What's up guys, welcome back to sweat equity.

This is a really special episode.

We've had a ton of guests on recently and something that we noticed as

we've continued to grow this podcast is we've never really talked about

who we are, what we've done, why you should listen to us at all.

Today's a really special episode.

I interview Alex about his entire story and how he got

started in the marketing world.

How he's led to this business, which he's running right now, which is marketing

examine one of the best B2B marketing media properties in the entire world.

So we went super deep on his whole journey.

We talked about how local businesses actually drive foot traffic leaving

a successful business because it's not aligned with who you are.

What do you learn from being at the hustle when it was acquired by HubSpot?

Why he actually started marketing examines and how you stand out

in a crowded space in 2024.

And we've been promising y'all for the last few episodes that we

were going to get to a free game.

So we finally did with one of our listeners.

It's a athlete subscription box.

Stay tuned for that.

It's gonna be super fun.

New thing we're doing for anyone that leaves the review is if you're one of the

first 20 people to review the episode, we do have these sweat equity hats.

We'll be sending one to you if you're in the U.

S.

So leave a review, send us a DM on Instagram or Twitter and we'll,

we'll let you know if you win.

So we'll get into the episode.

Let's go.

Dope.

Welcome to another episode of Sweat Equity.

It's been a minute since we're in the office filming.

It's good to be back.

Yeah.

It is very good to be back.

No more wifi issues.

The coffee shops of Austin and I have beef right now because that

was, that was a tough 27 day stretch.

But good to be back and super excited about this episode.

You know, I feel like we've recently cracked, you know,

10, 000 listeners a month.

And a lot of those people are obviously new, so we wanted to sit

down and talk about why we made this podcast, who we actually are any

sort of credentials that we got.

I know we've talked about it before, but.

You know, the whole point of this pod is that we're two people that are actively

building our business every day, and we're sharing what we learned, and we're

sharing what's working, what's not, it's, you know, a lot of refinement, it's a

lot of testing, it's a lot of learning.

I don't know about you, but I mean, my entire information diet.

Is skewed towards things that can improve my business and improve my skill set.

100%.

And the whole goal of this pod is, can we tell that to people?

And then obviously, you know, interview some really cool guests as well.

Yeah.

I'm like Rob says, I'm tracking, I'm on the same page as you.

We started this entirely for people like us that are, are trying to

build something incredible and they have the talent for it.

They know that they're going to do it, but they still got five years, right?

And we want to be along that journey with you.

What I will say now though, is look for us to grow this pod.

We need reviews.

So this hat camera one, camera two, camera three, this hat.

The first 20 people that leave a review on Apple or Spotify, we

will send you this hat or we have multiple different colorways, black on

black, black on gray, white on blue.

We will send you one of these hats if you are in the U.

S.

That's the difficult part.

And the way to make sure that you get the hat is we need to make sure

that you actually left a review.

So send it to us at podcast.

marketingexaminer.

com or DM me or Brian or whoever.

Or not.

Whoever DM nearby, just us, just us, just us

and the name sweat equity because it's just us.

And we got Gus is over there to help us produce it.

But, but yeah, make

sure that you send it to us, send us the proof and we'll

send you one of these hats.

But no, I'm pumped for this episode because we've grown the podcast.

We've done a lot in our, in our past and just in, in the startup

world, we don't talk about it.

You know, we've had Jordan Rogers come on here.

JT Barnett come on here and they say the same thing to us every time.

They're like, so what's your guys story?

Like, what do you guys do?

And it's like, you don't know.

What do you mean?

And so we've done a, inherently a bad job of actually talking about ourselves.

Cause your natural next question might be, how did you get those guests?

And I think that's almost the social proof.

Of what we have done in the past, it's a very strong network,

but the self promotion maybe hasn't necessarily been there.

And I mean, you have a huge audience on Twitter.

That was a massive growth lever for you.

So, but none of that growth came from self promotion of Alex Garcia.

Yeah.

You know, you had the Jay Alvarez era.

Are you trying to be an Instagram model?

And that didn't pan out.

And so, you know, I think you kind of learned your lesson and proceeded to

be like, no, I'm going to just tweet marketing threads left and right.

Brian tried going to the NBA and he ended up at a D3 school down the road.

Also,

also true.

So if we're throwing shade.

No, white men can't jump.

It's, it's true story guys.

So I did, I know your background and I think I want to give

as much context as possible.

And then you should just correct me if I'm wrong.

So I think my understanding is played football in college, started

at FIU, transferred to Texas State, proceeded to graduate from Texas

State with a business degree.

Wow.

Okay.

So we're literally off at the beginning.

That's great.

So didn't graduate.

Why didn't you graduate?

Are you just a bum?

We're not doing a good job of why people should actually listen to us.

No, so

I didn't, I didn't finish school because I, I came from Florida.

And so I.

I took out a loan to finish going to school, and I told my parents basically

like, Hey, I need one semester.

I'm a, I'm a get the football scholarship at Texas state.

I got a sports hernia, couldn't play football.

And then it was like, okay, well, I can't afford to go to school here.

I'm going to take a year off.

So I could gain residency.

The only way that you can gain residency is to live in the

state without going to school.

So I took the year off to gain residency to go back to school.

Never went back to school.

Got it.

Got it.

So were you chilling in San Marcos or is that where you moved to Austin?

working.

Yeah.

Okay.

I was just working in Austin or San Marcos.

I was chatting with John and he said that your first business

was the social media agency.

Yeah.

And that you ended up.

You know, starting to run social media for a bunch of the top bars and restaurants

in Austin, particularly on Sixth Street.

Apparently you had a pretty cool office above one of the bars.

Talk about that.

Okay, so I'll give you the, how we even got there.

So I did go through that Jay Alvarez era.

Yeah.

Where I was like, you know, when you, when you stop playing sports, and I'm

sure that's happened with you, you kind of have an identity crisis of like, Big time.

Yo, I thought I was going to the NFL.

That didn't happen.

What do I do now?

And it's preached so much in your come up.

No plan B.

Yeah.

I didn't have plan B.

You're supposed to be tunnel vision, going after the singular goal or else

you don't have a chance to make it.

And that's both right and wrong.

Unfortunately, you do have to have that.

And that's why so many athletes go through the identity crisis.

That was one of the things that I always wanted to maybe use as one of our

taglines was, we make, we make content for all the athletes that didn't go pro.

Yeah.

We're plan B.

Yeah.

Yeah.

So, and, and.

To actually give context.

Well, that wasn't my first business.

There's a, a business that I don't talk about often.

But when I was at FIU, I started a weightlifting equipment business

called Conjugate Fitness Equipment.

You did talk about that

on the, on the Rogue episode.

Yeah.

And what that was, was like, I didn't, we didn't have the money

to buy a lot of the weightlifting equipment I needed to, to train.

Yeah.

And so my dad who worked at a steel mill years ago when he

was probably in his thirties.

When he first came to America, he, because he worked there, he could get

us a bunch of discounts on steel and we were like, okay, let's actually build

this machine that I've been wanting.

