July 3, 2024 • 47 mins
Today we are going to share an episode from OMG Podcast. Brett Curry interviews me, about the current state of e-commerce and the strategies that can help businesses succeed in 2024.
I share my journey, the challenges faced by e-commerce businesses, and how my team cut their CPA in half by rethinking their marketing strategies. If you're a business owner, entrepreneur, or aspiring to be one, this episode is packed with valuable insights and practical tips.
Chapters:
0:00 - Introduction by Brett Curry
0:39 - Guest Introduction: Anthony Mink of Live Bearded
1:23 - Importance of E-commerce and Advertising Strategies
2:10 - Current State of E-commerce
4:48 - E-commerce Growth Trends and Challenges
6:13 - Fundamentals of E-commerce Success
7:36 - Adapting to Market Changes and Focusing on Fundamentals
9:18 - Dissecting and Solving Business Problems
11:10 - Example of Adjusting Marketing Strategies
13:02 - Identifying Key Advertising Issues
16:03 - Creative Problem Solving in Marketing
18:32 - Creating Effective Advertising Messages
21:02 - Key Takeaways from Creative Adjustments
23:22 - Importance of Authentic Brand Communication
25:22 - Leadership Insights and Upcoming Projects
#Ecommerce #BusinessSuccess #DigitalMarketing #Advertising #CPACutting #Entrepreneurship #LiveBearded #Leadership #BrandStrategy #Podcast
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Oftentimes, the most difficult thing is actually
solving the right problem, andthere's a lot of surface-level
problems that come up inbusiness that don't actually
address the underlying problem.
That's what you actually needto solve for.
Welcome to Entitled to Nothing,where we believe our life is
our fault.
My name is Mink and I have aspecial episode for you guys
(00:21):
today.
I was recently interviewed onthe OMG Commerce podcast by
Brett Curry.
Brett Curry is the founder andCEO of OMG Commerce, which is an
amazing Google agency.
They're one of the best Googleadvertising agencies out there,
especially for D to C businesses.
If you're a business owner, ifyou want to be a business owner,
(00:42):
or if you're an entrepreneurand you work for a company, this
is going to be a great podcastfor you to listen to.
Today we're going to talk aboutthe state of e-commerce, we're
going to talk about the economyas a whole and we're really
going to get into the weeds ofadvertising, cutting our CPA in
half and really talking abouthow we can build a successful
(01:02):
business in 2024.
So if that applies to you, Idefinitely recommend you check
out this episode.
If you're not a business owner,if that doesn't apply to you,
you could probably skip this one, but I wanted to share it with
you guys.
This aired a while back onBrett's podcast and I wanted to
share it with my audience here.
Enjoy it.
Let me know what you think ofit.
We'll talk to you guys after.
Speaker 2 (01:23):
Well, hello and welcome to another edition of
the e-commerce evolution podcast.
I'm your host, brett Curry, ceoof OMG Commerce, and I am so
excited about the podcastepisode today.
My guest is a legend.
This topic is going to beinsightful, inspirational, it's
going to be really, really good,and so I just want to dive
(01:45):
right in.
And my guest today is theco-founder and CEO of Live
Bearded.
He's one of the most fit guysin the business, one of the best
beards in the business, andjust really a genuine guy.
He knows business, he knowspeople, he knows leadership.
You're going to love learningfrom him.
And we go way back.
Anthony Mink is my guest.
(02:06):
So, anthony, welcome to theshow.
How's it going, man?
Speaker 1 (02:10):
Dude, thanks for the intro man.
I'll try to live up to that one.
I appreciate the kind words.
Things are going really well.
We were talking just before wego live.
It's November 8th.
We're two and a half weeks awayfrom Black Friday, so we're
(02:33):
just right in the middle of allof it, but really, really
excited.
The team's doing amazing andjust feel like the e-commerce
world has been crazy over thelast 12 to 24 months, if you
will, with the highs and thenthe drop-off and the turbulence,
and I just feel very fortunatebecause our team has done an
incredible job and we're stillhaving a lot of fun and enjoying
the process.
That's amazing man.
Incredible job and we're stillhaving a lot of fun and enjoying
the process.
Speaker 2 (02:47):
That's amazing, man, and I, you know, I get to see
your team a lot.
I obviously get to see you atleast a couple of times a year
blue ribbon and other events andthen you get to see your team
too, and you mentioned that theyhave fun and that they
genuinely do.
You know, I see your team.
They're smart, they're engaged,collaborative, but they're also
you guys are having fun.
You're like having fun doingthis, which really like if we're
not having fun, then why do itRight?
Why, uh, why not?
(03:07):
Yeah?
Speaker 1 (03:08):
Yeah, I mean I I started my first business like
because I didn't want to workfor a stuffy boss and I didn't
want to work in a shitty officeand I wanted to be able to kind
of do things my own way.
And like, when we go through theinterview process, one of the
things I say is, like we have avery politically non-correct
environment.
I'm going to say fuck a lot andwe're just going to be
ourselves and have fun and like,if you're not comfortable in
that environment, that's totallyokay.
(03:29):
But, um, I wanted to create theenvironment that I wanted for
my company or for myself withinmy company.
And so, to that degree, like we, you know, we respect each
other, we try to challenge eachother, to like get a lot of work
done, but also we just giveeach other the grace to, you
know, be flexible and do whatthey got to do.
So, um, we've, we've tried tolike find that good balance
(03:50):
between kicking ass and drivingresults and then also like
giving people the space to still, you know, do what they need to
do in their personal lives andprofessionally.
And it's so far it's worked outwell.
Speaker 2 (04:02):
Yeah, I really, I, yeah, I really tip my hat to you
guys.
The way you've struck thatbalance of getting after it but
also caring and having fun isreally admirable and it's
working and that's amazing.
And also thanks for joining meright now because, as you said,
as we record this, we're allprepping for Black Friday and so
when I invite my e-commercemerchant buddies to come on the
(04:24):
show or friends to come on theshow, I don't expect them to
come on like this time of year,but you're like I'll do it, I'm
in.
So thank you for doing that.
And yeah, I just want to kindof dive in and I think this
would be a good segue into howwould you view the state of
e-commerce.
Because, yeah, we had thehighest of highs, maybe not the
lowest of lows.
We had the highest of highs,maybe not the lowest of lows.
We had the highest of highs andthen all kinds of craziness has
(04:45):
ensued after that.
But how would you describe thestate of e-com?
Speaker 1 (04:48):
Yeah, I think it's highly industry dependent, based
on all the different peoplethat we know from Blue Ribbon.
You talk to some guys andthey're doing very well, other
guys they're struggling.
I think when we were at thelast Blue Ribbon a couple of
weeks ago, I gave some stats andone of the things that was
(05:11):
really shocking to me is thequarter over quarter growth rate
in e-commerce is the lowestit's been since they've been
tracking it, you know, like from2010, 2011,.
They tracked quarter overquarter e-commerce growth rates
and it was double digits 12, 14,15, 20, you know and it was
just like consistent year overyear.
And then during COVID, therewas a quarter that was 50, 60%,
quarter over quarter growthrates and so we had this you
know, tremendous wave that we'vebeen riding for the last 12
years, and over the last fourquarters were in the single
(05:34):
digits for the first time ever.
What's also very interestingabout that correlation is,
during the whole COVID kind oflockdown stuff the number of
e-commerce stores doubled.
So you've got twice the amountof competition, the slowest
amount of growth rate that'sbeen possible.
Pair that with inflation, andcredit card debt has reached a
trillion dollars for the firsttime in the history of our
(05:55):
country.
So also, advertising rates andCPMs, as you guys know, at OMG
are as high as they've ever been.
So you have all of thesefactors that honestly don't
create a good environment fore-commerce and I think a lot of
people are feeling that.
But at the end of the day, oneof the things that we talk a lot
(06:15):
about is it's just the ordinarythings practiced consistently.
One of my favorite coaches ofall time is John Wooden and he's
famous for the fundamentals.
You're going to do form shotsevery day.
You're going to do dribbledrills, you're going to do
passing drills, and I thinkthere's fundamentals in
e-commerce that if we stick tothem, we're going to have more
success.
And honestly, I think thefundamentals are the most
(06:41):
difficult thing to do, butthey're the most basic and
that's why they're the mostdifficult, because people want
to try to find the new whiz bangthing or the new strategy that
they can use to really takethings to the next level.
And oftentimes it's just greatemail marketing, great ad
creative, you know.
Great customer service, greatfollowup.
Um, there's just a few corechannels that if we just do very
well at, we can build a verydefensible business.
And for us, you know, our planthrough tough times is to just
(07:05):
do everything we can topersonalize the experience to
customers, make sure they knowthat we truly care about them
and we're here to support them.
And you know, if that meansthat they're going through tough
times and they can't buy,that's, that's totally fine.
We're going to be here whenthey do have some flexibility
and when they can, and in themeantime we're still going to
try to provide content that'sgoing to support and meet them
where they are.
And so for us, I think in anyenvironment there's an
(07:27):
opportunity to maximize thecurrent state, and right now I
think we're seeing a lot ofpeople that maybe they didn't
build a business based onfundamentals and it was tactics
or strategies that were workingin the time.
Covid wave the excitement,whatever, and now the wave is
gone and those businesses startto fall away as well, and so I
(07:48):
think on the other side of that,if you practice good
fundamentals, you build abusiness on strong financial
optics and good metrics, then Ithink on the other side of this
is going to be a tremendousgrowth wave, and that's
definitely what we're focusingon.
Speaker 2 (08:03):
Yeah, it's so good and I'm a huge John Wooden fan.
I love basketball, collegebasketball especially and he was
famous for when a new class offreshmen would join UCLA and
they won like 10 nationalchampionships in 11 years or
whatever the crazy stat was, andhe would begin practice by
showing players how to put theirsocks and shoes on right and
(08:25):
the players were like, yeah, I'mplaying Division I basketball
coach.
I don't need to.
But he was like no, no, no, thisis how you don't get blisters
and we don't want your shoe tocome untied during a key moment
in the game.
Just really thinking about it,it's almost more of a mindset
thing than anything.
We're going to focus on thelittle things and get really
good at the little things sothat they don't trip us up
literally, literally orfiguratively.
(08:46):
And you know it's alsointeresting too.
You talk about the state ofe-commerce and really some kind
of scary numbers that the wavekind of COVID wave has gone and
costs up and all this stuff.
But then there's also just someweird mixed data too right,
like I just I just saw the Q3earnings reports came out from
Amazon and like they were prettygood.
Like Amazon's ad business isoff the charts Good.
Facebook's Q3 was good.
(09:07):
Google's was a little more kindof middle of the road, but it
was okay.
Shopify did pretty good, butbut yeah, there's a lot of
e-comm businesses that aresomewhere up, somewhere down,
somewhere sideways.
It's just kind of a confusingtime as well.
Speaker 1 (09:18):
And I think.
Speaker 2 (09:19):
but I think that's another reason to go back to the
fundamentals, because they willnot change and if we get really
really good at that, we canweather whatever storm is ahead.
Speaker 1 (09:28):
Yeah, I think the the most critical thing to do is to
really dissect what problemsyou need to solve or what
fundamentals do you need tofocus on.
I think I know in our businessand this is, I think, one of the
things that we want to talkabout today is like, oftentimes
the most difficult thing isactually solving the right
problem, and there's a lot ofsurface level problems that come
(09:52):
up in business that don'tactually address the underlying
problem.
That's what you actually needto solve for and I know for us.
We in so far this year, youknow we're up 25, 26% year over
year, which, candidly, is downfor us.
We've been growing somewherearound like 35 to 40% year over
year for the last five years.
All things considered, we feelgreat about where we're at
throughout the year, but, thatbeing said, our profitability is
(10:14):
down.
