Podcasts about dollar beard club

Alex Brown joins the ClickBank Affiliated podcast to talk about his start with the Dollar Beard Club, how he scaled that business, and how we successfully transitioned to something new once he knew the market was changing. Truly Free's Website - https://trulyfreehome.com/ Connect with Alex - https://www.linkedin.com/in/alextbrown/ Connect with Truly Free - https://www.linkedin.com/company/trulyfreehome/ Grow Your Own Scalable Affiliate Program TODAY - https://www.clickbank.com/scalable-affiliate-program/?el=podcast Become a ClickBank Media Buyer with Our FREE Course! - https://www.clickbank.com/media-buyer-agency/?el=podcast ClickBank's E-Commerce Offers - https://www.clickbank.com/ecommerce-offers/?el=podcast Top Offers Blog - https://www.clickbank.com/blog/clickbank-top-offers/?el=podcast Email Us: affiliated@clickbank.com

In today's episode, we have a fascinating conversation with Brian Welfel, CEO of the ⁠The Beard Club⁠. Brian shares insights into the evolution of his brand, from its beginnings as the Dollar Beard Club to becoming a leading name in men's grooming. We learn about the brand's focus on serving diverse facial hair needs and its strategic approach to product development. Brian also discusses the importance of market positioning, strategic investments, and the impact of celebrity partnerships in building brand credibility. Join us as we explore the dynamic world of CPG brands and the mindset behind successful ecommerce ventures. Want to see the podcast on video? Head to the ⁠⁠Incrementum Digital YouTube Channel and subscribe ⁠⁠ Links: Scale on Amazon and Retail Media: ⁠⁠Incrementumdigital.com⁠⁠ ⁠⁠Follow Liran on Linkedin --- Send in a voice message: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/liran-hirschkorn0/message

Alex Brown has been launching e-commerce companies for over 5 years, starting with multiple successful crowdfunding campaigns (like Coolbox which ended up on ABC's Shark). He is best known as CoFounder of the viral hit Dollar Beard Club. DBC hit $10M in their first year with no performance marketing or affiliate help, and has gone on to become a scalable and globally known brand with over 300M video views.You'll learn:Is crowdfunding still relevant?The one thing that makes or breaks product launchesHow a video-first strategy launched their brandThe conditions for viralityThe three questions to ask yourself to build an incredible brand storyWhat to do when you feel overwhelmedSince exiting Beard Club, Alex has been advising multiple companies and speaking around the world on branding and content marketing. He currently runs the first e-commerce brand accelerator program for brands on pace for 8+ figures, and is an advisor to NGO's helping building entrepreneurial ecosystems.Show LinksEcommerce RockstarsCoolBox KickstarterThe Beard ClubThis is Marketing (Book)Evolved Enterprise (Book)Ecommerce RockstarsNever miss an episodeSubscribe wherever you get your podcastsJoin Kurt's newsletterHelp the showAsk a question in The Unofficial Shopify Podcast Facebook GroupLeave an honest review on iTunes. Your ratings & reviews help, and I read each one.Subscribe wherever you get your podcastsWhat's Kurt up to?See our recent work at EthercycleTake a ride with Kurt on YouTubeApply to work with Kurt to grow your store.SponsorsThis episode was made possible by Ecom Growers - In eCommerce, the difference between great and good email campaigns is hundreds of thousands of dollars Ecom Growers is an agency that figured it out so you don't leave any sales on the table.

Dan is a legend in the making because he is the youngest founder of a publicly traded company in history and is also an angel investor of 32 companies that range from mobile apps and tech companies, to successful monthly box subscription sites like “Dollar Beard Club” and consumer products like Uwheels, both of which exceeded $5,000,000 in sales in less than 8 months.During all of this, he's supported 2 dozen charities before finally launching his own: ModelCitizenFund.org creates backpacks filled with over 150 emergency supply items for the homeless.You don't want to miss this episode because he gives you details on how to launch a business in the matter of minutes.Come and have a listen and make sure to follow us at:@ArianeAndrew@MattDillon1983@SippintheTeaTvShowIf you're more of a visual person: Check out Dan's interview on our TV Show on YouTube: https://youtu.be/JORZbvWW3WE#DanFleyshman #SippinTheTea #ArianeAndrew #MattDillon

In this episode, Jared Nichols gets real on topics including the future, innovation, meetings, left-handedness and, most importantly, the importance of making the conversation about the future accessible to everyone. Jared's Bio: Jared Nichols is a futurist, advisor, and faculty member at the University of Tennessee’s Haslam College of Business, in Graduate and Executive Education. He teaches leaders, teams, and individuals, how to think like futurists so they can create the best future for themselves and the people they serve. His insight and expertise is utilized across a wide variety of sectors and industries from Fortune 500 companies to government municipalities, entrepreneurial start-ups, as well as his work in Hollywood with accomplished actors, writers, and producers, helping them reinvent themselves and discover new areas for growth both inside and outside the bounds of their industry. Jared is also musician, composer, competitive cyclist, and trail runner living in Charlotte, North Carolina with his wife and their two sons. His most recent accomplishment is becoming an official card-carrying member of the Dollar Beard Club and is making plans to build a workshop and tame a wild animal. Contact Information: Site: https://www.thenewfuturist.com/ Contact: jared@thenewfuturist.com Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/company/thenewfuturist/ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/thenewfuturist/ Twitter: https://twitter.com/newfuturists Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/thenewfuturist/ Online Courses: https://www.thenewfuturist.com/online-courses Free Course: https://www.thenewfuturist.com/overwhelm-to-insight-2 Episode Resources: About BLUF: https://hbr.org/2016/11/how-to-write-email-with-military-precisionhttps://hbr.org/2016/11/how-to-write-email-with-military-precision   HBR Meeting Cost Calculator: https://hbr.org/2016/01/estimate-the-cost-of-a-meeting-with-this-calculator Music by Ryan Sullivan. Contact: sullybmusic@gmail.com

Chris Stoikos is a serial entrepreneur and chief executive officer of Dollar Beard Club. He is the archetypal "mover and shaker" with a number of entrepreneurial credits to his name. His true genius lies in the ability to creatively market and commercialize products, and in building and maintaining teams of experts to run businesses independently. Despite his youth, Chris brings a practical knowledge of business in tandem with a firm grasp of market psychology for a younger and "hipper" consumer base. He also brings his manly beard, named "Grizz". Key Takeaways: [1:20] The creation of The Dollar Beard Club [4:15] The history of the rise of the beard culture [6:10] The impact viral videos have had on The Dollar Beard Club's success [10:10] Unconscious Content conference he's throwing to teach people to create viral videos [13:30] Dissecting the elements of viral videos [17:50] How you can tell a story in a 90 second video [20:10] Chris' background that led to his viral videos [21:40] How Chris writes his scripts for the videos and how much the videos have cost Resources Mentioned: www.DollarBeardClub.com www.UnconsciousContent.com www.ChisStoikos.com

Welcome to another episode of Explode Your Expert Biz Show, brought to you by http://gtex.org.uk/,   I am your host, Simone Vincenzi, The Experts Strategist, and this is the podcast for experts who want to become the ultimate authority in their niche while making an impact in the world.   If you want to build a highly profitable coaching, speaking or training business, download now our EXPERT BIZ CHECKLIST.   The EXPERT BIZ CHECKLIST is the best tool you can use for your expert business where you will take a full assessment of your business and know exactly what to focus on to go to your next level.   Click here to download. http://bit.ly/expert-biz-checklist-podcast     Today I have the pleasure to Interview Alex Brown   Alex has been launching e-commerce companies for over 5 years, starting with multiple successful crowdfunding campaigns (like Coolbox which ended up on ABC’s Shark). He is best known as CoFounder of the viral hit Dollar Beard Club. DBC hit $10M in their first year with no performance marketing or affiliate help, and has gone on to become a scalable and globally known brand with over 300M video views. Since exiting Beard Club, Alex has been advising multiple companies and speaking around the world on branding and content marketing. He currently runs the first e-commerce brand accelerator program for companies on pace for 8-figures and is an advisor to NGO’s helping building entrepreneurial ecosystems.      In this episode, we talk about:   How to build a brand with passion and purpose, what structures are important to consider when building a physical product business online how to create real impact with your business and massive enterprise value       Connect with Alex Brown   Website  www.ecommercerockstars.co   Instagram @ecommercerockstars   Facebook:  https://www.facebook.com/ecommercerockstars       To become a GTeX Member, Apply here: https://gtex.events/call     To receive daily support in your coaching and speaking business, join our private Facebook Group EXPLODE YOUR EXPERT BIZ https://www.facebook.com/groups/explodeyourexpertbiz/   Take a full business assessment for free to have absolute clarity on your business with the EXPERT BIZ CHECKLIST. http://bit.ly/expert-biz-checklist-podcast     Also, make sure you subscribe to the podcast so you don’t miss any other episode.                    If you want to reach out to me with your questions, you can email me at Simone@gtex.org.uk which comes right to my inbox.   Thank you for listening to EXPLODE YOUR EXPERT BIZ SHOW. If you enjoyed the interview, please subscribe to the show and leave us a review. Every week we will select a winner from the reviews we get.   Remember to download THE EXPERT BIZ CHECKLIST to get the roadmap on how to become an AUTHORITY in your field. http://bit.ly/expert-biz-checklist-podcast   Finally, To receive daily support in your coaching and speaki --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/explode/message

In this special episode, we interview serial DTC entrepreneur, Alex Brown, Founder of Ecommerce RockStars and past Co-Founder of The Beard Club (formerly Dollar Beard Club). In part 2 of this episode, we discuss: 1) Why Feedback from your customers is so important for building your brand, 2) Why customers will help tell you who you are and why you exist beyond just the product, 3) Why building a regular cadence for talking with customers is important, 4) Why it's important to keep a personal touch with your customers and why customers are hungry for connection, 5) Why and how the Amazon Bubble is going to burst, 6) Why taking a long term view of your customer is important, 7) Critical tips for people just starting a brand and for people who have a $500,000 a year brand and who want to scale the business.  Join us as we interview Alex Brown in Part 2 of this episode and hear him share the inside story of the building of a brand. For more on Ecommerce RockStars visit:  https://ecommercerockstars.co/ Visit our advertiser: https://www.privy.com/cf Visit our advertiser: https://churnbuster.io/pod Visit our Sponsor: https://www.retentionscience.com

In this special episode, we interview serial DTC entrepreneur, Alex Brown, Founder of Ecommerce RockStars and past Co-Founder of The Beard Club (formerly Dollar Beard Club).    In part 1 of this episode, Ramon Vela and Alex Brown discuss: 1) How Alex started in Crowdfunding, 2) How he started CoolBox and then Beard Club, 3) Why Drop Ship businesses are not feasible long-term and why the next correction will clean them out, 4) Why the fundamentals of business online are the same as offline, 5) How to start a DTC brand, 6) How you can build a brand that serves people and not just sells products, 7) How to create a story that resonates with people, 8) Why companies with a social aspect outperform those that don't (long run), 9) What are the stumbling blocks of building your brand.  Join us as we interview Alex Brown in Part 1 of this episode and hear him share the inside story of the building of a brand.  For more on Ecommerce RockStars visit: https://ecommercerockstars.co/   Visit our advertiser: https://www.privy.com/cf Visit our advertiser: https://churnbuster.io/pod Visit our Sponsor: https://www.retentionscience.com

