How to win in ecom in 2025 (from a $200M/yr marketer)

25:12So just more more willing to take risks. things are never that bad. Also being willing to eat shit. I'm like, bro, if I have to fucking be a waiter, we'll figure it out. Right. Um, yeah. So I, yeah, that, that fortitude, like not being like, so ego tied to whatever the fuck you're doing. If I, if I have to pack boxes, I'm going to pack boxes. Right. What are the ways people get, uh, e-com wrong? So we've, you were talking about all birds, right? It was a, a product that was hot and now the stock is, you know, dead. There's, you know, a bunch of other kind of famous examples of that. And then there's companies like yours, which is keep scaling profitably, you know, never took a dollar of debt, never took a dollar of investment and made it work.

25:53What are the kind of, give us like your, your version of the do's and don'ts. And maybe just start with the don'ts, like the dumb shit that people do, the bad decisions that people make, or the, the common traps you see people fall into. Cause I'm sure, you know, you're, that's your network is e-com. So you see the full spectrum, people who totally flop people who grind away for years and get nothing out of it and people who excel and succeed yeah so you can't you can't out muscle a tam so like understand what you're selling and how good the market actually is i see amazing operators waste time with horrible opportunities right like like the tam is what the tam is and if you're like the number one fucking garlic press seller like that's kind of a meme in the community like dude i'm like you're executing ruthlessly to be the number one garlic press seller, that is worse than being the 12th best creatine gummy, right?

26:43Because that market is exponentially growing. There's LTV tied to it. So many people just waste energy and time on these horrible fucking product categories. So you can't beat a Tam. You're not better than the trend. So bone broth, there was companies that exploded, got to$80 million in revenue. It was like, dude, this is the new way people are going to consume calories, bone broth. That is now at a 30-year low because that's not the cool thing anymore, right? Same with keto stuff. Yeah, exactly. So there's a guy from IQ Bar. His name's Will. He's incredibly smart. He talks about his trend surface area.

27:21So it's like, look, people talk about their luck surface area. He's like, I make products to have as much trend surface area as possible. So if keto's hot, I'll be keto. If gluten-free is hot, I'll be gluten-free. If it's sugar that's cool or non-sugar, like whatever, I'll make those products to just hit whatever the trend is and I'll just change my packaging. So I'm always top of trend and you're not better than the trend. Right. So that's the point I'm trying to make is you can write it up, but as soon as it crashes, you'll crash with it. And then my third one, the most controversial one is that LTV isn't real.

27:52Like lifetime value only works if you're alive. So most brands die waiting for LTV. Right. And what you mean by that is you got to be profitable early on on that customer you acquired if you acquire the customer for$200 and he only made you know$20 and you're saying oh the I the LTV it'll all pay off that's kind of what you're talking about right versus the way you guys do it is you're trying to be profitable either first purchase or are you guys profitable first purchase or is it like you know a month or two later what where are you guys at dude I have to be profitable in the first purchase you think people are coming back to buy a second wallet in a month it's like i'm like dude the the ltv from wallet customers is like maybe in 90 days i get 10 so like it's very much i have to be i have to turn not not not a contribution margin like actual true paying for all my fixed costs every time i saw a wallet to somebody can we play a game called uh change my opinion and this is for both of you guys I have a bone to pick with your industry.

28:53I think Sean's heard me with this spiel before. What frustrates me sometimes, not exactly you guys, but I'm going to use you as an example, but people who all they worry about is the CAC and the LTV and the TAM of these industries. And they don't spend any time actually thinking, is this product awesome? Is this the best? Is this truly solving a problem? And it bothers me sometimes that it's more of an arbitrage, not exactly thinking about can I create a widget that makes a customer's life better and is of high quality. I wish that more people in this industry sort of talked about that a bit more.

29:37Do you think that's a fair criticism or where am I wrong on this? I mean, I think it's a fair criticism. My industry has been washed out, though. So like the people you're talking about probably have all left. There's so few people left in e-com. Like Sean brought up the group chat. Maybe two people respond every single day and one of them is MeTap. It's like we're at like a multi-year low of interest in the industry. So like, yeah, all those people have left. The people who are still here in shipping, dude, I bring up Hexclat. You guys want to talk about like amazing? Yeah. Yeah. So like I'm very close to it.