We've ran into some efficiencyissues in our marketing and we
actually lost about $100,000 inJune and July.
So we went through a reallyinteresting summer stretch for
us, which it's usually a littleslower in the beard market.
Um, there's just less searchvolume.
There's less people online.
Um, guys like to grow theirbeards out in the winter, so
we've had a little bit ofseasonality.
(10:35):
But we had to take a step backfrom that that moment and be
like, okay, this is the mostmoney we've ever lost.
We've literally never had adown down a couple of months
like this, like our marketing'sway way out of whack, like where
, where are we missing the markhere and what are?
Are we solving the rightproblem or are we not?
And we just went through thisprocess to dissect, like why our
advertising wasn't working,what we were, how we were
(10:56):
languaging things, how we werepositioning ourselves.
And through that process, Ithink one of the things we
uncovered is the, the way thatwe position our brand may just
be or individual products orindividual sales funnels.
It's likely one of the greatestleverage points that we have.
And through going through aprocess, we were able to take
our CPA from.
You know it rose as high aslike $30, $35.
(11:17):
And to give the audience somecontext, we have a sample offer
funnel that we use to basicallyget our different fragrances in
the hands of potential consumers.
We found in our buying process,one of the biggest challenges
was understanding what fragrancethey wanted and what products
they needed.
So we put them all together ina sample pack.
We sell it for $10.
(11:37):
We lose money on the firstpurchase.
We go pretty negative on it.
But the theory is, if theproduct is good enough and we
deliver the desired end result,then they'll come back and we
know our repeat purchase rate.
The funnel is optimized.
It works great for us.
But at that rate we can onlyafford to spend about $20 on a
CPA.
Anything more than that westart to lose too much.
(11:57):
It takes too long to get thecash back, et cetera.
In the summer our CPA got like$32, $35, and we were getting
our ass kicked.
That's part of the reason whywe lost so much money over the
summer.
And so we took a step back andwe're like okay, all the ad
creative we're throwing up isnot working.
We are just reallyregurgitating a lot of the same
copy, a lot of the samemessaging, trying to repackage
(12:19):
it if you will, but theunderlying kind of hook, angle
positioning, it was all the same.
Speaker 2 (12:25):
And.
But the underlying kind of hookangle positioning it was all
the same.
And so, yeah, and one thing Iwant to kind of underscore there
, anthony, because a few thingsthat CPA.
Some people may hear that andthink, wow, that's really low or
that's really high, dependingon someone's perspective.
But yeah, this was for a freesample offer and LiveBearded
it's a consumable.
You guys have very loyalcustomers.
Once they kind of get startedon a product, I know they stick
and so that sample offer makes alot of sense for you.
(12:46):
But yeah, when you're going inthe hole on that first order,
you can have a really high CPA.
So just to put a little morecontext there, and then, yeah,
you guys, when did you startnoticing CPAs rising Around?
What time?
Speaker 1 (13:02):
Yeah, I would say, like May, june, maybe even as
early as April, but like May andJune, they started to get
really bad and we startedtesting more to try to optimize,
find new, winning, creative.
And it was like the more thatwe spent, the higher our CPA
went, and there was this perfectcorrelation between like spend
and CPA just going in the wrongdirection.
And so it was just it was anindicator that we were solving
(13:24):
for the wrong problem.
Um, and so we took a step backand just with my creative team
and my marketing team, we triedto dissect, like, what problem
are we really solving here?
And you know, there's there's alot of great training out there
on you know, how to solveproblems and and benefits
solutions, desires problems, etcetera.
Um, one of the things I reallylove is in StoryBrand they talk
(13:46):
about people buy externalproblems for internal solutions
or internal challenges, and sowe were just thinking the
external problem is like beardissue.
They don't like the way itlooks, grooming, et cetera.
But why are guys really buyingproducts in the first place?
And so we really just startedto dig into this and we actually
(14:08):
came up with entirely new hooks, entirely new angles.
We're able to do some kind oftesting and surveying of our
customer base to prove some ofthose angles were working, and
relaunched a whole new creativeset and dropped our CPA from
like $35 down to as low as like12 to $15.
Speaker 2 (14:26):
Yeah, which is just it's just insane and it's
awesome, and and and so there'sthere's really kind of two sides
of this and you guys kind ofnailed both of them.
One, they're solving yourbusiness problem, right.
And then there's the, the, theangle of what problem am I
solving for my customer?
And I think, from the, the, thegrade, the overall business
perspective, this is difficult,right, because we run into
issues where we're not asprofitable as we used to be.
(14:47):
And we had two quarters at OMG,q4 of last year, q1 of this
year where we still made money,but it was our lowest
profitability ever.
And so you look at that andyou're like, well, we've got to
fix profitability.
But then you really have tounderstand but what's the
problem?
What is the problem?
(15:09):
And I remember hearing a buddyof mine talk about this story.
He was, uh, doing a college um,it was like a college project,
right, and he had this, thisprofessor, and so they were
working through the, the, thisproject, and they were stuck and
so they went to the professorfor help and the professor just
kept, kept asking what's theproblem?
And so they'd like go throughthe whole thing.
Well, we got this, we got that,and he, we got that.
And he's like no, no, no,what's what's the problem?
And he literally startedgetting animated and like
throwing stuff and saying what'sthe problem?
And then ultimately it was theyhad a variable cost issue that
(15:30):
they had to solve.
Right, but they were, they werenot defining the problem.
Speaker 1 (15:51):
And if you don't have the right offer, you're not
using the right offer, the rightyou know the right ads and
they're not connecting.
So yeah, I think it's.
You know I did, uh, I did thiscreative thinking.
It was like a creative strategymastermind or masterclass with
our buddy Will Hughes, if youknow, uh.
He has this master class and Iwent through it and in one of
the trainings there is a pictureof a train track and it goes
like the train tracks go into atunnel and you can't see on the
(16:12):
other side of the tunnel.
And his question was simplywhat's on the other side of the
tunnel?
Or no, he said where do thetrain tracks lead?
Okay, and I was like to thetrain station, you know, and
he's like, he's like, well,maybe they do.
Yeah, that's like a logicalanswer, that's a surface level
answer, but what's deeper thanthat?
(16:33):
And then, and then he's like Iknew at that point what he was
signaling for me to do.
He's like what's beyond thetrain station?
I was like on the other side ofthis tunnel it opens up.
In this, there's this likemiraculous vista of like
mountains and snowcap peaks andlike eagles soaring and herds of
animals.
And he's like yes, that's whatyou want.
You want to go to the nextlevel, deeper than like the most
basic surface level thing.
(16:54):
And I think when solving aproblem, the first answer that
we come to is typically theeasiest one, which is why it's
the worst one, or it's like it'sthe symptom, not the actual
problem, if you will.
And so, just using us as anexample, we were like our CPA is
broken.
Okay, new ad creative, new adcreative.
Let's find a new character tolike play this role.
(17:14):
Let's rewrite the script, let's.
But our positioning of the offerand of the product was the same
the entire time.
It was just repackaging it,repackaging it fast forward like
six, seven months.
We couldn't make any progressand it felt like we were
spinning our wheels, we wererunning in a million different
directions but we were producingno results.
(17:35):
And that's when I realized,okay, we're solving the surface
level issue of ad creative, notthe actual problem of messaging,
of positioning.
And so then we brought everybodytogether and we started to
really ask, like, why do ourguys buy products?
What are they trying to createor accomplish?
Not the surface level.
Like oh well, they need togroom their beards or they have
(17:57):
beard itch or all of thesedifferent things.
Like they want it to growbetter, like those are all the
surface level things.
And then, um, there's thismoment where I was like someone
was like well, we want to givepeople confidence.
Like, what do a guy, what doesa guy really want?
He wants to feel confident.
It's like okay, but how do youmake a guy feel confident?
Like you put a hot girl in anad, say you know you buy this,
(18:19):
and like you're going to, you'regoing to get the girl, or
whatever.
Um, and oftentimes like Ireally believe that questions
are the answer.
So whenever we're solving aproblem, we just need to ask
better questions and andoftentimes solution.
Speaker 2 (18:32):
You got to ask better questions.
Speaker 1 (18:34):
Yeah, like, I will literally at times like go
through a journaling process butall I'm doing is asking myself
different variations of the samequestion and I'm trying to come
up with a question that when Iwrite it I'm like, oh, I know
how to answer that Like, andyou're almost like trying to
find that thread for your, foryou to just take, um.
And so I was like, well, how dowe create confidence?
(18:55):
And I didn't know, and so wekind of brainstormed about it.
And then I asked the oppositequestion Well, what makes guys
lack confidence or feelembarrassed?
And I was like I know theanswer to this one.
Right, it's like having a beardthat you don't like, not liking
the way you look in the mirror,having, you know, not feeling
good about the way that you look.
And then ultimately we like wentdown that road and came up with
(19:17):
this concept of, like my beardsucks, I feel embarrassed by my
beard, and the solution to thatis better grooming routines,
trying the sample pack, etcetera, et cetera.
And we definitely hit on thepain point of guys feeling
embarrassed.
And what we uncovered throughthis process of asking better
questions?
We uncovered that one of thechallenges that our consumer has
(19:39):
is feeling embarrassed by theirbeard or being dissatisfied
with it or wishing that itlooked better.
And so, rather than saying, hey, we're going to give you this
sample pack that's amazing, thatlike didn't work saying hey,
we're going to make you look andfeel your best, that didn't
work either.
We said hey, if your beardsucks, like we can you know, if
your beard sucks, then do this,this and this and we'll take
(20:01):
care of it.
And we did that in like a funny, playful way, where we had a
scene of three guys sitting at abar and one guy's like, oh, my
beard sucks.
And the other guy, like,backhands him and is, like, your
beard doesn't suck, you justsuck at taking care of it, right
, but it delivers the point oflike, hey, if you don't feel
like your beard looks good or itdoesn't look the way you want
it to, then maybe you justaren't good at doing something.
(20:24):
And oh, by the way, we can helpyou.
So, to to relate this back tothe consumer, I think ultimately
like finding what that unlockis.
I mean, there's a saying inmarketing that's as old as
marketing itself.
It's like if you can enter theconversation that the customer's
already having in their mindand you can demonstrate that you
(20:44):
know the problem as good orbetter than they can, they're
automatically going to trust youRight.
And so what we uncovered is theconversation that guys were
having was they felt embarrassedby their beard.
They didn't want to say it outloud, but when you brought it up
to them they're like oh yeah, Iresonate with that in this
example.
So um, so, finding what thatreal emotional hot button was
(21:07):
for them, or what thatconversation they were having
with themselves was, and beingable to tap into that, that cut
our CPA in half.
And it literally did it in thematter of three days once we
launched that new ad.
And here we are three, fourmonths later and our CPA is
still extremely good.
On Facebook, instagram, it'sdoing very well.
(21:28):
We're acquiring more customersa day than we ever has as a
company and we're spending moreat the top of funnel than we
ever have, and we've been doingthis for seven years.
So the positioning for us was amajor unlock, and now it's like
I know that whenever we havemarketing inefficiencies, we
(21:49):
need to really go back tovisiting how we're positioning
ourselves or what problems we'respeaking to specifically with
our customers.
Speaker 2 (21:54):
Yeah, and just thinking about I was reading
this David Ogilvie quote theother day, ogilvie on
advertising and just one of thelegends in the space.
He was the guy behind Dove Soapand Rolls Royce and Hathaway
shirts and lots of other iconicbrands and he said you know, all
good ads are fueled by a bigidea, not just a discount or
(22:15):
something, but a big idea.
And those, but all those bigideas are pretty simple, right,
not not complicated.
We always want to make things,the fundamentals right.
The fundamentals, right.
But going back to this andunderstanding, okay, why does
someone buy beard products?
Okay, they don't want theirbeard to itch, sure, they want
it to be moisturizer to smellgood, sure, but that's all
(22:35):
surface level stuff.