I wanted this machine called a reverse hyper.

We couldn't afford it.

It was like 1, 500.

Yeah.

So we're like, okay, let's actually make it.

So we learned how to cut steel, how to weld, how to do all this shit.

And then it was like, well, CrossFit's popping right now.

This was 2018 around there.

CrossFit's popping.

Yeah.

There's probably a lot of people that want to buy some of this equipment.

That don't have the money to spend 1, 500 on upper reverse hyper or push pull

sleds or all this, this kind of stuff.

So yeah, we ended up spinning up a conjugate fitness equipment and it was

just me originally creating it for myself.

And that's how I kind of got into marketing without knowing it.

Because I was finding all these companies on Instagram, all these CrossFit gyms, and

I was reaching out to, or I was finding them, then scraping their email address.

Then email him saying like, Hey, like I made this, all this stuff for myself.

Are you interested in buying some of this stuff?

And so it got to the point where we were making like.

750 to 1, 200 on a weekend, but I would spend all, like, I'd go to

school all in the morning at FIU.

FIU is two hours from where I live, drive home and like, weld all during the

night and then like go back to school.

So it was like this whole, this whole thing.

So eventually when I moved to Texas is when I stopped doing that, right.

And then when I was here, I did have like this Jay Alvarez air when I stopped

playing football, basically, that I was like, I want to travel, I want to

learn how to use a camera, I want to learn videography, and so I started

traveling and picked up a camera and was like in that travel vlog phase, where

I was just filming a bunch of like hype reels about traveling to XYZ places.

That's where I fell in love with content creation.

That's where I fell in love with like being able to tell stories and be able to

bring people in the door with, with video.

I did that for like two years, just freelancing and kind of doing video gigs.

To the point where I got really good at, you know, being able to work a

camera, being really good at creating content that I, I spun up an agency

called social first, this is like.

I think that time, yeah, 2019 spin up an agency called social first.

And again, without like experience, I hired this sales guy and I'm like, Hey, I

will pay you the first month of retainer.

I will pay.

I'll give that to you as commission.

Terrible deal.

Terrible deal.

And if for every client you bring in, cause I couldn't pay anybody.

Right.

Like at the time I worked at a bar.

Yeah.

So you were the

door guy at rustic tap, right?

Door guy, then bar back.

And yeah, that whole, that whole like rise of the bar, you know, the bar guy.

I know you were running crazy through the streets of Austin.

I was, I had long hair at the time.

It was a different, it was a different era.

Yeah, yeah.

So he lands, he lands our first client, Barley Bean.

Have you ever seen Barley Bean?

Where's that?

So there's one on South Lamar, you probably know where it's

at, but it was a cafe in Austin.

They're our first client.

They paid us 2, 000 a month to create.

It was like 20 pieces of content at a time, right?

Like all original, all original too.

Like I'm coming in, I'm filming, I'm doing everything.

Yeah.

But then he had an, an, like a slew of businesses.

So he had this other one called Artisa Rosso.

He had another one called the connection and all of a sudden, like his entire

portfolio were all my clients.

So all of a sudden I go from just be freelancing to, I'm making like six or

7, 000 a month, like within a few months.

Then word gets around that like, Hey, I'm making all this

content for all these companies.

And I was still working at the bar.

So like, this was a side hustle and I'm still working at the bar.

I pitched them on, Hey, can I start doing your guys content?

I start crushing their content.

Again, it was a rustic tap.

Then it ended up being where I took over West 6th Street.

So I got to do all of West 6th Street's content and like own that account.

Is that all owned by the same people?

No, but it's like a collective of individuals.

And so they have an account that they were paying for.

And it got to doing that.

Then I got to work with like Red Bull, Deep Eddy.

It was, it was this era though, that then this is why I got out of it.

It was this era of like, damn, I was just like integrated with so much alcohol shit.

Oh.

And I was like, yeah, I, this, this isn't me.

You know what I mean?

It sounds like you were getting so, so much traction that you were almost

about to start a career in that space.

Yeah.

Being known as that guy.

And the part, exactly the thing that hit me was I got invited to give

a keynote speech at like ut Mm-Hmm.

. And the description was like, runs all the, the social content for these bars.

Well, like I do a bunch of other things, but I didn't like that.

And, and so like a few months later is when, when the pandemic

hit and I got out of that, it got, I got out at a perfect time.

You're about to get rocked.

Yeah.

But I got to in the things that like, I don't talk about during that phase.

Like I got to work with a bunch of other brands.

Like I got to work with the honest of the world and I got to work with

a bunch of influencers from on it and build up their entire personal

brands and help them build out.

Their funnels, their paid ads, their, their landing pages, email, like the

entire growth side of things which was interesting, but like doing all

of these different things is what kind of opened that door for me to be a, a

good marketer was like trying to sell a bunch of lattes, then trying to sell

drinks and trying to sell supplements and trying to build up an influencer.

You just like.

You gain so many, like those, those individuals that are buying things,

those things, they're so different.

Yeah.

Right.

And you get to, you get to learn how to write copy for that

individual versus this individual.

So a little background, but so

I got a question for you and this might be useful to other people

that are thinking about getting into the exact business you want because selling

services to local businesses is a sexy.

Idea.

A lot of people think they're unsophisticated.

And so if you just bring them into the modern era, then, you

know, you'll prove ROI really quickly and it'll be an easy sell.

What a lot of people don't know is these businesses don't have budget to pay

you anything and or the infrastructure, they don't have infrastructure.

They're not going to be able to give you a working capital, any, anything, right.

They're not going to be able to support you in the way that oftentimes is needed

in services to make a relationship work.

How do local businesses actually drive foot traffic?

Like, what is the biggest lever for them to drive foot traffic?

Events and then running paid ads from a one mile

radius of, of the location.

Interesting.

That's what worked best.

And then collecting emails on special offers and then using email to And

then remarketing through the emails?

Yeah, so like What's crazy is I was early on a lot of things.

Yeah.

I was hosting influencer dinners at these places in 2018, influencers didn't

know how to pay the, like, charge,

By influencers, are you saying like the 512 bytes of the world?

Are you saying So we

were like one of the first people to advertise with When We're What, Austin.

Oh, okay.

So any influencer event or any, like, deal that was going on at one of these places,

I would go to when, where, what, Austin.

It was like 250 at the time.

That was going to be my next question.

How much does a sponsored post for when, what, where, Austin cost?

Then 250, then it got up to 500.

And now it's probably friggin, but anytime and yeah, anytime we do

it, it would just lights out that we started doing that repeatedly.

Obviously they're one

of the biggest pages in the city.

I mean, they've got several hundred thousand followers and

they're kind of a go to resource for events happening in the city.

And that can be anything from alcoholic events to community events.

You know, they talk about general things that are happening, happening in Austin.

They'll talk about where you should go for.

Watch party for UT game.

They should, they'll talk about run clubs.

They're, they're pretty much a community organizer in the form

of 100 percent or curation.

