In terms of growing the business,

it's just trying to identify

what the constraints are, right?

What's preventing us from growing and how

do we fix that? How do we attack that?

How do we problem solve for that?

Hey, thanks again for tuning into

the E-Commerce Evolution podcast.

I want to take just a minute and

talk about my agency OMG Commerce.

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strategic review with you. With that

back to the show. Well,

hello and welcome to another edition

of the E-Commerce Evolution podcast.

I'm your host, Brett

Curry, CEO of OMG Commerce.

And today my guest is the one the only be

Brodie from Tactical Baby Gear.

I love this brand, I love these

products. I love the story of this brand.

And so this is going to be a show that

covers lots of different facets of

running and growing an

e-commerce business.

I love opportunities to sit down and talk

to somebody who's in the trenches from

product development to

brand building, to scaling,

to figuring out what the heck's going on

in the economy and how do we still grow

through the madness. And

he's also a podcast host,

the Ultimate Dad podcast. So we'll talk

a little bit of family stuff as well,

which we have that in common, both

family men. And so with that beef,

how you doing, man? Welcome to

the show and thanks for coming on.

Thanks for taking the time.

Yeah.

Yeah, I appreciate it. Thank

you. Yeah, I'm doing really good.

I'm doing really good. Yeah,

you have a bunch of kids too.

I got a bunch of kids, man. I got

eight kids. It's wild times. Golly.

I can't hold a candle to that

and I'm not trying to catch up.

Yeah, that's what most people say.

Like, Hey, I know this isn't a contest,

but if it was weren't, I'm not trying

to beat you. I'm not trying to win.

And so that's kind of the way it

goes. But dude, I got to just ask,

you've got an amazing setup right now.

Your.

Camera, it's a good look, dude,

like the background, everything.

Talk to us about what's your tech

stack here for your podcast setup?

Yeah. Alright, so those who are

interested in the nerdy stuff I'm running.

This is a ZVE one full frame camera,

great sensor. It's a

24 mil 1.4, so that blurred out back.

And then I got my.

Podcast Focal Links and Aperture there

for those that want to get nerd. Yeah,

the great podcast, Mike. So

that's awesome, man. Well,

excited to dive into a lot here.

You're one of the rare, I would say,

male founders in the baby space

in what you guys have achieved.

You might think so. That is what I think.

So correct me. Am I mistaken in that?

Yeah. Well a lot of the guys

I know in the baby space,

particularly in the mobility space,

strollers and wagons

and that sort of thing,

most of that side of the industry

is run by a bunch of old white guys.

I mean, that is what I also heard. I know

some people that are trying to rework,

disrupt the undergarment space, like

the female underwear, and they're like,

yeah, most of the problem here is it's

old white dudes that run this industry.

And so Makes sense. Yeah.

So you're trying to reshape that for sure.

So I want to talk about several

things. 2025 has been a weird year.

We've kind of faced some headwinds with

tariffs and auction issues on meta and

government shutdown

and all kinds of stuff.

So we'll kind of talk

through some headwinds.

We want to talk about business

growth and a variety of things.

But first for people that don't

know or haven't heard this story,

what is tactical Baby gear and

where did this idea come from and

why launch a baby product company?

Yeah, so I'll give you

the abbreviated version.

I could go all day telling the story, but

I started Tactical Baby Gear

in 2013 when I found out

we were having another girl. I

had one daughter at the time,

and I had the pleasure of

carrying my wife's purple

diaper bag. Hold on. I actually have.

A here. Oh, you got it. You got

this for those watch right here. Oh,

look at that. Just said

the is very purpley. Yeah,

that's not going to give you a lot of

street cred with other dads. I mean,

girl dad, and I'm a girl dad as

well. I've got six daughters,

so I'm used to carrying stuff like this.

So people give you the nod of approval,

but that's not what you want to

carry all the time. Look at me, look.

At me. Do I look like

the kind of guy who must.

Got it doesn't fit.

For me?

God, guns and diaper hat on? Come on man.

A purple bag is not

what you're wanting to.

Rock. Yeah, I mean it's fine. We all step

up to the plate, we man up, we do it,

and it's like whatever.

But then you're walking through

the store and you're like, man,

I really hope one of my buddies doesn't

see me carrying this thing Nice purse

around. Yeah.

So anyways,

we're doing ultrasounds and

stuff with my second child.

We find out it's another girl

and I was like, God dang it.

I'm so sick of carrying this bag. And

at the time I was building custom cars.

I've got a shop, we build custom

cars, really high-end stuff.

We've set world records, built stuff

for celebrities, et cetera, et cetera.

Featured in magazines

and things like that.

But one of the things

we did was upholstery.

So I've got sewing machines

and things like that,

and I couldn't find a bag. I had no

interest in starting a baby brand.

That wasn't part of my thing at all.

I was trying to become Jesse James,

you know what I mean? And so I was like,

well, I'm just going to make a bag.

I can't find anything close

to what I would want to carry.

And then all my buddies are like,

yo, that's sick. Make me one too.

And I was like, man, this could be

a cool little side hustle, whatever.

I got so much time for that. In between.

Building.