That's not a big idea, right?
The big idea is I want to feelgreat about my beard, I want to
have confidence, and then, inrelationship to the conversation
taking place in the customer'shead, my beard sucks.
That's like the language thatwould be going on in someone's
head, right.
Uh, not, my beard needs to bebetter, whatever, but my beard
sucks.
And so you guys really tappedinto that, which was cool, and
(22:57):
so, um, yeah, kind of kind ofwalk us uh through, like, uh,
you, you, you you talked aboutthat that process of, okay, they
want to feel confident.
That's kind of hard to define,but we know when they don't
don't feel confident.
So it's to kind of define that.
Then, how did you kind of getget to the creative application
of you know, guys in a bar kindof playing that out or or any
(23:19):
any other insights into thecreative process?
Speaker 1 (23:22):
Yeah, um, candidly, my team handles most of that.
We've got a couple of greatguys on our team that kind of
just sat down.
They've went through a lot oftraining courses and have gotten
pretty good at doing scriptwriting.
And then we hired someone whohas done a lot of like hero
style videos.
So we've, you know, I've gotfour full-time creatives in
house plus two marketing guysthat are great at script writing
(23:44):
and copy.
So internally we've really likeoptimized to build creative, uh
, like this, and to be able todo it efficiently.
Um, we knew that this was anunlock for us.
So, to answer the questionspecifically, I think, um, you
know, we, the, the writing team,sat down and, to your point,
said, okay, if people areembarrassed by their beard or if
(24:04):
they're dissatisfied or unhappy, that's not the language that
they're going to use in theirhead.
Like what are they actually sayto themselves?
And you're a hundred percentright, they're going to say,
damn, my beard sucks, right.
And then we wanted to come upwith a fun environment where
bros would be having aconversation and it's like well,
where do guys meet and hang outand have a conversation?
What's relatable to ouraudience?
(24:24):
Having a happy hour, meetingfor a drink at a bar, et cetera.
So we just found a locallocation that we could rent out
for the day and put them in abar setting and record it, and
the rest is history.
Just stuck to the script anddid the things there.
But I think for us, what wealways try to do is write
(24:44):
creative and come up with setsand locations that we believe
are most aligned and congruentto who our customer is.
What's authentic?
Yeah, exactly To us as a brandtoo.
Right Like our brandpositioning is very much like
we're just regular guys.
You know, I started livebearded with one of my best
friends seven years ago.
We started it in my living room.
Uh, for the first four or fiveyears it was just him on camera,
(25:06):
him and I on camera, and wewere just really trying to
create this brotherly ballbusting have a good time, vibe
and so that's always kind ofjust been the culture and the
ethos of live bearded.
So with all of our creative, wereally try to make that be a
consistent that's awesome.
Speaker 2 (25:22):
So I want to go back to the problem solving question
and kind of look at how youdecided to start with the ad
creative.
Right, because the CPAs go upand there's several things you
can consider there.
Well, is just ad cost going upor my ads ineffective, or do my
landing pages need to be fixed?
And, ultimately, I think youguys have made improvements all
along that journey.
(25:42):
Right, you guys did CRO work aswell, landing page work, which
has worked very, very well, buthow did you land on ad creative?
That's the piece we need to fixright now.
Speaker 1 (25:53):
Yeah, well, to your point, I have spent a year and a
half optimizing our funnel,post-click.
So our landing page is superdialed in, converts at 12%, 13%
on cold traffic, so we're goodthere.
Um, our email funnel everythingback end is optimized.
Our repurchase rate on theoffer is upwards of 35% when
everything is dialed in andworking correctly.
(26:14):
So I knew everything post clickwas dialed in because none of
those metrics had changed.
The only thing that had changedwas our front end CPA, our, our
cost to acquire, and so and itwasn't just on one platform, but
it was on YouTube, working withyou guys at OMG, it was on
Facebook, it was on Tik TOK,like every ad we are running.
It was just it was going up.
Um, and so you know, I've been,I've been running ads and doing
(26:39):
, you know, this thing full timefor 12 years now.
Um, you know, I remembersetting up my first Facebook ads
in 2011,.
You know, so we've we've been atthis a long time and I think
when you're when you're at it along time, you just get a
general like sense of thingsright.
You kind of have an intuition.
That's maybe the part of ofbusiness and marketing, that's.
That's not necessarilyteachable.
You just get it after playingthe game for long enough.
(27:01):
And I just have this theorythat's like we're just one ad
away, one sales funnel away, onefunnel away, like one
optimization away from the nextlevel of growth.
And since everything downstreamwas optimized, I was like, well
, I think the only place we haveleft to try to optimize is
creative.
And you always hear these crazystories of like oh my gosh, you
(27:23):
know, like our buddy jock atraindrop, oh, dr Squatch came to
us at 3 million and we wereable to get him to 300 million
with different ads and the superbowl and the most Facebook or
the most YouTube spend ever.
Like.
You hear these crazy storiesand I think a lot of times
they're very hard to believe.
Um, even I, I doubt it in timesin my business, cause I'm like
man, we've never really had thatone ad that just like was a
(27:46):
moonshot right.
Like we've just always hit,base hits, base hits, base hits.
And you know it's again, it'sallowed us to grow at 35, 40%
year over year for five years ina row now.
So we've never been the companythat's tried to hockey stick
growth, partially because wecouldn't afford it.
We just were self-funded andwe're just, you know, we like
the slow and steady approach,but with that it's like I know,
(28:09):
creative always fatigues.
Again, everything post click wasoptimized.
So for me it was like, well,maybe this is just where our new
CPA is going to live.
Maybe everything elsedownstream, maybe we have to
change the dynamics of thebusiness and I think at times
there's inflection points wherewhat we were working
fundamentally changes.
And we do have to re-engineerour business, change our
(28:30):
approach.
And if we weren't able to getour CPA down with this
particular sample offer, wewould have had to look at maybe
acquiring customers in a new way.
But I just believe in theprocess of bettering your best.
That's what I tell my team allthe time.
It's like our goal, like once weget a new, a new winning ad,
our immediate goal is to beat itand we try to create a fun
competition and you know, and,and we tease each other about it
(28:52):
.
But I really just live by theidea of bettering your best and
that's really like what it justcame down to and, if I'm honest,
bro, like there was a periodthere where we were like in it
multiple months in a row with nowinners and no breakthroughs
and I thought to myself, like Idon't, I don't fucking know if
this is going to turn around,like I don't, maybe this just is
(29:13):
what our ad costs are going tobe, you know, and maybe the
economy and some of the maybelike there's just a lot of
factors here and I'm not goingto be able to break through, a
lot of factors here and I'm notgoing to be able to break
through.
But that doesn't mean that Idon't consistently show up every
day and do everything that Ican.
That's in my control and Iguess I just believe that if we
(29:34):
continue to show up, continue totake action, continue to work
to solve the right problems,ultimately we're going to find
an unlock somewhere along theway and that's going to lead to
that next level of opportunity.
Speaker 2 (29:47):
Yeah, and you said you believe in bettering your
best, and I think some brands,though, try to better their.
Meh, this is something that'snot really working.
We'll just get a little bitbetter.
Well, that doesn't work right.
Sometimes you need thatbreakthrough idea, and you guys
went through that, where theseads weren't working.
Well, let's just try to do thema little bit better.
Right, let's just try to do thesame concept but a little bit
(30:08):
better, and sometimes you justneed that different position.
Speaker 1 (30:17):
I don't know where I read it.
I actually think Spencer toldme about it or someone on the
team did, I think it was Nathan.
Actually, they listened to apodcast and the podcast was like
it's easier to grow 10 timesthan it is 10%.
And it was this veryinteresting kind of
philosophical approach and theysaid, cause, if you're going to
grow 10% more, you basicallyjust have to do what you're
doing a little bit better.
You just have to better that,Right, but if you're going to 10
(30:39):
times, you have to totallychange your approach.
Like you know, if you are sowe're in the in the eight figure
range, right, and what we'vedone has got us to, has gotten
us here.
If we want to go to nine figures, we have to totally change what
we're going to do.
Like, what gets you to whereyou are isn't going to take you
to where you want to go.
And so that whole idea of, yeah, you can grow 10%, 10%, 10%,
(31:01):
but if you want to go grow threetimes, 10%, 10%, 10%, but if
you want to go grow three times,five times, 10 times, you have
to actually fundamentally changethe way that you're approaching
things and solve a totallydifferent problem in a different
way and, uh, I can't in.
In some ways that's kind of.
The approach that we took islike, hey, we've been trying to
solve the ad creative this wholetime, but let's go a layer
deeper in a layer deeper andsolve for positioning, solve for
(31:24):
emotion Like what emotions dowe really want to hit and what
conversations can we have in adifferent way and that that
allowed us to get to the nextlevel.
Speaker 2 (31:33):
Yeah, and fundamentally understanding what
is someone buying when they buyyour product and why are they
choosing you over someone else?
Because you have to look at theDr Squ, dr squash example going
from three million a year to300 million a year is just
because it's better soap, I mean, that doesn't seem very likely,
right, it's better.
It's better positioning, rightwhat we feel, something when we
(31:54):
watch that dr squash ad and wewant what they offer and we're
willing to pay 12, a bar orwhatever it is right, more more
than that would pay forsomething you know, know, a
Walmart brand or something likethat.
And actually I just saw we weretraveling, driving through
Oklahoma City to go to afootball game and Dr Squatch in
a truck stop.
This whole section of DrSquatch, I'm like they made it,
(32:17):
man, they're in a truck stop.
So that should be your goal,anthony Mink.
I want to see you live beardedyour goal, Anthony.
Mink, I want to see you livebearded.
There's a lot of beardedtruckers out there.
There's a lot of beardedtruckers out there, for sure.
Uh, yeah, it's it, it.
It does come down topositioning and it does come
down to brand, and sometimeswe're just we're missing the
mark a little bit.
We've done okay, but we'rebettering our meh instead of
(32:39):
bettering our best, and that'sthat's where we need to shift.
Speaker 1 (32:42):
I think, said in a different way, maybe to try to
connect the dots.
Maybe it's just those peoplethat are like, okay, I get it,
but how do I really drive thispoint home?
People buy stories, states andidentities.
They don't buy products, right.
And so if you're selling aproduct, if I'm selling you a
bar of soap or a beard oil, likeokay, cool, like maybe I'm
(33:02):
interested if I actually needthat in that moment, but if you
sell a story or an emotionalstate, right, confidence, the
cool kid, the be a man, likewhatever some of these ads sell,
um, or you sell an identity,right, like there's a certain
type of of that people areselling, if they buy a certain
car, or if a woman buys acertain handbag or whatever.
(33:23):
And I think again, if we stepback from the product and try to
like sit down with our customerand really get inside of their
wants, their needs, theirdesires, what stories do they
want to buy, what emotionalstates do they want to buy?
And then what identities dothey want to buy, what emotional
states do they want to buy?
And then what identities dothey want to buy, so they can
signal who they are?
And I think just that frameworkwill help us, at least here
(33:47):
with us.
It helps me kind of dissect ornot dissect, but step away from
the actual tangible product,cause it's easy when you're just
selling the same thing over andover We've been selling men's
grooming for seven years right,you get in a vacuum and so
oftentimes you have to pullyourself out and get perspective
.
So, um, I think, stories,states and identities that has
(34:08):
really really helped me get adifferent vantage point or try
to find a different way toconnect with the audience.
Speaker 2 (34:17):
Yeah, it's so good.
Yeah, because stories reallyevoke a different set of
emotions and really makessomething come to life and
understanding what state are wetrying to create.
That's really important.
I think most people don't thinkabout that, but the deepest
level, or the highest level,whichever way you want to look
at it, is that identity right?