Yeah.

They curate.

And then the, another really cool thing about one where, where is

they have a very distinct brand.

So all of their grid, all of their posts are this signature blue color.

And they obviously give a, when, what, and where for the event.

And so that's kind of how they structure it.

They, they talk about those things in a very.

And then we would do specific deals once, once they followed us, we would do

specific deals, retarget them to get them

on the email list, do things with when, where, what, Austin, and then hit

exclusive deals to get them in the door.

So, yeah, on the growth side, it was, it was a lot of leveraging

places like, yeah, 512 bites ATX bites, ATX food, like ATX drinker.

Yeah, dude, like all that shit to get people in aware of it.

And then we would do specific deals.

And then we would do specific deals once, once they followed us, we would

do specific deals, retarget them to get them on the email list, do things with

when, where, what, Austin, and then hit exclusive deals to get them in the door.

So.

It's a very different playbook than, than most brands.

Yeah.

Because yeah, it was an interesting thing to, to learn.

One thing that I think we, we did that was really interesting in retail, or

not retail, but like having a physical front was and we did this with Barley

being in all his spots where we made like a first time customer card.

And so they would come in for the first time.

They would, we would ask them, Hey, is this your first time coming here?

Yeah, it is.

We would give them a card that says, Hey, come back for a 20 percent offer.

Come back for a free drink.

And so now we would see like the actual ROI of getting somebody in the door

for the first time, giving them this card and being like, Hey, and, and

knowing, okay, they came back and they gave us this card to claim this thing.

And we had that for customers for the first three, three visits,

because after three visits.

It essentially was formed into a habit of, I'm always going to come here for a latte.

I'm always going to come here for pizza, whatever the case may be.

And so that was one way that like we kind of leveraged psychology to build

a habit into these folks to like, get to know the people, get to know the, the,

our menu and everything that we offer.

Yeah.

But yeah, it's a completely different ball game.

Interesting.

That's cool.

And then next, somehow you found yourself at the hustle, you know,

that's something a brand name that a lot of our listeners will recognize.

But if you're unfamiliar with the hustle, it was a daily business newsletter that

actually put some interesting takes in there and wrote it as if they were writing

to their friend and not to an investor prospectus or something like that.

Founded by Sam Parr, exited HubSpot for around like 35 mil, 40 mil.

And you know, obviously you cashed out a ton in that exit, right?

That's okay.

Just kidding.

And you know, they exited HubSpot for, for undisclosed some

probably in the 30 to 40 mil.

Range and, you know, talk about that experience because I know that you worked

a little bit on their flagship podcast, my first million, and also you were involved

with some paid acquisition, you know, what that looks like for a newsletter.

Yeah.

So I'll give you even context on how I got there.

So when the pandemic hit and we weren't, and I was basically not doing anything

for the barley beans and the bars and all those, and the gyms had closed too.

And I was doing stuff with on it.

It was like.

This is the perfect segway for me to get out of this game because

I wanted to get out of the game, but I wanted to be in media.

I loved media.

I loved content creation.

I loved getting people to consume things, but I didn't love the way I was doing it.

Right?

And I didn't like the whole agency model.

At the time, I was really like a glorified freelancer, but I had clients and

therefore I was calling myself an agency.

So I was a reader of The Hustle and I wanted to get

my, my foot in the door there.

And so they had a job opening at the time as like head of social.

And so I applied for head of social went through like an

eight part interview processes.

Fucking crazy.

Wow.

It was, yeah, it was, it was pretty extensive.

Got the job there and then got to, to lead, lead social, got to work

on the community aspect with trends, do things with paid acquisition.

Then before leaving a year after or a year in, I got to work on my first

million and growing my first million.

So within that year, that timeframe, like I got to do a lot

of shit with a successful company.

Pretty crazy career pivot too.

Crazy, but it was

local business agency into media marketing operator.

Like, yeah,

because at the time I knew about startups, but I wasn't indulged into

like that, that ecosystem for sure.

And I think for

any, any young people listening, that's such a common storyline that I

see with people in our age demographic is you kind of get into something.

And we'll talk about my story later, but you get into a certain type of industry

and then there's that one opportunity.

That you don't see coming, you have no idea that that's coming and it

just completely changes your life and like alters that direction.

And

it did, like I, I tell Sam that, or I told Sam that last time, cause.

Like just full transparency.

I didn't have a bad outing when I left the hustle was more.

So one of those things, like I wanted to build marketing, examine, but things

were going great with the hustle.

And I, and I left abruptly, right.

Cause I was ready to build my own thing.

But I told him recently, I was like, dude, I appreciate everything you did for me.

Like you helped my career go from, I was doing fine to doing great, you know?

And that was because you helped put me in positions at the hustle that

helped me elevate my game and make me.

Just come out of like into my stardom kind of, kind of phase.

So very appreciative of that, but no, it was sick to be behind the scenes of, of

a successful startup and one that exited.

Like I got to see a lot in one year, you know, a lot that people don't see a

lot of times people would join startups.

And they fail, you know, within a year or two.

And so to be part of one that got acquired by HubSpot and then get to work at HubSpot

for a little bit was, was super cool.

But when, and I told Sam this too, I can't be at a job for longer than a year.

I'm just not that guy.

Like I don't want to be somebody else's employee for three, four or

five years and not build my own thing.

Cause I get the most joy out of building something.

And I've taken three jobs in my entire lifetime.

The Hustle Gumroad and the Collective.

And what I learned was if I'm taking a job, it's because it's helping me.

It's helping me do one of three things.

So the first one is, is this job a stepping stone to where I want

to go right with the hustle?

I wanted to build a media company going to joining the hustle was me learning

what it's like to build a media company.

The second is, does it develop the skills I need to do that thing?

Joining the hustle, joining gumroad, joining the collective.

They all helped me develop different skills that I knew when I was

going to build market examine.

I knew is going to help me develop the right skills to

build a successful company.

And then the third was.

So at each place, was there somebody that I aspire to be like, or did

they have qualities I aspire to, to learn and retain so that I can be a

better leader down the road with Sam?

Sam was that Sam was a content creator.

He was a great founder.

He's a great leader or great CEO.

So joining the hustle, it was that joining gumroad.

You know, Gumroad and we don't, you haven't dove into this

part yet, but like, I wanted to learn how to, how to work async.

How do we work all in Notion and Slack and have a remote team at

the time being remote was hot.

So joining Gumroad was that, so that's how I always approached one

of these jobs before then stepping away and building Marketing Xamarin.

Yeah, that's cool.

And so while you're at the hustle.

You did what I would, from an outsider's perspective, describe as the most

impactful thing out of all of that in your journey as an entrepreneur

is you built your Twitter account.

Yeah.

And When you built your Twitter account, you did the 50 threads in 50

days, which was an unreal commitment.

Perfect timing to build a Twitter account.

You know, threads were all the rage and growth was a little

bit more possible at the time.

Definitely.

Like really, you know, that was a hot time on Twitter during the pandemic.

