Billions in Ecommerce Deals & How to Build a Brand Worth Buying

23:07And the thing that's interesting about AI is that I think it reduces your flank if you're an established company, is kind of why I'm starting to lean towards the incumbents. that it's like, you know, we've all talked to companies where like, for example, social, they just have no clue, you know, and they're not even like to Curtis's point, they're not even asking the right questions. And, but it's easy to imagine a world a year or two from now where that doesn't really matter. They can just tell their AI, like, hey, I need my social to be good, you know, and that's like the extent of direction they need to give to actually have a pretty coherent, good strategy around social and spending and influencer outreach and all that stuff.

23:47And so I think generally the idea that the incumbents are going to be able to hold on to their leads is probably where I come out right now. And that this is one of the reasons why I kind of view this as a land run period where it's a really good time to be launching brands. It's a really good time to be scaling brands because there's going to be a point where it's harder is kind of my take and i we live in this kind of echo chamber and so i constantly like man we're behind we're not going fast enough you know whatever um and then it's like no you're like the people around me are like you're insane like you are like in the like you're so far out in front of the average company in person that you don't even understand but it's just the people that you run with are like all in on this so i do think we're on the front end like everything we're talking about, we might be five or 10 years out from this stuff really getting fully recognized in the average company.

24:45I have no idea, but I do think that there is this unique window of opportunity right now for operators to really take advantage of tools that are widely available, but not widely used.

24:58Matt Bertulli:Longtime sponsor Northbeam is launching incrementality later this quarter. This means that you can now have the trifecta of marketing measurement all in one platform, That is multi-touch attribution, media mix modeling, and incrementality holdouts all inside of Northbeam. You can automate that lift testing end-to-end, unify results with your MTA and your MMM. This is a lot of letters, but if you know, you know. And you can start to cut what doesn't work, and you can scale what works. And you can do this all with confidence. This is why this is such an incredible add to Northbeam. Northbeam's incrementality measures what results marketing is actually generating, not just what they're claiming credit for.

25:35Matt Bertulli:As a CEO, that's like music to my ears. Sign up now and you can lock in 50 % off unlimited tests for the year. And the macro, like all of this shipping nonsense with the straight-over-mose, like inputs, costs going up. Like, Curtis, do you think about this crap at all? Or are you like, nah, it's temporary, just keep moving. And what Mike said, like this is the best time in history to be operating. Screw all that. Welcome to being a CEO and a founder and entrepreneur. You have to hold two things in your hands at all times. And they don't make sense. There's cognitive dissonance, right? I read the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal every single day.

26:13I did my PhD work in political science. I get on and I read the news and I get scared out of my mind. And then I go and tell everyone that the world's going to be great and everything's going on our side. I met Mike for the first time. I saw him in person at the Hexplat offices in L.A. And the one thing I remember is on stage, he was up there and he said, hey, people who have a lead, who already have a company built, they're going to do better in all the disruption that's happening. And I believe that's true. But we're talking on this podcast and this is the best podcast that there is out there to talk to people who have a million or a five or a 10 or a 20, best one.

26:54If you've got that, you listen to each one of these and you're going to learn something. I learned something that day. If you get the lead, It's easier to keep that lead. But you get the lead by building systems over time. So if you're talking about AI search coming up, you're not like, I have to scam the system and create AI content to create AI content. No, it's, did you have a PR company? Are you putting out content for the last year, two, three, four? This stuff takes time to build. Like people have a lead because they built things. So sometimes when you're saying, what can I do today to make money today?

27:31or what's the investment for long-term, you have to be putting some time and energy into building things for the long-term because in three years, you're going to be really glad that you did.

27:42Matt Bertulli:You know what, Curtis? Okay, so this is an interesting point, guys. Consumer, I've long said this. I know we've all said this on the show. Consumer is very much a long game. And what I always find interesting, Mike, is if you talk to an investor, their worry is that consumer is not very durable. They're like, consumer preferences change all the time. My argument back is like, no, they don't. Their brand preference might change. But consumer preferences, that takes a long time to move, right? Like these trends that happen in consumer, they don't come along for a year. Like maybe if it's a labubu, like a stupid stuffy thing on the purse.

