Inside an exclusive event for 7-figure sellers
In this episode, we're heading to the vibrant and bustling eCommerceFuel Live 2024 in New Orleans. Join me, Kurt Elster, for raw, unscripted conversations with some of the biggest names in eCommerce. Get ready to hear from Brett Curry of OMGcommerce, Elaine Eason at QuietLight, Eulalie Cook from Tadpull, Jimmy Kim of Sendlane, and the incredibly talented copywriter Lianna Patch. We'll also dive into insights with Taylor Holiday from Common Thread Collective, among other notable guests. This episode is all about getting to the heart of eCommerce - the unfiltered, real-world experiences and strategies from those who breathe life into this industry every day. So, tune in and get ready to absorb wisdom and stories that you won't find anywhere else.
Highlights:
00:00 - Kurt Elster (Host)
Heads up friends. The unofficial Shopify podcast is made by indie entrepreneurs or indie entrepreneurs and may contain material not suitable for all audiences, like swearing or economics. Listener discretion is advised. We moved into sling blade pretty quickly there, billy Bob, I do enjoy a good sling blade impression.
00:49 - Paul Reda (Co-host)
Well, it's very easy. Yeah, it's three words. I think the key to an impression is you just need to get like one word. I think that's literally what Dana Carvey does. He just gets one word and then just hammers it until it has like bent out of shape and now turns all other and then like goes off from there. French frontaters.
01:09 - Kurt Elster (Host)
I assume you're doing your, your Cajun Billy Bob there. In reference to the fact that I just got back from New Orleans and I did make myself ill eating delicious fried food, I got trippin grits, fried alligator, a number of po-boys. The fried alligator was on a po-boy, if that helps. What makes gumbo all gumbo?
01:34 - Paul Reda (Co-host)
What makes a sandwich a poor boy sandwich? Stop that.
01:40 - Kurt Elster (Host)
You know full well it's a po-boy.
01:42 - Paul Reda (Co-host)
I would like three poor boy sandwiches please.
01:47 - Kurt Elster (Host)
That's a lot of sandwich. The reason that's a lot, you know a hoagie sliced cucumbers, I think, some mayo and some shrimp. Good to go. That's close enough.
02:01 - Paul Reda (Co-host)
So you were there for what? There was like a conference. There was a loser conference. What was going on?
02:06 - Kurt Elster (Host)
Well, there was a conference. It was not for losers. It was Andrew Udarian who, fellow podcaster, hosts e-commerce fuel podcast, but also that, like that's an event he calls ECF live and this was the 10th one, which was cool, and they hosted it in New Orleans, in the French Quarter, jw Marriott, and he's like hey, kurt, you should come out and check it out. The miraculous thing about this conference weirdly, no egos. What ECF, ecmf, E-commerce fuel, all right, there you go. Yeah, ecf live, e-commerce fuel.
02:37 - Paul Reda (Co-host)
And those are.
02:38 - Kurt Elster (Host)
Well podcast, but I think, more importantly, a forum. He has a community. That's been going a while. And then he did an annual live event series and this was I went to the 10th one. When I go to a conference it's been a while. I was thrilled to go back and interact with people face to face. Irl it's different. It's different. You can't like Zoom's cool and all, but in person it's different. Also takes a lot out of you. By 8 pm I was like I'm so sweepy.
03:10 - Paul Reda (Co-host)
Yeah, that's why I don't go. I'm fine, I don't know any of these people. You're the one that talks to people. You're like I know him, he's from this. I know him, he's from this. I'm like I don't know any of these people. Why am I here?
03:22 - Kurt Elster (Host)
The but it's good, it's energizing. You get a lot of new ideas, you get a sense of like this is the buzz, this is what's exciting, this is what's hot in the streets and I think the hot topics for sure, ai and TikTok shop. I discovered people using chat, gpt for essentially everything. People successfully breaking into the first page of Google with purely AI generated articles. No fear.
03:48 - Paul Reda (Co-host)
Well, if anyone who has done a Google search in the last six months knows that it's all garbage, now yeah, it's pretty brutal out there.
03:56 - Kurt Elster (Host)
I could, I could tell you about it. I could tell you everything I learned. More interesting, more important, is those lightning interviews. I recorded those. I gave them to you, did you? You cut those together.
04:07 - Paul Reda (Co-host)
Yep, we're all done. We're actually recording this after it's done.
04:09 - Kurt Elster (Host)
And all that, where's it?
04:11 - Paul Reda (Co-host)
going to it.
04:12 - Kurt Elster (Host)
Who's who's up first? Brett Curry. We're going to start with Brett Curry.
04:16 - Paul Reda (Co-host)
Yes, from OmgCommerce. You know why why? Because B was the first letter of a guy you interviewed.
04:22 - Kurt Elster (Host)
They're alphabetical by file Dave, all right, that works for me. Okay, brett Curry, take it away. Okay, how long have you been coming to ECF?
04:31 - Brett Curry (Interviewee)
So funny. I've been an ECF member, I think, for six years. I've known Andrew Udyrian forever, so I'm a long time. First time this is my first event, because usually I'm coaching basketball, this time here with my kids. This year I'm not coaching, so I'm here at ECF Live, happy to be here.
04:46 - Kurt Elster (Host)
And also my first time. That's crazy.
04:49 - Brett Curry (Interviewee)
Yeah, it is my first time here, both of us have been around forever and our first time here, and this is like a premier event, small event, but that's my preference, me too, me too, and it's been awesome.
04:59 - Kurt Elster (Host)
And okay, so it's your first time here. Give me your impression of what's the makeup of attendees like.
05:06 - Brett Curry (Interviewee)
Yeah, so I mean it's almost all brand owners and sellers. There's a few people like you and me where we're they're like startled, yeah, they're like yeah all these merchants are like uh Agency owners. Agency owner podcast host. I don't know what to do with you, they get the holy water out.
05:23
Yeah, yeah, but you know we're also an investor. We invest in brands and stuff, which is super fun and so, but yeah, a lot of people that are pretty established Found out. Several of OMG's clients are here, some that I didn't even know were part of ECF are here, but, yeah, not a lot of new brands Like these are more established brands and pretty sophisticated, pretty smart, and it's also like an open sharing type of group, which is nice.
05:50 - Kurt Elster (Host)
All right, give me a key takeaway.
05:52 - Brett Curry (Interviewee)
Key takeaway man. I just walked out of the TikTok shops presentation, which everybody's talking about that. I just spoke at Prosper Show in Vegas. That was all Amazon sellers. Everybody's talking about TikTok shops, like at the. You know the mixers and the things like that. That's what everybody's talking about. And so it was.
06:08
Paul from DK Beauty was kind of breaking down what they've done and in the matter of a few months, sales from TikTok shops and this is an established brand, a really powerful beauty brand sales on TikTok shops eclipsed what they were doing on their dot-com. Wow, monthly it was insane From like I think it's sort of like from August to October and November like TikTok eclipsed the website. So what are you talking about? It needs to be like hero product focused. Aovs are lower, like it's more of a. Here's a cool thing I found from this brand buy it versus. You know you drive traffic to your website and maybe you're getting people to load up the cart. And so he was talking about his AOVs are about half what they're on this website on TikTok shop. That's really cool. And then this is maybe a little not e-commerce specific, but David Klein, who did the management talk the first day.
07:02 - Taylor Holiday (Interviewee)
He did like the. It was like the second question leadership and better management.
