Your Burning Listener Questions Answered

The WI crew dives straight into answering you, our tens of listeners burning questions (Or just the ones folks replied to Zach's tweet with), we look at when (and if) agency folks should spin up their own DTC brand, the hidden costs (time, cash flow, ops, P&L) most marketers underestimate, and a very practical rundown of how to go 0→1 and then scale. We chat through how to avoid the classic trap of riding one “hero” ad too long and you’ll hear real budgets, campaign counts, inventory constraints around a holiday push, how to pick lower AOV vs higher AOV for faster learnings and better cash flow. We also get candid on the financial reality for founders (who are often “broke until an exit”) and how to think long-term.

Key takeaways:

• Should an agency owner actually become a DTC brand owner or is that just shiny-object syndrome?
• What’s the true time/capital tax of switching from retainers to inventory + P&L risk?
• How different is cash flow in an agency vs. e-com brand?
• What a clean 0→1 playbook looks like for paid.
• What “real” scale looks like in a Meta account on a holiday week.
• Why you can’t we scale past a certain daily spend even when a video “works”.
• How many winning ads you actually need to push beyond $1–3k/day (hint: more than one)
• The AOV you should launch with if you need fast learning + sustainable cash flow.
• How category passion + founder advantage will impact messaging and LTV over 1–2 years.
• The uncomfortable founder realities no one says out loud.

This episode is sponsored by Wayflyer, a smarter way to use debt for growth. To learn more about them and how they may be able to help your brand grow head here 

This episode is sponsored by ROKU. Did you know Roku integrates with Shopify, allowing you to see marketing spend and performance of your ad campaigns in Shopify? Oh and you can LITERALLY HAVE SOMEONE SHOP ON THEIR TV using Roku. Action ads let Roku viewers purchase products from your online store directly from their TV. To give them a try head here.

To connect with Andrew Foxwell send an email [e-mail]

To connect with Brad Ploch send him a DM at https://x.com/brad_ploch

To connect with Zach Stuck send him a DM at https://x.com/zachmstuck

Learn More about the Foxwell Founders Community at https://foxwellfounders.com/

Episode Transcript

(00:00):
Like if I'm being like super straight up,

(00:01):
it's like if you can change the offer
and the ad account could turn around
overnight and you can push up more scale
because now consumers are realizing, Oh,
this is easier to understand or it's
easier to unlock or
whatever that might be.
There are exceptions to this, but most of
the time they're a flash in the pan and
they're not the people that are out there
consistently doing the work.
And the other thing is all of these
people that we all know that are well

(00:22):
known in our industry, including us.
There are like multiple people under them
that are also or with them that
are also doing the work and that are
really smart and potentially smarter
than them and or than us.
I think for a while, people would be
shocked to hear that you're spending
40% upwards of 40% more in some cases of
your revenue on marketing.

(00:43):
I think people are
really shocked by that.
And I think that's just like somewhat the
reality unless you have a really unique,
you know, you have strong LTV, you have
some kind of like organic mode.
Like there's a lot of things that could
factor into that, but, um, kind
of the, kind of the barrier to entry at
this point, you can still have
other playbooks that can work.
I mean, these guys do
crazy affiliate stuff.
They do a ton of stuff with tick tock
shop driving traffic over to Amazon.

(01:04):
I mean, there's definitely no one size
fits all playbook that everyone has to
follow.
And if someone says like, this is how you
grow a brand, like just know there's
going to be a bunch of other ways that
you probably can go about it.
I also think like you also just have to
tap into what you're good at.
And now let's take a listen to the
scalability school podcast.

(01:27):
First of all, big
celebration, huge confetti emoji.
Like we're texting
each other on an iPhone.
Congratulations to my co-hosts.
Good job.
Most people, this is like a restaurant.
Like you don't make it past
the first six months or whatever.
Like look at this.
Most podcasts fail after
the third episode, right?
We're here.
Not us.
Not us.
Hanging on.
We've continued to receive tens of emails

(01:48):
from people about how great this
podcast is.
So everybody actually people like that.
They said they actually, I've had three
people comment this week.
Tell me that they love how
informal, informal it is.
So it's not like too structured.
And we're like, that's just cause we are
bad at planning and we don't.
All right.
All right.
Hold on.
I'm doing a decent job.

(02:09):
Of course.
But anyway, guys, we're anyway, guys and
gals and everything in between.
We're glad you're here.
Thanks for being here.
We're excited to talk through questions
that we got on our mostly
Zach's Twitter profile in response to his
tweet or sorry, X talking about
everything from, Hey, you know, we want
to answer your questions.

(02:29):
People ask us for this.
And so it's, it's, it's a whole bunch of
stuff we're going to go through today.
A potpourri, if you will, a potpourri of
questions, a lot of different things.
So we're going to go
ahead and dive right in.
Hey, what's up?
This is Andrew from scalability.
School.
And we really believe in way flyer.
And the episode is actually brought to
you by way flyer today.
If you ever run a brand or you work with

(02:50):
brands, you know, the
challenge isn't getting sales, right?
It's it's managing cashflow.
So you can actually grow.
There's things like inventory invoices
that come due ad spend ramps up before
big sales periods, and suddenly you're
caught between waiting on revenue
and needing money today.
And that's what way
flyer helps with, right?
They help DTC founders get fast access to
capital, usually within 48 to 72 hours.

(03:11):
And the repayment terms are designed
around how e-commerce actually works.
Think flexible monthly caps, fixed
repayment options, and even products
built specifically for brands
selling on Shopify and Amazon.
What makes them different is they
actually understand the space.
They know the ups and downs of inventory
cycles, the importance of timing,
ad spend, and how seasonal swings can
make or break a year.

(03:31):
Working with way flyer feels less like
borrowing from a bank and more like
having a partner who's
invested in your growth.
So whether you're looking to cover
inventory, smooth out cashflow, or give
your marketing budget the fuel it needs
before a big season, check them out
at way flyer.com
forward slash scalability.
First question.
You know, I think Zach, I've heard people
ask you this and I think it's worth
bringing up right away, which is when

(03:53):
should an agency try to be a DTC brand?
Or like, when should
people make that transition?
Cause that's something that we, I hear
about literally all the time.
I talk about founder members bring it up.
Oh, I'm starting a brand like Zach stuck.
And I, it's a thing that a
lot of people chat about.
So when and why should they ever do that?
And Brad, you have this as well.
So I'd be curious of your take.

(04:13):
Yeah.
I mean, I think I had the
intention all along to do this.
So when I started Homestead, I was like,
Hey, I want to do the agency thing.
And then I would go into brands.
Cause if I go way back, I actually
started a brand and I
was 19 in college and did
like a Kickstarter and
all that fun stuff for it.
And I always loved
being on the brand side.
So I always knew I wanted to get back
there at some point.
So like, that's the like forward answer.