28:21Matt Bertulli:But like broad, big trends, health, wellness, like better for you. That is not a one or two year trend. like it is actually a very durable tailwind that's going to go on for quite some time it makes no sense to me right like like you said that you get rich you get fat i'm like we've always done that as a species but for some reason right now we're going to get like we're not going to get fat and happy we're going to get fit and unhappy i don't know what the reverse this is but these trends are i actually do think that these trends are durable and i think curtis is making a really good point like you want to be operating from this place of like stacking bricks and compounding.

28:57Matt Bertulli:Doesn't matter how fast AI goes. It doesn't matter. Just do the damn boring work in consumer because that's where it's durable. What I've come to the conclusion of is that being a good operator now requires thinking in first principles instead of thinking in front pages. And that if you try to build your business around the latest headline, you're just constantly going to be chasing shadows and you're going to constantly be guessing and often guessing wrong about what the next thing you should do with your business is. Instead, you have to think from first principles about the market and about the consumer and about what creating value looks like.

29:37Put your head down and focus on those things. I cannot tell you where oil will be in six months. Nobody can, obviously. Just look at the volatility in the chart. But I know that people are still going to care about their health and their wellness. They're going to care about it even more than they care about it today. I know that people are going to want, you know, like they're going to want faster shipping, not slower shipping. They're going to want lower prices, not higher prices. They're going to want, you know, like this is this is the thing that the great investors and business owners do is they say, I am going to look at the timeless principles and I'm going to build around those.

30:14And I am going to try and not be distracted by the day to day. One of the more interesting examples of this, I was reading about a famous investor. And one of the most powerful things that they did is super counterintuitive. So if you are running a hedge fund, running a mutual fund, you have a Bloomberg terminal. Now, maybe that won't be the case in five or 10 years. But today, with the way that that industry works, you have a Bloomberg terminal. That's the brain that has all the quotes, the latest data, the latest news. And everybody just kind of lives on their Bloomberg terminal. This investor was making the point about thinking long term, which is the point Curtis is making.

30:53You're making that. And in their office, they did something really simple. They put the Bloomberg terminal on a desk and there was no chair at the desk. And the reason why there was no chair at the desk is that they intentionally were saying, we have to have a terminal in the office. But this is not a thing you spend hours looking at. You might go over there to look up a piece of information or to glance at it. But this is not where you spend your day because it's all about short term data. And that's not really how you make winning investment decisions. You think in longer chunks of time. And so that same principle is worth asking if you're an operator.

31:32It's like, where are you over-indexing on Twitter and the noise of today, the news, the volatility of a stock or an industry today? And how can you reduce that exposure? And if you're going to over-index on anything, over-index on human nature and on the things that you know are true today, five years from now, 10 years from now, that's how you build a really successful business.

31:57Matt Bertulli:Curtis, do you think that the, this is on Mike's point, do you think that the consumer, this whole trend towards wellness, is this part of like a broader and even bigger trend towards like more intentional consumption? I come back to this whole GLP one thing often, guys. I don't know how much you follow the space, but like it's having second order effects that I don't know that people saw, right? People who are on some version of a GLP-1 or whatever, I don't know technical terms of these things. I can't pronounce all of them. But their sex drives are lower. They desire less. If you desire something like intimacy less, do you then change your consumption habits broadly?

32:47Matt Bertulli:And then if you combine that with AI, like Mike, you're hitting it on the head. the news cycle on X, if you are on there all the time, you feel so far behind. Like as an operator, you are like, oh my God, I'm the dumbest person in the room. I'm not doing any of this. So like I look at AI right now and I'm like, it's producing such an amount of noise. Like we thought social media was bad. Oh my God. No. That the snapback, the pushback to this is, I just want less. I want less. In general, I want less. So you got GOP1s and this reduction of desire. Then you have all this noise coming from these AI companies and all the people that are up their ass.

33:32Matt Bertulli:I just don't want to be online. That's sort of where I get to. I'm like, I'm going to turn the internet off. I'm not an old man. Are more people feeling this way? Am I the only one? So I get you complete. I run my day in three phases. okay i get up in the morning i have coffee no one else is around and i write a linkedin post or do a video okay i go on to linkedin it's my thoughts it's my quiet time it's what's actually happened to me that day okay i read some stuff i don't read too much occasionally i'll go onto twitter and i'll see you post something or sean frank and then i'll look down a little bit farther and it's just this crazy stuff and i'm like no way twitter is not for me and i jump off i've never been on Twitter for more than three minutes.