07:05 - Brett Curry (Interviewee)
It's interesting I was talking to Bill D'Alessandro, a mutual friend of ours, and we were like you know what, I think every six months or so, we need this content as owners and as CEOs, because management is hard and sometimes, like your instincts related to management, they're just wrong. And so I use the George Costanza analogy. I don't know if you're a Seinfeld fan, but, but George is like you know what if all of my instincts are wrong? And so what if I just look at my instincts and I do the opposite?
07:32 - Kurt Elster (Host)
you know like and that's like his most successful run ever.
07:35 - Brett Curry (Interviewee)
Yeah, exactly Like picking up picking up girls was like if, what if I just do the opposite of what I would normally do, anyway, but that, but that content was really good on how to, when is the right time to hire, how do you, how do you recruit, how do you give feedback loops, how do you allow your team to level up, and just so many good things there. And I guess where a lot of people are at this, this event, where it's like, okay, we know some of the tactical stuff, now a lot of what we're doing is leadership and leading our, leading our team of experts, and so so that that workshop was awesome.
08:03 - Kurt Elster (Host)
Are you using AI in your business today?
08:06 - Brett Curry (Interviewee)
You know that that's one of those things that I feel like I'm behind on. I'm reading about it, I'm paying attention to it, I'm, you know, messing around with chat, gpt and stuff. We're not using it like we should. We're not using it enough, I don't think.
08:17 - Kurt Elster (Host)
I just I think for you as an ads person, it would be so brilliant for ideation. Yes, Like, all right, let's just get a whole lot of ideas out, we could test and then we can go make the good yeah.
08:28 - Brett Curry (Interviewee)
And we do have. We do have team members that are doing that. So I don't want to paint the picture that we're not using it and, like for the podcast, you know, show notes, sometimes we're letting the ad generate show notes and then we're tweaking them or or headlines or show titles and things like that. But that's like there's a ways to go. Like we, we get better. We have some brands that are like hey, don't use AI on our brand at all for brand protection, privacy and stuff like that. So so we don't. But yeah, that's maybe a little restrictive, but I, but I but I also get that sentiment as well.
08:56 - Kurt Elster (Host)
Anything else, anything I'm missing.
08:59 - Brett Curry (Interviewee)
Man dude, I don't know this has been. It's been really good. I know I talked about Google and Amazon there's. It's interesting Like those kind of just try to true, trusted things, but everybody's still interested in those. They laid out the $20 million a year playbook that that we use for boom and over tone as their firestones brands. So still interested in there's still interest in kind of the fundamentals. But also this group, it seems like, is more D to C right. So driving traffic to a Shopify store, amazon is secondary for most people here.
09:33 - Kurt Elster (Host)
They all talk about Amazon like they are in an abusive relationship with it. They're like I gotta get out of this.
09:39 - Brett Curry (Interviewee)
Yeah, yeah, like there's a support group for, you know, people that have been battered by Amazon and it. You know, I mean I get that too, but it's like it's a necessary evil and I think I mean that's what we like. That's what I talked about with with over tone. As an example, one of Ezra's brands is. Almost all the growth last year came from Amazon. D to C grew some too, but, like we just realized, man, amazon is taking off. Let's double down, let's launch new products, let's put all our effort there, and that's where the majority of the growth came from was on Amazon. I think there's a lot of brands that could be that way. It's probably. It's maybe a little bit different to manage your margins and make sure you're profitable on Amazon, but, man, the opportunity is still there for so many brands.
10:21 - Kurt Elster (Host)
Somebody told me Amazon fees are 40% of their margin.
10:25 - Brett Curry (Interviewee)
Wow.
10:26 - Kurt Elster (Host)
Yeah.
10:27 - Brett Curry (Interviewee)
That's insanity.
10:28 - Kurt Elster (Host)
Yeah, it's just like it all, because you got to advertise on it now and all this stuff adds up.
10:31 - Brett Curry (Interviewee)
Pick, pack and ship FBA fees, all that nonsense. Yeah, it's a lot.
10:35 - Kurt Elster (Host)
All right. When I go to a conference, I take action items, and when I get home there's usually like one thing that I'm definitely doing. What's your one thing?
10:42 - Brett Curry (Interviewee)
Yeah, so it has an agency owner. We've got a contact who reached out to us who wants to help us launch TikTok shops and I'm like all right, I'm doing it, I'm doing that thing, and so TikTok shops for sure, and then I'm sharing some of those leadership principles with all of my leaders. So those are the two things.
11:03 - Kurt Elster (Host)
All right, who are you? Who do Okay?
11:06 - Elaine Eason (Interviewee)
Are you recording? Yeah, okay, I'm Elaine. I am a business advisor with Qwilite, so I help people sell their online businesses. How many times have you been?
11:15 - Kurt Elster (Host)
to this conference. This will be my third one. Third one, yes, all right, that's two more times than I have been Okay, and so what's your impression of the people? What's an ECF or like?
11:26 - Elaine Eason (Interviewee)
Yeah, whenever somebody asks me about like hey, what's e-commerce, feel all about? I'd say this is a really, really great community of high level sellers across all niches, and when you need an answer to like a really obscure question, there's no better place to come. Like there's somebody in this community that knows something about like any random element of any anything that's related to e-commerce. It's like this is where you go, this is where you find, like the experts in this space.
11:53 - Kurt Elster (Host)
One anything that has surprised you.
11:58 - Elaine Eason (Interviewee)
I am always just like surprised with the variety of businesses People are doing like the most random, really cool things. Everyone is also super down to earth, like there are some huge, huge eight figure sellers here, but they're you know, you would never know, just talk to them. It's just like talking to someone you know, random, you meet at a restaurant or just out and about. Everyone is very, very humble but also have crazy success stories. So what's one of the what's a niche?
12:24 - Kurt Elster (Host)
that surprised you, cause I've heard like live chickens, deck accessories and live frogs. I was going to say something was selling live reptiles for sure. Yes, yeah, the chicken and the reptile guy, different people, yeah, yeah, yeah.
12:40 - Elaine Eason (Interviewee)
And there's. There's like a horse subscription box or people that have horses and want a horse accessory. There's like all kinds of like random things. If you can think about it, like you can buy anything online right now. There is a business around any anything that you see in your day to day life out and about. Like there's probably somebody with the e-commerce business around that.
13:01 - Kurt Elster (Host)
And what's the? You help people sell their businesses. What's the? What's your feeling on the market? Are people still selling businesses or people still looking to buy e-commerce businesses?
13:12 - Elaine Eason (Interviewee)
Yeah, definitely. I feel like the market's really stabilized in the last year or two after the aggregator boom has really, you know, boom and bust, if you will. Things are really starting to stabilize. I need to pick up a little bit. I've seen in the last month or so the businesses we've listed. If they are really high quality businesses, good growth trends, good fundamentals, we're getting a lot of traction on them and a lot of offers. It's harder to sell those declining businesses right now. Those are definitely selling for a lower multiples than I were a few years ago, but there's still strong demand for high quality businesses.
13:47 - Kurt Elster (Host)
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15:21 - Eulalie Cook (Interviewee)
you do. I'm Yulia Lee Cook. I go by Lee and I work with a company called Tadpole. I'm a co-founder there. My title is Chief Data Officer, and so what that means is that I get to help e-commerce merchants build resilient brands by leveraging their data. Really well, we have an e-commerce software, and then we also have professional services. Okay.
15:42 - Kurt Elster (Host)
And with well, what brings you to e-comfuel.