(04:33):
But I think a lot of people, you know,
are in this mode of like, okay, agency
game is a grind, maybe I
want to try the other side.
I think that it really comes down to like
your time and energy and where
you're getting energy from.
If you're getting energy from solving
problems in businesses versus like
agency problems, like people and staffing

(04:55):
and leading and teaching people things.
You get a lot of energy from like
teaching and stuff like that.
I'd say keep running your agency.
Like you're probably doing just fine.
And you should stick to
that and keep focused on that.
But if you are in this quest of like, I
want to go learn something new that I
know nothing about, which is like product
and ops and finance, really, like really

(05:17):
going deep into all those things.
I think that's a great
opportunity to do it.
I think that the biggest thing is it's a
time suck, you know, where I've tried to
run a bunch of different businesses at
the same time, and it's really hard to do
a lot of things at once.
So I think you just have to be cognizant
of how much time it's going to eat up.
And I also think like the other thing is

(05:37):
just like financially how much you're
willing to like take a bet on.
So the first brand that we started with,
like I dumped 150 K cash into, it was a
lot of cash and I
shouldn't have done that.
Should have started way smaller.
It should have
launched a brand from scratch.
But yeah, I think that you kind of have
to take those things into consideration.
If you're, if you're like debating it and
you're like, Hey, I've got 50 grand
to spare and I'm ready to take the risk.

(05:59):
And I feel like the team that I have in
place at the agency allows me to step
away for 10, 15 hours a week to go kind
of get this thing rolling.
Um, I say do it, then give it a shot.
But I mean, definitely
prepared to torch that entire 50 K.
Um, especially on the first one, like we
are on technically brand number six
right now in the portfolio.

(06:19):
Um, a few of the first ones didn't like
pan out to be massive.
I mean, we got lucky.
How has been like chipping away and a
little bit slower growth out of the gate.
But yeah, I mean, I think you just have
to be prepared to on time side and
financially and what you're really
willing to risk on that front.
Yeah.
I think just to add on the financial
piece of it, I don't
have an opinion one way
or another on what any
individual person should do.

(06:40):
I think you covered that really well.
I think agency people think that running
a brand is easier than it is because they
get to do the marketing stuff.
Um, and I'm not saying this is this was
just that said this, and I don't think
just as extremely smart, so I don't, um,
this is not a knock on him directly.
If you, if you haven't been involved in P
and L conversations and ops
conversations with clients and helping
like guide some of that decision making,

(07:02):
you're going to get slapped in the face.
The first time you have to do that now
that you're not capable of doing it.
But I think people are under for a little
bit of a rude awakening with that.
Uh, and then the cash flow consideration,
it's extremely different.
It is just a fundamentally different
business model from cash, a cash
position and agency assuming you bill up
front or with even reasonable 30 day
terms, like you have way more cash in an
agency business than you probably ever

(07:23):
will, uh, or for several
years in, in an e-com business.
So I think that just be cautious.
Yeah.
Just to be like very blunt, we got
homestead to a million in annual revenue.
And I didn't know how to read a P and L
at all, like zero, like that's not
possible with the, with the DZ brand.
You need to know exactly where all your
cash is and what you're losing money
on and what you're spending it on.
Right.

(07:43):
It's just much easier to do in an agency
space where it's like, here's how much
money I have in my checking account and
how much money is coming in based on what
we just sent on QuickBooks invoices.
I usually get paid within X amount of
period or a few days late, like let's go
hire another person and keep pushing up.
So, I mean, again, that's like me saying
how dumb I was when I started the
agency, but like, it's very, it's much
harder to do that properly.

(08:03):
Like Brad said on the brand side.
I mean, I would say
that it's also two things.
One is, is like, what do you want to do?
Is that actually
something you want to do?
Is it because you want to have a brand
because it's cool to have a brand or is
this actually something you want to do
because you think it's interesting and
it's going to add
something unique to the world.
That's a big difference.
And it's going to show in the way that
you go through and the way that you're
working late at night for it.

(08:24):
If you really are like,
this is a great product.
And I believe in this and I like this
versus I want to launch this because
it's a good idea.
The other thing that I would say is, you
know, going through and allocating, like
if you want to just do it from an agency
to say, Hey, I want to have a brand.
I want to get it going, then like have a
plan for how you will market it and how
it will be part of the journey for you
getting more leads in your agency.

(08:45):
That's a lot of people's like, it's like,
Oh, I'm starting this brand.
But then it's like, well, what are you
going to do with it?
It's like, well, we're not sure.
We're getting it off the ground.
It's like from day one,
you'd be posting about it, right?
That's going to be a transparent thing
that people identify with because brand
owners that could be your potential
customers are there or have been there.
And that's going to be a way that you can
connect with them right away.
There was a bunch of questions that came
in about, well, basically like scaling

(09:06):
and how you scale.
And we've covered this in the last
episode of like, how do you go through
and scale and a
little bit of the playbook?
That's a, it's a hot playbook, honestly.
And if you haven't listened to the
episode, go back and listen to it.
Yeah.
So it's episode eight.
We're checking out for us to ask how to
scale from zero to 10 K 10 K to 100 K.
I will ask what's needed to go from 50 K
and spend to a hundred K a day and spend.

(09:29):
And then, you know, Garrett asked, Matt
asked, how do you love your campaign
structures you're using for scaling and
testing and how it goes.
And we've talked about this a whole, you
know, obviously a bunch, I would say
predominantly it comes down to creative
and your systems for getting creative.
Into the, into, you know, the, this into

(09:51):
your workflow and not just creative,
but personas as well and unlocking new
personas and unlocking offer testing
and landing page and,
you know, CRO testing.
Other things you guys want to say about
scaling from one level to another.
A lot of folks seem to be interested in
sort of like the, the one K to five
K or the 50 to a hundred.