34:16So that is just too much chaos in my brain. So the first phase is me getting my thoughts together and writing on LinkedIn. That's why you're mentally healthy, Curtis, by the way. There's a direct correlation between mental health and time on Twitter. Then I go to work all day long and love it. That's on day-to-day, building long terms, solving problems. What's the biggest problem? And that's just so much fun and energy. And then at night, I go home and I watch romantic comedies or sports in a team that I don't care about. So Mike has it the worst way because when his team plays, he cares. And if I care about a team, I get so angry if they lose, right?

34:58I love if I love a team, I can't watch the game. I wait for the result. If I don't care, I'll watch it and I'll really enjoy it. So my evenings are never about conflict. I'll watch Brooklyn Nine-Nine. I'll watch The Good Place. I'll watch K-Dramas. Nothing with conflict in it. And then I'll take a bath and I'll sit around. I'll go to bed and I'll start that thing over again, right? That's just my day. So it's like mixes things. I don't want too much conflict. I create enough crazy and conflict in my life, just being me out there in work, that when I get home, whew, turn this stuff off.

35:34Matt Bertulli:do you do you curse do you think this is like i don't know i guess that i maybe my friends are just all too old like you guys we're all just too old but there's definitely a trend here and i'm even noticing it with younger people uh in our office they're just less online like they absolutely are they're they're being more intentional with how they consume they're very concerned with like is this ai or not like that's a big trend right now like america and if you look at like all survey data in the States, people do not like AI. Broadly, this is a negative sentiment. If you're looking for a trend, if you want the trend that's occurring, everyone's trying to spend less time online, but it's so intoxicating they can't.

36:15They think they are, but they can't. The next thing is community. It's either community online and then getting it offline. It's them connecting to other people in a real way is the next trend for the next 10 to 15 years. And this is what Hudson with Comfort would say is that ultimately like that propelled, you know, the success that they've had. But think about what Curtis is saying. That is a timeless need of human beings to feel connected to others and part of the community.

36:44Matt Bertulli:That's back to the first principles thing. It's the first principle. It's like you don't have to like people would rather be healthy than unhealthy. People would rather feel known and cared for than unknown and alone. You know, like, and great business owners are able to think in first principles of the human condition and say, if I address the human condition and the needs that are never going anywhere, then like, it's impossible that my business will suddenly not have demand one day. And that's why I think that today you have an opportunity that the more noise there is, the more disruption, the more distraction, the harder it is to focus on that.

37:23But we see every week on this podcast, we see people that are breaking through the noise and creating really significant value, great businesses. But usually, Matt, you and I have done a bunch of these with Titans and with operators. When you dig down, dig down, dig down, you realize that they've just found something about the human condition that was true 5 ,000 years ago. And it'll be true 5 ,000 years from now. And that's what great business people are able to do.

37:51Matt Bertulli:Yeah, it's the Woobles thing, right? her her whole like fiero it's like that you just want to accomplish something it's like that's such a human thing i just want i want to do something hard because i feel good when i do something hard well and ironically this is worth pausing and talking about because um you just mentioned like the sentiment on ai and i think you could more generally say like this is the sentiment about technology yep kind of by and large like i think people are using ai as just a placeholder for technology. The sentiment is very negative. And I get it. Like for me personally, I took everything on my phone that I significantly use off about a week and a half ago because I'm like, I just don't want to be on my phone.

38:33I do not want to be doing that much screen time. And I feel better, you know, like, and I think everybody is kind of making the same kind of observation. Implementing AI with our trusted data is shooting in the dark and building that from scratch, dealing with Tableau, dealing with beta pipelines, dealing with all that, it doesn't have to be your headache. You can hire Serious Analytics to handle that stuff for you. Serious IQ gives your leadership team a single shared view of the truth. Contribution margin, channel performance, customer economics, all can be answered instantly with the power of Serious Analytics.