30:14You tweet about them all the time and like they inspired me Because you said they like worked for three years finding the perfect pan. OK, so when I met Danny, it was 2020. They they didn't have a website. He says they did. But like you couldn't check out on the fucking website. OK, they they were fucking selling pans at trade shows and like county fairs cooking up eggs themselves. Right. In Costco Roadshow. So not even in Costco. They had to pay to show up at Costco and fucking cook up these eggs. and they, from 2020, they'll do, I mean, it's documented at this point, over a half a billion dollars a year.

30:51Like they got to hundreds and hundreds of millions of dollars in annual turnover with a hundred million plus in profit. Danny will fucking shoot me for saying all this stuff. But like, I think it's all pretty rare public. You know, Gordon joined the brand. They have Fox as an investor now. Pre all that, they were doing nine figures in EBITDA a year, okay? Didn't Gordon Ramsay like write a huge check? He didn't just like sort of join the brand. He like invested a pretty sizable amount. Or was he part of a round or was it him personally investing in it? That's all public. There's like a thing. He came in with Fox on something and like, you know, because it's like a three-way deal.

31:29Fox wants to give him money to make shows and he wants to get more equity in hex clad. So it's like a big three-way deal. Gotcha, gotcha. Dude, I have like 12 hex clad pants in my kitchen right now. Are they awesome, Sean? They're great. Like, you know, I don't know if they're the best pants. I don't try a hundred pans, but they're way better than the pans I had before. And to the point where I bought a second set of them because I was like, these are great. I'm happy with these pans. Yeah. And they put years into that product development. Like they actually, like they care about their customers.

31:57What it comes down to is respecting your customers. If you're just like, that's why I don't like info products. Like if you don't respect your customers, if you're just like trying to ARB them or like, you know, we have a customer name. So our customer is Everyday Dad. We call him Ed. And I'm like, almost every meeting, I'm like, are we respecting Ed? Are we delivering value to Ed? Right? Everyone has an Ed in their life. Think about like, your guys' brothers or your dads. He's just like a guy. He likes widgets. And like, he loves fishing. And like, he loves NFL. Like, that's fucking Ed. And I'm like, look, Ed has paid for everything in my entire life.

32:30We need to take care of Ed. We want to make sure Ed gets like the best, coolest shit possible, that we give him great value and great deals. And that's what Hexclad did. And like we're talking about like I think this industry, it's a bad rap because so many people have entered it and so few people have left with any amount of money. Or like the people who did leave with money, like it was like a greater fool theory. They were just tricking somebody to give them money and then they bailed out. But then there's companies like Hexclad where there'll be a 50-year brand. There'll be a generational brand and they're fucking crushing it.

32:59So it's possible. They're buying Super Bowl ads. Like, I mean, this is, you know, they were bootstrapped up until like two years ago, like a bootstrap brand getting that done. It's fucking amazing. Yeah. I think, Sam, what you said is true, that marketing skill is the core competency for most of the winners in this space. Most. There's a couple who just really nailed product or community, right? And then they just, they built slowly brick by brick over a decade. But for the most part, the people you'll hear about and the people you'll meet, they're great because they are great at doing Facebook ads and Google ads or now TikTok content.

33:37And so that's true. But at the same time, you're like, oh, I hate that it's this CAC to LTV thing. Well, it's like, guess what? When you sit down with your team, you're like, how do we raise LTV? Right? Like there's some natural gravity, like Sean saying, like you buy a wallet every seven years. You're not really going to change that. But like for my product, you do buy it way more often. You know, in the first six months, we double our double the amount that they paid us on the first order. Right. So it's really it's a it's it's a movable number. Right. We can actually affect that. And then you're like, all right, well, how do we increase LTV?

34:07It's like, yeah, you could spam them with emails. You can spam them with text messages. But guess what? The better way to do it is to make an amazing product that they're going to want to buy again and like lower the return rate. How do you lower the return rate to get more profit? Right. It's like make a better quality product. And so I think that for anybody who's actually going to try to win, you will have to make an amazing product. Otherwise, you won't be able to do the ad arbitrage you're trying to do because how else could you increase the LTV if everyone hates your product or it's not doing anything for them?

