Launching New Services Free: The Comp-to-Scale Model

0:00It's really easy to start an agency. The problem is because it's so easy, there's a ton of crap out there. So it takes a really long time to stand out. How are you able to make Blue Tusker stand out and know that Blue Tusker isn't just one or more of these marketing agencies that are just being created every day? Our biggest differentiator is that we operate in both the Amazon world and marketplaces in general and D2C and we help them develop more omni-channel strategies. You do have certain characteristics or requirements that a company would need to meet in order to be able to work properly with you guys.

0:35We really try to position ourselves as an extension of their team. But the only way you can really do that is as if you were being hired. So it's, yeah, I'm being interviewed to come work with you. But at the same time, I'm interviewing you to make sure that this is somewhere I want to be. When you position yourself as an extension of someone's team, the issue you run into is if they have a very poor company culture that can bleed into yours.

1:04Hey, everybody. Thank you for tuning in. My name is Andres Figueira, and I'm going to be your host for the day. This show is brought to you by the Global Talent Company, helping fast-growing teams hire exceptional remote talent from Argentina, South Africa, and beyond. We connect companies with world-class professionals who bring skill, reliability, and a global perspective to every role. And just for our listeners, we're offering an exclusive 10 % discount on your first hire. All you need to do is visit globaltalent.co, click start hiring, and mention the podcast listener discount when we get in touch.

1:36And today, with me here, I am speaking with Andrew Maffetone, founder of Blue Tusker, a full-service marketing company that expands the reach of e-commerce brands through robust digital strategies, targeted media buying, and data-driven analysis. So, Andrew, how's it going, man? Happy to have you on the podcast. Doing good. Thanks for having me. Appreciate it. No problem at all, man. I was very excited to see that another fellow podcast host would be on the show. So with that said, would you be able to give the audience a bit more context, Andrew, and tell us a bit more about yourself, your background, how you founded Blue Tusker, and anything that you might deem that is interesting?

2:15Yeah, sure. So I've been in e-commerce marketing for, I think, about 15, 16 years now. It's pretty much more or less all I've ever been. I had an agency in college, sold that, went in-house at a couple different eight-figure brands for a little while, then started another agency. we exited that in late 2019 it was pretty heavy on the amazon side and then i started blue tusker in early 2020 i'm also the host of the e-com show uh it's a podcast that we do uh pretty much on a weekly basis of just interviewing different brands and kind of learning like how'd you get to where you're at and you know things that you learned along the way type of thing um but yeah blue tusker is a full service agency so we basically act like an outsource marketing department for a lot of the different brands that we work with um and uh yeah that's that's kind of it in a nutshell okay and and blue tusker um for how long has this company that you created been around because i know you have like a ton of experience but blue tusker per se how old is it so technically blue tusker started in 2020 uh or like january literally i think our legal date was like january 1st of 2020.

3:27There was an agency I was a partner with prior to that that was very heavy on the Amazon side. We exited that in late 2019, but the company that had acquired us shut down that agency within like a year and a half, I think it was. So by the time that had happened, we ended up getting a bunch of brands and stuff that we were working with before. So it's kind of a weird little spinoff. So if you look at it that way, then maybe it was actually like 2016, but legally it was 2020. Okay. And how many clients are you working with at the moment, like constantly with Blue Tusker? Is it like you have your old legacy clients that have been with you forever?

4:04Or do you get new customers every single to every single month and you get new projects and stuff? Right now we have, I think it's like 55, 60 clients that we're working with. So different brands. 95 % of our business is e-commerce. I've got a couple companies we work with that aren't that just kind of came our way or I've known them for a really long time. We've got a lot of legacy clients, some that were with me at the agency before this that I've worked with since we started. But, you know, obviously the goal is to keep growing. So we're always, you know, looking at bringing on new brands and things like that.

4:39It's a, you know, it's a quality over quantity thing. You know, I don't really care. It's, I don't really care about how many brands we're working with. It's more about the quality of those brands. We try to work with companies that we know we have the ability to grow with them. You know, there's tons of opportunities where it's someone and they're coming in and they just started or it's a lifestyle brand. Like, hey, it's really cool. But unfortunately, that's not what we're here to do. So sometimes we pass over those, but we try to take on. You do have certain characteristics or requirements that a company would need to meet in order to be able to work properly with you guys.