Why do I buy Nike instead ofAdidas?
Or why do I want to drive thiscar over that car?
(34:39):
It's because it's how I want toidentify Like I want to be a
great athlete.
I want to be associated withgreat athletes.
Or, for me, I first startedliking Nike because I was a huge
Michael Jordan fan.
And so I grew up in the glorydays of MJ, and so I still like
Nike the best today, and it'snot like they got better shoes
than Adidas.
Speaker 1 (35:03):
I mean it's totally subjective, but, yeah, really
like, screw it up for you.
Like, at this point they justdon't have to screw up and
they've got your businessbecause the identity that
they've created, you know, andit's very interesting, I saw
this graph a while back and itwas talking about influencer led
brands and the importance of abrand having a forward facing
founder or someone that they canbasically connect with the
brand as an identity.
And it said they.
Basically the question was howimportant is it for you to buy
(35:26):
from a brand that you know thefounders?
And like the baby boomers, itwas like nil, like 10, 20% of
people were maybe like oh, it'simportant.
But when you go to like Gen Zin the the 18, 20, 25, 30 year
olds in that range, it was like60, 70% of people said it was
very important.
And you pair that with just.
(35:47):
I think I have this philosophyin life and I think just because
you don't like the messengerdoesn't mean the message is any
less valid and I've trainedmyself to just observe.
I think most people get caughtin a reaction to different
things and I like to justobserve and so, like there's
been some interestingobservations in the business
community, with Target, with BudLight, with several different
(36:11):
brands where they have made amove, and then the market has
reacted in a certain way.
And I bring that up because Ithink, now more than ever,
brands want to associate with or, excuse me, customers want to
spend their money with brandswho they like, who have similar
values or ideals or identities,and so I think that final
(36:33):
identity piece when you reallycan speak to the identity of
someone as a brand and it'sauthentic and it's genuine and
it's who you are as a brand, Ithink that's one of the biggest
unlocks that we can have.
And I think now people are moreintentional with voting, with
their dollars, than ever before,or maybe at least ever in my
lifetime as an adult, as aconsumer, I see you know a lot
(36:54):
of the different sways incommerce based on different
moves good or bad that customersor companies are making.
So I just think it's a verytimely time for everybody to sit
down and dissect how are wepositioning our brand, what
stories are we telling, whatemotions are we creating and
(37:14):
what identities do we connectwith or do we stand with, and I
think a lot of the ads that weknow so well in D2C, whether
it's Squatty Potty or Poopery orDr Squatch.
Why did they do so?
Well, they made someone feelsomething right.
They gave them an emotionalstate change.
Speaker 2 (37:38):
Yeah, and it wasn't just that they told great jokes.
They did, but the jokes wererelevant to those story, states
and and and identities.
And one one thing I want tokind of underscore there.
I think you know that you'vegot a good brand when you can
define those or talk about those.
You, you know what stories youshould be telling and your
customers probably know whatstories you should be telling.
You know states you're tryingto create and your customers
probably do too, and you knowthe identity that your customers
(38:01):
want to have as it relates toyou.
I heard Seth Godin say thisrecently and I thought it was
brilliant.
He said you know, if you takeNike, you know Nike's got a
great brand.
Obviously, if Nike was going tobuild a hotel, we could
probably guess what that hotelwould be like.
Right, it would pay homage togreat athletics and to sports
and we could probably evenpicture like what that
(38:21):
experience would be like ifwe've been in a Nike stores or
whatever.
But then you flip that and yousay but what if somebody like
Hyatt started making products?
You would have no idea.
Like what does Hyatt even mean.
I don't know.
It's a hotel.
They like have beds.
I get no mental picture.
I get no story in my head whenit comes to Hyatt no state no
(38:44):
identity.
It's just like it's fine, hyattis fine, and so I think that's
a really clear picture.
Do I have a brand or am I justselling a product?
Speaker 1 (38:52):
Well, think about Virgin.
Virgin has airlines, they havehotels, they have cruise ships.
They're one of those rarebrands who have transcended
these crazy different industries.
Speaker 2 (39:04):
You get a picture in your mind when you think Virgin.
Speaker 1 (39:06):
You know exactly what it is.
It's going to be a freaking,rocking good time.
Speaker 2 (39:10):
So I do want to talk a little bit about your
leadership, content and kind ofwhere you're headed with that.
So I got to hear you speak,obviously at Blue Ribbon San
Diego.
The presentation was fantastic.
Anybody listening to this I'msure has that expectation that
it'd be amazing but had visualsand stuff.
It was awesome, but you alsohad somebody kind of following
(39:30):
you around with a camera and youwere creating some content.
And I know you're getting intopersonal developmental
leadership, going to start apodcast called entitled to
nothing, which I love that title.
So talk to me about that.
Why, why start podcasting?
Why kind of get into this selfimprovement, um, content and
what's, what's the goal there?
Speaker 1 (39:51):
Yeah, it's.
It's a very interestingquestion.
I appreciate you asking it.
You know, I think, um, for me,my only model of success is just
going out and learning frompeople who are smarter than me
and who kind of know the roadahead.
Um, I I come from very humblebeginnings.
My dad was a logger.
He literally cut trees down fora living.
(40:11):
My mom was a stay at home mom.
I had no reference point forsuccess growing up and
entrepreneurs, I've got toentrepreneurs in your family.
No entrepreneurs, no, I meanlike it was just.
You know, it was very likehumble beginnings and because of
all the financial difficultyand pain growing up, I knew that
I never wanted to experiencethat.
So I knew I needed to figurethis thing out.
(40:32):
And to make a long story short,I am a product of a lot of
other people's knowledge,information.
You know, I've been to so manyconferences and books and like,
obviously that's how we met.
So I think I've got to a placein my career where I feel like
I've I've created, you know,some, some successful businesses
(40:54):
.
I, as I was getting ready forthe podcast and I was trying to
figure out how I was going toframe everything, I just did a
quick calculation and mycompanies over the last 12 years
have done over $50 million insales, which seems crazy to me,
like I don't know how it's thatmuch, but it was like a bonafide
$50 million in sales.
And so I was like man I.
I know I have something toshare and I know I've overcome a
(41:15):
lot of experiences, frombankruptcy and broke to a figure
company CEO 50 million plus insales.
Like I, the greatest gift I'veever been given was knowledge
and information and ideas fromother people.
And, um, I feel like one of thebest gifts that we can give is
breathing life, breathinginspiration, breathing, uh,
(41:35):
courage or compassion orconfidence into other people.
And I, just through the processof COVID and through the process
of all the craziness that'shappened, I just honestly felt
it on my heart that I needed toshare some of my journey in the
hopes that it inspires otherpeople along the way.
And it's an interesting process, man.
(41:55):
We've had a couple of recordingsessions where, at the end of
the day, I'm like just trash all, trash all of it.
It sucks Like I don't like anyof it, you know.
And then, and then havingsomeone follow me around.
I mean having someone follow mearound with a camera seems so
awkward and uncomfortable attimes, but also, I think anytime
you learn how to do somethingfor the first time, it's going
to be awkward and uncomfortableand I don't know what will come
(42:17):
of it.
But I just felt like, in orderto have the impact I want as a
entrepreneur and just as anindividual, I need to share more
of my experiences and some ofthe lessons that I've learned,
and I think one of the thingsthat I finally clicked for me is
there are certain people thatsay things in a way that I
really connect with and thenthere's other people that say
(42:39):
the same things in their ownvoice and I just like it doesn't
connect with me.
I don't, I can't get into it,you know, and for me, like the
guy has always been Tony Robbins, like I love him, his content
has always connected with me Hispassion, his language, his
curse words, like it, just itfires me up.
Speaker 2 (42:57):
Which is strategic, by the way, I heard him talk
about this one time.
He curses strategically.
Now, maybe he couldn't shut itoff even if he wanted to, but
he's like, he believes it joltsyou into paying attention.
You remember better, you learnbetter when someone is swearing.
It was interesting.
Speaker 1 (43:11):
Yeah, he said.
If, he says if, if your momsaid, you know, hey, Brett, get
in here, it would have oneemotional response.
If she said, hey, brett, getyour butt in here, it'd be like,
okay, brett, get your ass inhere right now, right, like it's
just the different languageevokes different emotions.
So, to make a long story short,I uh, I've got to a place in my
career where I feel like I havesomething valuable to share and
(43:34):
I feel like it's myresponsibility to share that,
because all of my knowledge isjust accumulated from other
people and in a lot of ways, Ijust want to pay that forward to
the next generation of peopleor to anybody who resonates with
my message or my story or kindof my experiences.
Speaker 2 (43:51):
Yeah, and I'm really glad you're doing it.
You know, I've got to hear youspeak on stage a few times and
been on a podcast with you.
You're very articulate and yourstory is going to resonate and
you've got a unique perspectiveand the way you've learned and
grown and become an entrepreneurwith really no family example
and I was kind of the same waylike nobody in my family was an
entrepreneur I just felt calledto do it.
(44:12):
Your message is going toresonate and so I'm super
excited.
Man, I can't wait for the pod.
I'm going to consume it, thankyou, and I know it's going to
touch some people and encouragesome people.
It's going to be a lot of funtoo.
Speaker 1 (44:30):
Yeah, I think I had one of my biggest business
failures happened because Istarted to kind of drink my own
Kool-Aid.
I felt like I had had somesuccess and I knew what I was
doing and I got a little bitcomplacent and a little bit
entitled and then I losteverything and I just had this
come to Jesus moment with myselfwhere I was like I'm entitled
to nothing and I started torealize that when we take
complete responsibility for allof our results, that gives us
the power to dictate thedirection that we go.
(44:51):
You know, we're not we'rehardly ever in control of
outside circumstances and thingsthat are taking place, but
we're always in control of howwe react and respond to them.
And that's where this whole ideaof like I'm entitled to nothing
and my life is my fault, and Iactually think in some ways,
we're living in probably themost entitled time in history.
(45:16):
You know, there's an easybutton and an app for everything
and people just want shit now,and so I just felt like this
message of like your life isyour fault, you're entitled to
nothing, I really felt like itwas timely and I felt like I was
someone that could really kindof lead the charge with it and
share from experience, not justideas or or perspectives, if
that makes sense.
Speaker 2 (45:37):
That's awesome man, and so, depending on when
someone's listening to this,that may not be out yet, but
it's coming soon.
Speaker 1 (45:43):
January 12th is the goal Awesome.
Speaker 2 (45:45):
How can people start to connect with you?
Follow you now so that they'reready.
Whether the pod is launched atthe time they're listening or
not.
How can they connect with you?
Speaker 1 (45:53):
Yeah, the best way right now is just Anthony Mink
on Instagram.
The best way right now is justAnthony Mink on Instagram.
At Anthony Mink, you can searchme and I would love to have you
follow along.
I'm posting content on a prettyfrequent basis Now.
We're playing around withdifferent videos and different
ideas and getting ready tolaunch the podcast in January.
So it would mean it would meanthe world if someone came and
followed along and shared theirfeedback.
I would really appreciate it.
Speaker 2 (46:15):
It's awesome, and for the bearded brothers out there,
or for anybody who's special.
Someone is bearded.
Uh, how can they learn moreabout?
Uh, live bearded and try outyour amazing products?
Speaker 1 (46:26):
Live beardedcom.
Um, if you have any questions,we've got a team of customer
service reps just in the roomnext door.
You can reach out to us and letus know.
But uh, yeah, for any men'sgrooming stuff we'd love to take
care of you, specifically forthe beards.
Speaker 2 (46:39):
It's awesome, man, and I can vouch for both the
brand and for the team.
You know we've had kind of afront row seat.
We got to get to work with youguys now for years and years on
the Google and YouTube side andit's just been fun to watch you
grow.
Man, love your team, love theenergy you bring and I love the
products.
And so long live, live bearded.