15:45 - Eulalie Cook (Interviewee)
E-comfuel. Well, you always find e-comfuel just to be such a great community where you kind of see what is going on in the industry, what are people struggling with, and also just like kind of, yeah, it's an opportunity to learn and an opportunity to teach. Really, I've discovered.
15:59 - Kurt Elster (Host)
A lot of people here came here with something in mind, a problem, a pain they wanted to solve. What's yours?
16:07 - Eulalie Cook (Interviewee)
That's a really good question. I feel like there's always numerous things and numerous things that the touch is on. I think some of the things that really resonated with me is just like how are people leveraging AI? I think that's one of the most prevalent themes that I've seen at ECF Live this year. And then I think the other thing and we are a remote team I think that's another area that there's just been a lot of really good discussion around how people are managing culture and keeping people connected. What is the cadence they bring people together and how do you do that well, and what?
16:39 - Kurt Elster (Host)
how are people using AI in their business? What are some of the creative uses we've seen?
16:43 - Eulalie Cook (Interviewee)
Oh my gosh, I would say some of the most interesting things that I heard and was in. Let's see, Julia Tunstall had a great example of. She's created a couple of GPTs and she lets them talk to each other and let them debate one another, and I just thought, wow, that kind of blew my mind and so it's funny.
17:04 - Kurt Elster (Host)
Yeah, I was like there's, there's, what is the point of a custom GPT? I think, get it. And then, now that I came here, I saw how people are using them and it's like it's a pre-assigned role with more limited data, which makes it more accurate yeah, Like less prone to hallucinating. And then they make them talk to each other. I think you could like mention bots in a chat. Make them talk to each other.
17:25 - Eulalie Cook (Interviewee)
Yeah, that was a really fun use case. And then I just think there's been a lot of good like create discretion I know Kevin Williams gave a great session this morning as well, so there's just been a lot of really good, insightful things. And then just people being so open and sharing tips and tricks, how you're using it, what you're doing with it yeah, and then any any key takeaways. I think one is just always be testing. It doesn't matter what it is.
17:49
I think that, as more data people, I think we always are interested in, like you know, playing on that cutting edge, but you don't want to bleed, and so I think that there's a lot of interesting ways of you know playing with it. We're actually using it within our software and we have a train, we're training a GPT on some of some, you know, proprietary information and textbooks that my partner and co-founder have has written, and so there's so many interesting applications and I think you have to be playing with it so you can understand where it's good, where it's bad and how you can continue to grow and learn.
18:20 - Kurt Elster (Host)
What's your favorite CHPGP prompt?
18:22 - Eulalie Cook (Interviewee)
Oh man. Well, one of my favorite news cases is just any kind of sticky HR stuff that I don't really want to deal with and just removing names, obviously, but also like just being able to summarize some of that, some of that work, and take the emotional labor out of it. It really helps.
18:40 - Kurt Elster (Host)
It's funny how often people are turning to the AI for help with interpersonal problems. At least once I've been like, hey, my wife's mad at me, here's why, please help.
18:51 - Eulalie Cook (Interviewee)
I think that was another great use case that I really appreciated hearing. I'm just like okay, what did I do? This was the situation, yeah, and chat GPT told you what to do, and then you followed up and asked how to apologize, which is also a good tactic.
19:04 - Kurt Elster (Host)
Yeah, you know, not necessarily always the most self-aware individual. I'm like. I know she's mad at me, but what have I done wrong here? Yeah, I don't know. That's making it to the final cut, all right. Most fun moment at ECF.
19:19 - Eulalie Cook (Interviewee)
Oh my gosh, there's so many. I think. Just seeing all the people that have been around a long time and just seeing their success in general, I think we started coming. So the New Orleans ECF Live was our first one, the previous one, so they think it was about six years ago and so just coming back and seeing the same people year over year and then also meeting the new people who are joining I think those are just the reunion moments are probably my favorite and some of the most fun things to see and some of the people that have been around a long time. And then Blair Bunlong he had an exit. He's now done. It's kind of interesting to just see people on the other side.
19:55 - Kurt Elster (Host)
So this is your sixth one? Yes, I believe so. How have they changed over six years?
20:03 - Eulalie Cook (Interviewee)
Well, I think initially and I remember having that first timer thing where it's like there's so many people here, a lot of them seem to know one another, but it's very open and inviting community, and so I think, just as you go to more and more of them, you kind of feel like you're just part of the community and you get to welcome the newcomers. And then you also just get to see some of these repeated faces and it really just is. It's so fun. It's like having this group of people that you come back and just visit once a year. Then we all go back and get in our little holes of you know e-commerce niches that we all work in, and then it's just an opportunity, I guess, to get out of your hole, see different ideas, be exposed to a lot of different things and meet some folks that share that. Yeah, I think many of us are introverts by nature and so it's a little bit overwhelming, so we probably sleep for a day and then we get back to work.
20:57 - Kurt Elster (Host)
Yeah, I'm extroverted until I'm not.
21:00 - Eulalie Cook (Interviewee)
Yeah, I think a lot of us have like an ambivert kind of tendency. But also it's an exciting three days basically.
21:08 - Kurt Elster (Host)
All right. Last question when you get home, what's your number one action item that you picked up here?
21:15 - Eulalie Cook (Interviewee)
Oh my gosh, that is a really good question.
21:17
I feel like that's going to be my plane. Well, honestly, the plane ride home is going to be sorting through my notes, sifting through, prioritizing and just kind of looking at what is that next big action item, because I think I learned so many things that I'm like I have to go. I like to take physical notes, I like to go back and look at those and then be like, okay, this is the thing I can actually do, and so kind of sifting through a little bit. So that's my first action item, but I think there's a lot of things and then just getting them in a queue so I can remember and kind of. I am one of those people where I like to be a little bit structured in how I implement things, because if I get all these ideas and then I don't have a good structure and nothing really gets done, so I have to like try to really think about it, prioritize and then implement things as I go. So I like to get them in a queue One tip for listeners.
22:09
One tip for other have a data strategy. I mean, I think that data is. It is what's going to help you make better decisions. And so I think really kind of starting that strategy of like how do you bring all your data together, how do you kind of simplify it so you can get your arms around it and then really kind of go out and amplify it.
22:28 - Kurt Elster (Host)
And it's been a theme that's like all right, content is now commodity or will be thanks to generative AI, but the data that you produce, collect and can interpret. That's your moat now. That's your value.
22:41 - Eulalie Cook (Interviewee)
Absolutely. I think that data is such a critical asset for every company and I think that if you can start collecting data now, you're going to be ahead. I mean, I think the best time to do it was five years ago. The next best time is today. And so just really building out a data strategy and having that and knowing, and I think there's some really great Selena is keynoting, and so I think there will be some great stuff in the data cult talk, and so I'm excited for that one. I wasn't able to attend the one yesterday, but I think, just overall, just like really be thinking about data and how to make sure that you're building that as an asset within your business.
23:19 - Kurt Elster (Host)
Alright, what's your name? What do you do?
23:22 - Jimmy Kim (Interviewee)
My name is Jimmy Kim. I'm the founder and CIO at Sendlanecom.
23:26 - Kurt Elster (Host)
What's the I stand for? Innovation, innovation. Okay, how long have you been doing that?
23:32 - Jimmy Kim (Interviewee)
I just did this in January. I just made the transition in January, stepping aside as I moved my president to CEO.
23:39 - Kurt Elster (Host)
Okay, yeah, and then how long has Sendlane been around?