(10:13):
And I don't know that
actually they're that different.
Yeah. I think the zero to one is pretty
different than some of
the scaling up stuff.
I think at the zero to one, you're just
trying to find anything
that works that you can lean into.
So generally what that
looks like is going wide.
I think Zach has laid
this out pretty nicely.
I think in episode eight, when we talked
about kind of this, this playbook
generally speaking and another podcast, I

(10:33):
know he's been on, kind of like laying
out, go wide with the messaging, use
statics, because it's easier to crank
statics out, you can be, if it focuses
you to be clearer and more concise
with the messaging
that you're looking for.
So I think getting from zero to something
is just trying to go wide with what can
have the potential to work.
And then once you have any evidence of
success in any of those things, it's

(10:53):
like, in my opinion, it's kind of
obsessively focusing on
whatever that one thing is.
So if it's a specific persona, how can
you get more out of that?
And what we talked about in that episode,
just to give you a quick highlight
is you kind of take that
and diversify the messaging.
Like how can that, that same kind of
thing be used across similar types of
messaging for the same persona, but maybe
slightly different angles of it.
How can you take the

(11:14):
static, turn it into a video?
That's kind of how to expand that and get
the creative flywheel rolling
around that, whatever that is, that's
working, match it up with a landing
page that is consistent with the message.
Is there anything you could do with the
offer that compounds it further?
Can you go into the whitelisting route?
Like there's, there's a bunch of
different steps that you can take, but I
think zero to one is starting wide.
It's like, maybe you have some opinions
on that as well, but I think it'd be

(11:34):
interesting for you to talk
about the scale part of it.
Five to 10 to 10 to a
hundred or whatever you want.
Yeah.
I mean, like we, just this last week, we
ran into inventory stuff, uh, back
half of June and then finally got in a
better spot and we're prepping
hauls for fourth of July sales.
So, I mean, when we were looking at the
thirds, this was what the fourth

(11:55):
was on Friday.
So this was Thursday and meta.
We were spending 32 K a day on that day
on the fourth or on the third.
Sorry.
We had one, two, three, four, five, six,
seven, eight, nine, 10 campaigns
running in our ad account.
And of those, we have one, two, three,
four that were just focused on sale
campaigns that were basically sale

(12:16):
creatives and
everything else was evergreen.
We, we break up the
campaign by partner whitelisting.
We break it out by product.
Like for us, we might break out like a
compression sock versus
like a trade sock or whatever.
And then we have our
creative testing campaign.
All of those for the most part are ABOs
that are kind of like our evergreen
campaigns.
And then when it's time to scale them,

(12:36):
we'll roll out like a CBO right now.
We're running lowest cost for the most
part, almost entirely across our ad
account, we had some issues getting cost
controls to spend at the rates that we
wanted to, but the point that I'm trying
to make here is cool.
We have 10 campaigns on Thursday,
spending 32 grand in meta on Sunday, the
sixth, we spent 76 grand in meta and we
killed one of those campaigns off.

(12:58):
So we literally had the
same exact campaigns running.
All we did was push budget up.
So I think like in theory, what Andrew
said is very right, which is you're
going to do the same thing.
You're just going to see the performance
that indicates that your new customer
rise is so strong on a daily basis that
even like in the morning, it's like,
Oh my gosh, when your customer is above a
two or above three, like we can
definitely push here and that just allows

(13:20):
you to like push into more spend.
I mean, I think even for Apple ovens or
running Apple oven right now, we were
at like five grand a day sale period
comes around, we double budget from five
to 10, nothing complicated.
We have one campaign in
there, 20 assets running.
They're the best video, basically reels
ads from Facebook and meta ads.
Copy them over to that.

(13:40):
Um, one campaign letter, it doubled it
from five to 10, 10 to 15, 15 to 20
over the course of four days.
Again, it's like not
that complicated to do.
It's more just about having the right
tools in place that the performance
is so strong that then you can push it.
It's really nothing more complicated than
that from what I'm seeing.
So it's not like we're doing
some crazy campaign structure.

(14:01):
It's not like we're
doing anything wild there.
It's your normal standard playbook,
creative testing in an ABO or in a CBO,
let the best ads and the best ad sets
pull up the spend and that's really it.
So I think like a lot of
people overcomplicate it.
And I think a lot of it comes down to, do
you have really good ads?
Do you have a really good offer?
Have you proven out landing pages and

(14:21):
then have you killed off landing pages
that are maybe pulling down your average
row as, cause like that was something
going into the sale, we had like eight
landing pages running.
We cut it down to three.
So like, these are the top three.
Why would we even spend?
Even if we want to test something
different during the sale period, get
rid of the, get rid of the nuance, get
rid of like the variables and just
put it all, put all
your chips in at once.
So to me, that's how we think about it.

(14:43):
Usually that's how we scale even over
like a black Friday period.
I remember like we had maybe
10 campaigns going into the day.
Some of those budgets, we would just like
X and just be like, okay, we're
ready to spend, let's see what happens.
It wasn't anything more
complicated than that.
So to me, it's more about having those
right first variables before you can
actually hit the gas than anything else.
Yeah.
I mean, we use the Frankenstein method.

(15:06):
Jizz.
No, I'm just kidding.
You bring things back
from where we go near you.
You bring things back
from the dead at 70.
Yeah.
That's there.
Yeah.
And they're all $1 different.
And then we use the bolt method.
Right.
The double up triple up method that
people joke about on Twitter is real.
Like, yeah, that's the reality of it.
If things are working, you can literally

(15:26):
double budgets and things right out.
It's totally fine.
So yeah.
I mean, that's not that exciting of an
answer, but that's the truth of what
we literally just did this last week.
So yeah.
Yeah.
I mean, to dig into the specifics of the
campaign structure question from Matt,
like Facebook actually has like some
decent meta, Facebook, whatever, has it
actually has some like recommendations
around this and that Yoni on Twitter

(15:48):
has called this out as like, you should
have a specific business case for
splitting out into new
campaigns, just like that.
And that's how we look at it, the lens
that we look at it through.
So what that looks like in practice is if
you let's simplify it and say you have,
you're a single SKU brand, you should
probably have one campaign for a very
long time until you start to
introduce like more offers.
We were talking like you should be
spending several thousand dollars a day

(16:08):
before I think you need to be branching
off into new campaigns and even
ad sets in my opinion.
Personally, I'm not a huge fan of
creative testing ad sets.
I think they're okay.
But I think at the end of the day, like
you can keep it very simple and you
start to add when you have a business
case to do so, which is you need to hold
the campaign to a specific target because
it have different margins or it's a
different product or it's a limited time

(16:29):
sale thing where again, kind of a
margin conversation, but have a specific
business case for splitting it out.
In my opinion,
one thing I was curious, you know, you
guys looked like I do too about within
and this is a scaling question is like as
people are scaling and we got this,
this is from, uh, from Garrett going
through the bottlenecks that people face.
We all look at a lot of ad accounts and
where the bottlenecks are and what you

(16:49):
see looking at all these accounts of
like, why can't we scale?
I'll just, I'll just go
answer my own question first.
This is classic Andrew Foxwell.
But which is like the bottleneck
generally that I see is
that they keep doing the
same thing and there hasn't been any
innovation of the things that we've just
aforementioned.
So it's like, there's, you know, over and

