When to Run Your Black Friday Sale with Ezra Firestone

[00:00:00] Ezra: I think people are fucking lazy with their merchandising.

[00:00:02] Taylor: Mm.

[00:00:02] Ezra: God, are you lazy. I'm sorry, but-

[00:00:04] Taylor: Website merchandising specifically?

[00:00:05] Ezra: All of it.

[00:00:06] Taylor: Okay.

[00:00:06] Ezra: Like n- like, "Oh, here's 10% off of our whole collection." Yeah, yeah. Thanks. It's like you need to be doing buy one, get ones, and, and, you know, free gifts with purchase, and live shopping discounts, 'cause here's the other thing, merchandising extends to each channel.

[00:00:19] Ezra: That's right. We're doing Facebook Lives, Instagram Lives. Mm. There's merchandising within those. Mm. We're... Like, you have to be creative.

[00:00:24] Taylor: Yeah.

[00:00:25] Speaker: We're here with Lucas Pachter, the founder and CEO of Tribe. So for those that don't know, what is Tribe?

[00:00:30] Speaker 2: Tribe is like TikTok Shop for direct-to-store sales. So TikTok Shop was genius. It democratized content and made it so any average person with a TikTok Shop account can sell a product, but it's only limited to e-com and it's limited to people that have access to a TikTok Shop account. Tribe is that but instead of posting the video on your page you're just making the video, you're sending it to the brand. If they accept it you get paid or you get a percentage of whatever revenue it generates.

[00:00:58] Speaker: With Tribe, what we've been able to do is go from 500 to 1,000 or 1,200 or 1,400 ads a month at a lower total cost of production.

[00:01:05] Speaker 2: the data is the most important part. If you give your creators the ability to see what ads are working in real time, they're gonna go make the magic happen.

[00:01:12] Speaker: So dude, where could people, if they wanna check it out, where do they go?

[00:01:15] Speaker 2: It's just jointribe.com.

[00:01:17] Speaker: Check it out, jointribe.com.

[00:01:18] taylor_holiday-b5cfb07b-bae0-407c-8436-1-CFR: I'm excited, for this opportunity to connect and for you to share a little bit about what you guys have going on with Alia. I have, seen all over the place how you guys are transforming something that I think most people don't perceive there to be that large of a potential impact in.

[00:01:33] taylor_holiday-b5cfb07b-bae0-407c-8436-1-CFR: So tell us a little about what that is and how you guys make it happen.

[00:01:35] shaan_arora-c0e52bb7-c47e-4e99-aaa8-1-CFR: I'm Sean, co-founder and CEO of Ollia. And what we do is super simple. We just do pop-ups, typically what we see is like we'll see, you know, a 2X opt-in rate, and then we'll see something like a 1.8X increase in welcome flow revenue. So I think that, that's, that's the key metric to track here. Of course, we want revenue to go up as a whole, but like there's only so much a pop-up can do.

[00:01:54] shaan_arora-c0e52bb7-c47e-4e99-aaa8-1-CFR: I think The best thing about us is that we offer 30-day free trial, um, no strings attached. Like you can cancel if it's not working for you, during that free trial, we'll manage the pop-ups for you.

[00:02:02] shaan_arora-c0e52bb7-c47e-4e99-aaa8-1-CFR: We'll give you kind of the outcomes that, you know, we promise we'll give.

[00:02:06] taylor_holiday-b5cfb07b-bae0-407c-8436-1-CFR: There you go. So where do people go to sign up and try it?

[00:02:08] shaan_arora-c0e52bb7-c47e-4e99-aaa8-1-CFR: Yeah, so aliapopups.com, A-L-I-A popups.com

[00:02:13] Taylor: All right. Welcome back to another episode of the Ecommerce Playbook podcast, live from Commerce Roundtable. That's the real skyline. This is an AI. This is also a real man, not AI. This is the legendary Ezra Firestone, good friend. Uh, we pod, like, once every three years. Um, and life has always taken so many wild turns every time we do.

[00:02:34] Taylor: It's

[00:02:34] Ezra: all good. How are you, bro? I'm good, man. I, I was on stage and I was talk- ... And a guy named Kevin, who works for me, was in, in the audience.

[00:02:39] Taylor: Okay.

[00:02:40] Ezra: And it reminded me that when I hired him, I had a Bevin. And at, at the time- That's nuts ... I, I had a, a woman named Bevin working for me, okay? So I had a Kevin and a Bevin- Okay

[00:02:49] Ezra: and I was desperately looking for an Evan, a Devin- You were

[00:02:51] Taylor: just gonna build

[00:02:52] Ezra: out the whole squad ... a Mevin. That's what I wanted. And then I lost Devin, but I still have Kevin. But recently, this is why I was thinking about it, a couple weeks ago, we got another Devin. So we have a Kevin- We're back in the game We're back again.

[00:03:03] Ezra: We have a Kevin and a Devin, and so if your name is Evan, Nevin, Nevin-

[00:03:06] Taylor: You're hired ... I will hire you. Done. So speaking of you, hire you where? Where are you at? You're back in the game, bro. I

[00:03:12] Ezra: mean- Like, you are, like, in the saddle.

[00:03:13] Taylor: Oh, man.

[00:03:14] Ezra: You thought you got to ride off into the sunset, and

[00:03:16] Taylor: now

[00:03:16] Ezra: you're back. I really, really did.

[00:03:18] Ezra: I have a brand called Overtone Color, and I bought it in 2022. It was losing a lot of money, like 400 grand a month. Jesus. And, uh, and within, like, 90 days, we had it making 100 grand a month. It was a good brand. It was just ... It blew up during COVID, and they, you know, had made some mistakes, and, uh, so we

[00:03:33] Ezra: Anyways, but we're growing rapidly now. We're about to go full chain at Walmart, which is really nice. Awesome. And, uh, I also have Boom. Boom kind of did its thing and plateaued. It's kind of on its decline. And I sold those companies to private equity, and it was such a great experience because I learned so much that I

[00:03:49] Ezra: You know, we all have blind spots.

[00:03:50] Taylor 2: Yep.

[00:03:50] Ezra: I didn't know what I didn't know. Yep. And by working with a company that has done now, they own, like, literal billion-dollar brands. They own giant brands, but they're all brick-and-mortar. They're all retail. Brand names, yep. And they didn't have a lot of e-commerce, and so I was able to bring a bunch of e-commerce to all these big brands, and they've been wonderful partners to me.

[00:04:07] Ezra: And when my daughter got sick, I stepped away from everything. I put everybody else in charge of the company, but I'm still around- Yeah ... but not as an operator.

[00:04:13] Taylor 2: Yeah.

[00:04:14] Ezra: And they recently called me and said, "Hey, man, you gotta step back in as the operator." Yeah. They need you. Oh. And I was like, "Oh, I don't ... I was done, man."

[00:04:20] Ezra: Uh, and I'm back, and it's been really fun.

[00:04:23] Taylor: Yeah, 'cause, uh, we were talking earlier, and you,

[00:04:25] Ezra: you

[00:04:25] Taylor: said it's given you a life, though. You're loving

[00:04:27] Ezra: it.