39:08Do not fall behind. Serious Analytics is experts. They've set it up for Ridge, TextCloud, and hundreds of other brands. Speak to them today. Connect whatever AI tool you already to use. And you can put that right on top of your personal data, privately, securely, and you can start talking to your data like your favorite chat bot. One of the reasons why I think the sentiment on technology and AI has turned so negative goes back to that PRO, which is a need that every human has that transcends time is the need to feel like your day mattered and you accomplished something of purpose. And it is very depressing the idea that you can't offer anything that the technology can't do better quicker you know less expensively than you like that is not you know like in the the software community right now there's this real existential kind of dread they all see the writing on the wall it's like at best your job is babysitting a computer basically going forward and just like hitting approve you know like and kind of like that uh that clip of all the people at the slot machines at vegas where it's just like you know they're all just hitting the button it's like that's what um cloud code has kind of turned some of us into and so my my kind of optimistic view is that's not what the future is going to look like but it's a great example of another one of those undying human needs if you help people feel like they made their day count they accomplished something there will always be a market and there will always be people that are ready to pay you

40:35Matt Bertulli:for that it's the programmers it's like first principles for programmers is everybody devolves or evolves into a parent. Like you're just, you're Claude's dad, okay? Or mom. Just make sure it doesn't like barf on itself. That's your job right now. If I have something to say about what you're saying, I'm not sure what it would be, but. Okay, so all this to say then, if you're thinking incumbent versus challenger, Mike, you brought this up and Curtis, I'm curious your thoughts on this, that we've got a several year period here, who knows how long, where you can just build things so much easier, right?

41:14Matt Bertulli:And the incumbents, like I like to, sometimes I think Mike, you and I were talking about this, like Simple Modern, you could say is an incumbent. Portland Other Goods is an incumbent. You guys have been around for a while. But like, if we're really looking at the scale of consumer, the incumbents are Procter & Gamble and Unilever and Coke. Well, that's the biggest acquisition. Those are the incumbents. We're talking about these people raising$20 million rounds. The big announcement was Unilever and McCormick creating a$6 billion company. Like that is, that's, that's, and that's significant. You know, it's significant when you're like talking about two of the real big dogs being like, you know what?

41:49I think it's the right time to merge. And it tells you something about their view of the world that they think being bigger is better than being smaller right now, which is interesting. And, and I agree, Matt, like, yeah, it's like on some scale, I guess we're incumbent and established, but on the larger scale of the U S economy, we're still.

42:08Matt Bertulli:You're actually a challenger, right? Ultimately, the way that you run your company and the way that, Curtis, you run your company, you guys are actually the challengers of broader consumer, like going for share of wallet. What else can you build? Curtis, I know you've been looking at, you and Mike actually share this. You guys are both wanting to build other brands in other categories. I'm the same way. I just want to build brands. I just think this is the best time in history to be doing that. But Curtis, I'm curious. Like, do you, would you rather, do you think it's good to tell people, like, right now is a great time to start?

42:41Matt Bertulli:Or is it going to get harder and harder, as Mike is saying, like, every day? It doesn't matter. It doesn't matter. It's a great time to start. It's always a great time to start. Like, it's the famous Lord of the Rings quote, the job that takes longest is the job that's never finished, my old gaffer used to say, right? Like, it's just like, yeah, you start. Things go up and down. You can overanalyze everything. it's this is a cocky egotistical way that i look at the world but i'm going to say it because for people who watch this a lot of them think the same way and that is you need to be better than 90 of the people out there do 100 agree with that you do now the good news is 60 of them suck i remember being and taking those scholastic tests when i was young and they're like hey you're in Montana and you're in the 98, 99 percentile and all of these things.

43:33You're like, wow. And then you talk to Doug, who's the idiot in the class, and he got 78. And you're like, who's 77 % worse than Doug? Right? Like, you know what I mean? Like, there are people who are going to make the wrong mistakes again and again because they're just out there flailing along. The right time to start in business is right now. There is not what podcasters ask. If you could break it down to one secret, like oh the worst question in the world the answer is it's not one thing it's you've got to grow as your company grows you've got to be better at making decisions hiring people and all of that and the time to start that is right now and as the world changes you change because you become more competent in doing that and everybody Matt does that, Mike does that, Sean does that everybody does that you're better now than you were a year ago so everyone who watches this podcast just has to say I start now, next week I'll be better, I'll make some mistakes, and in a year or two, I'm looking on the incumbents.

44:35I'm talking to those people who are starting now saying, dude, you started two or three years ago when I did, right? It's always start now.

44:44Matt Bertulli:The one thing is actually just what you guys keep hitting on, and I think Hudson said it. It's funny, I got a bunch of feedback for the Titans episode with Hudson because Hudson's like, I think I'm the greatest consumer operator out there. And then he went on to clarify, and I think Sean should think he thinks that way too. Yeah. Right. And like everybody, you, all entrepreneurs that I know that are successful, have an irrational optimism and an irrational belief in themselves. Like it makes no sense. You know, like none of us have any amount of like, there's no past history that we're taking from saying like, Oh, I can definitely do this.

