's like, I don't, or people who, you know, even like you guys have how many clients at C TC. A hundred. Right?

And so it's just, I look at that and go like, well, you guys have now figured out how to win for a hundred clients. I'm sure you're not winning for all of 'em. Yeah, yeah. I'm sure you're not winning for all of them, but I I'm also sure you stand behind the quality of your service and that, like brands that do your thing, you say, and, and all that.

Especially compared to when you had a hundred businesses before a few years ago. Yeah. Right. And so like all of these people are saying it's so bad all the time except that the businesses are getting bigger and they're generating a lot of profit. And yes, it's, it is. That's why we are generating a lot of profit.

The median EBITDA for an eight figure business is about 6%. Um, okay. For an eight figure business, the median EBITDA is 6%. What if they shrunk a little and took it to 10% that they'd be worse off. They wouldn't even be able to grow 'cause they would produce so little cash that they would not be able to, to invest in future growth.

If they took more, if they took more margin on a lower revenue. Yeah. Oh, because there are, because they're already at that revenue stage, you're saying you have, you'd have to grow in excess of whatever the delta changes, right? Yeah. Like, so the net cash result, we'd have to actually do the math of what you're suggesting, but the, the, you're saying, because they'd be pushing out their current inventory further, and then they would have to, and, and like, we don't know the inventory on hey, but, but the idea is that like in order to fund future growth, you have to have a cash value in excess of the inventory that you wanna purchase, which is more inventory than you sold.

But don't you have more cash if you take a higher profit? It depends on how much revenue you gave up in the process. Over a period, 5% of a million is, is the same as 10% at half a million. Right. So like whatever the ratio change is is gonna determine the net cash result and in likely, but, but at a lower margin percentage wise than your cogs are gonna take up a higher percentage of your cash.

It depends on whether it's coming from cogs marketing opex. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. Well what I'm thinking, yeah. Well, I mean, if you think about it as an inventory cost though, it would be like that if that's the constraint that you're talking about. Well, if they depends on what's causing the cash limitation, why your EBITDA is so low, is it 'cause marketing's inefficient or is it 'cause your opex is too high?

Or 'cause your inventory is Well, I know, well, I think the, the, the, so people, the string, most people would pull would be to grow less, to take up basically a higher loss. Right. Essentially that, that's, that's what, not always, but that's what people try to do. I mean they, yeah, and they hope that they can, but in reality, like, I don't know how true that is.

I have business doing it right now. Doing what? Taking a lower spend at a higher am MER and a bunch more short-term cm. Basically, I, there's a question about whether or not that's gonna hurt them in the long run. Yeah. For the, for the growth of returning customers and all that stuff. But part of it is they're just, it's just the Taylor Holiday playbook.

Just like, well, and it's funny, first profitability that if you listen to any of my content lately, what I'm realizing is that in many ways. You like the, the fundamental truth is you can't cut your weight to growth. At some point. You have to regenerate. What do I mean by growth? Growth to the shareholder?

To bottom line, the enterprise value of the company. Yes. Because enterprise value is a, like, one of the things I think people miss is that acquire of your company or somebody who's gonna, any gonna apply value. It's a discount to future earnings. Yes. Yeah. So the trend of those earnings matter. Yes. And if you've grown the bottom line by decreasing the top line, nobody looks out into the future and goes, this business is gonna grow profit.

You have to, you, you would have to do that as stage one. And then stage two is you have to verify stage two. Exactly. Stage two is that we can keep growing at a slower pace, but more profitable. That's right. And so, so that is the stage. I think that's a good way to describe what I experience right now, which is stage one was right size the economics of this business to viability.

Yes. Stop burning cash. Yes. But the stage two is the actual problem to be solved, which is now given the fact that you've right sized this, can you grow profitably? Yeah. At all? I don't know if I can listen to you and do this game, by the way. It's really hard. Well, you just, you're just looking for colorful chrome cards that say first of somebody that you might have heard of before.

Okay, great. You know, that's it. That's the, and when you find the odds, somebody has something signed and then Yeah. When you find the autos. Okay, great. Okay, so because I, what I find right now is brands are stuck on stage two, which is they, they have, they have cut back, but now they can't grow. Yeah. And 'cause when they go to market, what they find is that there never actually was viable growth here.

Meaning the economics between the cac, the gross margin, and what it takes to operate the business. Turns out the category got too competitive. Whatever it might happened there is now you can't actually go achieve the profitable acquisition at all. Like it's just not there. Yeah. And so now what do you do?

Yeah. Um, because you mean that you had diluted yourself into thinking there was a business here because you were willing to pay. The market price to acquire customers even though it wasn't profitable and you were funding that in some mechanism. Yeah. Right. And so then you're like, oh, I'll just cut back.

But then what you realize is like, oh, there's not actually a clearing price where I make money. So brands try. You're saying brand, I mean, understand brands try to cut back. Yep. But then when they cut back, the ROAS doesn't just like move in this perfect linear way where it's like, yeah. They they lose too much volume.

That's right. And or there's like literally they can't go get a two two on meta. So let's just for simplicity, they set a manual bid, 2.2. Yes. Manual bids working completely, perfectly tuned. It gives you 100% the output that you got. There's zero volume. And so they, uh, off of what, so they were at a 1.8 before they were losing money.

Like let's just say that they were acquiring customers negatively. Yeah. Negatively. I don't know what, like first order negative, they were at a 180 day payback period and whatever. And so now they're like, I have to get the first order profitable. So let's come up with a theoretical situation and let me tell you, tell, let me, this is something fan.

I'll give you a specific example without using a brand name. Well, okay. Uh, go ahead. Okay. Highly, uh, imagine a category that exploded during COVID. Okay. Okay. Uh, a bunch of demand. Hot new thing. A trend. Maybe show a list of players. Yeah, yeah. Uh, a trend in, uh, fitness, wellness maybe. Okay. Sure. Okay. Explodes.

During COVID for a period, you're able to go acquire a bunch of customers profitably. Yes. Um, you're the, maybe you were first to market Yes. With this new thing. Yes. Then all of a sudden there's 974 competitors. Okay. There are alternative options that are now undercutting you in the market. The, the categorical search is dissipated, your conversion rate's declining.

There's Amazon options that are way cheaper. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. And all of a sudden, this is not too far off of K, right, by the way. Well, exactly. I, I think this is exactly what happened to Kayla. In many ways, it happens in almost every category in e-commerce. This is one of the things is that the actual problem with the e-commerce in my mind is the barrier to entry is zero.

And so all the profits eventually get competed down to nothing. This, by the way, is the best counterargument with my position. This is actually, the barrier entry is solo. This is what Dave Cook. This is why, like on the other day I was listening to MayT tab on finance operators. Yeah. And he was talking about, uh, ip.

Yeah. And, and it was interesting because it was like, uh, uh, drew was like, ip, nobody cares about ip and, and like generally default, that's what I was kind of taught. That's kind of the position. But he's like, no, no, no. We actually think it's only the only thing that's defensible. And I think, I think he's right.

And he, he lauded, uh, Sean Frank for taking so much, uh, effort to defend their patents on the wallet. And that's one of the reasons they've been able to kill all the knockoffs and competitors.

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Yeah. That's really interesting. I didn't know that they had that. And so that's actually part of what defends.

Your ability to continue to acquire customers Yeah. Is that you don't get undercut by all of the people doing rhino ring. Yeah. Right. And whatever else ring. Right. Right. And so, uh, what I see happens is that, okay, so now all of a sudden all that competition comes in. How big of a business do you think Sean and Ridge could have if they didn't have that?

I don't, I don't think it would exist. You think it would be dead? I think it would be competed done to nothing. They would not be able to acquire customers profitably. Yeah. Um, what if they kept adding product products along the way? What if they kept doing product development? I think the question is, would they ever have been efficient enough to fund that kind of development?

Yeah. Right. Yeah, it's hard. I, it's hard to know the counterfactual, but the problem is the pace of, uh, knockoffs. Like now silicone rings are obviously the most extreme example because the barrier is literally nothing. Yeah. It's, and the cost is literally nothing. So like it is, if you were gonna knock something off at the lowest risk possible with the most margin to go capture, oh, you got a autograph.

Oh, there it is. Who do we, Jesus Ro Dodgers Prospect. I'm a big Dodgers fan. There you go. First Auto. Let's see. I have absolutely no idea who he is. Okay. Out a 4 99 Chrome Auto. Can't be a good sign. Can't a good sign that I know if he's a Dodgers prospect and, yeah. I don't who he is. It's not, let's do, let's do a quick read.

I think probably let's look him up. Let's check out some, some numbers. I think it's probably not somebody we care about here. Jesus, finish your thought. This is hilarious. This is gonna be the worst episode we've ever done. This is a clever idea, but people are gonna be so mad that you're finishing that thought then.

No, they, they're gonna like it 'cause they want know about Jesus tale. He's 19 years old. That's, he's the 27th ranked prospect in the organization. 45 pass ball, about 60 ceiling. Okay, hold onto that. That's good. Yeah, that could be good. Yeah. He pitched in the, uh, something league. He's 12 and a half Ks per nine in the dsl.

He's walking eight per nine though. I gotta go get that. That's a classic Dominican 19-year-old somebody 110 drive lines intended. Zone tracker. Exactly right. Um, okay, so, so the, going back to my example in the fitness category, okay, so now all of a sudden that that's degraded. Your opex got a little too bloated 'cause maybe you hired thinking you were gonna get all this growth.

It starts stalling you reset your opex and you go, okay. Alright, now all of a sudden we need to go from a 1.8 roas where we were scaling to a 2.6 and all of a sudden you go to try and get a 2.6 and there's no volume. Yeah. And so you're like, oh, okay, we gotta cut off X further. Yeah. And now we can get to a 2.5 and there's like a little bit of volume.

Yeah. And all of a sudden at that level, it's like the business would have to be a quarter of the size. Yeah. So do you, in that business, it sounds like a business that has basically won, like there's very little LTV on it. Yes. Right. So yeah, I mean, I think, I think a business with bad fundamentals that was sort of like took off during a trend and had very little LTV is not a good business.

So this is how it all ends up in supplements and beauty, like outside of the environment. Well the question is the fundamentals. Yes. How many products actually possess good fundamentals and it's like basically none. Yeah. I, I think I, I think, and I think part of the thing that I consider in all of this is that you ought to have, and this is, this is like one of you ought to have, um, a position.

About what is the upside of your business that's rooted in reality, you know, and that means understanding some basic things about that. Make an e, that make e-commerce work as a business model. Yes, yes. And uh, and now one of the things I'll say is to the point about the intellectual capital and shared balance sheet is that we have never been clear about that.

People were not very clear about that, not that long ago. And, but are we like, so is, do we know I, well, so there are exceptions to the, to the basic rules here, and sometimes they're like really thoughtful and careful exceptions. The one I always think of is simple modern, where like they have terrible gross margins, but that was actually a channel strategy Totally.

That launch them, which is about their ability to win on Amazon. With a, one of the smarter business strategies I could think of for a brand like, well, and, and like a massive tailwind that happened off of a random event with Stanley that produced massive categories. Yeah. Were they were doing great before that.

