1798 – Building Iconic Brands with Chris Orzechowski

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0:59with us right now chris orzakowski chris you are a growth strategist uh you serve as a fractional cmo and you're found on the web at 100 year brand.co chris thank you so much for joining us thank you for having me josh excited to be here yes um give us an overview of like who you work with, what you do, what that typically looks like? Yeah. So I am on a mission to build the next generation of a hundred plus year American brands and in the physical product space. And I typically work with brands as a fractional CMO, basically help them with their marketing and really just sit in that capital allocators chair and say, you know, with our marketing budget and the channels and assets and infrastructure and systems that we have, how do we multiply and how do we grow?

1:46So I help people with everything from advertising to retention, email marketing, SMS, direct mail, just, you know, look to find hidden opportunities for revenue and growth that a lot of people overlook. Yeah, well, Chris, not every company makes it to 100 years. So I'm sure you know a few things about what it takes for a company to kind of stand the test of time. What is it? Yeah, I think the best companies that last the longest tend to do a few things. One of those things being that they turn their brand into a lifestyle. And a good example of this is you look at like, you know, Polo Ralph Lauren.

2:21They're not 100 years old, obviously, but I have no doubt in my mind that they will be one day. But they've been in business for decades and decades. And part of the reason why is, you know, you don't just buy one shirt from Polo, right? Like, you know, it's kind of an aesthetic. It's who you are. And people in the modern world tend to buy their identities, right? And you look at Harley Davidson, they are 100 plus year American brand. People who are Harley Davidson fans are lifers, right? They'll buy from the company for years and years and decades for their whole life because it's part of who they are.

2:48So I think the best brands tend to do that. And the way that you do that is by having really solid retention systems. Obviously, you always want to be acquiring more customers and you should always be advertising and having those systems set up too. But the best brands that last the longest tend to retain customers for a very long time and get repeat purchases over and over and over again. Yeah. What do great brands and great companies do to kind of maintain and grow their existing customer base? In other words, how do they provide exceptional services so that they keep their clients forever? I think it's a big function of just doing really solid database management and database mining and making sure that you're putting the right offers and the right products in front of the right people at the right time, using segmentation tools, doing customer analysis, cohort analysis, things like that to determine who's at risk of churning, who is a VIP that you need to take extra special care of, who are people who haven't converted yet, who are people who have only bought one time, and really breaking it down and seeing like, you know, within every database, there's a lot of opportunity to, there's a lot of money waiting for you, right?

3:56Like if you just know, it's kind of like when you look at a mountain, there might be gold deposits all over. You just need to find the gold within the mountain. You need like an x-ray vision to go in and see where the money is buried. Your database is the same way. And there's a lot of tools that you could use, especially now with the advent of AI that you could use to go in and do, you know, analysis on your database and see who's ripe to buy, who's ready to buy, who hasn't bought in a while and should be coming back and the craft specific promotions for the right kind of people with the right offer at the right time.

4:24Yeah. And I know, Chris, you have a background. Well, obviously, CMOing is what you do. But, you know, part of what would be some of the areas of marketing? I know of one has to do with email, but what are some of the main areas that you generally come in and you're like, okay, guys, let me whip you into shape. And here's some of the tools I've got in my toolbox. Yeah. I mean, I essentially do the same thing with every single brand. I make sure that we're advertising to get customers. Usually for most people, that means Facebook and Instagram, but I've been experimenting with Twitter ads a lot recently and gotten some pretty good results with those.

5:01And then there's, you know, Google, YouTube, there's a whole different number of platforms, but making sure that we're advertising to multiply capital and have customer funded growth on the front end, making sure that we're utilizing one-click upsells and other ways to improve average order value. And then from there on out, it's essentially just email, SMS, and direct mail. We'll do some influencer strategy too, influencers and affiliates, recruiting them and then turning them into commissioned salespeople essentially, so that they can monetize their audiences and that we're aligning the incentives.

5:28But that's kind of the whole playbook. There's other things you could do. There's a million things you could do, right? But if you just do those five things, five, six things really, really solidly and just focus on going super deep with those five or six channels, then you're going to crush. I mean, a lot of great brands have been built on just one acquisition channel and then marketing on the back end with email. So like the SMS stuff is nice. It's not necessarily need to have, but it adds another level. And then when you get to a certain size and when you're$3 million and above, you can use a tool like Postpilot and start doing automated direct mail campaigns that are segmented to certain pockets of people on your list.