[00:04:27] Taylor: It- You're k- getting that fix again. It, it's- Solving problems, and you're- There's so- There's parts of it that you enjoy, so.

[00:04:31] Ezra: There's something very compelling about it.

[00:04:33] Ezra: Yeah. And also, one thing to acknowledge is that it does take a lot of time.

[00:04:37] Taylor: Yeah.

[00:04:37] Ezra: And especially when you've now ... I became an old-man jujitsu athlete. I had a second kid.

[00:04:42] Taylor: Yep.

[00:04:42] Ezra: I, like, was ... And I was working maybe 15 or 20 hours a week- Yeah ... with ownership in tons of brands, but, like, Molly runs Smart Marketer, and Dima runs Zipify, and Mike runs B Friendly.

[00:04:52] Ezra: I'm like-

[00:04:53] Taylor 2: Yeah ...

[00:04:53] Ezra: I have great operators.

[00:04:54] Ezra: And like, so, you know, I was trying to do that playbook. Yeah. And that, and that was really fun.

[00:04:57] Ezra: I was enjoying that, and now I have more work.

[00:05:00] Taylor: Yeah.

[00:05:00] Ezra: Far more work than I had, and it's different.

[00:05:02] Taylor: Yeah.

[00:05:02] Ezra: And I want to do it, and I'm grateful to do it, and I'm happy about it, but I will not do this for more than a couple years.

[00:05:07] Taylor: When you came back in- You are a guy that has, like, a tried and true set of things that you have executed across many years.

[00:05:14] Taylor: You've evolved to different form factors, but did you... Was the end the same?

[00:05:17] Ezra: Dude, you know what's crazy? Is that every company that I have bought or gotten back into has a people problem when I come in. Yeah.

[00:05:23] Taylor: Interesting.

[00:05:23] Ezra: Everybody hates each... Well, hate's a strong word. Yeah. People are very upset at one another.

[00:05:27] Ezra: Interesting. There's all kinds of conflict. Yeah. Nobody is in communication, and marketing is doing something- Really? ... and not telling other company. Yeah. It's just, like, the people, it seems to be, I find myself in situations where my main job is to organize the people.

[00:05:39] Taylor: Yeah.

[00:05:39] Ezra: Yes, are we changing marketing strategies and so on and so forth?

[00:05:42] Ezra: Yes. But more so than that we're, like, getting rid of that leader, putting this person in. Okay, what... You know what I did, and I did this, I've done this now twice. I did this when I bought Overtone. It's the first time I'd ever done it, and I then did it just now when I came back in as CEO, and I realized I should do this.

[00:05:56] Ezra: Every company that I have a major stake in ownership in-

[00:05:58] Taylor 2: Mm-hmm ...

[00:05:58] Ezra: that I want to go well- Yeah ... I should probably do this. I personally interviewed every single person in the organization.

[00:06:05] Taylor: Existing employee.

[00:06:05] Ezra: Every employee. Yeah. And I said- Yeah ... "What do you do?"

[00:06:08] Taylor: Yeah. "

[00:06:08] Ezra: What are your responsibilities? What are you actually producing?

[00:06:12] Ezra: What do you think is going wrong around here? What do you think is going right? Who do you have trouble with?"

[00:06:16] Taylor: Right.

[00:06:17] Ezra: And I, and then you realize, okay, some people don't do very much.

[00:06:19] Taylor: Yeah.

[00:06:20] Ezra: Some people do- You get a map of what's happening here. Yeah ... and this person has a conflict. And it's like, yeah, it took 30 hours of, of, of calls or maybe more-

[00:06:26] Taylor: Yeah

[00:06:26] Ezra: because then I had to talk to the person who was helping me with this, who had some context on the company- Yeah ... who was a former employee. But, like, so valuable.

[00:06:33] Taylor: Yeah.

[00:06:33] Ezra: And I never would do... I don't know why I never thought to do it.

[00:06:36] Taylor: It's so interesting. The, I would say the, the, the biggest experience or lesson I've learned as an AG, you get to work with so many different organizations, so you get this glimpse into their world.

[00:06:43] Taylor: And I'd say that it is so true that organizations are a direct reflection of the chaos internally of the leader. Like, whatever their clarity of vision, their organizational planning, everybody exists in the chaos that exists inside that person. Yeah. And you can, you can meet people, and you can understand very quickly why the system exists around them in the way that it does.

[00:07:01] Taylor: And so, so much of the work is- Organizational design is like for leaders to understand internally their own chaos and desires and what they want, that they're projecting into the organization in ways that they have to c- go in and clarify to create continuity, create vision, create organization in a way that allows everybody to move together

[00:07:18] Ezra: And people copy.

[00:07:19] Ezra: If you're the leader, they will respond to stress the way you do.

[00:07:21] Taylor: Exactly. Whatever you are, they will become. They

[00:07:23] Ezra: will be that 'cause it's like monkey see, monkey do. Exactly. They wanna c- raise up in the ranks, like this is what the people in power are doing. Yes. They will treat people the way you treat

[00:07:29] Taylor: people.

[00:07:29] Taylor: That's right.

[00:07:30] Ezra: They will respond to stress the way you do. So it's like, you know, you have to r- it's like being a parent. Exactly. Sounds weird, but it's like it kinda is. You,

[00:07:35] Taylor: you project your emotional state onto everyone around you.

[00:07:37] Ezra: Yes.

[00:07:38] Taylor: Yeah. I, uh, it's like I had to be... That, that's one of the things. I am a fairly emotional guy.

[00:07:43] Taylor: Um, and it, i- in a Zoom world, it's also still, it's more true in person, but I would recognize that I had to start to, as I got older, become consciously aware of my emotional state as I entered into spaces.

[00:07:54] Ezra: Yeah.

[00:07:54] Taylor: Because otherwise, if I was anxious, nervous, frustrated, whatever, all of a sudden the whole room would become that.

[00:07:59] Ezra: Yes.

[00:08:00] Taylor: And the, the meeting would deteriorate into that. Exactly. Yeah. And so you almost have to go, "Okay, what am I experiencing right now? Do I wanna give everyone this?"

[00:08:06] Ezra: Yeah. "

[00:08:06] Taylor: Whatever I have right now, I'm about to give it to all of them."

[00:08:08] Ezra: Yeah. "So is it worth it?" Well, it's like they, ideas are more contagious than viruses, but emotional states are also- Totally

[00:08:14] Ezra: as contagious as viruses. Yeah. However you are feeling is what you're bringing forth.

[00:08:17] Taylor: Yeah.

[00:08:18] Ezra: And then especially if you are in the person, the position of the highest power- Yeah ... in the org. Yeah. You gotta be like careful.

[00:08:23] Taylor: Yeah. It's funny. Even speaking, one of the things that you do really well is that you can tell when a person is excited about the thing that they're sharing with you.

[00:08:31] Taylor: And all of a sudden, if I'm listening, it's like a great teacher is like, whether it's history or whatever, if they like seem like, "This is awesome," even if it's boring- I feel it ... then all of a sudden I'm in, you know?