(47:00):
Thank you.
Speaker 1 (47:01):
Thank you, I mean, it means a lot, awesome.
Speaker 2 (47:03):
Well, thanks for coming on, anthony.
This was fantastic and I can'twait for that pod.
Speaker 1 (47:08):
Absolutely, brother.
Thank you so much.
I'll talk to you soon.
Speaker 2 (47:11):
Sounds good and, as always, thank you for tuning in.
Love to hear from you.
What would you like to hearmore of on the show?
Give us some ideas.
And hey, I'm getting moreactive on the social, so
primarily LinkedIn, but also onInstagram and YouTube and
YouTube Shorts.
So check that out.
And with that until next time.
Thank you for listening.
Oftentimes, the most difficult thing is actually
solving the right problem, andthere's a lot of surface-level
problems that come up inbusiness that don't actually
address the underlying problem.
That's what you actually needto solve for.
Welcome to Entitled to Nothing,where we believe our life is
our fault.
My name is Mink and I have aspecial episode for you guys
(00:21):
today.
I was recently interviewed onthe OMG Commerce podcast by
Brett Curry.
Brett Curry is the founder andCEO of OMG Commerce, which is an
amazing Google agency.
They're one of the best Googleadvertising agencies out there,
especially for D to C businesses.
If you're a business owner, ifyou want to be a business owner,
(00:42):
or if you're an entrepreneurand you work for a company, this
is going to be a great podcastfor you to listen to.
Today we're going to talk aboutthe state of e-commerce, we're
going to talk about the economyas a whole and we're really
going to get into the weeds ofadvertising, cutting our CPA in
half and really talking abouthow we can build a successful
(01:02):
business in 2024.
So if that applies to you, Idefinitely recommend you check
out this episode.
If you're not a business owner,if that doesn't apply to you,
you could probably skip this one, but I wanted to share it with
you guys.
This aired a while back onBrett's podcast and I wanted to
share it with my audience here.
Enjoy it.
Let me know what you think ofit.
We'll talk to you guys after.
Speaker 2 (01:23):
Well, hello and welcome to another edition of
the e-commerce evolution podcast.
I'm your host, brett Curry, ceoof OMG Commerce, and I am so
excited about the podcastepisode today.
My guest is a legend.
This topic is going to beinsightful, inspirational, it's
going to be really, really good,and so I just want to dive
(01:45):
right in.
And my guest today is theco-founder and CEO of Live
Bearded.
He's one of the most fit guysin the business, one of the best
beards in the business, andjust really a genuine guy.
He knows business, he knowspeople, he knows leadership.
You're going to love learningfrom him.
And we go way back.
Anthony Mink is my guest.
(02:06):
So, anthony, welcome to theshow.
How's it going, man?
Speaker 1 (02:10):
Dude, thanks for the intro man.
I'll try to live up to that one.
I appreciate the kind words.
Things are going really well.
We were talking just before wego live.
It's November 8th.
We're two and a half weeks awayfrom Black Friday, so we're
(02:33):
just right in the middle of allof it, but really, really
excited.
The team's doing amazing andjust feel like the e-commerce
world has been crazy over thelast 12 to 24 months, if you
will, with the highs and thenthe drop-off and the turbulence,
and I just feel very fortunatebecause our team has done an
incredible job and we're stillhaving a lot of fun and enjoying
the process.
That's amazing man.
Incredible job and we're stillhaving a lot of fun and enjoying
the process.
Speaker 2 (02:47):
That's amazing, man, and I, you know, I get to see
your team a lot.
I obviously get to see you atleast a couple of times a year
blue ribbon and other events andthen you get to see your team
too, and you mentioned that theyhave fun and that they
genuinely do.
You know, I see your team.
They're smart, they're engaged,collaborative, but they're also
you guys are having fun.
You're like having fun doingthis, which really like if we're
not having fun, then why do itRight?
Why, uh, why not?
(03:07):
Yeah?
Speaker 1 (03:08):
Yeah, I mean I I started my first business like
because I didn't want to workfor a stuffy boss and I didn't
want to work in a shitty officeand I wanted to be able to kind
of do things my own way.
And like, when we go through theinterview process, one of the
things I say is, like we have avery politically non-correct
environment.
I'm going to say fuck a lot andwe're just going to be
ourselves and have fun and like,if you're not comfortable in
that environment, that's totallyokay.
(03:29):
But, um, I wanted to create theenvironment that I wanted for
my company or for myself withinmy company.
And so, to that degree, like we, you know, we respect each
other, we try to challenge eachother, to like get a lot of work
done, but also we just giveeach other the grace to, you
know, be flexible and do whatthey got to do.
So, um, we've, we've tried tolike find that good balance
(03:50):
between kicking ass and drivingresults and then also like
giving people the space to still, you know, do what they need to
do in their personal lives andprofessionally.
And it's so far it's worked outwell.
Speaker 2 (04:02):
Yeah, I really, I, yeah, I really tip my hat to you
guys.
The way you've struck thatbalance of getting after it but
also caring and having fun isreally admirable and it's
working and that's amazing.
And also thanks for joining meright now because, as you said,
as we record this, we're allprepping for Black Friday and so
when I invite my e-commercemerchant buddies to come on the
(04:24):
show or friends to come on theshow, I don't expect them to
come on like this time of year,but you're like I'll do it, I'm
in.
So thank you for doing that.
And yeah, I just want to kindof dive in and I think this
would be a good segue into howwould you view the state of
e-commerce.
Because, yeah, we had thehighest of highs, maybe not the
lowest of lows.
We had the highest of highs,maybe not the lowest of lows.
We had the highest of highs andthen all kinds of craziness has
(04:45):
ensued after that.
But how would you describe thestate of e-com?
Speaker 1 (04:48):
Yeah, I think it's highly industry dependent, based
on all the different peoplethat we know from Blue Ribbon.
You talk to some guys andthey're doing very well, other
guys they're struggling.
I think when we were at thelast Blue Ribbon a couple of
weeks ago, I gave some stats andone of the things that was
(05:11):
really shocking to me is thequarter over quarter growth rate
in e-commerce is the lowestit's been since they've been
tracking it, you know, like from2010, 2011,.
They tracked quarter overquarter e-commerce growth rates
and it was double digits 12, 14,15, 20, you know and it was
just like consistent year overyear.
And then during COVID, therewas a quarter that was 50, 60%,
quarter over quarter growthrates and so we had this you
know, tremendous wave that we'vebeen riding for the last 12
years, and over the last fourquarters were in the single
(05:34):
digits for the first time ever.
What's also very interestingabout that correlation is,
during the whole COVID kind oflockdown stuff the number of
e-commerce stores doubled.
So you've got twice the amountof competition, the slowest
amount of growth rate that'sbeen possible.
Pair that with inflation, andcredit card debt has reached a
trillion dollars for the firsttime in the history of our
(05:55):
country.
So also, advertising rates andCPMs, as you guys know, at OMG
are as high as they've ever been.
So you have all of thesefactors that honestly don't
create a good environment fore-commerce and I think a lot of
people are feeling that.
But at the end of the day, oneof the things that we talk a lot
(06:15):
about is it's just the ordinarythings practiced consistently.
One of my favorite coaches ofall time is John Wooden and he's
famous for the fundamentals.
You're going to do form shotsevery day.
You're going to do dribbledrills, you're going to do
passing drills, and I thinkthere's fundamentals in
e-commerce that if we stick tothem, we're going to have more
success.
And honestly, I think thefundamentals are the most
(06:41):
difficult thing to do, butthey're the most basic and
that's why they're the mostdifficult, because people want
to try to find the new whiz bangthing or the new strategy that
they can use to really takethings to the next level.
And oftentimes it's just greatemail marketing, great ad
creative, you know.
Great customer service, greatfollowup.
Um, there's just a few corechannels that if we just do very
well at, we can build a verydefensible business.
And for us, you know, our planthrough tough times is to just
(07:05):
do everything we can topersonalize the experience to
customers, make sure they knowthat we truly care about them
and we're here to support them.
And you know, if that meansthat they're going through tough
times and they can't buy,that's, that's totally fine.
We're going to be here whenthey do have some flexibility
and when they can, and in themeantime we're still going to
try to provide content that'sgoing to support and meet them
where they are.
And so for us, I think in anyenvironment there's an
(07:27):
opportunity to maximize thecurrent state, and right now I
think we're seeing a lot ofpeople that maybe they didn't
build a business based onfundamentals and it was tactics
or strategies that were workingin the time.
Covid wave the excitement,whatever, and now the wave is
gone and those businesses startto fall away as well, and so I
(07:48):
think on the other side of that,if you practice good
fundamentals, you build abusiness on strong financial
optics and good metrics, then Ithink on the other side of this
is going to be a tremendousgrowth wave, and that's
definitely what we're focusingon.
Speaker 2 (08:03):
Yeah, it's so good and I'm a huge John Wooden fan.
I love basketball, collegebasketball especially and he was
famous for when a new class offreshmen would join UCLA and
they won like 10 nationalchampionships in 11 years or
whatever the crazy stat was, andhe would begin practice by
showing players how to put theirsocks and shoes on right and
(08:25):
the players were like, yeah, I'mplaying Division I basketball
coach.
I don't need to.
But he was like no, no, no, thisis how you don't get blisters
and we don't want your shoe tocome untied during a key moment
in the game.
Just really thinking about it,it's almost more of a mindset
thing than anything.
We're going to focus on thelittle things and get really
good at the little things sothat they don't trip us up
literally, literally orfiguratively.
(08:46):
And you know it's alsointeresting too.
You talk about the state ofe-commerce and really some kind
of scary numbers that the wavekind of COVID wave has gone and
costs up and all this stuff.
But then there's also just someweird mixed data too right,
like I just I just saw the Q3earnings reports came out from
Amazon and like they were prettygood.
Like Amazon's ad business isoff the charts Good.
Facebook's Q3 was good.
(09:07):
Google's was a little more kindof middle of the road, but it
was okay.
Shopify did pretty good, butbut yeah, there's a lot of
e-comm businesses that aresomewhere up, somewhere down,
somewhere sideways.
It's just kind of a confusingtime as well.
Speaker 1 (09:18):
And I think.
Speaker 2 (09:19):
but I think that's another reason to go back to the
fundamentals, because they willnot change and if we get really
really good at that, we canweather whatever storm is ahead.
Speaker 1 (09:28):
Yeah, I think the the most critical thing to do is to
really dissect what problemsyou need to solve or what
fundamentals do you need tofocus on.
I think I know in our businessand this is, I think, one of the
things that we want to talkabout today is like, oftentimes
the most difficult thing isactually solving the right
problem, and there's a lot ofsurface level problems that come
(09:52):
up in business that don'tactually address the underlying
problem.
That's what you actually needto solve for and I know for us.
We in so far this year, youknow we're up 25, 26% year over
year, which, candidly, is downfor us.
We've been growing somewherearound like 35 to 40% year over
year for the last five years.
All things considered, we feelgreat about where we're at
throughout the year, but, thatbeing said, our profitability is
(10:14):
down.
We've ran into some efficiencyissues in our marketing and we
actually lost about $100,000 inJune and July.
So we went through a reallyinteresting summer stretch for
us, which it's usually a littleslower in the beard market.
Um, there's just less searchvolume.
There's less people online.
Um, guys like to grow theirbeards out in the winter, so
we've had a little bit ofseasonality.
(10:35):
But we had to take a step backfrom that that moment and be
like, okay, this is the mostmoney we've ever lost.
We've literally never had adown down a couple of months
like this, like our marketing'sway way out of whack, like where
, where are we missing the markhere and what are?
Are we solving the rightproblem or are we not?
And we just went through thisprocess to dissect, like why our
advertising wasn't working,what we were, how we were
(10:56):
languaging things, how we werepositioning ourselves.