This is like what, spring 2021.

Yeah.

Around that time frame.

Yeah.

Yeah.

And that's actually how we ended up connecting for the first time

because I found your Twitter content to be super useful.

I was always sending it to my team at Grind.

I'd be like, cause it was the easiest way to train someone.

It was to, here's, you know, five copywriting principles to

make you write like an Amazonian.

Here's the seven components of a landing page that helps

it convert super successfully.

This was really bookmarkable, saveable stuff.

And that leverage has allowed you to build an audience that in turn allowed

you to build the newsletter business.

So, my question to you is, what would you sell your Twitter account for?

I

mean, right now with Elon?

Yeah.

Not that much, dude.

Like.

Yeah.

Quarter mil?

Yeah.

Quarter mil, maybe 500 at its peak

at its peak.

I mean, talk about the decrease in impressions too, because I mean,

back in the day, it seemed like everything you put out would go.

So when I did

the 50 threads over 50 days, there's one month I had

36 million impressions, right?

Right.

When you, when you think about that on paid ads.

I mean, the value of that is incredible for sure.

And during that entire span, the 50 days, it was like 60 million impressions.

Yeah.

This was from an account that literally had a hundred followers.

Right.

Right.

And grew to a 40 something thousand within that 50 days.

Yeah.

At that peak, if I would've kept that momentum going, I would've

sold it for seven figures plus.

Yeah, for sure.

But I wouldn't, I would sell it now just because I don't think

it's that valuable anymore.

Like it's, it's gotten to the point where like some of the

biggest creators on the platform.

Aren't they're not getting engagement, right?

They're not even bothering.

No, like we talk about Truong all the time.

He's probably the, like a top 10 creator on Twitter.

Yeah.

And he doesn't even get engagement.

Elon Musk follows him.

That's a problem.

That is a fundamental problem with the platform.

So,

and you know, Truong would be a fascinating example

of, and I've known Truong.

I saw Truong's freaking account at 5, 000 because Truong actually wrote

about grind basketball in the hustle.

And he's the homie and he's great.

And I've watched his entire glow up.

And Trung was similar to you.

He accumulated something like 550, 000 followers in a span of a year.

It must have been something insane.

He's a dog.

He's a certified dog.

Goes viral on command.

And because he's funny and it's Also really entertaining business content.

He blends those two things together better than anybody.

He's funny

and smart, dude.

It's like, it's a killer fucking car.

And he's also just the, he's the homie.

But what I, what I want to make this point about is I saw that growth and

I would say that he's consistently still gone viral quite a bit.

He still goes viral all the time, but the follower accumulation, he's only gained

150, 000 followers and I would love.

If he would share this with us, but just what the difference in impressions

to followers ratio was during his come up versus last year after Elon

acquired the platform, because That's what killed it is this for you page,

because now I see everyone in everyone in the e commerce world or whatever

niche you're in is on your for you page.

Even if you don't follow.

Yeah.

If they have something that gets like minor play, it'll,

it'll be on this for you page.

And I think that really killed follower growth.

Which in turn, if you can't build an audience, what incentive is there as a

creator to, you know, go on that platform?

Yeah, I'm sure there's something there with the amount of impressions

to follow, because I've had things get, I mean, you know this, millions

of impressions in the last few months.

And it doesn't lead to really anything.

Gone viral.

I've

seen you go viral probably three to five times since we've kind

of been more business partner vibes.

And you've picked up like 5, 000 followers on 20 million impressions.

The move now

is Instagram.

Yeah.

Over any of the platforms.

I couldn't agree more.

Even for driving inbound, like I've had multiple calls in the

last two weeks that have all happened because of, of IG content.

Yeah.

And it's the best

place to prove your subject matter expertise because your face is on there

and think reels is, and here's the truth,

here's the truth to all the people that are on Twitter

and are good Twitter creators.

Sorry, Trunk, because we just talked about you.

So this isn't relevant to Trunk because Trunk would kill on video.

Absolutely crush on video.

But most of the people that are on Twitter and crushing it on Twitter is because they

would be terrible on video and they don't have the personalities to be on video.

They rather hide behind a screen.

Yeah.

And there is a difference.

They have no sauce.

And they'd rather be on Twitter typing up a thread versus creating a piece

of content that goes live on, on IG.

So it's a huge opportunity for.

I say that all to not throw shade to say there's a huge opportunity right now.

Some of your Twitter homies are going to come for you.

It's more of an opportunity to, for people like you, for people like me, who

knew like the Twitter game to bring our Twitter game to a different platform.

Yeah.

That's all it is.

Something that just came to mind during that entire chat is.

You know, what is the value of just taking all of trunks?

You could probably do a Twitter advanced search of all of his, you know, more

than 5, 000 liked pieces of content and just turn them into iDre reels and easy,

you know, there's your viral framework.

So, okay.

I built a Twitter account, built newsletter following, and then

took the job at the collective.

CMO role.

Learn to allocate capital, manage teams, build something that was really

cool, really sexy from the outside.

You know, anything about that experience that you want to

share with the people, or?

Yeah, my entire, my entire idea with the CMO was I took the

job because the title was sexy.

Looking back at it, I would have never taken the position because the

M in CMO just stands for managing.

Yeah.

Right?

Chief Managing Officer.

Shout out to that boy, Robba.

Yeah, shout out to Robba.

He's the one that told me that when he was at Triple Whale that

he was like, Dude, I'm a creator.

I like to be creative.

I like to strategize.

You don't get to do that as a CMO.

As a CMO, you just, you're in meetings all the fucking time.

Yeah.

So looking back at like my role there, it's not that I

didn't like the collective.

I didn't like the people.

Love or I enjoyed my time there, but that wasn't the position for me.

Yeah.

I rather actually build the collective if I'm joining the collective.

But what I, what I will find, what I will say was interesting was

like, we spun up an agency called rare while we were there because.

There was so much deal flow coming through the collective, right?

The collective is like a Soho house meets Equinox, very high price point.

And so being there, there was a lot of companies that wanted content creation.

We had a, a skilled creative team.

So we spun up an agency called Rare Air, got to work with the C4s, the

cane footwears, pro pickleball teams.

Like.

All these different companies and essentially learned all of the

potential two parts, all the potential and in the content creation world

as an agency to dive into long form content that was like our bread and

butter and what we were selling.

And there were so many people that were wanted it and didn't know how to do it,

didn't have the infrastructure to do it.

The second part was, this was my second run at an agency,

and I still hated agencies.

Like, I hated it more the second time when I did, like, a content creation agency.

Yeah.

What I learned about myself was, I'm not a manager.

I'm a creator, I'm a leader, I'm a builder.

I'm not a manager.

I don't like to babysit people, and that's, You're really a

glorified babysitter as a manager.

Yeah, yeah, definitely.

And speaking of babysitting and speaking of shitty parts of that

business, what was the shittiest part about working with pro athletes?

Okay, so Brian brings this up because he was part of this.