Cars, build custom cars

and one thing leads to

another that leads to another.

And then suddenly I've got this side

hustle that's got more demand than I can

keep up with and I'm trying to

figure out how to manage all of it.

I don't know anything about e-commerce,

I don't know anything about sales.

All I know how to do is

make a cool car. That's it.

And so I reached out to a buddy of

mine I went to high school with who had

developed a product and was selling it

to Target and a bunch of big box retail

stores. I was like, oh, that's

the guy I should reach out to.

So I called him and I was

told him what I had going on.

He starts asking me some really simple

basic questions. I was like, dude,

I don't know anything about this

crap. I don't even know what a UPC is.

He's like a barcode. And I was

like, oh yeah, right, sure, yeah,

I guess if I want to sell stuff like

this, that's probably a good idea.

So anyways,

those conversations lead into

him becoming a partner and

then we really hit the ground running.

He's ended up selling his business.

He really believed in what I had started

with TBG and was able to help me really

build it as a business. And he's

an operations guy, he's like,

he's that kind of guy. So

helpful to have a product.

Visionary,

growth-minded guy with an ops

person as well. It's really.

A necessary thing if you want

to make big moves in my mind,

it's hard to do it without it,

but so that's kind of the origin story

and how we got started and why we got

started. And since I have that prop here,

this is my everyday bag that I carry.

But dude,

this is what one of our current diaper

bags looks like and it's got camo.

You got the space for patches, you

get the wipe in some kid stuff,

insulated cooler pouch for

bottles, things like that.

It's got a ton of features. It's

got changing mat, stroller, straps,

everything you would

expect in a diaper bag,

but looks nothing like a diaper bag.

Looks nothing like a diaper bag.

It's feature rich, right? Guys,

we can geek out about the features.

What do we want to do when we're

hanging out with other dads?

We want to show off our gear. So why

this gear is better than your gear,

right? She went off your custom

car in the garage or whatever.

And so love this. And so started in 2013.

I've been kind of following your journey

for quite a while because Kurt Eler

mutual friend,

I know he runs kind of the dev

side and the side of your brand,

did a brilliant job there.

And so I been watching that.

I want to fast forward to this year

just really briefly give some folks some

kind actionable stuff and

then we'll, like I said,

talk about a variety of things we can

bounce around. It's been a weird year.

So we had tariffs, which has locked

things up for a little while.

We've had meta disruptions,

yet the government shutdown,

it's now coming to a close

and things like that.

How have you faced the

headwinds of 2025 and then

maybe more broadly, how do you

approach problems in general?

Because obviously 2026 is going to

bring its own unique set of challenges.

So how have you weathered

the storm this year?

Yeah, it's been extra weird for

us too. Coming off the back of my,

actually the daughter who inspired me

to start the business, she had cancer.

And so I spent the last two and a

half years living in hospitals and

taking care of her fighting cancer.

And thankfully she's doing really,

really good now. So amazing that

she's been in full recovery. Love it.

It was rough.

So I'm coming off the back of that and

being distracted with that and getting

back into the business this year and

really trying to refocus, try to, okay,

I'm get my head back in the game.

And then we face some of these other

things and there's some things where I'm

like, alright,

are we struggling because I had my eye

off the ball for a little while and

things got a little messy or is it tough

because of all these other things? So

for us, it was a little bit of

both, I think. You know what I mean?

So there's a lot of things that I've

had to do to reestablish a foundation

within the business, put a lot of

SOP systems and processes and things like

that in place that allow people to do

their job more effectively,

more efficiently,

keep me from having to do certain things

so that I can focus back on growing the

business and not being in the

weeds and being such an employee.

So there was that side of it,

which was probably the biggest

thing for us is trying to get

me back out of being an

employee and being an owner,

which is such a mind change. You

know what I mean? Mindset change,

which is really.

Tough. I heard that phrase one time.

It's going from being in the

business to being above the business.

So there's this thought of working

on the business instead of in it.

I really like that thinking above the

business where what if I was an investor?

What if I was just a financial interest?

Would I move pieces or how would

I architect this or engineer this?

And so got to do a little

bit of both obviously.

But.

Yeah, love that.

Yeah, so that was one of the biggest

things for us. And I went into,

this year we hired some agencies to

help with Facebook ads and things like

that, that were taking up a lot

of my time and trying to outsource

Amazon, which became an epic failure.

And we had to take that back over and

that was a whole nother thing. But

with the tariffs thing in particular,

we had an unfortunate situation where

we had a manufacturing partner that was

just taking advantage of us

through all the COVID stuff.

And every time we would make

a small change to our product,

they would increase the price.

Like ah, COVID more expensive.

And we were with them for 10 years, so

we had a lot of trust with them. They's

been really good to us for a long time.

And then the quality product and all that,

they started to take advantage of

us on the price side and it was just

continuously eroding our margins.

Same with coming off of an election year

with Facebook ads and political money

thrown in the system. CPMs

are up, everything's a mess.

So our margins really got eroded

through a lot of that stuff.

And so we cut ties with

our manufacturing partner,

went with some new factories and

stuff, which really cut our margins,

got our margins back, and then

tariffs hit and we're like, oh my God,

like a break, man. Can't catch a break.