[00:08:39] Ezra: And the shit

[00:08:39] Taylor: we talk

[00:08:40] Ezra: about is so boring.

[00:08:40] Taylor: So boring. I like, I walk by your slide and it's like circle button.

[00:08:44] Taylor: You're going through all the things. But, but you do, it seems enjoyable to you. Yeah. I like it. And so all of a sudden the people consuming it appreciate it. Also, I

[00:08:50] Ezra: told them upfront. I said, "Look, this is all stuff you've heard 1,000 times."

[00:08:53] Taylor: Yes. "

[00:08:53] Ezra: There's nothing new in this deck."

[00:08:55] Taylor: Yeah. "

[00:08:55] Ezra: But you're not doing it."

[00:08:56] Ezra: Exactly. "So let me just give you a bunch of examples."

[00:08:58] Taylor: Yeah. All right. Well, so let's go back to a thing we've all done before, but we need to hear again. It's Q4, you're running Overtones.

[00:09:05] Ezra: Is that a big gifting time?

[00:09:06] Taylor: Is it a big moment for you guys? Does it matter

[00:09:07] Ezra: at all? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, here's what's interesting.

[00:09:09] Ezra: I wanna talk about

[00:09:09] Taylor: this- Okay ...

[00:09:10] Ezra: which is I have several brands that aren't gifting brands. Okay. And they do so much better in like Prime Day and- Yeah ... and, and also early Black Friday. So what I do in every one of my brands, I don't care what brand, I do this, I run the same playbook basically in all my brands every year.

[00:09:24] Ezra: I've put it out on the internet a million times. But I start, you know, I run the Prime Day.

[00:09:29] Taylor: Okay.

[00:09:29] Ezra: Okay? And then I go back to just normal, you know, um- So that's what? Second week of

[00:09:33] Taylor: October or

[00:09:33] Ezra: so, yeah ... that's October. First, so this, this year it's six, seven, and eight. Okay. So it's like the first week. Um, but Then November 1st to November 12th, which is usually like the first week and a half- Yep

[00:09:41] Ezra: to the first Friday, I'm doing, "Hey, our Black- Early Black Friday's coming. Sign up." I'm running ads. I'm building buzz. Then I open up early Black Friday. I do Black Friday through Cyber Monday two weeks early. Okay. Before everybody's- So

[00:09:51] Taylor: you're starting about November 13th, something like that?

[00:09:53] Ezra: Exactly, before everybody's getting banged.

[00:09:55] Ezra: And my, um, brands that are s- are, I'm purchasing for myself crush in that period. Mm. My gifting brands do not.

[00:10:02] Taylor: Interesting.

[00:10:02] Ezra: Uh, um, uh- Interesting ... Navage is a great gifting brand.

[00:10:06] Taylor: Yep.

[00:10:06] Ezra: It does so much better during the actual Cyber Five. Interesting. So much better. And then even better than that is the, like, Green Monday, which is the last...

[00:10:15] Ezra: It's usually the December 12th. It's the last. So I peak, I, I, I have my, my peaks and I can show a picture, then you can put it up if you want. Yeah. But it's like, okay, early Black Friday build-up, then actual early Black Friday, Cyber Monday, three, those three days. Or Friday, Saturday, Sunday, Monday. Then I shut down for two weeks.

[00:10:30] Ezra: Then I come back actual Black Friday- Mm ... Cyber Monday.

[00:10:32] Taylor: Okay.

[00:10:32] Ezra: Then I shut down. Oh,

[00:10:33] Taylor: interesting. Now, of course- So you actually close out the sy-

[00:10:35] Ezra: Close it down ...

[00:10:35] Taylor: it doesn't run all the way

[00:10:36] Ezra: through? Nope. Okay. I mean, look, you could get to it if you had an old email- Right, right, right ... or whatever, but I'm not promoting it heavily.

[00:10:40] Taylor: Okay.

[00:10:40] Ezra: I'm just doing those peaks. On every one of those peak moments, dude, I'm banging four to six text messages a day. Yes. Tons of emails. Working hard. You can't go hard enough, yeah. Ads double. I go hard.

[00:10:48] Taylor: Yep.

[00:10:49] Ezra: Then I close down, then it's like, kinda like, "Welcome to, uh, the holidays and stuff." And then right about Green Monday- Yeah

[00:10:55] Ezra: which is usually December 12th-ish, which is the last Monday you can order with regular shipping- Regular shipping, yeah ... and still get it- Five to

[00:11:00] Taylor: seven day, yeah ...

[00:11:00] Ezra: I go hard- Really? ... with the gifting brands. Yeah. So hard. Ads, emails, everything, and I just push, push, push. Okay, l- you know, two-day shipping, overnight.

[00:11:08] Ezra: I just push, and my gifting brands do so well. So well, huge. And that's the period for the gifting brands, and that's the period that I have the best ROI- Yeah ... 'cause I'm also following the ad spend ROI. I'm not spending money at a lo- you know? Right. I'm paying attention.

[00:11:18] Taylor: Right.

[00:11:19] Ezra: And then the last thing I do, people probably know this, but I do a countdown to New Year's sale, 26th to the 31st, last chance to save.

[00:11:27] Ezra: People would've had 100 emails, 50 text messages, all the ads, and somehow they then buy in that last week. Still, that's the

[00:11:34] Taylor: moment.

[00:11:34] Ezra: Mm.

[00:11:34] Trybe: Tribe is like TikTok Shop for direct-to-store sales. So TikTok Shop was genius. It democratized content and made it so any average person with a TikTok Shop account can sell a product, be an entrepreneur, make unlimited money doing so without taking any risk of like being a business owner, for example.

[00:11:53] Trybe: Um, but it's only limited to e-com, and it's limited to people that have access to a TikTok Shop account. So Tribe is that, but instead of posting the video on your page, you're just making the video, you're sending it to the brand. If they accept it, you get paid or you get a percentage of whatever revenue it generates.

[00:12:10] Taylor: So what you guys, uh, have unlocked is that the truth of the matter is that the most of the media dollars exist on Meta- Yeah ... not TikTok.

[00:12:20] Trybe: Yeah.

[00:12:20] Taylor: And so while TikTok built the most efficient engine for accessing and Meta somehow just missed the boat on this, uh, badly, you guys have come in and helped the creators to recognize, "Wait a second, I now have this skill.

[00:12:34] Taylor: It's in demand," but where the brand can actually monetize it better-

[00:12:37] Trybe: Mm-hmm ...

[00:12:37] Taylor: is often Meta. Mm-hmm. And so the, uh, there, there's this realization that these assets are really powerful and have the ability to drive massive impact for brands, but when they get into the Meta ad budget, now there's scale too.

[00:12:50] Trybe: Yeah.

[00:12:50] Taylor: And there's huge opportunity for that.

[00:12:52] Trybe: I think, you know, I think a lot of brands were already doing this.

[00:12:54] Taylor: Yeah. Or they were. In cumbersome spreadsheet- Oh, yeah ... bulky, annoying fashion. Yeah.