Guest Bio:Dan Fleyshman is the youngest founder of a publicly traded company in history. At the age of 23, after selling 15 million dollars worth of clothing in six department store chains and surpassing expectations with his 9.5 million dollar licensing deal with STARTER apparel, Mr. Fleyshman launched the “Who's Your Daddy” energy drink into 55,000 retail stores and military bases. 10 years after starting his licensing company in high school, Dan went on to launch Victory Poker in 2010, building the third largest team of professional players out of the 550 poker sites on the market.Mr. Fleyshman is a very active Angel Investor and advisor to 24+ companies that range from mobile apps and tech companies, to successful monthly box subscription sites like “Dollar Beard Club” and consumer products like Uwheels, both of which exceeded $5,000,000 in sales in less than 8 months.During all of this, he's supported 2 dozen charities before finally launching his own: ModelCitizenFund.org creates backpacks filled with over 150 emergency supply items for the homeless. It has been the official charity of the World Series of Poker Europe the past few years and has been featured on Fox Sports, NBC, MTV, and ESPN for supplying homeless shelters, teen abuse shelters, and orphanages around the world.Besides his passion for philanthropy, he's also an avid poker player with multiple 1st place wins. These range from the 5k C.E.O. Poker Championship at the Palms, the Canadian Poker Tour Main Event, and the 25k high roller event at the Commerce Casino — as well as winning the 10k Chipleader Challenge at the Hard Rock.On top of all of this, “Elevator Nights” is the quarterly event that Dan holds (free of charge) for 12 companies to present for five minutes each to 150 of his angel investor friends.Currently his media site, 1stSlice.com, has generated 300,000,000 page views in the first nine months since launching!

Alex Brown is an ecommerce entrepreneur, crowdfunder, speaker and active consultant with countless success stories under his belt. After building The Beard Club to $10M in its first year, his passion for startups and helping companies grow led him to share his knowledge through advisory work and on multiple stages all around the world. Bullet points 00:30 - Intro 04:30 - The start of the entrepreneurial journey 08:00 - The college experience 10:20 - Meeting a business partner 11:20 - Raising money on crowdfunding 16:20 - How to have a successful campaign 20:05 - What to do before launching 22:35 - The most important drivers behind pre-launch in today’s age 24:30 - The Dollar Beard Club 28:22 - Getting funding and cash flow 31:50 - Selling in the USA, Canada and globally 35:00 - Focus on encouraging consumption 34:50 - Don’t overcomplicate things 40:00 - Subscriptions aren’t always the best strategy 41:23 - The importance of social and environmental consciousness in brands 44:30 - You don’t have to be perfect 51:18 - Stepping back from the day-to-day operation 57:52 - The Mastermind event 01:01:16 - Rapid fire question round 01:01:18 - Any unusual drinking or eating habits? 01:05:07 - How do you get into a state of flow? 01:06:37 - What silly thing should people do more of? 01:07:24 - What habit or opinion do you have that people tend to disagree with? 01:09:45 - What non-traditional lesson would you teach at school? 01:12:29 - What books had the biggest impact on your life? 01:14:07 - What do you do or where do you go to get inspired? 01:15:05 - What’s the best advice ever given to you? 01:16:17 - Would you rather fight one horse-sized duck or one hundred-duck sized horses? 01:17:22 - How would you convince someone to do something that is good for them, but that they don’t want to do? 01:19:13 - What makes you happiest? 01:22:00 - Any asks or requests for the audience?

ENJOY this interview w/ Dan Fleyshman on his entrepreneurial story and how to grow your company fast. Dan Fleyshman is the youngest founder of a publicly traded company in history. At the age of 23, after selling 15 million dollars worth of clothing in six department store chains and surpassing expectations with his 9.5 million dollar licensing deal with STARTER apparel, Mr. Fleyshman launched the “Who’s Your Daddy” energy drink into 55,000 retail stores and military bases. 10 years after starting his licensing company in high school, Dan went on to launch Victory Poker in 2010, building the third largest team of professional players out of the 550 poker sites on the market. Mr. Fleyshman is a very active Angel Investor and advisor to 24+ companies that range from mobile apps and tech companies, to successful monthly box subscription sites like “Dollar Beard Club” and consumer products like Uwheels, both of which exceeded $5,000,000 in sales in less than 8 months. Follow Dan Fleyshman on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/danfleyshman/ ✔ Follow ADAM on Instagram:https://www.instagram.com/adamtotounji/ You can also watch to this interveiw on YouTube here: --- Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/mogulinsider/support

In this episode Tiz is interviewing Alex Brown, the co-founder of Dollar Beard Club. See what he has to say about building an 8 figure ecommerce business --- Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/no-bs-podcast/support

Alex Brown, co-founder of the Dollar Beard Club joins us today. As we all know, beard care and grooming is big these days, and we discuss how applying some of the basic principles of HIT have led Alex down a successful business path. The path we choose is truly ours, yet we sometimes look back and say "I should have done this" or we look back and say "time for a change". Alex digs deep and gets real personal about the moment he decided to change it all and start his new life as an entrepreneue.  I really admire Alex for his honesty and his vunerabiluty, most of all for his humility if I am honest. A truly likeable guy who tells it like it is.  Find out more about Alex and his humble power here  REMEMBER: When you join my group consulting program here, you get the bonus round of my guests going live in the group on the day I interview them, if you are not in the group, you need to wait weeks until the show goes live. If you have not done it yet, grab your FREE guide Right here! “8 WAYS TO GENERATE IMMEDIATE IMPACT REVENUE”