But we have been super lucky and

been very fortunate with Alex,

my business partner,

really keeping an eye on the

climate of a lot of those things

And staying, I think

probably more luck than good.

And I think he would agree that

we're always one step ahead of some of

these major changes and it keeps us from

being really screwed. Super important.

Same thing happened with in 20 16,

20 17 when all the China

tariffs hit the first time

we had just moved all our

manufacturing out of China to Vietnam,

and then the China tariffs hit. We were

like, whoa, we got lucky there too. So

it's been an interesting ride,

but we're very fortunate that we've been

able to navigate a lot of that stuff

and we're still in the game

and not everyone can say that,

which really sucks for a lot of people,

but we look at those things as we,

we'll figure it out mentality, we're

just going to power through it.

We'll figure it out.

As entrepreneurs and business

owners and product developers,

you're just solving problems all the time.

And some days' just a

different set of problems.

From one problem to the next.

That's the game forever.

We're solving problems, trying

to anticipate the next problem,

trying to have some first principles,

mindset to handle problems as they pop up.

And that's just the game. That's

the game of being a founder and.

Being a business leader for

sure, a hundred percent.

So that's how we tend to

think about those things.

And in terms of growing the business,

it's just trying to identify

what the constraints are,

what's preventing us from growing and how

do we fix that? How do we attack that?

How do we problem solve for that? Do we

need to hire, do we need to outsource,

do we need to, whatever that

is. Is it a new sales channel,

is a new marketing channel, is

it right? Any of those things.

I love that.

Let's actually pause for a minute and

see if you have any more to add to that,

because I love the approach of looking

at what are the constraints in the

business? This is what

I'm trying to accomplish,

this rate of growth at this EBITDA margin

to reach this outcome at this given

time. But what are the constraints?

So what are the components going

into that and making up that growth?

And then what are my constraints?

So any recent examples of where you've

identified a constraint that's limiting

growth and how you've kind of

tackled it? And you can be as.

Specific or as general as you'd

like. Yeah, I mean for us,

I think there's two things

we're up against presently.

One of them is I think we are sort

of maxing out what we can do in terms

of ad spend on meta because

we don't have the volume

of content to throw at the platform.

Because we all know right now that

the game on meta ads is volumes

of content. It needs to be good,

but you need to have a lot of it.

And with the Andros we were talking

about when we were hanging out in Denver,

it's like it's not just amount of content,

but there's got to be content diversity.

So you've got to have enough very unique

content aimed at different avatars and

things like that. If you don't have that.

You're going to be behind a little bit.

So oftentimes I become the bottleneck,

which is why I've been trying to remove

myself from being an employee for so

many different tasks. So

that was a constraint,

which is why we started

outsourcing things. Get someone

else to do Facebook ads,

get someone else to manage Amazon, get

someone else to, whatever the thing is,

try to outsource the things and get

someone to do it better than I can.

That's one constraint. Another

is I make all the content,

a lot of it, or at least my face

is in a lot of content, you're.

In the content.

So that creates another bottleneck,

which truthfully needing diverse

content and different looking people,

male, female, black,

white, Hispanic, whatever,

different locations is almost frees me up.

But now we have to manage finding other

people to make the content and is it up

to par and getting UGC stuff and

that UGC content is a whole nother

thing.

And we can touch on that because I've

learned a valuable lesson recently around

UGC, but another, and we can

come back to that. But yeah,

definitely come back to that,

The

constraints side of things. It's

just a lot of it is hypothesis too,

right? Okay, we're stuck here. I want

to get here. What is holding us back?

Well, I think we need to

make more content or I think

maybe we need to find a new marketing

channel to use the existing content we

have because we we've it

out on other platforms.

Can we use that same content

on a different platform

to acquire new customers

there? What does that look like?

And you start to hypothesize what

you think the constraints are

and then try to problem solve for it

and then you confirm or deny that works.

Totally, totally. So I think that's.

Sort.

Of the workflow.

It totally makes sense. And that's

just to use a media buying analogy.

We do a lot with YouTube ads and YouTube

has kind of been one of the vehicles

for our growth and why people are

attracted to us and things like that.

And there's several things we look at.

You look at some of the early

signs of is this ad or this

campaign working?

And you look at things like view rate

and engagement rate and watch time per

impression and click through rate and how

are people engaging with this content?

And that's good, but obviously what

ultimately matters is are people buying.

And so if the end goal is scale

at a CAC goal or scale at a

ROAS goal, what are the

components that make that up?

And so this is what we do all

day long. It's looking at, okay,

actually everything is working

here except the conversion rate.

And so then what is made up

of conversion rate? Well,

it's either the quality of the traffic,

it's the quality of the offer

or it's some component there.

The message.

Is it the website? Is

there a hiccup? Is there.

Problem?

So you start breaking that down over and

over and over again and then it's like,

okay,

well then these then are the three or

six things we need to test and in this

sequence. And then you get to the

bottom of it and then you scale. So.

Yeah.

Yeah. But I think the cool thing is you

can take that mentality and apply it to

essentially every area of business.