We worked with John Morant on a On a video for for the collective and it was

also going to be part of a rare air deal that we were doing grind basketball.

And so we, we have this huge plan of, okay, we're going to do a

two part series with John Morant.

It's going to be all about his off season training before going into

this season, which then he fucked up by, by having a gun at a strip club.

And

for context, this was when he was at his apex, coming off his

breakout year, where he was like second team all NBA, Like, he was the

next big point guard in the league.

I mean, I remember when we were doing this, they were telling us that he

was going to have that signature shoe.

Yeah.

So just to give you an idea of where job was out at the time.

And so we have this, this ideal plan of the video that we're

going to be creating the series that we're going to be creating.

I called Brian.

I'm like, Hey dude, I think I have the best sponsorship opportunity for you and

grind basketball because John Moran's training at the collective right now.

And we could get a grind basketball in front of him and him shooting on it,

and you'll have the best fucking UGC, the best content, shit will go viral,

and if you have John Morant shooting on it, you're gonna be able to sell it

to all the kids that love John Morant.

Didn't happen at all.

So, grind flies in, we, we talk about a deal, we're like,

hey, they're gonna pay us.

And it was like five or 10 K to like be in the spots and

we're going to shoot everything.

And every day that we're going to the shoot, the grind machine's just sitting

there and Josh just wouldn't shoot on it.

So three days straight, not only that,

all of his homies were shooting on it.

Yeah.

Everybody but jaw was shooting on it.

And so like we only needed a 32nd segment of Josh shooting on it.

It was supposedly lined up by his trainer, et cetera.

And yeah he just didn't do it.

And then our last day of shooting where we were like, okay, this

is the last opportunity we have.

To do this with John Morant jaw, jaw call or not.

Jaw doesn't call us one of his, his individuals or people on his team

calls us like, Hey, jaw decided to go to a WNBA game last night.

He wanted to see it.

So we're in Dallas right now.

And we were like already set up to shoot.

And he was like, you think we could shoot at 5.

PM.

And it's like 10 AM.

Yeah.

Like, can you push it back seven hours?

Like, right.

And it was just the worst process.

Like, they just don't care.

And then, and then he ends up not coming to that.

And when we figured, when we learned why it was like, Oh,

he had a shoot with Dre beats.

So like, he just couldn't come through.

That was when I knew it was not the level.

It was nothing personal.

You know, I mean, hyper ice was throwing him millions to be at a photo shoot.

And so what was our small sponsorship of his, you know, collaboration

with y'all are going to be.

And it's all love.

I mean, I'm still rooting for John and everything like that.

Yeah.

And then now, so the business you're running marketing examined.

So, you know, you talk about this being something that you wanted someone

like your dad, who you were building that business originally with, and

you wanted a resource that would break down marketing tactically, that someone

could read it, learn it, apply it, and actually use it to kind of grow something

on their own for free and just have that resource in that library of playbooks.

So Obviously you guys, you know, breaking seven figure run rates,

running some of the most effective B2B marketing campaigns out.

Talk about how you're growing that business in 2024.

Have you ever watched Scarface?

Yeah.

Okay, so you know at the beginning of Scarface, it gives the history of why

Al Pacino even, even got to the U.

S.

Was like, Castro was sending all the, the Cuban immigrants to the U.

S.

Because there was now the law that they could, they can migrate over and

they'd be free when they got here.

So they sent thousands of prisoners over to the U.

S., specifically to Miami.

My dad snuck on that boat.

And so my dad snuck himself and his brother on that boat at like 24 years old.

Had already graduated, was already a professor in, in in mathematics in Cuba.

Comes over here, has to get an education again because the

education from Cuba doesn't count in the US, so he goes to FIU also.

Gets his education gets his his bachelor degree, starts his own company

called EnerPower 10 15 years later.

With EnerPower, he's run it for 20 years.

Right.

For 20 years, he's been a one man band all the times that he tells

me, damn, like, I wish I would have known marketing marketing would have

been the one thing that we needed to really grow this company to be more

than a one man band hit home with me.

And so me being a marketer at the time, it was like, what if there was

a resource out there for the people like my dad also for the people in

startups that are growing startups and, and want to, you know, raise capital

and want to want to build a unicorn.

Awesome.

But what about the immigrant that came over here to give

a light a better life to.

Do his parents and his kids, and they don't know what the fuck marketing is.

They don't understand us culture.

They don't understand what Facebook ads are.

They don't understand what content creation is or email marketing.

What if I could give them also a resource to help them build an incredible company

so that they can live the American dream on the back end of their sacrifice.

So that was a lot of what went into marketing examined

and me wanting to build that.

And then, you know, now as we've matured.

And, and we're trying to really scale the company.

It's, I look at Harvard Business Review and I'm like, this, this shit sucks.

You know, like it's these hundred page case studies.

And you don't get really anything out of it, you know,

and, and they're a mega company.

They, they're, they do 300 million in revenue.

Yeah.

They have a evaluation of 1.

2 billion if, if they, we use the same evaluation as New York times.

So pretty, pretty crazy there.

But again, there's a huge opportunity to build HBR 2.

0 B2B business case studies that are more so for millennials and Gen Z,

which means let's make this visual.

So.

Then the other idea is, well, I love complex, complex has this twist of

culture and hip hop and rap and like they intertwine that into their media.

What if we can take HBR and complex and they have a baby, right?

That is a different world that people like you and me would really like because

we come from sports, we come from hip hop, we come from that side of things.

But now we love business.

That's our new sport.

And there's nothing there to really intersect both, both side of things.

So it's a huge opportunity.

That's what we're trying to build.

Trying to grow it in, in 2024, there's three things.

The first is adding YouTube to, to our our ecosystem.

I think YouTube has the biggest potential to build a, a successful

company on the back end of it.

Whether it's a creator led company or even B2B.

B2B is the biggest opportunity because They don't do YouTube.

The, the, so adding in that layer and essentially building TV shows,

but YouTube shows into our ecosystem.

The second part is really scaling the newsletter and

eventually adding other verticals.

I won't talk about what those verticals are right now, but we have other verticals

that we're testing, experimenting with, adding those layers into the

ecosystem and then the podcast front.

So sweat equity.

This podcast is a big component of, of our growth in 2024,

then on the monetization side.

So like those all monetize via ad sponsorships, we're going to be

adding in other layers of building exclusive communities for content

marketers and growth marketers.

Because here's the problem with media.

Everybody monetizes the same.

Everybody monetizes via ad sponsorships and they're monetizing on, on eyeballs.

What media is very good at is finding and building pockets of

communities, but they never monetize or leverage those communities, right?

You, the hustle built a, I mean, they, they launched trends, but it was

just tech focused people, startups.

That is a very valuable community.

But if you only monetize the way Morning Brew did, which is ad sponsorships, you're

leaving a lot of money on the table.

So when I, there's a good interview with.

Sam and Austin Reef, so Sam Parr and Austin Reef Austin's from

Morning Brew, Sam's from The Hustle.