And through that process, Ithink one of the things we
uncovered is the, the way thatwe position our brand may just
be or individual products orindividual sales funnels.
It's likely one of the greatestleverage points that we have.
And through going through aprocess, we were able to take
our CPA from.
You know it rose as high aslike $30, $35.
(11:17):
And to give the audience somecontext, we have a sample offer
funnel that we use to basicallyget our different fragrances in
the hands of potential consumers.
We found in our buying process,one of the biggest challenges
was understanding what fragrancethey wanted and what products
they needed.
So we put them all together ina sample pack.
We sell it for $10.
(11:37):
We lose money on the firstpurchase.
We go pretty negative on it.
But the theory is, if theproduct is good enough and we
deliver the desired end result,then they'll come back and we
know our repeat purchase rate.
The funnel is optimized.
It works great for us.
But at that rate we can onlyafford to spend about $20 on a
CPA.
Anything more than that westart to lose too much.
(11:57):
It takes too long to get thecash back, et cetera.
In the summer our CPA got like$32, $35, and we were getting
our ass kicked.
That's part of the reason whywe lost so much money over the
summer.
And so we took a step back andwe're like okay, all the ad
creative we're throwing up isnot working.
We are just reallyregurgitating a lot of the same
copy, a lot of the samemessaging, trying to repackage
(12:19):
it if you will, but theunderlying kind of hook, angle
positioning, it was all the same.
Speaker 2 (12:25):
And.
But the underlying kind of hookangle positioning it was all
the same.
And so, yeah, and one thing Iwant to kind of underscore there
, anthony, because a few thingsthat CPA.
Some people may hear that andthink, wow, that's really low or
that's really high, dependingon someone's perspective.
But yeah, this was for a freesample offer and LiveBearded
it's a consumable.
You guys have very loyalcustomers.
Once they kind of get startedon a product, I know they stick
and so that sample offer makes alot of sense for you.
(12:46):
But yeah, when you're going inthe hole on that first order,
you can have a really high CPA.
So just to put a little morecontext there, and then, yeah,
you guys, when did you startnoticing CPAs rising Around?
What time?
Speaker 1 (13:02):
Yeah, I would say, like May, june, maybe even as
early as April, but like May andJune, they started to get
really bad and we startedtesting more to try to optimize,
find new, winning, creative.
And it was like the more thatwe spent, the higher our CPA
went, and there was this perfectcorrelation between like spend
and CPA just going in the wrongdirection.
And so it was just it was anindicator that we were solving
(13:24):
for the wrong problem.
Um, and so we took a step backand just with my creative team
and my marketing team, we triedto dissect, like, what problem
are we really solving here?
And you know, there's there's alot of great training out there
on you know, how to solveproblems and and benefits
solutions, desires problems, etcetera.
Um, one of the things I reallylove is in StoryBrand they talk
(13:46):
about people buy externalproblems for internal solutions
or internal challenges, and sowe were just thinking the
external problem is like beardissue.
They don't like the way itlooks, grooming, et cetera.
But why are guys really buyingproducts in the first place?
And so we really just startedto dig into this and we actually
(14:08):
came up with entirely new hooks, entirely new angles.
We're able to do some kind oftesting and surveying of our
customer base to prove some ofthose angles were working, and
relaunched a whole new creativeset and dropped our CPA from
like $35 down to as low as like12 to $15.
Speaker 2 (14:26):
Yeah, which is just it's just insane and it's
awesome, and and and so there'sthere's really kind of two sides
of this and you guys kind ofnailed both of them.
One, they're solving yourbusiness problem, right.
And then there's the, the, theangle of what problem am I
solving for my customer?
And I think, from the, the, thegrade, the overall business
perspective, this is difficult,right, because we run into
issues where we're not asprofitable as we used to be.
(14:47):
And we had two quarters at OMG,q4 of last year, q1 of this
year where we still made money,but it was our lowest
profitability ever.
And so you look at that andyou're like, well, we've got to
fix profitability.
But then you really have tounderstand but what's the
problem?
What is the problem?
(15:09):
And I remember hearing a buddyof mine talk about this story.
He was, uh, doing a college um,it was like a college project,
right, and he had this, thisprofessor, and so they were
working through the, the, thisproject, and they were stuck and
so they went to the professorfor help and the professor just
kept, kept asking what's theproblem?
And so they'd like go throughthe whole thing.
Well, we got this, we got that,and he, we got that.
And he's like no, no, no,what's what's the problem?
And he literally startedgetting animated and like
throwing stuff and saying what'sthe problem?
And then ultimately it was theyhad a variable cost issue that
(15:30):
they had to solve.
Right, but they were, they werenot defining the problem.
Speaker 1 (15:51):
And if you don't have the right offer, you're not
using the right offer, the rightyou know the right ads and
they're not connecting.
So yeah, I think it's.
You know I did, uh, I did thiscreative thinking.
It was like a creative strategymastermind or masterclass with
our buddy Will Hughes, if youknow, uh.
He has this master class and Iwent through it and in one of
the trainings there is a pictureof a train track and it goes
like the train tracks go into atunnel and you can't see on the
(16:12):
other side of the tunnel.
And his question was simplywhat's on the other side of the
tunnel?
Or no, he said where do thetrain tracks lead?
Okay, and I was like to thetrain station, you know, and
he's like, he's like, well,maybe they do.
Yeah, that's like a logicalanswer, that's a surface level
answer, but what's deeper thanthat?
(16:33):
And then, and then he's like Iknew at that point what he was
signaling for me to do.
He's like what's beyond thetrain station?
I was like on the other side ofthis tunnel it opens up.
In this, there's this likemiraculous vista of like
mountains and snowcap peaks andlike eagles soaring and herds of
animals.
And he's like yes, that's whatyou want.
You want to go to the nextlevel, deeper than like the most
basic surface level thing.
(16:54):
And I think when solving aproblem, the first answer that
we come to is typically theeasiest one, which is why it's
the worst one, or it's like it'sthe symptom, not the actual
problem, if you will.
And so, just using us as anexample, we were like our CPA is
broken.
Okay, new ad creative, new adcreative.
Let's find a new character tolike play this role.
(17:14):
Let's rewrite the script, let's.
But our positioning of the offerand of the product was the same
the entire time.
It was just repackaging it,repackaging it fast forward like
six, seven months.
We couldn't make any progressand it felt like we were
spinning our wheels, we wererunning in a million different
directions but we were producingno results.
(17:35):
And that's when I realized,okay, we're solving the surface
level issue of ad creative, notthe actual problem of messaging,
of positioning.
And so then we brought everybodytogether and we started to
really ask, like, why do ourguys buy products?
What are they trying to createor accomplish?
Not the surface level.
Like oh well, they need togroom their beards or they have
(17:57):
beard itch or all of thesedifferent things.
Like they want it to growbetter, like those are all the
surface level things.
And then, um, there's thismoment where I was like someone
was like well, we want to givepeople confidence.
Like, what do a guy, what doesa guy really want?
He wants to feel confident.
It's like okay, but how do youmake a guy feel confident?
Like you put a hot girl in anad, say you know you buy this,
(18:19):
and like you're going to, you'regoing to get the girl, or
whatever.
Um, and oftentimes like Ireally believe that questions
are the answer.
So whenever we're solving aproblem, we just need to ask
better questions and andoftentimes solution.
Speaker 2 (18:32):
You got to ask better questions.
Speaker 1 (18:34):
Yeah, like, I will literally at times like go
through a journaling process butall I'm doing is asking myself
different variations of the samequestion and I'm trying to come
up with a question that when Iwrite it I'm like, oh, I know
how to answer that Like, andyou're almost like trying to
find that thread for your, foryou to just take, um.
And so I was like, well, how dowe create confidence?
(18:55):
And I didn't know, and so wekind of brainstormed about it.
And then I asked the oppositequestion Well, what makes guys
lack confidence or feelembarrassed?
And I was like I know theanswer to this one.
Right, it's like having a beardthat you don't like, not liking
the way you look in the mirror,having, you know, not feeling
good about the way that you look.
And then ultimately we like wentdown that road and came up with
(19:17):
this concept of, like my beardsucks, I feel embarrassed by my
beard, and the solution to thatis better grooming routines,
trying the sample pack, etcetera, et cetera.
And we definitely hit on thepain point of guys feeling
embarrassed.
And what we uncovered throughthis process of asking better
questions?
We uncovered that one of thechallenges that our consumer has
(19:39):
is feeling embarrassed by theirbeard or being dissatisfied
with it or wishing that itlooked better.
And so, rather than saying, hey, we're going to give you this
sample pack that's amazing, thatlike didn't work saying hey,
we're going to make you look andfeel your best, that didn't
work either.
We said hey, if your beardsucks, like we can you know, if
your beard sucks, then do this,this and this and we'll take
(20:01):
care of it.
And we did that in like a funny, playful way, where we had a
scene of three guys sitting at abar and one guy's like, oh, my
beard sucks.
And the other guy, like,backhands him and is, like, your
beard doesn't suck, you justsuck at taking care of it, right
, but it delivers the point oflike, hey, if you don't feel
like your beard looks good or itdoesn't look the way you want
it to, then maybe you justaren't good at doing something.
(20:24):
And oh, by the way, we can helpyou.
So, to to relate this back tothe consumer, I think ultimately
like finding what that unlockis.
I mean, there's a saying inmarketing that's as old as
marketing itself.
It's like if you can enter theconversation that the customer's
already having in their mindand you can demonstrate that you
(20:44):
know the problem as good orbetter than they can, they're
automatically going to trust youRight.
And so what we uncovered is theconversation that guys were
having was they felt embarrassedby their beard.
They didn't want to say it outloud, but when you brought it up
to them they're like oh yeah, Iresonate with that in this
example.
So um, so, finding what thatreal emotional hot button was
(21:07):
for them, or what thatconversation they were having
with themselves was, and beingable to tap into that, that cut
our CPA in half.
And it literally did it in thematter of three days once we
launched that new ad.
And here we are three, fourmonths later and our CPA is
still extremely good.
On Facebook, instagram, it'sdoing very well.
(21:28):
We're acquiring more customersa day than we ever has as a
company and we're spending moreat the top of funnel than we
ever have, and we've been doingthis for seven years.
So the positioning for us was amajor unlock, and now it's like
I know that whenever we havemarketing inefficiencies, we
(21:49):
need to really go back tovisiting how we're positioning
ourselves or what problems we'respeaking to specifically with
our customers.
Speaker 2 (21:54):
Yeah, and just thinking about I was reading
this David Ogilvie quote theother day, ogilvie on
advertising and just one of thelegends in the space.
He was the guy behind Dove Soapand Rolls Royce and Hathaway
shirts and lots of other iconicbrands and he said you know, all
good ads are fueled by a bigidea, not just a discount or
(22:15):
something, but a big idea.
And those, but all those bigideas are pretty simple, right,
not not complicated.
We always want to make things,the fundamentals right.
The fundamentals, right.
But going back to this andunderstanding, okay, why does
someone buy beard products?
Okay, they don't want theirbeard to itch, sure, they want
it to be moisturizer to smellgood, sure, but that's all
(22:35):
surface level stuff.
That's not a big idea, right?
The big idea is I want to feelgreat about my beard, I want to
have confidence, and then, inrelationship to the conversation
taking place in the customer'shead, my beard sucks.
That's like the language thatwould be going on in someone's
head, right.
Uh, not, my beard needs to bebetter, whatever, but my beard
sucks.
And so you guys really tappedinto that, which was cool, and
(22:57):
so, um, yeah, kind of kind ofwalk us uh through, like, uh,
you, you, you you talked aboutthat that process of, okay, they
want to feel confident.
That's kind of hard to define,but we know when they don't
don't feel confident.
So it's to kind of define that.