[00:12:59] Trybe: Yeah. And, and usually what they would do is because, like let's say you have 10,000 ads posted on TikTok, shop videos, whatever.

[00:13:05] Trybe: What most brands would do is they would only take the ones that perform-

[00:13:08] Taylor: Yeah ...

[00:13:08] Trybe: and then they would do the spreadsheet and the Google Drive and the PayPal and the payouts and all that manually.

[00:13:13] Taylor: Yep.

[00:13:13] Trybe: Uh, and even that was like horrible. Like w- my brand a year-- So I own a clothing brand as well. My brand a year ago when we were pushing four or five hundred ads a month, we had a team of five people managing it.

[00:13:27] Trybe: I was one of them. I would talk to the creators. I would keep up the relationship. We had someone that was in charge of, you know, measuring all the analytics in Meta. We had a payouts manager. We had an affiliate manager who would go search for them, and it was a whole team. Yep. And that was for 500 ads a month.

[00:13:41] Taylor: Yes.

[00:13:42] Trybe: And now my brand does Eight to 9,000 ads a month with just me- Yeah ... the one guy.

[00:13:47] Taylor: Yeah. And that-- What you just described, so we have been long proponents of creative volume. The math is obvious to me in this way that it is very definitively clear that the more high-quality diverse assets that you launch as a brand, the more impact and scale of spend that you're going to achieve.

[00:14:01] Taylor: So we've had this message for a long time, but what we would constantly run into is that you'd run into this impediment where the thing that you're describing, which is that the internal design system from the brand could not, did not have the capacity to produce the volume needed to be successful.

[00:14:14] Taylor: Yeah. And there would just be this tension. It would break. There was fighting. It was exhausting. They'd be frustrated. There's-- Or it would cost a lot of money to produce a ton of assets. And so brands couldn't get to that level of production. Mm-hmm. And then all of a sudden you guys show up and you did the brilliant thing, which in many cases is you invert the creative supply chain, which is traditionally is I have to go pay a brand or pay a creator $300 to go make an ad or pay- Yeah

[00:14:36] Taylor: a designer X dollars per asset or pay an agency this much per asset upfront, so my cash comes out of the pocket before I receive the asset.

[00:14:43] Trybe: Mm-hmm.

[00:14:43] Taylor: Then I have to go pay Meta, and then I hope that it works.

[00:14:46] Trybe: Yeah.

[00:14:46] Taylor: And that sort of cycle of your cash is just completely inverted from what you want. You guys flipped it on its head and said, "No, no, no.

[00:14:52] Taylor: Creator's gonna create the asset. You're gonna then get to deploy it, and then if it works, then they're gonna get to monetize it."

[00:14:56] Trybe: 100%. That was, that was explained very good.

[00:14:58] Taylor: So dude, where could people, if they wanna check it out, where do they go?

[00:15:02] Trybe: It's just jointribe.com. Um, we have a brand app coming soon. I've been testing it myself for a couple weeks now.

[00:15:07] Trybe: It's great. Um, I don't know when that'll come out. We wanna make sure it's perfect first. Cool. But yeah, it's just jointribe.com.

[00:15:13] Taylor: Check it out, jointribe.com.

[00:15:14] Ezra: Mm. And so I do that, those moments. Um, and what I find is that brands that are self-purchase, I'm buying this for myself, like boom, nobody buys that as a gift. Right. Nobody.

[00:15:22] Ezra: Does way better early. It just gets crushed late. Like, I turn off ads. They just don't work. Interesting, interesting. They don't, the ads don't work. Even Black Fri- Yeah ... on Black Friday, Cyber Monday time, that actual time.

[00:15:32] Taylor: Nope.

[00:15:32] Ezra: The ads, they're just... I email, I SMS, I kind of don't run ads. Interesting.

[00:15:35] Taylor: Interesting. One of the debates we're having, uh, with everybody, guests that come on, 'cause it's something we're trying to sort through internally, day of Black Friday, Cyber Monday, let's take those two days, is spend incremental on those lifts, what do you think?

[00:15:50] Ezra: I think it depends on the brand

[00:15:51] Taylor: Yeah

[00:15:51] Ezra: I also think it depends on your average order value.

[00:15:54] Ezra: Um, we spend a lot less on ads than we once did-

[00:15:58] Taylor: Really? ...

[00:15:59] Ezra: during the heavy holiday days. Yeah We spend a lot more in and around- Than

[00:16:02] Taylor: before?

[00:16:02] Ezra: Okay ... before and after. But look, are we still spending? Yeah.

[00:16:05] Taylor: Yeah, yeah.

[00:16:06] Ezra: I'm trying to get customers- Yeah ... you know?

[00:16:08] Taylor: But

[00:16:08] Ezra: you think it does- But yeah, is it incremental? I mean, yes.

[00:16:10] Taylor: Okay.

[00:16:11] Ezra: I'm

[00:16:11] Taylor: gonna say yes. Yeah, I think so too. That's what, that's the camp I'm in as well. I'm gonna say yes. Um, are there any spaces or

[00:16:17] Ezra: channel mix- Now, can I say one

[00:16:18] Taylor: other thing? Go ahead, sure.

[00:16:19] Ezra: Boom had its big rise.

[00:16:20] Taylor: Yep.

[00:16:21] Ezra: Big peak, big plateau, big decline. A brand like that is not gonna be as powerful as like, I got this, this, uh, dog teeth supplement brand.

[00:16:28] Ezra: Dude, that's gonna crush. It's crushing now. Mm. So like also-

[00:16:30] Taylor: Momentum,

[00:16:31] Ezra: yeah ... kind of I feel like it depends on where you are in the life

[00:16:32] Taylor: cycle, you know? Yeah. Exactly. You're on your 10 millionth customer, or you're on your- Exactly ... 3,000th customer

[00:16:37] Ezra: I have been applying this with Boom- Yeah, yeah, exactly ... Boom, people don't see it.

[00:16:39] Taylor: Yeah. Yeah, that's such a good point. Um- Is the channel mix changing at all for you?

[00:16:43] Ezra: Yeah.

[00:16:44] Taylor: What, what are you seeing?

[00:16:45] Ezra: I mean, for a couple brands, TikTok is killing it.

[00:16:47] Taylor: Yeah.

[00:16:48] Ezra: Dude-

[00:16:48] Taylor: GMV Max stuff or straight TikTok to the

[00:16:50] Ezra: website? Straight TikTok shop. Yeah. No, no. No, no. Straight TikTok shop. Yeah, yeah. G- I'm gonna...

[00:16:52] Ezra: Yeah. Uh, T- GMV Max? GMV

[00:16:55] Taylor: Max is the ads to run-

[00:16:56] Ezra: Yeah ... the TikTok shop. Yeah. Yeah, TikTok. Um, dude, Amazon is eating- Yeah ... the world. Yeah. It's shocking- I know ... the amount of, of how much is moving to Amazon, especially for my retail-heavy brands.