And Austin said, Sam, you were, you had the best roadmap to

build a billion dollar company.

I had the best roadmap to build a hundred million dollar company.

One monetized via ad sponsorships.

One was monetizing via ad sponsorships.

But also reoccurring revenue or annual reoccurring revenue with trends.

And if I could build out a ecosystem that has multiple verticals

like that that's where I think we, we have a lot of potential.

Yeah, I think I totally agree.

I think.

Above all else, you know, media company, the newsletter industry is something

that has traditionally been treated as a performance marketing channel,

a competitor to Facebook ads or a competitor to other paid sponsorships

that are supposed to drive direct clicks and direct leads and direct revenue.

And I do think that'll be a challenging positioning moving forward as more people

launch newsletters and there's more.

Optionality and it kind of becomes a race to the bottom.

Yeah, a lot of different newsletter businesses that are threat.

You know, I, I talked with Tommy, our buddy, Tommy Clark about this a lot.

You know, he's got a social media newsletter, all social media managers.

And so, you know, my buddy Jared Kleinstein runs this platform

called gondola and gondolas for social media creators.

And so if I were, you know, choosing between Tommy's 20 something, a thousand.

Subscribers and your six figure number of subscribers, you know,

and he's cheaper, but I'm reaching social media people strictly.

Yeah.

And that's my target demo versus you have, you might even have the

same amount of social media managers in your audience as he does total.

Yeah.

But it's so much more specialized that it does seem like that's more so

where sponsors are going is finding those super niche communities.

So I think building YouTube is.

I mean, ultimately I had a chat with a guy who works at SAP and

I don't even know what SAP does.

They're just an international conglomerate, like Illuminati shit.

And they, yeah, software solutions, business applications and

technology, market leading software.

Like terrible headlines.

They don't care though, dude.

I mean, they're worth billions and billions and billions.

I mean, they did 31 billion in revenue last year.

Or sorry, euros, but I don't recognize euros as real currency and and you

know, we, we, we looked at their YouTube and they're just doing the

most mid, like stale, boring content.

Those companies

don't know how to, how to execute like that.

Because

no one in the seats that are actually driving those.

Vehicles of, of grabbing attention have ever had to have any sort of

ROI attached to their initiatives.

And there's no earning eyeballs there's, we have a massive audience.

So let's put stuff in front of this audience.

And there's all sorts of different educational, interesting short

form content on Instagram that we'll talk about how, you know, 90

percent of Canada's population lives within a 30 mile radius of the U.

S.

border and then talk about the geo economic impact of what that is

and what it does on the power grid.

That's shit that someone like SAP could easily be creating that sort of

serious, but still entertaining content.

Yeah.

They're just not adapting it to the right medium.

Vox,

Vox is one of the best companies at doing this.

They take very complicated things and it's like, blank explains, so tech explained.

Right.

And they do these breakdowns that they could do as well.

And

now look at Clio.

Right.

She's building that from a creator led business and she's taking that principle

and she's going to be, instead of it being Vox media, it's going to be, I really

like Cleo's videos, Abraham and so all of these different massive international

conglomerates could adapt themselves to the modern world and with media.

And so it's, it's going to be interesting to see as you build out serious.

building for entertainment, how will there be a white labeling

opportunity similar to what you're doing with brand builders in Vermont?

Yeah.

Where software companies can kind of come to you and say, we want

to build this series and we want you to drive it and create it.

So you launched, you launched a successful media brand in 2021, but if you were going

to launch one in 2024, what would you do?

If I was doing it this year, the first thing I would do is It

has to be a founder led brand.

Like the founder has to be the front of it more so.

And I hate to use like Gary V as an example, but imagine Gary V being the

front of a media company today or three years ago would have been much more

powerful than, you know, XYZ company just launching a, another media brand.

So people want to be connected to the founder because they like

the founder and his thoughts.

And then his thoughts are then the reflection in the media brand.

The second thing I would think of is think about how you're going to be

monetizing outside of ad sponsorships.

Ad sponsorships is great, but at the same time, as you get those eyeballs

every month, you're basically starting at zero again, or, you know, you sell

a hundred K in sponsorships this month.

Well, it's now March and you're at zero again, you have to sell another a hundred

thousand sponsor thousand in sponsorships.

Yeah.

So think about how you're going to monetize.

That's not a course, right?

I like, you don't want to be a course business.

Do you want to launch communities?

Do you want to launch paid events?

Do you want to launch like, do you want to have a SAS product?

Whatever it is, figure out your way of monetizing and then build a community.

And then within that, when I say community, build a, a pocket of community

through the newsletter, then use that community to really understand what

you should launch on the backend.

So survive with ad sponsorships, then thrive with building out other products

on the backend of, of your insights.

Then the third thing I would say, which is contradicting to what we're doing

is I wouldn't start with a newsletter.

You know, a newsletter is one of the easier things to build, but I would

start with YouTube or a podcast.

I'd start with an asset that that is that, that the

market is not saturated with.

It is too easy to launch.

A newsletter right now, it is not easy to put out a good YouTube video or

sorry, build a good YouTube channel or build a build out a good podcast.

So I would really lean into differentiating with what one of

those things and then build your newsletter is the middle funnel piece

and the thing with YouTube and podcast podcasting that I really like is.

This idea of content minutes, we talked about it on the episode with Kane,

which I think is an episode before this, but is this idea of a YouTube

video or getting somebody to spend 15 to 20 minutes with you, a podcast,

somebody spending 45 minutes with us.

You're building fandom versus building subscribers and the whole

you want to monetize later downstream.

You want to build fandom versus subscribers are a

big essentially number count.

So there's a, there's a big argument to be had there with a lot of the

most successful companies getting built right now are getting built on

the back end of a podcast or YouTube.

The fourth thing is focused on inbound versus outbound.

One thing that, you know, we struggled with initially was we were building

outbound engines versus inbound engines.

So understanding what drives inbound, is it really pushing out

content on LinkedIn and Instagram?

If it is, build out teams there because it's going to, it's, it's a much different

conversation when you're talking to an inbound lead versus an outbound lead.

One you're trying to convince and you're trying to sell yourself.

The other, they're coming to you.

They want to advertise with you.

They want to work with you.

You now have leverage on pricing.

There's the desire versus the other one is, is us desiring to

get them to, to, to, to pay us.

So yeah, the fifth and final one that I would say is, and this is me

personally as a CEO and as the founder of the company, hire where you're

weak, play right into your strengths.

And when I first started, I tried playing into my weaknesses as well because I

wanted to get better in those areas.

Don't just hire for those areas whether that's, and for me, that's like

being very organized and doing things that are, are repetitive processes.

That's why we brought in fives and that has.

That's completely changed the game for us playing to my strengths, which

is content creation and strategy and being able to put all my 90 percent

of my time there and 10 percent of it.

As you know, as this side, the company is just going to do a lot better and

you're not going to affect the company.

So if I was starting a media brand in 2024, those are the five things

I'd focus on right out the gate.

Love it.

Love it.

