Podcasts about qalo

Today, I'm sharing my conversation with Kyle Widrick of WIN Brands Group, which first aired on Shopify Masters. WIN acquired brands like Homesick, Love Your Melon, and Qalo, and then went on to scale those brands successfully. In today's chat, Kyle shares what he's learned throughout this journey as both an owner and operator of these direct-to-consumer brands. Enjoy! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Kyle Widrick of WIN Brands Group acquired brands like Homesick, Love Your Melon, Gravity, and QALO, and multiplied their sales. Here's what he has learned as owner and operator of direct-to-consumer brands and more than a decade of experience in ecommerce.Subscribe to the Shopify Masters YouTube channel for video interviews.

Cody Wittick is the Co-Founder and Co-CEO at Kynship, a performance marketing agency that has visibility into $400M in ad spend, and has sourced 350k+ influencers for its brands. Prior to co-founding Kynship, Cody began his journey at QALO, the brand that created the silicone wedding ring. Throughout his time there, he built out a robust influencer program contracting thousands of micro-influencers in a variety of industries while also working with household names such as Lebron James, Jason Aldean, Mike Trout, and Dale Earnhardt Jr. In this episode, we get into all things influencer marketing, tactics such as seeding influencers with product, scaling ad spend and more; we also dive into what makes an influencer worthy of being paid for posts; how to assess the quality of “an influencer”, in terms of follower counts; Cody's journey as a founder, his struggles, and his very personally story. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Marketing strategies have been taught for decades, but admittedly, some of them are no longer working as changes in consumer preferences are accelerating. So, what's working now in the field of marketing?In this episode of What's Working Now? Katie talks with Cody Wittick, Co-CEO of Kynship, in a discussion about marketing strategies. Cody's life experiences from long mission trips around the world have given him a valuable perspective in connecting with people and building a productive and grateful culture for his team.Key Takeaways from this episode:A purpose-driven business and celebrating success.The benefit of spending a lot of time on culture. What's working now inside influencer marketing?Navigating complexity and stress in life and business.On faith, business, and fitness habits“The right thing at the wrong time is the wrong thing”About Cody Wittick:Cody Wittick is the Co-CEO at Kynship, the agency that is paving the way for the future of influencer marketing. Prior to co-founding Kynship, Cody began his journey at QALO, the brand that created the silicone wedding ring. Over the course of 5 years, he built out a robust influencer program of 500+ influencers, all through the foundation of seeding, while also working with household names such as Lebron James, Jason Aldean, Mike Trout, and Dale Earnhardt Jr. While at Kynship, Cody has been working with companies like Native, M&Ms, Traeger, and Wilson.Connect with Cody:LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/codywittickX / Twitter: @Cody_WittickWebsite: http://www.kynship.co/About Katie Richardson:Katie, once a girl who just liked to have fun, transformed into a globally recognized designer and entrepreneur. With expertise in woodworking, welding, drawing, and sewing, she crafted her own path. Despite initial doubts and imposter syndrome, Katie defied expectations by establishing Puj, a business that now boasts its products in 2,000 US stores and 26 countries, delighting over 1 million customers worldwide. Her greatest aspiration is to inspire women across the globe. Renowned shows like the Ellen Degeneres Show, Rachael Ray Show, Today Show, and Entrepreneur Magazine have featured her, while influential figures like Martha Stewart, Matt Damon, Camilla Alves, Mario Lopez, Robert Downey Jr., Kourtney Kardashian, Bill & Giuliana Rancic, and Pam Beesley have embraced her products. Today, Katie is a coach, mother of four, wife, author, and powerful speaker.To connect with Katie:An Event in Puerto Rico (November 9-11, 2023): https://now.katierichardson.com/eventWebsite: https://katierichardson.com/CASE STUDIES: https://now.katierichardson.com/casestudyLinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/katie-richardson-creatorApple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/whats-working-now/id1515291698BuzzSprout: https://www.buzzsprout.com/1847280Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/2kV8cL7eTZ70UAXMOtcBbr**DATES FOR THIS EVENT HAVE CHANGED** The event dates are now DECEMBER 6-8TH, 2023.I hope to see you there!

In this episode of the Unstoppable Marketer Podcast, we are joined by special guest KC Holiday, former founder of QALO, to discuss the challenges of starting and growing a successful brand.KC shares valuable insights on identifying the best platforms for content distribution, emphasizing the importance of understanding your audience to maximize engagement.The challenges of launching new products in a competitive market are explored, as KC discusses the need for unique value propositions to capture customer attention.Drawing from his experience, KC highlights the distinction between starting and running a company, shedding light on the evolving role of a founder.He challenges the notion of a definitive playbook for scaling a business, encouraging entrepreneurs to pave their own paths and embrace uncertainty.Instead, KC advocates for understanding fundamental principles and strategies, empowering businesses to make informed decisions and foster creative problem-solving.Tune in to the Unstoppable Marketer Podcast for invaluable entrepreneurial insights and a fresh perspective on building a sustainable business from KC Holiday, the former founder of QALO.Please connect with Trevor on social media. You can find him anywhere @thetrevorcrump

In this episode, we delve deeper into the world of influencer marketing with Cody as he recaps its evolution and shares valuable insights on how to navigate this dynamic landscape. We discuss proven strategies and playbooks that you can use to collaborate effectively with influencers, regardless of the size of your brand or budget. Don't miss this opportunity to learn from Cody's wealth of experience and expertise in building powerful partnerships that drive growth and success in today's competitive market.We dive into the fascinating journey of Cody, co-founder of Kynship, who started his career at QALO, the innovative brand behind silicone wedding rings. Over five years, he masterminded an extensive influencer program with over 500 influencers, all grounded in the art of seeding. Cody's expertise led to collaborations with thousands of micro-influencers across various industries, as well as high-profile partnerships with celebrities like Lebron James, Jason Aldean, Mike Trout, and Dale Earnhardt Jr.Throughout his experience, Cody discovered the immense power of influencers in building trust and driving sales through Facebook and Instagram advertising. This revelation inspired him to establish his own influencer agency, dedicated to fostering fruitful collaborations between brands and creators. Tune in to hear about his work with renowned clients such as M&Ms, Native deodorant, and Wilson, and learn more about the ever-evolving world of influencer marketing. Get show alerts and playbooks by signing up on the EcomGold website: www.ecom.goldClaim an extended free trial as a show listener.EcomGold is brought to you by:‍Rewind Shopify App.Back up your Shopify store because not doing so is absolute lunacy!As a listener of the show, you can claim a no strings attached free month with this link: https://rewind.com/ecommercegold/Triple Whale.‍Triple Whale brings the metrics that matter most into one easy-to-use dashboard, giving you the real-time insights you need to grow your brand.https://www.triplewhale.com/TapCart.Customer retention is so important. Push notifications are free money levers. TapCart can create a native mobile app available on Apple Store and Android play in less than 2 weeks. They will even design and launch it for you. It a true no brainer for small and large stores. Get your app demo here: https://www.tapcart.com/Follow Finn on Twitter: https://twitter.com/finn_radford

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This episode is brought to you by Sendlane.   Kyle says, “Founders have a superpower. There's a reason they've gotten a brand to a certain size. Usually, that superpower has to do with product and product creation. Unfortunately, a lot of the CEOs and founders end up getting caught up in a lot of things that they're not good at. It's not their background, it's not their experience. And so if they're unable to invest the capital to buy a genuine expert in that area of business, let's say in wholesale, then they're really left exposed. They may get the orders because they're great salespeople. But when you get that order, then you gotta place the product, then it's gotta sell through. There's a lot to deal with.”   Today, we interview Kyle Widrick, Founder & CEO of Win Brands Group. Win is a modern holding company that specializes in buying and building brands that matter.   We discuss:   * What he's grateful for * Overview of Win Brands Group * A look back to 2022 and COVID * What brands have been through in the last few years * A forecast of the 2023 environment for brands * His focus on 2023 and why profit is the ultimate leverage * The 3Ps of of wholesale and being successful in retail * The opportunities in 2023 * A review of their portfolio including Qalo, Gravity, Love Your Mellon * The Win Brands Group criteria for acquiring a consumer brand * And more…   Join Ramon Vela and Kyle Widrick as we break down the inside story of Win Brands Group on The Story of a Brand.   For more on Win Brands Group, visit: https://www.winbg.com/   Subscribe and listen to the podcast on all major apps. Simply search for “The Story of a Brand” on your favorite podcast player.   *   This episode is brought to you by Sendlane.   Alright, guys, here's the deal: I have a gift for you from our primary sponsor — Sendlane. They're giving away their online course eCommerce Academy - Email & SMS Marketing!   This course gives you the step-by-step playbook to drive more revenue and retention with email & SMS. This is typically a $500 package, but for our listeners, it's entirely FREE when you get started with your FREE 14-day trial of Sendlane.   When you do, chat with their support team and let them know you're one of our listeners to get full access to hours of course content that will help you make email marketing your #1 growth engine.   Visit https://storybrandgift.com to get the details, sign up for a free trial and get your gift!  

For over a decade, I've launched, led, and lived within multiple ecommerce businesses. The last six months have been the most challenging we've ever faced. First, pandemic-triggered claims touting “a decade of ecommerce growth in one quarter” fell short. Though substantial, many of ecommerce's gains have receded in the wake of retail's return. Where COVID once lifted DTC's tide, a new wave of competitors has rushed to crowd the waters. Second, a slew of supply-chain issues have impacted even the world's finest retailers. The results? Low-tide GMV during 2021's third quarter and the first industry-wide down year in Black Friday, Cyber Monday history. Third, iOS 14.5 smashed into Facebook advertising, decreasing ROAS by 30% virtually overnight. You might be tempted to ask, “How do we fix it?” What you should be asking is, “What if we can't?” How do you build a business that succeeds even when Facebook fails? How do you not only withstand pressure and chaos, but thrive amid them? To use a word coined by Nassim Nicholas Taleb, how do you become “antifragile”? 1. Production Lead Times Production lead time is the average length between ordering inventory and receiving stock. The longer that period, the better you're forced to be at something that's fundamentally impossible: forecasting. As you predict further into the future, risk intensifies. Likewise, your ability to capitalize on new opportunities declines. If you disagree, think about how the pandemic (spiked demand) or fulfillment issues (limited supply) unexpectedly impacted your business. What's the alternative? Consider ColourPop Cosmetics — a DTC beauty brand whose team monitors viral cosmetic trends and makes inventory onsite. From trend to launch to scale, all within 48 hours. We've adopted a similar approach at Bambu Earth where products are produced and shipped from our facility in Havelock, NC. Scoring Your Lead Times Length between placing an inventory order to receiving stock that's ready to sell and ship On-demand: +2 Less than 6 weeks: +1 Longer than 6 weeks: 0 Because Bambu Earth owns production, we're able to create products on-demand. So, we get two points. Antifragile Tactics: How to Improve Lead Times 1. Own parts of your supply chain Instantly manufacturing products isn't realistic for supply chains in total. For parts of yours? Probably. During my time at QALO (the original silicone-ring maker), we couldn't manufacture the rings themselves, but we could customize them through laser engraving. We priced the machines, amortized them over demand expectations, and dramatically reduced costs and time to ship. We did the same thing at FC Goods by bringing wallet engraving in-house; and we do it today with Modern Fuel — where we operate final assembly and shipping onsite. Dig through the entirety of your supply chain and determine how you can reduce lead times by taking over part of the manufacturing process. 2. Negotiate lower MOQ & master inventory turnover Manufacturers want you to order as much product as possible so they can make money by working at scale. However, they'll likely negotiate lowering their Minimum Order Quantities (MOQ) if you're a trusted partner. Cast a vision for how your growth will be mutually beneficial. Paying more to order less product more frequently is often worth the expense to improve lead times when testing new products. Don't hesitate to get your lawyer involved in this process, especially if you're creating new systems you don't want your manufacturer to share with your competitors. Lastly, pay close attention to customer's behavior to determine if you're holding too much or too little inventory at any given time. 3. Reduce your SKUs + work with local contractors Because different products have different manufacturing times, reducing the number of SKUs or SKU variants cuts back on the time it takes for you to receive your order. Similarly, it's not uncommon for fashion retailers to contract seamsters in small towns to keep patt...

Are you leveraging product seeding with your influencers? This week's guest, Cody Wittick, goes into the details of making the most of your influencer marketing program.Cody Wittick is the Co-Founder and Co-CEO at Kynship, an influencer marketing agency located in Orange County, CA. Prior to co-founding Kynship, Cody began his journey at QALO, the brand that created the silicone wedding ring. Throughout his time there, he built out a robust influencer program of over 500 influencers, all through the foundation of seeding. Eppie McDonnell is a skilled social media and digital marketing executive, having helped brands scale their growth through paid social campaigns. She is now an Account Manager on the Optily+ team, helping eCommerce companies grow by implementing cross-channel strategies to increase the overall return on ad spend.The main points we covered were:Creating a relationship with influencers through product seedingPaid media with influencer contentThe value of video over static

Cody Wittick is the co-founder of a highly successful agency that pairs businesses with influencers and he is known for tweeting practical daily business advice to his many followers. Jason invited him on the show to pick his brain about what the influencer marketing ecosystem is really all about in 2022 and how to make the most of it in your business. On this week's episode of Ecommerce Building Blocks, Jason and Cody Wittick take lessons from Cody's experience heading influencer marketing at Qalo and now at his own agency, Kynship. Cody is passionate about people doing influencer marketing the right way and has a lot to say about what that means. First, as a foundation, it's about building relationships. Cody gives great advice about how to reach out to influencers, how to approach them, and how to develop a relationship with them organically so that when they support your product it comes from a genuine and authentic place. Next, it's about content - and as Savannah Sanchez emphasized so much in our earlier interview with her - no matter the platform, there are ways to create great content that pulls customers in and makes them want to know more. After Cody gives his step-by-step breakdown of how to do influencer outreach correctly, he and Jason discuss how to set up flows for sending out product, and talk about the dangers of looking at vanity metrics when deciding which influencers to pay for. Cody's Twitter: https://twitter.com/Cody_Wittick Kynship's website: https://bit.ly/3yzdCZp ➡️ Building Blocks website: bbclass.co

Kyle is the founder and CEO of Win Brands Group, an omnichannel retail platform that buys and builds category-defining brands. Win's stable of brands includes Homesick (scented candles and home fragrance), QALO (silicone wedding rings and accessories), Gravity (the original weighted blanket), and Love Your Melon (mission-driven outerwear). Kyle has spent over a decade honing the art of consumer-focused venture capital and brand building. His background includes working side-by-side with branding guru J. Christopher Burch, as well as founding multiple best-in-class investment and marketing operations in the US and abroad.    Interviewed by Mortimer Singer. 

In today's episode, we learn a sane and accessible influencer marketing strategy that has worked for brand and big small: product seeding.We're joined by Cody Wittick, Co-Founder and Co-CEO at Kynship, an influencer marketing agency.Prior to co-founding Kynship, Cody worked at QALO, the brand that created the silicone wedding ring, where he built out a robust influencer program of 500+ influencers, all through the foundation of seeding. This included contracting thousands of micro-influencers in a variety of industries to produce monthly UGC and organic posts, while also working with household names such as Lebron James, Jason Aldean, Mike Trout, and Dale Earnhardt Jr.Show LinksKynshipQALOMeta for CreatorsTikTok Creator MarketplaceMightyScoutRevKapwingKynship App: Influencer SeedingKynship's Influencer CourseSponsorsFree 30-day trial of Zipify OCU - To get an unadvertised gift, email help@zipify.com and ask for the "Tech Nasty Bonus".Back up your store with RewindTry Bold Product Upsell, free trialPrivy: The Fastest Way To Grow Sales With Email & SMSNever miss an episodeSubscribe wherever you get your podcastsJoin Kurt's newsletterHelp the showAsk a question in The Unofficial Shopify Podcast Facebook GroupLeave a reviewSubscribe wherever you get your podcastsWhat's Kurt up to?See our recent work at EthercycleSubscribe to our YouTube ChannelApply to work with Kurt to grow your store.