So that's awesome. Talk about UGC.

We obviously UGC is a winner across

all socials, it's big on YouTube.

What have you learned there?

The interesting breakthrough

moment I had mentally about UGC and

you see a lot of UGC ads run, I

cringe at them, I can't stand them.

I get about 45 emails a day from

agencies to connect you with

UGC creators and blah, blah, blah.

And we have a bunch of influencers that

we work with that create content for us

and these sorts of things, but they're

in their own way, their own thing.

And I recently was on a call

with smart marketer about UGC

stuff and blah, blah, blah.

And when they broke down their

workflow on dealing with UGC creators

and everything that goes into it, it

became very clear to me in that moment,

there is a big difference between

an influencer and a UGC creator.

It's a completely different business.

It is the influencer you're paying

for access to their audience,

which I would argue you're not even

getting access to their audience anymore

with the way the algorithms are. And

oftentimes they're so stuck in the content

that they have made forever that built

this audience over the last five,

10 years that the numbers aren't

great anymore. Anyways for them,

the UGC creators are like, Hey,

hire me as a paid actor. And it's like,

give me the product, let me

know what you want me to say.

I'll make you the content, I'll

record it. I'll send you the assets,

whatever stipulations you have,

and pay me to make the content

or record the thing for you.

I'm not posting it to a

platform with lots of followers,

I'm might do any of that kind of stuff.

And that was the big learning point.

I was like, oh shit,

influencers and UGC and your

customer's reviews, those are separate.

Too different. Totally different thing.

But UGC creator is a very specific

breed and hard to find and it takes a

lot of management.

Yeah, yeah, it does. And one

of the interesting things,

and I know other people share your

same sentiments where it's like, oh,

I see a UGC ad and I just cringe,

I hate it, don't want to watch it,

things like that. I remember

when I was fresh out of college,

I was doing some TV and radio and stuff,

and I remember talking to this creative

guy about TV ads and he was like, Hey,

customer testimonials and video ads,

they don't work anymore. You see that,

you know ad's not going to work. So that

day is over, it's finished. I'm like,

yeah, I don't actually think so

this is like 20 some years ago.

And UGC is more popular than

ever. And here's the thing,

it's always going to

work if it's authentic,

at least authentic feeling,

if it's addressing a problem,

if it's talking about

a feature or benefit,

if it's allowing a prospect to

really connect with a product,

it's always going to work,

but it's a pain and bad

UGC or inauthentic UGC,

it does not work like it used to for sure.

So I would argue that it

probably never worked.

Any tips or tricks or tactics that

you're doing to get really good stuff

in all those categories?

Reviews, UGC, creator.

Content? Well, UGC we're struggling.

I still can't get anything from anybody

that I'm like, I get stuff and I'm like,

what is this? What is this?

So if anyone has tips for

me, leave it in the comments.

I'd love to read them because I'm

on the struggle bus with the UGC.

I also have a hard time

being okay doing it because it

feels so fabricated and whatever.

And that goes back to some of my

moral stuff. Such a brand guy.

Totally get into that. Yeah.

I'll share something on the UGC

side really quickly. I know Ezra,

a Firestone Mutual friend of ours has

some content around ambassador programs

and things like that. You can

get some content from that.

What's interesting is because

I was doing this long ago,

back when I was doing TV and stuff, I

actually put together this resource of,

and this was back in the day when you

were mostly filming things in person.

And so I've actually got this guide

for how to interview someone on camera.

So you should do this for

jewelry stores and other people.

I'd be like the guide behind camera

interviewing. And this was an art,

art and a science to how you ask

questions and how get someone talking and

feeling comfortable.

I'll share that with you.

Maybe that's something I'll

release to a wider group.

But what we'd always do is we would

just ask questions kind of leading,

but just letting someone talk in

their own voice. You end up with

85% or 90% unusable garbage,

boring ums and ahs and

what did you just say?

But then you'll get a couple

of clips that are just amazing.

I remember this one time we were early

on with this jewelry store I was helping

where this guy was like,

Christmas isn't Christmas unless I

have something under the tree with this

jewelry store's name on the bag. And

I'm like, oh, that's an awesome clip.

So we use that for, so you pull a few

of those things and now you're like,

I've got some marketing gold here

that I can use a long, long time.

And so I think part of it is

how do we guide someone in just

being their authentic self?

And then you got to find good editors

who will just weed through the

garbage to find the nuggets.

And the cool thing is AI can really

help with that now as well. So happy to

share a few resources there because the

cool thing is you should be able to get

a lot of UGC because your product is

so unique and because you're targeting

dads, but with cool gear, baby

gear that they want to wear.

But it is difficult, no

doubt about it. It's tough.

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What about working with creators?

Any tips or tactics there?

No, nothing useful. I don't claim

to be an expert in that field.

I don't want to.

Do it all good.

I think one of the things underscore

there is that stuff's not going away.

And so figuring out how to solve

it and do it in an authentic.

Way is key. Yeah, I mean the

most valuable thing that I

find with working with other

creators and influencers

or other internet personalities is I

just create authentic relationships with

these people. You know what I mean?