34:36And so I think the people who stick around and actually win in the long run are the ones who do what you – Yeah, I think those are good answers to the question. I think that when I see someone making a boost your testosterone thing, I'm like, dude, I don't know if any of this works or if they're just really good at making a label that's appealing. And so I start to lose confidence in the industry as a whole. Oh, totally. I'm actually curious if you guys have any of these DTC brands where you're like, this product is amazing. And so it's actually really good to hear that Hexclad is one of them.

35:13Do you guys have any other favorites? Well, going back to the supplement side, a lot of it is like, I mean, a lot of this work is being done to like the co-manufacturers, right? Like there's co-packers that actually do all the formulation. So a lot of times people are just showing up and buying stuff off the shelf. So if you're getting any sort of supplement, like it's probably the same supplement white labeled a hundred times. And that's just like the way the industry works. So, you know, I would put hard goods in a special category. And like, we talk about DTC brands. I mean, all of my favorite fashion brands are small and independently owned, right?

35:50Like, does that count? Like, this is Buck Mason. These pants are James Purse, right? Like, I just got a suit from Billy Reed. Like, these are all small, independently owned companies, right? That are running. They have Shopify websites. Does that count as DTC, right? It's very much like there's a black box of bad rap products. And I think a lot of supplements that come from commands, right. Or anything to do in the health and wellness space. Like that is like typically where there's a bunch of shit, but if you buy a Ridge wallet, you're going to get what is on the package, you know what I mean?

36:21Like, or one of our phone cases or whatever. It's like a fucking phone case, man. Like it's pretty good. What, um, who else is crushing it? So what are some DTC brands that we wouldn't know, or we wouldn't really realize how, how well they're doing, um, just because we're not in the space. We're not paying attention. Yeah. Yeah. The other reason you guys called me here to talk about the woobles. Okay. The woobles is fucking crushing it. The woobles. Okay. So what are, what are the woobles? So we are, we are, we are three young adult men. We're not the core customer, right? It is a crocheting product.

36:54So it is like you make little characters and they have licensing and like, there's little education. It's like, basically like either it's, you know, young people doing it to have less screen time or it's, you're doing with your kids that they have less screen time. and that's awesome yeah dude when i met them they might be they might have been doing 10 million dollars a year like they in two years they've gone from 10 to probably 150 million dollars in revenue like no no capital raised they are still and i really i like them and i respect them they will not fucking launch subscription boxes they're like yeah we don't think it's that important i'm like Jesus fucking Christ like if I could shoot these people I would because they won't do subscription it's like the perfect product like it is this educational it's fun it's connecting with your family like it's this movement against screen time which is like a big trend that they can take advantage of there's every month they could have new characters they could just show up in your door you do them there's a little community aspect it's the single best brand and execution that I've ever seen like this will be a billion dollar exit because they're so fucking good at it They've never raised any goddamn money.

38:06Just like it's two people just putting it together in North Carolina. How did they even think of this? Like, well, how did this get on there? Were they big crocheters? What is the origin story of this? Yeah. So I think it's a husband and wife team. I think she was just crocheting. And she's like, yeah, I would love to have little guides. And there was like an Etsy community of people like selling crochet guides. And she's like, she would buy them. And then she'd be like, okay, I'm gonna make my own. And then she would, you know, release them. And then it's like, oh, maybe I should just sell my little crochet kits.

38:36And bam, fucking explodes, dude. So like if you're listening to this and you're thinking like, OK, I'm not washed out. I want to try e-commerce. I highly recommend getting into services first, OK? Like you should learn how to make money on the internet via services. And if the show is called My First Million, you'll make your first million dollars delivering good value to people like me or like Woobles, whoever else. Then find a trend that's very fast emerging, right? Like I think no screen time. I think creatine. Those are the two biggest ones for the next two or three years. Like if you can do a no screen time creatine crochet kit, something fucking you'll figure it out.

39:12Right. Dude, I've spent so much money on Legos lately for that no screen time trend. What are other no screen time? I feel like the microplastics is another another trend. Right. Like an air quality. Yeah, dude. Yeah. So like just glass, everything, glass bottles, glass containers. what just like imagine if you could just buy a backpack and they're like we guarantee there's no plastic in it fucking awesome just wrap it in paper ship to people then that's another trend of things can be fast emerging um yeah no screen time just more physical tactical toys right like bringing back the fidget spinner but as like a focus tool right like i think there's a bunch of shit you could do in there um but anyway those are fast emerging trends right now protein was a trend that's basically probably dead, right?