45:15Matt Bertulli:And it's like, no, no, I can do it. I know I can do it. How do you know it? I don't know. I just can't. That is like, that's such a core thing to people who build. My partner often says, my partner says, you have more confidence than you have any right to have. You've never done anything in your life to make you that confident. But your confidence is your superpower. Yes. And I'm like, okay, I guess so. I have no ability to look backwards and to go through mistakes. I only have the ability to say, what did I learn and how do I go forward? I do not live in breath. Okay, so on this then, what you guys are making me think of right now I was like, all right, we're all saying it's a great time to be starting.

45:55Matt Bertulli:Go out, build a brand. Mike, you're building brands. Curtis, you're building brands. I'm doing it. It's a great time to start. On this other side, these massive deals are happening, and you're constantly hearing from guys like you who have established companies, who are omnichannel, who have lots of things that are making them successful. If you were to break down right now, I'm going to go out and build a winning brand, what do you think like are you still telling people omni channel super important you got to get there as soon as you can uh profit versus growth um consumable like are there things that you're like guys this again maybe not first principles mike but like characteristics of how you're thinking about building brands today like what can you give people to say like look this is how i'm thinking of them this is what's important to me and how we're gonna do it yeah i just like to leave people with like, okay, here's some structure to this.

46:50Here's the single best piece of advice I can give. I've worked with countless people trying to start businesses. I'm an entrepreneur in residence at OU. Your business being successful, the most important thing is that you find a channel where you can sustainably acquire customers profitably. the end. Like all the other stuff is secondary. Can you find one channel where you can sustainably, that means over and over and over again, perpetually acquire customers where it's going to be positive economics? And if you can, you've got a business, you've got cashflow, you've got a future. And if you can't, none of the other stuff matters.

47:37And so when I'm evaluating new business models that we want to get into that is absolutely at the very top of the waterfall is what is that channel and why do I think I can sustainably acquire customers profitably? And part of that, actually, there's an implicit question in there, which is how am I going to get better than market returns in that channel? Because if I use the same approach that everybody else is in that channel, whether that is Walmart or Amazon or Target or TikTok or D2C, then I am not going to be able to sustainably generate a profit. So I have to understand what it is. What is the unique value proposition that I am offering that is going to allow me to generate those excess returns and that consistent user acquisition in that channel?

48:30And sometimes that's saying, I have a better price than others. I can bring the same product with the same quality at a better price. Or I can bring a product that fits and meets a customer need that none of the other products in this space are meeting. And I know there are people ready to pay for it or whatever it is. You have to have some kind of unique differentiator competitive advantage that makes it possible for you to sustainably acquire positive economic people in one channel. And then you build outward.

48:59Matt Bertulli:Do you, Curtis, do you think that that obviously, I mean, like that, amen, Mike, but is that category dependent or is that more founder? Like what's more important there? Like Hammer, it's like, you know, some operators, like I'm sure Hudson would tell you or whoever's really good at TikTok shops, like Jordan, who runs Social Commerce Club, TikTok shops is where they would start. They'd start from the channel because that's their skill set. Can I take a stab at that, Matt? When I think about it, I think about your company, whether it's one person or 70 people, you have a unique set of assets. It's like a fingerprint.

49:36No two companies have exactly the same set of competitive advantages and assets. And the answer to the question that I just posed comes back to what are your unique set of competitive advantages? It just so happens with me that I never really cut my teeth on meta ads, but I know Amazon. And so it is completely true that I'm able to see and take advantage of opportunities on Amazon that others would not see. A really simple example of this that's coming, we will get into a category on Amazon that if I told you, you would say, that's interesting, but sounds suicidal, but we're going to win. And I understand how to win in that channel because of my unique experience.

50:17As a founder entrepreneur, you have to be able to have the self-awareness to assess where do I have unique advantages and where do I not? And that's almost as powerful is that I know all the areas where, you know, like there is nothing special. I like to think I'm a smart guy, but like there's a lot of areas where I do not have any kind of particular unique advantage. And so I don't try and play in those areas. I try and maximize my chances to win by playing in areas where I've got the biggest unique advantages to me.