(17:11):
over not trying anything new, hasn't been
any new products has driven to the same
landing page, you know, like it's, and
it's like, why can't we
keep turning up the budget?
It's like, well, you know, it's, goes
back to what I taught
in the scaling course
that, you know, you guys took and Zach,
the homestead, all your employees tell me
that they go through, it's like the
horizontal scaling method, which is like,

(17:31):
you can't just take
one thing, turn it up.
You have to have, it covers a broad base
of who you're talking to, why reasoning
creative, and then,
you know, go that way.
I don't know what other like common
bottlenecks do you guys see from
scaling from a scaling standpoint?
Yeah.
I have a specific example of
mine from a client recently.
Sometimes it manifests
itself in different ways.
And I think if you go back to not to

(17:52):
like, keep plugging
in a previous episode,
but like the point of that episode where
we talked about the playbook was to give
you a bunch of different options for
things you can go
change because it could,
it could be several of them.
It could be one of them.
So I think you have to pick one and kind
of commit to doing that.
So let me go into a specific example.
We had a client who basically had like
one winning ad, like they had just
kind of kicked off running ads founder
video doing really well, but we run

(18:13):
into a point where we increased budget
and efficiency just drops.
And there's no marginal benefit of
increasing the budget.
And at that point, it seemed to be the
whole was that we needed some
additional creative, right?
Like we have one video that's working.
If you look in your ad account right now
and you are being carried by one video or
one static or one piece of creative,
there's likely some potential that you
have the ability to diversify around away

(18:36):
from that, you know, at a thousand to
2000, 3000 bucks a day, you can get away
with one or two, but if you want to get,
you know, higher than that, you need, you
need a lot more that's making up a 10
plus percent of your
spend than just one ad.
So for them, it was, okay, what's the
messaging that's working for them?
I was speaking to a specific persona
about the challenges that they face,
which is very blank away of saying, like,

(18:57):
I'll just use a random example.
That's not them old men
with really bad eyesight.
Like they needed a
solution for this thing.
So we dug into that a little bit more
with launching some review.
We took, we took reviews, we turned them
into like video versions of the review
or it was like an AI
voiceover reading the review.
Cool.
Now we've got another additional winner.
Now we have two ads making up 40 or 80%

(19:18):
of the budget and the rest of the 20%
made up by the rest of the ad account.
And we, we, we once again ran into this
issue of we increased the budget.
All that happens is now row as degrades.
We don't actually get a
marginal marginal win in revenue.
The next thing that we did was how do we
make a landing page that is
cohesive with the messaging of, um, uh,
just made a five reasons why landing
page that pretty much exactly mimicked

(19:39):
the flow of the couple of top ads and
that up unlocked an
additional 40% of spent.
So I think like you'll know that it's
happening because you can't push spend
anymore without a massive degradation in
row as, or you just get nothing
additional and you just go, you know, I
think you can kind of go chip away.
I'm not a big fan of like using
benchmarks and ad accounts for those
things, because I think they can be
really easily, um, rinsed out, but

(20:01):
there's, yeah, I have really no notes.
I think Brad nailed that.
I think it's go back to
that episode, listen to it.
We gave like whatever seven different
things that could be the issue.
And just pick one a week and try it and
see if that can, can unlock it.
Cause yeah, I mean, it's usually offer.
Like if I'm, if I'm being like super
straight up, it's like, if you can
change the offer and the ad account could
turn around overnight, um, and you

(20:22):
could push up more scale because now
consumers are realizing, Oh, this is
easier to understand, or it's easier to
unlock or whatever that might be.
So if I had to pick one
thing, that's usually the biggest
thing that has the most leverage.
We got multiple questions about how you
use debt to grow and how do you
advise brands to think about this?
Yeah.
I mean, for hollow specifically, um,

(20:45):
we've used a lot of debt to get to where
we're at now, I mean, we're bootstrap
business, um, to go from one to eight
to 21 to whatever we'll do this year, 40
something hopefully.
Yeah.
It just takes a lot of money to buy a lot
of socks to sell them.
Right.
So I think usually
brands are starting out.
They're looking at like Shopify capital,

(21:05):
cause it's very easy and accessible.
There's a bunch of other lenders, which,
you know, way flyers like our
lender of choice,
they've worked with us a lot.
There's great ones settled.
There's a handful of them that are there
that are awesome, but way flyers
been the one that's been kind of there to
support us and always been there to
like be there when things get a little
tough, even some at some point.
So for us with our kind of cash

(21:27):
conversion cycle for that business
specifically, we buy all of our raw
materials at front, which is pretty rare.
Sometimes you can buy a finished good
material from your manufacturer because
we're making socks out of alpaca.
It's just very unique.
And none of the manufacturers in the U S
for one, take that big of a bet on buying
millions of dollars of this alpaca yarn
that they were like, I don't even know
what this is, we had
to find a way to do it.
And so that was really our option.

(21:48):
Usually how that works is you have to get
to a certain size and scale out of the
gate to kind of prove
that you can produce profits.
So for us, it was like a million five,
our first year, I think we did like
200, 300 K to the bottom line.
And at that rate, we were, we were
basically saying, Hey, We can do this
at more scale we're profitable in our
first real year here.
We just need more dollars to go buy more

(22:09):
product to keep growing.
And I'll be like, very honest, like it
was definitely much easier in years past
to get debt as consumer in
general was just healthier.
The market was healthier.
Things like that.
A lot of these lenders were much more
easy to just hand out
dollars to say, yeah,
go grow, go grow your business.
Now it's very profit driven.
You cannot not be
profitable and go ask for debt.
You have to be profitable and have a path

(22:30):
of continuous, continued profitability.
For us, I mean, it was in the beginning
and it's kind of a little bit of Shopify
capital, a little bit of money from way
flyer, using credit cards to try and like
work our way through, uh, pushing back
payments on fulfillment costs or ad
spend or whatever, but, um, I mean, for
us, we absolutely needed it to grow
to where we're at now.