40:00Pre-protein was collagen. There's always these just like pockets of success you'll find. And that's the beauty of the space. It's like - You know what it is right now in that space? What's the early boob milk? What's that called? Colostrum? Colostrum. Yeah. Oh my God. I'm getting so many ads for colostrum. Yeah. You know, the other one will be like, I think raw honey. It had like a small moment. I'm sure it's going to come back, right? There's like a bunch of New Zealand honey companies. And if you were a founder, where would you kind of look for these? Are you a proponent of look in your own life?

40:35What are you doing or what is your wife doing that seems unusual, but actually there's a passionate community? Are you like, I scour Etsy and Reddit. Is that where you would look? How would you do this if you didn't know which trend to start with? Right. So you should look in your own life because you probably don't have the skills to actually to go out there and like, you know, or I'm assuming you have no resources to actually pick a trend and double down and actually deliver on those promises, right? So you should find something in your own life that you actually know and are passionate about.

41:04If you're a more seasoned professional, I think you can find those things, right? And really what it would be is I think Reddit's dead. I think Etsy's dead. Like that's AI slop basically at this point. The inshidification of the internet has happened to those two websites. I would look at literally what's happening inside of Irwan. Like I would just move to LA and go to Irwan every single day because those, those are the best people at catching trends. Like they were anti-backs in fucking 1997, right? Like that's like, well, they are very, very early on those things. And if you're, if you're not going to do that, then it's like, you just, you have to follow the girlies on TikTok, right?

41:44Like the other one I bring up is Pilates. like Pilates was a thing in 2000. It's having a massive resurgence right now. And like, once again, we're three young men. How are we going to fucking make a Pilates brand? But Pilates for guys probably could be another trend. Just needs a new name. Yeah, totally. Well, Laplace, I think is what the actual name is. Oh no, Legree, something like that. My wife knows. But yoga is very much a downward trend, right? And like this yoga was just a synonym for health and wellness and like, you know, non just jack dudes waitlist thing. I think that's actually changing and it'll be something else like Pilates or something else.

42:27Hey, quick message here, because you know that feeling when you send a wire and it actually works? No friction? Well, I've used Mercury for years now. And let me tell you, it just works. And that's why I use it for not one, not two, but eight of my companies. from credit cards to invoices. I have everything in one place. There's no janky dashboard. I'm never told, please visit a local bank branch. None of that tomfoolery. And a few months ago, I landed a big client. And the first thing I did, I sent them a clean branded invoice. Boom, deal closed, cash in the door. That's the kind of banking experience I want.

42:57And that's why I use Mercury. So if you're running a startup and you want banking that feels like it's built in this century, well, go to mercury.com and get started in minutes. Mercury is a financial technology company, not a bank. Bank, the services are provided through Choice Financial Group, column A, and Evolve Bank and Trust members, FDIC. What are some other going up and going down? Give me like a topic or a trend and tell me, is this a buy or sell moment? Well, look, this is not a hot take. This is not Scott Galloway fucking, but all big box department stores. Like it's very, very much like we just saw Joanne's Fabric go down.

43:36We just saw Container Store go down. We just saw Party City. That's going to accelerate. We are over commercial real estate. There's too many big box stores. Even Target is having a really fucking hard time. And my biggest wholesaler is Best Buy. I crush it in Best Buy. But all of that shit is probably – the FUD isn't real enough. It should be even more real. Nordstrom's, Macy's. Like I think small independent brick and mortar shops really do work. Like if you're in LA, you go to Century City. Like, but I was walking around Bloomingdale's and, you know, like 10 years ago it was, or even 20 years ago, probably it was like the number one place to buy women's fashion, like women contemporary fashion.

44:25It was the coolest thing ever. I'm walking around, they got blouses that are$800 and it's dead on a Saturday. Like nobody's fucking shopping there at the best mall in LA. So I think the FUD isn't even – we should be even more scared that there's going to be more collapses in any sort of commercial real estate that's like 10 ,000 square feet plus. That is like selling physical goods. The other one is probably better for you, candy. Like VCs have really backed this like better for you, artificial sugar. Like you go to a fucking Target. There's all of these like weird artificial sugar brands. I think it's going to come out that that causes cancer and RFK is going to be pretty against it.