So to like go right into it, cause I know we're doing a free game segment.

What is this that's in the middle of the table?

And why do we even have create here?

I don't, we're not sponsored by create.

Am I just, do I just like.

Yeah.

Am I not looking good?

No, no, no.

We're putting a promo code for create in the, in the description.

I gotta, I gotta show Dan some social proof.

All right.

And just a reminder, if you leave a review and you're one of the first

20 people to leave a review, you will be entered to win a sweat equity hat.

Just send us a screen shot of the review, DM it to Alex or I on Instagram.

And we will let you know if you win us based only, sorry to anyone

that is not, but those shipping fees get a little bit outrageous.

So this box is from, we hosted that dinner in LA and we met this guy, Alec, right?

And Alec is building an interesting thing in my opinion.

So he's building a two sided business.

Number one, he's got a newsletter and you know, the newsletter.

Is basically like product reviews and all sorts of stuff like that for anything

in the health and wellness space.

And so what does he do next?

Is he layers in a subscription box, right?

So the subscription box has products like blenders eyewear, for example,

or it has you know, bad ace, which is like this base moisturizer.

He's got more labs, which is liquid focus.

So it's pretty much a lot of stuff for this new class of hybrid athlete, right?

This person that wants to be as optimized as they can, they're going to choose

better products, more expensive products with transparent ingredients vetted

out, probably recommended by their favorite influencer, stuff like that.

And Alex looking at it the right way.

He's building the newsletter first, and then he is monetizing downstream.

So he's got 2, 800 subscribers on the newsletter.

And, you know, he's now getting into this subscription box game.

It's going well.

But one thing that we like to promise our listeners is if you leave a review, we're

going to do a free game segment for you.

So we're going to do an entire growth playbook real quick for Lux,

which is the name of this brand.

So what I want to get into is a few things.

So number one.

He is coming into, you got to look at it from the entire landscape and

he's coming into a really saturated space at this point, you were

launching this product in, I don't know, 2017, not as much competition,

but now the whole health wave, health and wellness wave is in full swing.

It's reaching the mainstream.

Think about how many friends you have that just ran a marathon.

It's everybody.

Everyone's training for something.

Everyone's a hybrid athlete and they're considering themselves such.

So there's two ways to look at that.

Number one, your total addressable market is now bigger.

It's a lot of people that you can go acquire, but at the same time, you do

need to stand out in a crowded space.

And so how is he going to stand out?

Well, he's kind of upmarket.

He does have the newsletter where he's recommending things.

I do think you have to really speak to your target customer and

find who is that target customer.

Is it men or is it women?

Here's why, because women need to buy gifts for their men and who's

traditionally really hard to shop for?

Dad.

He doesn't know what the hell he wants anyway.

And so, you know, what better way to curate something for your dad than a

subscription box of male focused products?

So I think he should probably look at what are the downsides about

not having this subscription box.

Well, there's a few.

Number one, packages arriving separately.

It's kind of annoying if I ordered all this stuff separately

and I got to go pick it up.

And you know, it's nice to have it consolidated.

Not a super difficult pain point.

Men don't shop that much anyway.

A lot of them shop in retail.

So you do have to be mindful that that might not be a

strong enough emotional thing.

To go after another issue, having to constantly reorder any of these products.

I don't really feel like people enjoy subscription boxes anyway.

I don't think people like subscriptions.

I think oftentimes they order the subscription to, and this is backed up by

data from our friends at create gummies.

Dan just put out a thread on this the other day, I think almost

50 percent of his subscriptions, and I might be wrong, but like.

Almost 50 percent of his subscriptions canceled day one,

they get the subscription discount and then they cancel immediately.

That's crazy.

And it's to take advantage of the promo.

And so, when that is the behavior that you're trying to fight against.

And you're going to build a subscription business, you got to take a step back

and everyone wants to build subscription because it's sexy from a business model

perspective, but your customer behavior is going to be a little resistant to it.

And so that's why I think going after the gifting angle, which is a lot of

women struggle to get gifts for their men that they know their men will use.

Is you're dealing with a different customer.

They're not going to be as sensitive to continuously getting billed.

If they see that their man is using these products repeatedly, every

quarter or whatever the cadence is for the subscription, then

they're going to keep buying it.

They're going to keep reordering it.

And, you know, the other thing is he's been building this media angle

and that side of it is recommending the nicest products and, you know,

sort of the hybrid athlete space.

So, you know, if you can sort of use that as a vetted recommender, so that there

is a place for these target customers to then go look at the information about

what's in the subscription box, that'll be pretty strong put together the inspiration

for the gifting side is my friends.

Run this business called and our wallets and not in our wallets.

It's just like, and our name, they make all sorts of leather goods,

backpacks, wallets, whatever.

And it was so interesting about talking to them is their most effective ads

at the start were marketing to women.

saying your man's never going to buy a nice wallet and you

know that thing looks ugly.

You hate it.

You hate that bulky wallet.

So get him something that looks actually cool.

And it

worked really, really well.

Didn't Manscaped play into that as well?

Like they targeted women in real life.

Do you like your man to be buried down here XYZ?

And then it was like a lot of women and all their targeting was, yeah,

women and gifting it to their man.

Right.

No, I think that's the right play.

I think that the right play is looking at the gifting angle.

The other thing I'm thinking about is, if most people cancel after one month, and

I know this is for Create, like, Do you offer the three month or the six month

or the nine month like package where they're buying it at a slight discount,

but you're getting it for three months.

I think there's also a way to play into the trend of like maxing.

Yeah, because this is to me, this is, and I had this conversation with Vanessa.

This was a really random conversation where I was like, Ness.

I don't know why, but lately I've wanted to buy like a 30 bar of soap.

And she was like, what?

And I was like, I don't know.

Like I'm bougie.

I just feel like using, using something like that would just work, work for me.

Yeah.

Super, super dumb.

But it is, it plays into this idea of, of yeah.

Are they chill?

They're, they're good.

They seem chill.

Yeah, they're good.

I should have put mine on too.

But I think you could play into the trend of maxing.

I feel like there's.

It's probably going to be three to four different ICPs, ideal customer

profiles that you're going to play into.

Like that person that is trend maxing, the person that, that is the optimum guy or

just constantly optimizing everything and then you're playing into like the gifting.

Yeah.

I mean, that's another excellent point is.

You know, going after people that are, you know, if you're trying to have

people that are maxing, right, those people are not going to be nearly

as sensitive to any of the massive margins that you're trying to charge.

And a lot of the times the worst place to be is in the upper middle

class demographic like competing for that customer is crowded.

So it is worth it to go super ultra luxury.

Yeah.

You know, charge.

Do you make different boxes

then?

Do you make one that's the gifting box?

Do you make one that's the, the, the guy, the one that's for the optimizer

versus the one that's like maxing, right?

Like the guy that's maxing may want to have the best face.

You know, all the products that are best for how they look versus the

optimizer wants the liquid focus.