(22:51):
I mean, we couldn't, we
just couldn't have done it.
If we tried to just bootstrap our way,
we'd probably be, you know, and maybe
8 million this year versus, you know,
two, two and a half, three years ago.
And I mean, the truth of it
is it's risk tolerance too.
I naturally have like
pretty high risk tolerance.
And pretty high conviction in myself,
Brad is, you know, I
think Brad and Andrew
can definitely confirm that, but that's

(23:11):
where a lot of it comes.
Like you have to know where you're going
to allocate those dollars and how you're
going to pay those people back.
Otherwise, you know, you,
you risk losing the business.
I definitely wouldn't be where we are
either without like our head of finance.
Jacob, who's just been an absolute savage
at this stuff, building incredible
cashflow forecast, incredible like
modeling, um, to help these lenders
understand how we think about allocating

(23:32):
their dollars and obviously returning
capital back to them.
So yeah, I think risk
tolerance is a huge part of it.
I totally agree.
Brad, any notes on that?
Hey, this is Andrew Foxville and I'll
tell you one platform
I'm testing now is Roku.
One thing I love about Roku is that it's
the number one TV streaming platform
accounting for 47% of all streaming time

(23:53):
in the U S as of 2024 and reaches 125
million households from the
Roku home screen each day.
It integrates with
Shopify, which is pretty cool.
You can literally have someone shop.
On their TV using Roku with Shopify.
The targeting is on point.
You can use custom audiences has, you
know, pretty legit
demographic drill downs.

(24:14):
You can have a pixel as
well to track success.
And if you spend a thousand dollars
testing it, they give you a thousand
dollars of credit using code Foxwell.
You know, it works like one D to C brand
that I'm aware of increasing conversions
by 25% using repurposed social video ads,
which is pretty cool.
And another D to C brand saw a 3.3 time

(24:34):
row as from Roku movie, you
know, using a triple M to prove it.
You know, if you're not doing anything
else, you can also just remark it to
people on your list, using the custom
audiences feature, taking pre-existing
social content and putting it right on
Roku and running it to make sure that
you're in front of as many people as you
can be, or as many of those customers
as you can be in Q4 and Q3.

(24:55):
So hopefully you will give it a shot.
If you're interested, go to
foxwelldigital.com forward slash Roku
and go ahead and click to get started.
So we have some questions that came in
about like starting out
where, what would you do?
So I'll ask, uh, I'll
ask you Brad right away.
If you, this is from Sean G Sean G.
If you were launching a new D to C brand

(25:17):
from scratch, would you choose
a product with tight seasonality windows
with high first order value, but
weaker LTV or be an evergreen product
with lower first order value, but
stronger LTV over one to two years?
Curious what you think is trade-offs.
I obviously have my answer for Brad.
Yeah.
I mean, I lean towards the better LTV
just because you'll have more consistent

(25:38):
cashflow throughout the year.
Like at the end of the day, though, like
both have, I think Alex from Ozy says
this, like all
businesses have shit or something.
So like they all have it.
Like your acquisition costs are probably
going to be tougher on the evergreen
products because you're competing with a
bunch of people throughout the
entire year who probably have something
similar with a tight, it's hard
without like a specific product in mind,
but a product with tight seasonality
window, high, high first order value,

(26:00):
meaning like what is high, you know, we
work with clients who have a $5,000 first
time AOV and like, yeah, that's
great, but you know how much you have to
spend in order to get that customer.
It's like you're spending $2,000 to know
if an ad's going to work.
Whereas like a $40, a $40 AOV, you can,
you can spend the same and you're out of
learning and ripping really fast.
So I would lean towards the lower first

(26:22):
order value if it's kind of something
that you're just getting used to, unless
you have a really compelling, unique
advantage to for the higher AOV product,
because it's probably more competitive,
but you can learn substantially faster.
And I think the cashflow would probably
be better as a result of that, not to get
like super fluffy woo over a second, but
like, I think there's important
considerations for like having your like

(26:46):
benchmarks for what is a good business,
high margin, high LTV, whatever,
depending on the category.
But it also helps like really enjoy the
category or be somewhat involved in the
category.
So you have some kind of unique advantage
in that way of like
how to talk to people,
which is ironic coming from an agency
where we work with the brands across a
bunch of different things.
But yeah, that's, that's where my gut
says is the latter of the, those two.
You know, what I'm doing is I'm going to

(27:07):
start, I'm going to start a box
subscription company.
I don't know if you guys have heard of
these, but I'm bringing it back from
2010 when they were hot.
Hell yeah.
It's going to be incredible.
It's going to be a
subscription brand curated goods.
Curated goods that you throw away after
three months and it's
going to be incredible.
Your 90 day LTV is great, but after that

(27:28):
cooked, that's what I'm going for.
Yeah.
I mean, obviously we have brands now kind
of that fit both of these categories.
And if I'm going to do it again in the
future, it's
definitely going to be number
B, like it's going to be the higher LTV
subscription, heavy business for the
reason that you can like stack wins.
Right.
And I mean, like a lot of these brands
that are one time purchase, getting
someone back, you know, 30% of people

(27:49):
back, even in the first year is like a
good accomplishment, let alone can you
get 50, 60% of people to buy again the
next month with a subscription business,
like pretty likely to do that.
So yeah, I think that's the move.
I think you just have to take into
consideration the cashflow of that model,
which is you're likely going to lose
money on the first purchase and
inquiring that customer,
maybe not at a very small scale.

(28:09):
So you can be profitable on first
customer acquisition of a low way of the
high LTV product, but with more scale,
that's definitely going to get inverted
from any brand that we've ever worked
with or own now in that ecosystem.
So you just have to kind of build that
into your cashflow model of losing
money on the front end
and banking on the LTV.
So yeah, that's
definitely the move though.

(28:29):
If I had to choose.
So let's get to like a market research
kind of question about what percentage
of revenue should be spent on total
marketing costs at
different revenue sizes.
What is a good profitability percentage
goal at different stages?
We've talked about
this on another podcast.
I know that this would be, you know,
marketing spend includes marketing
salaries, ad spend, subscriptions, free

(28:50):
product, agency fees, et cetera.
What do you guys think about this?
I'm obviously looking at
a lot of different brands.
Do you want me to go first, Brad?
I can go first.
Okay.
Let's just talk about a
million a year business.
Then we can go 10 and then
we can go like 50, right?
Million a year business.
I would think you're going to
spend 400 grand on marketing.

(29:11):
I think you're going to
probably put 300 grand.
So 30% to cost of goods slash cost of
delivery, maybe even 40%.
So 400 K to that.
And you're maybe going to
put 10% to the bottom line.
And that doesn't include
like salaries, stuff like that.
A million a year business is really,
really hard in Ecom.

(29:31):
It's just hard to make that work unless
you're like a solopreneur or you have
like a couple, maybe a freelancer or two
at that scale, it's just very hard.
It sounds like, Oh, a million dollars.
It sounds great, but it really, in
theory, it's very hard to back out once
you start to factor everything else in.
I would imagine at that rate, you're
probably going to spend, you know,
40% of your revenue.

(29:51):
That number can probably stay fairly
consistent, even at 10 million a year.
If you're calling it marketing salaries,
marketing budget, influencer,
content, creative, all
that stuff all included.
I think like the standard that we like to
see in our clients and even like with
our own brands is like
running at like a three M E R.