We'll fly out to wherever they are.

We spend weekends together, we do

things, we go to dinner, whatever it is,

you know what I mean?

And I create a relationship with them

that are authentic real relationships.

It's not like I'm doing a fake

relationship so that I can get whatever,

but that just creates these lifelong

ambassadors and long friends.

And so that's how it's tough to do and

it's slow in some,

it can be slow moving in some capacity

that when I haven't done it as much over

the last few years, obviously

with my daughter's situation, and

we've seen the change of the

quality of creators that we have

in our world.

It's just like a business

relationship for them. They're like,

send me the thing, I'll make you the video

and then you never talk to 'em again.

Right?

I don't like that.

And sometimes the old

saying, sometimes to scale,

you have to do things that don't scale.

And sometimes that flight

across the country,

the dinner with the right key partner

goes a long way. It doesn't scale,

but it can enable you to

scale. And so that's important.

One of the big challenges every

year, all the time for people,

but especially this year is

new customer acquisition.

How are we attracting new customers,

especially when meta it's being wonky

or the things just conversion rates are

low or whatever.

Javi has been approaching new

customer acquisition this year.

And any learnings, insights,

interesting things to share there.

We've approached it a

little bit differently.

As much as I'm a brand guy and I prefer

to be making a lot of content that's

attracting customers versus us chasing

people around the internet convincing

them to buy, there's a time

and a place for it. Totally.

And as I outsource a lot of the

Facebook ads and that sort of thing,

and digging back into the data and the

analytics and we have a pretty low repeat

customer rate, but you buy a bag

that's going to last forever,

you don't need a second one.

Generally they're not coming

back for more diaper bags.

They might come back for a patch

or an accessory or a teddy bear or

something like this, right?

Hey, look at that. Nice. That's awesome.

And they come back and they spend

10 or 20 bucks or something.

But outside of that, so

our first customer, that

purchase really has to matter. It's got

to be profitable, it has to be to be.

And some businesses that's not the case.

They can lose a little bit of money

because the repeat customer and the LTV is

so high that it's like whatever. But

so we've approached it a

little bit differently.

We're being a little bit more aggressive

on the front end trying to do that and

trying different options.

Aggressive in terms of how you're

targeting people or more aggressive in the

offer or both? A little bit of both.

We've tested a lot this year to try to

find different things that we think we

can use to scale without me having to

create so much content because I'm trying

to work on the business and less in the

business, which is a struggle for me.

But yeah, we're just being aggressive

trying and testing different offers,

different audiences, narrowing that down,

really excluding existing customers

from things more than we have before,

which we actually saw an interesting dip

in repeat customer rate when we stopped

spending money on them.

Interesting.

And I was like, so then I was like, well,

maybe our repeat customer

rate's not as bad.

So there was some interesting stuff

there. Then you're like, okay,

well there's a problem to solve. Let's

look into this data. Is this accurate?

But we have a lot of gift giving going

on and all these different things.

So it's like it's tough got It's tough.

It's tough, man.

And this is something that we look at

all the time doing this with a number of

clients right now that

are kind of scaling.

We're in the thick of holiday

shopping right now as we record this.

And so how are we getting

net new customers? How are

we driving incrementality?

And several clients are running

house analytics studies and things,

which are really interesting. But yeah,

we're constantly trying and we see this

across different Google properties,

whether it's p max demand gen

on the YouTube side is yeah,

how are we excluding of course past

customers if it's an acquisition

campaign or a true prospecting campaign,

but also maybe getting even a

little more restricted than that.

Maybe we're excluding site visitors

and some other things like that.

Generally that's not always the best

idea because you want to a little bit of

remarketing in some of your

campaigns really fuel them. Yeah,

we're doing all kinds of stuff because

what it seems like platforms are doing is

really leaning into remarketing

audiences more and more,

even if you're trying to

exclude and go broader. So.

Because these platforms are in the

market of attribution. Totally,

totally. And they're all trying

to steal attribution. I say steal,

I mean what mean? Take credit. Totally.

Totally. Yeah. How can we get the.

Conversion, take credit for the

conversion. And so to optimize that,

the algorithm's going to lean more into

some remarketing almost regardless of

what you do.

Yeah, it's tough.

So one of our big things this year was

really focusing on that new customer row

as more so than we had in the past.

Yeah, love that for sure. And has

that led to some new creative,

I know you said you're trying to limit

that and not be a content factory type of

thing,

but as it led to some new creative or

has it more been on the audience and

campaign testing.

Side? It's been more on the

audience and campaign. I mean,

we are always making new content, but

it's like audience campaign offers.

Those have been a lot of

the testing this year.

Any interesting insights

on the offer side of thing?

I think that's seeing this with a very

large skincare brand we're working with

right now where just gone through a

couple of different phases of different

offers that are kind of seasonal and

content's good, view rates are great,

click-through rates good

on all of it, but man,

one launch is performing

worse than a couple others.

And it's all conversion rate driven.

As we're digging in, we're like,

I think it's just the offer. It's like

the makeup of the, no pun intended,

of the things you're offering here as

a skincare brand. I think that's it.

And so been tweaking and testing

to see if that hypothesis is true.