They were, they were, but that, that was, they were like nine figures before that, I think. You know, so, so it's not the only thing for sure. I, I just, but I just mean like, they break the rules about gross margin being important and specifically, but what have they done? What, what is their next, their next thing that they've gone to do to explore growth?

Uh, I mean, they've gone omnichannel, well, no. They launched a new product that is a consumable, right. That they, if we, well, that's a fully separate brand. Yeah. But it, the, the growth path for the enterprise, the whatever the HoldCo is that they look at. Yeah. They look at the growth potential of simple, modern, and trevi and go Trevi can be five times the size of this.

Yeah. And so certainly the future growth is gonna come out of this thing. Not even, no, I'd say less D two C more so retail. Like you could sell those things into every grocery store in the universe maybe. Yeah. Um, so like, I, I think that there's like, and the unit economics from a DC's perspective are substantial.

That's right. So you could subscription, because they have both skillset. They understand the unit economics of it. Like they understand how that game is played. Right. And so very high. So there was a flight to consumable. Yeah. It was like one of the three subsets of product categories that would work.

Yeah. I mean, they sent one of their talented executives to go do skunk works. That's the way I would look at it and say like, there's enough upside here on this. And how much cash? 10 million cash. 5 million cash. I have no idea. I think I've heard them say it before. I don't. And they might have said it somewhere, I just don't know it.

You know, and, and look, they're at a spot where they can afford to do that. I think that's smart. You know, I, I'm, I If what, if what you're saying as a counter example is really, really smart, uh. Operators decided to start an e-commerce brand. I'm happy to say that that was definitely, I don't think they would call it eCommerce brand.

I mean, had an e-commerce launch. So eCom, I don't know, this is the Kelsey Lair conversation, but e-commerce sales channel to start, they, they definitely thought they could incubate it there, and they also have all of these doors into retail and all that. Like, yeah, I think, I think that's an argument in favor of the idea.

There is a really good opportunity for some people if you can find the right product, category fit, you know, something like that. For sure. And I don't think I, again, I, I also wanna say, like, when I say that it's like. The easiest it's ever been. I don't mean that it's easy, you know, like, this is another thing I think that happens here.

Some people talk about how hard it is as if it was supposed to be like, you walk down and somebody just gives you a bunch of free money. That's annoying. I got a, a redemption auto, so that means that, oh, you have to like, he hasn't actually had time to sign it yet. Malcolm Moore of the Texas Rangers, it's probably not worth it.

It's a Chrome prospects auto. I don't even know who that is. Yeah. Oh, bummer. Alright. Um, anyway, the, what's it supposed to be like? What's the, what is it supposed to be? Well, I mean, I just think sometimes people talk about this as if the game is supposed to be like, well, what in the world? Like, I just put my money into meta and I have a business.

You know, like it's not, I don't, I don't think it's that and I don't want to suggest the idea that it is, that, you know, that, that it's, and I think that is sometimes how people frame it or they've grown really fast to $20 million at a 10% bottom line or 15% bottom line or whatever it is. Like they have a good, healthy business putting off millions of dollars on the bottom line.

And they probably don't have any cash, but like, you know. But they have a good business. Right? Like you right over there. Mickey, can we break anything? Yeah. Good devices. Yeah. Yeah. I know the two camera setup is, is leading to some injuries here. Yeah. Now, um, okay. I don't mean that I don't, and, but I, this is another thing that bugs, bugs me about the conversation is sometimes when I hear people with big, healthy businesses talking about how hard it's, I'm like, get outta here.

Like, so what do you think they're being protectionist? Like, what, what do you think the incentive is there? No, I, no, I think, I, I think that, uh, don't you think it's sort of like j like have you ever seen the interview of, uh, Jackson Wong from Nvidia being asked? Like, we talked about this last time, I think.

Yes. Yeah. Yeah. And he said, I, I would, I wish he was offering No, no, no, no. Where he's asked like, if you could go back and tell yourself, give yourself advice when you're starting, he would've, he, he goes, yeah, don't do it. That would've been the advice. Yeah. So it sort of feels like that to me. Which is that like the reward relative to the journey.

I, excuse me. It is not, not not paying off in the way that I wanted, or, or there may have been a different path. I, I mean, I just think, I just think that though, for those brands also, part of it is that, that this, this success is never enough. And I just think for some people there's an such an endless, uh, desire for growth.

Now, this, this may have perfectly reasonable business aspirations. I cast no aspersions on somebody having ambition to grow a big business or something like that. Right? Like, it's just that what I, what I ask sometimes is what is actually underneath motivating that? And at what point have you been successful enough to say, this is a good business and it's going well, but that's different than, is it easy?

Well, yeah. I, I, I don't know if I've ever said that it's easy if I said it's easier. That's the, that's the original point here. Yeah. I, yeah, and I don't, again, what I'm saying is I'm bullish on the ability to do it and like, like, and so I don't know if that's, I don't know, as easy is probably not the word I would choose.

All right. So maybe let's move it to a different part. Let's move to yours. Which is, which is present market is a terrible market. Well, yeah. So I mean, but maybe the way I would put it is like, do you think eCommerce is a bad business? You know, like, oh, yes. Yeah. Okay. So what I get asked all the time, would you start an eCommerce business?

Yeah. Yeah. And either there is almost no scenario the answer why, what are the main reasons for why not? Because I think that the path to liquidity and cash return on my time Yes. Is like, is really poor of that. Yeah. Okay. Um, yeah, go ahead. Sorry. Keep going. Like I, I look at your business as an example.

Yeah. And how much money you My, is he? Yeah. Yeah. How much money you've made over the last two years. Yeah. And how long it would take you to make that much money If in cash? Yeah. Certainly. Yeah. And I just go like, these things are not even close to the same. Um, yeah. And I, I think I have an appreciation for the asset value as well, that I don't actually think the trade off that people per pretend it is, is real either.

Yeah. Does this matter? No. Okay. Um. So I, I just look at that. That's just one example. Now I don't, I'm not one of these people that's like, you should start a dry cleaners. I know nothing about those businesses. Right. To assert that it's better or worse. But I know that I didn't end up in e-commerce out of some thoughtful, no consideration opportunity election.

Yeah. Right. That's not how I ended up here. No, no, me neither. And it's not my experience of how many people end up here. No. Um, and I, I do agree with that, that a lot of people are not considering opportunity selection at all. I have some friends who, who just sort out recently who like very quickly spun up a seven figure business distributing ozempic to people locally.

Yeah. Yeah. And it's just like, they're just like making more money than that, you know? Right. It's, that feels like opportunity selection, right. Like you're, where you're trend riding a wave that you thoughtfully entered into potential. Yeah. Yeah. Um, so yeah. I, I do think that that is where, but I just think about how much easier it was for 'em to get that much money than it has been for me.

You know what I mean? Like, and I'm just saying like, oh, so maybe if I thought differently about Right. What I put my mind up on. That's right. I think I, so I think when I think about easy or hard, I think about that. Is that like, if you were to sort of agnostic to industry, take a step back and go, okay, relative to my intellectual capacity, if I wanted to maximize my earning potential.

That's a recent one. Ooh, you like him Otto. He, uh, he uns Jang. He is a Korean, he was like a 17-year-old. The Dodgers signed outta Korea with like really big stuff. There's like a, there's a chance he's nothing, but there's a chance. He's a superstar. And that's an auto that's so, that's a, so these are you Dodger autos.

Yeah, I know. That's funny. That's convenient here, man. That's, he's like a really fascinating prospect. Actually, we're gonna, we're gonna give you this because he skipped the KB, he skipped the Korean League and it was like, it was like, he, so how old is he now? He might be, I mean, he is like 18 or something like that.

He's like really young. Or 19. That's cool. I think. I don't know exactly, but yeah, he's, yeah. No, that's fun. Yeah. I think people are gonna hate this so much. No, they're not. It's so fun. Um, are you having fun, Nikki? Well, great, great. Um, okay, so that, that, I think, and then, so I guess question is like when you interact past to generating a bunch of cash different, well, yeah.

Maybe let's just talk about the data, like what data we have available to us about the performance of our industry. Yeah. Um, if we start at the top in the public sector. Okay. It's not great. It's like, it's like the worst basket of performing assets Yeah. The history. Yeah. So now of course there's himms, it's an outlier.

It's crushing. Yeah. Hopefully you've got some HIMMS shares. I don't, um, I have no HIMMS shares, so it's not that there are zero windows, but I, I look at that and I go like, Ooh, man. Like you wanna talk about, uh, a category with unique dynamics relative to the rest of our industry that we're, we're lumping into D two C in a very generous way.

Right? Right. This is like telehealth, you know, this is, uh, and it fits closest to the thing we know kind of works, which is supplements. Yeah. But, but so at the public level, absolute blood bath disaster. Yeah. Um, now one, one of the things I'll say about that is that those are all brands. Where nearly all of them were like, blitz your way to IPO never be profitable and, and generate a bunch of, uh, enterprise value for the investors as we've talked about.

Great move by those people. Like, uh, building these businesses that never have a chance to be profitable. They are Allbirds of the world or whatever it is, right? Yep. Um, they, they just don't stand the chance. And, um, and that, that I, that I think of as a carryover from D two C 1.0 or 2.0 or whatever Okay.

Where it was just almost nobody is operating under those assumptions anymore that I can see. Now that might be, you know, wish, I wish we were that. Well, maybe so that it would be easier. Yes. But that, that maybe, I mean, not very many brands won there, right? Like there was how many of 'em that actually had, well, how many of them have iPod since?

Yeah. Like none. I mean, yeah, but, but the, um, so yeah, there, there was some ability for some brands to do that at the time. Good for them. They did well. Now when I talked to fan, fan definitely suggests, right, so now we're gonna move down markets. Well now he companies, he suggested me. There's still a lot of brands, a lot of brands.

O operating under those assumptions. That's another good pushback on my position, which is like, that knowledge has not disseminated as far as I think of it. Like I am in particular circles, you know, like I talk with my clients and with you and that's it, you know? And so like, I don't even really listen to any DC podcasts normally, you know?

So like, I don't really know what everybody else is thinking out there. So anyway. Yeah. Keep going. Sorry. Okay, so at the public, so at the biggest level disaster, uh, if we go down, is he a thing? Who Is it Jose? Jose Eno. I think he's a thing. I dunno. Sounds like a thing. Yeah, I, he's good. Um, so you go down to the next level and you are, all right, well let's do the eight and nine figure crowd.

Well, the only, the only data that I have. In real aggregate is this is what Filo has pulled across. 508 figure stores. Yeah. Okay. That's a lot. Yeah. Yeah. And so you look at that. So first of all, it's a lot more eight figure stores than there used to be. Yeah. Saying again, that's just time. Like there'll be more in 10 years.

Yeah. Partly. And there's also a lot more customers buying online, which everybody writes that too lot. Yeah, yeah, yeah. A lot more. More than twice as many. Yes. Over. 'cause the growth rate is like what? 15%? It's basically one percentage point. So it's gonna grow to double every five years. So it's basically one percentage point per year.

But that's also a pie that's getting bigger. Don't forget, what do you mean? So like the gdp DP of retail is growing. I mean, just like the totally economy grows at some point, you know? So Yeah. Maybe we're actually asking. I know, I know. I know. It's possible that we're in recession for a couple months. Oh, Kyle, it's not gonna be a Kyle DeBarge.