Cody Wittick is the Co-CEO at Kynship, the agency that is paving the way for the future of influencer marketing.   Prior to co-founding Kynship, Cody began his journey at QALO, the brand that created the silicone wedding ring. Over the course of 5 years, he built out a robust influencer program of 500+ influencers, all through the foundation of seeding, while also working with household names such as Lebron James, Jason Aldean, Mike Trout, and Dale Earnhardt Jr.   During the show we discuss: ● How an influencer is different from a brand ambassador ● Why focus on content creators first ● How influencer marketing works ● What influencer marketing is ● Who influencers are   Show resources: https://kynship.co/

Subscribe to DTC Newsletter - https://dtcnews.link/signup Hello and welcome to DTC Podcast, Today we're getting in the win column with Win Brands Group Director of Retention Sophie Baer. https://winbg.com Win is an omnichannel retail platform that specializes in buying and building category-defining brands, like: Qalo, Homesick Candles, Gravity Weighted Blankets, and Love Your Melon headwear. Sophie oversees CRM management, email marketing, SMS marketing, and lead generation, and collaborates across marketing channels to focus on improving and increasing LTV, AOV, and CVR Today we dove into: Email and SMS automations and why more retention communications should be automated (but still personalized) Why Sophie's rolling out quizzes to all Win brands (and what softwear she's using) Building purchase history into all automations and why every brand needs a recapture sequence. Why SMS is no longer optional for DTC brands You'll learn why Sophie is an automation overlord and what you can do to drive more second purchases than ever this year. Work with Pilothouse: https://pilothouse.co Subscribe to DTC Newsletter - https://dtcnews.link/signup Advertise on DTC - https://dtcnews.link/advertise Work with Pilothouse - https://dtcnews.link/pilothouse Follow us on Instagram & Twitter - @dtcnewsletter Watch this interview on YouTube - https://dtcnews.link/video

Cody Wittick is the Co-Founder and Managing Partner at Kynship. Prior to co-founding Kynship, Cody began his journey at QALO, the brand that created the silicone wedding ring. Over the course of 5 years, he built out a robust influencer program of 500+ influencers, all through the foundation of seeding. This included contracting thousands of micro-influencers in a variety of industries to produce monthly UGC and organic posts, while also working with household names such as Lebron James, Jason Aldean, Mike Trout, and Dale Earnhardt Jr. Cody is passionate about equipping and educating brands to build out strong influencer programs that generate revenue. In this episode, Cody shares his experiences to tell us how we can use powerful influencer seeding strategies to easily drive rapid growth by as much as 457%. Insights he shares include: What is Influencer seedingHow to build a community of influencers around the brandHow to do influencer marketing for B2B brandsWhat change are we seeing on a macro level with influencer marketingIf a brand wants to start leveraging influencer marketing today, what steps should it takeHow do you measure the ROI of influencer marketingUnderstanding your brand story and finding others who can tell it best.and much much more ...

Cody started his Influencer Marketing journey brand-side at QALO (the creators of the silicone wedding ring) spending 3 years growing it from nothing to work with a wide range of influencers – both in size, and interest niche. He then took everything he learnt there to co-found influencer marketing agency Kynship – who focus on building a community of influencers for their clients – not just the transactions. We discuss what tactics are working for Cody's clients right now including - seeding, dark posts, white listings, UGC content, relationship building and much much more. Get all the links and resources we mention at https://keepoptimising.com/?utm_source=captivate&utm_medium=episodenotes (KeepOptimising.com) Episode sponsored by https://www.klaviyo.com/?utm_source=podcast&utm_medium=referral&utm_campaign=masterplan (Klaviyo) This podcast uses the following third-party services for analysis: Chartable - https://chartable.com/privacy

Stefanie opens this week's second episode of For Crying talking about going to Target with Xander. Then, Stefanie invites Lynette to a small concert coming up in LA where a few FCOL fans are meeting up. The ladies also talk about the latest podcast they've been listening to called Bad Bad Thing. After that, Stefanie catches one of her kids in a lie. Before they wrap, Lynette gives an update on how Sonny's sleep as been lately. And thanks for supporting our sponsors: Qalo.com/FCOL, OxicleanCoupons.com, Gold Peak Real Brewed Tea, Geico.com, and PlutoTV

KC Co-Founder of Qalo, built a new category of product from scratch, silicone wedding rings. What started as a way to wear a wedding ring at the gym quickly turned into an online business generating millions in revenue which was up to $125million when he sold it. The tipping point? KC knew he was onto something when a Qalo ring ended up on an NFL player's finger on a TV showed which aired for millions across the US. Although KC didn't get results from that initially, what followed was just as amazing. Listen in to hear how you can access great resources, education, knowledge and experience from KC himself. What he is all about, setting realistic expectations, responding to your community and challenging what you think it means to go online. In this episode he gives some great advice on how to build an online store that thrives. Here are the main links from the episode. Show notes: - Qalo - https://qalo.com - Solving hollow – https://www.solvinghollow.com - Powerbalance – https://www.powerbalance.com - Hard knocks - https://www.hbo.com/hard-knocks - BetterLabs - https://www.betterlabsventures.com.au - RAC - https://rac.com.au - Skydio 2 Drone - https://www.skydio.com/skydio-2 - More on KC's story - https://www.starterstory.com/stories/qalo

Sean Evangelista is a retired Navy SEAL with 20 years of service, including multiple combat deployments throughout the world.  He is the founder and owner of 30 Seconds Out, a commando-inspired apparel brand that makes the world's most awesome t-shirts.  During Sean's military service, he experienced numerous combat situations that resulted in more than thirty broken bones and even brain injuries. Through a combination of perseverance and good fortune, Sean was able to survive these difficult situations and retire with an incredibly distinguished career. Now, Sean is devoted to operating Thirty Seconds Out and experiencing every new adventure life has to offer. https://www.athleticgreens.com/clearedhot https://www.allform.com/clearedhot https://www.Magicspoon.com/clearedhot https://www.Qalo.com/clearedhot  

Lynette and Stefanie open this week's first episode of For Crying Out Loud talking to producer Caelan about having young children. Then, Lynette recaps her recent trip to Las Vegas for another volleyball tournament. After that, the ladies talk about the 4th of July. Before they wrap, Stefanie tells Lynette about watching Team America: World Police with Jon and Xander. And thanks for supporting today's sponsors: Qalo.com/FCOL, CreditKarma.com/WinMoney, Gold Peak Real Brewed Tea, OxicleanCoupons.com, and Geico.com

Join us for an in-depth interview with Cody Wittick, CEO and Co-Founder of Kynship about what works, and what doesn't, for influencer marketers. Wittick got his start with QALO, the brand that created the silicone wedding ring industry, and has worked with influencers like Lebron James, Jason Aldean, Mike Trout, and Dale Earnhardt Jr. as well as micro influencers across a variety of industries.  Learn tips and strategies from an industry leader who wants you to judge his brand on sales, not clicks. In this insightful conversation Wittick reveals his influencer marketing mission, the steps brands should take today, and how to truly cut through the noise and drive measurable results.  Some of the topics we discuss are:  What are we seeing on a macro level with influencer marketing? What's different today than it was 5 years ago?  If a brand wants to start leveraging influencer marketing today, what steps should they take?  How do you measure the ROI of influencer marketing?  What are the best distribution strategies for the content?  What's a good strategy for micro influencers?  How to choose the right influence marketing platform.  What's going to happen with influencer marketing in the next 3-5 years and how can brands get ahead of the curve now? Guest Bio Cody Wittick began his influencer marketing journey at QALO, the brand that created the silicone wedding ring industry. From there he grew their influencer roster to over people including household names such as Lebron James, Jason Aldean, Mike Trout, and Dale Earnhardt Jr. as well as micro influencers within the industries of TV personalities, Crossfit, outdoor enthusiasts, and pets.

Stefanie opens this week's second episode of For Crying Out Loud talking about getting a new purse. Then, Stefanie recaps a little family drama involving her daughter wanting to hang with friends over going to dinner. After that, the ladies discuss driving the kids and their friends around. Before they wrap, Stefanie talks about trying to sign Elby up for a visual arts class for school. And thanks for supporting our sponsors: Qalo.com/FCOL, Madison-Reed.com enter FCOL, OxicleanCoupons.com, Gold Peak Real Brewed Tea, PlutoTV, and Geico.com

Influencer marketing has changed in the last few years and there is definitely a right and a wrong way to do it. Now that influencers have solidified their position in the online space and built a whole new industry if we want to take advantage of the power we need to take a different approach.    Today's guest has cracked the influencer code and he's sharing how he got his start in influencer marketing a QALO, eventually building up the influencer roster to over 250 people - including household names such as Lebron James, Jason Aldean, Mike Trout, and Dale Earnhardt Jr. as well as micro-influencers within the industries of TV personalities, Crossfit, outdoors enthusiasts, and pets. What You'll Learn How Cody got Lebron James to wear his product without even trying Why relationships are first in influencer marketing How to leverage the content from influencers to tell your brand story Connect With Cody http://www.kynship.co https://twitter.com/Cody_Wittick https://www.instagram.com/codywittick/   Get His Product Seeding & Usage Right Template Here https://docs.google.com/document/d/1pZbQbvhFbC5INav-w_aihVOYagC1uHOtozYgZSPDQMU/copy   Snag His Influencer Marketing Course Here https://ecommercebadassery.com/cody Read the Full Transcript eCommerceBadassery.com/57 FREE Resource Library  Every freebie I've created to help you grow the traffic, sales, and profit in your eCommerce Business, all in one place! http://ecommercebadassery.com/freestuff   Want More Badassery? Join the eCommerce Badassery Facebook Group and connect with other eCommerce entrepreneurs just like you!  http://ecommercebadassery.com/facebook Let's connect on Instagram @ecommercebadassery https://instagram.com/ecommercebadassery   Ready to Level Up Your Email Marketing & eCommerce Business? Try the Klaviyo Email Marketing Platform - Built specifically for eCommerce, serving entrepreneurs, and iconic brands.   https://ecommercebadassery.com/klaviyo Work With Me Interested in getting my brain focused on YOUR business? Learn more about my services…   Email Marketing Help: https://ecommercebadassery.com/email-marketing eCommerce Help: https://ecommercebadassery.com/ecommerce-help   Rate, Review, & Subscribe Like what you heard? I'd be forever grateful if you'd rate, review and subscribe to the show! Not only does it help your fellow eCommerce entrepreneurs find the eCommerce Badassery podcast; it's also valuable feedback for me to continue bringing you the content you want to hear.    Review Here: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/ecommerce-badassery/id1507457683 This podcast uses the following third-party services for analysis:  Chartable - https://chartable.com/privacy

Another inspiring conversation on the Zero to 5000 Podcast today. We were joined by KC Holiday, founder of QALO Rings. We discussed:The worst thing that can happen when you try a new tacticHow to be a visionary in your company"Your job is not to baby your employees, your job is to keep the lights on so that they can keep caring for their babies at home"Traditions provide structure for your people and structure removes anxietyEntrepreneurship and misery don't need to go hand in handResources mentioned:The power of Habit by Charles DuhiggRavi Zacharias International MinistriesThanks for Listening. Head to zeroto5000.com to download The Founders Guide to Talent Optimization. A 60-page report unpacking the specific talent practices that translate to peak business results.

The first in a new monthly episode – CEO of Common Thread Collective, Taylor Holiday and host, Andrew Faris each bring one topic they've been wrestling with over the last month and talk it through. Shownote Resources: 1. QALO "Mark Of A Maker" Quality Campaign: https://bit.ly/2ZodSJZ 2. QALO "Mark Of A Maker" Quality Campaign Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V5f7-ObdsvQ 3. Western Rise "Wear From Anywhere" Campaign: https://bit.ly/2Zk1dHN 4. "Mud Bogging" Facebook Group: https://business.facebook.com/theMudBog/?business_id=1514355852207761