[00:17:07] Taylor: It's

[00:17:07] Ezra: crazy. Crazy. Yeah. Like, the, the non-retail heavy brands, the brands that I don't have, even in small box retail, it's not big box, I can be much more, push it to my website.

[00:17:17] Taylor: Dude, it's like it is so hard to comprehend, like where Amazon has gotten to and so... Like, the amount of products that they can deliver to you within three hours. Un-f-ing- It's crazy ... crazy. It's so

[00:17:30] Ezra: crazy. I live in the middle of nowhere.

[00:17:31] Taylor: And it's still- And

[00:17:32] Ezra: still, they still get it to me ...

[00:17:33] Taylor: it's just like th- th- they're a machine that is just, it is hard to comprehend.

[00:17:37] Taylor: I

[00:17:37] Ezra: also stopped fighting them. I agree. Forever I fought. I didn't wanna be there. I wanted to push all my ads other places. I didn't want... And now I'm just like, "I will spend as much as I can there. I'll ship as much product as I can there. I'll promote there." I'm just-

[00:17:49] Taylor: I

[00:17:49] Ezra: think that- ... on the channel ...

[00:17:50] Taylor: yeah, I agree.

[00:17:50] Taylor: And I think, I think when I think about the role then that TikTok shops versus your website versus- Yeah ... like Amazon, they all have a very specific role to play in this journey. But I wanna meet, like, like with Skullcandy, we were talking with them and they're like, "There's a subset of people that are buying headphones 'cause they're going on a plane tomorrow."

[00:18:04] Ezra: Yeah. "

[00:18:04] Taylor: And I need a, I need a pair of headphones right now."

[00:18:06] Ezra: Yes.

[00:18:07] Taylor: And so no matter what, that decision is about the convenience and the necessity of I have a problem, I need it now.

[00:18:11] Ezra: Yeah.

[00:18:11] Taylor: And so you have to facilitate that transaction through Amazon. Got it. Like, you're not gonna get it done through your website.

[00:18:16] Ezra: No. And you can't- Right? Y- you can... Their logistics are insane.

[00:18:19] Taylor: Yes.

[00:18:20] Ezra: Also, they can afford to lose money- That's right ... on that physical product order-

[00:18:23] Taylor: That's right ... 'cause they got AWS- Exactly ... and so

[00:18:25] Ezra: we can't compete, you

[00:18:26] Taylor: know? Right. So you have to allow that to exist and meet the consumer where they're at. And then you have to ask, "Okay, well then what's our website for?"

[00:18:30] Taylor: Well, what kind of purchase decision for a pair of headphones? Well, if it's a limited edition- Yeah ... cool product release launch that's a brand purchase- Product ... yeah, that I don't need tomorrow, then all of a sudden now that makes sense to facilitate that transaction here, and then TikTok's discovery. Like, so there, there's a clear ecosystem that's emerging and I'm curious to see how...

[00:18:47] Taylor: Did you follow all the Muse, uh, Amazon thing? No. So Muse, Meta's new agent.

[00:18:52] Ezra: Oh, they don't let them shop on there. Yes. I just saw

[00:18:54] Taylor: that. Okay. So same day Amazon bans transactions from

[00:18:57] Ezra: agents. Why do you think they did that? 'Cause they just don't, they want, they, they wanna compete? They don't want Meta to-

[00:19:00] Taylor: I've always been fascinated by the relationship between Meta and Amazon and why they aren't more friendly with each other.

[00:19:05] Taylor: But dude,

[00:19:05] Ezra: they could be- I don't get it. This could be a game changer.

[00:19:07] Taylor: But then the same day Shopify announces they've got deep integration, are gonna allow it. So it's feels like these weird battle lines- This is- ... are kinda being drawn.

[00:19:13] Ezra: You know what I really thought? So I, um, was Fortunately enough, thank you Shopify, to develop the upsells-

[00:19:20] Taylor: Yeah

[00:19:20] Ezra: for shop app. Shop... Not, I mean, yes, Shopify checkout- Oh ... whatever, but actual shop app.

[00:19:25] Taylor: Oh.

[00:19:25] Ezra: And, and Shopify was, at the time, this was three or two and a half years ago, spending so much money on the shop app. Yeah. They were giving people, uh, credits in there. And I thought, "Oh- They had ambition here ... this is Shopify attacking Amazon- Yeah

[00:19:36] Ezra: trying to have its own- Yeah ... where you can shop from all the Shopify merchants," but it just-

[00:19:39] Taylor: I know, it's never really gotten the traction. I

[00:19:41] Ezra: would... Dude, I was like, "It's gonna be 10 or 15% of my website sales soon."

[00:19:44] Taylor: Dude, I know. It seemed like that was the thing that they were gonna try to do, and it feels like it's still...

[00:19:48] Taylor: I, yeah, trying to figure out exactly what they're all trying to do is bizarre. You know what

[00:19:52] Ezra: happened was their fulfillment network

[00:19:53] Taylor: failed. Yeah. I think what Amazon, part of it is, I think that they s- actually see themselves with the media side as having a discovery engine for the advertising, but they think they can play the, the whole thing.

[00:20:02] Ezra: Yeah.

[00:20:02] Taylor: They- I

[00:20:02] Ezra: mean, they can ...

[00:20:03] Taylor: yeah. With Prime Video and all that. Amazon,

[00:20:05] Ezra: wasn't Amazon Ads number two or three after

[00:20:07] Taylor: Facebook and Google? Yeah. I think, so I think in that way they don't wanna... I mean, yeah, it's just fascinating to watch.

[00:20:11] Ezra: You guys are Amazon in your agency?

[00:20:13] Taylor: We... So no, this is right now, so part of the, our journey now, and the reason we did the acquisition we did, is 'cause it was very clear to me that there was some M- M&A opportunities that we needed to expand to meet customers where they're at.

[00:20:24] Taylor: We just did TikTok Shops, that was the announcement this week. Yeah. And Amazon's very much the next step. It's like very clear that, like the cohesive, oh sorry, plan and execution of this full spectrum is- Yeah. And you see the big, big, big agencies, they have the- And that's- ... the whole spectrum ... yeah, that, that's the game is like brands, because brands don't, the, right now more than ever, they wanna measure their media across all the distribution.

[00:20:43] Taylor: Yes. They wanna forecast and plan across all of it. Yes. And so you can't, you can't come in and be like, "Oh, I'm just here to help you." Well, we used to do dot-com. And they're like, "Wait a second, half of our business is Amazon. What are we doing?" Yeah. So it's very much... And, and it's, it's an interesting platform on the service side because- Dude, we,

[00:20:55] Ezra: I, I was trying to put you together with- Did you guys do Amazon?

[00:20:58] Ezra: I was trying to put you together with other cats- I know ... and my cats, and we were trying. We

[00:21:02] Taylor: did. We, we gave

[00:21:02] Ezra: it

[00:21:03] Taylor: a good run.

[00:21:03] Ezra: No, we don't do Amazon. Or I guess Molly and them- Yeah ... they do Facebook, they do email, they do... They shut down TikTok.

[00:21:11] Taylor: Yeah.