If you want to know the value of your business and where it comes from, do the work. Take the time to collect the data, then hone in on what is the right fit for your company. Prioritize figuring out what makes your business tick in order to grow a sustainable brand. The bulk of Babak Azad's body of work lies in growing the Beach Body brand from 100 million to over 1 billion in revenue in eight years. Now working as a consultant in marketing for multimillion dollar businesses, Babak and his team focus on customer acquisition, retention, and the power of customer experience. Babak is here today to talk to us about building a lasting brand by helping business find a few channels that work well and hitting those home. Episode Highlights: Babak shares his unique way of looking at customer acquisition in every type of business he touches. Why business metrics are not as difficult as people think if they start with the basics. Start somewhere and then refine over time. The importance of knowing what a good customer is worth in any business. The things business owners should be tracking at a minimum. Look at the levels and the patterns. Get things right for a few to start off before rushing around trying to scale up too quickly. It is crucial to your success as a marketer to seek out and hone in on the best channels for your business. What your strategy should look like once those channels have been targeted effectively. Use service marketplaces such as Fiverr and Upwork to find small ways to find qualified staff to collect crucial data. How Babak helps clients discover the right intersection of branding and direct marketing then infuses that with customer sustainability. Why it is so important to start taking care of the customer. Hear Babak's 4 pillars of brand building. Transcription: Joe: So Mark I know that amongst all the Quiet Light Brokerage, Jason is probably the fittest. But I occasionally do get my butt kicked by someone online with beachbody.com. Most recently a young lady … I can't remember her name but I keep going back to it. I love the program and I love the story behind Beachbody's success. Because as you know I'm an old radio spot ad, radio infomercial, TV infomercial guy and that is where Beachbody started; I believe. And you had them on the podcast is that right? Mark: I did. Yeah, I think pretty much everybody has heard of Beachbody at some point or another. I mean it's a huge brand; huge name. I was able to talk to Babak Azad. He was the Senior Vice President for Media and Acquisitions; really fancy title, big companies … that comes with the big companies are fancy titles but his role at beach body was to figure out their customer acquisition strip. And this is what he does now. He's no longer with Beachbody. He did leave a little while ago. He's now with Round Two Ventures and they help e-commerce companies eight figure or nine figure, primarily e-commerce companies hone in on their customer acquisition strategies. What was great about this discussion is seeing as at scale, seeing what a … somebody who's in charge of a business that when he came into to Beachbody they were doing 100 million dollars in revenue annually. That's a lot of money. Joe: It's a lot. Mark: When he left in just a few years later they were doing over a billion dollars in annual revenue. Joe: Wow. How long was he there for? Mark: I don't know. I would have to take a look to see but it wasn't more than a few years. So he's really responsible for the explosive growth. I mean again a lot of people have heard about Beachbody or remember hearing about them. Way back when I was in college which unfortunately is too long ago now, so I remember hearing about them then. Now I mean everybody knows Beachbody. Everybody knows the brand and that was because of his customer acquisition strategy. We talked a lot about what that was and we talked a lot about problems and mistakes he sees especially in seven figure e-commerce businesses and even eight figure e-commerce businesses as they're trying to grow. I'll leave some of the mystery for the actual episode here but a couple of things that I pulled away from this that I thought were really good; one, he said that if he comes across a company and they have more than four main acquisition channels that he's guaranteeing they're wasting money and that they are completely … not doing what they should. Some people get all worked up and you know they think oh I need to be on Pinterest, I need to be on Instagram, I need to be on Facebook, I need to be here or there and everywhere. And he said that's not how it works. He said find a few channels. He says it should be no more than four. Ideally, it should probably be maybe three or even two to start. And do those well and just milk those for what they're worth. Really hit those homes. That was one thing that I really pulled away and the other thing I pulled away was his emphasis on data collection. And I run into this problem since that I own all the time as I always want the data collection to be perfect. And then I get kind of lost in the weeds, right? You get all the state in front of you. You have your analytics. You have all this stuff coming in and you're like what do I do with this? And his response was what I've heard from so many other successful entrepreneurs, just start doing something with it. You know he said go out and hire a college kid, go out on Upwork and have them put it into Excel and start analyzing the data. He said the data will start bubbling up from that by itself and start giving you insights and then that can direct you into what you should actually be collecting; a fascinating conversation from somebody who's done some pretty big time stuff. Joe: Yeah. It sounds like the data will speak to eventually. And even though when he left it's a billion dollar company I think that the lessons that he's learned along the way are incredibly valuable for those doing six and seven figures in revenue. You know a few weeks ago we had Ryan Daniel Moran on the podcast and he said: “find your customers”. Find your customers and then send them to the least half of resistance to ordering. So it's going to be interesting to see how those two things jive with … back in what he said here in the podcast. Let's get to it. Mark: Absolutely, let's go. Mark: Babak Azad thank you for joining me. Babak: Thanks a lot Mark, glad to be here. Mark: Did I butcher your name? Babak: You did not. You did it well the first time. Thank you. Mark: We literally just rehearsed this. We rehearsed it and then I hit record. I'm like I'm so going to screw this thing up. Cool, I … thank you so much for joining me. I know you and I talked about a year ago for a piece I wrote on entrepreneur.com and I'm super glad to have you on the podcast right now. We have a little bit of a tradition here at Quiet Light where we have our guests introduce themselves because hey you're better at knowing what your background is than I am. So why don't you go ahead and introduce yourself real quick? Babak: Sure. I live here in LA with my wife and two boys. I started out as a math major investment banking business school. I kind of came from that route. I started a magazine here in LA which failed miserably; best 25 grand I ever lost. I needed some humble pie, what I read that point of my life and then spent eight years in Beachbody. So the bulk of my professional experience was there; built analytics and then oversaw media and customer acquisition. So P90X, Insanity, 21 Day Fix, Shakeology, all that. Those efforts are for eight years and we kind of had a nice clean 10X. I already got there at 100 million so there's already substantial scale; really I obviously helped to push that thing to over a billion when I left three years ago right when my second son was born. The simple version of it, I have to start something, the team fell apart really quickly and then I started working on building a consulting business. So that's what I do right now; help generally seven and eight figure businesses, sometimes nine on … heavy on marketing, support around customer acquisition, retention, and analytics and really much more recently heavily infused with customer experience and really how to … I'm leading to writing a book about it too but really just the power of customer experience that's very much consistent with performance marketing approach but also really layering in building a lasting brand. That's really where my focus is today and I love what I'm doing. I have some great clients and yeah … so I'm having a good time with it. Mark: I love that you lead with the fact that you had a magazine startup that failed and then you just kind of glossed over the fact that you were part of the team that grew Beachbody from 100 million to a billion dollars. You know just a small footnote in your career history there. Babak: Yeah it's a … you know I have a … I appreciate all the experiences. You never want to go through those negative ones. I think we all have gone through them and just … I had to say I'm not sure I'm as humble as I need to be at times but [inaudible 00:07:25.5] as I mentioned it was an important thing of learning what it's like. I've been really much more of an analyst at that point. And then yeah I mean Beachbody was awesome. I had a great experience and … but it was time for me to go. You know eight years was a long time there and I grew a lot. I met my wife through one of my best friends there and [inaudible 00:07:41.6] me up for kind of this next chapter that I'm in right now. Mark: Cool we're going to be talking today about customer acquisition and also building a brand and some of the lessons that you pulled away from Beachbody and are now doing at Round Two Ventures is that right you're doing this at Round Two? Babak: Correct. Mark: Okay. I will link to Round Two Ventures and then your personal blog in our show notes and anything else that you want us to link to in the show notes. But … so we're going to talking a little bit about customer acquisition, lifetime value, and this intersection of branding. You have kind of this unique way of looking at this customer acquisition strategy, maybe we could just kind of start with kind of a general look at your philosophy when it comes to customer acquisition in the e-commerce but also in the SaaS world. You know I think metrics, being really metric heavy on customer acquisition and lifetime values, this is really kind of a SaaS world sort of conversation but you take it towards e-commerce and towards every other type of business as well. Babak: Yeah it's funny because I started really with physical products and given that distinction which I mean physical products, we sold DVDs and multi-vitamins at Beachbody. And that's really where a lot of my real marketing and just … I would say professional experience came from. And so this distinction of physical versus info versus SaaS really was nothing I ever really considered until I started frankly getting out of that world and talking to other folks. You know when I was at Beachbody and then started to learn about this but yeah I mean … so first off I was a math major but you know I wrote a piece a bunch of years ago saying business metrics are not college math, [inaudible 00:09:12.7] barely high school math. And I think that's the first thing is … I think I know a lot of people who are intimidated by the metrics or surely daunted by how do you do it or their systems. And you know I'm a firm believer first just to start with something. I think Peter Drucker you know said what you don't measure doesn't get better and so with the opposite is very much the case. That what you do measure, what you report on, what you send in an email or whenever it's your phone because it's fun to mine you just start to pay attention. So there's always a bit of grounding of just the basics in fundamentals. And that's really I think my approach. I'm not a shiny bright object guy. I believe that if you get the basics and fundamentals then much of what you need to do starts to take care of them itself. But really when it comes to customer lifetime … I mean I look at e-com and frankly all of the businesses, you know fundamental is I grew up as a paid media guy in marketing. And I think it's evolving over time but you know from a Beachbody and beyond heavy on TV, heavy on digital, you know that was what I knew. And certainly one of the core 10X. If you're going to run paid is you've got to know what a customer is worth. You know people sometimes ask like what's a good CPA? It's like I don't answer that question because I don't know your business. I don't know what a customer is worth. You know are you … do you have business constraints around needing to be casual positive on day one, on day 30, ideal business goals. There's so many factors that come in so this but really my belief is … and I just don't know any other way is especially when you're running paid media you need to know what a customer is worth because you need to know how much you can afford to pay for them. That sounds really basic and fundamental and hopefully for a lot of folks that is. But you know that's the core of it because ultimately it's how do you know if you're going to spend more or less? How do you know if your numbers whether in Facebook or otherwise are good or not? You have to have some of that measure. So a lot of the core work that I do with folks … and really I'd write about and all that is really if you're going to be running paid you need to understand those basics around customer acquisition. And then again start with whatever you have even if it's all customers that's … you're not dissecting by ad said or by Facebook versus Google. Just start somewhere and then you start to refine this overtime. Mark: All right. I love these conversations because I go into them sometimes not knowing what I'm going to ask and then after the first two or three minutes I've got a list of questions. So let's start with basics, you said start with the basics and fundamentals. What are those? What should somebody be tracking at a minimum? Babak: So let's assume [inaudible 00:11:39.2] whether you're a SaaS business, info product, physical product you know certainly from a from a traffic side the core stuff of spend, click through rates, CPC's, [inaudible 00:11:50.5], cost per click, conversions, cost per acquisition … whatever that means for you; for some folks, that's if your lead gen versus you're loop driving to an order. Those are just conventions and so the philosophical stuff and the strategic stuff applies to both. Certainly, you want funnel metrics, how many people hit your site whether it's landers or blog pages … you know get through the funnel and so whether you have one step or a five step process I would say again start with … if you have GA set up or you have others tools set up, what kind of just basic tracking of how many people are hitting pages, what's your conversion rate, average order value, and then ideally over time … and whether it's someone converts on day zero or beyond, what is the value of those people over time. So I generally try to look in ice sized chunks of day one … day zero, day one to 30, 31 to 60, and then beyond. And depending on your risk profile, your business goals, all those things you may determine how long you want to look out and how much you want to apply towards customer acquisition. Mark: Let's talk about that a little bit here because this is something that I've run across a few times recently. You know looking out over these different strata of periods of time; zero to 28 and then this kind of second up to maybe around 60 days; why are you taking a look at that? And you're taking a look at this in terms of the value that client is going to bring to you right? Babak: Right. Mark: So why break it out into those different groups? Babak: Well first and foremost depending on the business goals and constraints, that can oftentimes going to define how you're going to approach managing. Let's say … I mean I'm going to talk about paid media for a moment, that's going to manage that because if you look at … if you need to be breakeven based on credit terms, cash flow, whatever that is; if you need to be breakeven by day 30 or day 60 then you need to know what that customer is worth. And so based on a margin basis not just certainly on a revenue basis but on a margin basis you need to know how much you're making by day 30, by day 60 cumulative and that's going to help to define what your CPA targets are. And then it's … again for me, there is no right and wrong whether you're managing to a breakeven, to a margin percent, and if you are just revenue driven and you've got venture funding and you need to be driving those are not for me to say. And I never have a perspective of right and wrong … it's those are personal and business decisions but you need to understand that. And then frankly once you have some of these base lines then it's a matter of how do you start to improve those things over time. So if you know what day one, day 30, 31 to 60 then presumably someone in your team whether it's the owner, the single person, or someone on the team is spending time testing to say how do we actually start to drive this and improve that. And again different models you may need to look at 180 days, you may look at a year … I mean I work with folks that have a one year break even because they can afford to do that; some folks breakeven on day one. And so different businesses and different models can allow for that and some it's much more difficult. So you just have to understand the nature of your business and then what kind of things you're trying to constrain with. Mark: Yeah, by the way, some example … so something that I've run into in a business recently where we had a solid lifetime value number, and we were able to calculate it pretty well by taking a look at customers that had … this was a subscription based business, we took a look at customers that have canceled over the last six months and looked at their average lifetime value. And you know the number was something like I don't know $130, $140 but the average ticket value for any single sale was maybe about $30-35. What we found was that there was these whales and there right? These whales in there that were spending $3,000 and it took them years to be able to get to that point. So when you take a look at that lifetime value analysis we say okay that they might be worth $140 or $130 whatever the number was but was in order to do that you need a couple of these whales to wait for three, four years before you can actually get that value back. Babak: Right. Mark: So we had to kind of take a look at that from that kind of strategic way [inaudible 00:15:50.3] okay actually what are we getting from clients on average in month one and then in month two and then a month three and beyond that. We're not going to care too much about the lifetime value because it's going to take too long to recoup that cost. Babak: Right. Yeah and some businesses may not be able to afford to wait that long for those whales to kick in. And really then it means A. you're managing your risk in a certain way. Again, whatever is appropriate and then you're basically operating at a higher margin than maybe you could operate if you could tolerate that and maybe you want to take some of that and spend it into media. But if you can't wait that long and there's just too much risk and it's too small of a percent and too inconsistent then that may just be the way you run it. I think I get in some ways the same question when you're first starting, it's … that's great if you have five years of data and you have a much more sophisticated and robust [inaudible 00:16:37.1] data in your business. But if when you're just starting you probably need to start more conservative right? An owner that has bootstrapped the business knows that you start with what you can afford and then as you learn, as you develop and have this history… the history in the business then you start to understand your customers better; what they're worth and then maybe you can start to manage your media and how you think about that better and surely hopefully concurrently you're optimizing the funnel so your customers are worth more, you're converting better, all these types of things right? But that's just the nature of again where businesses are in there maturity and how long they've been around. Mark: Yeah one of the common objections I hear from people … because we ask people who are selling their business all the time what's the average lifetime value of a client? And one of the biggest objections I get to that is I have no idea because customers are still with me. And you said something at the beginning and that is just start. There's a lot of models out there, just start with something. Do you have a basic model that you like to follow? I know for myself I just like to take a look at okay I might sell if a customer is with us and from the Quiet Light perspective we can say the same thing. Our business is typically one off but we have people who have sold two, three, four businesses. All the same, we don't want to assume that, we're just going to take a look at what … the lifetime value I spend right now with the assumption it could grow. Do you have a recommended model for people that are saying I don't know how to [inaudible 00:17:58.7] for these people that are still with us? Babak: So the fact that a customer is still with you for me is not a reason to not understand what a customer is worth. And so let's say they've been with you for … let's say the businesses have been around for a year and you've got 20%, 50% of the customers have been around that long. Do the average based on how ever long that cohort has been around. And if the other ones are … you know seem like they're directionally going that way then great. And then as you get more information you can start to build your model and add to it. But you know I think part of the thing also to be careful over depending on how long the business has been around is how many people are you looking at? So if you've got 100 customers versus 10,000 you trust more volume, right? And then the other part is just looking at I like to break things down into monthly cohorts. Let's assume it's just purchase, so I'm not lead gen but it's purchase, I like to look at who are all the people who first transacted in January, and then in February, and then in March and look at their relative month one, month two, month three revenues and certainly again margin and then start to see what kinds of patterns start to form and then again. And starting really that at that level and then you just start to refine this thing and as you get more data and … then great then you start to layer in. So worst case you're being conservative because you have customers who are going to stick around a little longer but that's a good thing and that's a good worst case to have as opposed to certainly the opposite where you may be overestimating or you may be overlooking at one group that's worth a ton and everyone else isn't remotely tracking towards that super high value group. Mark: I think a problem that people run into a lot is they've up the perfect be the enemy they good, they want to get that perfect model and if they think they can get it then they don't do it. I know I've fallen victim to that quite a bit as well. I want to [inaudible 00:19:41.4] Babak: Quote I have on my phone that shows up is perfect … done is better than perfect. And it's really easy to get stuck in that analysis paralysis perfection like … and also frankly this idea that everyone else has it better. I think a lot of people think that bigger companies or those using better tools always have better data but is definitely not the case. Like a lot of times the bigger companies they have too many legacy systems so I think oftentimes that comparison can pull people back because they think I'm never going to be able to achieve what someone else is doing or all that big data stuff. I mean just start with what you got and literally it could be Excel with a college kid and then you start building from there. Like literally it can be that that can be very very effective and I've seen it be that way. Mark: Yeah that's a good lead into my next question because you know you started at Beachbody with 100 million in revenue right? So you guys wanted to go ahead and start digesting data, you put a million dollars towards hiring on a new team just to be able to digest data. The entrepreneur who has an e-commerce business doing three million, four million bucks that's a lot more of a challenge for them to bring on that much of a team. Excel, analytics, are there any other programs they may want to look at or systems that you know of that might be a good starting point or would you even recommend going out and hiring a college kid or going onto a place like Upwork to be able to have somebody to crunch numbers? Babak: Yeah I mean so first of all when I joined again it was seven, what you think maybe a hundred million dollar business has in terms of systems and processes I would say first of all the tools today are so so much better. But I looking back, I work with some hundred million dollar businesses now that have dramatically better systems and reporting frankly because the tools are just much easier. So you know it took a year or so for me to get correlatively cleaner data and not even clean. So first of all even back then it wasn't like everything was so dialed in, that's kind of part of my point. And then second again like depending on people whether on Shopify or Magento or whatever your platform, honestly the basic thing is do a data dump. I've hired for multiple clients someone part time on Upwork to basically do some slicing and dicing; basic stuff, get some things in place. And we're not talking … so first of all even if you hire someone full time and let's say that person is 50,000 a year just picking a number, your exposure to that person is not 50,000 because within 90 days you should know whether that person is going to be working out or not. So let's say it's a quarter of that plus maybe a little bit more so oftentimes first people think about if you're going to bring on someone full time that that annualized cost that's really not what it is. You should know I think within 90 days that you're getting what you need and they're on a path. But at the very least there are definitely folks on Upwork and really just looking for someone who's got some similar work; I put people through an Excel test to make sure they can do the basics. It's all made up information and yeah you start with that and I've literally had college kids help out just … who were good at Excel. They don't need to know that much, they just need to know how to slice and dice some information. And maybe it's an MBA, I'm not saying you have to go there but certainly Upwork, Excel, using again basic tools. You do not need certainly anything remotely close to enterprise so you get stuff going. And I will say I do, I run some numbers for some of my clients and it's literally … I did one about a week ago, Excel, Hubspot, Shopify, GA piece it all together and we had a pretty rich view. It took some time obviously but we then had a pretty rich view of what those customers look like. Mark: So with somebody who has a Shopify store or an Amazon store where you can't really track customers as well with Amazon, but let's say Shopify store where you can track your customers, or a SaaS application or anything else where you're tracking those customers would you literally just go out and do a dump of that data of the customers and go back and start to calculate okay this is what … you know graphing it out, these customers are worth this much in those first 30 days and then it starts to look like this when we move out? Babak: Yup that's exactly. I mean … so and that's what we did. Let's say you're looking at 2017 data it's literally [inaudible 00:23:52.4] all the new customers and that's part of the thing is making sure they're new versus repeat. But let's just say you can identify that hopefully relatively easily; who are the new customers who purchased for the first time in January of '17, February of '17, March of '17 and literally track those people. Look at their February orders for January, look at the March orders for both like you know January and February and really that's literally started that way. And you can then start to slice and dice by traffic source, by product, by offer, by ad set. But that's next level, for some folks they just want to get the pure basics. Just start with that average thing and then once you have that and then you start to refine over time. But literally it's a data dump and you know if you can marry it with GA or with your CRM or ESP then great but at the very least start with the overall, start with maybe one line and then you just start to get better from that point. And frankly again that's what I did with Beachbody, that's what I do with my clients. And whether it's me or working with their teams you just start and then you start to refine over time. Mark: All right so let's go to the other side of this conversation. We started to get a good sense for our lifetime value and what a client brings to us in terms of different time frames; the first 30 days, the next … the first 60 days and so on and so forth and we know our cash flow requirements. Again, people listening, you have to keep in mind if you're going to spend $50 on a client and they're not going to pay you $50 until month six you need enough cash flow to be able to get to that payback period. Let's build a strategy, what does the strategy look like then at that point from acquiring the customers and going through different channels? I know obviously with Beachbody you guys did television, you did radio, you did a lot of media which was hard to track. And we see this a lot with … you know online platforms are really good right now at tracking with view through conversions and everything else but there's still some of those mediums out there that aren't great and imperfect. How does that sort of factor into your decisions when it comes to acquisition channels? Babak: Yeah I mean so no matter what channel you're in attribution is the bane of everyone's existence. A very very few people have it down and like oh I know what that means to have it down. You want to get to the point where you feel like a level of comfort and confidence. You know these days again most of the work … I have one client that I work with on TV and it's a very rare exception of how good their attribution model is but let's say that for the most part, most people are doing … I mean it's digital heavy. So for me, I basically focus and work with folks on really only a few channels so Google … which for me is Google and Bing. I mean people always forget about Bing, it's another 5, 10% and my joke is if you don't want that 5, 10% can I have it? And I'm joking but no one ever says yes. But it's using higher ROI's especially when you're talking slightly older demos. But Google and Bing, Facebook and Instagram, your internal e-mail and affiliates, and frankly just … and I said just but if you focus there I've seen plenty of businesses go well into nine figures; focus there. And then certainly you can layer on radio and podcast, TV, direct mail; but honestly Google, Facebook, affiliates, e-mail and internal … you know that's really where I put a lot of time and attention. And I'll say even then attribution is a bit of a mess because Facebook and Google don't talk to each other. So they're each one who takes some credit … you know or using GA last click, what's happening are people opting in through Facebook and then converting through e-mail? But you really just have to start to piece together things, at the end of the day again depending on your business model your PNL and bank account are the true measures of it. And so that sounds like a totally average overall view but yeah that's again I work with folks that have that and then they've got to a certain level of sophistication. So you start with … you know start and piece together what does Google say, what does Facebook say, like if you add up those two do you even have that many orders? You're going to have to be very careful about double counting but you just start to piece together this … the data starts to tell a bit of a story. I would just say one thing you mentioned view through, I am a very very very conservative on view through so the point of it I basically I ignore it; certainly from a GDN side and really even from Facebook. I just think unless you prove it I'd rather start with a [inaudible 00:28:07.2] and it doesn't work. I mean you got to prove it as opposed to just proving it. But I know that you know 28 day click one day view on Facebook is the standard set up. I moved most people to 7 day click not because it's right but mostly because it … we got to account for double counting, AdWords, what's going on in email, things like that. So there's … again there's no right and wrong but that's one of places I've kind of dialed in a little bit is looking at 7 day click. But honestly my biggest … the biggest mistake I oftentimes see with people with channels is they have too many. And so I think if people say oh I heard someone's doing something on Pinterest or YouTube or I got to do this, frankly if I see people who have four channels where it's 25% in each, that says actually something is not being done well enough. And usually, it's people who are really scaled, I kind of have this thing of two offers two channels, most businesses that have scaled substantively they've gone deep and hard in a couple channels which basically means they're left probably some money on the table elsewhere maybe but it means they're focused. And that means they're exploiting where things are working. And so I think that's one of the things, people think I got to be in so many places, I don't … I have not found that to be the case at all. And even though it sounds like you're concentrating your risk it also means you're exploiting an opportunity. And that's really I think oftentimes what you're really trying to do. Mark: How do you know when to give up on the channel if it's not working or would you? Babak: You know it's a good question I think at some point you have to make a call so it's … I don't have a rule around it and I put it that way hard and fast. I think it's … first of all, I like modeling off of other people; not copying but modeling. And so it is … it can be dangerous because you can see all these other people seemingly running a bunch of ads and yours may not be working but you may not know what their goals are and their goals may be different than yours. So I think it's always … you got to be careful about comparison but you know I think at some point you have to take … just like a lot of things you have to take an honest assessment and say do we feel like we've given this a fair shot? How much time and money have we invested? Frankly, what is it pulling because we all have tradeoffs whether you're a six figure business or a nine figure business everyone is resource constrained in their own relative way. So you have to pick and choose your battles and really where you think now. I guess … and sometimes the market maybe telling you something too that it may not be the channel but maybe the way you're executing on it right? Which may be kind of the same thing for you but I think that's one of the things too is really you have to take an honest assessment of what have you done, what have you tried, have you talked to people, have you pulled in whether experts or friends or done some research and you know. I think then it's relative to other things that you have in front of you, where is your time, your capital, your resources is better allocated. Mark: Yeah all right that's awesome. I told you before we started recording this that we were not going to get to the one thing I really wanted to talk to so I'm going to get to it now. And that is something I find fascinating about your approach to direct response marketing because direct response marketing we often think about in terms of the money that goes in we want to make sure that we're getting a positive ROI out of that and we're just measuring that and that alone. And we see it almost as this opposite of brand marketing which is splash it out there splash it out there and splash it out there and it's kind of a long play. But you have this intersection and you do this a lot with Beachbody as well, you have this intersection of brand and also the direct response. If somebody is focusing on those four that you put out, the Facebook, the Google, affiliate, and internal e-mail, what can they do to start building a brand and why is that important? Babak: So I think the first distinction is around something you said and I think a lot of people will latch onto which is brand marketing. And so really what I focus on and try to talk to folks about is building a brand. And so for me the distinction is brand marketing oftentimes is associated with you spend a bunch of money on media marketing whatever that's basically non-trackable and that is trying to build brand awareness but without necessarily tying it to some kind of metric. And I say that as opposed to focusing on building a brand. For me, that really comes down to the customer experience. And so those are totally can be integrated with a performance marketing direct response model. And really that's about how do you start to take care of the customer and treat them frankly like you would want to be treated if you were the customer. So I think it's less about brand marketing initiatives and it's more about this idea of does the word in the Lexicon around building a brand, about building something that's lasting; how often does that come up in the organization? I had breakfast actually with a friend this morning and we're talking about the idea of what's on brand versus off and what that means. But really at the end of the day, it's are you building something that's got some sense of sustainability? And I think oftentimes especially when you're earlier on the idea of shortcuts of doing things that are maybe … whether it's not as clean or not as brand building, I get that everyone's got to make their call all around those things but ultimately if you want to build something that's got some sense of scale and got some sense of sustainability I do believe you have to be focused on building a brand. Because when you do that you start to treat the customer better. You start to invest more in your product. You start to invest more in the kinds of media and frankly, that kind of stuff can be infused in your acquisition efforts. Did I mention that I'm writing a book on customer experience and that really came from how do you start to bring DR and brand together and really things like tapping into a sense of identity in community. That's not just brand marketing that's non-trackable, you can start to build that into your video ads on Facebook, Dollar Beard Club … now The Beard Club and they've done a phenomenal job of there's this sense of identity in association with you're a man with a beard. And so they tap into that and who you are, what that means, and so that is one layer of customer experience and building that brand that is clearly tied to performance marketing but it starts to infuse that. I would say two things like … you know so my four categories is really around the human and emotional stuff; there's product, there's the transactional experience, and then there's content like video. And they're not mutually exclusive [inaudible 00:34:16.0] stretch. But I'll say like with subscription businesses whether online … I mean media, SaaS, or physical box, one of the best places or best examples I see people have make some mistakes is around order notification. So this is not brand marketing, this is are you treating the customer better? Are you letting them know that next order is going to ship, that next feeling is going to happen? And oftentimes I see people say well if I send an email before that billing my churn rate is going to go up and my response is absolutely you're correct but also you know what happens is your customer is actually aware of that billing. They're not annoyed. I mean I think we all faced that thing where whether it's a meal subscription or otherwise, a billing happened and we didn't know about it we're annoyed we got to go cancel. We tell our friends, we post. That kind of stuff actually has an impact on the brand. And honestly one of the best examples I've seen of how to use that notification positively is Dollar Shave Club, they send a notification but they use that as a promotional opportunity to say your order is about the ship do you want to add something to it? And so whether it's their shaving cream or any of their other products they use that … and again 20 or 30% of people are going to open your email if you're lucky. So it's not everyone but you get the brand benefit of notification but then use that as a promotional opportunity and say do you want to add something more. And I would much rather be playing in that kind of world rather than trying to sneak in what you think is a one or two more orders but it's very hard to quantify. But you absolutely are hurting the brand if you're playing a longer game when you're trying to sneak stuff in and not be as clean and upfront. And yes Netflix and Direct TV don't do that but again those are very very different businesses than subscription boxes or something that you start on a risk free trial that frankly doesn't get the kind of use that Direct TV and Netflix would. Mark: Could you repeat those four categories again? Those are great. Babak: So the first one is really I talk about as like the human and emotional aspects. So that's things like identity, community, exclusivity, things that are raw human needs and traits. The second is really product, and there are multiple layers on it but I think it's kind of crazy that I have to focus and emphasize it but the number of people that I see that don't have the attention to detail on product. I've talked to people who's starting they want to private label fine but the better your product [inaudible 00:36:35.0] part it doesn't always win but a better product gives you a better chance at that. Third is the transactional experience, so how do you take people through your funnel, what is it like to get a refund, what it's like to get … I talked to customer service those kinds of things. And the fourth is content, so how do you use video, music, spokesperson, or a character. I mean really each of these things, there are plenty of examples of companies that are using all of them or just one of them to really start to enhance that experience and really start to rile their customers. That's the [inaudible 00:37:05.3] kind of thing but you basically need customers these days to be blown away. It is … you know I like to say it like it's … when people say it's the easiest time to start a business because generally the tools are easier but it's also like that means it's brutally difficult to compete and to differentiate. So you've got to be just a ton better than everyone else. And my experience is that customer experience and these kinds of things is really what you need and again it's infusing this idea of playing the longer game into performance marketing and direct response. These two are not at odds. Mark: Cool. All right you got a book that you're writing right now do you have any idea when that's going to be done? Babak: Best case is Thanksgiving time but I've started … I mean I'm happy to post a couple of links to some of the things I've started to write about whether in LinkedIn or in Twitter to just to kind of go a little bit deeper into these and show some specific examples. But yeah we're still talking a few months out. Mark: Okay I know we've had a couple of other people that are reading books and we always get e-mails after saying “Hey can I get notified when that book is out?” So do us a favor one when you do have that out send me a message and I'll make sure I update everyone that wants to be updated on that. And then where can people learn more about you? Obviously Round Two Ventures, any other place? Babak: Yeah I mean my business is Round Two, it's Round Two Partners. Visit the website. But yeah the same thing and it's like a holding company but my blog is the easiest. It's just my name, it's Babak Azad B-A-B-A-K-A-Z-A-D.com And that's what … I put a lot of content there and then frankly there and LinkedIn. I'm @BabakAzad pretty much on everything other than Gmail of all things but … another Babak Azad stole that from me but … he was earlier but yeah I'm on pretty much every platform. But my blog and LinkedIn are the two easiest platform. Mark: Fantastic, this is great. So thank you so much for coming on, I really do appreciate it. Babak: Thanks a lot Mark I'm glad to be here.   Links and Resources: Round Two Partners Babak's Blog LinkedIn