45:04So anyway, I'm probably not launching anything in there. Probably launching real sugar. And that's a very hot tape that could age really bad that like real sugar is going to make a massive resurgence. What do you think about like these – like other people who do the same model you did, services to products? So, for example, I think the guys behind Brez, which is that, I think it's a, I don't know what it is, like a mushroom drink or it's like an adaptogenic drink. It's basically, it's like, it gives you a high, but it's not alcohol. It's like mushrooms are weed or something. Their website says Brez is micro-dosed cannabis and mushrooms in a can.

45:42It's a weed drink. Okay, great. It's a weed drink. Those guys were agency people, right? I begged to be the first check in Brez. There's screenshots where they said they were working on it. I'm like, let me be the first check. Because Aaron is incredibly smart. He was the first person to figure out how to work with Meta to have controlled substances be advertised. So that's like his specialty. If you had a cannabis company, you had to go through him and his agency called We Are Lucid to actually do the cannabis advertising on Meta, right? He found a compliant way to do it. So he's incredibly smart.

46:19Nick's an amazing operator. ran a great agency. That's the best model. The other person is Zach, uh, from Homestead. He has a company called hollow socks. Like I don't know how much time we have, but to unpack the history of e-commerce e-commerce 1.0 selling random shit on the internet. Okay. Like whatever pets.com e-commerce 2.0 was marketplaces. It was eBay versus Amazon versus everything else. E-commerce 3.0 is what we consider DTC 1.0, which was like the first brands coming online, the Allbirds, whatever else. Then you get DTC 2.0, which was the COVID hotness, the peak, everything exploding, right?

46:57We are now in DTC 3.0, which is small service providers pivoting to brands with very lean teams and CreateGummies, HoloSox, Brez, the three best examples. CreateGummies has a team of eight people, I think we'll do$40 million this year, right? Hollow Socks is a team of five people. They'll do$30 million this year selling socks, most of them at ads, right? And then Brez, they're public with their numbers. Follow Aaron on LinkedIn. And I think they did$5 million last month in revenue, okay? In beverage, in a controlled substance, that's fucking insane. Like that company's worth$300 million today, right?

47:39And I think their team's incredibly small, maybe 20 people at this point. So yeah, that is the best bull case for e-commerce right now. Service operators who've seen like the rise and fall of all these different brands, have learned from them, have spent their money to get good at ads, right? Launching targeted, hyper-specific brands. And the three I named are the best. Sean, you should go to drinkbrez.com. Do you see their website? That's the prettiest website I've ever seen in my life. yeah that's usually not a good thing the prettiest websites are not usually the ones that work the best i hear you and i am on board with that this is one of the exceptions look at this but i you know i think what happens is you see the front the front of the house is not always where the traffic is going so you know the front of the house is the it's kind of the hero it's the brand it's the aspirational but you run your ads and maybe you're running straight to a pdp or to a tiktok shop or to different things like that i think they're very heavy into tiktok right like Like their model is the TikTok blueprint, which we just did an episode with Rob from Rob the Bank about like the TikTok blueprint that a bunch of the brands are using right now.

48:46And I think Brez is doing that where it's organic. It's kind of the TikTok affiliate slash organic model where you're getting really cheap CPMs because TikTok videos can just pop off. And, you know, you're putting out thousands of pieces of content a month. but, and it's driving sales. Unlike the way, you know, I've been doing it or you've been doing it, Sean, which is like a lot of, you know, Facebook, Google ads, you know, you put a dollar in, it's attributed exactly how much that ad generated in revenue. And you just sort of optimize from there. The TikTok game is a little bit different. It's a bit of a spray and pray game for the most part.

49:22Yeah, so I just sent you guys, this is from Aaron from Brez. They did 4.6 million in revenue in month 21, January. This is their LinkedIn post. So this is all public information that they share. TikTok shop was 37 grand. Amazon revenue was 342. I'm not going to read this for the audience. Maybe I'll just show it. But dude, they're fucking killing it. Bryce is awesome. They post their P &L basically every month on, it's not an actual P &L, but like, you know, sort of a marketing P &L on Twitter and LinkedIn. It's great. We can read this. So total net revenue, 4.5 million. Let's see. that's in you said month 21 now yeah yeah dude like literally then their ads they spent a million dollars on facebook uh 400 000 on google on uh tiktok ads they spent zero but i know that they must be spending on on the affiliate part of tiktok because i if i'm on tiktok i see brez stuff all the time and it's always an affiliate link uh you know swipe up and you can sort of buy it from there.