23:42 - Jimmy Kim (Interviewee)
So our story is really funny. We've been around for about 10 plus years because I started this product as a brand. I had a men's streetwear clothing brand and essentially I had a problem in. The only two products available were MailChimp and Bronto. Back in 2013 and, being that we were naive entrepreneurs, we thought we could go build it by just putting some money out there. And we did, and for the first four years of the life of the product was not external, it was internal. It was used by myself and my other two guys that put money in to kind of build this little product. And in 2017 I looked around and said, as I was exiting my company, I said what do I want to do next? I'm going to go build this thing called Sendlane. So that's kind of how the story started, and the vision of the company has always been the same, which was I want to remove the tech stack because I think it's broken.
24:24 - Kurt Elster (Host)
So you were a merchant and you built your own email service provider. Yes, that's correct. And would you do it again, knowing what you know now? Probably not.
24:33 - Jimmy Kim (Interviewee)
Yeah, yeah, probably not A lot of naiveness. Some of the things that we did early on, like building our own delivery infrastructure, that was not because we were smarter than anyone else. We did it because we didn't know something else existed to do it for you. You know what I mean. Like you know how Klaviyo uses SendGrid, for example, we wouldn't have done this because we didn't know better. Literally, that's the only answer I can give you.
24:55 - Kurt Elster (Host)
Alright, so how many times have you been going? How many times have you been to e-commerce fuel?
24:59 - Jimmy Kim (Interviewee)
This is my very first time on e-commerce fuel and what do you think? It lives up to everything I thought it would be. What are the attendees like? So you know, what I love about the attendees is that what A? They're founders almost everybody's a founder here, which I think is incredible and they come in with open arms and guards down and they're here to learn and experience and they lean in Like nobody here has been mean or rude or anything Like. They've been so nice of like even though I'm a provider at the end of the day, even allowing me to have a conversation with him before at the bar or where at the events.
25:31
And the second thing that I really like is, you know, events always try to put together all these itineraries and schedules and usually you don't get everybody showing up to these things. But, dude, everybody's on time, they're here. Every time I walk in the morning, I'm just like shocked by how people are here promptly, even after I know we were out last night till 2am in the morning and we're out with everybody. So it's been really a fun experience. And then the talks have been just fantastic. Like someone who doesn't actually know some of this stuff like I, you know it's been out of practice for a lot of things. I've been enjoying a lot of these talks Like they're just impactful, they're truthful, they're real and they're obviously not the typical speakers you see in the circuit either.
26:10 - Kurt Elster (Host)
Okay, Recently something occurred and I had to update the DNS records for like two dozen Shopify stores related to their email. Break down for me what's going on there with these DNS records, absolutely.
26:24 - Jimmy Kim (Interviewee)
You know, this is something that I would say. Basically, what happened was you know how there's always best practice and what you should be doing versus what the law is. You know, like there's always that ang. So, as a best practice, over the last year actually before this happened I actually was at at an event a year ago from this day and I was actually talking about all these things saying like, even though you may not be doing this, you should be doing this, and what essentially happened is very simple. Number one it was about locking the.
26:51
What DMarka DKM is is basically allowing the other side know that, like you've given the handshake and this is like your email and any other email that comes in is not your email, so like it starts helping protect spam. That's really what authentication is. That's the handshake between your domain name and your and your ISP and saying this is a real email, it's coming from a real authority and it's coming from this website and so whatever IP is representing it or all that stuff. So that's what they call authentication, which also removes that little like via, you know, sendlingcom and all that stuff, because now it's coming from your domain. That was number one thing that happened. The number two thing that happened was unsubscribe change, and I think this has not been a problem in this market because most companies and brands of our habit where you can click on unsubscribe and you can unsubscribe in the header or down the bottom of the footer, right, that's been pretty standard in this market. It's not anything crazy. The third thing that's changing that's been really interesting is Gmail's basically, and Gmail and Yahoo are basically telling people that you've got to get better at segmentation, you've got to get better at, like, removing those dead people and getting rid of those things.
27:51
And though Gmail and Yahoo and Google will publish it, they don't track opens. They don't care about opens. I know everybody in the market cares about it, but the reality is they don't. You know what they care about. They care about clicks forward to a friend archive, delete junk. You know all these actions. Time on email these are the things they're measuring to measure your engagement, not your opens. They publish it's really on Google site and so what they've basically said is we're going to lower the spam complaint threshold and continue to lower that until we get to a moderate area.
28:20
Today it's 0.3%, is basically it. So if you have a thousand people. Three people complain. You are at a 0.3 complaint rate, right, so it is not much, but it's just saying send email that people want, and if you don't and you hit that, what happens is you actually get hit by a block, and it's not that you get in the spam box. Your email will not deliver for a 24 hour period until they let you come back in the send some more, until they feel that you're being compliant. So it's not an infinite thing, but it is a blocker that's going to occur Now. The good news is, though, it happened in February. It was kind of like an early morning shot. April, your next level warning shot will increase, meaning like you'll start to see more delays in your throttling of Gmail. Like, if you're like I sent an email and I don't see my email yet, why? Sometimes it's because Google's blocking you essentially and they're temporarily pausing you and throttling. So that's going to happen in April and in June they're going full force enforcement. So, june, if you're not doing good, you're just not going to get your email in the box, and so that's going to be a tough one for people, and especially in the B2B market and the direct-to-consumer market.
29:20
I think people are decent at the 90 day engage bubble, but that's not good enough anymore Because, if you think about it, a 90 day engage most people are using opens, which we know are not tracked by Google and also not really a highly accurate measurement anymore. Right, because of the way that I always joke, like in 2019, we used to be like 12 to 20% was a great open rate. Now suddenly we've gone to 30 to 60% is a great open rate. What I've really seen is it's just the trend line, right? Is it good data? Is it hidden in the inbox and is it real value? You know what I mean? It's ultimately something that is landing in the inbox ultimately. So that's probably what people think about most.
29:59
But, yeah, that whole spam complaint thing is probably going to be the one that really bites people in the butt and it's hard because Google doesn't even report. Like you know, when you're in your years P and you have that little spam complaint metric, you know that Google doesn't actually report to that. So that's only your Yahoo and AOL and Hotmail and Microsoft that you're seeing. So, google, you need to actually install a thing called Google Postmaster Tools to be able to see your own domain reputation. I had no idea. Yeah, you don't actually see a spam complaint. That's false information. That you're seeing Google Postmaster Tools? Yeah, it's a free tool. You can install it on your domain, not hard to do. But once you install it, you can see your actual domain reputation, you can see your spam complaints. You can see your volume and control there. That's what you should be paying attention to.
30:45 - Kurt Elster (Host)
So who cares about open rate? What's the KPI that you look at for email campaigns?
30:50 - Jimmy Kim (Interviewee)
Okay, so at the high level, clicks, obviously Clicks being the most important one, right? But the second thing you should be looking at is what we call inside of our company called UTA, which is Unsubscribe to Action. Basically, how many people are clicking unsubscribe, basically unwanted messages, right, what's the number one thing people do when they don't want your message? They try to unsubscribe before they hit spam often. So we look at how often people are unsubscribing to your email just as much as we look at how many people are clicking your email.
31:17 - Kurt Elster (Host)
So I want to look at, all right, what's a good unsubscribe rate? Certainly zero is not too realistic. Where's the danger zone?