Then, how did you kind of getget to the creative application
of you know, guys in a bar kindof playing that out or or any
(23:19):
any other insights into thecreative process?
Speaker 1 (23:22):
Yeah, um, candidly, my team handles most of that.
We've got a couple of greatguys on our team that kind of
just sat down.
They've went through a lot oftraining courses and have gotten
pretty good at doing scriptwriting.
And then we hired someone whohas done a lot of like hero
style videos.
So we've, you know, I've gotfour full-time creatives in
house plus two marketing guysthat are great at script writing
(23:44):
and copy.
So internally we've really likeoptimized to build creative, uh
, like this, and to be able todo it efficiently.
Um, we knew that this was anunlock for us.
So, to answer the questionspecifically, I think, um, you
know, we, the, the writing team,sat down and, to your point,
said, okay, if people areembarrassed by their beard or if
(24:04):
they're dissatisfied or unhappy, that's not the language that
they're going to use in theirhead.
Like what are they actually sayto themselves?
And you're a hundred percentright, they're going to say,
damn, my beard sucks, right.
And then we wanted to come upwith a fun environment where
bros would be having aconversation and it's like well,
where do guys meet and hang outand have a conversation?
What's relatable to ouraudience?
(24:24):
Having a happy hour, meetingfor a drink at a bar, et cetera.
So we just found a locallocation that we could rent out
for the day and put them in abar setting and record it, and
the rest is history.
Just stuck to the script anddid the things there.
But I think for us, what wealways try to do is write
(24:44):
creative and come up with setsand locations that we believe
are most aligned and congruentto who our customer is.
What's authentic?
Yeah, exactly To us as a brandtoo.
Right Like our brandpositioning is very much like
we're just regular guys.
You know, I started livebearded with one of my best
friends seven years ago.
We started it in my living room.
Uh, for the first four or fiveyears it was just him on camera,
(25:06):
him and I on camera, and wewere just really trying to
create this brotherly ballbusting have a good time, vibe
and so that's always kind ofjust been the culture and the
ethos of live bearded.
So with all of our creative, wereally try to make that be a
consistent that's awesome.
Speaker 2 (25:22):
So I want to go back to the problem solving question
and kind of look at how youdecided to start with the ad
creative.
Right, because the CPAs go upand there's several things you
can consider there.
Well, is just ad cost going upor my ads ineffective, or do my
landing pages need to be fixed?
And, ultimately, I think youguys have made improvements all
along that journey.
(25:42):
Right, you guys did CRO work aswell, landing page work, which
has worked very, very well, buthow did you land on ad creative?
That's the piece we need to fixright now.
Speaker 1 (25:53):
Yeah, well, to your point, I have spent a year and a
half optimizing our funnel,post-click.
So our landing page is superdialed in, converts at 12%, 13%
on cold traffic, so we're goodthere.
Um, our email funnel everythingback end is optimized.
Our repurchase rate on theoffer is upwards of 35% when
everything is dialed in andworking correctly.
(26:14):
So I knew everything post clickwas dialed in because none of
those metrics had changed.
The only thing that had changedwas our front end CPA, our, our
cost to acquire, and so and itwasn't just on one platform, but
it was on YouTube, working withyou guys at OMG, it was on
Facebook, it was on Tik TOK,like every ad we are running.
It was just it was going up.
Um, and so you know, I've been,I've been running ads and doing
(26:39):
, you know, this thing full timefor 12 years now.
Um, you know, I remembersetting up my first Facebook ads
in 2011,.
You know, so we've we've been atthis a long time and I think
when you're when you're at it along time, you just get a
general like sense of thingsright.
You kind of have an intuition.
That's maybe the part of ofbusiness and marketing, that's.
That's not necessarilyteachable.
You just get it after playingthe game for long enough.
(27:01):
And I just have this theorythat's like we're just one ad
away, one sales funnel away, onefunnel away, like one
optimization away from the nextlevel of growth.
And since everything downstreamwas optimized, I was like, well
, I think the only place we haveleft to try to optimize is
creative.
And you always hear these crazystories of like oh my gosh, you
(27:23):
know, like our buddy jock atraindrop, oh, dr Squatch came to
us at 3 million and we wereable to get him to 300 million
with different ads and the superbowl and the most Facebook or
the most YouTube spend ever.
Like.
You hear these crazy storiesand I think a lot of times
they're very hard to believe.
Um, even I, I doubt it in timesin my business, cause I'm like
man, we've never really had thatone ad that just like was a
(27:46):
moonshot right.
Like we've just always hit,base hits, base hits, base hits.
And you know it's again, it'sallowed us to grow at 35, 40%
year over year for five years ina row now.
So we've never been the companythat's tried to hockey stick
growth, partially because wecouldn't afford it.
We just were self-funded andwe're just, you know, we like
the slow and steady approach,but with that it's like I know,
(28:09):
creative always fatigues.
Again, everything post click wasoptimized.
So for me it was like, well,maybe this is just where our new
CPA is going to live.
Maybe everything elsedownstream, maybe we have to
change the dynamics of thebusiness and I think at times
there's inflection points wherewhat we were working
fundamentally changes.
And we do have to re-engineerour business, change our
(28:30):
approach.
And if we weren't able to getour CPA down with this
particular sample offer, wewould have had to look at maybe
acquiring customers in a new way.
But I just believe in theprocess of bettering your best.
That's what I tell my team allthe time.
It's like our goal, like once weget a new, a new winning ad,
our immediate goal is to beat itand we try to create a fun
competition and you know, and,and we tease each other about it
(28:52):
.
But I really just live by theidea of bettering your best and
that's really like what it justcame down to and, if I'm honest,
bro, like there was a periodthere where we were like in it
multiple months in a row with nowinners and no breakthroughs
and I thought to myself, like Idon't, I don't fucking know if
this is going to turn around,like I don't, maybe this just is
(29:13):
what our ad costs are going tobe, you know, and maybe the
economy and some of the maybelike there's just a lot of
factors here and I'm not goingto be able to break through, a
lot of factors here and I'm notgoing to be able to break
through.
But that doesn't mean that Idon't consistently show up every
day and do everything that Ican.
That's in my control and Iguess I just believe that if we
(29:34):
continue to show up, continue totake action, continue to work
to solve the right problems,ultimately we're going to find
an unlock somewhere along theway and that's going to lead to
that next level of opportunity.
Speaker 2 (29:47):
Yeah, and you said you believe in bettering your
best, and I think some brands,though, try to better their.
Meh, this is something that'snot really working.
We'll just get a little bitbetter.
Well, that doesn't work right.
Sometimes you need thatbreakthrough idea, and you guys
went through that, where theseads weren't working.
Well, let's just try to do thema little bit better.
Right, let's just try to do thesame concept but a little bit
(30:08):
better, and sometimes you justneed that different position.
Speaker 1 (30:17):
I don't know where I read it.
I actually think Spencer toldme about it or someone on the
team did, I think it was Nathan.
Actually, they listened to apodcast and the podcast was like
it's easier to grow 10 timesthan it is 10%.
And it was this veryinteresting kind of
philosophical approach and theysaid, cause, if you're going to
grow 10% more, you basicallyjust have to do what you're
doing a little bit better.
You just have to better that,Right, but if you're going to 10
(30:39):
times, you have to totallychange your approach.
Like you know, if you are sowe're in the in the eight figure
range, right, and what we'vedone has got us to, has gotten
us here.
If we want to go to nine figures, we have to totally change what
we're going to do.
Like, what gets you to whereyou are isn't going to take you
to where you want to go.
And so that whole idea of, yeah, you can grow 10%, 10%, 10%,
(31:01):
but if you want to go grow threetimes, 10%, 10%, 10%, but if
you want to go grow three times,five times, 10 times, you have
to actually fundamentally changethe way that you're approaching
things and solve a totallydifferent problem in a different
way and, uh, I can't in.
In some ways that's kind of.
The approach that we took islike, hey, we've been trying to
solve the ad creative this wholetime, but let's go a layer
deeper in a layer deeper andsolve for positioning, solve for
(31:24):
emotion Like what emotions dowe really want to hit and what
conversations can we have in adifferent way and that that
allowed us to get to the nextlevel.
Speaker 2 (31:33):
Yeah, and fundamentally understanding what
is someone buying when they buyyour product and why are they
choosing you over someone else?
Because you have to look at theDr Squ, dr squash example going
from three million a year to300 million a year is just
because it's better soap, I mean, that doesn't seem very likely,
right, it's better.
It's better positioning, rightwhat we feel, something when we
(31:54):
watch that dr squash ad and wewant what they offer and we're
willing to pay 12, a bar orwhatever it is right, more more
than that would pay forsomething you know, know, a
Walmart brand or something likethat.
And actually I just saw we weretraveling, driving through
Oklahoma City to go to afootball game and Dr Squatch in
a truck stop.
This whole section of DrSquatch, I'm like they made it,
(32:17):
man, they're in a truck stop.
So that should be your goal,anthony Mink.
I want to see you live beardedyour goal, Anthony.
Mink, I want to see you livebearded.
There's a lot of beardedtruckers out there.
There's a lot of beardedtruckers out there, for sure.
Uh, yeah, it's it, it.
It does come down topositioning and it does come
down to brand, and sometimeswe're just we're missing the
mark a little bit.
We've done okay, but we'rebettering our meh instead of
(32:39):
bettering our best, and that'sthat's where we need to shift.
Speaker 1 (32:42):
I think, said in a different way, maybe to try to
connect the dots.
Maybe it's just those peoplethat are like, okay, I get it,
but how do I really drive thispoint home?
People buy stories, states andidentities.
They don't buy products, right.
And so if you're selling aproduct, if I'm selling you a
bar of soap or a beard oil, likeokay, cool, like maybe I'm
(33:02):
interested if I actually needthat in that moment, but if you
sell a story or an emotionalstate, right, confidence, the
cool kid, the be a man, likewhatever some of these ads sell,
um, or you sell an identity,right, like there's a certain
type of of that people areselling, if they buy a certain
car, or if a woman buys acertain handbag or whatever.
(33:23):
And I think again, if we stepback from the product and try to
like sit down with our customerand really get inside of their
wants, their needs, theirdesires, what stories do they
want to buy, what emotionalstates do they want to buy?
And then what identities dothey want to buy, what emotional
states do they want to buy?
And then what identities dothey want to buy, so they can
signal who they are?
And I think just that frameworkwill help us, at least here
(33:47):
with us.
It helps me kind of dissect ornot dissect, but step away from
the actual tangible product,cause it's easy when you're just
selling the same thing over andover We've been selling men's
grooming for seven years right,you get in a vacuum and so
oftentimes you have to pullyourself out and get perspective
.
So, um, I think, stories,states and identities that has
(34:08):
really really helped me get adifferent vantage point or try
to find a different way toconnect with the audience.
Speaker 2 (34:17):
Yeah, it's so good.
Yeah, because stories reallyevoke a different set of
emotions and really makessomething come to life and
understanding what state are wetrying to create.
That's really important.
I think most people don't thinkabout that, but the deepest
level, or the highest level,whichever way you want to look
at it, is that identity right?
Why do I buy Nike instead ofAdidas?
Or why do I want to drive thiscar over that car?
(34:39):
It's because it's how I want toidentify Like I want to be a
great athlete.
I want to be associated withgreat athletes.
Or, for me, I first startedliking Nike because I was a huge
Michael Jordan fan.
And so I grew up in the glorydays of MJ, and so I still like
Nike the best today, and it'snot like they got better shoes
than Adidas.
Speaker 1 (35:03):
I mean it's totally subjective, but, yeah, really
like, screw it up for you.
Like, at this point they justdon't have to screw up and
they've got your businessbecause the identity that
they've created, you know, andit's very interesting, I saw
this graph a while back and itwas talking about influencer led
brands and the importance of abrand having a forward facing
founder or someone that they canbasically connect with the
brand as an identity.