6:01And that's when things get really fun and exciting. You know, you'd mentioned a bit about working with influencers. How do you see influencer outreach working? Because I know, you know, as I've communicated and worked with folks that have built some pretty decent followings, they get hit up a lot. So how do you, when you're working with a client, like how do you get them to kind of break through the noise and kind of build that relationship with that influencer? I mean, I'm a very much a big believer in the, you know, what do people say? You'd rather have four quarters than 100 pennies, right?

6:39So I think when it comes to influencers, it's like, you don't need a lot, because there's always going to be that Pareto's law distribution, the 80-20 of like, if you have 100 influencers, only 20 of them are going to be driving any sales. So like, instead of just spraying and praying and trying to get 1000s of influencers under your belt, like, that might be the right strategy for some people. But in the beginning, at least, you're going to want to find, you know, foster really strong relationships with a few hand selected people who you know, it's a hand in glove fit. You know, when I worked with perennial pastures ranch, the regenerative cattle ranch out in San Diego, we didn't try to get hundreds of influencers, we just said, who are the people who are super into regenerative, who are super into paleo and carnivore diets?

7:15And how do we get them on our side and really take care of them as influencers, and give them all the support they need instead of going an inch deep and a mile wide. So I think it really just comes down to, instead of just sending massive amounts of product out to all these people and hoping someone promotes, what if you just hyper-focused in on really special personalized touch points with the right kind of people who you know your product would be a good fit for instead of taking a chance, spraying and praying to thousands of different people? Yeah. Yeah. Agreed. You know, again, it said that you have to spend more time with fewer people, make it the right people.

7:48And then, yeah, so obviously it's probably, I would imagine then, you know, the approach is not a spray and pray approach. It's more of a try to build a relationship, try to, you know, reach out like a human, not like a faceless corporation that's reaching out saying, you need to join our affiliate program. Which, by the way, that's like 90%, I think, of what 90 plus, 99 % of what influencers get. Yeah. I mean, what I do personally, like, and I've encouraged brands to do this is like, I like to, I like to go first, right? So what I'll do is if there's someone I want to get in contact with, I'll kind of like force them to be my friend.

8:27And the way that I do that is I just start saying nice things about them in public. So like I might tweet about them. I might retweet their stuff. I might comment under it. I might, you know, if someone's looking for a vendor or a certain type of product, I might tag the company and be like, oh, you should check out this company. And I'll do that five, six, seven, eight, nine, 10 times. And eventually what happens is if you keep saying nice things about someone, at some point, they'll be like, who is this person? Why are they saying all these nice things? There's no pitch yet. It's because it doesn't need to be.

8:54What oftentimes happens is if I keep boosting someone else's signal, and this works no matter what you sell, if you have an e-commerce brand, if you have a SaaS brand, it doesn't matter. If you find other people who are important and you start lifting them up, eventually, they're going to start to notice. They're going to be like, wow, this person has really done a lot to boost us. They never asked for anything. Who are they? Maybe we should just reach out and just thank him for being awesome. And then again, even during that first initial reach out, if they reach out to me, which oftentimes happens, I don't pitch anything.

9:19I just say, hey, really big fan. Love what you're doing. Love this piece of content. Love this product, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. You're awesome. I'll just say, if there's any way I keep supporting you, let me know. And then oftentimes they'll say, oh, this guy helps with these, he helps solve these kinds of problems. We actually need something like that. Let's talk to him. And they actually reach out to you. So instead of doing the whole cold outreach thing, when you're trying to like bang down the door and get your foot in the door. I just keep saying nice things about people. Because here's what I learned when I was a wrestler.

9:45And when I was in high school, I used to run out to the edge of the driveway in my, you know, in my pajamas with bare feet, I'd run to the, you know, 30 degrees outside here in New Jersey, right? And I'd run out, I'd look at the paper. And I'd say, is my name in the paper? Because, you know, we had a match last night. And I want to see like, is my picture in the paper? Is my name in the paper? And I'll get so pumped. I think everyone, you know, if you ever played sports, you know, high school, whatever, like, maybe had a similar experience back when people used to read these papers, not that they do that anymore.

10:09but I was always so excited to see my name in print, right? And everyone loves seeing their name in print. Everyone loves seeing their name somewhere on public. It's like, if you get mentioned in Forbes, if you get mentioned in Business Insider, like everyone's gonna be excited about that. So like you don't have, you don't own Forbes or Business Insider, but you own your own platform. So if you start boosting other people, you're giving them a platform, you're introducing them to your audience, you are giving them earned impressions for free, you're helping them out without the expectation of anything in return.