Panel: Charles Max Wood   Guest: Scott Wyatt   This week on My JavaScript Story, Charles speaks with Scott Wyatt. Scott is a VC partner and is the CTO at Cali Style Technologies, works with startups, and was the CTO of the Dollar Beard Club. He first got into programming because his dad was a computer programmer and he really got hooked from a young age writing games and playing on the computer. They talk about the benefit of not living in the hustle and bustle of California and the Silicon Valley, how he got into JavaScript, what was it about JavaScript that hooked him, and more!   In particular, we dive pretty deep on: JavaScript Jabber Episode 282 Scott intro Works remotely from Indiana The pros to not living in Silicon Valley How did you first get into programming? Father was a computer programmer Strong arts background Started coding really young How did you get into JavaScript? Started out with ActionScript JavaScript to jQuery The cool part of having a diverse background as a programmer What was it that got you into JavaScript? Back-end JavaScript Node.js JavaScript is very versatile How did you get into doing something like Trails.js? Sails.js Fabrix and TypeScript  What have you done in JS that you are most proud of? Partitioned apps Contributing to freedom of information What are you working on now? And much, much more!   Links:  JavaScript Jabber Episode 282 Cali Style Technologies Dollar Beard Club JavaScript jQuery Node.js Trails.js Sails.js Fabrix TypeScript @ScottBWyatt Scott’s GitHub   Sponsors:  Loot Crate FreshBooks   Picks Charles  Get a Coder Job Course Golf Clash Golfing Planning in sanity time Suggest a Topic Chuck@DevChat.tv    Scott Gun.js Bitcoin