And it said they.
Basically the question was howimportant is it for you to buy
(35:26):
from a brand that you know thefounders?
And like the baby boomers, itwas like nil, like 10, 20% of
people were maybe like oh, it'simportant.
But when you go to like Gen Zin the the 18, 20, 25, 30 year
olds in that range, it was like60, 70% of people said it was
very important.
And you pair that with just.
(35:47):
I think I have this philosophyin life and I think just because
you don't like the messengerdoesn't mean the message is any
less valid and I've trainedmyself to just observe.
I think most people get caughtin a reaction to different
things and I like to justobserve and so, like there's
been some interestingobservations in the business
community, with Target, with BudLight, with several different
(36:11):
brands where they have made amove, and then the market has
reacted in a certain way.
And I bring that up because Ithink, now more than ever,
brands want to associate with or, excuse me, customers want to
spend their money with brandswho they like, who have similar
values or ideals or identities,and so I think that final
(36:33):
identity piece when you reallycan speak to the identity of
someone as a brand and it'sauthentic and it's genuine and
it's who you are as a brand, Ithink that's one of the biggest
unlocks that we can have.
And I think now people are moreintentional with voting, with
their dollars, than ever before,or maybe at least ever in my
lifetime as an adult, as aconsumer, I see you know a lot
(36:54):
of the different sways incommerce based on different
moves good or bad that customersor companies are making.
So I just think it's a verytimely time for everybody to sit
down and dissect how are wepositioning our brand, what
stories are we telling, whatemotions are we creating and
(37:14):
what identities do we connectwith or do we stand with, and I
think a lot of the ads that weknow so well in D2C, whether
it's Squatty Potty or Poopery orDr Squatch.
Why did they do so?
Well, they made someone feelsomething right.
They gave them an emotionalstate change.
Speaker 2 (37:38):
Yeah, and it wasn't just that they told great jokes.
They did, but the jokes wererelevant to those story, states
and and and identities.
And one one thing I want tokind of underscore there.
I think you know that you'vegot a good brand when you can
define those or talk about those.
You, you know what stories youshould be telling and your
customers probably know whatstories you should be telling.
You know states you're tryingto create and your customers
probably do too, and you knowthe identity that your customers
(38:01):
want to have as it relates toyou.
I heard Seth Godin say thisrecently and I thought it was
brilliant.
He said you know, if you takeNike, you know Nike's got a
great brand.
Obviously, if Nike was going tobuild a hotel, we could
probably guess what that hotelwould be like.
Right, it would pay homage togreat athletics and to sports
and we could probably evenpicture like what that
(38:21):
experience would be like ifwe've been in a Nike stores or
whatever.
But then you flip that and yousay but what if somebody like
Hyatt started making products?
You would have no idea.
Like what does Hyatt even mean.
I don't know.
It's a hotel.
They like have beds.
I get no mental picture.
I get no story in my head whenit comes to Hyatt no state no
(38:44):
identity.
It's just like it's fine, hyattis fine, and so I think that's
a really clear picture.
Do I have a brand or am I justselling a product?
Speaker 1 (38:52):
Well, think about Virgin.
Virgin has airlines, they havehotels, they have cruise ships.
They're one of those rarebrands who have transcended
these crazy different industries.
Speaker 2 (39:04):
You get a picture in your mind when you think Virgin.
Speaker 1 (39:06):
You know exactly what it is.
It's going to be a freaking,rocking good time.
Speaker 2 (39:10):
So I do want to talk a little bit about your
leadership, content and kind ofwhere you're headed with that.
So I got to hear you speak,obviously at Blue Ribbon San
Diego.
The presentation was fantastic.
Anybody listening to this I'msure has that expectation that
it'd be amazing but had visualsand stuff.
It was awesome, but you alsohad somebody kind of following
(39:30):
you around with a camera and youwere creating some content.
And I know you're getting intopersonal developmental
leadership, going to start apodcast called entitled to
nothing, which I love that title.
So talk to me about that.
Why, why start podcasting?
Why kind of get into this selfimprovement, um, content and
what's, what's the goal there?
Speaker 1 (39:51):
Yeah, it's.
It's a very interestingquestion.
I appreciate you asking it.
You know, I think, um, for me,my only model of success is just
going out and learning frompeople who are smarter than me
and who kind of know the roadahead.
Um, I I come from very humblebeginnings.
My dad was a logger.
He literally cut trees down fora living.
(40:11):
My mom was a stay at home mom.
I had no reference point forsuccess growing up and
entrepreneurs, I've got toentrepreneurs in your family.
No entrepreneurs, no, I meanlike it was just.
You know, it was very likehumble beginnings and because of
all the financial difficultyand pain growing up, I knew that
I never wanted to experiencethat.
So I knew I needed to figurethis thing out.
(40:32):
And to make a long story short,I am a product of a lot of
other people's knowledge,information.
You know, I've been to so manyconferences and books and like,
obviously that's how we met.
So I think I've got to a placein my career where I feel like
I've I've created, you know,some, some successful businesses
(40:54):
.
I, as I was getting ready forthe podcast and I was trying to
figure out how I was going toframe everything, I just did a
quick calculation and mycompanies over the last 12 years
have done over $50 million insales, which seems crazy to me,
like I don't know how it's thatmuch, but it was like a bonafide
$50 million in sales.
And so I was like man I.
I know I have something toshare and I know I've overcome a
(41:15):
lot of experiences, frombankruptcy and broke to a figure
company CEO 50 million plus insales.
Like I, the greatest gift I'veever been given was knowledge
and information and ideas fromother people.
And, um, I feel like one of thebest gifts that we can give is
breathing life, breathinginspiration, breathing, uh,
(41:35):
courage or compassion orconfidence into other people.
And I, just through the processof COVID and through the process
of all the craziness that'shappened, I just honestly felt
it on my heart that I needed toshare some of my journey in the
hopes that it inspires otherpeople along the way.
And it's an interesting process, man.
(41:55):
We've had a couple of recordingsessions where, at the end of
the day, I'm like just trash all, trash all of it.
It sucks Like I don't like anyof it, you know.
And then, and then havingsomeone follow me around.
I mean having someone follow mearound with a camera seems so
awkward and uncomfortable attimes, but also, I think anytime
you learn how to do somethingfor the first time, it's going
to be awkward and uncomfortableand I don't know what will come
(42:17):
of it.
But I just felt like, in orderto have the impact I want as a
entrepreneur and just as anindividual, I need to share more
of my experiences and some ofthe lessons that I've learned,
and I think one of the thingsthat I finally clicked for me is
there are certain people thatsay things in a way that I
really connect with and thenthere's other people that say
(42:39):
the same things in their ownvoice and I just like it doesn't
connect with me.
I don't, I can't get into it,you know, and for me, like the
guy has always been Tony Robbins, like I love him, his content
has always connected with me Hispassion, his language, his
curse words, like it, just itfires me up.
Speaker 2 (42:57):
Which is strategic, by the way, I heard him talk
about this one time.
He curses strategically.
Now, maybe he couldn't shut itoff even if he wanted to, but
he's like, he believes it joltsyou into paying attention.
You remember better, you learnbetter when someone is swearing.
It was interesting.
Speaker 1 (43:11):
Yeah, he said.
If, he says if, if your momsaid, you know, hey, Brett, get
in here, it would have oneemotional response.
If she said, hey, brett, getyour butt in here, it'd be like,
okay, brett, get your ass inhere right now, right, like it's
just the different languageevokes different emotions.
So, to make a long story short,I uh, I've got to a place in my
career where I feel like I havesomething valuable to share and
(43:34):
I feel like it's myresponsibility to share that,
because all of my knowledge isjust accumulated from other
people and in a lot of ways, Ijust want to pay that forward to
the next generation of peopleor to anybody who resonates with
my message or my story or kindof my experiences.
Speaker 2 (43:51):
Yeah, and I'm really glad you're doing it.
You know, I've got to hear youspeak on stage a few times and
been on a podcast with you.
You're very articulate and yourstory is going to resonate and
you've got a unique perspectiveand the way you've learned and
grown and become an entrepreneurwith really no family example
and I was kind of the same waylike nobody in my family was an
entrepreneur I just felt calledto do it.
(44:12):
Your message is going toresonate and so I'm super
excited.
Man, I can't wait for the pod.
I'm going to consume it, thankyou, and I know it's going to
touch some people and encouragesome people.
It's going to be a lot of funtoo.
Speaker 1 (44:30):
Yeah, I think I had one of my biggest business
failures happened because Istarted to kind of drink my own
Kool-Aid.
I felt like I had had somesuccess and I knew what I was
doing and I got a little bitcomplacent and a little bit
entitled and then I losteverything and I just had this
come to Jesus moment with myselfwhere I was like I'm entitled
to nothing and I started torealize that when we take
complete responsibility for allof our results, that gives us
the power to dictate thedirection that we go.
(44:51):
You know, we're not we'rehardly ever in control of
outside circumstances and thingsthat are taking place, but
we're always in control of howwe react and respond to them.
And that's where this whole ideaof like I'm entitled to nothing
and my life is my fault, and Iactually think in some ways,
we're living in probably themost entitled time in history.
(45:16):
You know, there's an easybutton and an app for everything
and people just want shit now,and so I just felt like this
message of like your life isyour fault, you're entitled to
nothing, I really felt like itwas timely and I felt like I was
someone that could really kindof lead the charge with it and
share from experience, not justideas or or perspectives, if
that makes sense.
Speaker 2 (45:37):
That's awesome man, and so, depending on when
someone's listening to this,that may not be out yet, but
it's coming soon.
Speaker 1 (45:43):
January 12th is the goal Awesome.
Speaker 2 (45:45):
How can people start to connect with you?
Follow you now so that they'reready.
Whether the pod is launched atthe time they're listening or
not.
How can they connect with you?
Speaker 1 (45:53):
Yeah, the best way right now is just Anthony Mink
on Instagram.
The best way right now is justAnthony Mink on Instagram.
At Anthony Mink, you can searchme and I would love to have you
follow along.
I'm posting content on a prettyfrequent basis Now.
We're playing around withdifferent videos and different
ideas and getting ready tolaunch the podcast in January.
So it would mean it would meanthe world if someone came and
followed along and shared theirfeedback.
I would really appreciate it.
Speaker 2 (46:15):
It's awesome, and for the bearded brothers out there,
or for anybody who's special.
Someone is bearded.
Uh, how can they learn moreabout?
Uh, live bearded and try outyour amazing products?
Speaker 1 (46:26):
Live beardedcom.
Um, if you have any questions,we've got a team of customer
service reps just in the roomnext door.
You can reach out to us and letus know.
But uh, yeah, for any men'sgrooming stuff we'd love to take
care of you, specifically forthe beards.
Speaker 2 (46:39):
It's awesome, man, and I can vouch for both the
brand and for the team.
You know we've had kind of afront row seat.
We got to get to work with youguys now for years and years on
the Google and YouTube side andit's just been fun to watch you
grow.
Man, love your team, love theenergy you bring and I love the
products.
And so long live, live bearded.
(47:00):
Thank you.
Speaker 1 (47:01):
Thank you, I mean, it means a lot, awesome.
Speaker 2 (47:03):
Well, thanks for coming on, anthony.
This was fantastic and I can'twait for that pod.
Speaker 1 (47:08):
Absolutely, brother.
Thank you so much.
I'll talk to you soon.
Speaker 2 (47:11):
Sounds good and, as always, thank you for tuning in.
Love to hear from you.
What would you like to hearmore of on the show?
Give us some ideas.
And hey, I'm getting moreactive on the social, so
primarily LinkedIn, but also onInstagram and YouTube and
YouTube Shorts.
So check that out.
And with that until next time.
Thank you for listening.
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