What is the right percent profit margin you should target for your products? How do you get the most out of your Facebook ad buys? How much should you really pay attention to conversion rate? These are just a few of the questions that every small business and Ecommerce shop wants the answers to. On this episode of Up Next in Commerce, we picked the brain of Andrew Faris, the CEO of 4x400, a company that has helped grow numerous Ecommerce companies from less than 500,000 into the tens of millions. Today, Andrew spills some of his advertising secrets, including how to make Facebook your core driver for customer acquisition. Here’s a mini spoiler: human bias is leading you astray, but there is a simple way to correct course. Find out that, and more, on this episode! Main Takeaways: Conversion rate is so context-specific that it's not that helpful of a metric. Instead, analyze conversion rate relative to average order value and relative to the traffic sources the customer came from. Before you invest in anything else, you need to drive traffic to the top of the funnel. Currently, Facebook ads are the core driver of customer acquisition for online shopping. Andrew suggests that most Ecommerce brands should invest in the platform and then trust the algorithm to put you in front of the right audiences. You have to take big swings with your experiments. Don’t get hung up on micro-details like the color of your buttons or rewriting your copy. Instead, find big ways to make changes and then see how the outcomes stack up. Because we are all riddled with our own biases, we often cannot predict accurate models of the future on our own. Instead, use data as your guide as you peer into the future. For an in-depth look at this episode, check out the full transcript below. Quotes have been edited for clarity and length. --- Up Next in Commerce is brought to you by Salesforce Commerce Cloud. Respond quickly to changing customer needs with flexible Ecommerce connected to marketing, sales, and service. Deliver intelligent commerce experiences your customers can trust, across every channel. Together, we’re ready for what’s next in commerce. Learn more at salesforce.com/commerce --- Transcript: Stephanie: Hey everyone. This is Stephanie Postles, co-founder of Mission.org and your host of Up Next in Commerce. Today on the show, we have the CEO of 4x400, Andrew Faris. Andrew, thanks for taking the time. Andrew: Stephanie, I am very glad to be able to do this. I have never been accused of not liking to talk about Ecommerce in particular, but just in general. So this is fun. Stephanie: Well, you're my perfect guest then. I was creeping as one does on your LinkedIn. I saw an interesting thing that you have a background in religion and theology. I was wondering how you transitioned into the world of business from that background. Andrew: Yeah. I can always tell when somebody has looked at my LinkedIn or not because that's maybe the only place where that's found anymore. Stephanie: You're welcome. Andrew: Yeah, yeah. No, I went to school for biblical studies, and then got a master's degree in New Testament. So that was my whole pathway, was to go into that and actually was a pastor for a while. Did that, and then about ... gosh, how long ago? Five and a half years ago stepped out of that not because anything in my faith changed per se, but just because I was just rethinking a bunch of stuff in my life and reworking a bunch of stuff in my life. So it's just total life change in all kinds of crazy ways. I didn't have a clue what I was going to do actually. Andrew: That educational pathway doesn't have a direct connection to almost anything that's not work in a church or academic setting or something like that in theology. So, I really loved that education a lot, but I was figuring it out. So I called a friend of mine named Taylor Holiday, who ... and I was talking to him about if there's any available work in his world of work. Just basically as an in between thing while I figured it out. I just thought I'll just go do something for a couple months to figure out what I want to do. He said, sure, and brought me to a company called QALO, Q-A-L-O. If you've seen the silicon wedding rings that are for- Stephanie: Oh, yeah. Andrew: .. on the internet a lot, QALO was the first big company of those. QALO went zero to 20 million in a year and a half and was not funded. So, I was bootstrapped. I went there and it was just growing super, super fast. Also, being not funded and being a bunch of people like that, it just meant that they just were, in those worlds probably some of your listeners probably know this story a little bit, which is like, you just find people who can do stuff in that setting. I literally started in the warehouse. At one point, I sat down with Taylor, who's now one of my partners. Taylor was running marketing for QALO at the time. His brother was one of the founders. Taylor said, "Hey, you've got a mind for numbers," which he knew because we were in a Fantasy Baseball League together and knew that I was a big baseball stat nerd. Andrew: May not be interesting to many of your listeners I'm sure, but I have a lot to say about the interplay of thinking about sports through statistical lens and thinking about Ecommerce. Anyway, so that was the origin. We had been in this fantasy baseball for a while, "I know you have a mind for numbers, why don't you learn Facebook ads and Google ads and learn digital marketing?" I said, sure, but still I was not really sure what I wanted to do in the longer term. But I was like, "All right, that sounds fun." So, did that and loved it. Andrew: I mean, I was so totally unaware of what was happening, but I still remember the first conversation I had with Taylor in a bank where he told me what I'd be doing. He's explaining to me how Facebook ads, Google ads worked and said, "Is it okay? Well, here's the deal. You get customers into the funnel with your ads and then you drive ..." and I stopped him in the middle of that sentence and said, "What's the funnel?" That was where my digital marketing knowledge was at. From there, that ended up being the pathway to the digital marketing and Ecommerce career growth. So I was at QALO for a while, went to CTC, the agency that owns our company, owns the majority of it and became the head of strategy there. And then now I run 4x400. Andrew: Yeah, it was a crazy set of circumstances with Taylor. We actually went to junior high together, but had not reconnected because of that. We reconnected outside of that. So, just weird circumstances. Stephanie: That's interesting. Andrew: This gets into my life philosophy a little bit. I'm a believer in divine providence and think there was some of that happening around. Stephanie: For sure. Yeah, that's awesome. Always good to be in business with someone who's willing to bet on you because you have that beginner's mindset and it's probably why you're doing so well. But I'd love for you to detail a little bit about the structure of CTC and 4x400 in the holding company structure because we haven't had anyone on the show quite like this. So, any details around what 4x400 is and how it's connected to CTC would be great. Andrew: Yeah, sure. Common Thread Collective, it grew out of ... Taylor was building the agency alongside the growth of QALO. Started really focusing on Facebook ads. CTC does a lot more in that now, but CTC is now a full service digital sales agency. We said digital sales sell digital marketing because what we're doing is selling things on the internet, it's consumer goods, really focusing on Ecommerce entrepreneurs. The mission of CTC is to help entrepreneurs achieve their dreams. So that's really what we're about. We're specifically really good taking people in somewhere in the journey from zero to 30 million. Andrew: I was a strategist there and then became the head of strategy there. CTC continues to grow and do well. Taylor Holiday, as I mentioned is the managing partner of CTC. Andrew: In the midst of that, we also were like ... I mean, we came from this background of starting QALO. Taylor also was early on with another one of our partners named Josh Rodarmel who founded Power Balance. If you don't know Power Balance, Power Balance was the really popular silicon bracelets that were worn by athletes for a long time, still are worn by some. Andrew: That company was another super crazy fast growth company. I think they were zero to 50 in a year and a half. Yeah, I think that was the number. But anyway, I did on the brand side selling consumer goods in those worlds. We're like, why don't we launch our own brands as well? So, that's how 4x400 started. Eventually I went over to that side of the business. We started with building our own brand from scratch. It totally saw giant failure called [inaudible] company, just a huge waste of money. It doesn't exist anymore. It was sports themed baby goods and it just ... there are a lot of reasons that didn't work Stephanie: Wait, sports themed baby goods, so- Andrew: Yeah, yeah. Stephanie: ... like onesies. Andrew: Yeah. Like onesies that look like football uniforms. They're adorable. I don't know why nobody bought them. Stephanie: Okay, that's super cute. I'll buy one from you. Andrew: Yeah. I think that you'd have to go find a flea market in Northern California somewhere. I had to go get it every day. Stephanie: I will find one, I actually need to for my twin. So, it'll be a long journey, but I'm going to do it. Andrew: Okay. You're in Northern California, right? Stephanie: Yeah. Andrew: Yeah, I think that's who we sold to, so [inaudible] don't worry. We did that, and then realized actually most of our skill at this point ... most last couple years that we have really been spent after we'd gotten out of the brand side so much growing brands, not so much building brands. So we thought, why don't we just do that? Now our model is, at 4x400, we work with entrepreneurs who are in early stages and feel a little stalled out. We provide them with a team around them that can help them grow it. 4x400 mission is also to help entrepreneurs achieve their dreams. We just do it in a different way than CTC. Andrew: CTC does that the traditional client relationship 4x400, takes the majority share of the brand. And then our goal is to make it so that by bringing us on as a partner and all of the expertise and resources we have around finance operations, marketing, growth customer service, even just really thinking through the whole system of what it means to be a great Ecommerce brand, we can help brands grow. We just closed actually our fifth brand that is currently in our portfolio. We're hoping to close another one soon. Who knows by the time it comes out, if that will happen? We're trying to work with brands who are doing less than half a million in revenue and saying like "We can try to grow you from there." CTC is the majority owner 4x400. 4x400 is the majority owner of these brands. So there's this giant web of relationships there. Stephanie: Yeah, okay. That helps me understand the landscape a bit more. How do you think about acquiring brands, how do you find brands that are willing to say, "Okay, we'll give you a majority share and come under your company"? Andrew: Yeah. Well, there's a few ways. CTC is a magnet for some of them. Sometimes brands will come to CTC and CTC will say, we're not the right partner for you. You're not a place where you can afford us. One piece of advice I have for a lot of it was like, if you are paying an agency not very much money you should really think about whether the agency is good because agency economics just require, for you to get great service, they typically require a pretty good investment. Just think about it. Agencies exist by marking up people's time. So, an agency works well if they are able to attract and train great talent by nature of access to large amounts of information. Andrew: The value of an agency is that they are spending millions and millions of dollars of other people's money on stuff. So, it's information arbitrage in that respect. You can come to an agency and get that information applied to your brand in a way that maybe an in house resource can't always do because they just are not going to have the visibility to as much of what's going on. For that to work, then you have to mark up that time of high quality, talented people who are probably not cheap. And then also for something like Facebook ads, Google ads, and then oftentimes there's a creative element of that and a writing element of that, and a strap gentleman have that, so that means you got to pay designers and other people like that too. And then there's web dev parts of it. You start to put that all together and if it's too cheap, then you have to be going like, wait a minute, what am I actually getting here? Andrew: Some brands in the early days, will come to ... they'll be stalled out or come to CTC for resources. CTC will say to them, actually you can't really afford this. What we actually think is a better solution for you is to talk about a deeper investment where we can really surround you with more stuff. What we find is a lot of entrepreneurs love product building and customer communication in certain ways. They love their customer, they love their product idea people, but they don't necessarily have all of the skills around everything else it takes to grow a brand. In fact, they don't want to do those things. Andrew: Most entrepreneurs don't start brands because they love finance, they don't. They don't even necessarily love tactical marketing. A lot of times what we can say to them is, "Let us take all that stuff that you hate doing anyway from you, you feel overwhelmed and stalled all the time anyway. You come with us, we'll pay you a consistent salary," which is also a big help to some people who are going like, I just don't even know if I can perform this anymore. We'll help you grow. Some entrepreneurs want to stay on, some don't, some just wants to take it. So it really depends on each entrepreneur, but that's basically a lot of how we think about it. Andrew: And then for us, we evaluate the brand by saying like, "Does it have basic product market fit and basic fundamentals to where we think as we bring in all of our tactical expertise and all of our specific expertise in various disciplines that we can then apply that to the brand and grow it?" A brand who comes to us who hasn't really invested much in paid media, but has done 100 to $300,000 in revenue, we look at that and say, "That's ..." Actually, we have a really high amount of respect for that. It's really hard to do that, it's hard to do $100,000 without being good at Facebook ads. It's not easy. So we look at that and say like, "Good job. We don't think you're a failure. If you come to us and want our help, we think we get it." We look at that and say, "That's very impressive. Let us surround you now with resources that we can scale this to 10, $20 million in revenue." Stephanie: Very cool. How are your brands performing now? Andrew: Yeah, good. They're doing good. Andrew: I think COVID really helped Ecommerce brands massively. Two things happen at the same time. One of them is that large corporations who have diversity of sales channels, but were spending lots of money on advertising, pulled their advertising budgets the way the heck back. Of course, lots of other companies couldn't produce products. So they couldn't sell products in retail settings, so they pulled a lot of the budget back. They couldn't produce products because of supply chain problems. And then at the same time ... So that meant that in large auction based advertising work universes like Facebook ads and Google ads, ads got suddenly way cheaper really fast. Andrew: The way that works is that because those are built on an auction, if a lot of people leave the auction everybody's prices get cheaper. We've looked at this data across CTC accounts. There was a giant plummeting of advertising CPMs in those worlds. And then at the same time in the last couple months, conversion rate on websites went up because the only place to capture demand was online. You couldn't go buy stuff in the store. So if you're selling things on the internet, that's where people are buying things from. And then of course, the stimulus checks it. As people have noted, that actually ended up being one of the largest increases in revenue to the average American family in history. So, all of a sudden, people have money to spend. Whether or not they should have spent it on consumer goods is a different question, I don't really know. But they had money to spend. Andrew: The less places for that demand to be captured mostly on Ecommerce stores. And then also, it got a lot cheaper to reach those people with ads. You put that all together and Ecommerce did really, really, really well for a couple months. So that really helped us. There's no question about it. We're still feeling some of the positive effects of that. It feels weird to be a winner in COVID, but there's no question that Ecommerce brands were .. To varying degrees depending on the category you're in, for sure. Andrew: We have three brands that are in the established stage and not in the start it up stage. Stephanie: What account is established, is it a revenue metric or- Andrew: Yeah, a good question. I'd say a million dollars during 12 months, or a million dollar run rate. We would look at and say, "Okay, we're growing at the pace that we want." I can just give you some numbers. We're projected this year to go to have one of our brains go to 8 million, that brand did 100,000 in 2017. Last year, we really took it over halfway through the year. I think we ended at 750 for the year. So, that's definitely our fastest growing brand right now. Stephanie: That's [crosstalk 00:16:47]. Andrew: Another one- Stephanie: ... some good growth right there. Andrew: Yeah. We feel good about that. That's profitable too, which is definitely in our model. We took on a little bit of funding early, but not a ton of funding. We function more like a bootstrapped company. And then another one went from ... just a little over two years ago, we acquired it. It was basically doing no revenue, it'll do 3 million this year. Yeah, that's a different story. And then another one went from 250 to a million to just under two, this year, we'll do four to four and a half probably. So those ones are all we feel established growing at the pace we want, we feel really good about. Stephanie: Yeah. That's some impressive number. How do you grow these brands? What are some of your tactics and strategies that you rely on those, what do you see success with? How can someone else learn from what y'all are doing to grow their Ecommerce companies? Andrew: Yeah. Facebook ads is the core driver of customer acquisition for us. I mean, selling consumer goods direct to consumer online, Facebook ads is still the most powerful tool in the world for reaching people. I'm hearing chatter about other things, YouTube, Snap, even Tik Tok, Google ads, product's changing. I just think still at this point, at scale, depending on what you mean by scale, people define that word differently. But for us, that's the core, top of the funnel way that we get traffic to our website. Andrew: I mean, you think about what Facebook ads is, it's not buying ads so much as buying traffic. I guess it's both really. But we look at that and say, "If we can make the traffic worth more than we're paying for it, worth enough more that we're paying for it to cover the cost of goods and things like that," I should say, "Then we can win." That's how we drive top of funnel traffic for us. And then after that, we try to do everything that we think great brands should do, which is like create a beautiful website that treats their customers great, has generous returns and shipping policies as much as we can afford to do it basically, which varies from brand to brand, depending on a number of factors. Do a great job with your retention email and other automated flow stuff. Constantly testing conversion rate optimization on our site in various ways. There's just a whole bunch of that kind of stuff that we're doing on the backend of that. Andrew: We are also certainly looking to invest in other top of the funnel type metrics, our traffic drivers as well. I would think of Google search as mid funnel and Google shopping as mid funnel. So, we're definitely investing there as well. I think we'll keep doing other stuff. That won't work forever. There's going to be a cap to how much Facebook ads does the driver work and we fully intend to add to our customer acquisition approach when we can. But our goal has been to grow profitably and we think that's one of the best ways to do it right now. Andrew: The other thing is it's not just one of the best ways to do it, it's just that we also have deep expertise in it. So, I'm just a believer that do the thing you do well as much as you can. I think it works for leadership and working with teams. Just as much as we can set up our team members to be doing the things that they love doing and they're good at. As long as the things that people love doing and are good at create value for the company, then you should pay them to do it. So that's the way we look at it too. Andrew: Just coming from the agency side, I personally have managed, I don't know, 25 ad accounts, that's probably more than that. Seen a lot more of that when I was the head of strategy and working with other strategists. I don't mean that to brag. It means that now I have some intellectual capital built up on what works. So, that's what we use from there. Stephanie: Cool. To drill in a little bit deeper then for the Facebook ads because I think a lot of companies probably have looked at Facebook ads, maybe they're using it. I haven't heard of anyone growing liked you guys are growing your brands consistently. So what tactics are you using specifically, or what do you see works well? Andrew: Yeah, there's a lot I can say about that. I think this is going to sound so fishy, but if you're getting serious about that, there's a couple of things ... The thing I would actually tell you to do, if you don't know where to start and you're getting serious about it, is to go visit your admission.co. I don't know, maybe I can give you a link to this, Stephanie, at some- Stephanie: Yeah, we can link it up. Andrew: Cool, yeah. So that is CTC's education program. It's not a course, it's different than every other education thing I know of in this world. It's actually a moderated community with access to ... Taylor, the CEO of CTC is in there doing webinars like our team members, our brand managers and people like that. Also, might jump in there and do webinars exclusively for that community. What we're doing is teaching all of the things that are ... what we believe are really the best practices for Facebook ads from the perspective of creative, from the perspective of targeting, bidding, all that kind of stuff. Bringing people through all of those things and then giving them continued support with access to the actual CTC teams who are doing that same thing that I was describing, which is spending millions of dollars of other people's money, so you can have access to that knowledge set. I think it's 500 bucks a month right now. Andrew: I even say sometimes there's even executive level people who will take their whole team through it. It's not like you're going to be in it for forever. The point is that you can do that and get access to what we believe works best. We're always evaluating that. There are certainly other things to do there, but that'll give you what we ... We try to be really honest and transparent where we can about what we're seeing. So that will give you mental ways to think about that problem. Andrew: I think one of the things that can go wrong is you could listen to me talk about this, and maybe you're an entrepreneur and you hear my numbers and you go like, I'm going to go do that. You just blow money because you make simple mistakes that somebody could help you not make, if you've just got some support. There is no way to learn besides doing it really. You're going to make mistakes, it's okay. In my view, creative needs to be really product focused in the sense that it's on Facebook ads and Instagram ads. You are driving high quality traffic by giving people a clear sense of what your product is right away. Clear wins over everything else first as a baseline. Andrew: Clear doesn't make you give you the best out in the world. They're clear plus some other things do that, but clear establishes a baseline of what you can expect and at least drives what I consider high quality traffic to your side. People who are interested in you because of your product. So that's probably the first basic principle I would say is focus on being clear in your creative before you focus on being clever or funny, or any of those kinds of things. You can drive a lot of very cheap traffic to your website with Clickbait tactics, but they won't buy anything. Ultimately, it won't matter how cheap the traffic is if they don't buy anything. So that's the kind of thing I would say. Andrew: And then the other big thing I'm a huge believer in is trust the algorithm. There was a world where people talk about Facebook ads as the value of micro-targeting that was one of the phrases people would talk about. This idea that you'd go find exactly your customer really specifically target them without everybody else. I think there was a time when that was part of how you did it. Those times are gone. What I would say is what you want to do is give Facebook as much information as possible and let Facebook's algorithm predict the future for you because humans are terrible at predicting the future. Algorithms are pretty good at it. So, algorithms do a really good job of looking at the data set of who's responding to your advertising. And then going and saying, here's some more people like that to put you out in front of. So, we believe in really broad targeting. Andrew: Let Facebook have as much freedom as you can to go and find the next person to put you out in front of. Over time, not even over that much time, Facebook's amazing in this regard much quicker than Google is at this. Facebook will find who those people are. So that's the broad principles I would say is trust the algorithm, be clear with your creative. There you go. There's just so much more I could say about the Stephanie, but I'm going to stop there. So I don't take up the entire rest of the podcast. Stephanie: Okay, cool. Yeah, we will definitely link that up. I think it's a really important point too to segment a piece of your ad budget for testing. I know we do that internally as I'll tell. Our team members are like, "Hey, you have this much money. If you spend it and you just learn from it, that's okay. Versus this amount let's actually protected and make sure we drive results with it." So I think it's good to go into a mindset being okay with using a portion of ads for an R&D type testing project. So, you feel like you can learn from it, but not blow your entire budget on it. Andrew: Okay, no question. Constantly testing is super crucial. What I'd say about that is, when I want to test on Facebook ads, the place I want to test most is take big swings with your tests. The common thing you hear people say with testing, you'll hear people like, I've seen so many articles trumpeting like, oh, we changed our CTC button color or we changed it from [inaudible] now and it was a 15% lift. Andrew: First of all, I just don't believe those studies anymore. Secondly, the reason you're writing about it is because it's exceptional. It doesn't happen all the time. I just think that's a waste of people's time. But most people need to do, if they're looking to go from not successful to successful, the larger the difference in outcome you want, the bigger the change you need to make. You can't just change the background color of your ad and expect that it give you wildly different results. That's once you have results you like and now you're just dialing in and trying to grab an extra 2% of value here and there. I just rarely see that thing work. Andrew: What I would say is much better to think to test is something like, what's the offer that you're giving people? What's the product you're starting with and leading with? That can create wildly different results. We just ran something for our jewelry company that we ... 