50:47Matt Bertulli:Curtis, so curious your thoughts on this. I have so many. So I spent a winter in a Zen monastery in the Northwest. It was me and eight Buddhist monks. And I remember an absolute was wonderful winter up at literally the top of a mountain. And I remember the chosen saying, as long as you're centered, you'll be able to make the decisions that life throws at you. I really was angry because Mike just nailed that. Like, it's not multi-channel. It's what channel can get you new customers at a profit. And you pour everything into that until you get good enough that you can go to that next one and the next one.

51:31You don't say, oh, I just read that this is what we do. TikTok's the way to go. The thing is, and please, I mentioned this earlier about TikTok, okay? We're doing$200 ,000 a day more. Every single day since we started TikTok 11 to 12 days ago. Okay? Now, only$90 ,000 to$100 ,000 is TikTok. But all of our other areas are making more money because of TikTok. If you had not set up profitability on those other ones, you couldn't pay for the acquisition. Mike nailed it. Find out a way to get a new customer and a profit. How can you test it very, very quickly, inexpensively, and learn how to get a new customer?

52:12Once you have those basics, then you make the decisions to build out over that. You don't look at the news. You don't look at a podcast. You don't look at the reels and say, oh, my gosh, I got to jump there because everyone's doing it. He nailed it. Learn how to sell something at a profit and then sell more of them.

52:31Matt Bertulli:Every SaaS company says they are AI-powered, but very few can explain what it actually does for the revenue of my brand. This is why PostScript's approach stood out to us. They don't just build AI for demos or buzzwords. They built it to drive real incremental revenue. PostScript's AI called Shopper, it shows up inside of SMS at moments with real buyer intent when shoppers are likely asking questions, hesitating, maybe even about to drop off. Shopper can answer product questions instantly, answer questions about fit, availability, recommendations, order issues, the kinds of stuff that people usually bounce for.

53:03Matt Bertulli:This means more conversions, higher AOV, less lost demand. So you are driving more revenue and doing it more efficiently. Check out Shopper from Postscript. We use it at PILA, which is why I am telling you to check it out. The wisdom you came with, Mike, you're just better than those monks, man. Good job. Well, that's why I cut mine and cut Matt off. I was like, Curtis is going to crush this. I got to jump the line and say it before Curtis does it. No, look, it's listening to both of you. Have you ever seen the Japanese, is it like the Ikigai thing? Like the overlapping concentric circles of like, what are you good at?

53:37Matt Bertulli:What makes you happy? What is the world value? It's that, right? Like Mike, I've watched you do this. Like you, you have a set of things that you know really well, and you seem to be picking moves as far as brands and categories that line up with the things that you know really well, which to me makes a ton of sense, right? Yeah. Like I think it's a counter almost to what Hudson was saying is that I am not the best at many, many, many things. yeah and i think that's a strength that i know that but i might be one of the best at very very few things but that's enough you know like i i have uh somebody i know from uh growing up and he is like uh probably a top 20 neurosurgeon in the world and i was asking him about it and he's like basically i'm an idiot in like 99 of my life like i barely know how to like you know run the dishwasher, but I have this very specific skillset and the market really values that, you know, because he knows how to operate on brains in a very particular way.

54:38And so the market's willing to pay him millions of dollars a year to do that. And that's, that's the way the business is. I don't have to be the best at hardly anything. I just need one or two things that I'm really good at. And then I can provide for myself, my family, my kids, generations to come, the community around me. And that's the inspiring thing about business. It does seem intimidating where it's like, well, I got to be an expert on TikTok shops and I got to be a guru at meta ads. And I also have to be a genius at operational efficiency. And I've got to be able to project the price of oil.

55:12And I've got to crawl inside his head and understand what he's likely to do when this set of tariffs run out. And I've got to, you know, and on and on and on. And no, you don't. You need to find one or two things that you can be really, really great at. and then you need to focus on them. And the more you focus on them, the better you'll get at them and you'll build something of value. And maybe someday somebody will come and give you a check for that. Or maybe every year it'll just pay you some money, but you'll have a better life either way. And that's what makes business great. And that's what makes technology and where it's going great is that it is going to democratize access to building things of value.

55:48And it is going to help lift people out of poverty. It is going to help people get away from working from somebody else to create value to having their own vision and having more flexibility. And these are all great things. This is what we celebrate with this podcast.