5:15It's not like a random startup with 10 people that doesn't have a proper SOP setup is able to work with you? Or do you prefer to have something that's a little bit more set up? It kind of depends, right? So I like to look at it as if I was an investor. Like, would I invest in this company? If I would invest in this company, then I would work with this company. You know, in the agency space, it's an ugly space. It's really easy to start an agency. Like you could, I could start one while we're on this podcast and launch it before the episode's over. It's so easy. The problem is, is because it's so easy, it's like there's a ton of crap out there.

5:55So it takes a really long time to stand out and like, you know, actually prove that you know what you're talking about. And no matter how good you are, there's a difference between being a great marketer and then also being able to educate a team that can then also help facilitate a lot of that stuff. So with companies, if we're going to invest our team's time into working with these brands, we have to make sure that like they have the capability to grow. Otherwise, we end up just it's no different than if we were a freelancer and we're just doing things for them. And then that's kind of it. And, you know, just like everyone else, our goal here is to is to grow.

6:33And we try to do that with the brands that we work with. So what we usually do is we kind of take a look at, you know, not only the brand from its capability to grow from a marketing perspective and how large, you know, that potential audience is, but also competitive landscape. What's the reality of their growth? Is that really going to happen? You know, what's what's their operational situation like within e-commerce? You know, we have the added benefit of there's no sales team. So if the sales team is not doing well, that's not my problem. Well, with us, I don't have to deal with that. Right.

7:04Because there is no sales team. But I do have to deal with brands that run out of inventory really fast because operationally, they're just not set up as well as they need to be. So you run out of inventory, your marketing essentially shuts off, and then you got to kind of start the whole thing over again. So we have a lot of different kind of, you know, it's an interview process when you first start working with someone of like, you know, we really try to position ourselves as a partner with them and an extension of their team. But the only way you can really do that is as if you were being hired.

7:33So it's, yeah, I'm being interviewed to come work with you. But at the same time, I'm interviewing you to make sure that this is somewhere I want to be, especially because with agencies, too, you also run into the problem of which is something that we've been trying to figure out now is like when you position yourself as an extension of someone's team and like you're a true partner in their business. The issue you run into is if they have a very poor company culture that can bleed into yours. And so we have to figure out like, all right, how do we really ingrain ourselves in their business, but also make sure that we maintain our own culture?

8:09And that's kind of where it's fun to deal with. And Andrew, in what you're saying and you're mentioning that it's like just so easy to open up marketing agencies. And nowadays there's like so much static and noise in the market for this. How are you able to make Blue Tusker stand out and become a place of trust where clients and companies know that Blue Tusker isn't just one or more of these marketing agencies that are just being created every day? Our biggest differentiator, when we say we're full service, it's full service marketing. We don't do anything from an operational standpoint or customer service or anything like that.

8:46But we really truly are one of only a few that I'm aware of true full service agencies in e-commerce. There's a lot of full service Amazon agencies where they do everything for you on Amazon. And then there's a lot of full service like D2C agencies where they'll do a lot of you, a lot of stuff for you for like your Shopify and things like that. We're one of few that actually operates in both worlds. So like our team, I kind of look at it as like we're like seven agencies under one roof. Right. So you have we have a paid media department and an owned media department. and underneath them are sub departments where everyone specializes in their own area.

9:26So there's a team that just does SEM. So Google ads and Microsoft. There's a team that just does social ads. There's a team that just does marketplace ads. Then on the owned side, I have an SEO team with the sub department under that from marketplace. We have a retention team, a social media and influencer team and a website UX UI team. So all of them are specialists in their area. So you're not getting that. this was the problem I had when I was in-house was you'd hire a full service agency. It was really like, you're getting some college kid who you're getting like X amount of hours. And they like know a little bit about a lot.