10:33It's very hard for that person to not see that and notice it and then initiate a conversation with you. Yeah. I want to share something, Chris, that someone had tagged you and was kind of talking about some copy from you. I actually love this post. I'm not going to read the whole thing, but just the beginning part, and then I'll let you kind of comment on this. I frequently review emails from clients who say things like, hey, thanks so much for signing up for our newsletter. We promise not to take too much of your time. Don't worry. We're not going to send you loads of email. I know you're busy, but just want to quickly let you know that.

11:04And then meanwhile, other people are like, I'm going to email you every single day. Some days I might even email you twice. Why? Because my emails are awesome. I just, that's hilarious to me because I think, you know, part of us is that we don't want to be intrusive. But then, you know, if we do that and then, I don't know, just kind of negate the value that we provide, what is that signaling to folks? I think when people are in pain and they want solutions, there's no, you know, my mentor, Ollie Richards, he talks about this. He's like, if someone's in pain and they have a problem and you have the solutions, there's no amount of content you could send them.

11:44That would be too much content. Right. And that's my belief. And if someone's not in pain, they end up on my list and they're not going to buy from me. Well, then you can unsubscribe. Like, it's nothing personal. I won't take it personally. But like, if you need my help and you know that I can help you and you're interested in learning about how I can help, I'm going to communicate that with you because I'm running a business and you're running your life and I can help you in your life. Right. So I'm never going to apologize for that. that and people are weird because oftentimes I've had a few people over the years who look where's the value man first of all my emails are valuable I make people laugh I tell stories I share insights from experiments I'm running so they are valuable people where's the value man you just sent out a straight pitch I'm like yeah I did and I look at your subscriber profile and you've opened one email in the past 90 days so like you're in the wrong place I'll unsubscribe you you know I mean like get out like but it's always those people it's never the people who are your true fans who say that stuff, right?

12:34It's always the people in the cheap seats. It's always people who aren't paying attention and they got yelled at by their boss and your email pops in their inbox five minutes later. And what it is, it's two things. It's either projection or it's displacement. It's always one of those two factors, right? It's either they are projecting their own insecurities onto you because they're mad at their own failures or they got yelled at by, it's like the guy who gets yelled at at work and then he goes home and he kicks his dog, right? That's displacement. They're taking that negative emotion, moving it somewhere else.

13:00And it always happens and it always happens with an email. And there's nothing you can do about that. I mean, I wish those people the best. I hope they get the help that they need. But, you know, that's not something that I can control. And it's not something I'm going to concern myself with. Yeah. Chris, your book, which we didn't mention, and we need to mention, is live. And congratulations on this. It's The Moat, How to Build a Durable, Profitable E-Commerce Brand that Can Last Forever. ever. And so again, this just hit the shelves at Amazon. Share more about this and who needs to get this book.

13:35Yeah. So thank you. Yeah. I published it. It's essentially my system for working with brands and Moat is an acronym. It stands for mission offers acquisition traction. It's kind of like the four phases that you need to go through if you want to start growing. What happens is a lot of people, especially in the e-commerce world, they have amazing products, but they're not marketers and they don't like, they think I'll just get my store up and then, hey, why am I not making more money? Why isn't my store growing? Why aren't I getting more customers? It's like, well, you need to drive them there. You need to have a mission that people can get behind you to have the right offers on the front end and the back end to monetize properly and profitably.

14:07You need to have the right acquisition strategy and know how to put together ads that actually attract people and get them to convert. And then you need traction on the back end, which means you are turning the flywheel. You're monetizing the audience that you built. And that is going to build a moat around your brand, right? Because if you, the main thesis of the book is that if you can multiply capital better than all of your competitors and do it not only at a better rate, but more sustainably, you're going to win, right? That's how brands are built. It's the brands that multiply capital most effectively.

14:34It's not even necessarily the brands of the best product. So if you can continue to multiply capital over and over and over again, and you're doing it at a better rate, even if your competitor is a thousand times as big as you, eventually at some point, because of math and how numbers work, you will pass them. Yeah, that book is on Amazon right now. And Chris, for our friend that's been listening to our conversation right now, and they want more Chris Orzakowski in their life, where do they go from here? Yeah, I mean, definitely check out the book. It's$25. It's a hardcover. It's really nicely designed.

15:06You'll like it. It's a solid book. And then you can also go to my email list. You go to 100yearbrand.co and get on my list and read some of my essays that I publish every day. Yeah. Yeah. Again, that website, 100yearbrand.co. The book, you can search it right now on Amazon. It's called The Moat, How to Build a Durable, Profitable E-Commerce Brand that Can Last Forever. Chris Orzekowski, it's been a joy having you as a guest on the podcast. Thank you so much for this conversation. Thanks so much, Josh. Appreciate it.

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