56:02Matt Bertulli:How do you guys think founders, operators should be spending their time right now with respect to AI? Because there is a limit to what it's going to do for a consumer brand at this moment in time. Like I'm not running a better ad account because of AI. Like not really. So like Curtis, how much time are you spending on this? Mike, you and I know you and I are spending a lot of time on this. But Curtis, I'm curious, in this grand world of you just got to pick things that you can be really great at and focus on them, how do you think about this? So the fun news is I have an opinion on everything.

56:42So if you ever ask me, I'm going to have an opinion. But on AI, I'm going to go back and hop off the computer and talk about something that Mike mentioned very early on. He said, first of all, let's talk about this at a high level. You have to be a CEO or a founder to say that, because if you talk to any of your employees or all these startups, they want to talk about all the noise down at the bottom. Part of what we do, Matt, I know you do it. Mike, I know you do it. I say, I understand all this garbage down here. Let's talk about it at a different level. Let's look in at it on this. So we have people using AI, coming up with things, doing all of this stuff.

57:18And my job is to say, let's look at it from a higher level. We're not doing it enough. We're doing it too much. We need to put that. Because when I make a decision, I'm saying we're going to take time, money, and people, and we're going to put toward that. And it's going to save us time, money, or people. It's going to make us more money over the long term. So I have to look at that. Are we using AI? Absolutely. I'm using it to simplify the way that I view the world. I am not on cloud creating apps like you guys. I am not on, I don't know all of these things, but I've hired some really smart people that I talk to every day that I'm saying, let's look into it.

57:59Come back to me and tell me in three or four simple sentences why this is going to work. I don't want to, you know, you guys are younger and smarter than me. I do not want to be involved in that all day, every day. I think it clogs up the simple way I look at the world. But if you're not jumping into this heavy, meaning every question you have say, could I solve that more quickly? It's so simple. When people ask me a question, I'm like, I wish you had a device that you could literally ask that same question to and it would answer that right now. I wish we could look into some of these things that we do We had that.

58:42Our first instinct is not to use AI to solve our problems. And we have to train our brains to saying, first of all, can I solve this and what's coming in the long term? I'm not up in as much as you guys. I am not. But we use it. I love it. It's the reality of the world. And it's going to make your opinion offline of taking all that information and making decisions that change your company that's going to make the difference.

59:09Matt Bertulli:Mike, let's go to you on this one. They asked CM Altman, what would you not use AI for? And he said, well, I don't think I would ask it about the meaning of life. And there's something pretty interesting there. And I'm going to make a really generalized observation. Our ability to think high level and our ability to think about meaning and purpose is being impaired by our technology, how online we are, and how often we go to our technology to answer questions for us. It's ironic because if you listen to the people that are on the front rows of building this, what they're saying is, yes, it will be able to do anything.

59:57However, However, the thing that is going to create leverage is understanding how to deploy that power. And that is more of a first principles question. That is a question that only comes from somebody who is able to think about the world and how they want to impact it and what they want to build and how that's going to create value. and so the point i use this analogy because i think it's really effective uh arabian nights you know the the aladdin story he he finds a magic lamp and if you rub it the genie comes out and he grants you three wishes and the story is really about how difficult it is to answer the question of if a genie could do anything what would you have it do how would you use those three wishes I think AI is a nice placeholder for the gene that imagine the technology does get to the point where it can do anything.

1:00:53You know what that still doesn't answer is it doesn't answer the question of what is it worth doing? What is it worth building? Only you can answer that. And that the people who will succeed won't necessarily be the most technologically smart. They'll be the people that have the vision of what is worth spending my time towards building. and that the tools to help them to build those things are going to be more capable, more abundant, and more inexpensive than ever before, but they can never solve the question for you of what is worth doing. You have to do that hard work, and those are going to be the people that thrive in the years ahead.

1:01:26Matt Bertulli:Can I expand on what you're both saying then? I think, I also think, Mike, at the same time, like this is one of those instances where lots of things can be true at the same time. I think you should be spending as much time on it as possible. And I think the reason for that is this word understanding, which is what you just said. I think every operator, every CEO needs to understand this at the level that they understand every other very important part of their business. Like, I know enough about my supply chain to be dangerous. I know I can build factories now. Now, that doesn't mean that I'm the one doing it, but I still know enough to be dangerous.