Yeah. Um, okay. I dunno who that is, but, well, I mean, that's technically a fourth Auto, I guess we get six, so yeah, we're not correct. Um. So, so you've got, uh, this eight figure set of stores Yes. That basically have, um, a median outcome. Okay. So median for the record Yeah. Is the middle. Yes. That means half the people are worse.

Yes. And half the people are better. Yeah. Okay. That 6% in Q1, they just pulled me the most recent data of ebitda. 6% ebitda. Okay. Okay, go ahead. Sorry. So 6% EBITDA is a median outcome for an eight figure store. Yeah. This isn't seven figure. Yep. Seven figures are gonna be worse. Yes. Um, so if once you get to 10 million, the great hope is that if you're a middle of the road eight figure, you're making $600,000 on 10 million.

Yeah. That's not great. It's not great. No. Um, okay, so what would you do if you were making $600,000 on 10 million, knowing only those two things about the business, the top of the bottom line, you would be able to pay yourself $0. I mean, so what would you do if you, if you ran that business, what do you think you would try and do with it?

I mean, it's too generic of a question I would try and get out of the business first of all. Okay. So that, that's a fair answer. Right. I mean, it depends on so many things, right? Yeah. But, but it, it, what I, having operating in a business that has substantially more margin than that, yeah. I can, that's a grind.

Yes. That is a grind for pennies. Yes. Um, I think there are better vehicles than that. Yes. To spend your life in. Yeah. Unless you really, that's not really the question, which is like. The question is like e-commerce relative to e-commerce, like is it better now than it was before? Well, I thought we were moving on to is the industry disaster right now?

Oh, sure. We can do that. Okay. Yeah. Great. Yeah. Yeah. I, I think, uh, I think that's a fair, I think that's a fair point. Do you think that a brand though, but let's say you were running it, what do you think the viability is? Do you think it's just not viable for the, that brand to grow slower and more profitably?

I mean, we talked about this a second ago, but this is something I always think about. This is sometimes when I hear, I mean, fan had a story when I interviewed him about this that was kinda kicked off some of this conversation about like a $40 million brand that sold for six figures or something like that, because they were, they were not profitable.

And I hear you hate that. You hate that. Well, I just hear that and I think like that's a choice at 40 million. Like there's almost no way the economics of that business are like you are, you are operating it excellently all the way down to now. I couldn't be wrong. You just don't know if there's any profitable acquisition potential at all.

Yeah, I mean, I just think at 40 million, you almost for sure have some amount of returning customer revenue at that point. Yeah. That's just gonna whittle down to nothing eventually over time. I don't know. It depends. If it's an apparel business, apparel business, returning customer revenue, often, if you can operate the business well, like will be shockingly sticky over time if you can keep producing costs.

Shockingly sticky. Yes. I mean those, those cohorts last for longer than people think. Yeah. They lasts in tiny percentages. I, no, that's what I'm saying is that in larger percentages of people think you'll see brands that produce larger returning customer. Percentages over a longer period of time than many, many people think, particularly in apparel, in my opinion.

What are you, what are you actually talking about? Let's say they do an 80% increase in customer value in a year. A lot of those will end up doing 60 and 50 and some of that for the next course, a couple years, and sometimes they'll even stay closer to that 80 for longer. Like they just won't degrade as fast.

There's no way. Yeah. You don't think so? No, I think, I think it. I think there's no way in the second, now, in the second or third year, you're gonna match. 'cause you're just dealing with a perpetually smaller number of people. Yeah. So unless you are somehow extracting more and more value out of them. Yeah.

Which apparel businesses do. Because a lot of them, what happens, some of them do, 'cause what a lot of them do over time is they release products more often and they have sales more often. Like they become more of, as I think you've described it, a rhythm and timing business over time. So they, they get better at doing those things.

Now, I'm not saying that it'll last forever, but I'm saying some of those will be better than you think. And if you can keep piling those up at some level, you end up having a pretty profitable business and keep piling it up. Part is the point in that example though, why not go to 30 million? 'cause you don't know that you can actually sustain the customer acquisition at $30 million to make it work.

Yeah.

My, my summary statement is, I think it's very possible to build a pretty good $20 million business in e-commerce right now. That, and that's not satisfying to a lot of people. And that's, I think, the difference between my position and a lot of people. So let's just play it out. $20 million. What kind of EBITDA do you wanna give it?

15%. You think you could double the median 70, 10 to 20, depending on how you run it. 20 would be a really, really big if, if you're running it super profit, let call it 15%. Yeah. Okay. So 15% on 20 million? Yeah. Is like 3 million. 3 million bucks. Yeah. Okay. So, um, assuming you have some carrying cost of the inventory, some level of debt, some partnership, how much free cash flow do you think you could spit off in a $3 million EBITDA business?

I don't know. Um. Uh, 20% of it. Yeah, sure. That's seems that's, that seems, that seems fair. Let's, let's say you'll do a little bit better than that if you're growing, if, if assuming that you're taking it and not trying to grow that fast Yep. Along the way, you're, you're, you're getting there and not trying to, you know, so 600 didn't, you didn't zero to five, to 10 to 20, you know, like 600 grand pre-tax.

Yeah. Okay. Assuming you have no partners, if you own a hundred percent of the business Yes. Is a post-tax earning of 300 grand. Yeah. You make more than that. Yeah. Running a tiny service agency. Yeah, yeah, yeah. That's insane. Yeah. You take home more in a service business that is how many people now? Four, five.

Yeah. Three in the, uh, three in the us, three people. That's not doing $20 million in revenue. No. And your take home cash is gonna be better than this theoretical $20 million business running at 15% margin, which is a 75th percentile outcome. Yeah. I mean, that's crazy. Yeah. But, but, but, but the, the enterprise value of that business is way higher than mine.

Is it? Yes, for sure. What is it for sure who is buying? Gimme gimme the outcomes of those, those sales. Of the $3 million. 3 million ebitda. Yeah. I mean, I think you're selling that for five x EBITDA seems reasonable to me. Who is buying? Gimme an example of that transaction. Uh, bill Alessandro, it just happened.

They're, they're, they were bigger than that. Okay. I don't know. They're definitely bigger than that, but it's, it's within the range of, of, of, of that transaction. Now, I think this is another question that I think is fair, which is like, what is the m and a market actually like right now for e-commerce business?

Right. And there's so many, so much that's also changing all the time, I think feels like more than we can explore here, but like, I think that's another possible reason that people would say that's, that's. Right. I'm not a good business. But yeah. So the other thing I thought that was interesting that MayT tab said is that basically like when he underwrites an investment, um, into e-comm, he does not consider the liquidation event at all in the calculus of value.

Be because, because basically the market doesn't exist. And like any assumption that you're gonna go out and realize this great transaction. Yeah. That I think is another mistake we make. Exactly. So he looks at it in its capacity to do two things. One is like to distribute cash along the way, and then two is like, can he get out in secondary?

Is there a path to uh, second round where he could take secondary off of the next investment uhhuh? Basically the greater fool theory is what that sounds like to me. Um, so like, ooh, that's a cool one. Johnny, Johnny level, dunno who that is. Never heard of him. Sparkle outta 2 99 auto great. Um, never heard of him.

He says he just dismisses the poor guy. Eduardo Quintero first. Maybe he's a dude. This might be a dude. I don't remember. Dodger guy. Um, so I don't know. I, I think about like that to me, when I look at those different businesses and I go like, and I think what you just did is what a lot of people do, which is they go, oh, the asset value.

Oh, the asset value, the asset value, the asset value. It's not nothing at $3 million. And I mean, it's only as real as your ability to realize it. The cash. Yeah. Uh, and so like, I think about that with Calo, right? Like it's the TED saying this is worth a a hundred million dollars or a billion dollars, and you just go like, okay, that's only true in the event that there is a pathway to you realizing that value.

And, and there wasn't. In fact, you misread the, the, the market competitive dynamic so bad. Yeah. That like the present value of the cash you were being offered was so Yeah. Astronomically in your favor. Yeah. That you missed it. Yeah. Right, right. Um, right. Yeah. Yeah. Um, so tell me about the business you're watching, the eCommerce brand that you're getting right now.

I mean, part of it is that, you know, part of the thing I'm, I'm thinking about with it is that I'm not trying, I'm not, I should have brought the sample. I almost brought you some. Can you smell me right now? Yeah, it's nice little. Yeah, just a little. See, when did I put it on? Eight o'clock. Um, so. I, uh, yeah.

Well, I mean, I, part of the deal here is I'm not expecting this to be a monster business. Yeah. So that should just be set up front. You're doing it for fun. Partly, I'm partly interested in doing it. It also creates, um, potentially good content. I think it can generate some revenue 'cause like market marketing for your agency.

So e-commerce has marketing for your agency and also like, there's potentially the ability to like. You know, I mean, this is another thing you didn't say in all that. Um, talk about the, the e-commerce brand we just discussed that has 3 million on the bottom line is like the salary you can pay yourself as part of that and, and some of those things.

Probably nothing to keep opex at like 4% to get to that even. Well, so I'm gonna come back to this later. This is, this is a, this is a point that I think doesn't fit with your theory, but anyway, um, okay. So it's a solid cologne business. Okay. That, and it's a solid cologne business today. Okay. Uh, it doesn't necessarily mean that's, that's what it would be forever.

So Yeah. He doesn't mean solid as in good. No, he means literally, I mean, the product is literally instead of a spray cologne, it is like, um, I mean, for lack of a better word, it's a goop. Yep. You know, um, and so it's, it's, uh, there's a couple guys, a couple brands out there who, who make these kinds of products.

Now, they're probably, so far as I can tell, the one that selling the most of it is probably Fulton and Rourke. Um, and so they sell Silicon Cologne, although I think their main product is spray cologne. Um, clones a $2.2 billion business in the us. Um, I think it's a fairly bad e-commerce business, um, in some ways, particularly because, uh, shipping glass bottles of liquid is, uh, heavy and difficult.

Um, so, um, so, but it's really high margin. Famously high margin solid clone or clone in general. Um, solid cologne creates a potential opportunity to, um, solve some of those shipping dynamics. And then there's also, I think, some things around clean ingredients that could really make a difference. So, um, so it would be all clean ingredients.

The business is called resolute. Um, and it will be all clean ingredients, uh, that is like a solid clone and you apply a little right here and right here, uh, just like you would with a spray cologne. We, we spray it on. There's some things I like about it as a category. I'm not like a Cologne junkie. That's not how this came about.

That the, the big thing is a long time ago, Keith Naff showed me mm-hmm. Something he had played with and Keith, um, had thought about starting this business a while back, and I just noticed that there's a couple dynamics of it for e-commerce that I think make a lot of sense. Extremely high margin. Mm-hmm.

For example, uh, is one of them, you can charge a high price for cologne, uh, and ship it, uh, very cheap. And particularly that shipping component of it's a really big deal. Um, because if you can ship, if the solid cologne comes in a thing that's like, you know, a half ounce container or something like that.

Yep. Um, even with like really drummed up packaging, which I think is a really important part of Cologne businesses is, is branding and packaging and those things. Um, you can, you can ship it for very cheap and charge a pretty decent a OV so you end up with the, the cost of shipping against the revenue Yeah.