31 Bits, which is our other most recent acquisition, our fourth brand. We started with a batch of ads focusing on one set of products were necklaces and bracelets and things like that. We were getting a dollar of 50 clicks, low click through rates, et cetera, and very poor conversion rate. Andrew: We changed the product set, same exact brand, similar styles of photography, but just different products to a whole different category of product and saw triple or more the performance suddenly CTC went way down. Click through rate, went way up, conversion went way up. The reason why is really obvious, it's jewelry, some people like some bracelets better than others. If you just use the same stuff all the time, people are going to respond to it the same way over time. There's no magic to that. That's how people shop for something that you wear. It's about what it looks like. So, by changing the products that we led with that made a huge difference. So that's what I'd say is for Ecommerce consumer good people, that's the kind of test you want to be running. Andrew: Give it a whole different products out, a whole different offer, a whole different way of framing the offer, don't just change little bits of the creative and copy if you want to change your outcome in a big way. Stephanie: Yeah. I love that. People I talk to sometimes are focused on those micro adjustments that you're talking about or just the minimal incremental pieces that they could change, whether it's button colors or all that. That's a good point too. Yeah. Focus on the higher level things. But how did you decide on what new products to show? Andrew: In that case, part of it was what new products ... there's a change in our product development, that's going to make it so, or in our manufacturing that was going to make it to that, we're phasing out some products anyway. We always start by looking at most products over various periods of time. This is a simple way to start. I mean, there's not a lot of science to it in that respect. I think we're just looking around- Stephanie: Just seeing what it's doing well in the market. Andrew: Yeah. And what's done well on our side. Honestly, part of it is for a place to start your testing just like make a hypothesis and test it. I mean, it's not- Stephanie: Yeah. What timeframe are you looking at? When you do the test, are you looking at 30 days? Let's see how it does and try something new, or is it like after a couple of days you'll know and try something different? Andrew: Yeah. I'd say budget is probably a bigger factor than time. So if you're spending thousands of dollars a day, it doesn't take very long good answers. If you're spending a couple $100 a day, it takes a little longer. It also changes relative to your average order value. What you need is a statistically significant number of responses and really a statistically significant number of conversions. You can think of conversions as micro conversions as well. For example, a click on an ad is a conversion in a sense. Clicks as a percentage of impressions is a conversion. Because it's pretty cheap to run Facebook ads, you can actually figure out a reliable statistically significant performance in a click through rate pretty fast without having to see how those clicks convert. Andrew: In that case, it took us, I mean, I think we're got 100 bucks, when we knew that this new round of ads was way, way better performing because the gap and click through rate was so significant between the two. That's another core principle here. The larger the gap and the outcome, or the larger the disparity in the outcome, the more likely it is that it's a reliable result, if that makes sense. In that case, I think we spent between the two products, that's a total of 1,500 bucks. The whole goal of that was to test those while we went and ordered new products to try and start scaling a little bit for a larger test in the future. I didn't really care what the actual result was. The goal is a bigger goal to win bigger over time. Stephanie: Yeah, that makes sense. When talking about growing, I saw that you guys live by a central Ecommerce growth formula. I was hoping you could go into that a bit. Andrew: Yeah. This is changing a little bit in some ways. I'll give you the baseline version of it, which is visitors tasks conversion rate times average order value. This is actually really simple. Every business in the world only actually has three factors that make up the value that you get from a purchase, or that make up your revenue actually. The first factor is how many people come to your business. This could be people walk into your store, it doesn't have to be a website. But just never people who show up. And then you multiply that by the conversion rate. So, what percentage of those people buy something from you? And then you multiply that by how much they spend. Andrew: When you look at that, that will equal your revenue. If you just say, how many people get there, how many of those people buy and how much they spend when they do? That's the entirety that makes up the revenue. That's incredibly simple and intuitive in a lot of ways. But what I find is that in the fog of war, people lose sight of that very simple concept. So, they start making tests and changes without a really clear idea of which one or multiple of those variables they're actually trying to affect. Of course, those all relate to each other. For example, your average order value goes up, your conversion rate goes down, that's a general rule of thumb, it's true across everything. It's intuitive when you think about it. Andrew: A smaller percentage of people are going to buy a $1,000 item than a $10 item. As you drive more traffic, it's highly likely that you're driving lower and lower quality traffic. Everybody exists along in the world, exists along a continuum of people likely to buy your product and unlikely to buy your product from your mother, who's the most likely person in the world to buy your product to- Stephanie: That is number one. Andrew: Yes. To a subsistence farmer who doesn't have the internet is the least likely person. The farther you go from your mom to the subsistence farmer, the more expensive it is to acquire that customer. So as traffic grows, then your conversion rate is likely to go down. That's just another helpful concept, I think. These are rules of thumb to heuristics they're not always true, but that's a basic way of thinking about it. We think about those three levers in what we do and really try to understand when we test something at any point in our funnel, whether it's on the website or ad level or whatever, which one of those am I actually trying to affect? Where's the problem in my business? Andrew: I've talked with friends of mine who own CrossFit gyms, and I've said to them like ... I'm thinking of a friend in particular whose gym was struggling. I was trying to help him think this way, which of these is the problem for you? Are not enough people showing up to your gym? Or when they show up, do they not buy a membership? Or do they buy a cheap membership or you give them a month free and then they don't spend any money after that? Which one of these is the problem? That probably gets towards LTV as well, or CLV, Customer lifetime Value as something to think about in the midst of all this as well. This is where you can make it a little more complicated, but that basic principle is true. Across the gym, just like on my consumer goods websites, it's the same problem. You just have to figure out which one of those things has the highest upside at the lowest cost to fix next. That's where you should put your energy. Stephanie: Yeah, I love that. Have you ever pitched a brand to be taken over by a 4x400 that you believed in where everyone else on your team didn't believe in it? Andrew: Oh yeah. This is where it helps to be coldly rational. Gosh, I don't mean rational like smart, I'm always right. I just mean my approach is unemotional to a lot of this stuff. To the probably emotional dysfunction in other ways in my life or something like that, I'm not saying you should emulate this necessarily. But that's why there's therap, so it's fine. So, sorry? I know there's some noise there. A lot of times, if we're tweeting about a new brand acquisition. People will say privately like, "I do believe in this," or "I don't believe in this." I just started think that's like ... I think without having the view that I have in the acquisition process, I just don't even know what somebody is judging that on. People just go by their general sense of what they believe about if it's a good brand or not. Andrew: First of all, other people are not like you. Your subjective sense of that may not reflect at all what I brought population to potential customers is. Secondly, to me, you can validate this pretty clearly by looking at simple product market fit, things like margin is a huge question, which makes businesses work and it makes other businesses fail, is one of the problems of opening day. We made a huge mistake by just giving ourselves away too little margin on the products. Stephanie: What's the little margin, what do you consider small? Andrew: Yeah. Well, I think if you're going to try and grow a brand with ... I'll just tell you, we target 70 points plus of margin for brands that we are trying to grow with our method of growth. And then that's really important. If you have other growth mechanisms that might not matter as much. But for us, we want 70 points plus landed margin. We can deal with a little less than that, but if you're going to try and grow a brand with Facebook ads, you're going to need to be able to exist at a two to one return on your money on ads probably. It's hard to really beat that number, if not withstanding something like coronavirus throwing those small. So we target that. That becomes a big question for us, if we think we can do that. Andrew: Sometimes actually it's part of the first thing we have to fix for a brand is, we see supply chain processes that are in our view broken and we would say like, "We love everything about this brand. It's convergent on site, is great relative to its average order value, relative to its traffic sources." We dig into all that stuff, and say, "But your margin is not good enough, but we think we can solve that. W can help with getting your shipping cost down by repackaging it differently, or thinking about what products to focus on or not, or changing your manufacturer or something like that." We don't want to ever do that at the expense of giving people a good product. We haven't compromised on that at this point, which I'm happy about. But yeah, those are all the things that we can look at as potentially something to fix. But in our view, 70 points plus, makes the game a lot easier for sure. Stephanie: Got it. I like that point too about, what would someone know when they're doubting a brand? Because that is definitely a human flaw thinking about ... even when I'm thinking about those rubber bracelets from a while back, for me to say, "Oh, that's dumb," I don't need to be balanced or anything, or I need help with that. It's funny because it's like, well, apparently a lot of other people did because look how many people bought it. Yeah, I think that's also a good lesson for anyone starting something up. If they hear someone say like, "Oh, that's dumb, you shouldn't do that." Probably good to take a step back and be like, well, that's just one person's opinion and not let it deter you from trying at least. Andrew: Yes, especially relative to the set of metrics I have in front of me, which are going to tell me something a little bit different. This is one of the things that's so great about data is that I'm just wrong, Stephanie, about so many things in life, I just know I am. So having some source outside of my own brain that I can look at. When my own eyes are lying to me, humans are just biased machines. We're just machines of bad thinking about stuff. So, finding ways to be aware of my priors going into something and my bias going into something, check those against some sorts of truths that exist outside myself. Of course, people can lie with data and data can be poorly collected. There's all kinds of ways that can go wrong too. But in light of all those things, I just think that it becomes really helpful to do that, to go and have a source like that to go check in. So that's what we do in our process. Andrew: There's various levels of excitement about brands even internally. But there's no question that ... We sincerely believe it can work based on the data set in front of us and a few other old principals. So that's what we do. Stephanie: That's cool. We're mentioning data, stick with the data when it comes to it and don't just listen to unfounded opinions. What kind of metrics do you look at that you think a lot of other brands aren't utilizing enough? There's obvious ones like conversions and click-through rates and all that kind of stuff and revenue obviously, but is there anything that you look at that you think enough people aren't paying attention to? Andrew: There's no magic here. After we acquired 31 Bits, this jewelry company ... really super cool brand. This brand was started by women who were anthropology majors in college and wanted to provide good quality jobs to people who could not access them by nature of where they lived in the world. So they started in Uganda after a trip there and had these women making these really cool beads. This started in 2009. These women were out to change the world with this brand. It's just totally authentic, beautiful brand story around all of this stuff. When we acquired that, I on my podcast, it's called- Stephanie: What is your podcast? Andrew: Yeah, yeah. I feel so lame doing this right now, but- Stephanie: Oh, sorry, Andrew. Andrew: I know. There's a tangent there. But anyway, if somebody really wants to hear how I think about this question, I spent about 45 minutes with Taylor, the head of our agency, talking about exactly why we acquired 31 Bits. We did an episode about that. I'll find it and send it to you for the show notes as well. And then we interviewed the ladies from the brand for the next episode after that, so people could kinda hear why they chose us as well. We tried to be really honest about why we think it'll work and why we think it could fail. I would say the metrics related to that, that I care about, it's not just conversion rate it's conversion rate relative to average order value and relative to traffic sources. That's a huge one for us. Andrew: Conversion rate itself is actually so context specific that it's not that helpful of a metric. I mean, think about the conversion rate of a direct click. Somebody comes to the website, types in 31bits.com, presses enter. Let's take a 45 year old female on a desktop computer direct versus a 25 year old male on their cellphone through a display ad on the internet, saying conversion rates to describe what both of those people are doing and getting a baseline is not going to be helpful at all because the baseline for those two different customers of what you'd expect, they're so different. I mean, just the device issue you're twice as likely to convert on desktop than you are as mobile before you talk about any of the rest of the demographic's software or anything like that. Andrew: We try to really give some specificity of the context of something like conversion rate. Even one thing you'll see there is like, sometimes the brand's conversion rate will look low, but it's actually not low. The reason it looks low is because they're getting a ton of blog traffic via organic search SEO essentially. That blog traffic is technically on their URL, but it's not at all related to their product and it's not people looking for their product. Therefore, that blog traffic will have an incredibly low conversion rate and will therefore negatively influenced the total conversion rate. If you bucket that blog traffic out, it turns out the conversion and the brand is fine and their website works great and you just didn't realize that. I don't know if that example made sense. But there's- Stephanie: It does make sense. Andrew: ... there's just all of these kinds of contexts, things like that, that I think are really crucial to look at all the way around. We look at some other stuff like we've looked at entire funnel on our site, so we'll look at not just the conversion rate thing. If somebody doesn't buy something on your website, there's a question of why did they not buy? Because they made it to your website, so what happened next? Did they never add anything to cart or did they add to cart and then drop off once they got to checkout or did they never even make it to checkout or what? We look at each of those things and try to understand what's going on. Andrew: If somebody adds to cart and makes them check out and then drops off, why? The answer to that question is probably because you're shipping cost is too much a lot of times, or it's going to get shipped slowly, or they're not confident in return policy or whatever. So we'll look at some of that stuff too. We have a value of 4x400, which is understanding before you act and paired with that is hard problems require deep focus, or require deep work. The basic concept is like, before I go and throw out a million solutions, I want to really understand as clear of terms as possible exactly what's wrong. Andrew: When I hear somebody say my Facebook ads are broken, the thing I want to say is, "What do you mean? What's happening? What broken- Stephanie: What are you doing? Andrew: Right, yeah. "Is the conversion rate broken? Are the clicks too expensive? Where is the problem? Are you not getting a high enough AOV? When you say it's broken, what do you mean?" To try to help people answer that question because then it can guide where to think about the next problem. Stephanie: Cool. I love that. Yeah, that was a really good example. Stephanie: Are there any things, technology or otherwise tools that you're using right now that are maybe new that you're excited about? Andrew: Well, I'll tell you what I think that is, it's not the answer you're looking for, but I think it's the answer that I get. Stephanie: Go for it. Andrew: My answer is no I don't. We will get there to where we'll need to do that, but I just think this is a massive distraction for a lot of people. I think people love to go chase the next new thing. They'll even say things like, "well, my customer is on Tik Tok." I don't really know what that means. Yes- Stephanie: I don't really know who's on Tik Tok right now. Andrew: I'm 36. First all, I'm 36, I'm too old and I don't get Tik Tok. I've never had Facebook on my phone, so I'm just the worst social media marketer ever in that respect. I do not understand what's happening in the world. I just don't always know what that kind of thing means. I think your customers probably also want Instagram because there's a lot of people on Instagram. So I could be wrong about that, I guess. I'd be so happy for somebody to correct me if that's the case and reach out and tell me, "You're not looking at this right." Anyway, I just think it becomes a huge distraction for people to go and try and find another new thing to go do instead of to get really good in one or two areas. Andrew: We will expand channels over time. I think we're really trying to build out more search and shopping as a next step for us, that is not a new channel at all. It's actually the oldest digital marketing channel, search in particular,. I'm playing around with some ideas from SEO, but really I'm just trying to make my customer more valuable at this point. So, just trying to really get better via email, post-purchase, via my unboxing experience, trying to think about how unboxing and product experience creates retention in word of mouth. I'm trying to dig deeper and get better at the things I'm already doing rather than adding a whole lot, I think. Stephanie: With everything happening in the world right now, it does seem like there, like you mentioned early on the show, there're a lot of changes happening, especially around Ecommerce. I know you're talking about focusing on what's working and all that, but is there anything you're preparing for over the next three to five years that you're anticipating around Ecommerce trends? Andrew: Yeah, all right. This is my coronavirus beat right non. This is a really fun question and is a great podcast fodder. I do not fault you for asking it and I don't want you to hear my answer to this as condescending. But there's no possible way in the world that I could predict the future that far out. Here's what I believe about predicting the future. The more complex the system you're project predicting with the more inputs that there are there, over the longer the timeline, the harder it is to project. So, I might be able to give you some sense of what's happening next week, but then also last week, all these companies started saying they're going to pull their Facebook ad spend. Stephanie: Yeah. I didn't why I mention that, but I'm like well, that seems like it's a good opportunity then, like you're mentioning to get on Facebook. Andrew: Yeah, yeah. Stephanie: I think Zuckerberg even said they'll be back or something like that, which is just funny. Andrew: First of all, who could have predicted over that timeline, that kind of thing would happen? Before you even talk about Zuckerberg, who ... There's just so many elements. The system of macroeconomics in the U.S., before you even talk to the world, is so big with so many inputs and so complex that I just don't believe in anybody's ability to really predict that. So what I think is that it's not helpful generally to do that. I'll say three to five years, the one thing I feel broadly, fairly comfortable with though, I think even this has, there's some basic questions is that Ecommerce, as an industry, Ecommerce is a share of U.S. retail spending, will continue to grow. Andrew: I mean, I just have no possible way of predicting that. So I feel like it's a good place to be if you're in Ecom, I think you should be investing in Ecom broadly. I just don't think otherwise it's very possible to do that. I mean, just look at what we were all saying about coronavirus two months ago and the models that we were all looking at about what this thing could be. It's been devastating. I don't want to underplay that, but it has not been in the U.S. the millions of deaths at this point, at least. Who knows that people were predicting? I just look at that and go like, that's because predicting that many things for something with that much unknown is really, really hard. Andrew: My take on this is to go read Nate Silver's book, The Signal and the Noise and to hone your skills thinking about what kinds of things you can and can't project, and even how to think about projecting things. And then to go from there, which means the way you win is not by predicting the future, but by honing your fundamentals and carving really good thought processes. This is what I really believe in the most. To think about this all like poker, which is that good poker players don't win by winning a hand, they win by playing lots of hands really well and by making the right move over and over. Understanding the game that there are going to be times when they're going to be in a big spot with a lot of money in the pot and the card will come up and go the wrong way. But if they play enough big pots and enough money in it, the law of large numbers says that they'll win over time. I think that's the way to think about it. Andrew: Get really good at understanding something like visitors and conversion rate times average order value and asking the right questions about that. Get really good at following your profit margins everywhere you can . Get as much clarity about them as you possibly can that way you know where your money is going and where you're making money and where you're not. If you can do those things over a long period of time and just get good at finding good people to work with and get good at those sorts of things, you will win. So ultimately, I bought into the partnership at CTC with my own money, I'm not rich. Andrew: The reason I put my money into that is because I believe in the humans that are the partner group there, and I believe that those people overall given enough chances will win. That's the way I think you should think about your brand and your business is find partners and find brands and businesses that you believe will play the right hand the most times and are people of high character. That is part of the right hand of what you're play, you're going to have a relationship with these people. Every part of your business, if you can do those things, then I think over the aggregate, you're going to win. Stephanie: That's great. That actually took a very nice spin because at first I'm like, okay, no one's going to disagree with you that Ecommerce is going to grow. But I like the spin that you just took on it about what you should focus on instead. So, good answer. Andrew: Thanks. Yeah, I know. It's a compound answer in some ways, but it's really what I believe is true about the world. It's so sexy to say, okay, over the next month, this is going to happen and this is going to happen. Next time somebody on the show gives you that answer, bring them back on in six months and ask them what happened and- Stephanie: I was just going to say that. I think the world is still missing a little bit of the accountability piece because I see people still on Twitter, even the people who are talking about the end of the world, no one's following up with these people, how come this guy has had a billboard out around California for a long time saying the end of the world was going to happen, I guess, a few weeks ago, and it didn't? What now, are we going to follow up with him and be like, "Hey, what happened?" Andrew: Yeah, that's a very California story. I like that. Stephanie: All right. We're going to shift now into something called the lightning round brought to you by our friends at Salesforce Commerce Cloud. This is where I'm going to ask you a quick question and you have a minute or less to answer. Are you ready, Andrew? Andrew: I am. But this is the ultimate challenge for me. Stephanie: This will be the hardest part of the interview. Andrew: Yeah, it probably are. All right, I'll do my best. Stephanie: I actually feel like you're going to have some great answers, that's why I've been excited to get to this. All right. If you were to have a podcast, who would your first guest be and what would the show be about? Other than the podcast that you're running now, you can't say that one. Andrew: Okay. I think it would be about exploring. Does it my guess have to be a live or can I pick anybody? Stephanie: No. Andrew: Okay. I think it would be about exploring big ideas about the world like theology, philosophy kind of stuff, but for the every man or woman. So, it would try not to be too much in the clouds, my guess would be C. S. Lewis, not because he's the most interesting thinker in the history of the world, although he's a really interesting thinker, but because he says things in really interesting ways. So, I think he would be a fascinating guy to just sit and talk with. When I think of a historical person I'd want to talk with most, would be that. Either that or a baseball ball guest. Stephanie: All right. Well, that's cool. That's a good answer. What's up next on your reading list? Andrew: Books I'm in the middle of or after? Stephanie: I'd say, you can do both, middle of and ones that you're looking back on like, that was a good book. Andrew: Okay. The Color of Law is the book I'm in the middle of right now. Richard Rothstein going through the history of government and forced racism in the U.S. incredibly helpful book for me so far. I'm three quarters away through. Highly recommended to try and get your head on straight about what's going on with race in the U.S. just pure history. It's really good. And then I am reading a Christian book called Money, Possessions and Eternity about how to use your money for compassion and care for people instead of for yourself. So, that's what I'm in the middle of right now. And a baseball book called Ball Four, which is a famous book. Stephanie: That's cool. If you were to pick a country to focus on to maybe buy a new brand from, what country would you look into? Andrew: A country? Stephanie: Yeah. If you were to bet big, I'm going to go for something in India, that's top of mind right now because I just read the whole thing between India and China and turning off Tik Tok in India. So, it's very interesting to me thinking about, if you were to bet on brands from a certain country or are you looking to go international, where would you go? Andrew: I think the answer is India. I think that's probably the right answer. The cost of reaching people in India is very cheap and India's economy seems to be growing very fast. But I'm just bullish on global economy in general. So, I think you could probably broadly pick out. In the last 50 years, massive amounts of extreme poverty have been alleviated in the world thanks to globalization and technology and all kinds of things like that. The world is a much better place than people make it sound. That's another book record recommendation, Factfulness by Hans Rosling. Go read that book- Stephanie: Factfulness. Andrew: ... it will help you look at the world totally different. Factfulness. Forget my other book my other book and finish reading that one. Stephanie: I'll link of that one. Yeah, no, I think that's where I would bet too because I think I just read that, it's a billion and a half people there only a third of them, I think have cell phones right now. They're coming online at a very quick rate. So, I think- Andrew: Yeah. I mean, it's incredible how much better life has gotten in the world for so many people. There's very hard life in the world for a lot of people, so to not to underplay that. But it's just crazy and it's going to keep happening. Stephanie: Yeah, I agree. What's up next in your travel destinations? Andrew: Anywhere- Stephanie: When you can travel. I think, just outside my neighborhood. Andrew: Yeah. I like Austin, Minnesota where my family is, hopefully in a couple of weeks, but we'll see. As far as other places, I love Boston. Would like to go with my wife there. I have a seven month old though, so the actual answer to this question is probably nowhere for a while. Stephanie: Yeah. That's my life too. I have four month old twin boys and a two year old. Someone asked me like, "Oh, where are you going to go on vacation?" I'm like, "Nowhere outside of 10 miles away." It's a mess to get into the car that would be- Andrew: Four-year-old twin boys? Stephanie: Yeah, yeah. Andrew: I think it's awesome. Congratulations. That's beautiful. Stephanie: Thanks. Yeah, it's a wild ride. All right, the last one ... Yeah, you know. What's up next on your Netflix queue? Andrew: I just watch the same shows over and over again with my wife. Stephanie: Does she get to choose? Andrew: She does most times, yeah. Stephanie: So you guys are watching Selling Sunset and things like that? Andrew: No. We watched Parks and Rec, 30 Rock and The Good Place- Stephanie: Okay, those are very ones. Andrew: ... over and over and over again. That's probably all we watch. I don't know. The decision fatigue I have on this particular issues, we just created a Slack channel that worked for media recommendations because I just don't know even what to do anymore about where to look next. So, I wish I had a better answer than that. It would- Stephanie: Let us know if you find something from your Slack channel. Andrew: Yeah. It's probably another episode of The Good place. My team is really hot on Yellowstone right now, so there you go. Stephanie: Okay. I don't know what that is, that just shows I am not with it either. So I'll have to check that out. Andrew: Kevin Costner intense ranching family season three. Stephanie: Okay. I'll have to dive into that one. All right, that was a good lightning round. Is there anything that you were hoping to cover, are there any last words of advice before we hop off? Andrew: I think just that in situations like this, I always just want to say that when somebody asks you for answers on a podcast, it's super easy to make it sound easy in some ways. But it's really hard actually to do these things and to grow business and to work in a team and all these things. So, I think the parting word for me is always just to say, it's not actually as easy as it maybe. I hope I didn't make it sound like that. It's just challenging at times. So, keep at it and surround herself with good people. Yeah, I think that's it. I think I just properly took all the wind out of the point that I was making by monitoring it at the end there. Maybe out of [inaudible 01:02:52]. That's the big piece for me, is just you can do it, it is harder than it sounds a lot of times. Stephanie: Yeah, I like it. Well, Andrew, thanks so much for coming on the show. It was a lot of fun and ... Yeah, thanks for taking the time. Andrew: Thanks, Stephanie, for having me. It's super fun.