You might not care about the laundry sheets, but he might care about the

laundry sheets if they don't have this one, this one ingredient that, that

then reduces your testosterone by 1%.

Right.

Like I think there's ideas of, okay, what are those ICPs?

Now you're making the boxes for those three ICPs versus one box for everyone.

Yeah, that's where I think it's, it's tough.

It's an excellent point because a lot of the most successful

supplement brands, I was thinking about launching a supplement brand last year.

Take advantage.

It's, it's great.

I just like my core business is so much more profitable right now that I don't

want to throw away 50, 000 which is what it's like to launch an econ brand.

If anyone is curious, but I think You know, what, what he could do is, is

the way that someone like heart and soil, which is a supplement brand

here in Austin, they're crushing, they merchandise their products by goal.

So is your goal gut health is your goal mood is your goal to gain muscle?

What is, what is the actual goal?

And that is how they structure their entire website is.

Right off the bat that that's the categories you're looking at.

You're not looking at, you know, type of supplement or anything like that.

And similarly, I wonder if, you know, for a subscription box to be

so diversified, he's betting on, I want every single man to like every

single product in my subscription box.

Did you ever try Stitch Fix or any of those clothing subscriptions?

I need to because you know these thighs

just bust through pants left and right.

You are thick with two C's, but that's not what I'm asking.

Is the problem with Stitch Fix was they would send you five

different pieces of clothing.

And you're, you're, you're really only going to like two to three of them.

Sorry.

I started cut you off.

I thought Stitch Fix is like when you, they somehow do like the dimensions.

Oh, like they tailor it.

Yeah.

That's why I said that.

Oh no, no.

I know what Stitch Fix is.

Like they send you two t shirts, a pants and like shorts.

Rotating

subscription box.

And so they will send you a bunch of clothes.

And the problem is over time, You get three boxes in a row where

now it's 15 items that you've been shipped and you only liked five.

Yeah.

Kind of like, ah, fuck it.

I don't want to like keep returning this.

And doing all this stuff and I think that's the game you play by being

for everybody with this subscription box is you're making a pretty big

gamble that I'm going to enjoy every single product that you curate for me.

Yeah.

If you're just doing a generic box versus what you just described.

If my goal is to get my skin dialed and you're the guy that's vetting out the

best skincare products that are non toxic and are going to make me look younger

and get rid of wrinkles or whatever.

Like.

There's some very specific benefits that you can lean into if you go a little more

direct with the benefit you're pitching.

Yeah,

so what I think you could do is Find those three ICPs.

Is it the, the look maxing individual?

Is it the optimizer?

Ultra luxury, I think.

I think like, you know, Le Labo and Mer what is it?

Merlin and Goats?

And then I think what you, like you have those three ICPs,

then figure out what are the goals attached to those ICPs.

For the look maxing, is it the best Facebook or Facebook?

Is it the best face routine?

Is it the best skin routine?

Whatever.

And create boxes for each one of those goals.

Do the same thing for the optimizer.

Do the same thing for He did the dad or like the gifting individual, right?

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

I think he could play into that.

And then, and then so some, some more tactical, tactical stuff that he should

be looking at is this thing, this concept called the publisher funnel.

So what a lot of econ brands are doing right now is they're, they're using a

tactic called whitelisting to sort of interrupt the usual pattern of, I see

Instagram ad from brand and therefore don't really want to continue watching.

And if I see an Instagram ad and the person that's running the ad isn't

an actual brand, it looks like it might be a publication talking about

specifically the example that I'm referencing is, is mushroom coffee.

So rise super foods does this a lot.

They run a Instagram ad from a company or a page called mushroom

coffee direct or something like that.

Mushroom coffee.

Farmer's dog does this.

Yeah.

A ton.

A lot of these people will do it and it's called the publisher funnel.

When you're running that type of ad, you, you have a new style of landing

page that you can send people to, you can incorporate listicles, which are

several different reasons, five reasons why the Lux box is perfect for every

man and, or you can, you know, five reasons why the Lux box is better

than man crate or something like that.

You can do direct competition type of things.

And there's a, there's a graphic that I'm going to, I want to put up here on the,

on the YouTube and we'll, we'll attach it.

But this company called BuzzSumo did some research and this is

very quantitative research.

Fuck, is it quantitative or qualitative bro?

Quantitative is the numbers, right?

Cause it has the N.

So that's how I always remember it, quantitative.

It's like former and latter, you know, I just like,

I got to Google it every time.

Yeah, but so we'll put this graphic up, but the best ways to they have

the top 20 phrases that are starting headlines in articles ranked by how

much engagement those headlines get.

And so X ways to is the best way to start a headline.

So five ways to, you know, lift your aesthetic five ways to, you

know, fix your skin problems.

X of the second, how to make is third and then the X best is

fourth and so on and so forth.

We got the top 20.

And so if I'm Alec, I am creating a ton of listicles running them.

He has the publisher page, you know, that's playbook.

That's this newsletter that you've started.

So you want to run, I would run his ads from the playbook, which when

people go to playbook, it looks like an innocent, you know, kind of wire

cutter for men's health products.

And so run a publisher funnel from playbook on your meta ad account and

incorporate different ways to call out the desired benefit of using

your product using these top 20.

Formats that are proven to get engagement and proven to get people to actually

open the article and see what happens.

I'm there with you.

Yeah.

I think the right, the right move.

So, you know, to recap, definitely look into the type of product offerings

that you're doing and grouping things by more specific benefits, because.

It's really hard to be a generic subscription box.

It'll, it'll be really, really hard to retain your users because there's going

to be a lot of times where you're not going to satisfy their needs and they

just paid 100 and they feel like they got 50 of value and that's going to pit

them against you and want to cancel.

I think that's going to be the biggest issue you

face is, is the retention.

I don't think acquisition will be too hard.

The first time purchase will be too hard.

I think it's going to be the retention play of like the box isn't

for me because I'm not getting the products I need based on my goals.

If the product is tailored towards my goals Then I'll stick around.

Yeah.

A hundred percent.

And then second is incorporate this publisher funnel or that acquisition.

And Alec, let's see how it goes, man.

Appreciate the blenders.

That's it for today's episode.

As we mentioned at the beginning, and as you just watched, if you leave a review

and you send us a screenshot, we will try and grow your brand live on the podcast.

You know, we got some really cool episodes in the backlog that

we're excited for y'all to see.

Man, these guests things have been cool.

Been awesome to like learn from the masters and just kind of get unfiltered.

Are you going shades off?

I'll go shade.

Yeah, but it fucks with me.

Yeah.

These work.

But yeah, we'll see y'all next time on sweat equity.

I'm Brian bloom.

Follow me at Brian bloom on Instagram, on Twitter.

Connect with me on LinkedIn, please.

And Alex, tell them

where to find you.

Yeah, and then you can find me at alexgarcia underscore

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LinkedIn's just alexgarcia.

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And maybe we'll even send somebody one of these blenders I wear.

Yeah, for real.

Alright, we'll catch y'all next time.

Alright, peace.