Is pretty low. And so you end up with a high margin product. I think it'll have some LTV not great LTVI think it'll be a really, but it won't be nothing. I think it's consumable. Uh, we'll see, we'll see if, I mean, I really don't know for sure. I don't, I just don't expect that to be a huge, huge element of it.

Um, but you know, my hope here is I, I love. Um, subcategories within larger categories. Yep. Um, so silicone wedding ring is the example of this that I think of all the time, right? Wedding rings are a really large business in the us Silicone wedding ring is a way to come into that category with something that's distinct and at the same and kind of draft off of it and maybe make a play to make a bigger business if everything goes really right.

The like 90 90 percentile outcome here, 95 percentile outcome is that you're able to actually move towards like a few things that are happening culturally around, um, a mix of things, some, uh, ideas around masculinity that are happening in culture, um, as well as some ideas around clean ingredients that I think have pervaded women's products, but haven't made it all the way to men's products in the same way.

Yep. Um, and, and there's some of those things that I think if this is, again, 95th percentile outcome, right? Every, then you're able to actually right on the back of that as people sort of. Have a real category allegiance or really look for clean ingredients, whatever. It's, um, that the solid cologne would be a different mechanism for doing that.

I like it as a mechanism for applying cologne more than I like spray for a few reasons. Um, you know, you talked about one time your spray bottle, um, spilling all over my spilling all over, spilling all over your doctor brush. Yeah. Your, your breath probably smelled awesome afterwards. It was gross and I'm gonna die.

You told me from, from using it. Well, I'm not gonna make any claim like that here on a recorded piece of content, but it's, uh, but very likely, um, they have a hundred ads running that's like they, that's that's a real business. They're clear money. Yeah. Yeah. That's a good business. I know I've seen them, but I think a lot of it is is not solid quantumly.

A lot of lon and I, and this is why I say solid clone today. It's what we're gonna launch with. Yeah. I'm not like married to the idea that we'll never launch a spray cologne. We're not like, you know, we could we'll see. So you'll be back killing me. You're gonna be, you're gonna be in on that. Oh no, no. Make your chemicals not kill me.

Yeah. So you'd have to launch a clean spray cleaner. Okay. Yeah, I wouldn't change that 'cause I actually, that's probably hurting people, so, okay. Um, so yeah, uh, fragrance is like, uh, alcohol brands where if you use the word fragrance you can basically put all kinds of stuff in it without interesting having to declare it to people.

Interesting. Um, you know, just like if you look on the back of a tequila bottle, it doesn't say what the ingredients are. Right. Fragrance is the same way you word the word fragrance on a label. And, you know, there's certainly regulation around it, but like, you can't, uh, but you don't have to disclose what is what it's a trade secret.

Oh, interesting. Interesting. So, so, yeah. So I think it's possible. I also think another part of this is a relatively low risk to launch, and what I mean is, you know, we can do this whole thing for between me and my business partner, my, your friend of mine, Greg here, you know, launch this whole thing for something like 30 grand or something like that, and kind of get it off the ground and see what happens.

And see if it hits. Um, I think the ads make themselves, I like that it's visually interesting. I think you could do some stuff on the ad level to say like, this is cologne like you've never seen before. Yeah. Um, which I think is good. Um, yeah. Another example of like a small, uh, subcategory within a larger category that I like is, is I just had Isaac Merton's on from Flex Footwear.

Yep. Um, you know, wide toe box, shoe wide toe box, athletic shoe is subset of subcategory within a larger category. That's a big category. Yep. Um, so yeah. So anyway, my, again, I, this is not putting my life savings on this. I I'm actually not, you know this about me. I'm actually not very risky. Yeah. Like I am, I'm not the kind of classic entrepreneur chasing down some crazy outcome who's gonna throw everything in there?

I'm planning on running it profitably. Basically from the beginning. I'm not trying to get it to a hundred million, you know, those kinds of things. So that's, that's the case. So tell me why it's bad business? Because you have a better one. Yeah. And then you're neglecting That's a decent, that's that's a decent answer.

That's, that's the sad answer. That's, that's the only thing I care about. Like, I think, like I think what you'll do is you'll be moderately successful doing that. Like you just went right through the auto and you just like ignored it. I'm gonna get there. I'm gonna get there. That's Prince fielder's son.

Yeah. But he is not any good. He's not? I don't think so. Oh, bummer. Yeah. Um, yeah. So I just, my thing with you Yeah. Yeah. Is more just like I have repeatedly tried to tell you to go grow my business. Yeah. To you have a really good business that's going pay you lots of money that you could make. Yeah. Very large.

Valuable. Maybe I'm working on that too. Yeah. I think you, well, I think you are. Yeah. So take a couple bets. Yeah. Well, um, yeah, so I think there's an opportunity cost to it and I think that I, yeah, yeah. That's my contention more than I agree. I like, I like one of your businesses better than the other. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, here you go. Your off. Um, so that's my contention. Yeah. I think, I think knowing that category, um, I think that you're gonna end up selling more expensive spray spray. I think that's very possible. Isn't, and I think that category, uh, is a good category. It's funny 'cause I don't, I don't see a lot of that counts.

That's really good. Yeah. I don't see a lot of D two C cologne businesses. Um, or like perfume and it makes sense as a category to me. Yeah. Because of the value to weight ratio, because of the margin profile. Like it's got some similar skincare kind of components of it. It's not quite as high LTV as that.

Yep. Um, so there's some things I like about it that, that are, are there, that I think could be really interesting, you know? Yeah. And I think, I think what I'm gonna find out here is like, do my ads. Hit right away. Yeah. And if they do, then they're there. Like a big part of this is the ability to just like have a very high margin product.

Like we're gonna be able to launch with like probably landed margin. If we get more than 70, I'll be really happy. Just because when you're lower ordering at lower m oq, it's really hard to launch it there. But like, I've already got like sheets from manufacturers, both the level of packaging, which is twice the cost of the, of the product.

Right. Packaging and product. I've got. Sheets that are like, Hey, look, if you can get this from a 1000 piece order to a 3000 piece order, we're gonna shave a dollar 50 off every, you know what I mean? It's like you, you reduce cost very fast there. And if we can, you know, obviously really hard to negotiate upfront, but if we can launch with like 70 points of land margin, then you just don't have to live at that high of a, of a ROAS on meta to make some money.

And um, and that's a big part of it. And then, and then of course, core to this, to me also is a lot of what I think about, um, the place of opex right now in the world. Like I, I we're basically planning on hiring the entire team in the Philippines, um, where I've, you know, very good contacts. I think this is a real advantage of mine.

Um, and in terms of that, and not, but you're playing it, but you're playing an OPEX game that is not real, which is you are a very expensive employee that you're not paying. That's true. That's de you and Greg both. That's definitely true. So this is another thing though, that people look at the opex and they go, yeah, if you were paying yourself $30,000 a month, the opex would look very different.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. That's true. I think that's definitely true. The, um, and, and I think that's, you know, an advantage I uniquely have in this case. What do you mean? It just means that you're not paying yourself through the business. Yeah. It's not real. Well, we'll see. I mean, we'll see if I can, you would have to get an ad back to EBITDA for anybody acquiring this business for you.

Yes. If we, if we, if we get it to many millions of dollars and sell it and we have to add back the EBITDA won't be too upset about that, I don't think. Yeah, yeah. I'm just saying the lean opex thing, I think that's right. When you're a very expensive person, but the is is not real. Well, there is no opex that's lean less than a million dollars in revenue.

Right? Totally. I mean, that's the thing. That's, it is still an entrepreneur thing, you know, like it's, it's not gonna look good at, at a million bucks, you know? It's not going to No, it's just, I understand that, you know, so, so that's why you, you like to talk about this slow growth thing though. Yeah. But for you in particular, based on your costs Yeah, as an individual.

You can't gross though, because you will be way too much of the opex for too long. Yeah, that's possible. That's possible. Just think about like, how does your, your earning value alone at $5 million Okay. Still represents a percentage of the EBITDA that's higher than you would want much opex to be. It's putting, it's, it depends on how much time I'm putting into it too.

And that's, that's another question I think. Yeah. But it's still like, you can't hand the business to somebody and be like, the, the applied value here is 50% of somebody's time. No. And, and yeah. And yeah, I think that's, I think that's, that's reasonable that, that I will end up being expensive. And so maybe it has to get to a certain level of revenue for its any stats.

Yeah. Which I think is why you have to think about like that's fair. The input on return that you're after is like you as a high expensive thing being plugged into something has to generate value. Yeah. In excess of its cost. Yeah. And your cost is high. Yeah, it should be. Yeah. Um, yeah, so I think that's the piece where it's like, if you don't think you could get that to 10 million in 24 months, um.

Yeah, I think that's definitely possible. Uh, I think that's not crazy. And I also think, I mean, one of the things that people also underwrite with the cashflow conversation is like if you run an extremely high margin, then the, then the, then the holding costs issue and some of, some of the cashflow dynamics change quite a bit, right?

Like, so the, the better margin you have, the easier it's to grow faster, for obvious reasons. Well, it depends on the efficiency of your acquisitions. That's true too. But you're gonna use that margin to be aggressive on the acquisition side. We'll see. Yeah, it's possible. It's possible. We'll do that. Yeah, it's possible.

Uh, Josh Stinson Garcia, do you know him? Sure. Don't. Is he good? He, he is a sasher for the Red Sox one. Do you know these guys? He has one of the greatest nicknames in baseball history. What is it? So his name is Josh Sson. So it's JHO ss T-Y-N-X-O-N, yep. J-H-O-S-T-Y-N-X. His nickname is the password. Oh, that's clever.

Pretty good nickname, right? Yeah, that's good. See, good insight right there. Yeah. Alright, let's jump to a non e-commerce topic. Okay, great. Let's do it. Let's give to people really what they came for. Yeah. Our takes on children's schooling. Okay. Should we do this now or did at the end? I don't care. Do you wanna ask me anything else about my business?

Should you wanna interrogate it anymore? Just forget my, forget the ops thing for a second. Do you think it's a bad ad? Do you think it's like a, it's not gonna work. I just think it's a side quest fun thing that you like doing. I do like doing that. Um, but I, I imagine I was going all in on it. Forget that.

Forget the, I would beg you to not Okay. But like, okay, let's think about it this way. I came to you and said, I'm a CTC client. You're my strategist. Yeah. Right? When you just hear about that business right away, tell me what you would do with it. I think you're gonna have, you're gonna be grinding out acquisition at a one three and you're gonna have 30% LTV and yeah, 30% is probably feels fair.

Yeah. And you're gonna be, uh. I just really trying to make it happen. Yeah. Okay. So you just hate it. Alright, great. But we can, um, you don't have to, you don't have to be my strategist. I'm, I'm, I'm not firing you as my strategist anyway. I've, I've been a strategist in that category. Yeah. Um, yeah, I think it's hard.

I think, I think it's, it, I now I would just be begging you to make a more expensive perfume Cologne. Yeah. And to create a sample kit. That's actually the, so I've been talking about this for a while. Yeah. Which is, and I'm, I wonder if anybody has thought like, dude, just launch this business already. So we decided specifically not to launch without the sample kit.