IntroductionMost things look different these days. How employees work, how we visit the doctor, even how we grocery shop. There’s no doubt the pandemic has reshaped how we operate on a daily basis. Customer experience is no exception to those changes. So how do you handle customer experience when the ultimate unexpected happens? In this second installment of Customer Experience During a Pandemic, we’ll dive into personalization and customer data.First, here are the latest headlines.Nike Announces Digitally-Focused StoreNike just announced a new digitally-focused concept store–Nike Rise. The retailer opened its first location in China, with plans to open more in 2021, according to a press release. The latest concept quote “responds to the pulse of sport in a Member’s city,” end quote. Customers will experience a "Nike By You" personalization bar with this new concept and a new app feature called Nike Experiences, that will turn their city into a quote, “digitally-enabled interactive playground”, end quote.  With digital experiences as the foundation of the new store concept, it’s clear Nike is leaning into the increasing importance of innovative omnichannel experiences. And with digital channels accounting for nearly 30% of total business in the quarter for the retailer and a shift to focus on direct to consumer purchasing in recent years, the emphasis on digital makes sense. https://www.retaildive.com/news/nike-opens-latest-store-concept-nike-rise/581404/ Uber Launches Grocery DeliveryNike’s not the only one making headlines for innovative solutions. Uber is launching U.S. grocery delivery this month, pushing into a booming market while it’s original ride-hailing model has likely taken a hit. The company will launch in Dallas and Miami, where the company recently soft-launched, before expanding to other cities. Deliveries will be handles by Cornershop workers, a grocery app acquired by Uber last year. And speaking of acquisitions, this news came just one day after Uber announced it was buying Postmates in a whopping $2.65 billion dollar deal.https://www.retaildive.com/news/uber-will-launch-us-grocery-delivery-this-month/581211/https://www.grocerydive.com/news/uber-buys-postmates-in-265b-deal/581054/ Walmart Reportedly Pushing Ahead with Prime Membership CompetitorIt’s no secret that Amazon and Walmart have been battling head to head for quite some time. The two retail and e-comm giants can almost cause whiplash with the back and forth strategy swaps and matches, like with Walmart’s rollout of one-day shipping at an eerily similar time as Amazon. But the competition may have come to a head. According to Recode, Walmart announced its Prime membership competitor back in March but had to delay the launch due to COVID. Now, according to Recode sources, the retail giant plans to push forward this month with Walmart+, a $98 dollar yearly subscription. Members would enjoy perks like same-day delivery of groceries and select merchandise, fuel discounts, and early access to product deals. While it’s too soon to predict how Walmart’s latest pushback against Amazon will fare, especially since so many of Walmart’s highest-paying customers are also Prime members, based on the company’s full-throttle strategic moves to grow its e-commerce business and further claim its authority in the competitive grocery space, I think the program could be a worthy competitor to Prime. Handling Customer Experience During a Pandemic: Data and PersonalizationCustomer data. In the digital age where privacy is a concern and transparency is key, it’s easy to go wrong. And in an environment where trust is more important than ever, it’s crucial to get it right. Collecting data is an essential element to superior online customer experiences. So what are the best practices for collecting data that’s useful without violating the trust of the very person you want to create that incredible experience for? Find your North Star. This was a golden piece of advice that Patrick Carney, the Director of Customer Service at 4Ocean, shared at the 2020 CXLife Virtual Conference. He explained that identifying your North Star, AKA the end goal or result you want to achieve, is key to knowing what data you should be collecting and how you want to use it. Because, as he puts it quote, “The first step is determining your North Star. From there, you can reverse-engineer all the data you’re trying to acquire and be able to piece that together. Step one is figuring out what is the experience you want and reverse engineering to be able to execute upon that.” end quote.Onto transparency. You had to know that was coming because any conversation about collecting data is usually followed by this word. But more than a buzz word, this should be a guiding principle when you’re approaching data. Trust is huge when you’re talking about providing a great customer experience. For lack of a better term, being shady will do the opposite of what you’re trying to achieve. Even the best of intentions without that transparent policy can work against you. KC Holiday, the founder of QALO, echoed this when he talked about collecting customer data at the Virtual Conference. He explained that when you start collecting customer data for the sake of collecting it and don’t make it clear to your customers what you’re doing with it and why, that can become a slippery slope. Truly understanding why you’re collecting data and connecting it back to how you’re crafting personalized experiences that stand out is crucial.KC went on to say that regardless of what you’re collecting now, there’s an opportunity to utilize what you currently have with the team that you already have in place in a way that improves customer experiences. That’s such an important piece of advice to take away and apply to almost everything in life. There’s an opportunity to optimize the processes you already have. You have the potential for improvement at every point in your CX strategy no matter who you are or what company you work for. Dive into what you already have and finetune how it can improve your customer’s experiences.Get creative, get innovative. ClosingThanks for tuning into today’s episode. If you want to explore even more content about all things CX, request to join the CXLife community. Not only will you have access to on-demand content from past events, you’ll gain access to a number of community perks including networking sessions and mentorship.  Until next time!