31:27 - Jimmy Kim (Interviewee)
It's percentage wise. It depends on the list size, but we like to see somewhere between under 1%. You want to see under, right, you're a little bit over. You start getting gray between 1% to 2% and then over 2%. You've got a problem because you've got a lot of people unsubscribing because the message is unwanted, which effectively means that you're not targeting properly, right, if it's too broad and the message is unfocused, you may end up in a position where you've got more people unsubscribing because they don't feel that you're relevant to them anymore, right? So that's where segmentation comes in finding and understanding where they are in their journey. That's where, ultimately, that's what customer experience is and that's where it also leads into the other side of click-through rate, right?
32:07
I always tell people 2.5% is what you should be aiming for, and people are like I'm barely at 0.5%. Well, that means you have a problem. That means that you probably have a data problem because you're merging all your data together and you're not effectively seeing where the data is. And the simple tip I'll tell people is just separate your customers and prospects, the ones that bought and the ones that didn't buy, why You'll see your customer click-through rates probably north of 5%, 6%. But the moment you add those prospects, those ones that opted in for that coupon code or your newsletter, that's where your data problem ultimately lies and that's what's going to fry people with disband complaint changes.
32:42 - Kurt Elster (Host)
And so should I be engaging in list hygiene Meaning, should I?
32:49 - Jimmy Kim (Interviewee)
be unsubscribing people. It's not unsubscribing people, it's being smarter about what their intent is, right. You take a person. I'll give you a perfect example. You have a person who opted into a pop-up 30 days ago and has not made a purchase, regardless if they've opened or clicked. Right. You should probably reduce the frequency to that person because for some reason or another, it's not resonating, right. But if I take someone who's been five days in it and they're active with me, I should continue to send those people email, right. There's too often I see email people who haven't had an open or a click. I know it opens still a dead metric, but it's still important because it's a trend line, because it tells you the device is real and potentially they're opening the email. Maybe right. But to click and you haven't seen it in 30 plus days, well, that person is probably out of your funnel and cycle so effectively. What it's going to do is make people send less email, but more targeting email.
33:40 - Kurt Elster (Host)
I like this approach, so we want a segment and we're going for relevance.
33:46 - Jimmy Kim (Interviewee)
Relevance? Yes, we're bringing it back full circle. What is a relevance, frequency, what's the old saying? Right, it's bringing it back full circle, but it's actually doing it in a more proper way, because we actually have more data available. You don't have to create spreadsheets for this anymore. You just do it in segmentation and understand your customers and your data a little bit more.
34:05 - Kurt Elster (Host)
That's it. So at these events, I find I get energy out of it. I get charged up. I get back to work on Monday, I'm excited and often there's like one thing, I picked up something. I'm like this is what I've got to do when I get in. Do you have that one thing?
34:21 - Jimmy Kim (Interviewee)
That's a great question. I have a lot of things that I've picked up here, I think, from just learning about what the merchants want. I ask a lot of people a lot of questions. Just, probably, like you do, I'll ask a merchant like how long you've been coming here, what's your pain points, and things like that. I heard a lot of interesting ideas. I actually ran into. I can't remember David I think his name was in and he started talking to me about product ideas and he was just telling me all the things he wished he had at our competitor at Clayville, for example. Right, that's all relevant information. I actually slacked a bunch of my team members over the week. This is what I picked up, just put it on the map and let's just talk about it when we get back. Right, so I would say for me it's product research. That's why I love coming here is because I ultimately get a lot of prospect and customer interviews all day and they just tell me what they want or they wish they had.
35:07
Like there was a lady that was here right before you came up to me. She was telling me about this homegrown loyalty program that she was running. It's actually makes sense and it's brilliant, right, but it's not really feasible because we're not able to. And we had an honest conversation about it, right? I said, look, what you want is very much out of the norm. It makes sense for your business, but it's out of the norm, right? But as I'm trying to unify the stack and I'm going to bring loyalty into this product here in next year, she's a person I need to continue talking to because those edge cases could be tomorrow's future loyalty programs, because she's thinking about it in a different way.
35:42 - Kurt Elster (Host)
I often it's interviewing Shopify merchants. There are a lot of people who get a lot of value out of going to events and selling in person and it's because they're meeting people face to face and talking to their customers directly and there is just there is so much value in that and you can't replicate that with a survey, with a phone call or even with Zoom, Like in person, IRL, real can't beat it.
36:10 - Jimmy Kim (Interviewee)
Nope, 100%, that's 100. And that's probably why I've been on the road for 10 weeks, essentially Like I go home for weekends, you poor bastard, I go hit the roads I was in. I can't remember where was I last week? What week is this? Miami, I think I was in last week, maybe, and then the week before I was in New York City. So I'm hitting the road and I'm out there talking to people, but it's helping me develop our product. I was on the floor here doing a roadmap call with my CTO talking about all the things, and I was like no, we really need to do this, because I hear about it a lot in the market and my customers are telling me about it. Let's prioritize this in front of all these other things, even though on your side it might not seem like it's the most important thing, but on my side I'm hearing it from the customers.
36:50 - Kurt Elster (Host)
One email marketing tip for listeners.
36:54 - Jimmy Kim (Interviewee)
Stop over-engineering everything. I can't stop shouting that message to a lot of people. What I mean by this is very simple. When you're doing one to $10 million I'm going to give you a number Zero to $10 million you shouldn't have more than some campaigns and some basic flows. If anything more than that, you're over-engineering yourself. You need to be working on top of the funnel and you need to be working on getting more new customer acquisition, the biggest brands and what's funny is I always laugh because we work with brands that are about a million dollars in up. That's where our core market is. Our ideal customer is doing about $5 million and we've got brands doing $250 million. But you know what's funny? The $250 million brands have a simpler program and a more effective revenue than the guys doing $2, $3 million. But those $2, $3 million people are over-engineering. They have flows and splits and splits and splits and conditionals with and they over-engineer.
37:42
And think about it, because often we over-think about this. Email is effectively a game of numbers and frequency and messaging. That's all it really comes down to. If you think about it that way, you realize that sometimes we over-think about these things. If I'm sending a campaign every day, for example, I shouldn't even care about flows, because, outside of a welcome email when they first opt in, you're staying in front of them all the day, all the time, right, so it really depends on your strategy. But I would say send more email and stop over-engineering yourself, all right.
38:13 - Kurt Elster (Host)
Who are you and what do you?
38:14 - JP (Interviewee)
do. Hi, my name is JP and I run an e-commerce business called Pro Teeth Guard. We sell custom fitted dental mouth guards for people who grind their teeth which is about like 8 to 10% of the population, but about 50% of entrepreneurs and it really wrecks your teeth right. Yeah, I mean cracked tooth pain.
38:36 - Kurt Elster (Host)
other issues yeah, Is this your first ECF? Have you been to these before?
38:41 - JP (Interviewee)
I've been to, I think, four ECF events before this and yeah, I think the last one was actually the first one I went to was this one in New Orleans, but it was like five or six years ago.
38:55 - Kurt Elster (Host)
Okay, it's my first one and I'm excited to be here. The thing that strikes me is how interesting the folks are. What kind of people are here?
39:07 - JP (Interviewee)
So I think the average store revenue is about like four or five million and then it's a $1 million kind of end up. So you know you're talking to people who are running businesses of a size that is interesting and has interesting problems to solve. So not to say smaller businesses aren't interesting. But I think when you're trying to learn and grow it's nice to know that everyone is kind of at a certain level and then also there are very few agencies or people trying to pitch you. Most everybody is a store owner and owns a brand and is actively growing their brand.