But what have you guys learned

on the offer side of things.

That for us, and I say

that because for us,

because it's always different,

it's still just a 20% off

offer crushes it for us.

We can try this or this dollar off or get

this thing and get this thing for free

and all kinds of different variations.

10% doesn't move the needle,

15% doesn't move the needle. 20% kills it.

25% really kills it.

Yeah, it kills your

margins potentially too.

And so that sweet spot where it's

motivating gets people to move off center

but still protects margins it seems like.

From all the things we've

tested in the past year.

Again. Yeah, yeah, totally.

Totally makes sense.

Anything new or interesting in the

community building side of things or the

brand building side of things?

And it totally makes sense as I see

your content and see what you've built.

I'd forgotten about the custom car piece,

but you build custom one of a

kind cars, you're a craftsman.

So quality design, look and feel

aesthetic, it matters to you.

And so I know you've guys

have always been good at this,

but any insights on community building,

brand building or how that's

shifted here in the recent past?

Yeah, I mean brand building

is really my strong.

It's like brand building and product

development is really where my heart is.

We haven't done as much of the community

and brand building stuff that I'd like

to be doing in the last few years,

again because of my daughter,

but I'm desperate to get back to it,

which is why I'm trying to lay such a

foundation right now with the rest of the

business so I can break away from some

of that day to day and just get back to

making content, doing podcasts,

creating educational content

for new parents and attracting,

what I try to do is attract

customers to us love it,

versus chasing them around and trying to

convince them with all these offers all

the time.

I feel like a used car salesman

doing it and it's a necessary thing.

There's a time and a

place for it obviously,

but when you talk about first purchase

matters and it has to be profitable and

cost to acquire a customer needs to be

low and you want to get to LTV up as high

as possible and there's no better way

to do that than building a brand and a

community of people who just are

attracted to you and it takes a lot less

convincing.

Yep. And one.

Interesting thing for you too, biv,

that you mentioned this and I think this

is a way that maybe LTV is a little bit

different for you than for others. Maybe

someone's not buying two or three bags,

but I think what you do have though,

you talk about the gifting idea,

you could create this passionate

group of customers. So yeah,

maybe they'll buy one or two things,

but they're also very likely to refer

and very likely to buy a gift for

someone else. And so I think

you could argue that that's a bit like

LTV. So I attracted this one customer,

now I've got community,

I've got offers now.

They love my brand and

love what I'm about.

They're going to be way more valuable

as a customer now they're going to refer

three or four or five

people to me, they're.

Going to be.

Buy something else as long as.

As long as you build that

brand. And when I say brand,

it's like if you replace the

word brand with trust big,

it's like you're building trust,

right? It's reput is ultimately.

And so I'm really big on

that. It's like, yeah,

it's great if I get 'em to come by.

It's even better if they become a fan

of the brand because then you're right,

they refer, which becomes difficult.

No attribution on referrals,

especially pretty hard. So it's you.

Put surveys and a few things

that piece it together,

but ultimately it's pretty hard to track.

Can be difficult

and especially in a day and age where

you can track so many things and you want

to be able to track those things,

sometimes you just let go of it and let

things work. It's kind of refreshing.

Let's actually talk about that for a

second because it's so interesting.

And I have always been a data guy. I

love data. I think it tells a story.

I think it's really valuable.

I think I remember there was

a time when I was like, oh,

MTA is multitouch attribution tools.

It's going to solve all our problems.

Then you get in and you're like, nah,

it actually doesn't really solve our

problems at all. And so then it's like,

all right,

well you probably need some component

or some combination of MTAs,

MMS and incrementality tests.

And even then it's not perfect.

You get post-purchase surveys and

things you kind of pulled together.

And so I think you want to be

directionally accurate and actionable,

but trying to be super precise

is probably a bit of an

exercise in futility.

But how do you look at measurement and

attribution and how do you measure and

understand is what I'm doing working?

Yeah,

I mean we look at a lot of that stuff

obviously on a platform platform,

individual platform level through

the native platforms tools

or through triple whale for example,

which is super common practice, great one.

So we look at some of those things.

A lot of times it's just looking at

different assets within that to what's the

benchmark within the platform? This

one's performing better than this one,

et cetera, et cetera.

But a lot of it is just looking at blended

numbers and some of it you're taking

a wild stab in the dark and you're hoping

you're like, I think this is working.

The data YouTube ads is so

hard, so hard. Hard. It's hard.

It's one the hard one. Yeah,

And you just get, sometimes

your gut will tell you,

and that's a tough one.

And other times you just

attribute or set aside a

small budget for testing. I don't

know what's going to happen with this,

but I'm just testing. So yeah,

I mean it's a lot of roas,

a lot of blended stuff for us that

we're like, we're trying lots of things.

We're testing things. Some

of it is very analytical,

and I also believe that you can

optimize things to a point where you go

backwards. Yeah, that's true.

Especially with conversion

rate optimization or something.

You look at a heat map, you're like,

well, no one's clicking on this thing.

Take it off the site.

You take it off the site and then

suddenly you've got negative actions of

taking from that, and

then you're just like,

what I don't understand or

whatever. Or you start to add,

you definitely be ROAS.