Ted Baker is the co-founder of QALO (pronounced “kay-lo”), an active lifestyle company which was started in 2012. Their hero product, a functional silicone ring, has disrupted the multi-billion dollar wedding ring industry. In 2018, QALO was ranked #151 on Inc. Magazine’s fastest growing companies list. People like Lebron James, Dale Earnhardt Jr and Steph Curry now wear them. Ted’s story is a great example of how new innovative products can create a white space, unlocking unmet sources of customer value while capturing share in established markets. Ted shares his insights on the grit and tenacity it takes to bootstrap a company to phenomenal growth. Ted earned his MBA, with a focus in entrepreneurial and small business operations, from Loyola Marymount University. He currently serves as Board Chairman of www.qalo.com.Discussion Topics:(1:29) Backstory on how and why Ted started QALO.(5:35) Launching without outside investment.(7:35) Brand, culture and building an active lifestyle brand.(14:30) Dealing with new competitors after explosive growth.(17:26) Innovation and new product launches.(22:57) Selling on Amazon and omni-channel marketing strategies.(29:15) How to bootstrap a company for growth.(35:40) Variable marketing and return on advertising spend (ROAS).(40:45) Leveraging a business school education as an entrepreneur.

Today we steal from entrepreneur and all-around creative KC Holliday, known for founding his company QALO that has become a global success producing silicon rings.

Guest - KC Holiday, founder of Qalo and Chief Evangelist for his brand returns to the podcast studio to catch back up with Christian and to let everyone on in on some news. Always great to have him back.

Ted Baker / Qalo Ted Baker is a Husband, Father, and the CEO/Cofounder of QALO Inc.  QALO is a lifestyle company based in Southern California that he and his business partner KC Holiday launched in 2013, after his wife asked if he was “ever going to wear a wedding ring?!”  Education includes a BS in economics […]

Ted Baker is a Husband, Father, and the CEO/Cofounder of QALO Inc. Qalo is a lifestyle company based in Southern California that he and his business partner KC Holiday launched in 2013, after his wife asked if he was "ever going to wear a wedding ring?!” QALO was recently awarded the 151 spot on the Inc 500 list. Education includes a BS in economics from George Mason University, followed by an MBA in Financial Systems Analysis, and International Business from Loyola Marymount in Los Angeles. A former Actor and restauranteur- Ted loves anything Gluten free! Ted is proud to be affiliated with and sits on the board of a number of philanthropies and considers himself a consciencepreneur. “check your ego, be patient, revel in the anarchy, be ready to, you can't be comfortable, don't allow complacency”… It's always going to change. The advice I will give you today would be different advice tomorrow because the circumstances and the parameters are going to change [Listen for More] Click Here for Show Notes To Listen or to Get the Show Notes go to https://wp.me/p6Tf4b-73c

College days Sibling feelings Their beliefs Social media Negativities Out of date beliefs QALO planning for kids Value of work and money

Jason sits down with QALO owner, Ted Baker, to discuss the ins and outs of QALO (Quality Athletic Love and Outdoors). Together the two discuss the mission and culture of the company, and what it takes to "make marriage cool again." Grounded in family, function, fitness, and adventure, Baker explains how the company finds themselves situated amongst the entire family unit, and how the company has grown far passed their original hero product, the QALO ring, to appeal to all fitness enthusiasts an adventure-seekers alike.

In this episode, Chris Cirullo interviews Co-Founder and President of QALO, KC Holiday. As Christian men, they discuss entrepreneurship, family, marriage, books and more. Did you enjoy this episode? If so, please share via social media and tell a friend, family member and co-worker about it, we would greatly appreciate it. It helps get the word out about this content to other people who would enjoy it and benefit from it. QALO Family Identity and Challenge BookQALO WebsiteBOOK - Man's Search For Meaning by Viktor FranklBOOK - The Power of Habit by Charles DuhiggBOOK - True Spirituality by Francis Schaeffer@mrkcholiday on Instagram

From Stark Headquarters, in Irvine, California, in the heart of Orange County, brings you Episode 21 of The C-Life: The Entrepreneur That's Disrupting the Wedding Ring Industry and Making Marriage Awesome, CoFounder of Qalo: KC Holiday. In this episode, Tyler Mounce sits down with KC Holiday and finds out the important meaning behind the ring, and how KC is completely changing and disrupting the wedding ring industry. Qalo is absolutely altering the wedding ring game and making marriage awesome again. Find out how KC grew the business to what it is today!

In this episode, Barney welcomes to the podcast KC Holiday, co-founder of Qalo, the functional wedding band that fits your life. Qalo is a brand that isn’t built solely on silicone wedding bands; it is about so much more. The success that the Qalo brand has experienced is due to their commitment to the ideals and values of family, relationships and, above all, love. Along with co-founder Ted Baker, KC knew he wanted to continue wearing something that represented the commitment he made in marriage. They both knew that whatever they created had to meet certain requirements and standards that fit their lifestyles and personal beliefs. KC talks about the impact he and Ted have made in the sixteen billion dollar wedding ring industry. He discusses the organic growth of Qalo, and how it continues to strive for differentiation as a disruptor in the industry. KC speaks to importance of Qalo’s brand as a company that strives to keep families together and promote a sense of community. It is Qalo’s brand messaging that has made it possible to expand into an ever-evolving global community. Finally, KC shares parting words of advice to aspiring entrepreneurs on how to achieve their dreams and goals.   

This month, we visit with QALO co-founder and CEO Ted Baker, whose active lifestyle brand started as a niche product -- silicon wedding bands -- and is now growing by leaps and bounds. QALO -- which stands for "Quality, Athletics, Love, Outdoors" -- centers commitment at the core of its brand. A former actor and bartender, Baker and his co-founder KC Holiday have built a company that solves a problem while helping people show how much their most important relationships matter to them. He shared his recipe for building a thriving corporate culture, which includes philanthropy and giving back to organizations like the Cystic Fibrosis Foundation.

Ted is a man who loves his wife and his family to the core of who he is, he just didn’t love wearing a wedding ring. His business partner felt the same way. So in the classic “there must be a better way”, they created a silicone ring that spawned a whole industry and has turned into so much more at QALO.

Show Notes: In this episode, co-hosts Brian & Christie Moore chat about the best way to focus your Valentine's Day efforts and the oddities found in the Winter Olympics in Newsfeed (2:06). In this week's Pillow Talk (14:06), the duo share some funny stories, tips and recommendations for traveling with children, plus make recommendations for Huckberry and Qalo rings in Check-It Out (55:32).