39:49 - Kurt Elster (Host)
Yep, a few people were startled when I was like, oh, I don't own a store. I snuck my way in here by virtue of friendship with Indra, what? Okay, so there is a a leadership talk this morning. It was like two hours, it was long, it was impactful. What did you take away from it? Like what's one action, step or one thing where you're like alright, this is what I gotta do when I get home?
40:14 - JP (Interviewee)
Yeah. So I took probably like four or five pages of notes from that talk and a lot of good content. If I had to go to one, there are a couple of graphs that were really interesting. Actually, I'm going to say this one there was a graph of basically when you hire someone right, it's a curve, that's kind of like a little bit like a parabola shaped curve, where it takes a little bit of time to get them going and then, like you know, they might be able to produce a lot more output over time, Whereas if you just try to do it yourself and like try to improve the process, you get maybe a linear improvement over time and there's going to be a painful period for a while where basically getting someone onboarded is going to be more costly and less output, and that's a painful period.
41:09
But you have to go through that to get to the kind of the returns and the gains. And really being aware of that and planning around that and expecting that when you're trying to grow your team and try to grow your business I think is a super important framework to think with.
41:25 - Kurt Elster (Host)
One of the simpler, quicker tactical items he had was hey, make sure you meet one-on-one weekly regularly with your people and don't skip it. And that had not occurred to me, I didn't do it, and so like that's the first thing I'm doing on Monday is setting that up. Do you do like regular one-on-ones with?
41:48 - JP (Interviewee)
your team. Yes, but I still took notes away from that point that he made, and that point was in the one-on-one meetings really make it their meeting. It's your the person who's reporting to you. It's their meeting to own. It's for them to bring up the things that they need help with. They need support with, they need resources to help them unblock their progress. I was doing the meetings but I was kind of being a little bit maybe dictated or dictatorship Dictator-like. Yeah, I was being a little bit prescriptive in all the things that I would talk about. It's more about listening and really addressing their needs.
42:32 - Kurt Elster (Host)
Yeah, oh, okay.
42:33 - JP (Interviewee)
And having them drive it Alright.
42:36 - Kurt Elster (Host)
Last question I noticed a lot of people came here with a problem in mind to solve. There's like some challenge or subtopic that was frustrating them, that they're interested in asking people about what's yours.
42:49 - JP (Interviewee)
We are very interested in TikTok shop at the moment. I feel like this is kind of the I mean, it launched last year and this is kind of the rising tide. There's a lot of momentum behind it and it's very new. But we're interested to learn from the people who already kind of jumped into that market and I believe there's a presentation tomorrow from someone, I think from zero to a million a month on TikTok shop. So really looking forward to that and learning the tactics and the strategy there. Hey, where can we go to get some mouth guards? Oh yeah, check out ProTeefGuardcom. We have a 110% money back guarantee. So you ever buy a night guard and you're not happy with it, send it back.
43:36 - Kurt Elster (Host)
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44:36 - Lianna Patch (Interviewee)
Who are you? What do you do? I'm Leanna Patch. I'm a conversion copywriter for ecommerce and SaaS.
44:43 - Kurt Elster (Host)
And how many times have you been to ecommerce fuel? This is my fifth one. What are the attendees like?
44:49 - Lianna Patch (Interviewee)
Oh, they are just the nicest people in the world. And then you realize that they're doing like 50 million in top line and you're like I shouldn't be here.
44:57 - Kurt Elster (Host)
I know it's been a while since I felt imposter syndrome. But then you're talking to people here like just so relaxed, so brazy, and they're like, yeah, you know, I'm on my 10th business and like a billion dollars. Yeah, like, all right, I'm going to go home and cry into my pillow, yep, but no, it's inspiring. I love the energy. Yeah, so key of the talks you attended, what was the one that like stood out? I love Bill.
45:20 - Lianna Patch (Interviewee)
DeLessandro and Bill DA. You know earnings before interest tax in. Delessandro is who I couldn't understand for and he talked about focus, which felt like a personal attack, because we just put our store up for sale and part of the reason is because the other owner wants to focus, and I get that. I've never focused on one thing forever. Like what would that be like if I did that? What else did he say? There were just a couple of moments in his talk where I was like, oh, stop it, bill, stop attacking me.
45:52 - Kurt Elster (Host)
Yeah, so it's always good when someone does that to you when you get home usually when I go to a conference and make action items, when I get back to work on Monday, there's like one thing, one key takeaway that I want to do yeah, what's yours?
46:02 - Lianna Patch (Interviewee)
Oh, I'm in the middle of setting up TikTok shop. Yeah, and I have been, and we should have done it before, but, like the best time to do it was six months ago and the second best time is now right, so trying to figure that out.
46:12 - Kurt Elster (Host)
The two recurring themes have been TikTok shop and AI. Yeah, also in Facebook is painful. Yeah, that's like the undercurrent with AI, which favorite chat GPT prompt.
46:26 - Lianna Patch (Interviewee)
A favorite chat GPT prompt if you don't have your custom GPTs is you are a copywriter. Leanna Patch, known for writing funny copy that converts. Please write so and so.
46:37 - Kurt Elster (Host)
I refuse to believe that chat GPT is funnier than you. It's not.
46:40 - Lianna Patch (Interviewee)
Yeah, I think so. It's so cringe. It'll come up with some good dad jokes and like, okay, it's like cringe, it's floor level. Yeah, it's like not great. Every now and then it comes up with something that turns into an idea for me.
46:55 - Kurt Elster (Host)
I like my toys.
46:56 - Sonia Roselli (Interviewee)
Yeah, Okay. Who are you? What do you do? I'm Sonia Roselli and I own the skincare brand Sonia Roselli Beauty. What's your? What's your top selling products? Sex?
47:04 - Lianna Patch (Interviewee)
appeal Sex appeal yeah.
47:07 - Sonia Roselli (Interviewee)
It's an instant go-mage exfoliator from Korea. It's some really interesting Korean technology that's been around for years, but no one in the States had it. So you basically spray it on, rub your skin and your skin and the product all comes off and you're left with skin of a teenager. Hi.
47:23 - Kurt Elster (Host)
You sent me one of these and it became like one of the favorite products in our household. Oh, I'm so happy Like I'm using, like I had these bumps in my arms for 20 years. Oh, you're crazy. Caratosis pullers Took them off. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, totally. My wife was using it. Then our, our 12 year old started getting the acne. But it gave him. He got the bumps on his face. He starts using it. He loved it, but he's like too awkward to say sex appeal. I like it's written on there. It's huge letters. He'll be like where's that spray? It will be like what spray?
47:51 - Sonia Roselli (Interviewee)
That's interesting that you say that, because a dermatologist friend of mine said the same thing, because she gives it to all her patients and she says is there one that you can make for kids? Because it's a little awkward because of the name sex appeal, so I might need to think about a refriend You're not wrong about that, yeah, but no, all right, I digress.
48:08 - Kurt Elster (Host)
So how many times have you been to ECF Live? This is my second time. Second time yeah. What do you think?
48:14 - Sonia Roselli (Interviewee)
I love ECF. I'm the ECF fan girl. I post a little too much on the group I probably should be working, but I really love the community that they've built. It's one of the things that I think is is great about ECF.