50:26AppLovin,$472 ,000. It really seems like one of the keys to this business, and this is not always the case, but it's picking the right idea. The right idea and the right angle, it seems like there's no other way to explain how something can get to$4 million in monthly revenue in 21 months. Yeah. I mean, and the reason they were able to be right is because they're both agency operators, right like they the right people to launch a product like this and also it's so hard the reason why they're willingly sharing their pnl is they have nothing to hide and they don't think you can beat them right and i think anybody listening to this can't beat them because are they shutting down their agency are they just going to keep trying to do both like why would you run your agency once this happens yeah i mean you end up just like you know selling it off or hiring operators i mean i mean nick uh shackleford which was the partner in brez i mean he had you know an events business he had an agency business he had an email business i think he just you find partners take that over and you just put more time into this but i mean early on i was like willing to bet on these fucking guys because they're the best sam i want you to google nick shackelford tattoo and uh tell me if you want to compete with this guy oh my god his whole body is covered yeah from the neck down to his toe every inch of his body is covered in a tattoo he looks like a He looks like the guy from Prison Break, dude.

51:49Yeah, he looks like a Japanese murderer. You know how they do the Yakuza? They do the whole... That's insane. Including his dick. I mean, he actually got it done, man. He said it was so painful. Oh, my God. It looks horrible. I mean, it looks great, but I don't want to do it. It looks painful. Yeah, that's what I mean. That's insane. What do you think Ridge is worth right now? Oh, man. I mean, the market for a brand like us is at an all-time low. and like look. Well, what's the all-time low number? We'd probably, a market clearing price is probably 300 million. Like I could probably clear that at the market with our growth and everything.

52:30It's really hard to sell my business right now. And like, I'm not trying to sell my business right now, right? Like I think we have like, by the end of the decade, we'll be doing like five or$600 million a year in annual revenue, really driven by this big tech rollout. So like we're really big in Best Buy already. We're going to be in Apple. We're going to be in Verizon. selling power banks, phone cases, cables. We already sell our wallets in a lot of those places. So that's like the next evolution of the brand is just more product expansion. But it's hard for me to sell my brand when Solo Stove is in a public company.

52:59And I think they're worth maybe a hundred million on the public market, right? Like there's, they peaked at$2.1 billion and now they're probably, the market cap today is a hundred million. And they have like 400 plus million in revenue. They own chubbies. It's very hard for my brand to go to market when if you squint, we kind of look like them and they just need to be taken private. There's a lot of take private things to happen and interest rates are still too high to take a lot of stuff private. So we're just waiting, waiting for all that. What would you want to sell if you weren't doing Ridge?

53:32If you had to sell Ridge today, what other product? I mean, you're not a guy who would stop. what other product would you want to sell yeah my goal for ridge eventually i'm not the long-term shepherd of this brand like if it's going to go public or whatever or most likely get bought by one of the roll-ups like in our industry that's that's the exit path there's 10 strategics that end up buying brands like ours um i would like to net a hundred million dollars and then i would like to start a portfolio of brands and services basically like you know everyone wants to have their own little PE, their own little family office type thing.

54:06So I would launch a bunch of weird little e-commerce brands that I think are going to be trend relevant and hire service providers to run those businesses. I love that you know what you want. You know, you've mapped this out of like what your ideal setup is. I love that. I love people who call their shot. Do you, you talk about trends, like, but, but, you know, bone, bone broth, it's hot then it's not keto it's hot then it's not and so like why go after a trend if it's gonna ultimately you know do what trends do most trends don't last forever so is that like building your sandcastle you know uh building your castle on quicksand or something like that like why why go after a trend when trends have this like shelf life are you trying to time and exit or are you trying to you're gonna hop trends what's the plan if you're gonna build on top of a trend.