[00:21:11] Ezra: It's hard. I think, buy a TikTok agency.

[00:21:13] Taylor: Yeah. That's a good thing.

[00:21:14] Taylor: Try to

[00:21:14] Ezra: do it yourself when you don't know, it's like-

[00:21:15] Taylor: It's, I agree ...

[00:21:16] Ezra: and what else do they do? They do Google.

[00:21:18] Taylor: Yeah.

[00:21:18] Ezra: But, but yeah, no, they're not- The

[00:21:19] Taylor: Amazon service business is interesting because there's Amazon advertising,

[00:21:22] Ezra: but it's so, it's

[00:21:23] Taylor: like very basic, right? Like, it, and it doesn't... And then-

[00:21:25] Ezra: Well, and Amazon service business is a lot about listing management and promotional planning- So it's

[00:21:28] Taylor: way, it's different in that way.

[00:21:30] Taylor: It's...

[00:21:30] Ezra: Yes.

[00:21:30] Taylor: And it's the pricing model's kinda hard to figure out- Yeah ... when you're doing it. It is. So it, uh, it's getting to know a lot of the Amazon ecosystem. It's a hard agency business. Um, it's a- It is.

[00:21:38] Ezra: But a flat monthly fee- Yeah ... where you can have an account manager who can do all that stuff, and you can know...

[00:21:44] Ezra: So I'm, I have an Amazon agency that I know really well. They're doing great, and maybe you should buy it. Yeah. Let's chat. You know, I'll put you in touch with them. Yeah, please. But they charge a flat fee.

[00:21:50] Taylor 2: Yeah.

[00:21:50] Ezra: I think that's where it's gonna be. And they have it, they have it broken down where it's like, "Okay, we know that an one person plus this can do an account."

[00:21:55] Ezra: Yeah. "Here's all the services they offer for the account. We know it's gonna cost us X," and they just basically double it. Yeah.

[00:22:01] Taylor: Have

[00:22:01] Ezra: you had any success

[00:22:03] Taylor: with Apple having an Overton?

[00:22:04] Ezra: Yeah.

[00:22:05] Taylor: You like

[00:22:05] Ezra: it? No, no, not at Overton.

[00:22:06] Taylor: Really? No?

[00:22:07] Ezra: No. Couldn't get it to work at Overton. Really? Interesting. Couldn't get to work at Boom.

[00:22:09] Ezra: Uh, working at Safe Sleep.

[00:22:10] Taylor: Okay.

[00:22:11] Ezra: Um-

[00:22:12] Taylor: That's the pet... What's the, what's the

[00:22:13] Ezra: pet- Sa- Safe Sleep is the, uh- Oh,

[00:22:14] Taylor: okay.

[00:22:14] Ezra: The phone cases ... cellphone radiation. Yeah. Um- And what's

[00:22:16] Taylor: the pet brand?

[00:22:17] Ezra: Longer Together pet company.

[00:22:18] Taylor: Okay,

[00:22:19] Ezra: cool. It's literally brand-new. It's 60 days old. We just crossed 100K.

[00:22:22] Taylor: And are these, are those all brands that you did as part of your work with PE company?

[00:22:26] Ezra: No. No, um- Or is this your

[00:22:27] Taylor: individual stuff?

[00:22:27] Ezra: So what I like to do is buy or build-

[00:22:30] Taylor: Okay ...

[00:22:30] Ezra: mostly on my own. Yeah. I do it with the PE, too.

[00:22:33] Taylor: Yeah.

[00:22:33] Ezra: We do stuff, but they, they wanna do much bigger deals.

[00:22:35] Taylor: Yeah, yeah.

[00:22:36] Ezra: Which is nice.

[00:22:36] Taylor: Yeah.

[00:22:37] Ezra: And I'll put in, you know, half a million bucks, a million bucks- Yeah ... and I'll have sweat equity, whatever.

[00:22:40] Ezra: But, like, I can't get enough ownership in those deals- Yeah ... to get me really excited. Yeah. Look, I'm happy-

[00:22:45] Taylor: Yeah ...

[00:22:46] Ezra: to be a part of it and, and it is enough to, like, be meaningful.

[00:22:48] Taylor: But- But passive minority deals in e-com is tough.

[00:22:50] Ezra: I know. That's what I'm saying. All the fluidity. It's, uh, it's tough. It's like, yeah, I wanna own between 15 and 30%- Yeah

[00:22:56] Ezra: and I want to not operate.

[00:22:59] Taylor: Yeah.

[00:22:59] Ezra: And I'm happy to g- Like Smart Marketer, I only own 25% at this point.

[00:23:02] Taylor: Yeah.

[00:23:02] Ezra: But I don't have to operate. Right. I'm not involved at all.

[00:23:04] Taylor: Yeah.

[00:23:05] Ezra: I help them strategically. I help them with the finances. I do some stuff for them, but it's like- Yeah ... I get to do the fun parts and support them when they struggle-

[00:23:12] Taylor 2: Yeah

[00:23:12] Ezra: and not be in the day-to-day fray.

[00:23:13] Taylor 2: Yeah.

[00:23:14] Ezra: And pretty much every brand I have is like that now. Like, I just bought this company. We're, we're up to, like, two million. It's small, but- I only own 35%. Yeah. I put the money in, but I only own 35% because the two operators are so good, and it's like they're gonna spend 40 hours a week each.

[00:23:29] Ezra: Okay, take 30% each. Fine. I'm happy with that. I don't need... Dude, if you get a company to 5 or 10 million bucks with a good EBITDA margin and you sell it, you have 30% of that. That's

[00:23:39] Taylor: good money. That's meaningful money. It's good money. Yeah, it's a good outcome. Yeah. What about Zipify? What's the like-- What, what's that business?

[00:23:44] Taylor: How has AI affected

[00:23:45] Ezra: that? I love-- Okay, first of all-

[00:23:45] Taylor: I know you

[00:23:45] Ezra: love it ... Zipify is the greatest business I've ever- And your-- That's the, I know. That's always

[00:23:48] Taylor: been

[00:23:49] Ezra: the cash cow ... the cash cow. Yeah. It's been such a good

[00:23:52] Taylor: ride. And has AI affected that?

[00:23:53] Ezra: Yeah.

[00:23:53] Taylor: Yeah.

[00:23:53] Ezra: But we're using AI for dev.

[00:23:54] Taylor: Yeah.

[00:23:55] Ezra: We're using a lot of A- where AI's been helpful in a way.

[00:23:58] Ezra: Um, I think that software is very hard. Yeah. It's the hardest business I have. I agree. But it's also the most profitable. I think you told me that. I remember the- You know? And also the, uh... has the highest valuation, and Zipify went . Yeah. And then it's been literally, like, I've been growing, like, 2% a year for, like, four years, five years.