    Law Smith is a SMB Consultant, Digital Strategist, Stand Up Comedian and President of Tocobaga Consulting, “TocoWorks”, a small-to-medium business consulting firm + digital agency located in Tampa's historic district, Ybor City.   Eric Readinger is a Website Producer*, Video Editor, Sketch Performer, self proclaimed Super Nerd and Partner at Tocobaga Consulting, and Partner and Producer at Tampaniac Pictures..    * Website Developer and Website Designer   Please Support Our Sponsors That Support Our Girthy Show! This episode's girthy sponsor is FreshBooks, the best cloud accounting software for hustlers, entrepreneurs or anyone with a side piece business.     Sweat Equity listeners get a free 30 day trial of FreshBooks. 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Spotify http://bit.ly/swequity iTunes http://bit.ly/se-it Laughable http://bit.ly/2k7y6Ff YouTube: http://bit.ly/se-yt Facebook: http://bit.ly/se-fbp   What happening whatever you talk about this, much modified was running I was like oh yeah GM.security song it's going right on our sweat equity podcasts and streaming show playlist if you want to follow that aunts modify spot if I were on their got podcasts modified yeah that's cool yeah we will not be at school that we didn't know and it just showed up magic populated I like that automation just that little technology you can't pitch about no no offers of technology am pretty much sure if everything was done for me anyway automated I'd still find some bits about yes that's just how I like the role yeah we've got going iTunes give us that five-star gives that review you write a funny review will probably say it on air yeah but it's gotta be actually funny gas the Drupal ship to be a hater but be a funny hater yet know you make fun of us to write a roast joke right yeah do something don't be weak right something totally insane it's fine we had Stan Tripoli on we like insane people yes that uses of the illuminati all that were on Facebook were to start engaging with that group a little bit more illuminati this illuminati group were applicant real Facebook group attach the sweat equity page free to phoria that that's a big thing to increase engagement with your audience in pages might be devaluing while they might be phot fake Facebook might be. Focusing on groups right I'm always on time you decide what pages are going bye-bye pages you have to pay very much every time you post is the things so your organic unless you're one of the top guys was retirees that's like the celebrities a get free meals when they go into the reference writers of the last people to need the free meals right they get the free shoes and that the movie screeners yeah will pay for nothing here we are for your storm bit torrent enough let's give some love to our sponsor fresh books cloud accounting rent taxis a man going through it I heard I heard from RI networking group that 2018 entertainment category like tax expenses no good anymore used to be meals and entertainment you can get like 50% right off or some like that yeah Summer 5700 doesn't matter that's for my CPA to figure out not not so much more what was now so if we if we were going to go see Bass ballgame suppressant clients it's a nachos got a pocket well that's a travel meal probably now get to specific I just don't want someone to just they want they have a natural charge sorry if I'm not yo charge so 2018 the entertainment expenses not right off anymore I will I was always surprised it was how back in the day yet is kind of stupid so what you need learn those things you need accounting system you need to do your books need to do it easy if it integrates with about 100 apps I think go fresh books.com/sweat that's go fresh books.com forward/sweat only a $50 off the 30 day free trial our listeners get that hook up holler if you hear me and is making up numbers and turning as well thanks Facebook it's hard to keep all the advertiser copy together, have three main dollars three numbers I got a remember and I'm forgot and then working to do were continuing from last by customer to when not to devalue the fresh book said that Sir that's her presenting sponsor what we do a quick shout out for free kinda Pete's pics I'm still in this section from Pete's pics brought to you by law Smith you made it weird one of my favorite podcasts were just he just tells people something he likes that he uses in his life he loves it the same thing here mu.com were to put our referral code on this episode description we'll talk some business cards because Erica Eric Scott did you bring with you know is going to grab it now is in my office I want to get actually of the cards I were talking about we posted on the on the episode okay I'll do it for you take it we can take you want to explain it well my way let's go move, first yet talk about what submittal servers or go to note mous or go to stationary printer business cards invitations thank you cards that's a big thing if you write handwritten thank you cards that goes a long way I'm behind on my got a stack I got to do today tomorrow for clients that thank you for doing this but it's got that thick that thickness you want to say girth he only wanted to say it all to use their their term called lux so if you look at the lux collection our cards are really thick real great and it does make a difference when I have my card out and it's thick like that nine times out of 10 I have a conversation about it yeah that's true than the ones we got that you can mean you want to double as coasters but they're thick enough to be coaster like people make the coaster joke a lot of people like the outcast lyric on the back yes without so fresh and so clean to buy fresh books exactly and then that they did it's it's one of the things I thought business cards I thought all things are to be digital I thought all the stuff dying in we have to put money into a it's one of the things we paid a little bit more I'm not big on like we need look fancy with everything I mean look at our set up if you're watching the the video but it was one of those all things pay a premium for this it's giving us a lot more return on the investment so it's conversation starters good summary.com I will put our company referral code, like the refer a friend affiliate link thing yet no timeout share with a friend yeah we'll you always asked me if I have one for every app it's always no yeah because you're always you will I used to just say screw it I'm lazy about it I know I just got a stress free money it takes five seconds to just sit there and might figure it out if if there is one or not you know it's the pull of thing of you know what it is it's like I don't know my password is yes yeah exactly it takes me longer than five seconds I cut my thumb opening a can because I'm an idiot like old machete the green beans with using hand can opener I'm doing I'm going dad yeah I'm doing handcrank line break I'm going hard-core daddy I'm trying to help with dinner and watch both babies there doing their thing and open it like the the generic green beans one your life this company this is not the solution to my kids that they love the canned version instead of like fresh green beans sweet slick $0.40 is nice but it's weird so I'm opening it up in its it's because it's crusty doesn't open like that for the good stuff your thumb the Kennedy fellowship so you just I have to like get some torque on it a try to use a knife as a fulcrum MI this is stupid on I could do that in mice to hear my sunlight cough like almost sounds like it's choking a turnaround of Scott it look like I was bleeding like will it look like us try to commit suicide like that's on the sly lowest way possible right that that's how much blood was coming out just a tiny cut my thumb the detective said he was too stupid to kill himself and then went all dad have true Detective three nothing bad happened dad some we and it's one of those Wednesday I need stitches now I went down I went hard-core damage stitches. Superglue well I didn't think that you were like I think one of the glues is medically acceptable to use on your body yeah although I'm not a doctor so don't listen to me yeah I'll tell him to do it yeah I've done it before it were it works but I'm not can advise anybody do that because were all soft my thing was so I can even I can't use the touch idea my phone I didn't realize how much is that yeah and I had to get the other thumb on there but it doesn't do it for every app that you associated with you can add your other thumb but this coming this hand basically there for show doesn't do much it's there for the wedding ring oh that's weird I Exodus got a new wedding ring what you get it's from Quay low Pete's pics quail Q ALO to silicone wedding ring this is my second one because I got the men say men's and women's versions the men's versions all the they look like O-rings on a torpedo for a nuclear submarine working so I had the men's version and I hated it is it was humongous I didn't know how hard they wanted me to be married so I got the win version and it's half the size and it fits a lot better what golf check is rock and that that I know some say and it looks like a mentoring I went straight you went but you went that the the the comet cost-effective; cheap method that I did to just like I want to find a ring that is probably going to lose this thing you know you take it off to go out at night you know everything how this got us it makes her so uncomfortable as I you don't bring me into this this thing you're doing right if they go out of their way to say that they're doing it are like make a big deal out of it that's really creepy I just forget it all the time I know I'd then never taken off will now I got a silicone one I don't like the metal so the silicone I don't mind washing my hands with it and stuff doing things yeah yeah this is hot men's ring talk to and it was well done I back to my wife's business card is what I want to say I do hate the guys that have a really expensive wedding ring yeah for that aren't millionaires and even if you are doing right doesn't matter I don't like that only those yet for some reason usually I can't hang with that kinda it's just you come across more like a sucker than anything that you got suckered into buying this this declaration the whole diamond the whole diamond ring thing is a total funking snake oil salesman bull ship thing anyway I know I feel like we've talked about it would we get a lot of new listeners and how yeah I don't buy diamonds the bull ship yeah what was it do beers basically inflated the cost and then they said it was the perfect gift for engagement that it didn't exist any tradition before right this minute up diamonds like super common in caves where the diamond they get to get like that they're not like that rare of a thing to come across the not they really aren't Colton's monopoly for your for your batteries and all your devices that's like the new member like that's the new hotness of blood diamond mineral that's in your blood mineral basically right Colton so I'm in a move on from now on with that that's what it up that's the mineral it's just we have some mineral riffs of the batteries were using all these devices were they go right same with the the Honda like the electric cars yeah try not to say and I'm trying not to say like this I heard myself on the pad is paralyzing as good on the minerals once they start mining those asteroids get all minerals we need yeah will get to Mars man anyways tell you about this tachycardic so my wife sent me a screenshot of her business cards and they were not good in my opinion she liked him a lot coming in so much trouble for Fairpoint but I love your wife I was friends with her before syringe with you nowadays she has known her forever she's awesome she's got a good sense he is my dentist Yep she is a dentist so you know not design is not her thing and I were talking about what we want to talk about the podcast and it's the subject that came up was how to tell somebody that they're not good at design or maybe they don't have a good eye for design because I heard her business cards look like decoration at a nursing home that a good way to put it I was going party city best of the shady invites to a birthday party and let the 50% off any idea it's just too much right your meeting someone now if she was an event coordinator for kids parties blankets to give what you get paid like this if she eat out issues the GM of celebration station or Chucky cheese any of those hello this would be appropriate card I would say yeah she had a Nazi store your fine it's like the worst ways the $10 of ever say maybe Skip the beer she won't good thing I don't think she listens the party knowingly my wife does either it's all right two however she's not give a picture of great love you babe the worsening women love the backpedaling cabinet out of nowhere from not the conversation topic what would you not just beautiful so great a little flustered what will rid you of our you've got about this so no I would just I would've brought it with me as well that we do video I don't actually have physical copies of them yet is was this picture that she had sent me and put it on our slacks if you can pop that up to maybe put it towards the Meebo camera I don't know okay but will put will put it with the description yeah you'll see the is you'll look at it for too long her dress it reminded me of like glorious turning 50 cut invitation sangria party Lordy Lordy yeah laws 40 so how do you tell someone bad design right and it's really tough it's it's similar to sense of humor you come from the commie world like we do it's it's tough to be like look The Big Bang Theory isn't funny a lot of people watch that show I can't say that it's not funny I can just say hey I can… I mean like when you're talking to someone that you don't know that well you know you will be like I don't give it to socks it out to be fair I've never watched it but II can tell it's not primary goodwill if you think The Big Bang Theory is funny need to go online and watch the diversions that somebody's made really take up the laugh track how really gets dark very quickly really well it's just that the personalities of all the people are just so weird and you know asked burgers the yet it's like oh this seems like some kind of school for special and the hot the hot chicks the the like she's the fish out of water and all these other people around her right that's the model for every sick and anytime the talk tours comes across super creepy without the laugh track it hopefully we can find out I hope I ruin The Big Bang Theory for about 500 looks really find that URL to put on the on the post yeah that after the show so I kind of rely on stats because I have I know I have a bad pallet so I'm not a good chef not a good cook right I know what I don't know we work on this I think individually as it's in a self-help you kinda wager I think it's important to go I'm pretty good here, too 10 here, 9/10 over here on this note encounter it's never yes or no binary, thing it's tough to tell everybody just like a sense humor thinks they have a good aesthetic and now it's at I can do it with a little bit of math so we had a we had some weird talking to I said let me just send you a strategy video on its own the house also new strategy digital strategy when your business, a film in an hour or whiteboard room and I'll go over it as I can do that pretty quickly and here's one thing that happens a lot of people really attached to shady logos Julia like I can relate this looks I know fear shirt from 1993 plot let's let's let's move provable to salute right or I or he decided or he or she desires in that they get really attached to bad design so we have this conversation kind of a lot I would say and you can't go it's absolute yeah I just go let's look at some of the competition who's the best in your industry and then you can kind it go through it go look three these out note no 3D that's a start, a simple rule of thumb yeah look at all the big brands out there what are the top Forbes 500 and overshadowing shut it you can do it but yeah it's not contest contemporary and they do that so that it's easier across the board for I guess I'm guessing and asking for printing in like branding on so as many things as possible yeah is the way to think about it yet will indelible so need to be unique you need to stand out the adjective I thought I try to use to sound smart is indelible I do look that up one time ago I put in a PowerPoint ever was and what is that mean I like yeah all I know is indelible ink yeah so it's unique undeniable so you want to have a brand it's so we talked about this and previous episodes branding brain is kind of that crazy elastic term the last couple years so it's that thing that defines you what people think of when they hear your name or see your logo and so the logos in brand names and slogans are really tough to do because it's squeezing all this stuff all this orange Jews are the orange to get you get just a little bit right you just want you have to economize everything away like a diamond write the center you go yeah like Colton know so with the logo the logo sets the tone for everything in your design guide basically most people I bring guides find recommended that I would save my thing is I just go on return investment I go okay let's use transit property like college football teams right this team bit distant this team so they could probably beat the state yeah so transit proper edge go look look look at the best in your business or the restoration is does not should've got a bunch of dental business cards for the whole industry is really bad with this stuff is then asserted by Dennis have this weird marketing company thing all over the country there's these companies that always used dental yeah and they drive they drive the sick they don't value design either because it it's it's hard to do yeah and it just dentists in general are not your normal they're not like doctors because there also they tend to be mechanically inclined or tactfully using their hands more because they accept to get in there and do these things that require fine motor skills and stuff like I flick they're just so unique mentally and in like what they're trying to do and are all driven in other all opinionated most of the time your wife likes to talk to me while I have all everything in my mouth I like all these tools right off the you understand this I try to like a light try to use my hands like to the side but anybody in the coach you know yeah exactly Telex the whistle apparently I sit do know that I've had a chipped tooth in the front for like 2 1/2 three weeks now that I told her Megan affixes it was my good look tooth now I have to get it fixed by her I hope you listen to this beforehand though she knows a nice chip I put in a podcast and listen and to start zone out on everything I listen are pico students get a bonus yes okay so how do you tell someone they have bad design it to same thing how you tell someone the address or it you don't speak to me simplistic never goes out of style general rule of thumb you can just look who's the best people are the best dressed people around you like almost kind of everybody knows like this the celebrity we can all agree is good to come over the celebrities will bring a bird out a pretty burned out P Diddy now just the aviator Julia in a NBA draft you did see the best suits clearly what the style should be that's actually the future style so you be ahead I don't know if there's there going crazy with the draft a TOTALLY okay got it wound suits yeah the pinstripes are like huge so to think about is like double-breasted coming back like giant bowties so I have I look at stuff and I just go what's going to be the best return on investment simplifying your designs a lot of the time the more exotic you get the more the more yet the yeah the more it drifts the eye of the user we try to keep things as pretty minimalistic as we can although I like I like detailed stuff and it has its place but for the most part if you want to make a bigger brand or you want to have a business card all that stuff distracting everybody is ADD now yeah almost like start small with the building of it and then if something helps functionality or whatever add on to it then but yet it's in the margin of error the more stuff your writing on there the more distracting it is more like the less likely it is to achieve what you're trying to do whether it's get new client whatever and in little things like I rehang her card out right her name is big because I want them to see that first we have a little hidden puzzle in there of like we called total body consulting toco works is because we need a shorthand name so we have it cut hidden some negative space in their but the main thing is I want them to see my name entitle your name and title and I'm not trying to oh I could overload them with a lot information believe I want to yeah as our titles have we have like five different things I want to put on their like shrinks like those dictators who put all of the metals on the third yeah well again I want to fire a shot I do want to badge system that fits her camping Brand theme, going on like that we could dress up like Boy Scouts we could Artie do no pants though I know but this time for real I just where the sash around the house that's it your family hey guys will focus on the badges of my thumbs waiting but he's my use my sash first aid badge so the thing of just changing font size relative to each other like this is small this minute this is not super sexy but this is almost mathematically you can look at some of the things and go right I did make a call to action bigger than the rest of information yeah care about our address on her business card like I can will lose it because this matter yeah but I like I like that people see were in the historic part of town it does pick up some conversation will I think for Arduino digital stuff that's good because you can see that it's a physical place that were a little bit legit you know where it's like if you have a store whatever something that obviously has a needs an office building then you will need your address yet we were talking to I was talking to our our our mustache client the mustache somebody data since you keep talking about it to sound like a guy with a mustache so must it's it's like we gotta figure out a pitch it it's a way to conceal blunts and joints right well I to the big that it will the tube is this two story but the little thing on the bottom he got the tube in a foot a little footer thing that inserts into the tube that you can ask into that's fireproof let your you have a way to put something out pages you put a cigarette out we've all been there right can I put this out of my hand tongue so not that good we were going over his business card and I like what he did use hemp ones rigging the center over here right now is excited because I go I'm not huge on those but you're it what you're going to be doing this business card is basically always selling yeah to that person even at the end user or you really trying to sell it to the person at head shop in Colorado that wants to buy a bunch of them yeah because you wouldn't be doing a lot of sweat equity getting around there trying to trying to get get this out there guerrilla style and get some feedback as we went to new product totally invented by him and I like that because that fits the brand theme the card might suck the design might suck but the the bill carry around this hence got a little little weak yeah Lori – I was like that so you have say we had a dentist that we talk to his business card with loss had floss in it do it all or do you do things what he thinks about branding yet he thinks like what can I hand out the people just to toss in their wallet or throw away immediately right and I say flaw it's not as though he's given a big plastic tube fly it's a business card size floss thingy that they've come up with yeah very convenient it's got utility I love it so I like if you Vista print cards no don't talk to me hopefully will fix what bad design those are and just the actual texture think of that in like this would I want to extrapolate this kind of stuff out a little bit from a business card out right to design design matters we have to agree on that principle design is undervalued I would say yes like graphic design severely undervalued big time because people think nowadays you just get stuck anything which you can but it doesn't really work the way you think it does right now you get into a new life that's not what it's my head what our big thing is were extracting your brain were trying to get your opinion because you don't know how to articulate it right I heard that it's almost only benefit the stock thing if you like everybody knows somebody who does design start sure so just the fact that everybody knows somebody who does it is it's kind of devaluing in itself the goal line you can always do I can always as this person under nothing to go back to sense of humor so it's like people think oh you should talk to Todd bro Todd's like the funniest book God used in our golf group my I deftly don't want me to write it's not the same kind of comedy yeah it's deafly probably pry references like wedding crash I know five minute he's the guy that is not funny just times movie lines at the right time right but it did work for that group they don't know it's redundant yes do they don't know it's duplicative so that's that they know they don't care if your prospective client was in this this is, how we really feel work in the room try to be very polite around it and run it, just miss you like well that's okay but let's list looks let's try to beat that I was try to say that if anything creative can we beat that holds true that's that's how it start out with that though the city one so be it some easy things are just like just no 3D no patterns that are confusing no symbols that are confusing you have to take a step back I I like to go around like 10 people I trust ago how does this look this design look just in case I am you get too mired in it you don't know if it's good or not where does your I go that's a big one that is a huge one for marketing materials and websites and apps people don't get it light right so there's UX UI the user experience that you ask and user interface that UI so the 30 that's why there, grouped together because her the pin diagram is very is overlapping pretty big UX and UI can increase sales front for your site or app it can increase whatever call action you have if you do it correctly I'm in ship if you put a Moji's in social media post copy or email marketing title subject lines you can increase open rates or or views of that post by a 5 to 8% I believe it I mean when our podcast pops up on our phones that yet subscribed my own pocket I got government down the judges one by one devil he catches your eye Julie I forget to post it with it yeah but it helps know for sure that's a universal language to the same Tyra glyphs and were going backwards it but that's the thing of like I just go right let me find a study to prove this point if I need to II know intuitively and I knew that because I I can cut it see behaviors and tendencies and trends and stuff yeah but I was like I was on the back this up so I'm not spouting out like I'm a creator of the view that I feel it in my bones yeah exactly so it's one of those things were II want to extrapolate to IKEA it like design of your store of your office your office that you're seeing a lot more stuff about office space design becoming way more involved it's all psychology all the stuff it's all psychology you basic psychology what what's the end goal of all of this design so that IKEA you have church go through a falcon labyrinth dip to get out if you're smart you going through the exit like I do go by whatever you buy right most people do that then we know you can do that I didn't know into the dolmen you get sent about you go get cinnamon buns aren't you worried about the IQ offer lease don't delay her police how they know no I think that a lot of weird rules feeding give other software's the Swedish learner do you think you know the the IKEA owner died the guy who invented it is the 94 years old is like two days ago.I saw a lot of Hakki joke hello yeah I was trying to doing about his gas building is candidate Haskins that's right remove his eye with my was his casket was partially built because the Allen wrench broker sent Mike that I that's all I got I don't where there's an angry dad build this poor guy's casket what about Walgreens versus CVS the way Walgreens was set up at a certain point in time if it may be different now consumer behavior you have pharmacy in the back your baby in the back because those are the two things impulsively like pharmacies moneymaker that's good bring people in so they have to go to that that look every time you go into one now diagonally usually from the door oh yeah at Walgreens for sure yes that sometimes a bit depends on drive-through but generally because it can't they want to drive through every time but sometimes buildings can't help it in Florida we just we love Shady orchid that's another shady architecture all over here things like retail centers help our chest I'm not getting it today also it will really know they do the thing when you go to check out where the they wrangle you into that the cow pen you know you have a run you through the lines that has candy on both sides and all that stuff it's all around us and yet we all come to know yet the end caps of a grocery store of the aisles it's good to be promoted stuff I know it and I've I've read a lot about it I still go boom cool yeah hot Doritos this is sweet the pig gave Scott yeah the big game this Sunday I guess you would add suitable ads work on me and I know the ads and I'm online I might yeah that's fine out the design of it we talk about squatty party with the video visually so stimulating that you have to stop and go away would like it if we didn't have ads would all still be wearing potato sacks you know it's kind of one of those things you don't want to say it tells you what's what's good or what's new or whatever but it without an ad for you wouldn't know about a lot of stuff so here's how I can come to tell mathematically quantitatively why design matters is I got into this world this nerd world from the from the online ad side it all you do when you do like product advertising campaigns is it's because there's no kind of emotion in it there's no people involved it's not lead generation for just selling stuff you want to get anything any human involved rights until the transaction happen for the lead generation then you gotta worry about how the calls made do people pick it up on time you know did the other did your client pick it up how it would how they talk to them all that stuff that's worth humans get involved in funk it up were we help we help clients with that but understanding e-commerce you look at it just pure math campaigns we do creative media okay rooted these 10 creative campaigns were to see which ones are stars and which ones are dogs and you can tell because you keep everything else even every all 10 campaigns of a budget of a thousand each in the same target audience so you're just you make in this trial and error test the most impairment is maybe castling is what they call everything so usually due to an UAB split and you go okay now Asian doing better than be now we need to have another one coming ago is that what's the reason why okay so it basically breaks down creative and a math way by like deductive deductive logic from the performance of the ad so to add your doing well and all things are equal right that it's the creative that is being that the variable so that's how you tell you can to mathematically tell good creative and then you over time this was called wisdom knowledge trust plus experience I would say I'm a wise owl but I would say I have enough experience and knowledge to go here's the kind of designs that work and here's the kind that don't you that for a time there used to be a thing we put a yellow upper right little outline of whatever the image was in and it would increase sales by 3% that's sounds negligible the 3% what is not I mean the road outside know it's huge it's that mean like if you do 1% conversion rate for ad campaigns for like a privacy around hundred dollars you were talking digital yeah that's that's huge yeah like good conversion rates three of not retargeting people like to straight campaigns anyway I just I just look at the mass out of it go okay does this I don't have a dog in the fight for clients either I just go hey this is prop this is better just aesthetically personally ago informally this tousled blonde veteran contemporary formally this is the time to start breaking this out to be bad guy good guy with formerly the phone is a informal off the record whatever you want to good cop my boss wants would want me to say this is yet some like that because I have to start have to be both guys a lot of time right it's really tough until we get a snappy gay guy to be our client service head okay what you can put it on LinkedIn I hope you love LinkedIn so much I do I do what I can pull I can plug them out you can't find out okay that's the that's for Facebook so so we can I just go look here's my style here's what I think doesn't matter but here's my opinion keep it out on the side on the mass side of this here's why we want to do this this and this for the design here's what your website can't have 13 sections to it because it loads to slowly the pattern people people so now if you have a similar pattern throughout yeah so if you three columns that another three call him in another yet nothing is more important than the other thing yes switching it up this is a loser like easy things like changing font size relative to what's important I mean I don't want to say of Clayton Pfeiffer design but it's like one of those things were I can look at something like I don't miss really know why you know and that's really annoying thing to say but i.e. could look better this way or the it's not working you know and most I forget that people don't always have that are you for what's what's wrong with her I know it's hard to say but I mean it's hard to articulate that side of it the other side were were sitting yeah I would say we I think what you're trying to say is theirs was the judge that convicted someone is like a federal case I don't know what pornography is but I know it when I see it right yeah some like that it says so that's kind of but the quota, sticks in my craw about design I just go I just go basics that a lot of people know hey on the website bright yellow button whatever you whatever bright color we have in our pallet are you free to bring guide call to action yeah called called Hilliard I know one thing is you want to do make that that color stick it right on the front pretty simple stuff so like there's you can always go back to the basics and then work up from their minimalistic simplistic is always the safest then you can get advance like IKEA and do that, stuff you can get advance like like Adobe does it too much I feel I further their branding me almost everything they have they have too much stuff that it's too much yet overwhelming will there their software's notoriously slow kind of pain in the ass right right II that's functionality of the slow part lately and just overwhelms me when I let people get overwhelmed when they open Excel you know because this is that if it's not there thing if it's super confusing that's why I view Squarespace is a good example we handed out to clients the the admin side what a lot of people incorrectly referred to as the backend is a simple menu it looks like an Apple product yeah right super simple the iPhone is a simple product that is so intuitive to-year-olds can play with it really work it people don't think about that stuff the someday there's this thing where I think people will think the more the better and get this little bit of information out there make it over hereto and then you know that it's not that way since I think about it like a wedding a wedding toast but I've seen so many horrible most are horrible there all bad especially the sorry ladies but if you do the thing words like I thought we got Redland bad leg when I can and they just they don't explain it limit is wink remember the dating, forever try yeah I remember I remember the notes cool inside joke at the wedding I'm sure I'm trying to bring up some hub hub spot has a lot of good information I love statistics I laughed and can I love stats man I love Moneyball extra 2% all these things the biggest one I want to bring up was how visual things are changing online for for just digital marketing would say trends you mean yeah trends yeah I was looking at that and I had to look up at the word brutalism meant what is mean is an architecture I guess but raw is basically the idea so here's a good example infographics are liked and shared on social media three times more than any other type of content now is why people like stats I think is my theory people like reading like quick stats yeah DZ content right cartoon stats yet we are all adults or children to do so you have to make a cartoon out of what would be back in the day and abstract to research paper writer marketing research because most people look they on time to read everything but if it some on social media tunic with all articles with an image once every 75 to hundred words could double the number of social shares than articles with fewer images now people want to look at stuff II heard the 90% of like posting content is the image to get the click for sure I think headlines become bigger now I think we go to them because are more salacious now visual content is 40 times more likely to get shared on social than any other type of content I believe it 100% I'm just try to pick and choose a few something I saw that we had talked about that's on this list of trends as cinema graphs you don't know a cinema graph is if you ever seen a it basically is a picture with a small part of it moving as though it's a video oh those are cool though like a still picture with the fire and it were only the fire is moving I love those those are cinema graphs and I learned how to do it one day and then for will there either is I've been advertise to a lot by one company that does it really well yet both perfect for us to fire campfire we could do it I think we could do it ourselves which got a set of that we have 28 monkeys in animation I   but in no we want to bother him but you go over there knowing I can hold them like I do disco hey any change they do with us hey you how to do this is in the so it's really easy to go no it's not that hard yeah I know that sand the do I the part parts film and it I believe gift of the letter no I will break it down but I'm trying to look at a few other things in them will close it out current we've got there's a lot of stats on here help up with this link and there's well look at things as saturated ingredients house at a gradient saturated oh this is the other link I gave you yeah website design yeah just want to mess with you on the 15 web design trends Yep saturated gradient Little give any definition of anything I don't like the trending web design stuff because we don't do a lot of lifestyle brands yet I guess we read we do a lot more professional services I guess just not by just happenstance yes so we do a lot more timeless design classic cleaning featherbed like a suit right not to be a suit just a regular "ties these yet to clean always looks good it if you don't have a lot of money to buy suits like I was was you just go simple simple pinstripe symbol of Navy Sue goes back to everything even talking about minimalistic simplistic list mess up serif fonts are big city like a lot of the stuff is like cool lifestyle luxury items we don't live in that large like the stuff were the clients we have don't have a luxury product or service usually a dimension serif fonts that's that's all the people don't know what that means I had learned about the other day I may have little decorations on the little the bottoms are ends of the sticks that are making the letters know that it's the creative fonts basically yeah well so if you have a low lawyer work we do a lot of law firms were not used a lot of serifs stuff right usually I guess a serif font is used because it's easier to read it makes the letters more distinguishable yeah I mean the act depends on blah blah let's originally I think that's where they came from I went to look that way I think I I am browsing the Internet are not my stats I had a lot and then I got the rent mode can't figure out where my spot okay we got we got a big day in this is where to start banking episodes and professional so but not too far in advance don't need me making the good references for Ebola verbal or black plague go all the way back any of them I hope you have fun if you did if you didn't write it right a five star review but you can tell us what you didn't like just don't give us one start is your city because I use the word shady I had that in my other podcast I caused a lot one of them and some guy gave us one start I was like really you in any way to do that if you're our friends that her listen to this that I found out secretly listen to it don't tell me yeah or helps out share this data out there if your new friends we don't know you yet you are you can submit questions either on social media words posted on YouTube comments we read them WERE narcissistic every last one and if it's good even if you don't want to get the sweet sponsored fresh books for your accounting software always click on that link this gives us little is this little leverage sometimes maybe can get better days everything that comes in from this podcast goes reinvesting into the podcast which better guest maybe a step away good that be awesome I love someone that could just google talk about is going another person to do this so much stuff that you get one more set of hands beef testing right right tiny hands to the guys know I can really small but oddly small hands please rate subscribe review tell a friend tell your friend that has that side hustle that at sea store that that all I got an FIDI get to do this how I do it hey we try to keep the ones Eric and I do we try to keep them a little bit timeless to help out so the training stats there to be relevant about 10 years anyway yes they will grill it will be a little different but will be about the sam