54:58Yeah, dude, going back to Will from IQ Bar, trend surface area. You create a product and a trend because that's the best way to grow is in a growing market. You can be average in a growing market and grow very, very fast, right? I was an average operator when Facebook ads were growing and that's why my business grew. Now I can be a good operator because I have to be, but when a market's growing very fast, you could just be average. and then once once you get some sort of success it's it's pivoting so like if i was in the bone broth business i would have told them like hey we have to do fucking protein focused bone broths or bone bars like i i'm that guy coming in here trying to like disrupt whatever fucking business i'm in i'm like we yeah if i was at bone broth i'd be like look that's fine we should do that we're gonna do bone bars and we're gonna get whatever some jack guy talk about how they're great.

55:50Then I'd be in the bars business. Then it'd be like, we got to do bone supplements. We're going to be the only guys doing bone, whatever marrow pills. Like that's the type of shit I'd be pitching to them. So, uh, I love that that's your answer. Cause it's like, that's the attitude you have to have to win in that game. My takeaway is fan, what a horrible game to play. Uh, like, you know, I was just doing a podcast yesterday with a guy and he goes, uh, you don't want to be in the fresh produce business. He's like, um, you know, you know, He's like, you want to be YouTube, not a YouTuber, right? Just as a simple example.

56:22He's like, you take the best YouTuber and they're in the fresh produce business. They have to keep running as fast as they can on that treadmill. And then the treadmill gets faster and faster every year. And if they stop, they fall behind and there's a thousand other people on that treadmill. And so same thing, like if you're on a trend and a trend, you know, almost by definition is going to sort of peter out and then the new trends will emerge. that just seems like a really hard way to win in business when there's other styles of businesses that don't have that problem, right? But I think, but Sean, I think you're both could be right.

56:53I think the right answer though is to whichever, whichever path you take should fit your skillset and interest and you should commit to it and be that. You know, we had Moyes on, Moyes Ali from Native Deodorant. And we said like, why don't you do something easier? He goes, cause I'm a merchant. This is what I do. Yeah, I think that stuff is silly, dude. No, it's not silly. I actually disagree. I agree. I think committing to a path is significantly better than not. And if Sean Frank is committing to this trend thing, then he, yeah, it's exhausting for you because that's not your interest. Yeah, but you can commit to a better path.

57:22That's not true. What are you talking about? How much better path could it be? He's got a 10-year-old company that's doing$200 billion a year in revenue. That sounds like a good path. Yeah, I'm not saying what he's doing is bad. I'm saying he's the, he's an outlier winner. And even he's like, yeah, there's a company that's like us that does 400 million a year. is probably and is worth 100 million on the public markets, right? Or, you know, we have to continually hop, you know, from one category to the next. And he's in a better one, it's more enduring. But let's say you're on the bone broth type of type of thing where it's a wellness trend.

57:52And the wellness trends or the diet trends, they change very, very, very rapidly. Right? It's like that's a hard game to play compared to like, you know, look at the other look at the possible set of businesses you could go into. That's, that's definitely on the hard side, dude, like, ecom is definitely on the hard side and e-com on top of a trend is it is the hard version of the hard version oh dude look i i understand completely but the reason why i'm in it is because it's permissionless when i was 22 nobody would let me build fucking nvidia servers or whatever like you know a more robust infrastructure-led business right like if i was going to provide i don't know fucking routing cable services some random shit like that like maybe now you know i could get of that, but e-commerce is permissionless.

58:38And that's why I like it. Agencies are permissionless. It's like, the reason why we sold on Shopify is because nobody would give us a Nordstrom's PO, right? Like there's, there's a level of - But there's a lot of things. SaaS is permissionless. Communities are permissionless. There's a lot of things that are permission, newsletters are permissionless, whatever. There's a lot of things that are permissionless. The agency one is actually more permissionless than e-com because, you know, for e-com you have to buy inventory, right? There's a there is a capital requirement the agency one is different right that's just i'm gonna hustle my skills and i'll get cash flow then what you did was use that cash flow to then you know invest and continue to grow the brand right but for most people they get i know a lot of people that got excited about e-com and didn't realize like how scaling works with e-com where yeah it's it's like people squint and think it's sass that's not it's like it's like your bit your problems get harder the bigger you get right like it's bigger pos it's more management it's everything else where you know if you're sass it's like you know if it's if it's if it's 10 zeros or a thousand zeros being processed through your thing who the fuck cares um hey sean you you've gotten more you're you're a great follow on twitter because you're hilarious but you're this perfect combination of being hilarious but also i think you're right like because you've been there done that but has being as opinionated as you have been and willingness to call people out and this willingness to like say what you think, has that ever held you back?