9:59And it's like, all right, this is not, this is not what I needed. But the issue is when you go to the specialist agencies, they, they hit a wall real fast, right? Like the issue I had years ago was like, uh, to give me an example was like, Like we had a Google ads agency and they would blame website conversion rate issues on, you know, things maybe that didn't go as well as they wanted to. Like, OK, now I have to go find someone else because you don't know how to fix that. You only do Google ads. Then you would get like an email company and or like and we had a separate social agency. Well, now I want to do a campaign.

10:34Let's do a big sale for Black Friday, Cyber Monday or something. I got to juggle six different agencies to try to get them all on the same page of when this promotion is going to go out and what the creative is. And well, it's like it gets all over the place. And so the concept of the full service was like you can get a fractional CMO. Why can't you have a fractional marketing department where everyone is a true kind of specialist in their area? So for the brands that we work with, our biggest differentiator is that we operate in both the Amazon world and marketplaces in general and D2C, and we help them develop more omni-channel strategies.

11:09So how can you grow on Amazon, but also benefit D2C? Or how can you use your D2C data to also grow on Amazon and look at your business more holistically? And because we have this full team that operates in both marketplace and DTC, we have the ability to do those types of things. Wow, that is so cool, man. I love how you departmentalized every single aspect of the marketing and you have everything in its proper segment. And how long did it take you, Andrew, to build out this team? How many people do you have helping you with all this? I'll let you know when I'm done. Um, so right now we are, I think it's 15 or 16, uh, full-time people.

11:51And then, I mean, we probably have like 20 or something different contractors we work with. Uh, you know, it didn't start off full service for the most part. Um, we kind of positioned ourselves as that, but there was definitely services that we didn't offer at the time because it was like, look, we just don't have the expertise for it now. We finally got to a size where obviously that's not a problem anymore. but you know it was it was interesting there was a lot of learning curves because the the specialist agency was kind of a little bit where I came from like our last agency that we had exited really was like 80 % Amazon so like we did DTC stuff but not a ton and so then when I was in house I obviously learned a lot about dealing with specialist agencies on the other side from the brand side and then also dealing with the full service ones um and so like that would be a little bit how i kind of factored a lot of this stuff in um but yeah it uh it took some time and it was very much like you know let's let's get a typically the concept is like all right we've got a brand that wants you know this type of service like okay we really want to get into that service but we don't have a ton of experience at this agency doing it but obviously like at this point i've done it so i can talk to the brand and we would usually just comp the service for the brand.

13:10We'd tell them like, hey, we're going to do this for you, you know, for X amount of months, completely free. And we're going to walk you through our process. But we want you to do like a survey at the end of it, let us know what you thought, let us know you'd like to see improved. And then we would adjust it from there. Then we'd kind of turn it into a little bit of a case study. And then it was justifiable to go out and tell people like, hey, we now have this service. And then we would start to increase contractor hours until it was justifiable for us to start looking at full time. Okay, I get that.

13:39And it's like creating the experience that you needed in the company in order to be able to sell that service properly and actually make some bank out of it because you can't charge people for something you don't even know what to do. That's the biggest issue with agencies. It's like you end up getting sold from like, and I hear it all the time too. And we're talking to new brands of like, hey, you know, how do I know that, you know, they talk to me or they talk to someone else on our team? like yeah you seem like a smart person but how do i know who you're gonna hand me off to isn't like you know some idiot or it's just some person like overseas and blah blah like hey look first of all you're gonna meet everyone on the team uh before we do anything so we'll bring them in on a call make sure you understand uh who's working on your team and who's involved everyone on your team is reachable we usually put them on like a shared slack channel or something okay and then it's just a matter of, you know, making sure that like, if it's a new service, a lot of times we'll just be like, Hey, we're not going to charge you for this because I cannot, we're going to have process issues.

14:39You won't have results issues, but things may come out slower. Um, but it's just because we're tweaking process, but I'm not going to charge you for it. No one has ever said no, thank you to that. So we'll do that, map it out, prove out the process and then scale it up from there to the point where we have enough people working on that service specifically that can be client facing as well so that they can have conversations with the client about it and make sure that we're scaling it up before we start really launching a service. Of course. And Andrew, does your team, like I imagine Blue Tusker is then a remote first company since you guys are practically an agency that works with different other brands.