Panel: Amiee Knight Charles Max Wood Special Guests:  JC Hiatt In this episode, JavaScript Jabbers speak with JC Hiatt. JC is a software consultant, and working a starting a company called DevLifts. DevLifts is a company that helps developers learn to live healthier lives. JC mentions this business was base on this health journey. JC and the panel discuss output and mental clarity to get work done in a healthy fashion. Also, the benefits of eating a healthy diet, rather it is the Keto Diet or others types of healthy clean eating, there is a physical and mental benefit. JC and the panel talk about count macros, healthy food intake, and a basic outline of getting into ketosis. Also, the panel discusses finding the motivation to get into a healthy lifestyle to benefit work and your lifestyle. In particular, we dive pretty deep on: Mental Clarity Keto Diet Cutting out processed foods Counting Macros Getting into Ketosis Supporting brain function Motivation for a healthy lifestyle Gaining energy Getting started  - Walking, Eat Whole. Etc. Pack your own lunch Mindset change -  you are responsible for anyone else’s healthy choices Drink Water You can find a healthy balance and practice moderation Cheat day? Sugar Sitting to0 long at work Sleep - brain wave activity, caffeine, and light Naps And much more! Links: @jchiatt @devlifts devlifts.io Picks: Amiee https://www.womenwhotech.com/panelist-bios https://github.com/AllThingsSmitty/css-protips Charles Gunnar blue blockers  Flux ReactDevSummit.com JSDevSummit.com   JC American Vandal Confession Tapes  Qalo https://lodash.com

Panel: Amiee Knight Charles Max Wood Special Guests:  JC Hiatt In this episode, JavaScript Jabbers speak with JC Hiatt. JC is a software consultant, and working a starting a company called DevLifts. DevLifts is a company that helps developers learn to live healthier lives. JC mentions this business was base on this health journey. JC and the panel discuss output and mental clarity to get work done in a healthy fashion. Also, the benefits of eating a healthy diet, rather it is the Keto Diet or others types of healthy clean eating, there is a physical and mental benefit. JC and the panel talk about count macros, healthy food intake, and a basic outline of getting into ketosis. Also, the panel discusses finding the motivation to get into a healthy lifestyle to benefit work and your lifestyle. In particular, we dive pretty deep on: Mental Clarity Keto Diet Cutting out processed foods Counting Macros Getting into Ketosis Supporting brain function Motivation for a healthy lifestyle Gaining energy Getting started  - Walking, Eat Whole. Etc. Pack your own lunch Mindset change -  you are responsible for anyone else’s healthy choices Drink Water You can find a healthy balance and practice moderation Cheat day? Sugar Sitting to0 long at work Sleep - brain wave activity, caffeine, and light Naps And much more! Links: @jchiatt @devlifts devlifts.io Picks: Amiee https://www.womenwhotech.com/panelist-bios https://github.com/AllThingsSmitty/css-protips Charles Gunnar blue blockers  Flux ReactDevSummit.com JSDevSummit.com   JC American Vandal Confession Tapes  Qalo https://lodash.com

Panel: Amiee Knight Charles Max Wood Special Guests:  JC Hiatt In this episode, JavaScript Jabbers speak with JC Hiatt. JC is a software consultant, and working a starting a company called DevLifts. DevLifts is a company that helps developers learn to live healthier lives. JC mentions this business was base on this health journey. JC and the panel discuss output and mental clarity to get work done in a healthy fashion. Also, the benefits of eating a healthy diet, rather it is the Keto Diet or others types of healthy clean eating, there is a physical and mental benefit. JC and the panel talk about count macros, healthy food intake, and a basic outline of getting into ketosis. Also, the panel discusses finding the motivation to get into a healthy lifestyle to benefit work and your lifestyle. In particular, we dive pretty deep on: Mental Clarity Keto Diet Cutting out processed foods Counting Macros Getting into Ketosis Supporting brain function Motivation for a healthy lifestyle Gaining energy Getting started  - Walking, Eat Whole. Etc. Pack your own lunch Mindset change -  you are responsible for anyone else’s healthy choices Drink Water You can find a healthy balance and practice moderation Cheat day? Sugar Sitting to0 long at work Sleep - brain wave activity, caffeine, and light Naps And much more! Links: @jchiatt @devlifts devlifts.io Picks: Amiee https://www.womenwhotech.com/panelist-bios https://github.com/AllThingsSmitty/css-protips Charles Gunnar blue blockers  Flux ReactDevSummit.com JSDevSummit.com   JC American Vandal Confession Tapes  Qalo https://lodash.com

In today's Workout Wednesday I talk about making gains without the pains! How is one supposed to go about their fitness journey while preventing injuries and staying healthy long-term? Nothing will hold you back from your goals like an injury, so it is critical we prevent them from happening. Big shout out to you guys for the support, and to Qalo for the awesome rings they sent. Thanks! www.triplefpodcast.com

Active people require special equipment.  QALO has been making the original Silicone Rings since 2012.  Co-Founder Ted Baker sits in the Home Court to talk business, life, love and passion.  Get your entrepreneurial fix for the week courtesy of TNL.  That and a special offer for you, the listener, from QALO

Once upon a time there were 300+ teams with dreams of a National Title.  Just 16 remain in the game.  Hear from Creighton Bluejay head coach Kirsten Booth on how her team from Omaha kept their National Title aspirations alive this last week. Also, the TNL crew wears them and you should too.  If you are an active married male or female your wedding band can take a beating.  QALO saw a need and filled it with a product you'll love.  Hear from the founder and creator of the original wedding band for active athletes everywhere. That and More on TNL

Happy Thanksgiving GGW fam! What better way to give thanks than to chat with the sweetest Southern paleo blogger we know, Cassy Joy from Fed & Fit! Cassy shares some tips for the best teased hair (no Bumpit necessary), shares some Dolly Parton wisdom, and most importantly tells us how she turned around her disordered eating lifestyle and used paleo to find health and sanity. Support the podcast! Click the SUBSCRIBE button on iTunes! Please leave us a review on itunes!! We love hearing your feedback and want to make this show the best it can be for YOU, amazing listeners. Share with a friend while you’re at it! www.girlsgonewodpodcast.com Send us an email with feedback and show ideas: girlsgonewod@gmail.com Girls Gone WOD Podcast is sponsored by QALO.COM Discount Code GGW

It’s been almost 2 years since Emily was last on GGW (check out her first appearance on Episode 83), and we have a lot to catch up on! Emily tells us all about her latest project, The EmPack, and what the process has been like to go from idea to production with her first custom product. Then we get on the topic of her new gig and passion as a Nutritional Therapy Practitioner, and all bets are off. Emily breaks down what she’s learned about hormones, gut health, supplements, herbs, how adrenal imbalance can cause pelvic floor problems (seriously guys, MIND BLOWN on this one), and her future as a real life professional hippie. Support the podcast! Click the SUBSCRIBE button on iTunes! Please leave us a review on itunes!! We love hearing your feedback and want to make this show the best it can be for YOU, amazing listeners. Share with a friend while you’re at it! www.girlsgonewodpodcast.com Send us an email with feedback and show ideas: girlsgonewod@gmail.com Girls Gone WOD Podcast is sponsored by QALO http://qalo.com Discount Code GGW