(30:12):
So call it like somewhere in like the 30
to 35% range that kind of fluctuates
on a monthly basis is what you're
spending on ad dollars.
And then ideally you're in the 10%
operating expenses range.
Like that's 10% of revenue is kind of the
sweet spot of where you want to be.
Um, so it's 40% and then cost of
delivery, probably still
landing around 40% to get
the, you know,
products, the customer's door.

(30:33):
So in a sweet spot at 10 million a year,
you're probably 15% that profit would be
a great target to shoot for.
Um, 10 to 20 is probably like where we
see a lot of brands sitting.
So one to 2 million of EBIT on 10 million
of revenue would be a great business.
And then you push it up to 50 million.
It all depends on like, if there's retail
distribution or not, that'll definitely

(30:53):
factor into like your margin at that
point, assuming you're all D to C shop
for Amazon, even if you're like 70, 30
split 70 shop, 30 Amazon.
I mean, you're probably running still at
like a three M E R at the end of the day.
You're probably still spending 30% of
your budget on, on, on advertising,
especially if you're
trying to grow at a decent clip.

(31:13):
Um, so yeah, I don't think
that really changes a ton.
I think it more depends on like how
you're optimizing your operating
expenses and not
trying to scale those up.
Like if you can be below 10% OpEx at 50
million a year, you're doing great.
And if you're also spending less than 30%

(31:34):
of your, your revenue on advertising
at 50 million year, you're
probably doing really great too.
So I would say that's kind of the
baseline is kind of this like 10% OpEx,
30% to cost of ads.
That's 40%.
You're probably 40% cost of delivery,
meaning like the cost of the
COGS, your product land in the U S pick
pack ship fees at the customer's door.
Maybe there's duties involved depending

(31:55):
on if you're shipping international,
that's where you're like 10 to 20% net
profit kind of sits.
Anything below 10%, you're
like too tight on cashflow.
Like you're not producing enough profit
to even like cover cost of interest,
things like that below 10% and then
anything above 20%, you're likely not
pushing enough growth unless your goal is
like just kind of stabilize and

(32:15):
just be really profitable.
But for most brands that are trying to
grow at 50 to a hundred percent year
over year, that's usually what we see.
Yeah.
I mean, I think you did a good job of
going through the true cost.
I think there's an idea that a lot of
people feel like they're,
that number is different.
I mean, and let's just say that the one
that we see often, right?
Which is the one to 10 million or the two

(32:37):
to 10 million, right?
Which is, I think the most common one we
see or in there are exposed to,
which is that there's going to be more
money at there at the end of the day.
And the reality is this is not the case
today, especially if you're going to
try to be a high growth brand.
So I think, I think the other thing that
I'll just like hit on, which I think
is an interesting point, Brad might have
some notes here is like how much
money you're actually taking home as the

(32:57):
business owner at that rate.
Okay.
So 40% goes to taxes.
So there's 400 K boom gone.
Then we have investing money back in
paying for interest.
Okay.
That comes out.
I mean, you're probably still only paying
yourself like low six figures.
If that, you know, so it's, it's crazy
how much you really have to do in profit
and e-comm for it to really kick out.

(33:19):
And this is where like a lot of people
talk about the agency model.
They just, it's great.
It's very high cashflow, much easier to
take cash out of the business because
you don't need to reinvest it back in to
buy more things that often you can
definitely grow, you know, your team and
people at a steadier clip and a
steady pace, but yeah, when it comes to
e-comm, like that's probably the biggest
misnumerators people are like, Oh wow.

(33:40):
They're doing 20 million a year in
revenue and they're doing 2 million or 3
million in profit, like
that owner must be killing it.
He has, he's got to have Ferraris and all
sorts of crazy shit that owners at 20
million a year business doing 3 million
in profit is probably making 300 K max.
Like max max, which is kind of a crazy
concept to think of.
Yeah, which is still
great on where you live.

(34:00):
Yeah, right.
You might be balling it
up in Appleton, Wisconsin,
you can kill it at 300 K in
LA or in Foxwell's new home.
Santa Barbara, that is not, that's not
going to go very far.
You're not getting guac on your Chipotle.
If you're in Santa Barbara, you are not,
that is not going to work.
Yeah.
Anyways, I just think that's an
interesting and important
thing to call out to on that.

(34:21):
Yeah.
Just one small side note to just add is
like, I think, um, I think for a while
people would be shocked to hear that
you're spending 40% upwards of 40% more
in some cases of your
revenue on marketing.
I think people are
really shocked by that.
And I think that's just like somewhat the
reality unless you have a really unique,
you know, you have strong LTV, you have,

(34:43):
um, some kind of like organic moat, like
there, there's a lot of things that could
factor into that, but, um, it's kind of
the, kind of the barrier of entry at this
point, get used to it.
And that's the thing I think that, that
also, that number has changed
significantly, okay?
Like, you know, it used to
be a different ball game.
And I think that that
that's the reality of today.
And so that's why it's important.
I think to talk about a Forex row as back

(35:05):
in 2019 was a thing.
It was just like, yeah, we're ripping it.
We're at four.
Cool.
Sounds good.
I'm not even that excited.
Six, seven.
I get excited.
Now it's like seeing
those numbers of four.
M E R like 25% ad spend of your revenue
is like, wow, they're killing it.
Yeah.
If you, this is, I know we have an
episode where we like
pick fights with people
or not an episode, but
there's like a segment at the end.

(35:25):
So I'm going to pick
a fight really quick.
Yes.
Be some of the pull
beefs ahead a little bit.
If you see somebody post a screenshot on
Twitter and they are running meta ads
that higher than a 10 X they are full of
shit or they're not
spending enough money.
Like full stop.
There's basically
zero argument against it.
Um, you should question that.
And if it's, if it's substantially higher
than a 10 X, they are lying.
Pure like flat out, they're lying.

(35:46):
So just going to throw that out there.
My, that's my, that's my lead magnet for
the founders membership
is a 10 X screenshots.
50 X 50 X.
Yeah.
If I stopped there.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Remember back in the days when I ran all
the paid media for,
um, peer Vita bracelets.
And I remember they would get like, you
know, 10 X it was like constantly.
Right.
And I remember they, there was a week

(36:07):
period that they never responded to me
with words, uh, it was only fire emojis.
And that's all it was
back in the 10 X days.
So one person asked a question about
financial realities of growing and the
realities of growing a business super
fast versus sort of bootstrapping it.
And I think one, this, there's another

(36:27):
person that has kind
of a related question,
which makes me think about what are the
realities of running a business as a
brand owner or as an agency owner really,
but as a brand owner, since this podcast
is for seven eight figure brand donors,
primarily that isn't talked about.
Like, what are the realities of this that
people just don't talk about or get into?