Panel: Charles Max Wood   Guest: Scott Wyatt   This week on My JavaScript Story, Charles speaks with Scott Wyatt. Scott is a VC partner and is the CTO at Cali Style Technologies, works with startups, and was the CTO of the Dollar Beard Club. He first got into programming because his dad was a computer programmer and he really got hooked from a young age writing games and playing on the computer. They talk about the benefit of not living in the hustle and bustle of California and the Silicon Valley, how he got into JavaScript, what was it about JavaScript that hooked him, and more!   In particular, we dive pretty deep on: JavaScript Jabber Episode 282 Scott intro Works remotely from Indiana The pros to not living in Silicon Valley How did you first get into programming? Father was a computer programmer Strong arts background Started coding really young How did you get into JavaScript? Started out with ActionScript JavaScript to jQuery The cool part of having a diverse background as a programmer What was it that got you into JavaScript? Back-end JavaScript Node.js JavaScript is very versatile How did you get into doing something like Trails.js? Sails.js Fabrix and TypeScript  What have you done in JS that you are most proud of? Partitioned apps Contributing to freedom of information What are you working on now? And much, much more!   Links:  JavaScript Jabber Episode 282 Cali Style Technologies Dollar Beard Club JavaScript jQuery Node.js Trails.js Sails.js Fabrix TypeScript @ScottBWyatt Scott’s GitHub   Sponsors:  Loot Crate FreshBooks   Picks Charles  Get a Coder Job Course Golf Clash Golfing Planning in sanity time Suggest a Topic Chuck@DevChat.tv    Scott Gun.js Bitcoin

Panel: Charles Max Wood   Guest: Scott Wyatt   This week on My JavaScript Story, Charles speaks with Scott Wyatt. Scott is a VC partner and is the CTO at Cali Style Technologies, works with startups, and was the CTO of the Dollar Beard Club. He first got into programming because his dad was a computer programmer and he really got hooked from a young age writing games and playing on the computer. They talk about the benefit of not living in the hustle and bustle of California and the Silicon Valley, how he got into JavaScript, what was it about JavaScript that hooked him, and more!   In particular, we dive pretty deep on: JavaScript Jabber Episode 282 Scott intro Works remotely from Indiana The pros to not living in Silicon Valley How did you first get into programming? Father was a computer programmer Strong arts background Started coding really young How did you get into JavaScript? Started out with ActionScript JavaScript to jQuery The cool part of having a diverse background as a programmer What was it that got you into JavaScript? Back-end JavaScript Node.js JavaScript is very versatile How did you get into doing something like Trails.js? Sails.js Fabrix and TypeScript  What have you done in JS that you are most proud of? Partitioned apps Contributing to freedom of information What are you working on now? And much, much more!   Links:  JavaScript Jabber Episode 282 Cali Style Technologies Dollar Beard Club JavaScript jQuery Node.js Trails.js Sails.js Fabrix TypeScript @ScottBWyatt Scott’s GitHub   Sponsors:  Loot Crate FreshBooks   Picks Charles  Get a Coder Job Course Golf Clash Golfing Planning in sanity time Suggest a Topic Chuck@DevChat.tv    Scott Gun.js Bitcoin

In today's episode, we're talking to Alex Brown, co-founder of The Beard Club… which is formerly known as The Dollar Beard Club, a $10M subscription business that sends its members a monthly supply of all the best products to keep your beard looking and feeling fresh.

Subscribe to Unleash Success for weekly strategies for Success! Enter your email at https://www.unleashsuccess.com Alex Brown is a serial entrepreneur well known for co-founding Dollar Beard Club, now known as The Beard Club. In their first year of business they made over $10 million! Alex loves the start up space and specializes in strategic vision development and business strategies. In this episode we breakdown and learn: Alex's Journey of Entrepreneurship The Secret Sauce needed to create Raving Fans The phases of growing a business What to FOCUS on in each of these phases What traits great entrepreneurs have Common mistakes start-ups make The one word secret Alex uses to overcome all failure Connect with Alex Brown! http://thealexbrown.com/ http://www.subscriptionhacks.com/ Join the Unleash Success FB Group!                                          For accountability, tips, and breakdowns of guest strategies! facebook.com/groups/unleashsuccess Subscribe to Unleash Success for weekly strategies for Success! Enter your email at https://www.unleashsuccess.com Leave a Review on iTunes and Get a Free Unleash Success T-shirt! http://bit.ly/UnleashSuccessReview Just take a screenshot of your review and email it to me at corey@unleashsuccess.com ***Please note this is giveaway is only available to U.S. residents at this time.  Subscribe to the Podcast at http://www.unleashsuccess.com/podcasts http://bit.ly/UnleashSuccessYoutube Connect with Corey Corpodian! www.facebook.com/CoreyCorpodian/ www.instagram.com/coreycorpodian/  

In today’s episode, Alex Brown shares the strategies he used to grow Dollar Beard Club to $11M in one year, sell over 1.7M boxes, generate 200M viral video views, and how he convinced Dan Bilzerian to promote their products. Tune in and learn from his journey! TOPICS: What’s the story of how The Beard Club came to be? [01:37] How many years did it take before it felt like they had some traction and success? [06:40] What was their strategy for building their email list of 15,000 people? [08:02] Why did they choose to work with influencers and how did they build relationships with them? [10:41] If someone is looking to get into influencer marketing, how should they negotiate rates? [12:55] How did Alex get connected with advisors who are really influential and how does he create relationships with them? [14:48] How did they first build their brand through video marketing? [16:48] How did they get things lined up in order to launch the brand? [19:10] How did they find the manufacturer to make their product? [25:40] What was it like for Alex and his partners to grow the business so quickly? What were some of their lessons learned? [27:51] What were the strategies they employed when it came to customer retention? [31:41] What’s the one thing that they did that Alex thinks had the biggest impact on the growth of The Beard Club? [36:43]   “Aligning with people that were in the influencer world was our biggest secret to success there.” — Alex Brown “Just really having the ability to know where you’re going and to attract people to that vision is super huge.”— Alex Brown More from Alex Brown Alex’s branding website LinkedIn The Beard Club Resources mentioned Gleam PressRush The Power of Now Sponsor link 14-day Free Trial to LeadQuizzes   Thank you for listening! If you enjoyed this episode, subscribe to this podcast! And don’t forget to leave me a rating and a review on iTunes!