48:28
My first year I was very intimidated Like I think a lot of us think we have imposter syndrome. And then the more I listen to podcasts and the more I listen to people I don't know I call it peacocking. I want to hear the real, raw stories of like when you got your ass handed to you and how you fixed it. That's the stuff that makes us feel better, because even when I talk to other entrepreneurs, they're always saying, well, I don't know if I'm an expert, and they always get down on themselves. But when you put all of these people in the room and you start talking about stuff, these people know a lot and they don't give themselves enough credit for it. So I think that's what I love about coming to ECF Live is that even if I'm not an expert, in an Amazon store, I can help you with some branding or like Leanna can help you with copyrighted. So I think that's what's really cool about it and that you just get with like-minded people and it's just really awesome.
49:18 - Kurt Elster (Host)
I think what's interesting about it is because it's been going on 10 years. A lot of these people came up together, and so the default attitude is they don't have egos. I did not encounter any weird ego issues that you normally do at a conference, not here, because it's a reunion for a lot of these people and that ends up being the vibe and the tone.
49:43 - Sonia Roselli (Interviewee)
It really is and everybody's so giving. You know, like Paul with BK Beauty, with the TikTok shop breakout room, I was just so blown away at how giving he was and how he's just he's almost done the hard work for us but he just is teaching and just so telling everybody all of the secrets and what to watch out for. You know, you don't really get that, especially from my world and beauty. You know, in the beauty industry we it's very catty. You know, everybody's trying to be the top dog.
50:13
But in ECF and like with the entrepreneurs that I meet, everybody's just like hey, what you need help with, you know, because everybody knows that it's your brand, that's what really sells it. You have the same exact product, but you're going to have your own people and you know it's not really a competition. So, are you on TikTok shop? I am, I just launched, but one of the I'm just not very active. I'm not as active on TikTok as I was Instagram, which it's my fault, but he gave us a lot of like good step-by-step things to do when you first launch on TikTok. That's really what I'm going to double down on this year.
50:49 - Kurt Elster (Host)
Yeah, I'm excited about that. And then what's your takeaway when you get back on Monday? What are you doing?
50:55 - Sonia Roselli (Interviewee)
Going all in on TikTok shops. My takeaway I actually learned some cool new AI prompts. I'm already deep in love with AI we in our household we call ChatGPT Chachi, because my husband and I were walking one day and when it first came out I was like I'm in love with ChatGPT and he's like Chachi and I was like no ChatGPT, so now it's like the nickname Chachi. I don't know, some people may get the reference, they may not. I think my biggest takeaway was actually, one of my biggest takeaway was everybody does it different. It was some of the things were you know, some people gave the same advice as it was they could it was the actual opposite advice of what someone else would give, and I thought that was really interesting, because what works for some doesn't work for someone else, and how they get there on their journey. So I thought that was really interesting.
51:44 - Kurt Elster (Host)
So what's your favorite chat? Gpt prompt.
51:46 - Sonia Roselli (Interviewee)
Actually I learned it from the guy at A2X I can't remember his name now, sorry he said whenever you start prompting chat GPT for either marketing or any kind of copywriting, ask it do you have any questions for me? And then it will ask you questions to give you a better prompt and it asks you all the questions and you answer the questions and I was really blown away at how much better the result was.
52:13 - Kurt Elster (Host)
Alright, who are you? What do you do?
52:15 - Taylor Holiday (Interviewee)
I'm Taylor Holiday. I'm the CEO and founder of Common Thread Collective.
52:19 - Kurt Elster (Host)
And you're big on Twitter, right?
52:21 - Taylor Holiday (Interviewee)
I'm big as a relative term In our small world, I'm medium-sized.
52:27 - Kurt Elster (Host)
Okay, and I put myself at medium-sized yeah exactly, I'm in the range, yeah. And what brings you to ECF.
52:36 - Taylor Holiday (Interviewee)
So ECF, I think, is the best community for e-commerce on the internet, and it's because it reflects the personality of Andrew in areas. I think he's an amazing human and he's cultivated an incredible group of people that genuinely care about this industry, about each other. It's a wildly supportive group of people, super smart, and being around them is exciting, because at home, my wife can take about 10 minutes of me talking about e-commerce before she gets exhausted. Here, these people could do it all night. So I'm amongst my people here and it's fun.
53:09 - Kurt Elster (Host)
And oh, you didn't mention your talk.
53:12 - Taylor Holiday (Interviewee)
Oh, and I was speaking. Yeah, yeah, there's that too.
53:15 - Kurt Elster (Host)
All right before. I want to hear about your talk, but most people I've noticed have come here with there's like a pain to a problem, something in mind that they're hoping they can get answered, that they can get an unlock on. Do you have one?
53:28 - Taylor Holiday (Interviewee)
What I love about any of these kinds of conferences is you discover somebody who's doing a thing in a novel way that you hadn't yet considered right, and I'll give you, for me it was Paul from BK Beauty. So one of the things we also own is a skincare brand called Bamboo Worth, and so we've watched Paul from a distance, and TikTok Shops has been intriguing and compelling, and so I got to sit with him at dinner last night and just hear him talk about just ruthless focus they have on this opportunity and what it's done for his business, and it was like challenging in this exciting, novel way that I like I can't wait to go back and figure out how to take some of that energy and apply it to our business, and that kind of like. It's really hard to get that anywhere else Besides sitting across from somebody and seeing them vividly come to life over a marketing tactic, and you're like, oh my gosh, I believe you so sincerely. I need to try this. So I think stuff like that is always exciting.
54:20 - Kurt Elster (Host)
Yeah, I always come back and I'm like going a million miles an hour when I get back to the office. I didn't even need to actually learn anything. You're right. The enthusiasm is infectious and then it reminds me of doing this a long time. It reminds me of that excitement and that passion as a good way to recharge.
54:39 - Taylor Holiday (Interviewee)
Totally. It's like going to New York City for me. I don't know that I could live there, but man do. I love being there for a few days to soak up the energy. So it's the same thing. Some days you're in your office, it's not in this, it's hard and then you come here and you're like oh, I love this, I remember why and I trade off with people's enthusiasm when you're down. So I agree with that totally.
54:57 - Kurt Elster (Host)
New York's my favorite city. I wouldn't live in.
54:59 - Taylor Holiday (Interviewee)
Yeah, that's exactly how I feel. It's my favorite city on earth, but I don't know if I could be there with my three kids in the winter.
55:04 - Kurt Elster (Host)
Yeah, you're not ready. Alright, so what was your talk on?
55:07 - Taylor Holiday (Interviewee)
So I did a talk. It was actually David Herman and I did a talk together where we took a ECF members account and built a media plan live for them on stage, and this was Andrew Daring sort of came up with this idea of having David and I work together. We found an awesome woman by the name of Elizabeth Grogene who is super generous and vulnerable, and let us tear apart her whole account on stage and my sort of mission right now is about uniting marketing and finance, so I got to sort of take the setup of helping her look through the financial and operational side of the business and how it informs her media strategy. David picked it up and talked to Facebook Execution and it was fun.
55:44 - Kurt Elster (Host)
What do you think people are consistently getting wrong about their marketing or media plan?
55:49 - Taylor Holiday (Interviewee)
That it starts with a clear financial plan Is that their media plan suffers from a lack of clarity of the business objective, a lack of connection to their inventory planning and a lack of clear objective of what they're trying to get the ad account to do to serve the overall business outcome. Because it's actually really hard to get to that level of clarity that you can enable a media buyer to be effective and too many times they're just sort of letting the ad account dictate the general direction of the business versus the ad account is in service of a clear financial objective for the organization.