(36:49):
And when you're in person with people,
Zach, or you're in person with people,
Brad, or like you're having an honest
conversation that you're talking about
with them, what are the realities of this
that you guys see that feel like
aren't discussed ever?
I think a lot of entrepreneurs are pretty
broke until they have an exit.
I think it's like one of the biggest
things that I've had a lot of
conversations about with people, no
matter what, whatever

(37:09):
category they're in,
specifically brand owners, though,
they're not killing it
until they sell a business.
Usually for the most part, especially if
your business is under 10 million a year
in revenue, it's really hard to like
really put a lot of
dollars in your own bank account.
So that's one thing.
The second thing is like, people see all
these brands that
raise VC money and they're
like, man, the owner must
be making millions a year.
Usually they have a board and usually

(37:30):
that board is like,
nope, you have a salary
and it's capped and they don't like
seeing the owners
taking wild distributions out
of those businesses.
So I think that's another thing that a
lot of people have like a misnomer about
of like, Hey, they
raised all this VC money.
They must be, this owner
must be making so much money.
Not always true.
I've definitely learned that by having
conversations with brands that are, are
VC backed and they're like, yeah, I'm

(37:51):
going to set salary.
I actually like make more money on the
side freelancing or some shit.
But, um, that's, those are
kind of two unique things.
Brad, what do you got?
Yeah.
I mean, I think that we
talked about it earlier.
It's like the, just the cashflow
considerations, like
you don't just get to
pull out a bunch of money whenever you
want in a lot of circumstances until you
start to hit those, those
thresholds that you mentioned.
I say this with a lot of love for

(38:11):
everybody that does this is as somebody
who's literally on a podcast right now,
it was like, there's a reason a lot of
brand people do podcasts, like their
knowledge is extremely valuable.
And like it, if they can get
sponsorships, great.
Like there's no, there's no cost
associated with that
other than their time.
And if they have the
access time, like cool.
It's great to get a nice paycheck from,
from a sponsorship thing, knowing that,
um, like the brand, whether for growth

(38:33):
reasons or because it's not big enough.
Yeah.
It's like, you just can't pull cash out.
And again, like I don't think there's
anything wrong with that.
I have no shill sass all you want.
Like we'll probably be doing it.
So like, I have no concerns about it.
It's just like, there's a reason that it
happens at the scale that it does.
And, um, I don't think it's, I don't
think it's good or bad.
It's just this.
Yeah.
Yeah.
No, it's, it's rare to see.
I mean, like, I think the standard from
what I've heard is like, at most

(38:54):
people are pulling like 20% distributions
of like monthly net profit.
If you got multiple,
so here's another thing.
If you got multiple co-founders, you'd
really got to break that number down.
Right.
I think a lot of people
don't think about that.
They're like, Oh, I'm
going to start this business.
We've got like four
awesome co-founders with me.
It's like, you realize that how much
profit you're going to have to do in a
month to take a meaningful distribution

(39:15):
is really going to get pretty small,
especially with more
cooks in the kitchen.
Yeah.
You said, are you going to be driving
that use Prius in 10 years?
If you're going to do it.
Yeah.
I think a lot of it too is, um, obviously
I think about the stuff a lot
from a people angle, cause that's where I
have a lot of, I think a lot of people
that have a business that are in that
phase is they're lonely.

(39:35):
They just don't have a lot of people to
talk to that they can
be really real with.
I think that's one.
And I also think that there's a degree to
which momentum keeps them away from
what they actually want to do.
So the momentum is, is leading them in a
direction and they don't necessarily,
don't take the time to assess and like
look at their life and be like, is this
what I want to be doing right now?

(39:55):
And if it is, I need to be innovating on
the product or I need to be changing the
way that we're thinking about the
operation of this, right?
And they just kind of like keep it going
in the momentum ads.
And then usually more, more workload gets
added and then they find themselves
really burnt out and upset and then
they're just upset for a long period of
time and, and feel like
they don't have control.
So I think that's a big one that you have

(40:17):
to go through when you're
always thinking about that.
That I think is just like a good call out
is Roman Khan, who runs like a
old co absolute G killing it.
He shared with me that like one big thing
that he's trying to do now is trying to
find a way to take a bigger percentage
distribution of his EBITDA.
He's like, I think a lot of business

(40:37):
owners just go so full bore into like,
gotta reinvest, gotta reinvest, gotta
reinvest that they never take the time
to say, what if this business falls apart
one day and I'd not take enough
money out of the company.
So I think like slowing down growth to
focus on profitability and figure out
how you can take more money out to
actually like put some money aside.

(40:58):
I think a lot of brand owners get, like
you said, kind of get stuck in that
Hampshire wheel of like, gotta keep
doing, gotta keep
doing, gotta keep doing that.
They don't really actually slow down and
say, Oh, I actually could take more out.
If I was meaningful with the dollars in
the business a little bit more, if I
spent a little bit less money on
software, a little bit
less money over here.
Maybe I hired off shore instead of
domestic for my next three hires.

(41:18):
I could actually end up taking a little
bit more money out of the business.
I think a lot of brand owners need to
like pause, look at their cashflow P&L
and try to do that because yeah, it's
hard and not every brain gets that,
gets an exit, right?
So if everyone's just waiting for that
one day, I think it's, it can be pretty
brutal. So that's, I just
thought it was like good advice.
He had a manager for like within the last
week, probably a couple of

(41:38):
weeks when this comes out and it's great.
Like he talked about some
of those things exactly.
And somewhat specifically
about how he's doing it.
So you should just check that out.
It's great.
Sweet, sweet.
Why don't we do that?
All right.
And final question is what's the biggest
load of shit that you hear in DTC that,

(42:00):
that, that you disagree with or agree
with that you agree with that shit?
What do you guys think?
He started my beef.
So like I, I saw, maybe I should let you
guys answer the beef's question.
Do you have one, Brad?
You have one?
Go for it.
No, I mean, I just think like one of the,
one of the questions I was in here
from, I'm sorry if I mispronounce your
name, Danivir, but like he kind of, he

(42:21):
kind of said this is like, what do you
see on Twitter that
you like is kind of full
of shit.
It's like a lot of it.
It's like a lot of it.
Like a lot of people, a lot of people are
trying to build a following on Twitter
and they say things that are
not like totally validated.
So you just need to be cautious.
Like I say that knowing full well that
we're three dudes on a podcast, just
like sharing what works for
us within, you know, whatever.