So I saw today like there's a sampling, uh, packaging set, uh, being sent to my house, like I literally just saw today. So, um, from, from a, yeah. That's cool. That helps. So yeah, I think it's a hard, it's really smell right? Really big. No, of course. Yeah. So you have to be able to create that as an entry point.

There's sort of a three step thing here that I think is also interesting, which is like, you buy the sample kit. Round two is you buy like, the main packaging and then you buy refill packs for the packaging. 'cause the packaging, I wish I had it. Yeah. What's that? There's that, that, uh. Deodorant brand Wild that does the refillable do.

Yeah. Yeah. They're really big now. They're just, I saw a huge display in Target. Sweet. Yeah. Good for, sounds like a good, sounds like, but like, I don't, again, I, I think there's this other part of this, which is like you brushed over quickly, which is like, you have this like, uh, this thing about masculinity that it's like a message you wanna get out into the world.

So you're kind of preaching too. Like you have a, like a think it's a medium for a message. Little, it's like a mix of things I care about, but also things that I think are culturally in the water. Yeah. And I think they're both, they're both, they're both. Which I think always informs a lot of what you do.

Even when you were talking to me about your business earlier. Yeah. Yeah. Like it's very valuable. I find that you really want to. Wrap a meaning into the thing Yeah. For you to, to feel definitely committed to it. Definitely. Definitely. And so I think, um, I make enough money. I don't need, I don't, I just don't feel like I need any more money.

Right. So, so I think our evaluation, when you ask me what I think of it, I think our evaluation criteria are fundamentally mismatched from the root. Yeah. Uh, in that sense that like, like the Philippines thing is an example Yeah. Like that you talked about with your other business. Yeah. That feels important to you.

Yeah. And it's like, as an investor, I would be like, I don't want that in the podcast. Well, so that is, I mean, the Philippines thing, I, I really think, I just sent a newsletter about this, this last week, I think is a huge advantage that I have, which is like, and part of it's because I have connection, but would you care about changing it to Vietnam?

And I think you would because you care about the people uniquely now? Well, sort of, I, I, I, I mean, I think. I think I would be open to doing it in Vietnam as well. But part of the, part of the thing is that they, specifically, the groups of people that I'm working with there, I think are, are uniquely excellent and talented.

And so like I, because of that and also like care about the way that they are, um, treating the people in their business in a way that feels ethical to me. Especially, particularly with offshoring where there's like, it could get pretty shady and unethical really fast. I think so. Um, so that's a big part of it to me.

Um, and, and so, so it's, it's, it's not just the component that I care about people that I do. It's also that I think I have connections to people who fit very well. I like, I guess what I mean is they are providing a bunch of value back to me. Yeah. It's not just me being like, I am so helpful to you or whatever.

It's like I actually think they do a great job staffing my business for sure. Like my design and video editing team is good and like, that's, that's part of it. And so, and I don't know if that would be true if I was just hiring through some giant conglomerate offshoring. Staffing agency, it might, you know, I don't know, but like, and so, and, and because I've built relationships there, there's just like a business partnership thing here where I have connection to the most important executives who are moving the needle in the business.

And that's good for me. You know, that's like the, the more I have the ear of the, of the most important people in the company, the better it's for me. So, totally. Anyway, so there's a, there's a few unique advantages there that I do think sets me up for unique success there. So, yeah. Yeah. It's more, it's more that in the event that it didn't Yes.

What would be the like requirement to persist because of, yeah. Well, the other parts of it, my mentality is Philippines first, and that is a business decision as much as anything else. Right now. And I think if, if they delivered poorly on the work, I mean, I just did this, like I looked at some, I, I looked at some, uh, resumes for a position that I was trying to hire.

It wasn't quite what I wanted. And so I went over and, and did it back in the us Yeah. 'cause like if the, if it's not good enough, it's just not good enough. Like that is the, that is the reality. In fact, one of the things I believe about work in general is that you have to, you generate value and that generates value back for you.

Mm-hmm. And therefore, um, if, if only one side is generating the value, the relationship doesn't work. And, and so Yeah. It's not, it's not charity. Like that's what I mean. You know, I, if I want do charity, I do that separately. You know what I mean? Like, uh, but, but yeah. That's, that's what I think. Yeah. Um, yeah.

So I, I don't have any other holes to poke in Raising Raising kids. Yeah. Raising kids. Go ahead. What is your school thing? Tell me about this. Well, so I'm, I'm at this like, position, gosh, I don't know who's gonna listen to this. Wait, I have one more question. Okay. I have one more question. Yeah. Yeah. You are, uh, extremely AI optimistic.

Uh, like in the sense of like, you, you, I mean, you can restate your position however you want. Yeah. But like, you believe that AI is taking over everything and maybe eliminating the humans from the work. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. So restate that however you want, but here's my question about it. Okay. Who to whom does that accrue value in the e-commerce ecosystem?

To whom? Is it accrue value in the e-commerce ecosystem? Because it's, it probably meta. Um, okay. But how can, but only meta, meta can only theoretically can mostly accrue that value if it's providing at least some people some value back. But I agree with you meta. I think Yeah, they, they, I think they will disproportionately continue to benefit.

Of course. And I think that's true, and I think that's also good. Then probably Shopify, then it, it, it's all the people in the middle taking the money out that are accruing the value. But what about agencies? I think, I don't know if it's existential to agencies or not in that, like, I don't, I don't know what an agency is.

Yeah, yeah. Sure. Um, at the end of this. Yeah. Um, or even like having a really hard time trying to distinguish ourselves from a software provider at this moment. That's right. Yeah. That makes sense. And so I think these things kind of converge into a thing. Yes. Yeah. Which is this idea of an agent. And I, if you think about it, an agent is a software service provider agency.

Yeah. Right? Yeah. Like, that's what it is. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. Um, and so I think there's this real question about where that all lives. I think the question of who is the agent provider, what I anticipate happening is that like, I, I just think that the agents become best built by meta and Shopify and people with the most resources and the most money and the most data.

And like, so the value just continues to accrue. To the people who develop the best technology. Yeah. In the process, as the technology becomes more value. But they have to just, I mean, unless meta starts the brands and Shopify starts, the brands also, like at some point a brand has to make money from this.

Right. And like, 'cause, because one way of framing this, this is another point of of mine on the broader discussion earlier, is that like I. It's now going to drive opex even lower, and it's also going to, and, and with meta's ability to gener to between, between the incre incrementality stuff that they're clearly pushing on mm-hmm.

And the ability to do more things with AI for you faster. Yeah. Theoretically drive your K down or drive your volume up. One of the two. Right? Yep. Um, and that, another way of framing both of those is that, uh, a brand could theoretically have a lower opex as a percentage of their revenue and either more scale or a lower, or, uh, a lower CAC as a percentage of their revenue.

And therefore, one way of thinking about all the things that are happening right now is that they're accruing value down to the brand, um, and that the brand is the one who's actually gonna benefit from this. And it's, it's the middle part of, of like, I think like there's ser like, and here's an obvious loser that doesn't touch either of our businesses, so we can talk about it really freely.

Okay. Um, like there are, there's a tier of service providers mm-hmm. Of software providers, I mean, um, that are gonna get wiped out from this. Mm-hmm. Because they charge, they must charge a lot of money. Yeah. It's a little bit like the yapo conversation you had where it's like, there there's only so many people who are buying from you and you have to be able to keep making each of them more valuable, except all of the forces right now are pushing to make the cost go down so much.

Yeah. Um, and so, and, and so that tier of service of software companies are the most existentially threatened right now, right? Yep. Um. You know, I haven started working with a tool called Ad Nova. I'm happy to shout them out 'cause they do a great job. I'm not paid by them or anything like that, but just started to use them and they're just, there's just like six software companies that we use right now that they are pretty close to replacing all in one tool, you know?

Yeah. Like, and I just think like, now they're not doing the, we promise we're gonna make all your ads at the click of a button saying that in fact they've resisted over promising, which I really appreciate. Um, but they're saying, here's our product roadmap, here's what's being, you know, whatever. And I look at that and just go, um, and just go like, that actually is an.

A real value add to brands to be able to run more profitably in, in this whole thing. And I think it's very hard to be very AI forward and or to be a AI optimistic or whatever it is, and sort of meta optimistic on their ability to, to leverage those tools and not think that that accrues some value to brands.

Well, what, what do you mean it's happened over the, I think over the last five years, meta has accrued more value while brands have accrued less. Yeah. So I, I actually think what happens is that meta, is that true? How brands actually accrued less value over that time? Do you know? I mean, if you took the, the market value of the D two C industry versus the market value of meta, which stock are you buying?

Yeah. Right. Yeah. You just judged on the level of Yeah. Okay. Yeah. So like I, I think that what happens is. That meta has so many pot, it's like they're like a giant index fund of advertisers. And this is one of the things that, like what happens? Yeah. Right. Interestingly in meta is that when people like talk about in our industry going back and it affecting Meta's earnings, it actually has almost no effect because you have to think about every advertiser on in the world uses meta.

So in reality, the meta ad revenue is an index of the entire world. Yes. Yeah. And so when one industry bad won good. Yeah. When travel and hospitality shut down, the outdoor industry exploded. Right. And like it so it hits like a giant hedge against every industry. Yeah. Because every advertising business in the world uses the black.

Yeah, yeah. Right. So it doesn't, it doesn't have any need No. To make our industry better. No. Like it, so that's where like when CPMs, this idea that like somehow we're gonna, what'll happen is like if there's a perfect machine, let's say there's the perfect optimization. The reality is like for every product, there's some total potential profit in the current market dynamic.

Yes. And let's say meta could optimize to that perfectly. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. Like that volume isn't infinity. Yeah. It's fixed. And in fact it gets competed down, I think. And so the idea that like even if, so an agency, a media buyer or the meta system could perfectly optimize to the available volume for you.

It's not infinity. Yeah. And so eventually it just gets deteriorated unless you introduce something novel to the system. Yeah. A new product, a new ad, a new something. Like everything has this like very finite amount of value. I'm coming back to this thing, but what should, so I think I know your answer, but what should brands do then besides sell the business and leave?

Right. Well, so I, I think that this goes back to where do you have a unique value proposition that the market would persistently pay for it? Yeah. And that can happen in lots of ways. It can happen in the form of innovation. Um, yeah, it can happen in the form of like medical discovery. Like why is HIMSS and hers creating it an advantage?

Well, they're building direct. Medi telehealth relationships with people, and then they're on the forefront of innovate. They're introducing GLP ones to a direct relationship with the customer Very fast. Yeah. That's like, has a lot. So, but that'll fade and they'll have to introduce the next thing, whatever the next drug is, the next thing.

But they're owning this direct relationship to people to distribute it through. What about, I mean, sometimes forget Hys for a second, like is a super extreme outlier versions of it. Like again, I'm think of, I'll give you another example. Thinking of like a a a sort of a mid eight figure e-commerce brand, right?

Let's use, let's use heart and soil as an example of why I think there's, they're such a good business is because they've monopolized the supply chain. So there's actually this real limitation to access to beef organs. Yeah. There's lots of beef farms, but very few that actually go through the process of dry freezing organs.