Rich, but growth poor if

you're really optimizing roas,

which can be a bit misleading.

And so I love the blended look to

balance that. So looking at mer,

looking at total ROAS or

total ACOs depending on where

you're looking and things

like that because you've

got to balance it.

And it's one of those things where I

think it's not necessarily always helpful

to look at this data is wrong

or this ROAS lies or whatever.

But sometimes it does.

And sometimes it's like it's just telling

you it's measuring in a certain way

and there are limitations to that

measurement. That's what it's right.

And so understand those limitations

and then make decisions accordingly.

What about channel expansion for you guys?

And I'm thinking more on the

distribution side of things.

So you guys are on Amazon,

are you thinking retail?

Is that a big opportunity for you?

Are you looking at more marketplaces

and how do you view channel expansion?

We're not really looking at retail

right now with my business partners

background in big box

retail stuff. It's just,

we said early on that it's just not

a road we want to go down. Got it.

And we did a little bit,

we had some very strategic retail

partners at one point in time,

the exchange, which is the Army,

it's like the military's target.

It's on every military base.

We had to deal with them for a

while and it was a lot to manage.

It wasn't that fruitful,

truthfully got it through COVID that sort

of fizzled out and we just kind of let

it be.

It was kind a pain in the butt and we

didn't pursue it anymore on our end.

But yeah, so we've got Shopify and Amazon.

I don't think we're looking at any more

sales channels right now in the near

future, at least probably

not in the next two years,

but definitely going harder on

different marketing channels, I think.

Yeah.

And I think one thing about your.

Product is it may not do

great as a standalone in a

retail store without some explanation

because it's different and because

it's very feature rich

and it's very well built,

you almost need some explanation.

You need to see a demo of it

in that target or something.

And so that's where the online

advertising really helps with that.

I think it could help you convert some

of the people that you educate online,

get them to buy more, but

totally makes sense, man,

it is capital intensive.

It doesn't always work out.

The terms are terrible. Like, oh, okay,

A buddy of mine helps people get into

Walmart and he talks about the Walmart hug

of death where it's like, it can be great.

It can also literally put you

out of business. And so yeah,

it's a tricky game for sure. What

about then marketing channel expansion?

What's your philosophy there? What are

you guys looking at thinking about there?

Yeah, I mean we're going to

dive heavier into Amazon ads.

As I briefly mentioned,

we tried to outsource that to an agency

to just manage the Amazon store because

Amazon's a whole nother beast,

and that was a really bad experience.

And so we kind of took the reins back and

we never turned the ads back on and

it's continuing to perform as it was.

So really it was a lot of sort of,

you're converting from your Facebook

traffic basically, of course.

But a lot of the ads we're

running were brand search,

things like that they were going

to convert anyways. Totally.

It was the demand generation from

Facebook ads that converted on Amazon.

So trying to go more top of funnel,

new customer acquisition on Amazon,

and that's where sponsor

brand video really.

Comes into play, or used to

be called video and search.

It kind of creates a

nice picture. But yeah,

someone's searching for a product on

Amazon. You got the category level,

the sponsor brand video. Which

one of your videos that I'm picturing

my mind and I know that you shared in

Denver, just brilliant for that. I

think you want a little bit shorter.

Amazon needs to be more

product demo focused,

but that is a huge way to

get non-brand traffic on

Amazon. My favorite way is responsible

video for most products and for you guys,

I think that's where someone can see

it and when they see it, they're like,

oh yeah, we have so much video.

Content that really the next

big play for us. Love that.

As well as YouTube. We run YouTube ads,

but I was talking to you in Denver,

it's like, we have some

really awesome content.

We got a great product getting this in.

It's always when you get it in front

of the right people and they're like,

holy shit, this is amazing. Take my

money. Know what I mean? Exactly.

So that's the game we need to play.

I'm sort of lost at where and

how to grow and scale that

particular piece of the puzzle on

the YouTube side, because I'm like,

I don't know if this is working and I

don't want to throw money at it more than

I'm already.

Want to get clarity.

And it is one of those things where

you definitely have to triangulate with

YouTube, obviously talk about

that a lot. But yeah, again,

kind of getting post-purchase

surveys and search list studies,

and of course direct conversions,

but also engaged view conversions and

looking at your MTA eventually looking at

a house studies is something with that

really comes I think once a brand is mid

to high, eight figures

probably. And so yeah,

YouTube is a challenge,

but what's interesting there is that's

the platform people are spending more and

more time on. And I hear this,

I was actually talking to a guy who's

kind of in his fifties and he is like,

I just find myself spending

more time on YouTube.

I'm watching golf content and I'm

watching this content, that content.

And then when you kind of blend YouTube

and YouTube tv, you're like, man,

I'm spending a lot of time on these

two platforms. So there's opportunities

there,

but it's not unfortunately for

Google and YouTube and for us

as Advertis I, oh, I guess maybe

this is Help me out. I'm not sure.

It's not as easy as meta, and

I'm not saying the meta is easy,

but Meta's algorithm,

and I heard my buddy Cody Ker

from Jones View talk about this.