1:00:03And do you regret doing that? Or do you think that like going all in on being a strong personality has benefited you? I mean, the only tangible negatives of being a public personality on the internet is, is if and when you get sued, because you will be sued, right? Everyone gets sued. And it's the cost of doing business, they will read your tweets in depositions. So just like that is the reality, right? I think a lot of people like don't want to like offend you're like that's embarrassing or what like what did you mean by saying you want to shoot the wobble family dude no like i mean i was i got to pose right i told someone i was going to drop a nuclear bomb on them and they read that i had to explain like i don't have access to nuclear weapons um but like i mean you should you should be yourself and authentic and uh my twitter has sold like$300 ,000 with a wallet.

1:01:00So definitely it's a net positive. And your podcast, right? So your personality and being public about what you guys, how well you guys are doing with Ridge and being funny and opinionated led to you guys doing this e-com podcast. And the e-com podcast pays you a bunch of money, right? Like you guys are doing really, really well off that. So that's paid off in a different way, right? You want to talk about that? Yeah. Yeah. So I only have like four minutes and I got to go to a call and do my real job. Maybe something you guys don't know anything about, but. Yeah, what are you talking about? Huh?

1:01:29I take naps after this. Yeah. So look, the reason why I got public on the internet is because in 2022, all of my friends moved across the whole world because of COVID and I didn't hang out with anybody. And it sucked for everybody. 2021, 2022, like I used to have a community of people who talk about e-commerce and then they've all moved. So I was just by myself and I'm like, let me just get on Twitter and started talking about e-commerce. And through that, I made a bunch of great friends because it's a very lonely thing running a big business. Like, you know, my best friends from high school, one of them goes to like crime scenes and cleans up like when somebody kills themselves or whatever.

1:02:09And the other one does garage doors. So like, imagine trying to tell them being like, yeah, man, like, you know, I spent$8 million on Meta, but I probably should have spent, like they told me to shut the fuck up. So you want to find friends who can have some sort of sympathy for what you're building. So I got on Twitter, found those people. They're all like Jason from Hexclad's on there, Mike Beckham from Simple Modern. He has like$200 million still in fucking water bottles. Matt from Pila Case. We started a podcast. Yeah, dude. What's it called? It's called Operators. So it's a niche e-commerce podcast.

1:02:44We have spinoffs. We have marketing operators. Dude, I think it'll bill at least$2 million to sponsors, but it might be like$4 million to sponsors. And it's just us talking about e-commerce, probably one-tenth the listenership. I mean, way less, maybe one-hundredth the listenership you guys get. But because it's so niche, it's like way more of an actual community, right? And I think people want to be you guys because you guys are like an entertainment show, right? You guys are like a big show, massive reach, entertaining people. But if you listen to this and you're an expert at something, do an incredibly niche YouTube channel because like the sponsor integrations are just so much deeper.

1:03:23Like our sponsors fulfill the ERP, right? And like, you guys don't know what that is, but if you're an e-commerce merchant, you need an ERP and the annual contracts are$150 ,000 a year and we've probably sold a hundred of them, right? So it's like, they'll give us$600 ,000 a year because we're the only marketing channel for them, right? Anyway, yeah, so we do a podcast. I think that's great advice. All right, we'll let you go. We know you got to go sell wallets and rings and other great things. Shout out your Twitter. Shout out your URL. Where do you want people to go? Okay, go to ridge.com slash Sean and buy a wallet.

1:04:01That's the best way to support me right now in this moment of time. Never stop selling, guys. We appreciate you, man. Thanks for doing this. All right, that's the pod.

1:04:17Days off on the road. Let's travel. Never looking back.

1:04:25All right. This episode is brought to you by Mercury. They are the finance platform of choice for over 200 ,000 companies. Shouldn't be surprised because I use it myself for not one, not two, but I have eight different Mercury accounts. I have seven for different companies that I'm a part of, and then I have my own personal account because now they have personal banking, which is a really cool feature. I highly, highly recommend it. Like I said, I use it myself. And the reason why is because the way that Mercury works is beautiful. It's very intuitive. And you could tell that it's actually made by a startup founder.

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