And so because they got really big, they now own the direct relationship with all of the suppliers. Yeah. So you as an entrant can't come in, go to their supplier and say, don't make it for them best. This is the, uh, this is the consolidation of sunglasses problem. Right? Exactly. This is why Lexi Otica does this.

Yeah. Right. It's because they control the supply. Everywhere. Yeah. And so they can control the price. Yeah. That's the only way to maintain the pricing power. And 'cause otherwise, what happens is all these categories get competed down to nothing because the supply side gets outta control. And so the demand gets dispersed across such a broad supply and the price just goes all the way down.

And so, but, but for heart and soil, I look at that and go, Ooh, they have a, an advantage that will allow them to hold pricing as so much that the demand in the market remains the same constant or even grows. They will continue to grow and capture disproportionate share and hold margin. Yeah. Because they can't, they don't deal with this influx of massive competitors.

Now there's a different reason that's sort of collapsing on itself, which is that there's sort of this like infighting, but that's like sort of thing. But um, but, so that's another example. Patents are a way to do that too. You can protect the distribution of the product and hold pricing in some way. Okay.

But still, so, still still a, a hard example to, to mimic. Exactly. I mean, I think what you're saying is helpful, which is like. Be sincerely, super innovative or audience access or something like that. Like you were making fun of somebody the other day, you're like, oh, what's your advice? Be famous. Like you were talking to Bill Bill Rom.

Yeah. Yeah. But in, in reality, the answer is sort of yes. Like it, that is an advantage that gives you, gives massive leverage on your competition. The only thing I'll say is it is as it did for them, it takes like 10 years to do it. Right. So like, well think about what you're doing for your business. Yeah. In a micro scale, you're doing the same thing.

I'm doing the same thing. Yeah. Which is that our moderate level of internet fame Yes. Drives our current level of business value. Yes. And if we were to get more famous, we could capture more value. That's right. Right. And so there's this game of doing both of those as a leverage point's. That's like eight years of recording podcast for me.

That's right. Exactly. And tweeting. Right. So the one, so this, yeah. So I do think that's a good strategy. It's just people just need to be, I mean, I'm very pro that strategy. I just think people need to be realistic about, about what the timeline is. And it isn't the timeline. Well, yeah. And the horizon for it, but, but all of these, these, this is what I'm thing in all this calculation.

I think some people, when they say that it's hard, what they mean is, I didn't get extremely rich very fast. I'm like, well, yeah, but like what? I really think some people mean that. I think it's, I think that's what is happening. For some of them. They're like, oh, I don't disagree. You know? But that is the obstacle is the way, which means it's not easy.

It's hard. Yes. Yeah. And so that goes back to what is the industry? It's a very hard industry and people who work very hard win in it, but you can't not work very hard. Yeah. So like, yeah. If that's the standard, then. That's fine, but let's not call it easy. Yeah. You know? Um, so I think, I think that's part of it.

Okay. We did all this stuff, uh, we did this for a long time. That's okay. We, I don't even know how much we have schooling. Should we do some, like, well, yeah, let's go to some random ones. Go to the random ones. Okay. Schooling. So you, you said you're thinking this actually probably, maybe studio deep. I've gotta decide where my kids are gonna school.

And I love your question, but they're, they're in sixth, fifth grade. They'll be in one more year of elementary school, then they go to middle school. Okay. How have you decided it so far? Uh, one, the local public school, that was our first choice. Uh, two was along the way. There's this school down the street that's like a lottery.

My kids, by the way, are three and five. Um, we're going through the same things. One of 'em is, is like just gonna go into kindergarten, first grade. And we're, he's smart dude. Like, we're trying to figure out what to do with, I'm not trying to be a braggy parent or whatever. Yep. Just, you're just trying to parent your kids as well as you can.

Where's he gonna thrive? That's right. And uh, so, and then there's a school that's a magnet school, that's a public magnet school. There's a lottery entrant to only, and so we had been applying to the lottery every year. One of our kids got in, so we got to run this sort of like AB test where we sent one of 'em to one school.

One to the other school. One of your twins? Yeah. Okay. So split the twins up for a year. One of 'em went to that school and now all three kids go to that school. To the lottery school. Yeah. Okay. Um, was it the, was it the right decision? I don't know. Yeah. I, it's really interesting the dynamics of what play out in both cases.

Yeah. What are the question that you asked of? What's the point of school is like a really interesting one. There are social considerations, educational considerations, there always. Can I unpack that a little? Yes. This was a really helpful point that somebody brought up to me. It was somebody who was debating.

It was, it was in the Christian world that I'm in. And like somebody was debating sort of like homeschool versus public school. Yeah. It was relevant really to anybody who's Christian or not. Right. But like, um, so one person talks about why she's for pro public school or whatever. The other guy comes on with homeschool, or it's a classical school, might have been, you know.

Yeah. And he's like, well, the question you have to ask is what's the point of school? And when he asked that, I thought, I've never thought about that in my whole life. And it was a really helpful question for me. His answer to the question I'll tell you Yeah. Is the development of virtue. Interesting. Think interesting.

He thinks school is a, he thinks the main point of of school, like with ra, with anything, with raising your kids, is to develop, is to develop, um, people of virtue as they, as they grow. And I think he would define virtue wisely. That would be, or widely It would be. It wouldn't just be like being nice. He would mean it in terms of like, uh, pursuing excellence in various pursuits and like Yeah.

You know, your impact on the world and various, you know, it would be, it would way beyond just like, again, like a sort of general kind. Although I think the development of your character would be part of that too. That was his answer. Yeah. Um, so anyway, I don't know if you have time to think about that.

Yeah. Well, so during COVID, I went down to this rabbit hole pretty far and there was this school that was sort of launching, it was sort of just trying to rebuild education through the first principles. And their idea that I've always found somewhat intriguing is that your job is to make them, uh, uh, thriving and contributing members of society 18 years from now or when they get to 18.

Yeah. So it's actually a vision towards equipping them for being an adult. It's the EOS vision of, uh Right. What's your 10 year vision and how backtrack from there. That's right. And so we should educate through that lens. Um, which I, I think about that a lot. Like someday they're going to leave, they're gonna be out severe outside my sphere of responsibility and I would like for their life to go Well yes.

Right. Which means that they can earn a living, that they have friends that they can That's right. Pursue a partnership in a family someday. Yeah. Uh, and that would be. Good. Yeah. So what sets them up for that? Um, as much as possible. Um, and I find myself in that context having a hardest time with the value coming to education.

Yeah. Um, in part because I find evaluating education is very difficult for me to do. Like, is this good? Is this math class good or bad? Yes. Yes. Yeah. Is an incredibly difficult thing for me to wrap my head around. Uh, and it's so standardized in many cases that, um, the distinct and the distinction between then I get into like, sort of evaluating teachers and it's like, well, I have so little access to that question.

Right. It becomes this thing of like, how was your experience with Mrs. X? Right. You know? Right. And you're dealing with this like very limited anecdotal sample size of a kid that's not your kid that learned in some way. Yeah. And so it's, man, I find it to be very hard. Yeah. Is my point. Yeah. We, and so I tend to go closer to the social things that I feel I have more visibility into than even the classroom side.

And I just use this sort of like baseline progression of their state testing as like as indicator of progression. Yeah. Right. Relative to their peer set. Um. So, I don't know. I, I, how are they doing? They're doing really well. Um, and I think that's where I feel this. Like I don't, I'm like, okay, hold constant.

Um, the thing relative to where they're at the middle school, what's challenging about middle school is that this school, because it's a lottery school, um, like all the kids distribute from here. It's not like an obvious, you go to this school next. Yeah. Because if you go to this school, you're allowed to choose to go to any middle school in the city.

Yeah. And so there's this like constant conversation now about, we're going to Enson, we're going to Mesa, we're going to this school, we're gonna that school, we're going to ou, whatever. And so the kids really. Fragment from here. Yeah. And so now all of a sudden it's not a choice of one or two, it's a choice of one of five.

Yeah. And so it becomes overwhelming amount of information. Yeah. Yeah. I, um, we, I mean the, the, the question like, where will my kid thrive in school? Yeah. Is I. Like, we've tried to wrestle the, we wrestle this out, you know, we've looked at like public school for our older boy. Like, uh, we have looked at keeping him in a Montessori setting where you can go sort of past preschool, kindergarten, actually the, the Montessori preschool he goes to now, my, my wife's mom was like a lifelong Montessori preschool teacher, so that was not even a decision for us.

It was just like, that's just what her family does, which is great, like Montessori. So it's fine. Um, by the way, there's pretty good data to say that like if there is a decision that you ought to really kill yourself over for educational outcomes, it's actually preschool. Yeah. Like basically the development is so, oh, you know, there's, I know some old Freakonomics episodes about that.

Um, but anyway, so we felt good about Montessori and, and that was fine. And then, and they, and his experience has been great. That's what my kids did too. Yeah. They, my wife was a Montessori teacher at the time. That's right. Yeah. And in fact, we first took 'em to one school that they didn't, that was not good.

And then we, we went over there. Um, but the, um, but yeah, anyway, the, then it was like, there's actually a Montessori elementary school, like drum Montessori preschool. So it's like 20 kids. 15 kids, whatever, from age, from first grade to sixth grade. Is it bilingual in one classroom? It's not. Okay. We would like that.

My wife speaks Spanish. Yep. Um, and mostly speaks Spanish to the boys. So, um, so, but that is, that is a drawback. So we, we definitely would, would've otherwise loved, there is a local public school that is a, um, dual immersion bilingual elementary. Um, so that would be really nice. But, uh, but yeah, that it's so, and then we're also validated a classical school.

It's like a mix of classical and homeschool, like combo, you know? Yep. And we aren't like big homeschool people, but it was just like, maybe this is what's right for this boy. I agree with you. It's very, it's a decision that feels like almost impossible, especially when you layer back to, one of my clients has done a bunch of research about this and send his kid to all kinds of different schools.

Like, you know, he just says, like, when you sort of look at how we landed on the way we do education, it's a mix of like, not nobody ever like thought about it really, like mm-hmm. It was like essentially it wasn't particularly well considered to a particular goal that you would care about now, first of all, but, or secondly, the goal that it was created to was like.

Hey, it's like put your pencils down the bell rung because you gotta get ready to work in a factory. And that's what life is like. You know, like essentially it's like a, a postindustrial revolution artifact. And that's the way we do Yeah. Classrooms the way we do them, instead of like letting kids go, like learn the things they wanna learn or direct certain ways.

Now I have no, I haven't read the book, I haven't evaluated that claim. Right. I'm not saying that's what the case is, but, but, um, I, I, I agree with you. And so I've actually felt a little freer on this in that, um, I think Emily o's comments about this, who's very helpful in these sorts of things. And she's an economist who does a lot of stuff around parenting, but she's like, worked through all the papers and brings them to a public level, uh, a public level.

One of her things is like almost every one of these decisions that you make, um, doesn't have very good data to say that it works. Yeah. It's essentially like she means that as a freeing thing. Yeah, I get it. Probably try to be a good parent and help your kids. Yeah. And those kids best present, like current consequences and make it adjustments if you need to, I think.