15:20And do you have everybody working within the states or do you use um global talent and overseas people so it kind of well they're global definitely global um we've got a good amount in latin most are in the states but we still have a good amount in latin a handful in like the philippines and things like that um you know it's a uh how do i put this this is a you know a question that we started asking ourselves a couple years ago of like what we are willing to sacrifice versus what we're not And part of the issue is for whatever reason in the States, so many brands are very anti working with someone that is overseas.

16:03And it even if they are the best person I've ever worked with for whatever it is service, they're still like, like if how many, you know, it's a common question we get when we're talking to new brands. is like, is your team in the States? And it's always like, first of all, if my entire team was in the States, your proposal is gonna look a lot different. It's very, very expensive to have everyone in the States and you want me charging you that and then you're gonna be like, oh, you guys are too expensive. Be like, well, what do you want? Like, you can't have your cake and eat it too here. So what we started to look at, what we started to ask ourselves is like, look, like, first of all, there is some really really talented people outside of the united states that is a fact so there's no reason that we couldn't work with them as well we just sometimes have to feel it out with certain brands of like you know maybe we slowly introduce someone and they're kind of tag teamed with someone in the states or in a handful of scenarios it's just like they don't care and it's great and then the brand gets to work with them you know there's so much talent that comes out of LATAM is definitely a whole area of where it's grown a lot more in terms of like, I know years ago, it used to be people got a lot of workers out of like the Philippines and things like that.

17:20But I know that it's definitely starting to go more LATAM, which I love it, because now they're working on our time zone, which makes life so much easier. That's what I was going to mention when you told me the places you had different people like helping you out. I was like, okay, Philippines is a time zone covered, but LATAM as well. And that helps you have different clients. And that's another question I did have your clients that you have, are they solely from the States or are you also taking global clients from Europe, from Asia or something like that? They're also definitely global. Most are in the States, but we've got like a handful that are in UK.

17:51We have a handful out of China. We have a handful out of Australia, I think one or two out of New Zealand. And another question that I did have, Andrew, that like it popped into my mind when you were mentioning this is the fact that, yeah, when you're an agency and you start working ingrained with other companies, then you can be absorbed into their culture but then how do you as the leader of blue tusker maintain your culture within your employees alive and how do you keep that um like that essence going and not losing who you guys are look maintaining a company culture is way harder than i ever thought it was gonna be um you know you kind of you kind of think that like oh it'll just be it's just gonna happen and then like that'll just be the direction it goes in and that's that's how cultures work is They just kind of happen.

18:37But you need your culture to go in certain directions and you need it to be, you know, based on what your goals are and your values, like you need your culture to be a certain way. And when you start working with brands that have a completely opposite outlook on that, it can kill you. And we've we've had to fire clients before because of issues like that, where it's just like, hey, this is not how we work and we're not going to tolerate half this stuff. and so that becomes like a when it starts to become obvious and it's usually you can usually there's telltale signs of like unnecessarily rude emails or like you're on calls and it's like please don't talk down to like so and so like we're all professionals here um so it becomes like okay there's something interesting going on here and then we slowly have to be like all right you know obviously every situation is different sometimes they're really big clients and you're like, all right, we got to figure out something here or they're smaller clients and go, all right, unfortunately, isn't going to work.

19:35But you start to you start to distance yourself a little bit, just enough. And then for me, as just like the owner here, like I make sure to have a lot of close communication with our accounts teams of like, who's the actual client facing person is dealing with them all the time and that becomes more of a like you know keep me updated if they overstep and let's figure out what our next what we need to do here um or you know just don't forget that's just who they are let them be the way that they want to be that's not us like and then it's just also the team concept of just like we're all in this together working at an agency like i don't know if you follow like any of like the agency like there's a ton of like meme pages and stuff out there.

20:24It's hilarious. Like it's all like, it's a horrible, oh my God, it's amazing. It's just a horrible industry in certain scenarios because no matter what, no matter how we position ourselves, no matter how much we say we're an extension of your team and we want to make the best decisions for your business, not just for your marketing, they don't give a shit. You're a vendor and they will absolutely just treat you poorly if they want to do it that way. I pray to God They don't do that for their staff, but like everyone treats vendors differently. And marketing is it's the most art and science out there.