[00:24:14] Ezra: Like, it's just- Yeah. Did you

[00:24:15] Taylor: ever get an offer to sell it? Did you ever think

[00:24:16] Ezra: about selling it? Yeah. Yeah. So, okay, so check this out. With Boom, uh, this is not because I'm some kind of genius, but dude, when I sold that company, e-commerce multiples were 10 to 12. Yeah. Yeah. I got a nine and a half- We nailed it

[00:24:28] Ezra: on six-plus million in EBITDA. I got a great multiple. Yeah. I went and I was like, "Oh, I'm a genius." I thought I was-- I just got lucky. Yeah. But I thought I was, "Yay for me."

[00:24:36] Taylor: Yeah.

[00:24:37] Ezra: Um, and then I was-- did the whole thing. I was like, "Okay, if Zipify's in a good spot, we could sell it now." We just hit, uh, 10 million in, in ARR.

[00:24:44] Ezra: We had, like, a 25-ish percent profit margin. We're doing great. Jesus. And, uh, I went to sell it, and the, like, the market fell apart. It was like- Right in the middle of it ... right. And SA- like, SaaS multiples- SaaS

[00:24:55] Taylor: was at, like, 20 times a year. Like, that-- the SaaS multiples were

[00:24:58] Ezra: crazy It was theoretically worth about $100 million.

[00:25:01] Ezra: Yeah. Theoretically.

[00:25:02] Taylor: Yeah.

[00:25:02] Ezra: And then I went and just, like, the market fell apart. I can't remember what crash it was. One of the crashes in the, in the 2020s. One of the things that's happened, yeah. It was either post-COVID, I don't remember. But basically, um, I timed it back.

[00:25:13] Taylor 2: Yeah.

[00:25:13] Ezra: And then SaaS multiples were in the, in the trash.

[00:25:16] Ezra: Yeah. And then, so I was like, "Okay, well, I'm-- It's-- I make more money, just keep it and run it." And I also like it. Yeah. And I have a b- I have a C- CEO who runs it, who's great at it. And then I was like, "Okay, great. We're gonna do it." And we got it back up to sell again. AI came in and killed SaaS multiples. Oh, man.

[00:25:30] Ezra: And so I would like to sell it. And also one of the things it does, that I'm grateful for, is it keeps me close to the space-

[00:25:37] Taylor 2: Yeah ...

[00:25:38] Ezra: in a way that since I'm so far out of Smart Marketer and I'm, I had been so far out of operating that, like, yes, I'm strat- I'm, uh, these guys, I meet with them weekly. I talk to them about everything.

[00:25:47] Ezra: I connect them with agencies. I help them out. But it's different when you're operating. Totally. It's different.

[00:25:51] Taylor: Totally.

[00:25:52] Ezra: And I have been, I've been pretty, like, I didn't realize how much I had lost my- Uh, I don't know how to say it, but like, not ability but, but closeness to the industry- Yeah ... and Zippfly keeps me close, which I really like.

[00:26:04] Taylor: Yeah, no doubt about it. It's funny, uh-

[00:26:05] Ezra: Which by the way, I, I don't know what, if you guys are using Aftersell or Rebuy, then I'm gonna call your agencies-

[00:26:09] Taylor: No, let's

[00:26:10] Ezra: do it. Let's- ... let me give you a discount. Let me g- 'cause dude, I really believe truly, I truly believe this, I think we have the best product.

[00:26:15] Taylor: Yeah.

[00:26:15] Ezra: I really do.

[00:26:16] Taylor: And so- What do you think what's happening in that space? What do you think about, like, what Judge.me is doing and then what they're email saying?

[00:26:21] Ezra: I think,

[00:26:22] Taylor: um- These guys are going hardcore.

[00:26:23] Ezra: Yeah. It's... Dude, the, I said this on stage, that I've never been in a more ruthless- Dude ... industry than B2B SaaS.

[00:26:29] Taylor: It's

[00:26:29] Ezra: wild. It's ruthless. But I also think when the Judge.me scenario and, and, and, and some of these SaaS companies, I'm not gonna name them, have gotten a little greedy and a little less paying attention to their customers- Mm ... and a little bit, it's like, yeah, that's gonna happen.

[00:26:44] Taylor: Yeah.

[00:26:45] Ezra: This happened with Yotpo.

[00:26:46] Taylor: Yeah.

[00:26:46] Ezra: It's like you, you, you gotta treat people well. You gotta charge fair prices. Yep. You gotta like... So-

[00:26:52] Taylor: Yeah, when you have infinite gross margin, theoretically, there's so much temptation to take an exploitive share of that volume. Yeah.

[00:26:58] Ezra: And here's the other interesting thing I'll say is that, about AI and SaaS You can vibe code a product for 100 people, you can't vibe code a product for 15,000.

[00:27:07] Ezra: I have 15,000 active customers. Yeah. What kind of servers I need. It's like, yeah, you can use some AI- Yeah ... but you better have some good developers.

[00:27:13] Taylor: Right. Well, and just the amount of customer service, like, you need to interact with those people to provide them solutions. Like, and it's just, it just is a large scale problem.

[00:27:20] Ezra: Tell you what else SaaS did. SaaS made it so that we had to be a white glove- Yes ... concierge- Yes ... do it for you. Uh, sorry, AI, I mean. Like, we had to step up. It was no longer enough, "Let me sell you a product." Nope. It's now, "Let me see. What can I do for you? Can I..."

[00:27:34] Taylor: Well, I think this is- this is why, like, my whole thing is I've seen this convergence of service and software because what the customer wants is just an outcome.

[00:27:41] Taylor: Yeah. It's sort of like they don't care. They want a- They want a

[00:27:42] Ezra: mechanism. Yes ...

[00:27:43] Taylor: they don't want a product. They don't want a s- Yeah ... they want you to, to create an outcome.

[00:27:46] Ezra: They want.

[00:27:46] Taylor: And however you do that, whether you do that with software, whether you do that with people, like, whatever, get me money. Get me, make me money.

[00:27:51] Ezra: Yes,

[00:27:51] yes.

[00:27:51] Taylor: You know? And so they, there's just sort of this, like, loss. Like, they don't wanna buy... They don't wanna be hand and a hander and be like, "Good luck." Yeah. They're not, they're not interested in that. They're like, "Go swing it. Go build me something. I need to make money," you know?

[00:28:01] Ezra: Yeah.

[00:28:01] Taylor: And e-commerce owners are just, they're f- they're ruthless in their attempt to create margin 'cause there's-

[00:28:06] Ezra: Yeah.

[00:28:06] Ezra: Well, here's what I'm seeing- ... some, some have been ... with,

[00:28:08] Taylor: with,

[00:28:08] Ezra: uh, P&Ls 'cause I, uh, one of the benefits of being in, having s- int- ownership, pretty good equity in a lot of brands, is I get to look at... And, and being a navigator, not a driver, is I spend a lot of time with P&L. Yeah. Here's what I've seen with P&Ls.

[00:28:20] Ezra: In a e-commerce P&L, you have cost of goods. Yep. You have cost of marketing.

[00:28:23] Taylor: Yep.

[00:28:23] Ezra: You have G&A, which is like your team and salary. Yep. Then you got some other few little things. Those are kind of the big buckets. Yep. That, uh, cost of goods is going up.