56:21 - Kurt Elster (Host)
Okay, but my clear objective is be profitable, or do I have to narrow this down?
56:27 - Taylor Holiday (Interviewee)
No, you have to say it much more specifically. So I think the difference between be profitable to. I want to do $4.14 million and $342 million on the bottom line for the year and that translates to this next month and this subsequent month on these units that I'm going to purchase at this time. That's a financial plan. I want to grow 20%. It's not a financial plan.
56:45 - Kurt Elster (Host)
I find, when I have like actual concrete cash flow goals, yes, even if you know they're chosen arbitrarily but realistically.
56:53 - Jimmy Kim (Interviewee)
Yes.
56:54 - Kurt Elster (Host)
Because that is a real number and I can divide that.
56:56 - Taylor Holiday (Interviewee)
That's right.
56:57 - Kurt Elster (Host)
You know, I'm like okay, that's, I know exactly what these inputs and outputs need to be.
57:00 - Taylor Holiday (Interviewee)
That's exactly right. So I'd say step one is exactly that Just guess at a future number that you can track your performance against that expectation. Eventually you'll refine that process to get more sophisticated and modeling and more accurate over time. But data only matters in context of expectation and if you don't have expectation of your numbers, they don't mean anything, and so every day you should be looking. I just got out of Roman Konstock. He's another amazing founder and you'll see every day in Slack he has his people post performance to expectation, performance to expectation for every metric and that's the game. How are we doing relative to how we thought we were going to do? Not because you're going to guess right. We're not playing guess the M&M's in a jar here. We're trying to understand where we are off course so we can course correct quickly, and that's what expectation does. It helps you understand that.
57:47 - Kurt Elster (Host)
The sentiment I have heard about Facebook here, yeah, has been negative. Sure, because it is it harder. What's happened?
57:58 - Taylor Holiday (Interviewee)
People have a extremely unhealthy emotional relationship with metal is. What happens is that it is set a bar of expectation for performance that's so incredibly high that when they experience volatility or change in it, the level of frustration is just so outsized relative to its positive impact. And maybe maybe I'm selling for Mark Zuckerberg here, but I don't think people realize the magic and power of that tool and treat it Also. When you look at things on any individual daily basis, you're dealing in the law of small numbers. You're just going to deal with more volatility. It's the same way that you look. But if you zoom out on a wider spread over the period of time, you have the greatest ad platform ever built in human history and, I think, the real. The last few weeks there's been some errors in meta. There's been some CPM spends. Nobody likes losing money. In a way, that's so. I empathize with that. But at the same time, if we zoom out, we still realize that this is where we need to be acting in effective, but people have a highly emotional relationship with this channel.
58:58 - Kurt Elster (Host)
What's your favorite chat? Gpt prompt.
59:01 - Taylor Holiday (Interviewee)
I have been playing more with Dolly lately. Okay, then I have been with chat GPT and I've been trying to like all of my thumbnails this is the only job. This, all my thumbnails from my YouTube videos and everything are all prompts created by Dolly and I've been trying to see how much. Because I'm not a creative, so it feels like it gives me a power I don't have yet and so suddenly I feel like I am, so more I'm capable as a creator in a way that I wasn't before. So that's that's, I'd say, where I'm spending more of my time with right now.
59:31 - Kurt Elster (Host)
I love that. Yeah, I love. The idea of the tools is not like this is not replacing anyone, this is just super charging your output.
59:38 - Taylor Holiday (Interviewee)
Yes, it's, whether it's coding, data analysis, you know, like language translation, all the things that I don't know how to do in my human brain or don't have the skills for I suddenly now can is like really empowering. Once you feel it, You're like, oh dang, I'm, I'm now a designer. If I can think it can be there, you know, that's like really cool, it's exciting.
59:58 - Kurt Elster (Host)
It was. I have heard so much about like people using AI in novel ways here, and a lot of it's about like creative output so many people excited about, but struggling with TikTok shop.
01:00:12 - Taylor Holiday (Interviewee)
Yeah.
01:00:13 - Kurt Elster (Host)
Like that one. They're like all right, they see the opportunity there. Yeah, but it isn't easy.
01:00:17 - Taylor Holiday (Interviewee)
No, well, nothing is, and I think Paul's a great example of this. When I asked Paul why BK Beauty was so successful at it, his story started. He started telling me the story of that 10 years ago, and it started with my wife as a creator on YouTube for five years. We understand the creator ecosystem. We've been seeding product into that community for two and a half years, prior to the existence of TikTok shops, people were already making videos of us all the time, so when the affiliate feature got turned on, we were able to immediately take advantage, and so people like to see these things often as like an overnight success story and we could all, so we all got a rush over there.
01:00:50
No, no, no. Paul was positioned perfectly because he had spent years in a world that suddenly moved in his direction. It's really hard to recreate that the same way, and so when I asked him, I was like, so, ok, so what would I do? I would think about spending the next six months of seeding the product into the community before you even think of turning on TikTok shops. And I was like, whoa, that's like OK, that's, that's different than turn it on tomorrow and start making money.
01:01:12 - Kurt Elster (Host)
He's playing 4D chess yeah.
01:01:13 - Taylor Holiday (Interviewee)
Yeah, and he is he's. He went to Paul with the film school. He sees himself as a creator, so his brand reflects this intimate connection to that community in a way that again it's like oh yeah, of course, that's what was true about why you're winning here uniquely relative to everybody else. It's not that TikTok shops is this magic. Everybody wins all the time. There's very few things that are actually like that, but it's that for some people who were positioned in this really unique way, that feature of the affiliate ecosystem that you could turn on instantaneously was magic for him. But you can't just expect to recreate it in the same way.
01:01:44 - Kurt Elster (Host)
Yeah, that's brilliant. All right, you are fully recharged. You're at 100 percent Come Monday.
01:01:51 - Taylor Holiday (Interviewee)
Yes.
01:01:52 - Kurt Elster (Host)
What's the first thing you? What's the action item? What's the thing you do? Because you were here.
01:01:54 - Taylor Holiday (Interviewee)
Yeah, that's a great question. I feel that I got a lot of reinforcement that the message that I'm focused on right now, this idea of bridging gap between marketing and finance, is the right message for me to focus on and I feel re-energized to continue creating content in that space. Someone one of my good friends, alex Baynes he's awesome. He used to work at Trek and now has a cool brand, grubbs brand, with his wife he said. He said to me last night you're on a hero's journey, bro, like you found your story. And I was like okay, thank you, I guess, a creator, you need fuel. Sometimes you feel like you're shouting into a void and you just go is this good, does anyone care?
01:02:30
And so to get that is re-energized and go back and think of another script and record another video and edit it again, and it's like you get it. Sometimes someone just telling you that it mattered to them is like so life giving, so that's what I'd say.
01:02:41 - Kurt Elster (Host)
Yeah, it is a weird thing with the, especially the internet. Now You're putting content out there, thousands of people may see it. You don't hear a single thing from any of them, not a drop. It's so weird, like something way. Think about it. I'm like man. That's odd.
01:02:55 - Taylor Holiday (Interviewee)
Totally. And there's days where I'm like, dude, that was a total flop. And then on random Thursday, I'll see a kid in Italy post an IG story watching my video and I'm like whoa, like that, I had no idea it made it there. You know, I didn't get that feedback instantaneously, Like you know, so it can be a lonely endeavor sometimes, but getting to be around these people and getting that feedback is so encouraging.
01:03:20 - Kurt Elster (Host)
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