21:03And most founders look at it from a science perspective and they don't look at it from the art perspective. And if there is a strong lack of knowledge in how the platforms work or the purpose of every platform or the time it takes to bring in appropriate amount of data to make good decisions. Otherwise, things go the wrong way. That's where it becomes a whole conversation of like, you know, this is it's more of a consulting and teaching than it is actually doing our jobs. And now shifting the gears a bit from like the real team and the essence of what you guys have at Blue Tusker. I would also love to know if is if you guys, Andrew, are you leveraging AI any specific or different way that is actually helping you ease a lot of the workload that your team or yourself might have?

21:49yeah i mean you know it's kind of at this point you have to everyone at the agencies get gets their own like the pro or whatever just chat gpt things we've got that all set up that's all integrated with we use g suite so it pulls in everything so it makes life a lot easier with that um but we've got we've probably got four or five other ai platforms at least that help from a copy perspective or a research perspective or creative and video and cro stuff so like at this point, like we're trying to lean in on it as much as possible. You know, as an agency, you always get that question of like, oh, you know, like, you guys aren't going to use any AI stuff, are you?

22:27And it's like, actually, yeah, we are. And I'm going to show you like, it's not, there's a ton of AI stuff that you should not use, but there's a ton that you should use. And it allows us to keep our price points at a better rate. It allows us to be more efficient and get things done faster. I mean, if you had, you know, if you were asking me about, let's say, social ad test creative, right? You asked me that question a year ago, I would be like, all right, we got to make a bunch of creative. It's going to take like 20, 30 hours for us to knock out probably enough creative for us to test for like the next month, right?

23:00Now, give me like three hours and we can do a ton of different split tests, hammer it all out. It all looks the exact same. It's great. there's stuff with like people and things you obviously don't want to do but otherwise it's we have to leave that on it no and and i know that ai it's it's like people what they feel right now is that if you're a marketing agency i imagine that their biggest fear must be the fact that it's like don't give me an ai generated image that i can tell it's ai because then it just looks fake and doesn't help the advertising or whatever they're trying to do which is something that i agree with but being able to to incorporate it in the back end and have it optimize your processes without it affecting the final results in terms of how it looks and and people buying it that's just perfect and making it able to having it assimilated into your team and just being seamless is is what makes ai perfect after a while because it does take some tweaking in order to be able to work well with it oh yeah yeah i mean there's there's definitely stuff that it's just bad like it doesn't look good and you know sometimes that just comes from poor prompts in which case like you could fix that but like anything with people in it anything with animals in it if there's something alive in it it rarely ever works and it rarely ever looks good but if you want something that's a lot like it can look ai and if that's fine like take the pretty much every drink you have ever seen there's a commercial for it where the can pops up and it rotates and there's a bunch of floating crap around it ai totally fine doesn't have to be a real can no one's gonna get mad at that so like that's where it's okay but then you have other stuff where it's like you know you have people and it just looks horrible so that's stuff we stay away from and um andrew i'm noticing that we're we're almost at time for the episode but i did want to give you the chance to let anybody who's hearing us know how it and if like they're a company owner or if they're working in in in their own thing and they might feel the need for an agency how can they go about contacting you guys, learning more from you, maybe even having a chat to set up a meeting?

25:05How would that be and how would that process look? Yes, head over to bluetusker.com. It's B-L-U-E-T-U-S-K-R. Or you can email me, andrew at bluetusker.com. Not hard to find. LinkedIn, I'm all over that thing. Username thing's Andrew Math, but feel free to find me wherever you'd like. Amazing. And well, with that said, Just know that if you're looking for Blue Tusker services, you've heard here how they work and how they do their things. And I believe it would be a pretty smart decision to just find out more. So anybody who's listening, you already got directed and know what to do. And Andrew, thank you so much, man, for taking the time to have this episode with us, for letting us know about you and showing us and telling us everything about Blue Tusker.

25:50That has been very interesting. Thank you. No, no problem at all, man. and to anybody who's here still with us thank you so much for coming on the show we really appreciate you listening to us hopping on to learn about the different personalities that we bring to the episodes and the different industries that we're learning about so with that said, thank you so much I hope to see you the next time