What do you think the point school is? Um, yeah. You said social. Well, no. So I, I think about it as going back to like setting them up for adulthood. Yes. Um, equipping them for the skills of engaging the world functionally. Okay. Which are what? So I think that, I think about, uh, hard work. Yeah. I think about, so the ability to develop friendships.

Yeah. Um, as having a massive, huge impact network effect on your life wouldn't be here doing this if it creates a floor to your life that I think is job opportunities and people might not know we became friends in seventh grade. That's right. Yep. And so much of my life is like that. Yeah. Like, um, yep. So I think that that's a, that's a huge piece of it.

Hard work. That, and then I think you want, um, like problem solving. So like hard intellectual problem solving. You wanna be faced with those kinds of challenges and work through them. I heard Mark Zuckerberg actually give a really great overview about his math experience, um, that like when he went to Harvard, what did he learn really well?

And he said that, uh, what he liked about the challenge of this math teacher that he gave him was that he gave him this like. Wildly insane, hard problem. Uh, and that like, he had to cram for hours and hours to work through it and get to it. But getting to the other side of that was a realization that, oh, I can take on a challenge and get through it.

Yeah. Yeah. And it, he's like, I don't even remember what the math was. Right. I don't know how to do it, but the lesson I thought was like, oh, if I need to, I can solve a problem. Yeah. Like that's a really empowering feeling. Yes. That's right. Um, and so I think that's a, that's a really important one. Uh, not get addicted to drugs, not, I, I think you want to avoid massive social consequence.

Yeah. Not get stabbed by somebody like I, you know, I think there's a avoidance piece too, but it's funny. So I was homeschooled. Went to a private middle school, went to a public high school. Right? Yeah. So I have all three all Yeah. These different viewpoints of all of it. And I don't even know how to reflect on my own experience.

Like Yeah. I kinda liked all of 'em. They all offered me good things in different ways. Oh, great. Yeah. This is where like the Thomas Sodic is helpful, right? There's no solutions. Only trade offs. That's right. That's right. Yeah. It's like, yeah. It's like, yeah. Okay. Uh, you guys got any advice out there? I know you do.

People have, please. You wanna talk about an area? People have opinions? Yeah. Who are we? Yeah. Right. Yeah, that's right. Um. Dr. TBT, Dr. Chachi BT. Okay. I have thoughts on this too. Okay. So this is a good one for back, back and forth. So tell me about Dr. Jt. So I've been, I have this new like, and your supplement routine.

Yeah. Yeah. I haven't heard about this new concierge, uh, like medical practice through Hogue, which is like, you have your own doctor so I can get an appointment, whatever I want. It's pretty cool. So you're paying like a monthly membership to have access to? Yeah. Okay. Right. So a subset of the concierge medicine Yeah, I've heard about this.

Um, you pay monthly fee. It's outside the insurance system basically. Right. You pay the monthly fee is outside the insurance, but then the, the care is within, uh, so I get, uh, quarterly blood tests. Uh, and so I now I have like eight quarters of consistent blood panels. Awesome. And I give them to chat, GBT.

And I, uh, recently got them back. I saw somebody say recently, if you're not doing that with medical results at this point Yeah. Anything that anybody gives you at the doctor, then you're being ne negligent. Honestly, it's like so incredibly helpful. Um, the communication. And it's cool 'cause I have trends, right?

Yeah. So now I can see eight orders. Is it in a project or something? I was like, it's a PDF, like, so my MyChart is like my hospital thing that spits out a pdf DF that I can upload into Chad GBT. Yeah. Um, but I mean, do you keep them all in one chapter, GPT project or is it just like one long chat? Or how It's one long chat Yeah.

That I referenced back to projects are in, I gotta use those better. I think. I don't, I don't know. I'm not good at that. Yeah. But, um, and so recently I did it, uh, I had a little bit of. High cholesterol. Uh, and so looking at all of this, I was like, okay, give me both diet, health and supplement plan relative to my things.

And it gave me this whole comprehensive plan, this stack of supplements. And so I just went and immediately bought the supplements uhhuh and like I was thinking to myself like as a discovery mechanism for shopping. Yeah. Right. Like how did I end up with zinc supplement? Yeah. Well there was two things.

One, it wasn't through the website quiz. No, it wasn't through the website quiz. It wasn't through a brand. It was chat GBT, using my medical results to gimme a preference. And I went to Amazon and found the exact milligram dosage of the, the most like root level supplement that I could find. Yep. And that was it.

I don't even know the brand. It's inconsequential to me. Yeah. It's so commoditized in some ways, but really this interaction and level of trust that I have with my Chad GBT doctor. Now has given me an entire yes program of consumption that I'm on a subscription basis with like five things. Yes. It's wild.

Do you worry at all about Chachi pt, hallucinating the, any of that? Yeah, for sure. Yeah. And so I think that's where like, that's like, that's one sharing it back with your medical professional. Yeah. Right. And saying like, what do you think about this is an action plan. Yeah. What I find is that the doctor tends to be more conservative in their messaging to me.

Meaning they're like, yeah, that's probably fine. Yeah. Maybe it'll work. Like they, they don't, they don't have as strong of opinions about things sometimes. Yeah. I think there's probably like, is a doctor, like a functional health doctor? Uh, he is a GP general physician. Okay. Yeah. I mean, that might be part of it.

Is it like, especially something like supplements or whatever, it's like it is just a very different. Way of thinking about medicine then. Totally. You know? Um, so, so I don't know. I don't know. I've, yeah. That's really cool. I love it. That's really cool. When I think about shopping, I think about like the, the question of is that demand capture or demand creation?

Yeah. Like where does that sit? Um, I think is a, and how much of my future purchasing, buying behavior is gonna come from there? I think it's gonna be a lot, a lot. I, yeah. I, it's, it's helpful for me to hear things like that. 'cause I still don't quite use chat GPT that way in my life, really. But I'm using it a little bit more all the time.

Like, here's a good example. My, uh, one of my clients, uh, Chris Kresser, who is a functional health commission, actually himself, has a supplement brand. He's been on my show. He just sent, sent the prompt in our slack, uh, uh, yesterday, what he does for like, his meal planning. Mm-hmm. You know, and he's, again, he is a functional health.

Yeah. Finish him like, he knows how to think about this. And it's just wild. It's so smart. He is like, and I, then I get it, and then, you know, after, of course his meal prep, he's like. Then I ask it for, he said, here's the ages of each person. Here are dietary concerns. Yep. Gimme some recipes. And then of course, what's the next step he puts in?

Yep. Gimme the shopping list. That's right. And so it's like that same thing, it's just like eventually it's gonna be like deliver it from DoorDash, whatever. That's right. Right. Like it's all Yes. And that's where like the question of what is brand in the middle of all of that is like interesting for like, which supplement did I take?

I literally don't care. Yeah, right. Like it some, I mean at some point, this is a good category question though, where like there are definitely supplements that are better and worse. And so you may end up with something where you have to go. Then research a little bit more of like, okay, what. But you're right.

At the end of the day, you're looking for like the brand is the purveyor of an ingredient at that point. That's right. And like, I'm gonna remove You don't much on the research part. I'm probably gonna give the chat TBT two. That's right, sure. Which is, may recommend the best version of X, Y, Z for sure. Um, so I don't know.

I, I found that that, and you know, there was the big news this week about the Apple coming out Yes. And saying that they had a decrease in searches for Google for the first time in 20 years. Yeah. Google stock stock dropped 9%. Yeah. And so there's this like, really interesting, we're starting to hear more conversation of Chad G-B-T-S-E-O.

And so it's so funny, like you, when you thought about Google, this is probably how all disruption happens. The idea was like. Is Bing gonna be able to take away a little bit of market share? Just like a directly competitive search engine. Yeah. Right. But it's not a directly competitive search engine. It's a, it's a step in the way people interact with the world is meaningfully different.

Totally. That's what actually happens. Yeah. Um, okay. Uh, so my thing about this that's similar, yeah. Um, it's related to more to the health side. It's something I've been thinking about. So I, I just have not spent very aggressively on my health. Like, I, I mean, in some ways I have like some home gym stuff and like eat clean and, and that effect, you know, relatively clean, like all those things and, and I think, yeah, I have a whoop, you know?

Yeah. Yeah. I immediately bought the new one immediately. Um, but, um, but in other ways I don't. And what I mean is like, there's, there's some stuff you could do, like function health is, is obviously a popular one of these now Function bought Ezra, so you could do cancer scans like really fast. Um, I'm a little behind on a couple things I need to do, but I've started to just think, and I'm just, I'm just curious if you think about this, this way in your, in your life and your family, like.

I sort of started thinking about my role in my family as a single point of failure problem. Mm. Totally. Where like, if something goes wrong with me, I, I'm actually the only earner in my family. Yep. Like my wife is home with the boys right now. That probably won't be forever, but my kids are young and Totally.

So, you know, um, and probably just like my wife is highly justice oriented. Worked at a InnerCity school for a long time, just probably not gonna go to a super high paying job. I know. So, um, so, uh, yeah. So. So I've thought like, am I being an idiot if I don't start thinking about that single point of failure problem more around a lot of sort of things.

So for example, um, should I be going to buy the sleep pod eight, sleep, whatever? Yeah. Because like sleep is so powerful. I. Should I be doing the things you're doing, the quarterly blood test, all of that stuff. Should I go the function? Yeah, exactly. Function, health. Basically do the whole thing and then go to the next level, which is like buy a car that has self-driving capability because self-driving I about this a lot is drastically more, is drastically safer than not.

And so like every day when I drove 35 miles to get here today. Were you being negligent? Yeah. Not, yeah. And then of course there's another step which is like. Also my wife is a single point of failure. Like, and also like, I don't want my boys to die. You know? So like, forget. Well, I think this is why what you're describing is LeBron is the example I was thinking of where like, LeBron is putting millions of dollars a year into his body because it has a clear benefit to the rest of his output in the world right's.

Right. And that's actually true for all of us. Exactly. It's like you don't have to be LeBron for that to to matter. I think this is why the category that I think is most interesting in consumer is health. Yeah. Like, I think that we are gonna see, like if, if you were to break down, like what you just described, like a percentage of your budget that goes to healthcare right now, we think of that as insurance.

Yes. And like, but I actually think we're gonna see like an astronomical increase. Yeah. And the amount of our money that goes just because the potential solutions are exploding. Yeah. Like, and so it, like the Ezra things or the, the, the, uh, um, the, the. What you call the concierge medicine, like these are novel in a way that all of a sudden whoop.

Like there's all this immersion. Whoop do you see the new one? And it'll tell you your blood pressure at to given time and do something with your heart. Like it'll tell you you're an AFib. That's right. That's crazy. So you think about these things as self-driving is another great example where it's just like this is a health decision in a lot of ways.

Like and so I think, I think that's a category that's just gonna keep expanding for sure. And yeah, I think there's a question for me, like sometimes I think like, is this just like. Is there any point at which it just becomes almost like selfish? Like it just, like it's so much or it becomes obsessive. Yep.

And the sort of like you, you know, the people talk about this problem of like, optimizing anything in your life. Like you just become this super ultra optimizer all the time. Yep. And it becomes over the top, like, um, and I think that's the one question, it just become so endless. But I've started to think about it more like, yeah, is this actually a thing?