A cool new way to look at developing your new opportunity. On today’s episode Russell talks about how he was able to look at his own principles through a different lens after he heard Steven teach them at the FHAT event. Here are some awesome things you will hear in this episode: Find out how Steven helped Russell see the market, submarket, and niche concept differently. Find out the difference between a red ocean market and a blue ocean market. And hear Russell discuss in detail what it means to throw rocks at the red ocean. So listen here to find out how to still be a part of the red, bloody ocean, while creating your own blue ocean. ---Transcript--- What’s up everybody? This is Russell Brunson, welcome to Marketing In Your Car….No wait, it’s Marketing Secrets now. Welcome to Marketing Secrets podcast. Hey everyone, you get 300+ episodes of calling it Marketing In Your Car, sometimes it’s hard to break the pattern. Anyway, I hope you guys are doing amazing today. I’m heading in, we got Operation Underground Railroad coming in today. We’re still working on the documentary, so many cool things. Those of you who are going to be at Funnel Hacking Live, we’re actually going to be showing this documentary we’re building with them, which is super cool and I think you’re going to love it. And then we’re going to help save tons of kids, which is awesome. Good things happening on that front. Today I want to jump in because something kind of cool happened. We had our FHAT event last week, which the first FHAT event was about a year ago and I taught it. FHAT is F-H-A-T Funnel Hack A Thon, that’s the acronym, so we thought we’d shorten it and call it the FHAT event. Everyone calls it the F-HAT event and everyone’s confused by what it is. But that’s what it is, it’s the Funnel Hack A Thon, F-H-A-T. Anyway, the first one I taught for three days and it was awesome I think, people liked it and I thought it was good. Right before Funnel Hacking Live last year, which was kind of dumb. And then we’ve done I think 5 times, we did it after that. And Steven started teaching, first he taught half of it, then more of it, then the majority of it. And we did our last one, it’s kind of sad, we may bring it back, who knows. But we did the last one last week and it was really cool. And it was fun because, like I said, Steven’s been teaching it and each time he teaches it, he gets better at it and better at it. But three weeks ago he officially ended his job here at Clickfunnels and went out on his journey as an entrepreneur and he took all the stuff that we do in the FHAT event, talk about in the FHAT event and he launched his first webinar and he’s made 100k in the first three weeks. And it’s like, oh my gosh, this stuff actually works. Who knew this whole time? And what’s fun, this FHAT event, this is after he had a chance to go and do all this stuff. So now he, his belief level was there before, but now it’s ten times better. And it was crazy watching him on stage, I was super impressed. In fact, I was going to listen for 5 or 10 minutes because I had this big project I needed to do, and he started to speak and I started listening, and I was like, dang this is good. And I just sat there and I listened for over an hour. And it was cool, it was cool hearing him take a lot of the principles and stuff that we talk about in Dotcom Secrets and Expert Secrets and then weaving it together, and then taking his spin. How did he think to do this when he was creating his offer and his thing like that? And one thing he said that was just really, really cool and it’s not different than we talk about in the Expert Secrets book, or I’ve talked about with you guys, but it was just a different lens. And because of that it was so, so cool. So if you’ve read Expert Secrets, if you haven’t you’re insane. Go buy it. I spent a decade of my life learning this stuff to give it to you for free. Go to Expertsecrets.com. But if you have read it you’d remember it talks about initially there’s three markets. There’s health, wealth and relationships. And every time we share that people are like, “No there’s other things. What about razors?” And he actually brought that up as a thing, why do people buy razors? What’s the reason? They’re shaving because they want to look good to get a girl. Relationships. So it’s in the relationship market. It works for everything, it fits somewhere in those things. That’s the core markets and if you think about back in the day, whoever was first in the core market, it was probably one dude that taught health and he was the weight loss guy and everyone gave him money because he was amazing. Then someone else was like, “Wait a minute, I know how to lose weight too, maybe I should jump into health.” And then he jumped in and this blue ocean of a market became this red, bloody ocean with tons of people. So then the evolution of markets started happening. So we got health, wealth and relationships and they evolved to a niche or submarket. Sorry, it’s been a while since I read my own book, to a submarket. So let’s say inside of wealth, it’s not just teaching you how to become wealthy, there’s these submarkets inside. There’s real estate that you can use to become wealthy. There is internet marketing to become wealthy, there’s stocks, all these submarkets within there. Initially whoever broke out in a submarket, blue ocean, all the money started happening. But then some other guy is like, “Well I know stocks too, maybe I should jump in and teach this stuff. Maybe I should create software that does this.” or whatever. So those red oceans, excuse me, those blue oceans start become bloody and red again, and it gets harder and harder with more competition. So that’s the market that you guys are in today. You can come in and jump in the red ocean, but the problem is you’re competing for people’s attention for the same kind of thing, it’s difficult. So the next phase of that is coming down to the third level, the niches. You develop, you create your own niche and I purposely don’t say don’t find your own niche, because if you’re finding your niche it means you’re jumping into a red ocean. But you’re developing, you’re creating your own niche within this ecosystem. One thing he said that was so cool, and I want to come back. He said, “You niche needs to come out of a red, bloody ocean. If you don’t know what your red ocean is that you are breaking out of, then you’re not doing it right. You didn’t pick the right thing.” So for example, let’s say it’s this example of the relationships…health, wealth and relationships. The relationships, shaving, because shaving is now this bloody thing right. There’s all these thousands of people selling shavers and stuff. You need to know, that’s the bloody market. You’re goal when you’re building your business is to look at that bloody, red market and you’re going to be actually throwing rocks at them, throwing stones at them. This is how you separate and become this unique different thing. You have to be able to see the submarket, the red, bloody ocean, and throw rocks at it. So if you’re in the shaving market and you’re looking like, man this is a bloody market. How do I create something new, a new niche, that gives me the ability to throw rocks at the red, bloody ocean? He talked about some examples, one is Dollar Beard Club. You shave? You’re a moron, real men don’t shave. Now they can throw rocks at the red bloody ocean that they are breaking off of. Think about this, I’ve seen this in the last year, with stocks. So there’s wealth and inside of wealth there’s the stock markets, and inside of stock now there’s this magic thing that’s becoming sexy and exciting called cryptos. People who have crypto offers have to go back to the red bloody ocean of stock, investing, things like that, and they have to throw rocks at the red ocean that everyone else is fighting in. You have to throw rocks at it and that is what separates you and creates your blue ocean. Now crypto has become bloody, so now it’s like if cryptos is a bloody red ocean, what’s the thing that I got that I can look back at the crypto red ocean and I can throw rocks at it. Everyone’s doing cryptos this way, this is wrong, this is bad, throwing rocks at it and boom that creates the separation for your new blue ocean. And I thought it was a really unique, I’d never thought about it in that way. You have to identify the red ocean that you are building, that you are coming off of to build your new opportunity. So you gotta find that and then you have to throw rocks at the red ocean and that’s how you create that separation that creates your blue ocean. And it’s just fascinating. So if you’ve got a business right now and I were to ask you, which one of the markets are you in? Health, wealth or relationships? You gotta tell me that, and from there what submarket are you in? I’m in internet marketing. I’m in stocks. I’m in real estate or whatever. You’ve figured out that. Now it’s like, okay now that you figured that out, what are you doing to throw rocks at that to make separation to create your blue ocean. You guys getting this? Is this making sense to you guys? If not, let’s do it again. It’s huge. Even for me it was a big light bulb in my head. So thank you to Steven for explaining it that way, again same framework, but looking through it through someone else’s lens is fascinating the different tips and ideas you get, again, because it’s not different. It’s still the three markets, submarkets, niche, but now it’s like, how you create that niche is coming back to the red ocean, identifying it, throwing rocks, creating the separation and boom that creates your actual blue ocean. It gives you all the things you need for your sales pitch, for you launching it and introducing your new opportunity, all those things come out of that magic. So I hope that helps. Like I said, it was super cool, I loved it. There was so much more gold that he was dropping in there, it was amazing. It was really cool to see someone else teach a lot of your principles through a different lens. So fascinating. I told him after, “I enjoy you teaching a lot better than I ever taught it. So that’s awesome.” Anyway, I hope that helps you guys. Figure out your three core markets, which on you’re in. Figure out your submarket, find that red, bloody submarket that money’s already in, that customers are already in. That’s the other thing, a lot of times people build these businesses and they launch and there’s no customers. Find a red, bloody market where there’s tons and tons of customers already there. The more competitive the better, and that’s where you create your separation of your thing. Because then it’s like you’re going back to those red, bloody oceans to get those customers to come to you. It’s like how I get traffic. You identify that red, bloody ocean where all that traffic’s at, and then you jump in front of there and throw rocks at the red ocean they’re currently swimming in, and they’re like, “Oh my gosh, he’s right.” Boom, that’s what brings them into your new opportunity, to your blue ocean. So cool, so amazing. Anyway, I hope that helps you guys, I’m going to go work today and get things prepped for Operation Underground Railroad, amazing stuff is happening. Appreciate you all. If you got anything from this please go to iTunes and leave a comment and/or share this with your friends, family members and other people who you think this would help. Thanks again you guys, appreciate you all and we’ll talk soon. Bye.