1:02:01Matt Bertulli:I know if somebody is like doing it right or not. I know enough about how to run an ad account. I'm not flipping the switches, but I still know enough. And I think this is a new area for operators because most operators don't know a thing about how software works. Not even one. We just know it works. And I negotiate the price of it. That's been the history of software in most brands is like, does it work and how much? And I think this is a unique time where I am seeing operators, non-technical people getting in the weeds trying to figure this out. The ones that are doing it well are doing it from a place of, I need to understand how this is going to add value to my business.

1:02:41Matt Bertulli:Like where can it provide leverage? And the ones that are doing it wrong are the ones that are trying to become software engineers. And I've been saying this a lot lately to people. I'm like, just because you can code doesn't mean you should. If you're scaling an e-commerce brand today, ads alone aren't enough. After Sell focuses on the one moment that every brand already owns after checkout and turns the post-purchase moment into more profit. Monetize every order with post-purchase offers and thank you page experiences without disrupting checkout or hurting conversion. Enterprise-grade tech used by Gap, Ticketmaster, Macy's, and Target now driving results for brands like True Classic, Hexclad, Ridge, and Jones Road.

1:03:21I would know. This is the reason I ended up buying three pans from Hexclad instead of two. Aftersell has already generated over$1 billion in additional revenue for e-commerce brands, revenue that doesn't require more traffic or higher CAC. So check out AfterCell and tell them that the operator sent you. Well, and I'm going to try and bring it back to what we've been talking about today. It's funny because my observation, just talking with other leaders, the podcast, is that AI has become almost like the death star with this tractor beam, where no matter what you set out to discuss, somehow like at the end you're talking about AI.

1:03:56But like, let me bring this full circle back to M &A. practically the reason why M &A is always the most popular thing we talk about is that it's really the way that you can have your life completely financially changed overnight right someone buys what you've built and that can not only transform your life but it can transform your children's lives and you know people descendants you haven't even haven't even born yet and so I do want to make an observation here which is that people aren't going to buy what you've built because of some clever cloud integration, right? That can be a tool you use, but they are going to buy value that you have created.

1:04:37And as the technology has become more powerful, don't look at that as a substitute for value creation. It can be a great tool that you use in the process of creating things of great value, but it is not the value. And so we will continue to explore how do we use these tools, but the types of things that investors pay for are long-term competitive advantages that, as Curtis said, take months and years to build. And technology can be an aid and a tool in that, but it is not the thing. This is the unsexy stuff like building a team with great culture, building a brand that really means something to thousands to millions of people, building a supply chain and manufacturing partners that really trust you and are really partnered in things with you or your own manufacturing, developing intellectual property that other people cannot produce, regardless of how much money they have.

1:05:32These are the kind of things that investors are happy to pay you for. And so use the tools available to help build those things, but never conflate the two. The tools are not the value. The value is still and always will be in these things like these unique competitive advantages.

1:05:49Matt Bertulli:Love that. Curtis, do you want the final word? I want to wrap this show up because that's a great, this is a great way to place to end. You did great, Matt. And thanks for guiding us along through this. I just, when Mike was talking, I was thinking of philosopher Bertrand Russell, who said philosophy is not to figure out the question. It's to figure out what questions we should ask. And I think that's AI. I think he's figuring out the right things to use it for is number one. And then I want to tell all these operators that are starting at 1 million right now or at zero and today they think they want to start that and we've motivated that.

1:06:24The great news is if you build a$200 million company, you will be a much better person because you can't do it if you're a person. Like the growth personally that you make is equal to the company growth. So when you look back, you won't even remember that person that you were because you have to get more integrity, more thoughtful, better with people, better at salesmanship, better at making the hard decisions, better at everything that you do. you're going to be a better person. You want to know why to be an entrepreneur? It's the best way to become the person that you're meant to be. It's hard.

1:07:01It's rough. And you get out the other end and you feel like you can take over the world.

1:07:07Matt Bertulli:Yeah. Ultimately, what you're both saying is how you actually build a great, valuable business. That's it. All these deals that are happening, that's what they did. You know, that's it. Boys, this was fun. I like this one. This is going to be a great app. I appreciate you both. I got to take notes now. That's how I know we have a good episode is I leave and I'm like, I got to write things down. As opposed to most episodes where Matt just tunes out and this one, he actually might learn something from. So hopefully you did as well. I just got to take some notes. All right, guys, that's a wrap.