[00:28:32] Taylor: Mm.

[00:28:32] Ezra: And cost of marketing is going up.

[00:28:34] Taylor: Mm.

[00:28:35] Ezra: But-

[00:28:35] Taylor: OPEX is going down

[00:28:36] Ezra: OPEX is going down. That's right. And so that, and so the companies that are getting really efficient-

[00:28:41] Taylor: Yep ...

[00:28:41] Ezra: y- like, you have to be able to make more with less people now.

[00:28:45] Taylor: That's right.

[00:28:45] Ezra: And that has been really the journey across all my orgs is where are we bloated? And it turns out when you interview every person, you find out- A lot of places

[00:28:52] Ezra: where you are.

[00:28:52] Taylor: A lot of

[00:28:53] Ezra: places. Which is, like, sad for the economy because AI is a little bit enabling- That's right ... you know, one s- high level strategic director to do a bunch of stuff that they would've needed two individuals to execute on.

[00:29:03] Taylor: Yeah. Yeah, it'll be interesting. That, that whole car sale. My hope is that what it creates is more entrepreneurs.

[00:29:07] Taylor: Yeah. More people that go and say, "Okay, well, yeah, I guess that labor, now I can go and try and do something I couldn't do," and we'll see where that goes. Um, what else? What other Q4... Give me something that you think-

[00:29:18] Ezra: Okay, here's what I think about Q4. I think people are fucking lazy with their merchandising.

[00:29:23] Taylor: Mm.

[00:29:23] Ezra: God, are you lazy. I'm sorry, but-

[00:29:25] Taylor: Website merchandising specifically?

[00:29:26] Ezra: All of it.

[00:29:27] Taylor: Okay.

[00:29:27] Ezra: Like n- like, "Oh, here's 10% off of our whole collection." Yeah, yeah. Thanks. It's like you need to be doing buy one, get ones, and, and, you know, free gifts with purchase, and live shopping discounts, 'cause here's the other thing, merchandising extends to each channel.

[00:29:39] Ezra: That's right. We're doing Facebook Lives, Instagram Lives. Mm. There's merchandising within those. Mm. We're... Like, you have to be creative.

[00:29:45] Taylor: Yeah.

[00:29:45] Ezra: And then the other thing people don't do, 'cause, is, like, they don't think about how can I have somebody feel like they got extra value? Mm. How did they get... Hey, maybe it was a PDF.

[00:29:55] Ezra: Maybe it was... I- I've started doing small sample sizes of all my products. Like, in retail right now with Overtone, we have this hair... We... Our one product that's relevant to all hair is the gloss. We're working on more, but, but mostly we're like, "What color? Your hair is silver, if you're brown," whatever. Yeah.

[00:30:09] Ezra: We do colors. But we have one that's, like, relevant to everyone, so we create a little sachet of it. It's, like, one ounce, and that's at the... Right at Target, you just put it in your bag at the checkout. It's our number one SKU.

[00:30:18] Taylor 2: Oh.

[00:30:19] Ezra: And so I think, like, basket builders, which are products that are easy to manufacture, high margin- Yeah

[00:30:25] Ezra: that you can build bundles around, build- giveaways, free gifts- Yeah ... upsell and cross-sell. People don't do basket builders. Yeah. And my whole... Dude, I sell a $38 basket builder bundle as a pre-purchase shopping cart upsell that has, like, 26 bucks in margin, and it changed, fundamentally changed- Yeah ... that business.

[00:30:42] Taylor 2: Yeah.

[00:30:42] Ezra: So I think people are lazy with merchandising, and Q4 is the time. You're fighting against everybody. This is the time to make sure they feel like they got value.

[00:30:50] Taylor: And like you were saying, like, it's a day where you can get away with sending four to six emails, four to six SMSs if you can come up with something new to say each time- Yeah

[00:30:56] Taylor: uh, '

[00:30:56] Ezra: cause you have different ways to position the product. Yeah, and talk about-

[00:30:59] Taylor: Hourly sales, whatever it might be.

[00:31:00] Ezra: Yeah.

[00:31:00] Taylor: There's so many

[00:31:01] Ezra: mechanisms. Or just content. Yeah. "Hey, look, this person's doing this thing. They're using this one of our products. Kind of fun. This guy's chopping his... He's chopping his onions this way using this."

[00:31:08] Taylor: Yeah.

[00:31:08] Ezra: You can mess around with it.

[00:31:10] Taylor: Love it. It's good to have you back in the game, bro.

[00:31:12] Ezra: Back,

[00:31:12] Taylor 2: man. Back.

[00:31:14] Ezra: He's back. I'm

[00:31:14] Taylor 2: back.

[00:31:15] Ezra: Hey. I wrote that- Hey,

[00:31:16] Taylor: we don't have him for long though. No. He stated- Truth is- ... he gave us the truth. Truth is- He's coming in and he's getting out, so- Yeah ... follow him while you can.

[00:31:21] Ezra: Yeah.

[00:31:21] Taylor: Are you... How most active? Still on X? LinkedIn? I'm,

[00:31:24] Ezra: I'm on Instagram. Instagram. I, I... Yeah, I've never been... I would like to... I see the whole community is on X.

[00:31:29] Taylor: Yeah.

[00:31:30] Ezra: I have never been someone who expresses myself through writing.

[00:31:32] Taylor: Oh.

[00:31:33] Ezra: I'm verbal.

[00:31:33] Taylor: Okay.

[00:31:34] Ezra: I like to make videos. Yeah. I like to do audios. And so, and I've missed...

[00:31:37] Ezra: Like, I was a big Facebook guy. I had 70,000 Facebook fans- Yeah ... which at the time in e-commerce was a lot, you know? It was the

[00:31:42] Taylor: most,

[00:31:42] Ezra: oh, yeah. And then everybody moved to Instagram, and I was like, "Oh, I gotta get over there." So I went over to Instagram, and I sort of fell in love with Instagram as just a user of it.

[00:31:48] Taylor: Yeah.

[00:31:48] Ezra: And then everyone's on X, and it's like, okay, am I gonna, like- Have somebody take my stuff and write it out and put it on there? Maybe Maybe ... but I wanna be the person behind my social accounts, and I'm also not... Like, it was a time where it was very important for me to be on these podcasts- Yep

[00:32:04] Ezra: speaking at the events. Now look, I love you guys. I like, I really truly enjoy this, and I want to do a few of them every year, but Molly does that now. I don't need to. So I'm kinda like, you know.

[00:32:13] Taylor: Well, there you go. Go get him on Instagram.

[00:32:15] Ezra: Um- And I'm, I'm on X and stuff, too. I'd love to relate with you wherever you are in the industry.

[00:32:19] Ezra: I'm on LinkedIn. I'm there. I do check in, and, um, yeah, if you'd like to, uh, be friends-

[00:32:24] Taylor: OG ... reach out to me. Legend. Has an off- a lot to offer you both in the game and in life. So seriously, awesome, awesome human, awesome father, awesome husband. Brother, appreciate you.

[00:32:33] Ezra: Thanks so much.