Should I be taking the neutropic every day? Right. Because like, my mind is how we make money have tides. I thought about like, there's lot things, right? Like all of the, you know, um, and I don't know, I dunno what the payoff is, but Yeah. So you think about it the same way I do. I, and I think this category is gonna explode.

So if I, I, I'm very interested in it. I, I find it to be super compelling. Interesting. Um, okay. Two super fast ones and then we should be done. Okay. I'm gonna just, this, this is fitting into this. I love my desk treadmill, my walking pad. I did it and here's what I'll say about it. So I'm now like doing, I've figured out that I walk basically the same pace as I take little walks around my neighborhood.

Yep. Like, I'll take calls on walks and stuff like that all the time. Um, so I walk about, uh, about a 20 minute mile pace. Three miles an hour. Yep. Um, and I, when I first started doing this, I was walking too slow. It was annoying me. Um, I, I've, I've, I've gone to the point where I'm comfortable looking like a maniac on a, on a call.

Oh, zoom call Uhhuh. Yeah. You doing it? Oh boy. Depending on who the client is and how well I know him, um, I've seen Sean Frank posting about Rucking on it. You know, that's like, that's, that's so funny. I literally like, keep going. Okay. So, um, when IF Here's the thing. When I first started doing it, first of all, I work from home so I don't have to worry about annoying people or anything.

Okay. But, uh, when I first started doing it, I couldn't, um, I couldn't type and walk at the same time. It was like, it was like annoying, you know, I couldn't figure it out. And so I kind of stopped using it for a little bit. Plus if I kinda roll it out and back for under your desk, the way my desk, whatever.

But now I've gotten to a point where I'm so. Um, it's a GORUCK ad that I made in Chad, GBT. It's a guy on a treadmill with a GORUCK on. So Sean, if that's you, I made this ad about you in Chad, GBT. That's so funny. Um, I, um, is it working? Has it gone? Uh, we're, we're in the middle of a contest right now of we're all trying to make AI ads in for our clients this week.

Okay, great. And so I'm playing and that was mine, so I just submitted it. It's not Okay, great. We'll see. It's not live yet. Um, I, um. Uh, yeah. So anyway, it took me as I'm getting used to, but now I'm at a point where I use it a ton. Yeah, I love it. And I, and crucially, I think it really helps my work.

Yeahinteresting. I think I just interesting focus better. I'm, I'm less distracted if I'm watching a Loom video that somebody has sent me about something. If I, something like that, like I'm able to do it while just kind of moving a little bit. I'm probably, I don't know, a DH ADHD or something like that.

Yeah. So, um, anyway, I dunno. Have you ever, ever gone down that road? Well, so I've thought about this because I actually, and by the way, calorie output, like passive, so that's the biggest thing. You, I know you said to me, I hate, like, caloric restriction is just like, really not fun for me. I don't feel good.

Fasting in the morning. I'd prefer to have breakfast if I could, but when I sit at work, it's really hard for me to get above like 2100 calories burned in a day. Yeah. I, so I, my average is easily over 3000. Really? Yeah. See, that's, that, that's, it's definitely worth exploring just because it's so miserable for me, a whoop to like, to be in caloric restriction in an extreme level like that.

Yeah. And not eat breakfast. I don't, I get anxious. I just, yeah. So I would prefer to be able to have a light breakfast and get my calorie burn up to 2,600 or 2,700. Yeah. So I think it's probably worth it. Yeah. To, to add. I, I'd be curious to see, you're such a maniac also that I wonder if it would help you.

So you got another fast one. Yeah. Um, yeah. Uh, let's see. Well, so fun. So you brought up AI chat, GBT disappointment. How are you, are you guys making ads in chat GBT yet? How's your image? Yeah, yeah, yeah. We, we are making some chat GBT ads. Yep. Um, we're starting to look at some other things that maybe even do it better, but like, um, I would say we haven't had.

Any, oh, actually that's false. I have a, yeah. Uh, I have a client who's very good at AI stuff and, and is kind of a developer and has built a machine that is Yeah. Smashing by just putting in prompts, uh, to develop, getting to image outputs entirety, putting into the ai. So he's not a, he's getting, he's prompting for the image creation.

Yep. And then text overlays over the images. Yep. And the text usually is created in CHATT as well. Yep. Um, and, and like, like. Mm, two and a half x. Now he had a, uh, this sounds like the wrong credit. He, the thing is he launched a new product, um, that he was able to basically jet a super low MOQ. Um, he could, he could test on the product side very fast and very cheap, go from idea to product launch in like a week.

Like it's just like that kind of thing. And then spun up 50 ads like this and the products hit and he can get more of it really fast. And, uh, and so that like combining it with the operational efficiency he's built has made it an invaluable tool because he can create. So many ads so fast now, and what he did was we spent an hour on a call last week.

He's like, here's the keys to the magic box. So he basically overlaid Chachi P'S thing with his ability to sort of make use of it. Yep. So he is not just going into Chachi PT and like making an image. Yeah. He's like, he's built it into his other, his other stuff and it's like, oh my gosh, we're gonna go make so many ads.

Interesting. Yeah. So I, I think that this is a public service announcement is that I think that. The number one thing that I experience when trying to do this is that brands have to relinquish the minute obsession with the details that the consumer will never notice. Yes. Because, um, I agree with this, the trade off here is so disproportionate.

Yeah. In terms of speed, cost of production Yeah. Relative to those details that if you get hung up there and it prevents you from using this system, yeah. You are going to get run over by somebody. Um, and so I think arguing about the shovel in your gold mine That's right. It's just like, it it the you to not put an ad live that you made for free because you're like, oh, the straps don't look exactly right.

You, someone is gonna not care and they're gonna make 500 times as many ads as you Yeah. And it's gonna be problematic. Yeah. But so we're trying to, what I've found is that like there's this real forcing function where, so if you think about the sequence of selling ads inside of an agency norm, it's like you buy 10 ads from us, we go make the 10 ads, we bring them back, you approve them or not.

And we're sort of pre-selling the idea of ads versus ads themselves. And so we're introducing this new initiative where everybody has to make their client 20 ads a week and show them to them with a prefix price for video and, and image. If they want them, great. If they don't, no problem. Um, and so the the, we're always bringing them things Yeah.

All the time. Yeah. Do you want these? If Yes. We'll put them in your ad account right now. Yeah. If not, no worries. Because the cost to us is so low Yeah. That we can actually afford to do that. And it forces us to get better at it and better at and figure out what they like and don't like. And to where you can all get this like endless purchase opportunity in front of people.

And so I think we're really trying to figure that muscle out right now. We, um, shout out to behind the scenes studio that, that design and edit partner in the Philippines that I use. I'm both a client of them. They're a client of me. They advertise my podcast, I use them for our services. They have been, they are much better at this than I am.

Yep. They have built it into their services in a way where it's like, like the moment it became possible, they're just like, okay, we got it. We're gonna do creative brief and just like, just hammering, hammering ads at a massive volume. So we're not doing quite the thing you're saying in terms of the 20 per client per week or whatever it is.

But what we are doing is we're saying like. Um, building into our process that, and especially some, especially like what I think it's most useful for is getting weird. Um, totally. That's the thing that I really like about it. Right. Like where it would be very hard to pick up a camera and shoot it. So it's like some people have already showed this ad, but like the development of the posted ad being like writing on somebody's belly Yes.

Where it's like in there, right. Yeah. So we call these text and context ads. The text is instead of overlaid on the image, it's. It's in the context of the image. Yep. Okay. But now, but think about it like we skyr, we're writing in the, we're, we're right. We're using lawnmowers to write in the grass. That's right.

That's right. Where, you know, we're riding on the sand on the beach. Yes. But nobody has to go shoot that. That's right. So like, um, and, and I'm still pushing, well, like one of 'em from our down n they have a gut health supplement and they immediately came up with, this is so great. I just told this, one of the guys on my team get weird.

She was like, um, she, she came back with ads that were um, that were like somebody straining to poop on a toilet. Yeah. Which would be very hard to get footage of. That's right. You know what I mean? That's right. Um, and so it was like that, that I think has been useful. So we're trying to find ways to especially do that and then to just move fast and then at the same time, also to very straight ahead sort of product oriented stuff as well.

So, so the, so what you're describing of like, there's the idea of the writing and you can now extrapolate to all these ways like, so Go Rock customer of ours, they have a a, a campaign that's like bring the gym with you and it's this idea, go hiking into beautiful places. Right. So JG VT immediately answer.

So, exactly. So like, imagine. This is a real photo of Glacier National Park. Showed, yeah. Okay. This is real photo of Glacier National Park. Okay. So I'm like, all right, well I can take all the best hiking. No, one more time. Oh, sorry. Show it again. Show it again. So this is Glacier National Park. Okay. This is Google Glacial National Park.

You'll see this photo. Everybody takes a photo here. Okay. So this idea of bring the gym with you, I can immediately put anybody there in that exact location. Yes. And I can go to give me the 50 most beautiful hiking locations in the world. Yeah. And recreate the exact photo. You what? The problem with that ad is though, is that you can't see that they're wearing backpacks Good enough.

Well, you get copy and other things surrounding it. I agree. Forget whether that's exactly right. Okay. Another cool. But the beauty of it, right? Is that you can I see what you're saying. The beauty of it though, right? Is that you so get, here's another Zion, you put them there. Yeah. Whatever you get, you should show both of the, I dunno.

Yeah. Yeah. So Zion National Park. There's the idea, right? And then you get to boom, bring the gym with you. Same exact location or I, the other thing that they do, there's no way that was, yeah. You're, you, whatever. People get the idea. I'll give you the actual image to show. Yeah, that's a good idea. We, the other thing that they, their other tagline is Don't walk Rock.

Yeah. Okay. So don't walk. Okay. Right. Um, Uhhuh. Oh yeah. Show that one. That one's awesome. So, so like, there's the little walk sign, right. That we all know. And if your tagline is, don't people are gonna see the Yeah. Do that one. Because then that's the way, that's the context of a, and if customer would see it in, this is literally my one one verbal prompt.

Yes. Right. Okay. And then I took, same thing. I find this sign, don't Walk, walk. Um, and I'm like, oh, don't do that. Don't walk. Don't walk. Yeah. Don't walk. Rock. Yeah. Right. Yeah. Got a million burn, three eggs. The calories don't walk rough. Yeah. Right, right. And so you can get to, and this is just me as a designer, I'm a death treadmill.

Doing this in like six seconds. Like I, I can make this ad that there's nothing like this in the account because right now, will it work or not? I don't know. Probably not. But who cares if you could take a thousand shots, right. It took zero seconds to make it right. You know, and, and it's like, I think that that's where I just go, man, this is like, but, but I'll tell you, running into some issues, love you guys at GORUCK about whether it's like perfect, perfectly on brand or not.

And I get it. They're, they're, these guys are executive brand. Yeah, they're great at brand and I, I understand it, but man, I think that there's just an opportunity Yeah. To build on some of these really great foundational brand ideas and keep going with it. But we should be done. That was long, but we're, we're an hour and a half.

That's it's usual. Usual as usually are usual. Um, open up some extra ad inventory, you know? Yep. We'll see how much money we made on our cards. Don't suck. Jang. I think that's the big one. Thanks for tuning in. Thanks.