(42:41):
So, um, I think it just,
yeah, he'd be somewhat skeptical.
I think it's cool to get ideas from
people, but you can't,
you can't possibly test
everything at all the time.
So just, uh, yeah, maybe, maybe just be a
little bit more skeptical probably.
Yeah.
I think that one of the bigger things
lately is like,
obviously we focus so much
on meta and it's like, you can only scale
your business on meta.

(43:03):
Talk to a brand person the other day and
they're, they're doing volume, like call
it, what is this?
Tens of millions a month in revenue.
And they spend little to nothing on meta.
So it's like, you can still have other
playbooks that can work.
I mean, these guys do
crazy affiliate stuff.
They do a ton of stuff with tick tock
shop, driving traffic over to Amazon.

(43:23):
I mean, there's definitely no one size
fits all playbook that
everyone has to follow.
And if someone says like, this is how you
grow a brand, like
just know there's going
to be a bunch of other ways that you
probably can go about it.
I also think like you also just have to
tap into what you're good at.
If you're good at ads, cool, then build
your business off of Facebook.
Like that's what, that's what we've done.
So I've been running
Facebook ads for a long time.
That's what we know best.
We don't do anything on tick tock right

(43:45):
now for any of our brands, but there's
people that are putting up
numbers, doing that stuff too.
So I think like one size fits all like
takes like, that's the classic, like,
that's smart.
Yeah.
So generally, I mean, that's kind of
soft, but that was, that's the
one thing I can get annoyed by.
That's true.
I mean, I think that's true.
You know, to me, I would say mine is a
little bit related to what you, what

(44:05):
you guys have both said, which is, you
know, I think the people that are
really successful that I learned from,
and you know, I've been doing this
work in DTC e-com for
like, since it was invented.
So I'm old now.
I just turned 40.
You know, so like the people that I take

(44:26):
inspiration from, you guys, of course,
but other people, they are putting one
foot in front of the other and
like building brick by brick and that
they have this mentality where they're
planning the work and
they're working the plan.
And I know that sounds like really, you
know, out there, but there's so many
people that pop up that they're, you

(44:48):
know, trying to get leads and they're
blowing things up and they're putting out
this and that and whatever.
And it's like, there are exceptions to
this, but most of the time they're
a flash in the pan and they're not the
people that are out there consistently
doing the work.
And the other thing is all of these
people that we all know that are well
known in our industry, including us.

(45:10):
There are like multiple people under them
that are also, or with them
that are also doing the work and that are
really smart and potentially
smarter than them and, or than us, you
know, like my team, right?
They are smarter than me.
And I love that about them.
Like they do, they
put in incredible work.

(45:32):
They're great people and
they're doing it consistently.
And that's what makes us great.
We're just stacking wins
one thing after another.
This is the mission.
And I think that there's
a lot to be said for that.
And I think if you read through, you
know, successful
businesses over time, you
know, everybody loves a very unsexy
business and I think that there's so
much focus in ours on sexy businesses.

(45:55):
But like, that's not true.
There's a lot of these people that are
out here just one thing at a time.
And I think that, that is the people that
you're always trying to find, right?
That are like digging in and, um, you
don't need to be a person.
You can't be a person that's out there
giving advice and giving thoughts.
If you aren't hearing from people 70% of

(46:18):
the time and listening 70% of the time.
And that's something that
I've certainly learned as well.
Yeah, I think there's time.
Totally.
One other thing, one other thing.
And I'm just now kind
of ranting about that.
Maybe we should start fights.
Yeah, the last thing I'll have to say is
that when things are good, all the big

(46:40):
dogs are talking, right?
When things are hard, they go away.
Um, and not calling myself a big dog by
any means by saying this, but like we
went through a really rough
period last spring for hollow.
It was brutal.
Like I thought maybe we
would lose the business even.
It was pretty scary.
We just over index.
We had a super like weather was
completely set off like our sales and our
velocity of what we were planning to sell
and what we ordered versus what we

(47:02):
didn't order of inventory.
It was definitely scary, but I like just
got off of Twitter for like three months.
Cause I'm like, I just, I can't be out
here talking about things being good
when things are not good.
And I think when there's people that are
always posting about things are good all
the time, like you can
usually, you know, call bullshit.
Cause it's not, it's not the truth.
Um, so that's just my other point is like

(47:24):
give people kudos that share the
L's also, um, versus just always out
there flexing, which I'm, I do sometimes
cause it's, you know, it's fun and it's,
you know, I love to kind of like hype
the people up a little bit, but, uh,
yeah, yeah, it's,
it's definitely the real
thing though is, you know, it doesn't
always have to be, that's what's always,
that's what's always so funny is because

(47:45):
everybody knows you as Zach from, from,
from X, but in real life, you're like
actually incredibly good friend and
sweet person, which you're not like out
here flexing like crazy.
Even though when we had dinner last week,
I did notice that your license
plate says D to C, which is pretty sick.
Yeah.
I mean, what else can I make though?
You know, there's three of us in
Wisconsin that do this.
So you gotta, you
gotta let the people know.

(48:06):
Gentlemen, good to be with you.
As always, you can feel free to email me,
Andrew at foxaleligital.com or DM the
guys, and they may look at their direct
messages, but if you actually want
somebody to read it, send it to me.
I'm happy to look at it and hear from you
and please rate review, share this with
friends who really appreciate everything
you guys do by listening and keep
questions coming.
Everyone have a good rest of your day.
Yeah.

(48:26):
Thanks guys.
See you.
This episode is brought to you by
Homestead's email and SMS service.
Honestly, we've, we've done an episode
with, with Jacob from Homestead.
He's the man and he's, he's got to be

(48:47):
probably one of the smartest email and
retention operators like on
the agency side hand sound.
I look forward to seeing the tweets that
he puts out basically every single
month with like a recap of the designs
and as amazing as the designs themselves
are, it's the actual like tactical behind
the scenes work where he just
like knows what he's doing and the team
at home said like really know what
they're doing on email and SMS.

(49:07):
Probably if not the number one, very,
very close to competing for number one
retention agency in the DTC space.
So just killing it.
Yeah, absolutely agree.
You know, if you are looking at your
emails and you're
like, these are terrible
and you know, you can optimize the flows
and you know, you can do SMS better.
You got to look at the Homestead team.
So check them out, reach out
and they can definitely help.

(49:29):
Make your entire email and retention and
SMS program so much better.
And I'm not just saying
that we've all seen the work.
I actually had a member who sat down
with, with Jacob at the
founder meetup that we
had, and he came over to me and said, I
just talked to him for 10 minutes.
And literally he, he's revolutionized my
entire email department.

(49:51):
So agencies are modeling themselves off
of what Jacob is giving them for advice.
So anyway, onwards to
hopefully working with them.