Chris Stoikos is the wildly creative, out-of-the-box thinking, high performing CEO of the Dollar Beard Club. He’s a serial entrepreneur who at age 28 has already been responsible for over 100 million video views, tens of millions of dollars in sales, and has even landed a deal on the TV show Shark Tank for Coolbox, a product which he’s now since licensed. He’s a master of viral video, and Chris’s mission is to change the way that companies interact with potential customers. And in a Results Mindset Podcast first, we’re going to be joined by Chris’ Dad, Andy. Andy’s a father of 4, married for 31 years to his wife Suzanne, and is a retired PE teacher and entrepreneur. For full show notes, please visit http://www.jamiesmart.com/rmp32  

Interesting thoughts I had on my drive home from Salt Lake City. On this episode Russell relates following God’s will to following the will of the market in business. Here are some of the enlightening things you will hear in today’s episode: How spending his weekend talking to a leader in his church reminded him that’s its important to align your belief’s with Gods. How aligning your beliefs will God’s is similar to aligning your product ideas with the needs of the market you’re in. And find out how you can align your own beliefs with that of the market you are in. So listen here to find out how Russell is able to relate business marketing to God. ---Transcript--- What’s up everybody? This is Russell Brunson and welcome to the Marketing Secrets podcast. Hey everyone, I hope you guys are all having an amazing day today. Whoa, I’m juggling my phone as I get in the car. Crazy day. We are just leaving, I was about to leave the house today and I walked out and Norah was outside on the trampolines jumping. Some of you guys heard my crazy stories. We had a big side yard that was kind of a big empty weed field. So we decided this year to go a little crazy. So we put in a football/soccer field, a volleyball court, basketball court, baseball and a track that wraps the whole thing and then 9 underground trampolines. And they got the 9 underground trampolines up this weekend while we were gone.  So we spent all night last night when we got home jumping and then this morning, I was about to leave and I could hear little giggles outside and I went outside and Norah was jumping. It’s a little bit cold out here, but I went and jumped for the last little bit. Now I’m heading out so I’m buckling up in my car and we are ready to rock and roll. It’s funny, we were gone this week. We went and drove to Burley where my in-laws live and we dropped off our kids and from there we drove down to Salt Lake because I had a meeting that I’ll tell you guys about here in a second. But it’s funny, on the way home we went camping and stuff like that, so I haven’t shaved in two days. So my face was all prickly, you know what I mean. I was picking up Norah yesterday and her curly hair is like Velcro on my beard. I tried for two days and I just hated it, so I just shaved it this morning. I’m like, ah, I feel so much better. But I hate it because I’ve been watching, we’ve been studying Dollar Shave Club and Dollar Beard Club’s off-boarding process. In fact, I wrote about it in Funnel university this month. And I don’t know what it is, all the beard guys just seem cooler and part of me is like I wanna be cool like the beard guys but I just can’t. Two days and I gave up, it was horrible. So I’ll never be as cool as the beard guys. But I will give them credit, they are definitely cooler than us shaved guys. Anyway, hopefully someday I’ll become a man and be able to grow one out. That day is not today. Anyway, so I want to share something today, and some of you might be thinking, Russell this is a marketing podcast why are you talking about God? Because he has to do with everything, it’s really important. And the lesson I learned this weekend has to do with God, but it also then relates back to you guys and your market, so I think it’s really, really important. So I was in Utah and I had a meeting with someone who is one of the top leaders in my church, the Mormon church. And we believe in our church that there’s a prophet and his 12 apostles, similar to how when Christ was on Earth. And my meeting was with one of the twelve apostles, which was really a huge honor, and scary and exciting and all those things all wrapped into one. And I had a chance to meet with him. So this whole week prior to leading up to it, I’ve had a lot of thoughts about just life and how things work and then obviously meeting with him and then afterwards, it was a really neat reflection in time. And there was something that came out, I mean, there was a lot of stuff I wish I could share in the context of this podcast, but it’s probably not appropriate or the right spot, so I won’t. But there was one thing that just kept ringing through my head that I wanted to share because I think it’s important and it does relate back to marketing. So there you go. Is it I alright if I relate it back to marketing, if I talk about God for a few minutes? Hopefully that’s okay. So it’s interesting, if you look at the world, what the world tries to do is that they see, I don’t want to get political because I don’t care about politics at all, so I’m not going to get political. But I see this mostly, it’s amplified in politics, where it’s like these are the agenda items that people either believe this or believe this and they fight back and forth, who’s right and who’s wrong, and all that stuff. And it’s kind of crazy. And it’s been interesting, in my life, and I’m not perfect in this by any stretch, this is what I aspire to be, when I look at an issue, when I look at something it shouldn’t be what do I believe. What does Russell believe on this topic? It should be, okay I believe in a God, so what does God actually believe on this topic? And then my job as a human here is not to try to convince God that, “No, no, no, you’re wrong.” Because he’s not. So my goal is to look at what he believes on the topic and then bend my will towards that. Say, okay this is what he believes therefore this is what I believe. That’s how it should be, if you do believe in an all powerful creator who created the heavens and the earth and everything. I think we should bend our will towards him. This is what he thinks, therefore this is what I think, on any topic. I think that’s important as we’re trying to set up our belief’s. What we’re for and what we’re against. It should be less of, this is my opinion, this is what I think is right, this is what I studied, what I read. It should be like, what does God actually think and then sit back and pray and find out what he believes and then be like cool. I will align my will with yours. I will align with that because that’s what you believe. So I was thinking about that, again, something I probably wouldn’t normally share inside the podcast, but I started thinking about this from the business standpoint too because there’s always correlations between all things. And it’s funny because a lot of the entrepreneurs that I work with, it’s interesting what they do. They have an idea, “This is a product I want to create. It’s the greatest thing in the world. It’s going to change mankind. I want to charge this price for it, this is how I want to deliver it.” And they have all these things that they want to do because it’s their idea. It’s their baby. And they go out there and they put it on the market and the market crushes it and it’s like, that idea sucks. Or that price point is not right. Or whatever it is, the market goes and does it’s thing. And the market in this situation is kind of like God. The market doesn’t care who you are, not that God, God does care. But the market doesn’t care who you are. The market doesn’t care how good your ideas are. The market is what it is. If you put your thing out there and it will tell you, that idea sucked. Or that idea is amazing. Or whatever the thing in between there is. And our job as entrepreneurs, is not to try to convince the market that our idea is the best, our job is to find out what does the market actually want and then align our will with that. And when you do that, that’s when things explode. That’s why when we test funnels, we’ll test and be like, oh the market said no. And we try again and we test and tweak the messaging and the pricing, we keep moving things around until we figure out what does the market actually want? How much do they want to spend for this? What’s the price point? What do they actually want? Do they even want this product?  A lot of my ideas they didn’t want. As great of an idea as I thought they were, the market did not care about it. And the market is the only thing that actually matters. So I always tell people, it drives me crazy people in my coaching programs, Facebook groups, and everything will come in and be like, “What’s your opinion on this?” and I’m like, “Dude, don’t take my opinion on it. I don’t even trust my opinion on my own stuff. I let the market decide. I create the thing the best I know how to do, based on what I have seen the market respond to in the past. I make the thing and then I send some traffic to it and I let the market vote. And I don’t let the market vote through quizzes or surveys or things like that. Where they’re like, ‘Oh yeah, I would buy that.’ The only thing that I care about is people that actually pull their wallets out of their pocket and swipe their credit card. That is how the market votes. They don’t vote with their mouth, they vote with their credit card.” Yes, I do, for those of you watching, I do have a Clickfunnels sticker on my wallet because it is what fills my wallet full of the stuff that we need to buy. Anyway, so that’s how it works. So for you guys, as entrepreneurs, it’s important for you to not get so caught up on your ideas and what you believe. It is important for you to figure out what the market actually wants. What they actually believe. They believe this is worth this amount of money, they believe that this is what they want to buy. You figure out what the market actually wants, and you do that you become rich. If you fight against that, you struggle. I’ve seen people go years, maybe decades and never have success because they are trying to jam their belief’s down the market’s throat. And the market doesn’t care about you, all the market wants is what it wants. So you gotta figure out what it wants and then you align your will with that. And that’s it. So as I was thinking about that this weekend with God and our responsibility to not so much try to dictate what we believe and try to shove it down his throat. But to figure out what he believes and align our will him. It’s the same thing with the market. And when you understand that, that’s when business becomes a lot easier. It comes back to Expert Secrets 101, like page 3 or whatever, find a hot market, ask them what they want, and then give it to them. It does not say, find a hot market, decide what you think would be awesome to create and then jam it down their throats. That is a hard business to run. Okay, it’s the opposite way. Find a hot market, ask what they want, and then give it to them. That’s it and the market will tell you. The market will tell you if you’re right. The market will tell you if you’re wrong. If you’re wrong, don’t be mad about it. Just change your approach, change the pricing, change the hook, change the angle, change the product, change the service. Create what it wants and then everything will take place that you need it to. Okay, there you go, is that okay that we reel religion into this thing? Because even if you guys don’t believe in God, it doesn’t mean he’s not there. That’s what’s interesting. I have people, friends that are like, “I don’t believe in God, you shouldn’t talk about it.” I’m like, “Whether you believe in him or not, he’s still there.” That’s the interesting thing. People are like, “I don’t believe this will sell.” Whether you believe it or not, it doesn’t really matter, it’s what the market believes. So let’s go find out what the truth is, and let’s align our belief’s with that. That’s in all aspects of life. So there you go. That’s preacher Brunson preaching on. Hope you guys don’t mind. Anyway, regardless, I hope you got something out of that one and hopefully you guys understand that’s how the world works, how the market works. And when you understand that, and you align your will toward it, that’s how you grow a company. Find a hot market, ask what they want, and give it to them. Alright guys, I’m at the office, I gotta go. See you all soon. Bye everybody.