There's never been a better

mid funnel engine like

meta where meta knows what you're in the

market for, what you're about to buy.

I just bought an SUV for my wife,

and I don't know if I thought or

searched for all weather floor

mats, floor mats.

I'm seeing I'm about to drop

300 bucks on floor mats.

And so I'm like, Meta's

just scary. Good at that.

Google's good at a lot of things,

but they're also not as good as

tying the loop back for YouTube.

So they make a challenge for YouTube

in particular because YouTube in

particular, you don't tend to.

Click.

From a YouTube, right? Yep, exactly. And

that's one of the biggest issues there.

Yeah, for sure. So love that. And I know

we're going to be chatting about that,

which is super exciting for me.

What about then on the product side?

So are you more of the philosophy of, Hey,

this is our flagship product, you

buy it once you have it for life,

it's amazing. We're just

going to stick with that.

Are you constantly looking at

innovations and tweaks and changes in new

launches? How do you look

at product development?

A little bit of both. I mean,

when we develop a product,

we want to make it the last one you

buy. You know what I mean? Love that.

Some people come back a few years later

and buy another one because every year

or two, we continue to make improvements

on our existing products. We're like,

we could really make this a little better.

So if you look back at version

one versus version four,

it's quite a bit different.

And you're like, wow,

version four is really

refined. I want the new one.

So that's one thing.

I also try not to add to the noise if

I don't think it's something that I can

innovate and make wildly better than

someone else. I just don't touch it.

It's great. It's great.

Generally speaking,

if I think it's something that

really, maybe that trust factor.

Your customers begin to know that this

isn't going to be released unless it's

going to be the best in its category or

at least to something new and different.

Yeah, yeah, for sure. For sure. So

that's how I really approach it.

And then I obsess over making it as

the best I can. And then I try not to

get that too much into that,

where it's like at some point I have to

release the product for timing purposes.

We got to get this out.

So this has to just be good enough and

knowing that next year we'll iterate and

we'll make improvements to it.

So I think a lot of people

get held up in that like, oh,

I've been sitting on this thing for four

years and it's almost there. It's like,

dude, you'll learn faster about how to

make it better if people are using it,

release it. Iterate. Yeah, that's

one of my favorite Steve Jobs.

Quotes is real creatives ship, right?

Meaning you think you're a product

designer or developer or creative,

then ship something, right?

Don't just sit on it forever,

ship it and then make it better as

you go. I think that's brilliant.

So that's awesome, man.

Well, anything else?

We'll wrap in a minute by sending people

two tactical baby gear. Buy some gear,

whether you're listening to

this right before the holidays,

right after you need this in your

life. If you know a young family,

a dad that you need to deck out,

then do the right thing

and buy some technical baby

gear. But before we do that,

anything that you want to

talk about what's next?

What's next for technical baby gear

that we haven't already talked about?

Yeah,

I mean that's kind of where my mind is

right now is really just like Amazon.

Amazon, YouTube is these

new marketing channels.

Amazon is just rebooting,

but really taking them far

more seriously than just

testing a little bit here and

there and seeing what sticks.

It's really attacking some

of these things head on

and creating with Meta and

Andromeda and these full funnel

campaigns you can do now,

a lot of the things we're doing is we

have quite a few different product lines.

So it's creating full funnel

content for each individual product

line versus just sort of top middle,

bottom of funnel of a

little bit of everything.

We've got stroller as kind of a newer

product for us that's been sort of like a

cherry on top.

And now we want to try to make that a

core product that we're selling and really

attack that market. Love that, which

will take us to a whole nother level.

And there's a lot of really amazing

benefits to that stroller, which again,

I'm not going to come out with something

unless we can kind of disrupt things a

little bit. So we're excited

about that one. That's a.

Great natural addition

to what you're doing.

It's also high a OV. You buy one,

you maybe have that thing

for a long, long time.

Although I will say as

we kept having more kids,

we would always upgrade strollers.

So maybe there's a little bit of upgrade

upgradeability there for some folks.

Well, they.

Tend to.

Get pretty gross.

What mean? Yeah, pretty

quickly. And you're like,

I mean it's just time for a new one.

I mean, it's like your car, right?

Your car is expensive. You don't

keep it forever. It's like.

Every three years you're

like, yeah, four or five.

Years.

Ready to get something else. And

so beat has been awesome, man.

It has been super, super

fun. Where can people go?

Where can they buy some tactical

baby gear? Because folks need some.

Yeah. Tactical baby gear.com and

then you can follow me personally,

I try to make some brand

type content time to time.

And that's be Brodie on

Instagram and YouTube. Yep.

BEAV. Be Brodie, check him out.

Awesome. Follow awesome products.

Keep with the good work, dude.

So great chat with you as always. I

could keep going for a long, long time,

but we're out of time, so it's been

fantastic. B, enjoyed it. Thanks man,

and hope you crush what's left

of this year and into next.

Thanks, man. I appreciate you.

Awesome. And as always, thank you for

tuning in. We'd love to hear from you.

Would you like to hear

more of on the show?

Leave us that review if you've not

done. And with that, until next time,

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