Interesting thoughts I had on my drive home from Salt Lake City. On this episode Russell relates following God’s will to following the will of the market in business. Here are some of the enlightening things you will hear in today’s episode: How spending his weekend talking to a leader in his church reminded him that’s its important to align your belief’s with Gods. How aligning your beliefs will God’s is similar to aligning your product ideas with the needs of the market you’re in. And find out how you can align your own beliefs with that of the market you are in. So listen here to find out how Russell is able to relate business marketing to God. ---Transcript--- What’s up everybody? This is Russell Brunson and welcome to the Marketing Secrets podcast. Hey everyone, I hope you guys are all having an amazing day today. Whoa, I’m juggling my phone as I get in the car. Crazy day. We are just leaving, I was about to leave the house today and I walked out and Norah was outside on the trampolines jumping. Some of you guys heard my crazy stories. We had a big side yard that was kind of a big empty weed field. So we decided this year to go a little crazy. So we put in a football/soccer field, a volleyball court, basketball court, baseball and a track that wraps the whole thing and then 9 underground trampolines. And they got the 9 underground trampolines up this weekend while we were gone.  So we spent all night last night when we got home jumping and then this morning, I was about to leave and I could hear little giggles outside and I went outside and Norah was jumping. It’s a little bit cold out here, but I went and jumped for the last little bit. Now I’m heading out so I’m buckling up in my car and we are ready to rock and roll. It’s funny, we were gone this week. We went and drove to Burley where my in-laws live and we dropped off our kids and from there we drove down to Salt Lake because I had a meeting that I’ll tell you guys about here in a second. But it’s funny, on the way home we went camping and stuff like that, so I haven’t shaved in two days. So my face was all prickly, you know what I mean. I was picking up Norah yesterday and her curly hair is like Velcro on my beard. I tried for two days and I just hated it, so I just shaved it this morning. I’m like, ah, I feel so much better. But I hate it because I’ve been watching, we’ve been studying Dollar Shave Club and Dollar Beard Club’s off-boarding process. In fact, I wrote about it in Funnel university this month. And I don’t know what it is, all the beard guys just seem cooler and part of me is like I wanna be cool like the beard guys but I just can’t. Two days and I gave up, it was horrible. So I’ll never be as cool as the beard guys. But I will give them credit, they are definitely cooler than us shaved guys. Anyway, hopefully someday I’ll become a man and be able to grow one out. That day is not today. Anyway, so I want to share something today, and some of you might be thinking, Russell this is a marketing podcast why are you talking about God? Because he has to do with everything, it’s really important. And the lesson I learned this weekend has to do with God, but it also then relates back to you guys and your market, so I think it’s really, really important. So I was in Utah and I had a meeting with someone who is one of the top leaders in my church, the Mormon church. And we believe in our church that there’s a prophet and his 12 apostles, similar to how when Christ was on Earth. And my meeting was with one of the twelve apostles, which was really a huge honor, and scary and exciting and all those things all wrapped into one. And I had a chance to meet with him. So this whole week prior to leading up to it, I’ve had a lot of thoughts about just life and how things work and then obviously meeting with him and then afterwards, it was a really neat reflection in time. And there was something that came out, I mean, there was a lot of stuff I wish I could share in the context of this podcast, but it’s probably not appropriate or the right spot, so I won’t. But there was one thing that just kept ringing through my head that I wanted to share because I think it’s important and it does relate back to marketing. So there you go. Is it I alright if I relate it back to marketing, if I talk about God for a few minutes? Hopefully that’s okay. So it’s interesting, if you look at the world, what the world tries to do is that they see, I don’t want to get political because I don’t care about politics at all, so I’m not going to get political. But I see this mostly, it’s amplified in politics, where it’s like these are the agenda items that people either believe this or believe this and they fight back and forth, who’s right and who’s wrong, and all that stuff. And it’s kind of crazy. And it’s been interesting, in my life, and I’m not perfect in this by any stretch, this is what I aspire to be, when I look at an issue, when I look at something it shouldn’t be what do I believe. What does Russell believe on this topic? It should be, okay I believe in a God, so what does God actually believe on this topic? And then my job as a human here is not to try to convince God that, “No, no, no, you’re wrong.” Because he’s not. So my goal is to look at what he believes on the topic and then bend my will towards that. Say, okay this is what he believes therefore this is what I believe. That’s how it should be, if you do believe in an all powerful creator who created the heavens and the earth and everything. I think we should bend our will towards him. This is what he thinks, therefore this is what I think, on any topic. I think that’s important as we’re trying to set up our belief’s. What we’re for and what we’re against. It should be less of, this is my opinion, this is what I think is right, this is what I studied, what I read. It should be like, what does God actually think and then sit back and pray and find out what he believes and then be like cool. I will align my will with yours. I will align with that because that’s what you believe. So I was thinking about that, again, something I probably wouldn’t normally share inside the podcast, but I started thinking about this from the business standpoint too because there’s always correlations between all things. And it’s funny because a lot of the entrepreneurs that I work with, it’s interesting what they do. They have an idea, “This is a product I want to create. It’s the greatest thing in the world. It’s going to change mankind. I want to charge this price for it, this is how I want to deliver it.” And they have all these things that they want to do because it’s their idea. It’s their baby. And they go out there and they put it on the market and the market crushes it and it’s like, that idea sucks. Or that price point is not right. Or whatever it is, the market goes and does it’s thing. And the market in this situation is kind of like God. The market doesn’t care who you are, not that God, God does care. But the market doesn’t care who you are. The market doesn’t care how good your ideas are. The market is what it is. If you put your thing out there and it will tell you, that idea sucked. Or that idea is amazing. Or whatever the thing in between there is. And our job as entrepreneurs, is not to try to convince the market that our idea is the best, our job is to find out what does the market actually want and then align our will with that. And when you do that, that’s when things explode. That’s why when we test funnels, we’ll test and be like, oh the market said no. And we try again and we test and tweak the messaging and the pricing, we keep moving things around until we figure out what does the market actually want? How much do they want to spend for this? What’s the price point? What do they actually want? Do they even want this product?  A lot of my ideas they didn’t want. As great of an idea as I thought they were, the market did not care about it. And the market is the only thing that actually matters. So I always tell people, it drives me crazy people in my coaching programs, Facebook groups, and everything will come in and be like, “What’s your opinion on this?” and I’m like, “Dude, don’t take my opinion on it. I don’t even trust my opinion on my own stuff. I let the market decide. I create the thing the best I know how to do, based on what I have seen the market respond to in the past. I make the thing and then I send some traffic to it and I let the market vote. And I don’t let the market vote through quizzes or surveys or things like that. Where they’re like, ‘Oh yeah, I would buy that.’ The only thing that I care about is people that actually pull their wallets out of their pocket and swipe their credit card. That is how the market votes. They don’t vote with their mouth, they vote with their credit card.” Yes, I do, for those of you watching, I do have a Clickfunnels sticker on my wallet because it is what fills my wallet full of the stuff that we need to buy. Anyway, so that’s how it works. So for you guys, as entrepreneurs, it’s important for you to not get so caught up on your ideas and what you believe. It is important for you to figure out what the market actually wants. What they actually believe. They believe this is worth this amount of money, they believe that this is what they want to buy. You figure out what the market actually wants, and you do that you become rich. If you fight against that, you struggle. I’ve seen people go years, maybe decades and never have success because they are trying to jam their belief’s down the market’s throat. And the market doesn’t care about you, all the market wants is what it wants. So you gotta figure out what it wants and then you align your will with that. And that’s it. So as I was thinking about that this weekend with God and our responsibility to not so much try to dictate what we believe and try to shove it down his throat. But to figure out what he believes and align our will him. It’s the same thing with the market. And when you understand that, that’s when business becomes a lot easier. It comes back to Expert Secrets 101, like page 3 or whatever, find a hot market, ask them what they want, and then give it to them. It does not say, find a hot market, decide what you think would be awesome to create and then jam it down their throats. That is a hard business to run. Okay, it’s the opposite way. Find a hot market, ask what they want, and then give it to them. That’s it and the market will tell you. The market will tell you if you’re right. The market will tell you if you’re wrong. If you’re wrong, don’t be mad about it. Just change your approach, change the pricing, change the hook, change the angle, change the product, change the service. Create what it wants and then everything will take place that you need it to. Okay, there you go, is that okay that we reel religion into this thing? Because even if you guys don’t believe in God, it doesn’t mean he’s not there. That’s what’s interesting. I have people, friends that are like, “I don’t believe in God, you shouldn’t talk about it.” I’m like, “Whether you believe in him or not, he’s still there.” That’s the interesting thing. People are like, “I don’t believe this will sell.” Whether you believe it or not, it doesn’t really matter, it’s what the market believes. So let’s go find out what the truth is, and let’s align our belief’s with that. That’s in all aspects of life. So there you go. That’s preacher Brunson preaching on. Hope you guys don’t mind. Anyway, regardless, I hope you got something out of that one and hopefully you guys understand that’s how the world works, how the market works. And when you understand that, and you align your will toward it, that’s how you grow a company. Find a hot market, ask what they want, and give it to them. Alright guys, I’m at the office, I gotta go. See you all soon. Bye everybody.

How can you find "Your Business"?What's with the growing trend of mega successful business leaders who are embarking on a spiritual journey?In the quiet moments you may have asked yourself: how much “success” is enough? These are just some of the enticing questions we'll set out to answer on this episode of Dov Baron's Leadership and Loyalty Show. If you've ever wondered how a 20 something Canadian becomes a world renowned business leader who mostly just hangs out and trusts his people to run things, while making millions, you are going to love this show. Our guest today is a highly successful individual who got to that exact point and took a leap…. Chris Stoikos.Chris Stoikos is a serial entrepreneur and chief executive officer of The Dollar Beard Club.He is the archetypal "mover and shaker" with a number of entrepreneurial credits to his name. His true genius lies in the ability to creatively market and commercialize products, and in building and maintaining teams of experts to run businesses independently.Despite his youth, Chris brings a practical knowledge of business in tandem with a firm grasp of market psychology for a younger and "hipper" consumer base.However, aside from being a serial entrepreneur, the CEO of the Dollar Beard Club a multi-million dollar company and creating some truly brilliant viral youtube videos, there something far deeper driving this guy, and today we are going to look under the hood and find out what it is. Chris Stoikos has been featured in Forbes, Buzzfeed, Inc, and has been interviewed on Mixery, Entrepreneur, Mobe, The Pitch and others.More on Chris Stoikos: https://www.chrisstoikos.comMore about The Dollar Beard Club and it's Man Message: http://thebeardclub.comMore on Hiring the host Dov Baron: http://FullMontyLeadership.com See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Alex Brown is the cofounder of Dollar Beard Club, Unconscious Content, Coolbox and others. The recently founded dollar Beard Club is turning heads as a leading male grooming subscription service, and did over $10.5M in revenue in their first year in business, mainly through the creation of high impact video content and brand building. Unconscious Content was born of the repeated success in various industries, and where Alex and his business partner Chris Stoikos are divulging the secrets of how entrepreneurs can use video effectively to build brands and drive sales.  As a serial entrepreneur with multiple successful ventures, he typically wears all hats in each startup until a full team can be created. He has extensive experience in product development, contract manufacturing, PR, branding, integrated marketing and business development. 

Alex Brown is the cofounder of Dollar Beard Club, Unconscious Content, Coolbox and others. The recently founded dollar Beard Club is turning heads as a leading male grooming subscription service, and did over $10.5M in revenue in their first year in business, mainly through the creation of high impact video content and brand building. Unconscious Content was born of the repeated success in various industries, and where Alex and his business partner Chris Stoikos are divulging the secrets of how entrepreneurs can use video effectively to build brands and drive sales.  As a serial entrepreneur with multiple successful ventures, he typically wears all hats in each startup until a full team can be created. He has extensive experience in product development, contract manufacturing, PR, branding, integrated marketing and business development. 

Alex Brown is the cofounder of Dollar Beard Club, Unconscious Content, Coolbox and others. The recently founded dollar Beard Club is turning heads as a leading male grooming subscription service, and did over $10.5M in revenue in their first year in business, mainly through the creation of high impact video content and brand building. Unconscious Content was born of the repeated success in various industries, and where Alex and his business partner Chris Stoikos are divulging the secrets of how entrepreneurs can use video effectively to build brands and drive sales.  As a serial entrepreneur with multiple successful ventures, he typically wears all hats in each startup until a full team can be created. He has extensive experience in product development, contract manufacturing, PR, branding, integrated marketing and business development. 

Chris Stoikos is a serial entrepreneur and chief executive officer of Dollar Beard Club. He is the archetypal "mover and shaker" with a number of entrepreneurial credits to his name. His true genius lies in the ability to creatively market and commercialize products, and in building and maintaining teams of experts to run businesses independently. Despite his youth, Chris brings a practical knowledge of business in tandem with a firm grasp of market psychology for a younger and "hipper" consumer base. He also brings his manly beard, named "Grizz". Key Takeaways: [1:20] The creation of The Dollar Beard Club [4:15] The history of the rise of the beard culture [6:10] The impact viral videos have had on The Dollar Beard Club's success [10:10] Unconscious Content conference he's throwing to teach people to create viral videos [13:30] Dissecting the elements of viral videos [17:50] How you can tell a story in a 90 second video [20:10] Chris' background that led to his viral videos [21:40] How Chris writes his scripts for the videos and how much the videos have cost Resources Mentioned: www.dollarbeardclub.com www.unconsciouscontent.com www.chisstoikos.com www.finaldraft.com The Mastery of Self by Don Miguel Ruiz www.jotsome.com Instagram @cstoikos

Chris Stoikos, co-founder of Dollar Beard Club, joins the experts to discuss his approach to making viral videos and creating a “tribe” of loyal customers.   In thirteen months, his strategy saw the launch of his business, generating 100 million video views and over $11.5 million without any venture capitalists. Learn his video making process that will work for any business, even if your industry is “boring” (